Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

The watch face was in front of his mouth, and it looked as though Lukas examined the time it showed and had difficulty in that light. He murmured, lips barely moving, ‘Don’t shoot. Don’t respond.

‘You were asking me the time, Salvatore, about five minutes past-’

The shot was fired.

Lukas saw the flash and the recoil of the weapon, and saw the boy flinch, cringe, sag, but he was held up by the arm and the belt. There was no blood.

He knew that if a second shot was fired it would be a killing shot.

What a fucking way to live, what a fuck-awful job to have… He had stood once in a corner of the board room of Ground Force Security, had been a day back from Baghdad and had come out with a freed hostage, and Duck had led the directors in celebration drinks – Lukas wouldn’t have been there had there not been delays at Heathrow from the baggage handlers. He had been sober and his employers had not. One had quoted, declaimed it, a Shakespeare speech: their King Harry on the eve of the battle. ‘And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here…’ Not if the ‘here’ was a mud-wall village beyond the conurbation of Ba’aquba. Likewise, not if the ‘here’ was a stinking, foul, dirt-laden walkway on the third level of the Sail. Bullshit… And any right-minded person, valuing sanity, should have been ‘now abed’. But it was what Lukas did, and was all he knew. He had slipped out of that boardroom and doubted that any of them had noticed that he, the cause of their celebration, had quit on them. He had the watch again in front of his face.

‘Next time will be for real. I’m not usually this much of a glory-hunter, but I fancy it’s time to go and do some walking.’

There was no answer in his earpiece. He didn’t expect it. It was the side show. It was the B flick. The main event was Miss Immacolata and her denunciation, and the boy was rated as secondary. He could do what he damn well pleased.

He called forward, ‘I think I have that message, Salvatore. You should trust me. I am here to help, and best for all of us – if I am to help – is that you give me trust. Watch me.’

Lukas stood. He had seen so many men, women and children with a knife close to their throats or wired explosives round their bodies or a pistol against the soft skin at the back of an ear. He had seen mute terror on the faces of the old and the young, and sometimes he had been far back from them, linked only by a closed-circuit camera or binocular vision, and a few times he had been close and they had seen him, and the burden was goddam near intolerable then because of the dependence on him focused from their eyes, as if he was a final chance. Maybe most of those people – intelligent or stupid, experienced in the world or innocents – had been side-show material or B-flick fodder. There were some he’d lost and they’d had a half-minute of fame, posthumous. There were some he’d helped to save and they might, just, have secured a full fifteen minutes in the limelight. Only an idiot without a life, without an idea of a proper job, without a bed, would have been there, midnight gone, and the next bullet drawing blood, and feeling the night cold in his knees. What Castrolami had not asked: would he ever, all these years in, forget the basics that underpinned success, lose the mischief and excitement, and ever just get – so simple – goddam bored, been there and seen it? Questions not asked were those not needing answers. He flexed – so damn tired… Not a long time left for the resolving of it. Folk in Charlotte went up into the hills and hiked trails at weekends, on public holidays and for their summer vacations. They took cabins, and the last morning there was a cut-off when the cabin had to be vacated and them gone, forgotten, no sign of them left behind. Lukas thought that by five, before the dawn, they would be off the third level, out of the Sail and driving away down the road from Scampia. He appreciated the agreement made, through third parties, between Castrolami and the local big-shot player. By first light, the ROS team would be gone and the dealers would be back, and Salvatore was either in handcuffs or dead, and Eddie Deacon was either in a body-bag or walking free. It wasn’t a big window of time but more than sufficient for Lukas to climb through. What bothered him, this time, he cared about the target – which was shit. Didn’t do concern and emotion, except… Saw the face and the fear, saw the hair and the pistol barrel, saw the eyes and the bruises and the lips and the swelling and the cheeks and the cuts.

He said it again, pleasant, like he talked to a friend, a trusting one. ‘Just watch me, Salvatore. Watch me very carefully.’

He bent and pulled loose the knots on his laces, then kicked off his trainers and used his toe to shift them to the side. Then he ducked down again and pulled off the socks. He couldn’t remember how long he’d worn them, and smelled them. He dropped them on to the trainers and stood in his bare feet.

‘Just as I say, Salvatore, keep watching me.’

He did it as a palming motion, slipped his hand past his ear and extracted the gear, moulded and flesh-coloured. He hadn’t expected Castrolami in his ear, or wanted it, and he admired the investigator for not burdening him with queries, hesitancies. The palm went into the pocket of the lightweight windcheater, then Lukas shed the coat and tossed it on to the pile. He had never done a strip before, but the tiredness ate him and he sought to push the matter on – force it. His shirt went next, unbuttoned, taken off, discarded.

‘Watch me, Salvatore, watch me all the time and have trust in me. I’m here to help Eddie and to help you.’

He did everything slowly, nothing suddenly. His hands went to his belt and unfastened the buckle. He was not self-conscious, never had been. Almost, because of the way his mind worked, he shared the agony of self-doubt inflicted on the hitman. In seminar talk it was ‘police-assisted suicide’, but in any canteen in Paris, Berlin, New York or London it was ‘suicide-by-cop’. It was the easy way, lifted the decision-taking out of the equation, had somebody else do the dirty stuff. Didn’t have to climb on to a parapet on a wide-span bridge or go up a crane ladder and feel the wind swaying it as he went higher, and didn’t have to sweat on whether there were enough pills in the bottle and he’d come to, alive and vegetable-brained. And easier than turning the firearm on himself, feeling the ugliness of the barrel in the mouth and the foresight in the roof above the tonsils. All about self-doubt, and all about the selfishness of a bastard who thought of himself only; most certainly did not think of the poor guy, police marksman, who blew him away, then went on to trauma counselling. It was a fucking awful place to be, and a fucking awful job – and Lukas had always said he would fight bare-knuckled any man who tried to take it off him. He did the zip on his trousers, let them fall and kicked them off, used a bare toe to move them aside and shove them with the heap.

‘Just keep watching me, Salvatore, and know that you can trust me. It’s all going to be fine. You and me, we’re going to sort everything.’

He took off his undershirt.

Not a fine sight, he thought.

Damn near twenty years before, the medic from the Bureau’s recruitment programme had taken a sight of that chest, the concave bit between the bones, the spindly arms sprouting, and failed him. He was told afterwards, when all the rest had gone well, that he presented, next to naked, a poor example of young manhood, and it hadn’t improved in two decades. He chucked aside the undershirt. Might have killed then for a cigarette and might have killed as well for a shower, long and hot, and soap. Not right for him to shiver and he didn’t. They watched him, as they were supposed to. Didn’t think that seeing him would give too much comfort to the boy. Didn’t think, looking at him from twenty paces would summon up too much suspicion and anxiety in Salvatore. Their eyes, the two sets, were never off him.