The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘Then find him – find him quick, before the bits are sent to you,’ Lukas said.

  They turned their backs on the piazza and the mountain.

  He had already bought the shirt, inexpensive and manufactured in China, wrapped in cellophane, when he met his handler. It was one of Davide’s routines that he bought a cheap shirt when he took the bus down the hill to the old town. Then he had something to bring back to the Sail and talk about if anyone wanted to know why he went so far.

  That day he didn’t know the name of his handler. There were men and women, and some he thought were senior, and others little more than clerks. Neither did he know from what building in the city they worked. He had, that day, requested an extraordinary meeting and broken the schedule.

  A man in a hood, handcuffed, had been hustled along a walkway. There was a view, fleeting, of the capo of the clan that had control of the Sail and half of the rest of Scampia, who, with his family, was a billionaire in euros and had been a fugitive for twelve years. There had now been four sightings of a man who was a stranger on that floor, not seen before, escorted. An old man, unable to disguise arthritis or rheumatism, had been brought past the agent’s apartment window. He told it all. He was not expected to interpret or analyse. He said that the activity was of greater intensity than he could remember and he thought the presence of the outsiders, and the hooded man, of sufficient interest to be reported.

  He passed to the handler two small cassettes. He was given two replacement spools.

  He received no encouragement, no praise. Neither was he criticised for requesting the extra rendezvous.

  He left the handler at the table, also routine. He knew that when he had gone, the handler would leave. Using his pass, which showed him as disabled, he took a bus to the railway station, then another back up the long hill. It would drop him – with the rest of the flotsam and the addicts who came each day to buy – in Scampia near his block.

  He had seen the shape of the hips, known it was a young man, – but his handler had shown no humanity, was unconcerned. Perhaps he had cared more for the cake on his plate.

  Umberto, the lawyer, used his open hands to demonstrate helplessness. ‘I don’t seek to be an intermediary. What am I to do? A note is left at my office, and an answer demanded. I do my best, and attempt to save the life of an unfortunate.’

  The prosecutor had the note in front of him. They were in the same room as they had met in before and, again, no dignity was offered to the clan’s advocate. He considered his answer. He had learned much that morning. Castrolami had come to him and brought news that Immacolata Borelli was back with her minders, that Operation Partenope proceeded and her support was guaranteed. Excellent news. Less excellent – in fact, dismal: a further communication via the lumaca, the lawyer he regarded as a slug crawling in slime, and an ultimatum that had hardened. Time was running fast, fine sand between fingers.

  With Castrolami there had been a short, slight man, who looked unfed and carried no spare weight, whose clothes were clean but unironed, and who had pepper-speckled hair that was cut short – as if by using scissors harshly the need for brushing was removed. He wore a short-sleeved checked sports shirt – not the collar and tie that the prosecutor and Castrolami habitually put on. The man had on jeans, not suit trousers, trainers, not polished leather shoes. His accent was a little American, had something of French, intimations of English, the language he used. The expression on his face was of humility. The prosecutor would likely have dismissed him as an indulgence that wasted precious time but for two factors: Mario Castrolami had brought him and would not have done so lightly, and the man had eyes that pierced, in which a light burned and demanded attention. He used only one name: Lukas.

  The prosecutor, formulating his answer, recalled what he had been told by the soft voice with many accents. The man, Lukas, had said they were now in the ‘stand-off’ time, that they needed to get to the next stage, the ‘negotiation phase’, and there followed only ‘termination’. Right now – with a tenuous line of communication open – they should be stalling, playing the game towards deadline extension. He should not be negative, should not refuse, but should delay while always reassuring that a solution of mutual benefit could be found… And when nothing is negotiable? The man, Lukas, had said with simplicity and candour: ‘You swallow the truth and lie.’ It stuck, like a mullet’s bone, in the prosecutor’s throat. He had been told how he should begin the dialogue and wanted, almost, to throw up.

  He smiled sickly. ‘What you must remember all the time, Umberto, is that I want to help.’

  Nothing was negotiable. Immacolata Borelli would testify. She would denounce her mother and brothers. Her evidence would send her blood relatives to harsh gaols for the greater part of their lives. There was no slack, no elasticity in the rope he now played out. He had, in his desk drawer, a photograph of the boy. A decent photograph, one that had been used for a passport. It was a photograph of an ordinary boy, and nothing was negotiable. The boy’s freedom could not be bought. It would be duplicity that saved the boy, not honesty – which did not sit easily with the prosecutor. He had talked of it that morning with his wife, who had remarked, predictably, ‘His parents, how awful for them…’ The parents, of course, were another burden for shouldering. Often, when faced with the gravest problems, he would talk to his wife and listen to her, then decide on the course to be followed. He would go to his office in the palace tower and listen to none of his closest aides. His wife had said, ‘But you cannot buy, dear one, the life of the boy.’ He valued what she told him, and could be strengthened by her opinion. What would change when he was gone, retired? What would be different on the streets of Naples when Castrolami was gone, and all the men and women who worked in that trusted loop round him? Would anything have altered? Was a great victory possible before the day that he, his wife and child turned their back on the place? He smiled again, looked across the table at the lawyer and felt the purity of hatred. ‘I need you to know, Umberto, that I want to help resolve this matter in any way I can. My help is on the table.’

  She didn’t talk about her mother. The tape-recorder was not produced. She didn’t speak of Vincenzo in the British prison, Belmarsh, or of Giovanni and Silvio, in the Poggioreale gaol. She made no more accusations against her father, locked in a solitary cell of the maximum-security block in Novara.

  Her plastic bag was filled.

  She had cooked an omelette, with cheese and diced ham, had mixed a dressing and tossed a salad, and had about emptied the refrigerator of bread and fruit. She had drunk a glass of water from the tap, as they had, and she had cleared the table. They had offered to help and been curtly refused.

  Immacolata washed up the plates and bowls and the frying pan, the knives and forks.

  They were behind her, still at the table.

  She could have asked if there was news of Eddie Deacon. She did not. They hadn’t spoken of anything significant, major or minor, of the purchase of the padlock and it being left to rust on a chain on the Ponte Milvio, a place of history. She used scalding water and no plastic gloves. The pain flushed her skin and she didn’t know whether they approved of what she was doing or thought her a cold, heartless, treacherous bitch. Knives and forks clattered on to the draining-board.

  Immacolata had not asked for information on what was being done to save Eddie Deacon’s life. She knew she wouldn’t be answered. They would have shrugged, pleaded their junior rank, and she would have demeaned herself. The salad bowl and the frying pan dripped on the draining-board, and she attacked the plates.

  Her problem – why she washed up and would then mop the floors and wipe the surfaces – chewed inside her. A junction reached, two turnings for choice. To take one betrayed the death agonies of Marianna Rossetti, to take the other condemned Eddie Deacon. There was no middle road. A plate broke. Maybe it had already been cracked, or she had put it down too forcefully on the draining-board. Without thinking, she collected the pieces, laid them out and l
ooked to see if the damage could be repaired. Only for a moment. She picked the pieces up, marched across the floor to the bin, dumped them and let the lid slam.

  She was finishing. Orecchia came from the table, gestured that he would help to dry up, but she waved him away. She wondered, briefly, who would be here next – a pentito from the Camorra, from the far south or Sicily? She had thought once that the hill, with its views, its fences, its guard dogs and its money, could be a home. She would never come back here. She saw a future of cars with privacy windows, false identities, and apartments that displayed nothing personal. No friends. She supposed, one day, they would give her a number to ring if she had difficulties. She would not, after a few more days or weeks, see Orecchia or Rossi again. There would be no friends. She would not love.

  It hurt too much to think of Eddie Deacon.

  She cleared the draining-board, made the correct piles on the shelves – and wondered if, for a department of the ministry that dealt with housing collaborators, she should write a confessional note reporting the broken plate. Then she went to the cupboard and brought out the mop. All the rooms would be cleaned. Orecchia and Rossi would understand that she needed to purge the place of her presence. She was a memory that would be erased, as if she had never been there. But she would have left something. She bit her lower lip hard, felt no pain but the warmth of blood. Without what she left, Immacolata would be a changed person.

  She would not know how, again, to love.

  The prosecutor’s car had brought him to the city hall. He did not see the mayor or any elected politician, but an official in the Interior section of the city’s bureaucracy. ‘We believe the successful prosecution of the entire Borelli family is a matter of great importance to the administration of Naples.’

  In his own world, at the Palace of Justice, the prosecutor was a king, an emperor, and had – almost – the authority of a Bourbon.

  ‘We are concerned that the image of the city is fractured, that national leaders from the north regard us as a nest of anarchy and criminality, and that the city is ungovernable.’

  He was not in his own world. Power, absolute, resided in this building, and when he was summoned, the prosecutor came.

  ‘Without a mark of success, we face the very grave dangers of attacks on the city’s budget as supplied by central government – it would be reflected in police and carabinieri budgets. There is the expression, “throwing good money after bad”, and it is used frequently in reference to our society. We have to succeed. The election, also, looms.’

  A small mountain of paper was on his desk, with foothills of files on the carpet around it, but in acknowledgement of that power he must show dutiful attention.

  ‘There can be no question of a bargain being done. We deal, Dottore, with justice and we are not in a souk. Justice comes first, always. The case against the Borelli family will be prosecuted with full rigour. The mayor, or a principal in his administration, wishes – very soon – to give a media conference at which the iron-fisted determination of the city hall will be shown as resolute against organised criminality.’

  The prosecutor nodded, seemed to show what was required of him: respect.

  ‘If the young man dies – and no negotiation will be deployed – it is believed that such a tragedy can be turned to advantage as a clear indication of the barbarity of the clans, their ruthlessness. If… We demand there is no weakening.’

  He was dismissed. He had stood throughout and had not been given coffee. What angered the prosecutor most: he had been dragged across the city, brought here, lectured, and he agreed with each sentiment voiced. Nothing was negotiable. He left through the ornate double doors. He wondered how high a level of deceit was required to save the boy, and whether the man, Lukas, who had been in his office was capable of lying to that level.

  A priest said, in brisk Italian, ‘Yes, he came here. He came to my church of San Giorgio Maggiore. I’m told he waited a long time for me. Before, he had been the length of via Forcella and back, and had asked where he could find Immacolata Borelli. Her last home was with her grandparents. He was a stranger and no one would tell him. If a stranger asks for the directions to the home of an old clan leader and his wife, no one will tell him… except me. I told him. I realise now that I should not have, but I did. And the boy has “disappeared”, a way of saying he has been kidnapped, and will be used to pressurise the granddaughter, Immacolata. I know Immacolata. If she had stayed, if she had taken a young man from her own class, from another family, I would have been asked to marry her in my church, and I doubt I would have refused. It would have been a grand wedding, followed by an obscenely lavish party, and horrible amounts would have been spent on the principals’ clothing. A heap of banknotes would have been given me for the repair of the church roof and most of those notes would have tested positive for recent cocaine exposure. A predecessor of mine refused, and he was not supported by the hierarchy, and his condemnation of the killing of a child in a gun battle was not backed. For a few days after the girl died there were demonstrations of hostility towards the clan. The anger was a wind that blew out very soon, and the priest was isolated, under threat. When the TV cameras had gone, and their lights, he was alone. He is now in Rome, and when he comes back to visit his mother and father he has an explosion-proof car to travel in and armed bodyguards to escort him. Our cloth and our collar do not protect us. There are bullet marks by the main door and you passed them. It is not easy to stand against such a force. You wish me to ask in my pulpit on Sunday for information to be given to the police concerning the boy. I would be wasting my breath. They are the state, not you, Dottore Castrolami. They have complete power, complete authority. Even inside this house of God I feel the fear. It is always with us. It shames me, but it’s there. Fear is in the fabric of this street, this church, this congregation, this priest. A priest stood out against the Casalesi clan and was shot dead. You say you have few hours left, and you have no idea where the boy is held. I’m grateful for the trust you place in me that you can give me information so sensitive, and I can suggest only that you pray for good fortune and that the sun will shine on your endeavour. It is Naples. We are all, believe me, friend, powerless in the face of this force of evil. We lack the strength to stand against it. But I tell you, friend, if it is one or the other – the force of justice exerted against the family of Forcella or the boy’s life – I choose justice. I feel inadequate, a failed man, not only today but every day I serve here. I will pray for the boy, but privately. The Church has little use for another hero, less for another martyr.’

  Castrolami shook his hand, then Lukas. They left him in the quiet, cool, empty cavern of his church, and went back out into the sunshine. Lukas was not a man, ever, to criticise the actions, the self-preservation and the priorities of a victim skewered on dilemmas. They went for coffee.

  Did he want it?

  Eddie shivered.

  The enormity of what he had achieved struck him, a hammer blow. He was shivering, his legs were trembling spasmodically and his hands shook.

  He had two hinges loose.

  He could now, using the galvanised bucket for leverage and the head of the nail as a screw-driver, free the hinges from the door.

  At any moment, on his decision, with a five-minute window to shift the screws, he could open the door, forcing the bolt from its slot, and go through it. He would have the nail as a weapon, with the end of the chain and its pin.

  He didn’t know what was beyond the door.

  He could get through one, might find another that was locked, bolted and barricaded… might find that the handle turned and it opened. He might confront, beyond it, three men with knives, guns and coshes, or he might find it empty, or one man asleep. He might be too high up to go out through a window – or there might be a flat roof for him to drop down on.

  He didn’t know.

  If he opened the door that took him beyond the chance to turn back – he’d be going for broke. If they caught him they’d
hurt him, then kill him.

  Choices faced Eddie Deacon, almost crushed him.

  15

  It was as if Eddie pressed on a coiled spring. His breathing was hard, uncontrolled. His leg muscles had tightened and his hands were clumsy, insensitive. Tension built in him.

  He did it.

  Eddie had the galvanised bucket under the lower hinge bar. The upper was already detached and had swung away from the steel-sheeted door. He let the spring go; his energy danced free. All of his strength now was directed on to the bucket and his fingers were gripping it. He pulled, tugged, forced back the bucket and the two screws screeched. He had been more careful, had worked slower, on the upper hinge and it had made less noise. Now the lower hinge made a cat-fight sound. No going back. A sound – proverbial – to wake the dead. Enough to wake any guy on sentry duty, drowsy in a chair. He did the last heave, and was hurled back across the space as the hinge bar came away and one of the screws exploded into his face, like gunfire. The bolt fittings loosed. The door sagged and fell away.

  A strip of light came into the space. Eddie could see where he had been – walls that were graffiti-marked, and his own name a scrawl across other writing, the boarded window, the turned-over bucket and the plastic bag in which the food had been, the bottle on its side, the crevice of broken concrete from which the chain’s pin had been dislodged, and the hood. He could see all of that. Then he scooped up the length of chain, might have been five feet of it, the nail in his right hand, and he put his body into the gap, using his hips and shoulders to force the opening wider. He was snagged – he struggled, writhed… and broke out.