He saw them too, winced, and wished he’d lit a second cigarette. He went back into the restaurant.
‘Everything all right?’ his guest asked.
He smiled. ‘Probably, perhaps – about as all right as it can be. Now, what have you ordered for us?’
Immacolata had been given pizza in the prosecutor’s office. She was not privy to events. He had been called out by his assistant three times, left his inner office, gone into the outer, took the phone and kept his voice at a pitch subdued enough for her not to hear what he said. She sensed that finality approached and that she was not invited to share it. Each time, when he came back, he had a deeper-cut frown on his forehead and then – as if he remembered its presence – would force a smile and attempt to wipe anxiety.
She ate the pizza and drank aerated water. She thought, in truth, they didn’t believe in her resolve. She cleared her plate and emptied the bottle. Immacolata said, and did her sweet, warm smile, ‘You need not be concerned for me. My mind is made up, and it’s not for changing.’
He looked at her quizzically, as if he didn’t yet understand her. ‘I work in this room, Signorina for six days out of seven every week, for a minimum of ten hours every day. I strive after successes, but they are rare and elusive. To arrest a de Lauro or a Lo Russo or a Licciardi or a Contini classes as success. Maybe once a year we take one. Because of you, the evidence you bring, I have been able to close down an entire family – not an individual but a whole clan… Does that then defeat the criminal conspiracy? No. But it halts the advance. In my terms, to halt an advance, to stop a flow of Vesuvio’s lava, is a success. Such are the crumbs off the table from which I survive. If you capitulate, Signorina, success is snatched away and the advance – irresistible – continues.’
‘I won’t capitulate.’
‘You will not say – now, at this moment – that the life of the boy matters more?’
‘No.’
‘Say it to me again, please.’
‘No… His life doesn’t matter more.’
‘Thank you.’
She stood up and let the pizza fragments fall from her lap on to his carpet and desk. She brushed the lap of her skirt, then took a little handkerchief from her bag and wiped the ring on the desk that the bottle had left. She touched her hair. She faced him. ‘I’m ready for my next test – yes? It’s a matter of giving proof? Where’s Eddie?’
‘In Scampia, in the Sail, at the mercy of your father’s killer. Salvatore controls him.’
‘Will you save him?’
‘We’ll try to.’
‘Could I save him?’
‘Of course.’
‘And the price would be my evidence?’
He shrugged. He didn’t have to give her his answer. She walked towards the door. It was as if she was an actor, on a stage, caught in a pool of light, and she knew the lines would not be spoken again, the questions and doubts would not be reiterated. She would not be thanked. She did not expect gratitude, and she thought humanity – what had been a variety of love – had been squeezed out of her, existed only in a padlock abandoned on a bridge. She said, ‘I am ready to go to Posilippo now, to give you proof and serve you the crumbs, success. Can we move? I hope your best is good enough for Eddie’s life.’
‘It’s only advice, not control.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Lukas answered. ‘I give advice and you – obvious – are free to take or ignore it… It’s the way, friend, it always is.’
He saw a wry smile spread on Castrolami’s face – almost Lukas grinned, as dry as the skin of a tomato left out in the midday sun, what they sold in a supermarket – and Castrolami asked, ‘What would be the first item of advice?’
Lukas squinted, looked up the length of the walkway. Two ROS guys, including the one they called Franco, the sniper, the franco tiratore, had gone up to the fourth level, had tracked along it then come down and were now hunkered in front of the far barred gate on the third level. The washing in front of him had not been torn away and it was only as he lay on his stomach that he could see the doorways and windows, the one door and the one window. He thought the section of walkway was now evacuated; if it wasn’t, if some had been determined to stay behind, they must take their chance. There should not be the distraction of bawled commands, or requests, on a bullhorn for people to get clear. Always difficult to make the last few shift – they had a sick relative who was bedridden, a dog and four cats, a stick insect and a snake, a programme was coming on the television that they never missed, they feared they’d be looted once they’d gone. What now to advise?
He lit a cigarette. The Tractor had just started one, and the Engineer had just stubbed one out… From what he had seen and heard in the hours in the annexe off the operations room at piazza Dante he knew a little of the men around him. They talked girlfriends and sex, wives and arguments, kids and schools, mothers and food – and the psychologist made mobile calls to his partner, Maria, Spanish, and was concerned about the progress of her PhD thesis, while the collator was bothered that his son was on left-side defence in the café soccer team for the under-nines and should have been on the right. Castrolami had made one terse call, not more than ten seconds’ duration, to a woman, hoping her work had gone well and stating that he would not be eating with her that evening.
Lukas’s only communication had been with Roddy ‘Duck’ Johnstone, and had been short, brief, factual and without emotion. He had no one else to call. He never called his mother, Amy, and never called his father because he didn’t know his name. Never called his one-time wife, Martha, who knew him only because a lawyer in Charlotte, out of a smart office block on the city centre’s West Trade Street, sent her a small donation on the first Friday of each month, a couple of hundred dollars that had once been to look after the kid and had never been cancelled. She didn’t acknowledge it. Never called his boy, Dougie, who did real estate out of premises on North Tryon Street. There was no one he knew, other than Duck – and that was professional – who would give a damn whether he called or not… Not even the artist on the riverbank or the man who had the grocery off the rue de Bellechasse, or the woman who sold him ice-creams outside the museum, or the waiters in the cafés would care greatly if he returned to their territory or not. He wasn’t maudlin. It was the way he wanted his life to be. He didn’t have ties that tugged at him. He was only bonded, so he was told, to his work. He lay on his stomach with his upper body jutting out of the recess of a doorway. He could see the distant shapes of the Sniper and his partner, the door they focused on, and the window, and he could see half of Castrolami’s shoulder. Lying in the filth of the walkway would screw Castrolami’s suit. What advice was on offer?
The walkway was secured at both ends, so no advice was needed on sanitising the perimeters of a designated siege area.
Nothing was negotiable on free passage out for a hostage-taker and his victim.
The renunciation of evidence would not happen. An exchange – witness statements ditched in return for a life given – was not an option.
Clemency for a killer – unlikely. Leniency – improbable.
‘Right now I don’t have advice to give,’ Lukas said. ‘I can tell you what I want and what I don’t want.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I want to stabilise the atmosphere, cut the tension, get it stable. Make it so tedious that everyone wants to go to sleep – like it’s taking the drama out of the show. The hostage-taker, what I have on him, he’s young and he’s used to immediate acceptance of what he says, and he’ll reckon himself – saying it vulgar – the dog’s bollocks. He sees himself right now as a central figure in a big theatre. We have to get him down to the ground, and calm him, bleed the adrenalin out of him, then keep him cool. That’s the stabilisation. He’ll threaten to kill because he has no other currency to chuck at us. Cool and calm is what we aim for. The priority for the boy is to have him walk out in one piece. Agreed? We do an assault by your people and we’re on uncertain ground – may win,
may lose. An assault is last-chance stuff. The hostage-taker, where’s your priority for him?’
‘Taken alive.’
‘Most of them, ones fitting his profile, want what we call “police-assisted suicide”. It’s easy and quick, and they have a delusion about a legend being born. Alive, and he’s just another number in another cell block, rotting and forgotten. Alive, then, is my aim point.’
‘Do you do timetables?’
‘Try not to.’
‘I don’t have for ever.’
Lukas understood. A deal already in place. Part of a walkway cleared. A clan leader ordering his people to stand aside on this limited patch of territory, and an understanding that the law-and-order guys do their work, hurry, look for nothing else, do not disrupt, get lost. A deal that called for a long spoon, supper taken with devils, not a nice deal, one that stuck in a gullet. A deal that was understandable.
‘It’ll be over by dawn,’ Lukas said. He had the feeling he was regarded as an oracle, had done little to diminish it, and that he knew solutions to whatever problem areas were thrown up. But hostage negotiation, hostage rescue and hostage coordination were not exact sciences. Some people lived their lives on certainties, down to a level of decision-taking on whether to replace with a bayonet or screw-fastening bulb. He knew of no two cases where hostages had been taken that exactly mirrored each other, but, there were basic patterns, enough for him to make up expertise on the hoof. What Castrolami had not asked him: did he have the same excitement as years back? Did he find the processes repetitive and was the light in his eye dulled? ‘I have that feeling, and…’
The shout came down the walkway, hacked into the night air.
‘… it’ll be finished by dawn. What did he shout?’
Lukas strained to hear the voice better and Castrolami had a hand cupping his ear.
He heard the obscenity. The feet came back across the floor and Eddie was heaved upright. He stood, tottered, was supported. The man was at his back and wriggled in his hips and pelvis but stayed close to him. Eddie felt the belt looped round his own waist, then buckled across his stomach. They were a single item, Siamese. One hand was round Eddie’s chest, above the belt, and the other held the pistol against his neck.
His feet, from behind, kicked. He could manage a hop, and went forward. More hops and the space between the inner and outer door was crossed.
Halting, in English, at his ear: ‘They do not answer me. They see you, they will answer me.’
What to say? Nothing. Eddie bit his lower lip. It was broken where his teeth closed on it, and swollen to double size and the pain, brief, was pure. His ankles were trussed, his wrists too, and he could only move at a snail’s pace. He was driven forward… and, God, he wanted to live. He prayed silently, but the bitten lip moved, and they would not shoot. He could feel the body of Salvatore close against him and they were indivisible. The door was pulled open. Eddie blinked.
There were gaps between the sheets, towels, shirts, underwear and dishcloths. None of them stood.
Eddie did. Eddie was exposed. He looked left, saw the barrels of rifles and felt that each aimed at the centre of his chest, above the belt, below the arm, and zeroed – Eddie reckoned – on the place where his heart beat, bloody pounded. He didn’t know if he could hold his bladder. His body was twisted a quarter-turn and he looked to the right and up the other section of the walkway. Light reflected back from the telescopic sight mounted above the barrel and another black-suited figure was prone beside the marksman and had binoculars. The binoculars’ aim and the sight’s and the barrel’s were not on Eddie’s chest but his head. He could feel the pressure of the second head, Salvatore’s, against the back of his scalp, and the forehead moved, made little motions, bucking his own forward and back. Eddie read it. A rifle’s bullet would enter and exit, would not hit one of them but both, and the movements of Salvatore’s head dictated that the sniper’s aim fluctuated between their two skulls. From the other direction, up the walkway, the rifle bullets would go through one chest – one ribcage, one set of lungs or one heart – then into the other.
Prayed again – ‘Don’t let the bastards shoot.’ Realised it: ‘the bastards’ were the marksmen. A fucking jumble in his mind and the marksmen were the risk to his life, not the man hugging him close and holding the pistol to his neck.
The voice boomed in his ear, had stayed with English, and Eddie didn’t know why: ‘I walk out. I walk past you. I walk from the Sail. When I walk I have the guarantee that the whore, Immacolata Borelli, the voltagabbana – the turncoat – retracts evidence. You have a half-hour. Look for the time on your arm. Half an hour. In half an hour, no promise of retracting evidence, he is dead. Believe me, dead. You have a half-hour. You decide.’
Eddie shivered. The cold was on his skin, but the warmth of the night made him sweat. It was a new cold, and it came from fear. The rifles, he saw, never wavered in their aim and were on his head and his chest, and he was perhaps forty paces from them, and they would have a killing range of a quarter of a mile.
He sucked in great gasps of air, would have collapsed if the arm and the belt had not held him.
A man among them pushed himself up. He had been flat on his stomach, went to his knees, then used his hands for leverage. It was the man who was slight and inconsequential, who wore a creased, dusty shirt and crumpled trousers, and who was unshaven and had the short pepper-coloured hair. His face was weathered and worn and had the texture of hardship. He stood at his full height, then arched his spine as if to get stiffness from it… Salvatore breathed hard on Eddie’s neck, beside the pistol barrel. The marksmen had not shifted, nor a big-bodied man who wore a suit and held a pistol loosely, uselessly, in his hand.
Eddie watched the man who stood, saw him cup his hands across his mouth, as if that was the way to be heard.
‘Do they believe me?’ a shrill whisper in Eddie’s ear. Then the firearm’s blast near his ear, and the hair above it was scorched, the stink of firing on his skin. Concrete dust came down and settled on his face. Eddie blinked, squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, and the rifles were still aimed at his head and chest. ‘I think, now, they believe me.’
The man had paused, as if at an interruption. Now he stood his ground and called to them.
19
‘My name is Lukas. I’m a friend of Eddie’s parents, not a policeman. I’d like to help.’
He twisted a little, lowered his head and murmured to Castrolami below him, ‘This is advice. If you ever incline to hostage-taking and a jerk says, “I’d like to help”, my advice is to shoot him, and fast.’
Lukas had that mischief in his face, but then his head rose and it was gone. He was sober, sombre. ‘I’m here to see if I can help,’ he shouted, throwing his voice down the walkway.
The mischief was off his face but it stayed inside him. First time the mischief had taken root since he had been at the forward airstrip in the mountains beyond Bogotá and the captain, Pablo, had asked for advice and it had been suggested that the assault team go in: there was not much else in Lukas’s life that pumped excitement.
The tip of a directional microphone lay in front of his trainers, and by his ankle the comms kid took off his headphones and gave them to Castrolami.
He yelled again: ‘Would be good if I could help to sort this out, and that’s what I want to do – if you’ll allow me.’
Because he now stood square in the centre of the walkway he could see far down it. There had been an accident in the hanging of the washing so there was an avenue of vision for him. He had manoeuvred himself into a position where he had a good eyeball on the boy and on the hood who held him.
‘My name, I’m saying it again, is Lukas. What I’m looking to avoid is anyone getting hurt, and any way I can, I’ll try to help prevent that.’
What Lukas saw: every few seconds, the hood’s head moved and took the boy’s with it, and he rated it as a hell of a hard call for Franco, the sniper, to have a zero on the small piece of
skull that was visible as a target. And the bodies were locked together, like they were in stand-up sex out in the yard at a kids’ party. He didn’t rate the chances of the sniper getting a clean shot. And the pistol was against the back of the boy’s head, and Lukas could see in the available light that the finger was inside the loop and against the trigger bar. Most likely a shot to the head – a killing shot – would induce a muscle spasm through the body. Most certainly, a chest shot – whether fatal and into an organ or a wounding shot – would set off a decisive twitch through tissue and ligament and it would go to that finger. A spasm, a twitch, would be sufficient to depress the trigger bar… wasted exercise. They had taught the siege-busters at the Quantico training unit to do a double tap in the head, close range, pistol if possible. Two shots to the brain might suppress a spasm.
‘I told you what I want. I want it. Now you have twenty-five minutes. You use time.’ The voice came back, reedy.
Lukas thought the hood was exhausted. God alone knew how long it had been since he’d slept in a bed. Maybe not for two nights or three. Exhausted and hungry – wouldn’t have eaten proper cooked food. Exhaustion and hunger, to Lukas, balanced out. The hood would be irrational and unpredictable. He would make mistakes and be subject, big-time, to judgement errors. They were the equations Lukas worked on, were what he knew.
Castrolami, below him, beside him, murmured, ‘We have a feed through, the psychologist hears this. He says that Salvatore would dream of a legend – was never taken, killed with honour, will already know that nothing can be negotiated and that he is boxed. Salvatore knows it. He is a killer, he expects to kill. More important than anything to Salvatore is the belief that woven into the legend will be respect. The psychologist says—’
The Collaborator Page 47