Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

Eddie had his hand in his pocket, was reaching for a handkerchief – must have been dust, up his nose and in his throat. He was about to sneeze. A man closed on him, came from the van, and behind was a dark interior, and sacking, a rope trailing out of the opening. The man on the fish stall held Eddie’s eyes. So much, then, for Eddie Deacon to assimilate. Time slowing. The man coming slower. People in the cafe opposite pirouetting their chairs to face away from the street, but the pace of the movement slackening. Trying to understand… The fish-seller had that look, unmistakable, no argument with it. Like a warning shout, but nothing passed his lips. The quiet, like fog, settled on him but the sights were clearer.

He could not comprehend why the fish-seller should give the warning. He could only react to it.

The hands of the man reached towards him. Not open, not in greeting, clenched. The veins stood out in his muscled arms, like highways through the hairs. Eddie ripped his hand from his pocket and moved into that defensive stance, as a boxer does, trying to go forward on to the balls of his feet. He had never, since he was a child in a tantrum, hit anyone. He had never punched, kicked, gouged or bitten another adult. He had only once intervened in a fight and played a hero and- So fast. His hand was only halfway up to protect his chin and throat when the fist of the man came at him. He felt himself buffeted. Pain riddled his nostrils and there were tears in his eyes. A grip tightened on his shirt and he was dragged forward. He was pulled past the fish-seller and saw nothing but a face without expression. Should he have tried to run? No chance: blocked by the van and the fish stall on its heavy trestle legs. Could see only the backs of the heads in the cafe opposite.

He was dragged forward and when he was close enough the man’s knee exploded into Eddie’s groin.

About the end of it, his experience as a street-fighter. Real pain now. He tried to double up, which merely offered his jaw, the chin, to a short-arm hook punch. He went into the side hatch of the van.

Eddie was face down, his head buried in a heap of loose sacking, foul-smelling and tasting – hard for him to breathe, and he struggled, but one fist was clamped in his hair and the other whipped his face, used it as if it was a boxer’s training gear. He stopped the struggle. The door was slammed. Then all light went and a hood was over his head. His arms were snatched down into the small of his back, handcuffs snapped on. He heard the tearing of heavy-duty tape and his hood was lifted, the tape fastened over his mouth, and the van was moving.

The hands were at his legs and rope was wound round his ankles. He heard the oath when the van must have hit a hole, perhaps where a cobblestone was missing. Then the rope was lashed tight and tied.

He was helpless.

He wondered if he would hear sirens, immediate pursuit. There had been people in the cafe, people further up the street and down it. He imagined a phone call on a mobile, alerting police to what had happened. The hope died pretty bloody soon.

Eddie realised that the van was not speeding. There was no chase. The driver went at the normal speed for morning traffic, didn’t hoot, didn’t weave, didn’t chase back-doubles and rat-runs.

He thought the worst. He was gone, lost, and it was hard to drag air into his lungs, and could hear the breathing of the man sitting on the van floor close to him. He didn’t dare move because that would get him another thrashing. Truths came.

Eddie Deacon, bloody idiot, had blundered on to territory where he should not have been. Way back, he should have walked home from the Afghan place, should have reached up and taken down the blow-up of Immacolata, his Mac, folded it and put it deep in a drawer, maybe under his socks. He should not have gone with a street kid and burgled, should not have jacked in work and taken a budget flight, should not have walked down a street where no smile met his and no help requested was given. He should not have trusted the old couple, grandparents and providers of coffee, cake and betrayal. Pretty damn obvious: keep the idiot in place and send for the heavy squad.

What to do? Important – not important: why it had happened. What to do mattered.

Bitch and fight and get another beating. Go passive, supine and give up the ghost. Lie still, let the world move and try to bloody think. He gave himself three alternatives. He was bound at the ankles, handcuffed at the wrists, his mouth was gagged and a hood covered his face. He had to make choices between alternatives, would have to.

He did not know how long he was in the van, lost track of time, and would lose also the pain in his wrists where the cuffs bit. He never heard a siren.

The fish-seller, Tomasso, came round his stall and bent low. He believed it would be thought he retied the knot in his lace. He hadn’t moved from his place beside the cash box and the scales until life had returned to the via Forcella. Chairs in the cafe had swivelled, the pavement was filled, and scooters swerved along the length of the street. Children poured out of the big gates of the school named after the girl who had been shot in cross-fire, Annalisa Durante; a murder gang had come to kill the son of a more minor clan leader in the district. Tomasso watched the children – six or seven, the only evidence of innocence in the street. He knew her parents, who lived a dozen doors up, and he knew what had been the fate of the priest then at the church on the corner with the via Duomo who had denounced the clans and called for their elimination from the community. He had seen the street return to normality, then moved round his stall and bent to tie his shoelace. He could reach, also, a few centimetres to the right of his shoe and slide his palm over the piece of paper that had fallen from the young man’s pocket. It had been at the moment that the hand came out fast, in response to Tomasso’s silent warning, that the piece of paper had been dropped. He slipped it into his breast pocket after glancing at it and realising what it was.

The priest who had stood against the clans and their culture, after the killing of the teenager Annalisa Durante, had had two shots fired at him when he paused on the steps of his church and now lived in Rome. He came back to Naples rarely, but always with an escort of police bodyguards. There would be protection for a priest but not for a fish-seller, so he was careful in his movements. He telephoned his uncle and asked him to come – quickly, subito, immediately – and mind the stall. The paper in his pocket gave the name of a hotel and the room number. While he waited, he considered which route was quickest, and hoped he might help – when no other would – a wretch in the gravest of danger. To ring the police direct was a step too far.

Immacolata was permitted to prepare the food.

She had heard the courier’s motorbike outside the main gate to the block, then the doorbell. She had seen the plastic sack of tapes Castrolami had taken across the living room into the hall, and the door had been opened. She had seen, from the kitchen’s balcony, the courier in black leathers load the sack into a pannier, then ride off at speed, spitting dust.

She washed vegetables, scraped potatoes and brought the penne down from the upper shelf where the pasta was stored. She had turned up the radio and did dance steps between the sink and the surfaces where the food was laid out. For a few minutes she felt freedom, perhaps for the first time. Orecchia and Rossi had left her to herself, and in those minutes she had expelled from her mind the scams, deals, fixes and hits of the clan, and had filled the void with… nothing. She delighted in the emptiness of the black hole.

Castrolami was at the door. She was sluicing the spinach leaves, had been measuring the penne in her mind, was deciding on the mix of tomato puree and cream for the sauce.