Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

The kids were behind and level with him. If he faced them, they met his gaze. They made a cordon behind him when a car came down and it had to hoot for them to give space. Two men sat at a table on the street, and the car slowed to get past them. Eddie saw they had dominoes. He stood over the table, waited for a play to be made, expected that one would look up, but neither did so he interrupted the game. He asked once more: did they know where in the via Forcella the home of Immacolata Borelli was? He couldn’t read the faces, tanned, cracked, as if the skin was old leather, or the eyes, but one spat and the brightness lay on a cobblestone beside Eddie’s trainer, and the game went on.

He was confused. He didn’t understand why she lived there. It was poverty. So were parts of Dalston, corners of Hackney, Hoxton and Haggerston, but he did not see any of the pockets of wealth, anything of quality – the small areas that had been tarted up – as there were in his corner of London. He thought he sounded like his father. But it had been clear enough on the scrap of paper – Borelli, Via Forcella, Zip code, Napoli. He stood outside a shop that sold bread, rolls and cake. He was taken inside as the queue moved in and the kids were left on the pavement. Now the scooter was with them and the engine was gunned. He reached the counter. He asked for the home of the Borelli family, said that he was looking for Immacolata Borelli. The woman heard him. Eddie thought she considered what was requested of her. He spoke the name again: Immacolata Borelli. The woman looked away from him and her eyes went to the next in the line, her smile broad. What did that customer want? Eddie went out of the shop.

Bells clamoured in his mind. A broken front door in a north London street and a police guard, his Mac never giving him an address or a phone number, and she had disappeared. This was her home, and he was watched, and no one in the street responded to his request for information. The bells rang loudly. What to do?

Should he stop, turn, walk away and quit? He didn’t doubt that each person he had spoken to had known of Immacolata Borelli. He swore. Stop? No. Turn and walk away? No. Quit? He went on down the street and looked for the next man or woman to ask, the kids and the scooter trailing him.

She talked of her mother, had done since she had woken. She had taken a perfunctory shower, gobbled a roll, gulped coffee and sat at the table, drumming her fingers for the tape to be switched on.

‘An account she values is that with the Dresdner Bank – I can’t tell you the number. It’s at fourteen, Karl-Liebknechtstrasse in Leipzig. It’s the first place cleaned money goes, fixed-rate deposits for six months. She goes in October, doesn’t stay overnight since my father’s arrest. She has a travel agent that routes her from Reggio Calabria to eastern Germany on budget flights for German tourists. The turn-round time for the aircraft is sufficient for her meetings. There’s never less than eight million euros in the Leipzig account, and she’s a generous supporter of the bank’s nominated charities. You understand?’

Castrolami sat opposite her. He was swivelled sideways and did not look at her, or at the picture of Gabriella Borelli on the wall. He didn’t look at her because he was shaving. Had he faced her, the action of the battery-powered machine would have interfered with the recording. She couldn’t tell, with his cheeks and eyes away from her, whether he was impressed by what she said, or indifferent to it, but he didn’t prompt her. Perhaps, Immacolata thought, he had turned on a tap and preferred not to interrupt the flow. He shaved, working the machine with three heads across his face, his throat, below and above his lips, and she talked about the distribution of money. Where were the accounts placed? In what banks in what cities? She spoke of huge sums but he never raised his eyebrows in astonishment or disbelief.

The sun shone on her.

A maid sluiced the tiles of the kitchen floor.

Orecchia lounged on a settee behind her and read his newspaper – a socialist one that her father, Pasquale, said was fit only for wiping a backside. He never spoke or coughed or intruded in any way, but his holster harness was round his shirt.

Rossi was on the balcony and swept up dried leaves that had fallen from the plants in the ochre pots. He would have been aware that he could be seen by the residents in other blocks so his holster was hitched on a chair. She had fired a pistol, but never at a human target. Had her mother? Perhaps, but she didn’t know. She couldn’t have said whether her mother killed by proxy – Vincenzo, Giovanni, or the cold, creepy one they used – or had done it for herself. It didn’t matter. After she had talked about money, she would go on to killings. With killings she might raise Castrolami’s eyebrows. Rossi swept diligently, but sometimes she looked up and out through the opened glass doors to the terrace and she thought he watched her, and each time she set her shoulders back and allowed her blouse to be stretched. Then he swept some more.

There had been no views from the apartment her brother rented in London or from the buildings they had occupied in Sanita and Forcella: roofs, water tanks, satellite dishes, and glimpses of the great mountain where the cap was missing. Here, from Collina Fleming, the view was exceptional. Clear skies above, trees and an autostrada link below, and a distant horizon of grey hazed hills on which clouds perched. Maybe she would live here… Have a maid who came in and cleaned… Finish accountancy courses and have diplomas… Set up in a small business with money provided by Castrolami’s people, or the prosecutor’s people, until she was able to support herself… A new name… And maybe meet someone, have babies, maybe… The warmth filled the apartment but a small zephyr wind came with it. Immacolata had dreamed of her future and talked of her mother.

‘Every April she goes to the Societe Generale bank on the road called La Canebiere, number fifteen, in Marseille. She is driven to Bari, then flies to Milan and connects to Marseille. She starts early. She has lunch with her manager, and is back the same evening. They think she’s a resident of Milan. That account is for more than two million euros and-’

A plastic bucket on the balcony toppled. She realised then that Rossi had swept and now watered the pots. He had kicked over the bucket. She stopped. That brought a reaction from Castrolami, a little hissed curse because she had been interrupted and the flow broken.

‘How am I doing?’

‘You talk and we listen. That’s what’s expected.’

It was the place, in a dream, that she might live, away from the dark, drear streets of Naples, beyond the reach of Sanita and Forcella – and the gaols at Poggioreale and Novara – beyond the reach of the hands that would be scrabbling for her eyes.

‘Please, I want to go out.’

Now wariness clouded Castrolami’s face. ‘You know what’s dictated. No phone calls, no meetings, no contacts. Signorina Immacolata, they’ll kill you.’

‘I want to buy food – I want to cook.’

He sighed. She thought him confused. He had finished shaving. Now he opened the head of the machine and blew the mess out on to the floor. ‘What other banks outside Italy does your mother use?’

‘And we’ll shop and I’ll cook?’

‘Yes… The other banks?’

‘She doesn’t visit it but meets a representative in Turin each January, the Danske Bank in Stockholm, on Norrmalmstorg. In Spain, in Madrid, the family uses the Banco Santander for fixed-term deposits.’

Her mind had drifted. It was where she could be, could settle, could live, could make a new family.

His mobile rang. The noise, insistent, clamoured in his pocket: he had tried to emphasise that he shouldn’t be called when he was with the pentita, Immacolata Borelli, unless to be given information of seismic importance. They had gone beyond European banks, were now in the Cayman Islands – a Swiss bank – and had just talked through Greek Cyprus, a Larnaca branch. She stopped and he switched off the tape.