The Collaborator

by Gerald Seymour

  He didn’t know how much time he’d used since the screech of the screws – seemed an age, might have been a few seconds. Time, then, was most precious to him.

  Eddie crouched. He had two weapons and readied them. He had the nail held like a knife for stabbing downwards, and the chain with the pin on it which he could swing as a flail. The room was small, empty. No chairs, no table, no cupboards or chests, but there were sacks against one wall, three, opened, and in them were stacked packages in sealed oiled paper – like it was their warehouse. There was wallpaper, peeled and damp-stained, with mould by the skirting and a loud flower pattern, and there was a window, daylight.

  Going fast, crab-like, Eddie reached it. Light poured through it and stung his eyes. He blinked and they watered. He didn’t know how long he had been in darkness or with the hood over his face. He realised, peering through the grime on the glass, that he was high in a block. He could see below an empty road, then a path on which dogs fought, snarling and posturing, and a woman pushed a buggy. Beyond, kids kicked a football and the shadows were small, the sun high. He saw also that a man urinated in the bushes, his back to the block, and further down the road a couple, young, looked behind them furtively, then went into the cover. He knew he could have waved at that window, screamed, jumped up and down and yelled some more but no one would hear, see or care about him – not even the bloody dogs. But he pulled at the window latches. They were rotten and broke, and he had the window wide. Eddie had to close his eyes to protect them from the glare. He stood vulnerable – thought it pathetic – rooted and blind. He had to open his eyes, take the pain. He did.

  He put his head out of the window. He saw a cruising police car, but only the tail, then it was gone – and a scooter coming up the street. The driver and his pillion wore black helmets with darkened visors.

  What was he looking for? Perhaps he hoped to find, under that window, a drainpipe or a balcony, a hand reaching up from a window below, or a builder’s ladder, the convenience of a fireescape. He craned forward, lost sight of the dogs and the kids, the woman with the buggy and the man who had now zipped up and was walking. The scooter had gone and the road was empty again. There was nothing. Maybe a film stuntman could have done something, or a Special Forces soldier, a guy from a comic – not Eddie Deacon. There was no hand or foot grip, and the pavement was fifty, sixty feet below, the drop sheer.

  He heard, behind him, the door open, then an oath.

  Turning, he faced the man. Young, muscled, not focused but confused, T-shirt and jeans, hair slicked with gel and a chain on his neck with a crucifix hanging. Eddie saw every feature of him. The sun spot on his temple and the mole on his chin, his T-shirt inside the belt on the jean waist. Not more than two seconds, and Eddie had absorbed that the man had no weapon.

  He charged him. Hit him hard, clenched fist holding the nail, hit him in the chest where the ribcage gives way to soft stomach skin. Didn’t know who he was, why he was there. Eddie felt he’d punctured him. Hadn’t seen him before. Hit him, wounded and hurt him, because he was in the doorway. The man grunted and doubled. Eddie didn’t know whether it was a flesh wound or a fatal injury to an organ. He pushed him aside. As the man went down, Eddie went through the doorway.

  He was in another room. The men’s hands loosened, the cards fell haphazardly to the table and dropped on to the banknotes they played for. Chairs were pushed back and the table rocked as knees caught its underside. Three more men, all matching the other’s confusion, disbelief. But the door out of the room was beyond them. A hand clutched his shoulder from behind.

  He was brought to the Sail by Fangio. His nose was a dull pain that throbbed. Blood was in his nostrils, and he had sucked some into his mouth and swallowed a little.

  The anger burned in him. Salvatore had had to return to the Sail to report to the clan men who had sent him out, given him the photograph of an opponent to be killed and the map for the location of a killing. It had been demanded that he report back in person. Already a witness would have called a cut-out number, which would have phoned into the Sail. He was not bringing news of a killing – like when he was ten, before he was full time on the streets, and standing before a goddam teacher, his goddam writing commented on – ‘Poor, needs more practice. Improvement required’, but it was a part of the price Carmine Borelli had paid. They would know already that a bottle had hit his face, and that the execution had not shown calm, casual power.

  When he lifted off his helmet, the visor spattered, the blood had been dammed by the padding and made a ring below his lower lip and on his cheeks. He was Salvatore, the idol of kids who had his photograph on their mobiles. He was Il Pistole. He was the enforcer of the Borelli clan. He could have screwed Gabriella Borelli, should have screwed Immacolata Borelli. He was a man of consequence in Forcella and Sanità, but in the Sail he was a servant and had been sent with a P38 on an errand. The blood on his face was as humiliating as if, a kid, he had soiled his pants.

  He went up the stairs fast and hoped to find a washroom before he saw the principals. As he took the steps – two in each stride – the pain caught him.

  The car was a high-performance Alfa 166, a three-litre engine. Orecchia drove and the seat beside him was empty, except for a machine pistol, gas canisters and a protective vest.

  She had Rossi with her in the back. It might have been Orecchia’s sense of humour that he had insisted on driving and put her with Rossi, who had seen her naked as she had seen him. They sat at the far extremities of the black-leather bench seat, and there was another machine pistol between them, more gas and vests. She thought the car was low on its wheels and presumed it was armoured. Rossi, now, ignored her. It was as if, she thought – her signature on the ‘contract’, the agreement that she would collaborate and give evidence guaranteed – they were about to pass her on and therefore had no need to humour, flatter, cajole or dominate her. She was to them used goods.

  Their eyes did not meet. Their hands stayed far apart, and their knees. She was behind Orecchia and stared out of the left side window. Rossi’s attention was locked on the right.

  They went fast on the autostrada, kept a place in the overtaking lane. Traffic in front veered out of their path and blue lights flashed behind the radiator grille. They had been escorted out of the Roman suburbs by a marked car and would be met again when they approached the southern city. They were now south of Frosinone, north of Cassino, and cruised at an average of 145 kilometres an hour. Orecchia had music on, light opera, and there was no conversation. The radio filled the void.

  She wore the best of her few clothes, had done her makeup and brushed her hair before leaving. She had seen residents on the balconies of the block on the hill and had walked straight-backed to the car. It would have been obvious from their body language that the men with her were a protection detail. She thought there would have been sneers from those balconies and it would have been obvious that she was a collaborator – she had protection but not the clothing of a person of status. By now she would be gossiped over. Like dogs with old bones, they would be exchanging anecdotes of sightings of her. Not one, she was certain, of the residents on the hill would have admired what she had done.

  They had gone out to the autostrada by the north-east route. She had had only one glimpse of the river. The old bridge, built originally by a Roman-era architect, and carrying now a padlock sold that morning for thirty-five euros, was far behind her.

  Immacolata Borelli was going home.

  One man had a lacerated face, a ribbon of blood, from the chain swung against it.

  Another had run and was gone down a corridor, a door slammed after him and a bolt pushed back.

  Another was dazed from the collision of his head with Eddie’s and doubled from the impact of Eddie’s knee in his groin.

  The man who had been stabbed with the nail and had grabbed Eddie’s shoulder, now moaned on the floor and held his throat. There were welts on it where the chain had wrapped round it, and he had almost choked
with the constriction of his windpipe.

  There were two doors, closed, ahead of Eddie.

  The moment would not last, could not. They were in shock, and shock would clear.

  Eddie opened the left-hand door. He saw a lavatory seat and a basin. He came out, twisted and dragged on the second door. He was in a hall. An artist’s conception of Christ hung on the wall, a candle under it, not lit. Eddie understood that adrenalin coursed through him. When it was used up, he would weaken. His pace would slacken, while their shock and confusion ebbed. There were more sacks in the hall and another door, with a steel-barred gate, and beyond it a steel sheet on wood. But the lock on the gate was unfastened and he could wrench it back. In the local paper, the one that did Dalston and Hackney, there had been a piece about crack houses that had been busted into by the police, with photographs and the crack houses had had those barred gates for security. Heavy keys were in the door. He didn’t know what was beyond it. He pulled it open.

  An alarm wailed. He couldn’t have known the door was alarmed – had seen no key pad. Eddie reeled out on to a walkway. He could have gone right but he went left. In either direction there was only a long corridor of concrete with chest-high walls and wires running across it, looped to overhead bars, with washing slung on them – he had to duck his head below shirts, sheets and skirts, cotton trousers, lightweight towels and underwear. He ran, and heard the pursuit.

  Because of the washing his head was down, and it was awkward running with the shackle on his ankle – bloody excuses, Eddie. He looked up. He saw, ahead of him, a gate. It was as if the air was vacuumed from his lungs. It was like when hope died. There was no way off the walkway and it was lined with doors – closed, blocked to him. There was a staircase, perhaps fifty paces ahead – might have been a mile or five. He slowed. There was a knot of men at the head of the staircase and between them and him the gate. He saw it so clearly. He could see five vertical and three horizontal bars, and it was topped with a loose coil of barbed wire. The pandemonium behind him came nearer. He had almost stopped. He saw the man, with caked blood on his face, approach the gate and talk to the guards there, and attention was distracted.

  Eddie was level with a window. Some on the walkway had been broken and repaired with cardboard, others had old sheets or towels draped across them for privacy, or were too filthy to see through. He caught the eyes of an old guy slumped in a chair but who had turned, twisted, then was on his feet.

  The door beside the window opened. It must have been in Eddie’s face: two big words – per favore. He heard a key turn. The door wasn’t opened. For him to do it.

  Eddie understood the survival instinct. Refuge given, but for him to open the door, and for him to determine whether it brought the dogs of hell into the old guy’s room. Nowhere else to go. He went inside.

  Old blood on Salvatore’s face. New blood on the men confronting him. He had been slowed at the gate, they had been slowed by the washing slung across. Some items had been torn down when the cloth was across their faces. Women screamed and were in the walkway, collecting up what had been torn down. For dirtying washing, foot-soldiers of the clan could be abused, not for murder, not for selling narcotics or for intimidation, but for washing that had been dragged off the pegs and would have to be washed again.

  Salvatore was allowed through the barred gate. He could have been let through immediately, but that was not the way power was exercised in Scampia. He was kept waiting on the pretence that an answer to a mobile was needed – bullshit. And amusing, too, the blood on his face. He saw men coming towards him. He recognised three of the four, knew where they had been and what their work was.

  Incoherent ramblings greeted him. Then clarity.

  Salvatore screamed.

  His man was lost. Where? Above the scream, close to where he stood, a television was turned up loud and blasted out of a closed window. He had to scream to be heard above it: ‘Knock down every fucking door. Find him.’

  The handler of Delta465/Foxtrot had enjoyed his cake and coffee, had put the tapes given him into his briefcase and had wandered back to the office used by the service, a block in the Mussolini tradition that was behind the Posta e Telegrafi building and backed on to the piazza Carita.

  He had wound fast through the picture images, had seen a clan leader whose image was perpetually on the database. He had seen a close-up of Carmine Borelli and his hood, Salvatore, both thrown up by computer recognition, and the three still frames that showed a hooded prisoner being frogmarched along the walkway – a front frame, a side frame, a back frame.

  He had typed his report.

  He had gone down a corridor and had knocked with due respect on the door of his line manager. He had been admitted. He had explained what matters the agent – Delta465/Foxtrot – had felt sufficiently important to warrant an extraordinary meeting. He had shown the images.

  The concerns of the agent were logged.

  His line manager said, ‘We operate, Beppe, in a world of priorities. We’re not policemen, not detectives of the Guardia di Finanze, or investigators of the carabinieri. We are defenders of the state in matters of national security. This is mere criminality. We do not, for any short-term position, endanger the safety of a long-term asset. If the police or other units were to act on this information it would hazard his safety – our agent. It should be filed. Thank you. Please, excuse me, I have a meeting. The usual file and without specific flagging.’

  The search had started. In the warren of concrete that was the Sail, on its third floor, where the walkway had the numbers of the three hundreds, odd and even, doors were hammered on for entry. Like a pack of hunting dogs, hurt and demanding blood, men went about the task of tracking down a fugitive.

  It had been the washing suspended from the wires criss-crossing above the walkway that had permitted the escaper to lose his pursuers. The washing was gone now, and the women had retreated.

  It was a methodical search, down two sides, and every apartment was scoured. All those who hunted or watched waited for the triumphant shout that would tell them of success. There was no love for strangers here.

  News travelled fast in Naples and its environs. It might as well have been carried on the hourly bulletins of the independent radio stations or on the RAI network. It burrowed through prison walls, over the barbed-wire defences, into the great heat-stifled blocks, where the cells were, and into the wire-roofed exercise yards.

  At Posilippo, north of the city, Gabriella Borelli heard a whisper through her door that her daughter was back in the custody of the Servizio Centrale Protezione and would testify. She sat on her bunk and the sweat streamed off her. She thought of the boy, the one lever left, and wished him dead, his corpse dumped at her daughter’s feet. She was near to tears.

  At Poggioreale, south of the city, Giovanni Borelli strutted in a yard and Silvio Borelli slouched around the circuit, and it was murmured to them that their sister had returned to the protection of the state and had guaranteed her willingness to give evidence. The older swore, cursed and blasphemed, his cheeks reddened, and his brother heard him say, ‘The whore, the fucking whore – she should have her boy, have him dead.’ The younger shook his head, didn’t understand the scale of his sister’s hatred or why it was directed against himself. He would have seen the boy butchered if it would open the Poggioreale gate for him.

  Umberto, the lawyer, heard – brought to him by the grapevine his nephew, Massimo, listened to. He thought: then the boy is condemned. And his building had cameras aimed at it, his phones were listened to. If he walked to a bar for coffee and a pastry he was followed on foot, and if he drove to the launderette to deliver or collect his cottons a car came after him. ‘The boy is condemned and has little time. Sad but inevitable… little time.’

  Eddie Deacon had no bloodlust, would have said he did not practise cruelty to the defenceless. He had memories. He could hear – through doors, walls, above the volume of the television – the search coming closer… doors breaking, sh
outing, always closer.

  A memory of fishing for pike in the Avon as a child, with other children. A small roach or a juvenile perch, maybe three inches long, was impaled alive on treble hooks, then thrown into still water in the ebb of a weir and near a reed bed, and a float would bob around as the fish swam for safety from the predator. It would try to reach the cover of the reeds and find shelter there from the pike’s jaws, and the children would yank the line and pull it away from the reeds so that it would swim where the big beast could see it. Always the live bait went for the most tangled reeds to hide.

  The apartment was a trap, and its teeth had closed round him.

  A memory of the kids who lived on farms – and the child, Eddie, went to their homes at weekends and headed off with them across the fields – and had set snares. They were put in place on a Friday afternoon, inspected on Saturday and Sunday morning. Sometimes the rabbit was already dead, sometimes there was just blood and fur and a fox would have taken it but occasionally the rabbit had crouched, so still, and seemed to know its fate and merely waited for the killing blow. Always, with its final strength, it had tried to get into what deep cover the snare’s restraint allowed.

  There was a front room in which an old man sat and watched the television. It was a dirty, smelly, hot room, and the man had gone back to his chair after turning the key and hadn’t looked at Eddie. He had watched a film, technicolour, cowboys – it could have been Robert Mitchum, half a century old, and had not caught Eddie’s eye. What alternative? A pack running behind him. A closed gate in front. No steps off to the sides, up or down. The door had been unlocked for him to open and close. A front room with a window that was exceptional for its cleanliness. He had gone inside. A corridor ran from the living room, and there was no air-conditioner, no electric fan, and the heat caught inside was a blanket in his face. There was a kitchen space off the corridor with a small cooker and a fridge, both from a museum, and small cupboard units. It wasn’t a place where a man – five foot ten, twelve stone six – could hide. No chance. There was a bedroom and a double bed, and under the mattress there were fixed drawers, a wardrobe that looked ready to fall apart and a chest with more drawers. Again there was no hiding place.