Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

Gabriella Borelli was six years younger than her husband. Since his arrest, when he had been dragged out of the underground bunker by the ROS bastards, she had been undisputed in her leadership of the clan. They had been married for thirty-two years, since she, at seventeen, was little more than a child, but decisions inside the core of the clan had always been taken after her advice had been heard. Now she was a latitanta, and her continued liberty depended on her moving from safe-house to safe-house, a network of covert addresses. As a fugitive from justice, she was unable to utilise publicly the vast wealth the family had accumulated. Since her husband had been taken and the flight of her eldest son, she had won respect from other clan leaders. It had come from her clear-headed ability to strike deals, open up new markets and act with cold ruthlessness when such was required. She was feared. She was a small woman, petite, dark-haired, and well kept for her forty-nine years, but she wasn’t out to look for a new dress, as she would have liked, but to attend a meeting. She was an anonymous figure in the narrow streets, walking briskly and carrying an old shopping bag. She missed having the strengths and certainties of her eldest son close to her, but rarely thought of her daughter.

Vincenzo was in his thirty-second year, the eldest, and he was eating a pizza in a trattoria off Hackney’s Mare Street. He always had the Margherita, with mozzarella, tomato and basil – the colours, white, red and green, were those of his country’s flag. He was with friends, young men from the fringe of the clan, and together they dreamed of a day when they could return to the city and eat the best pizza from the via Duomo, the via Forcella or the via Ettore Bellini. He would go back. He would take authority from his mother. He would not be able to drive a Ferrari, wear Armani suits or have a penthouse apartment overlooking the Golfo di Napoli, but he would have power, and he would be careful not to leave a trail from himself to a killing hand-gun. Vincenzo faced four charges of murder if he was located and arrested, so it was important for him to maintain his unseen existence in London, but he was concerned that if he stayed away too long the fear in which he was held in Forcella, and the respect, would diminish. He barely noticed his sister, accepted the need for a member of the family to have a good knowledge of financial procedures and structures, but he expected her to clean the apartment they shared and to look after his laundry. She wasn’t important to him.

Nobody loved Giovanni, he knew that. He was twenty-three. That evening he was on a girl’s family bed. Her father and mother were in the next room and had the television on loud. He fucked the girl – a virgin until he had penetrated her the previous week – on her parents’ bed because it was bigger and more comfortable than hers. They would not complain, and they would not attempt to throw him out of their home. He was Giovanni Borelli, the son of Pasquale and Gabriella Borelli. In the Forcella district, and in part of Sanita, his name gave him unquestioned power. He would not pay the girl under him, who was giving him as good a ride as he was used to. Neither would he pay for the meal he would have afterwards. He paid for nothing. The only man who had ever raised a fist to Giovanni was his elder brother, who had beaten him, split his lip and cut his eyebrow – the sister of a friend had accused Giovanni of putting his hand up her skirt. His father had not protected him from Vincenzo; neither had his mother. Now he grunted and cried out as the orgasm came, louder than was natural for him, but he knew the sound would carry into the living room and would not be drowned by the television. Good that they should know their daughter was a good ride. He was responsible for the collection of dues in the area north of corso Umberto, south of the via Foria, and between the via Duomo and the corso Giuseppe Garibaldi. The only excitement came when a smart-arse shite would plead poor business, inability to pay, and be beaten – as his brother had beaten him. He thought his sister, Immacolata, an arrogant bitch, and she had no time for him.

In his bedroom, Silvio Borelli read a comic and listened to music on his iPod. He was seventeen, the youngest of the tribe. He had been told by his grandmother, never one to mince words, the circumstances of his conception. Eighteen years ago, in 1991, his mother had been sneeringly informed that his father flaunted an amante, had been seen with her in an hotel on the sea front, the via Francesco Caracciolo. When Pasquale Borelli had next come home she had punched his head, scratched his cheeks, kicked him in the stomach and kneed him in the groin. He had suffered a tempest of abuse. He had crawled to Gabriella Borelli and pleaded for her forgiveness, promising abjectly that such behaviour would never be repeated. They had made up, her on top of him, calling the shots, at her speed and for her gratification. The result had been Silvio. He was a sickly child from birth, and was doted on by his mother, but he loved his sister. He told her everything. Giovanni sniped that he wouldn’t wipe his arse without asking Immacolata’s permission. He lived with his grandparents, above the via Forcella, and sensed their contempt for him because he was not blessed with the family’s hardness. He wanted little more from life than to speed in narrow alleyways on his scooter, and to mess with old schoolmates – and almost resented that his name denied him friendships. He knew that some spoke of him as a cretin, but a reputation for stupidity brought its rewards, and the clan used him to ride round the district and drop off narcotics, cash, messages and firearms. He was unsettled. Driving back from Nola the previous afternoon, he had been bewildered by the transformation in his sister’s mood – and her shoe was broken, her clothing ripped and her knee scraped raw. She had been near to tears. And she was the best person he knew, the most important in his life.

The parents of Pasquale, the grandparents of Vincenzo, Immacolata, Giuseppe and Silvio, were Carmine and Anna Borelli. They were both eighty-seven, though she had been born four months after him. They had founded the clan, given it teeth and muscle, then passed its control to their son. They lived now in via Forcella, and as she sewed a collar back on to a shirt, he snored quietly in his chair and…

The television screen in the prosecutor’s office was blank, the photograph killed. The files on the clan family were back in the secure area of the archive. The office was darkened. He had gone home, as had his deputy, the liaison officer and the women who ran his life; they were as dedicated as he was to the extermination of the Camorra culture.

A car’s tyres had screamed as it had headed for Capodichino. The liaison officer drove Castrolami. No sirens and no blue lights, but speed on the back-streets. They had swept into the airport and the Alfa had rocked at the sudden braking outside Departures. Then he was out and on the forecourt. He slid the pancake holster off his belt, the loaded pistol in it, and left them on the seat. No backward glance, no wave, and he heard the liaison officer power away. He scurried through the doors to Check-in. An officer of Mario Castrolami’s seniority could have demanded, and received, preferential treatment at the airport – a ticket already processed, a boarding card presented to him, a lounge to wait in until the rest of the passengers had been herded to their seats, a drink, a canape and an automatic upgrade – but such treatment would have been noticed. He went past the site of the death – unmourned – from heart failure of Salvo Lucania, known to law enforcement in the States as ‘Lucky Luciano’. He thought that the pain of the coronary was a fitting end for that man. He always noted the place where that boss had collapsed.