Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

‘I care little for the killings in Naples. Bad guy kills bad guy. Excellent. Fewer bad guys to pollute the streets. Marianna Rossetti was not a bad guy. I seldom do speeches, Signorina. This one is about those already dead, those already condemned and those yet to be contaminated, all innocent. A whole district, hundreds of square kilometres, is poisoned and no one knows how to clean that ground and filter that water. For generations to come there will be the misery of the visit to the doctor, the rush to the clinic, the failure to prolong life – and for your like there will be meals on the table, the best clothing on your back and a fat bank account. You confirm to me that you take responsibility?’

She had lifted the glass. Drained it. Held it up so that not a drop of the wine should be left in it. ‘Yes.’

‘And you will see this through?’

‘I will.’

‘Whatever?’

‘Correct.’

He heard the glass fracture. He realised she had crushed it in the palm of her hand. She opened the rubbish bin with the foot-pedal, let the shards fall into it and blood dripped. He thought he’d done well. Theatrical, but acceptable in context. Castrolami’s opinion: it had been necessary to cut away the bullshit in her and break her. Having broken her, he could rebuild her. He thought her stronger now, and focused. He believed she would, as she had said, see it through in the face of whatever was thrown at her.

The policeman stood on the step and the porch light played on his shaven scalp. His suit was crumpled, his shirt was second-day-on and the tie was loosened; he should also have smeared some polish on his shoes – shouldn’t have been there, should have been in Salisbury at County Headquarters, should have been changing into the best suit, clean shirt, best tie and better shoes, should have been focusing on the seminar kicking off that evening: ‘Terrorism – Tackling the Reality of Today’s Threat’. Was, instead, at a bungalow in a village outside Chippenham. The rain was tipping down.

‘We have to look, Mr Deacon, at the actual world – as it is, not as we’d like it to be. Do we have at the moment – I’m just repeating what I’ve already told you and your wife – the resources to look into this, as you would like us to? We do not. It’s a matter of priorities, Mr Deacon – difficult as that may be for you to appreciate – and what you’ve told us doesn’t top the priority ladder. Then there’s the cutbacks. If we could link your son’s disappearance to international terrorism, it’s a different ball game – could probably send an aircraft-carrier down there. Sorry, not appropriate, Mr Deacon… Look, I understand how upset you are, but see it, please, from our viewpoint.’

The father said, ‘I’m sorry if my son’s situation is inconvenient.’

‘I think you’re getting the hang of ours, sir. He’s gone off, your boy, to try to patch up a scene with a girl who walked out on him in London. You get a garbled call, all the language difficulties thrown in, saying your son’s been kidnapped. Who says? You can’t tell us. What’s the source? You don’t know.’

‘I’m probably keeping you,’ the father said evenly.

‘We’ve called the carabinieri – those people in pantomime uniforms – in Naples. They have no report of a kidnap. We’ve not been idle. We’ve called the consulate there and they’ve checked with the police. Nothing heard. I’m being frank with you, sir. It’s about resources and priorities – and also about our pretty desperate relations with Italian law and order.’

‘I’m sure you’ve something more important to be getting on with.’

He saw the brief smile of relief and watched the man scuttle to his car, which was parked in the lane. He checked his watch. It had been twenty-eight minutes of pass-the-buck messing.

From behind him, Betty asked, ‘Arthur, what’s Eddie worth?’

He looked out on to the lane, then the darkened outline of the hedges and fields, hearing the smack of the rain around him. ‘Pretty much everything we have. That’s what Eddie’s worth to us. Not the easiest boy, but the only one we have.’

‘A difficult enough little beggar.’

‘But he’s our son.’

‘Can be infuriating. What do we do?’

‘Can be an utter wretch. I was thinking, top of my head, of going down to Dean’s. Hear what he has to say.’

‘You should. Eddie met him, didn’t he, last time he was here? Had a good talk. A pretty sensible chap. Just troubled… I can’t think, right now, of anyone better – or what else to do.’

He came inside and – as if it was something he should do more often and had forgotten for too long – gave his wife a brush kiss on the cheek. He dialled a number, and spoke to Dean Weymouth’s partner at their home a quarter of a mile up the lane. He wouldn’t have gone near the man without first checking that it was a good time to call. All the village knew Dean Weymouth had bad turns when he came back from the three-month visits to Iraq, and his space was respected – but he had always said the company he worked for was the best: efficient and dedicated.

Arthur Deacon didn’t know where else to go. But it involved his son so he had to go somewhere.

‘Each time I go back, Mr Deacon, it’s worse. But I keep going… Doesn’t make sense, does it? I go back because there’s nothing else. Going back is my way of saying I’m not history, not scrap, not finished and chucked out. I’m a soldier, Special Forces, that family. I have no other skills. I’m diagnosed PTSD – my stress levels go up to the top of the gauge – but I keep going back, have to.’

They were outside, in the wilderness of the untended back garden. Dean Weymouth was happier there than in the house.

‘I’m not accusing anybody, certainly not you, Mr Deacon, but I hear the word is, round here, that I’m “peculiar” or “unpredictable” or “difficult”… maybe just round the twist. People don’t understand “traumatic stress” and don’t see it as a medical affliction, like a worn-out hip or a hernia. They cross the street, pretend to look anywhere else, find excuses not to talk. You’re almost crying on the Black Dog days for someone to talk to – but people haven’t the time or the inclination.’

He wore only a T-shirt on his upper body and it was short-sleeved. The rain ran down the decorative lines of his tattoos, and was in his cropped hair. Mr Deacon had on an anorak and a cap. Dean Weymouth spoke softly and without rancour, in a flat, almost lifeless monotone.

‘All right, wrong. Most people haven’t. Your boy, your Eddie, he did, he made time. We didn’t talk stress, trauma, disorder. He let me ramble on down by the river – only last Sunday – about that new weed that’s taking over on the banks, and we saw the kingfisher fly, and I told him about the fish in there and… It was nothing talk. Would have bored a saint half to death. He gave me time, not many do. It was precious.’

He lit a cigarette. It took three matches because of the shake in his hands – he remembered his hands hadn’t shaken when he’d been by the river and given time. The trembling was always bad when the end of a home leave was in sight.

‘I’m going back in a couple of weeks. What spooks us most there is the thought of getting lifted – being taken. It’s like your worst nightmare but ratcheted up. We do close protection, usually of civilian experts. We have to take them to work. Could be lifted in the office, hoods in bogus police uniforms, or blocked in on the road and not able to shoot a way out of it. We know about kidnapping. It scares the shit out of us. If that’s happened to your boy, Mr Deacon, in Naples, then I’m sincerely sorry.’

He threw the cigarette on to the uncut grass.