Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

‘You are Lukas?’

No warmth. A question put without enthusiasm, as if he was a stone in a shoe, a tick sucking blood on his leg, an irritation between the cheeks. He didn’t do point-scoring, but he didn’t do grovelling either.

‘Yes.’

‘I am here because I am instructed to be here.’

‘Thank you for meeting me,’ he said quietly, but briskly.

‘I am Mario Castrolami of the ROS. Excuse me, that is the-’

‘The special duties unit. I know what the ROS is.’ He didn’t spell out its full Italian name because that would have been to lord his knowledge – and get straight up the man’s nose. He was an intruder.

Castrolami was heavy-set and overweight. Lukas read him as one of the workaholic guys who slaved through all the hours, and more, and who were the backbone of pretty much every law-enforcement outfit he had come across. They didn’t get promotion, and they didn’t care. And they were busy, had clear-cut priorities, and failed on small-talk.

‘It is about Eddie Deacon?’

‘It is, and Immacolata Borelli.’ Lukas could have said it was about ‘Juliet and her Romeo’, because he had seen the movie on a flight out from JFK to Jakarta, a long time back, but neither of them wanted imbecile talk. He had to lead, but gently, as if the wind buffeted him when he was stuck up some God-awful crane and looking down wasn’t an option. ‘Can we go get a coffee? I’m told there’s a carabinieri barracks behind the Parliament building – near here, I think – and that a very good espresso is served in the non-coms’ mess. I imagine, Mr Castrolami, that you feel like you’ve stepped in a dog mess and that I’m the mess, but a coffee in the barracks might help to get the smell and the nuisance off your uppers. I suggest, though we’ll be using up your valuable time, that we say no more until we’ve had the coffee.’

Duck Johnstone had all these things on the file, could hack into them and carry Lukas back six years, an easy ride in the nostalgia stakes. Had taken him there for a reason.

Of course, Lukas knew where the barracks was, off which street on the far side of the via dei Corso, and how to get there quickest.

So, he led. It was a cheap trick, but he hadn’t time for subtlety. They exchanged cigarettes, but kept off the talking.

Carmine Borelli fired. The stock of the sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun was hard against his shoulder. He squinted down the valley between the barrels and fired again. The recoil, twice, rippled through his chest and up his neck. The sensation, shuddering through him, was incredible, and he shed years. The cordite was in his nostrils – extraordinary. It was one thing to have used a pistol the day before and have the retort ripple up his arm, but the shotgun at his shoulder was just pure pleasure.

One man squealed, held tight to a lamppost for support, then began to hobble towards the car. It was down the street, the doors already open, its exhaust spitting fumes. The other man had ducked down on his knees, then twisted and tried to run but was bent double. He could hear a man in the car shouting for them both to hurry. Carmine Borelli ejected the cartridges, dipped into his pocket for two more and loaded them. He had three of his own foot-soldiers further along the street than the car, and two more behind him. Salvatore, his visor down, was astride the pillion of a scooter across the street. None of the foot-soldiers, or Salvatore, were to intervene unless the life of Carmine Borelli was at high risk. He saw why the man who tried to run was bent: a hand gripped his hip and the tan trousers were bloodstained. Two shots, at twenty metres, and two hits. The two men made the car and it roared away, wheels shrieking as it spun right. There were several hospitals nearby where the passengers could be dropped off, but the Incurabili on the via della Sapienza was the nearest. A good hospital, where his Pasquale had been born and where he had sent many men.

The street had been empty, now was filled. A woman stopped, set down her shopping bag on the pavement, crouched, picked up the two ejected cases and gave them to him. Briefly, he kissed her hand. She retrieved her bags and went on. A man filled the door of a bar and shouted, ‘ Viva Il Camionista! ’ and there was applause behind him.

Carmine saw Salvatore ride off down the street. He knew that those who had been wounded would live now in mortal fear of Salvatore coming after them. The matter concerned the pizzo paid for protection by a shop on that street between the via Cesare Rosaroll and the via Carbonara which sold wedding dresses. Carmine Borelli understood that his granddaughter – no longer spoken of without a spit on the pavement – had fixed the pizzo at five hundred euros a month: chicken shit to the Borelli clan, small change. The previous evening, he had learned early that morning, men from the Misso clan or the Mazzarella clan – it was unclear – had told the shop’s owner that they would take over protection, and the payment would be seven hundred and fifty euros a month. If he had weakened, if it was allowed to happen once, if it was seen that he couldn’t fight to defend what he held, the Borelli clan was finished, dead and buried, forgotten. So he had taken the shotgun from the cache where it had lain hidden for more than twenty years, stripped off the damp-proof, oiled wrapping, loaded cartridges and found the old coat with the inner pocket where a shotgun could be secreted. He had been on the pavement when the men had come to collect seven hundred and fifty euros or to slop petrol over the shop’s stock of gowns. He thought he had sent a second message.

Another shout: ‘ Forza Il Camionista. ’ He acknowledged it, a slight wave. The scooter came back down the street. Salvatore would have circled the block to see if more men waited in more cars for orders to intervene – it was an old friend who had shouted – and the helmet shook. At this moment, there was no more danger. A gloved hand reached out, snatched the shotgun and the scooter was gone, lost in the traffic. The shop’s owner was behind him, with the padlock that fastened the steel shutters to the loop in the pavement, but Carmine denied him permission to close for the day, demanded he stay open – his sent message would be reinforced by that gesture. He walked away.

They would now be arriving at the hospital, probably the Incurabili, and would be hustling for the Pronto Soccorso entrance, which was alongside General Surgery, where they were skilled in extracting bullets and pellets. It was near to Trauma – necessary if the wounds were serious – and the chapel was beside the mortuaria – a good design layout and convenient. The first professional man he had hired was from that hospital.

Sixty-six years earlier: the city starved, women picked dandelions and daisies to boil as soup, kids prised limpets off the seashore rocks and men hung nets to catch songbirds for plucking. Carmine and Anna Borelli made their first fortune from the brothels. Not all the women who went into the cubicles with American soldiers were married. They had to eat, so dropped knickers and opened thighs were the only currency they had, but the Americans had moved on. Carmine Borelli had hired a professore from the hospital, and for a fee per patient of ten thousand lire the eminent medical man restitched the virginity of the unmarried, and Carmine took fifteen per cent of the fee. That professore had delivered Pasquale safely into the world.

He would go first to the place where he could shower and change his clothing, then take more of the pain pills because he didn’t want people in Forcella to see him hobble or limp. Clean, he would go home. He believed he had done well, believed also that he was on a treadmill, running, and didn’t know how long, at that pace, he could last.