Gerald Seymour: The Collaborator

A year later… The senior judge thanked her.

She bobbed her head. She stood. She turned for the aisle and the double doors. The prosecutor had told her that the sentences would range between ergastolo, life, for the younger men, except her juvenile brother, thirty years for her mother, twenty years for the advocate, ten years for her grandfather who would die in Poggioreale, and eighteen months at Posilippo for her grandmother.

In the cage, no one looked at her. Her mother and her three brothers, her grandfather and grandmother, the lawyer who had known her since she was a babe in arms, and the hitman, all looked away as if that co-ordinated gesture demonstrated their contempt of her. It was a wasted effort. She never glanced at them. On earlier hearings the abuse from the cage – particularly from Giovanni and Anna Borelli – had blistered across the court room, and on her fourth day in court Vincenzo had come to the front of the cage and spat venomously at her, and her mother had declaimed that Immacolata would rot in a living hell, and on many days Silvio had wept. Her evidence was completed after a month of daily testimony. She had forsworn cosmetics and dressed in lifeless colours for her appearances. That day, her last in court, she was different. She had brought, almost, a possessive smirk to the face of Orecchia and a bounce to the step of Rossi when they had collected her from the safe-house and driven her early to the Palace of Justice. They, alone, were privy to the transformation.

Rossi and Orecchia had taken her the previous evening to the boutique salon in the back-street on the seaward side of the piazza dei Martiri. Her mother’s account? Of course it would be on her mother’s account. Who would have refused her? The owner faced an investigation from the Guardia di Finanza, so easily arranged, if Immacolata Borelli and her escorts were turned away… and the account was still open because her mother needed fresh underwear and required the changes of plain clothing that might, to a court, indicate a misunderstood and guiltless woman. That day, her daughter had been driven to court in the bulletproof and armour-plated Lancia in clothing that was chic, elegant, styled. Her jacket and skirt were Asian silk, sea blue and severe, her shoes were white, with low heels, her blouse was cream and hung loose. She wore no jewellery. Also, the night before, the wife of a court security guard, had come to the safe-house, cut and styled her hair. She had turned heads in court, all except those of her family and her family’s closest confidants. It was as if a trapped bird had escaped a cage.

She went down the stairs from the court, through guarded double doors into a concrete underground cavern, and was led to the Lancia.

It was time there, beside the car, for a brief moment when the professionalism of the Servizio Centrale Protezione was abandoned, thrown to the winds. Orecchia took her hand and kissed it lightly. Rossi kissed her on each cheek, cool lips. She knew them, knew of their families and their problems, their excitements and their moments of despair. They were, perhaps, her only family.

She sat in the back, encased by the dark privacy windows, and accepted now and did not query the vest that was laid on the seat beside her. Orecchia drove, for this final journey, in the middle of an October afternoon when light rain fell on the city and the mountain’s summit was hidden in gloomy cloud. Beyond the tunnel, the road ahead was blocked by police motorcycles, and they were given a free run on to an open road. She would never see the city again, knew it.

At the airport gate, Rossi laid his machine pistol on his lap, rummaged in his briefcase, produced her airline ticket and passed it to her. He said, quietly, that the aircraft was due to leave five minutes ago but was held for her. Then he gave her the new passport that carried the new name. They were at the terminal’s Departures door. Orecchia turned and faced her, then tapped the top of his head. She took her cue and lowered the dark glasses from her hair, covered her eyes with them and her upper face.

Rossi said, ‘At the gate they’re expecting us. We’ll be taken straight to the aircraft. I’m with you until the hatch closes after you… You’ll be met?’

‘I don’t know.’

Orecchia frowned. ‘You said you were coming?’

‘I did it by text. The number he used to have. What flight, where we should have dinner. I don’t know whether he has a different mobile… I didn’t call, maybe for fear of what I might be told.’

‘Are you sure of this?’ Rossi demanded of her.

‘Very sure – I’ve not had a text back but I’m sure… I hope I’ll find him.’ She paused, then said softly, ‘After what I did to him, what else – now – can I do? I must look for him – at the airport, in a restaurant we used, in the bar he liked. I owe it to him to look.’

Orecchia scribbled on a sheet of his notepad, then ripped it off. ‘Call me and tell me if you’ve found what you’re looking for.’

She smiled at them, and treasured them for their loyalty. ‘You’ll get one word, fatturato. In English that’s “turnover”. Then you’ll know I found him.’

Orecchia changed – was the professional, the guard. ‘You don’t stop, you follow Alessandro, you keep close to him. Goodbye, Signorina Immacolata, who is finished. Goodbye, whoever you have become, and today you are beautiful. I hope you’re met.’

The car door was opened for her.

She walked well. The gate closed behind her. She didn’t know if he would be there. She had a brisk stride and remembered a park, a bench and a young man, and a question put in innocence – and a great wrong done to him, and to others, in a faraway place.

Gerald Seymour

The Collaborator

Gerald Seymour spent fifteen years as an international television news reporter with ITN, covering Vietnam, the Middle East, and terrorism across the world. Seymour was on the streets of Londonderry on Bloody Sunday, and was a witness to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

Seymour's first novel was the acclaimed thriller Harry's Game, set in Belfast. He has since written twenty-four more bestselling novels, of which six have been filmed for television in the UK and US.