Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

They were running, except the driver and his escort who were left behind.

Lukas didn’t play at heroes, was separated from Castrolami’s back by a cigarette-paper thickness. He saw, past the big shoulders, the shadows in a dark doorway. Lukas thought, then, there was brief negotiation, a few seconds, two or three exchanges, and the shadows were done and the way ahead was clear. There were pounding feet, and he imagined the heavy boots encasing water-resistant socks, and more boots behind him, which was as welcome a sound as any. The Tractor had a flashlight in one hand, turned it on. In the other he held a handgun. He wore a vest, and had a machine pistol slung on a strap looped at his neck. His chin jutted. No debate, negotiation or discussion. The Tractor led them through – as if he was crossing a water-filled ditch or rode a sand berm – and men made way for them. Lukas was given no explanation, but he factored that their entry on to a staircase was not impeded. That was a little victory, minimal, but a victory of sorts.

The smell of the place hit him.

The flashlight, used intermittently, guided him up.

He would do the best he could – had no more to offer.

It was as if a signal had been given from the base of the stairwell and sent on up to the floors above. The flashlight caught men and women, children with them. They were dressed, the smaller children in night clothes, and carried cases and bundles. One child had a puppy clasped to his chest, and others had prime toys. He sensed the mood of evacuation – as if a deck was cleared. There was no eye-contact between those on the stairs coming down, stumbling under their loads, and those going up, bowed under the weight of the kit. Two groups not acknowledging each other. Lukas thought he did dirty work: it was work that decent people should not be asked to perform. He went up the stairs and Castrolami’s shoulders bounced in front of him.

Eddie wondered where the noise had gone. Salvatore talked. ‘They pay me well – because I am the best. I am expert and I am valuable. I have accounts in banks in Switzerland and in Liechtenstein. I do not know where that is. There is another account in Andorra. I have never been there. I am twenty-four years old and I have much money and many accounts.’

He should have heard noise. The keenest sounds he had heard had been when he was brought up the staircase, hooded, and when he was taken down a long corridor and voices had been muffled behind doors and windows, with televisions and music. Men had shouted, women had laughed, kids had squealed and dogs had barked, yapped. He had heard less when he had run and realised that the corridor was a walkway, an aisle between boxed apartments. There was a knife on the table near the door, close to Salvatore’s hip, and he had a pistol in his hands.

‘I can buy what I want. I can go to any shop in Naples and I can buy anything. I want jewels for a girl, I can buy them. I want a suit, I want shoes, I want a car. I have the money in banks. They pay me because of my worth. They want me, the Borelli family. They can have me but they must pay. I think I have a million euros in accounts, and perhaps it is more. One day I will go to the coast, not Italy. One day I will go to France – they have told me, the family has, of Cannes and Nice, and I will go there. I think I will have many girlfriends when I go to France, because I will have money and I can buy anything.’

He could not recall so clearly the sounds of the walkway when he had fled along it before he saw – under the washing – the barred gate, closed. Eddie, then, had been on his toes and running at speed, despite the stiffness in his legs, knees and hips from being tied down, and the burden of the chain and ankle shackle. He had heard sounds then: shouts of pursuit, the gasp of his breath, doors slamming in his face, a kid’s obscenity as he charged past a window – and there had been the loudness of the television in the room where he had taken refuge. Now he could hear nothing. It was as though quiet carpeted the air round him. Salvatore’s shoes slithered on the flooring and his voice droned in the accented English as he played with the pistol and aimed it at points on the wall. Eddie thought there was in the eyes something demonic or manic or lunatic, something that was plain bloody mad. He realised it: he was the only audience the man had, maybe had ever had.

‘I will go to France, to the Mediterranean, and I will buy an apartment – a penthouse – with cash and I will go to a showroom and buy a car and again I will use cash. In the morning I go to the bank and I sit down, and I authorise transfers from Liechtenstein and Andorra and other places, and then they go to get my money from their store in the basement and we fill a suitcase with my money and then I go to the real-estate office and to the showroom. I will find new friends and new girls. Maybe this is in one year, or three years, and maybe it is tomorrow after I have… I will go to France. I speak good English – the best, yes? I will speak good French. I have many enemies here, but they will never find me when I have gone to Cannes or Nice. There I will be unknown and I will have much, very much money. I have the money because of what I do well. I kill well.’

The shadow spun on its heels and the feet came close to Eddie’s face and the shadow crouched. A little of the light from a window, thrown up by a streetlamp, orange, caught the pistol’s barrel and rested on it. It was three or four inches, less than six, from Eddie’s forehead. He stared at it and kept the focus of his eyes on the needle sight at the end of the barrel and could see the finger, just, on the bar protecting the trigger, and the finger slipped from the bar to the trigger stick. He wondered then if his bladder would burst, whether the urine would squirt into his trousers, fill the groin, make it steam hot. The finger moved from the trigger. He did not know if the safety catch had been on or off. What had he thought of? Had had a modicum of seconds to reflect. Had not thought of his parents, or his house friends, or anything noble, had not thought of Immacolata – had worried that he would mess his trousers. Had hated the bastard, and anger caught in him.

‘I think, when I have gone to France, that many in Naples will remember my name. The kids will, women will. They will remember that I was a big man in Forcella and in Sanita and here in Scampia, and that I had respect. No one in Naples, I promise it you, would ever dare not to give me respect. I will be written of for many years, in the Cronaca and in the Mattino, and I will let them know that I live – go to Germany and send a postcard, go to Slovakia and send another. The police do not have the brains that I have and they will not find me. I will be written of in the papers and they will put my photograph there, because I have importance, and I have respect. I will never be taken. Do you understand me? I will not be taken alive.’

Eddie was still lying on his side. He had lost sensation in his hands from the tightness of the plastic at his wrists, and he thought the welts at his ankles were raw and his vision was through the slits of his swollen eyes and his lips were broken and the bruises throbbed, and he hated and felt the growing anger. The man, Salvatore, circled him, held the pistol in two hands and aimed it down, but the shadows of the fists were too dark for Eddie to know if the finger was on the bar or on the trigger, and the man laughed – cackled. Eddie thought Salvatore didn’t hear the silence around them. Himself, he didn’t know why the quiet had come.

*

The first gate on the walkway of the third level was chained and padlocked. Washing had not been taken off the wires, some of it still sodden and some of it nearly dry. The wet sheets, towels and shirts clung to their faces as they went forward. It was as if the evacuation was complete. Nobody came and nobody moved: no men from a clan, no families quitting, all gone, faded into the evening, and most of the lights with them. The clothes and bedding hung out to dry threw long shadows. No radio had been left on, and no television. They were wary of the silence, and the Tractor went on the balls of his feet.