Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

The kid had asked for fifty; they had haggled. He had settled for thirty. Eddie thought the kid might be as young as nine. Newspapers he glanced at in the staff room carried interminable features on the spread of hooligans on the capital’s streets. Thirty pounds had been passed, and to make it up Eddie had had to empty a pocket and dig up pound and fifty-pence coins. It was big money to him, but he didn’t think it was high-value work to the kid… He rather liked him.

They had gone to the parallel street at the back. The kid had led and Eddie had followed. There was a locked iron gate at the side of a four-house terrace, and the kid had unfastened the lock as if it was easier than opening a toothpaste tube. They had edged along a garden, while inside a baby cried and a television played, and Eddie had been helped over the end wall. They had dropped down into a yard filled with sodden cardboard cartons that would have come from the shop alongside the steps to the door used by Immacolata and her brother. Next, up a drainpipe using a dumped stool to get clear of the ground, then a window ledge. The kid used a penknife on the window while Eddie tottered beside him. The kid was sure-footed and showed no fear. The window was levered up and a small thin arm, width of a broomstick, came down, a hand took Eddie’s and wrenched it through the gap. Funny thing. When the small hand took his weight, Eddie never doubted that he was safe.

What he liked about the kid was his sheer anarchy. Didn’t do arithmetic, as nine- or ten-year-olds should, but did burglary. Didn’t do joined-up writing and reading aloud but did house-breaking. And smiled: wasn’t sour-faced, but had an openness and a sense of untamed rebellion about him that were captivating. They stood statue still in the darkened room, listened and heard nothing. Then the window was closed and the kid said – still a treble voice – his friend Vinny had boasted that a new alarm system had been installed, had cost a grand, that the system couldn’t be interfered with by an intruder. The kid said, shrill whisper, that the system was shit and he’d gone into the apartment by this route, disabled it and brought out a leather-covered Filofax by way of proof and carried it to the trattoria where Vinny ate his pizza. Eddie hadn’t understood how the circuits could be blocked but Vinny had. He had given the kid fifty pounds.

The kid worshipped Vinny. Only when he was talking about him did the anarchy light go out of his eyes. He had looked away just once, not done eyeball-to-eyeball, when Eddie had asked what work was Vinny in. The kid had said, ‘Business,’ and looked away. Eddie remembered how he had been at that age – guarded, protected, supervised, bred on a wish-list of ambition and success, and damn near frightened of his own shadow.

The curtain was drawn. A palm-sized hand torch was passed to him. ‘Is it in her room?’ the kid asked.

He nodded. The kid took his arm and took him across what he now realised was a spare room, storeroom, into a central corridor and then the living area. The torch beam raked it. It was chaotic. Every drawer was out and upturned, the contents on the carpet. Every cushion was off the chairs and dumped. Pictures hung at wild angles, and Eddie thought they’d been shifted to see if they concealed anything. The magazines had been opened and dropped. He asked, confused, why it had been done. The kid told him, matter-of-fact, that there must have been a problem with the VAT. Then he repeated that he had heard police talk of the girl – Immacolata – who had gone back to Italy, her bag to follow. The kitchen was more chaos, plates scattered, saucepans on the floor or in the sink, refrigerator left open, sachets of pasta sauce slit as if they might have concealed something. The kid now amplified explanations and Eddie made out an exaggerated wink when he was told that people in ‘business’ sometimes forgot what VAT they owed.

Eddie didn’t use his brain to analyse, then challenge. The kid seemed to glide over what was on the floor; but Eddie didn’t. He kicked a china cup and heard it disintegrate, glass crunched under his feet. Then the small hand was tugging him and he was facing a closed door.

‘She’s lovely, isn’t she, Vinny’s sister?’

‘Leave it.’

‘Did you really do it with her – shag her? I used to watch her – I was out the back, and her room light would be on. Maybe she didn’t think anyone was there. I used to, you know – when she was taking them off. I did.’

He didn’t think of the kid as a dirty-raincoat man, or a voyeur: they all did it. At his house, with a few beers taken, he and his friends had lined up to see across the garden to an upstairs window. He wasn’t proud of himself, but didn’t reckon it a hanging offence. Eddie thought that here, at least, the precocious adulthood of the kid came up short. Wouldn’t have had sex, not at nine or ten. He was let into the room. The door had been locked and no key in it, but the kid opened it with a fast movement and Eddie didn’t see whether he used a hairpin or a plastic card. He could smell her.

‘Not your concern…’

Her perfume scent and slight body odour mingled. To smell her hurt him – like a kick, sharp, on his shin. The first thing that Eddie Deacon realised was that the room was only untidy. It had not been searched. The wardrobe doors were open but the dresses, blouses and skirts were on the hangers, and the drawers were not dragged open, tipped out. He hurried to the window, drew the curtains and switched on the torch.

It was a single bed, unmade, the duvet pulled towards the pillow but not straightened and smoothed. He let the beam sweep the room. He knew what he was looking for, had not promised it to himself but had hoped… He was disappointed. He had wanted to find a photo frame on the little pine table beside the bed, on the chest, or the bookcase to the left of the window, with a picture of himself inside it.

He set to work.

Nothing in the room shouted that Immacolata Borelli was the lover of Eddie Deacon. His own room, on the other side of Dalston, had the blow-up image of her, and her dressing-gown, which she put on when she came off the bed and went to make tea or coffee or to bring him a beer. He had precious little money each week after he’d paid the rent, and presents for her were his definition of mild extravagance, but the last thing had been a scarf – silk, a sale in Regent Street, price slashed – and she’d said it was wonderful. He found it in the top right drawer of the chest.

He had been three, four minutes in the room when the kid came to the door. He made a sucked sharp whistle, as if he wanted to be gone. As yet Eddie had found nothing. There were three more drawers in the chest, on the left side. He went through them faster as the kid watched.

Nothing. Nothing in the pockets of clothes in the wardrobe. Nothing in the drawer of the bedside table. The kid came further into the room, snatched away the torch as if that were his right and shone the light into a wastepaper bin, picked it up and tipped it out. Eddie saw a ripped packet for tights, the wrapper from a tube of strong mints, two or three squashed paper handkerchiefs, a torn blouse, shredded brown paper that might have been used on a small parcel – and a plastic tray for sweet biscuits with Italian markings. The kid bent and sifted through what was on the carpet. He gave a scrap to Eddie. ‘About all there is.’

Eddie Deacon held a piece of jagged paper, the tear running through a handwritten address – not the destination. Where the tear was, to the right, there were four scrawled lines. On the top line was ‘elli’. Below it was ‘cella’. Under that line was ‘157’. At the bottom was ‘poli’. He was trying to decipher it when the torch beam was cut.