Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

The kid asked if he was looking for Vinny.

He said he wasn’t. It was just good to stop walking and rest his feet.

Was he looking for Vinny, the Italian? He heard a tremor of worship in the kid’s voice, as if he was talking about a footballer.

Eddie Deacon took a deep breath and told the kid he was looking for a girl – an Italian girl. Then he had his wallet out and bent down with it. The kid struck a match, and Eddie showed him the photo.

‘She’s Immacolata,’ the kid said, reedy, then coughed and flicked away his cigarette. ‘She’s Vinny’s sister. There’s filth here. They took Vinny, and I stayed to warn her if she came so they didn’t lift her. They put a girl’s bag and clothes in the van. Then I heard them talking and one said to a sergeant who came in a car that her bag was for shipping home to her. That was all.’

He thanked the kid. It was an afterthought but he asked him if he’d still be there later.

‘Something of yours in that place? Something important?’

He said there might be. Then, ‘I have to get inside.’

Was he a friend of Immacolata? He was.

A good friend?

He thought so.

‘Did you shag her?’

Eddie Deacon looked at the kid crouched on the ground, his shoulder level with Eddie’s knees. He said quietly, ‘Not your business. Important? Maybe. How do I get inside? God – you’d know, wouldn’t you?’

‘I would, too.’

He tried to sound authoritative: ‘Then you’d better take me.’

A smile slashed the kid’s face and Eddie saw it when another match was struck and cigarette lit. He was told to give it a couple of hours, then come back – and that it would cost him.

He had no doubt that the kid would have the skills to break into a property that had a police guard on the front step.

*

Salvatore felt her tremble. He had not known Gabriella Borelli, madrina, leader of the clan, show fear, but she shook and couldn’t stifle it. He held her close to him and the warmth came off her body. One arm was close round her shoulders and the other round the small of her back. She was twice his age. She was the most feared woman in the city. He could feel the straps of her underwear, and she would have felt the hardness against her belly. He could have pushed aside her coat, lifted her skirt, pulled down the panties, then flicked his own zip and hitched her up so that her arms were round his neck. Could have leaned her back against a wall and gone into her. Had he, it would have been – sad – the stupidest action of his life. Against a wall of old brick, put up by craftsmen centuries before, to have fucked a madrina while her husband was in gaol in the north and subject to Article 41 bis would have condemned him. Already Salvatore, Il Pistole, was a marked man and could live with it. If he fucked Gabriella Borelli he was a dead man and walking nowhere. And yet… He let a hand worm round from her back along the top of the pelvis, let it slide down and heard her breath quicken. And yet… He was not stupid.

He kissed her lightly on the forehead, at the hairline, and eased back from her. He thought – could not see in the darkness – that she clenched her fists and maybe drove the nails into the soft palms. He was glad, then, that he had backed off first. Her face would have hardened, and her jaw would be out.

The moment – body against body, juices aroused, heat rising – would not be referred to again. She would show no sign in the future of that intimacy. Neither would he. He thought she would have been a good fuck, better than the daughter. Salvatore knew that if ever she believed he was conceited enough to think he had any hold over her she would destroy him.

She touched his arm. It seemed to acknowledge a moment of weakness that was now stamped on, bagged, disposed of. She said, ‘They have searched five addresses I use. Who knew five of my addresses?’

No cheek, no attempt to joke. ‘I did.’ He knew she would consider him as much of a suspect as anyone else. She had the ability to detach herself, analyse, and act. It was not necessary to bluster innocence to her.

‘Who else?’

The wall behind her was high, dwarfing them, and above it was the Certosa di San Martino, of the fourteenth century, and behind the monastery, the fortress of Sant’Elmo, whose first stones had been laid eight hundred years before. That he was in the deep shadow of two of the most remarkable buildings in a city that was, itself, a miracle of history did not impress the clan’s principal killer. He had one boast only: he would never be taken alive. Coming after him were the police detectives and the ROS investigators, the families and associates of those he had killed on the instructions of the Borelli clan, and if he rose too fast that clan would destroy him.

He had been found and taken in hand by Pasquale when he was a scugnizzo. The padrino had lifted him off the street, where he thieved, conned and tricked for food and money, no family to care for him, and created a ladder of advancement for him to climb. He had done street-corner spotting – who came into Forcella, what was their business and where they went – message-running, with tiny scraps of paper, sealed in plastic and secreted in body orifices, and had given out beatings when monies due were not paid. When he was eighteen, Pasquale – identifying talent where he could find it – had put the P38 into his smooth hand, had driven him to a disused quarry beyond Acerra and let him fire two magazines at rusty cans. A week later he had been given his first living, walking, breathing, spitting, cursing target. He had money and status, and wouldn’t see his thirtieth birthday, which he accepted. He would be dead, and would not have – at his last breath – a regret.

‘All the brothers, they knew.’ He had taken instructions from Vincenzo before his flight to London but always after a moment had elapsed as if clarifying that his obedience was considered, not automatic, and instructions from Giovanni only if they were prefaced with ‘My mother says.’ He was contemptuous of Silvio and had never received an instruction from him. It did not cross his mind that he should include the sister, now gone eight months, with the brothers in having knowledge of the safe-houses.

‘Yes – and who else?’

‘Did Carmine and Anna Borelli know the addresses?’

Her father- and mother-in-law might have known two of the five, three at maximum. Not all.

‘Did Umberto know?’

The lawyer, used by the family for more than thirty years, was now elderly, run to obesity and looked a fool, a pompous one, but his intellect was sharper than any other city lawyer’s. He was skilled in the manipulation of court processes, the transfer of monies while they were rinsed clean, and the avoidance of surveillance. Umberto, perhaps, was a more significant aide to the clan than Salvatore, the killer.

She thought briefly, then replied that the lawyer might have known two addresses, no more.

‘Did Pasquale know?’

She did not dismiss it. Her body seemed to stiffen, tighten, then a coil was loosened. She relaxed. She said that however desperate her husband was to regain his freedom, he wouldn’t dare to betray her – and he would have known three addresses, but not five.

He shrugged, had no more to offer. He took out a small pocket torch and flashed it three times down the lane. He heard the response, the gunning of a scooter engine. It came forward, no lights shown. Did she want to be taken somewhere? She shook her head decisively. Who now to trust?

She walked away. He thought her wealth could have provided her with a Bentley, a Maserati or a Porsche, a driver in uniform and a guard to protect her. The scooter came up and collected him, the lights were flicked on and he saw her trudging the other way, along the rough track that would bring her out on the corso Vittorio Emanuele. He didn’t know where she would head for but he reckoned it an hour’s fast walking to get back to Forcella and Sanita.