Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

‘The man who stopped me in the street – I assure you, Professore, he is unknown to me – he said that the boy taken would lose an ear after four days, a finger after five, his penis after six, then would die if Immacolata Borelli’s statement was not passed to me. I don’t know why me.’

The prosecutor remarked briskly, ‘Because you represent Pasquale Borelli and all his tribe.’

‘I’m just a messenger.’

‘Of course.’

‘I would deny that my clients, the family I have the privilege to represent, and who are hard-working, honourable people, are linked to this sad, difficult situation.’ Then he asked, innocence creasing his face, ‘Do you know who this young man is, Professore? Do you know his connection with Immacolata Borelli?’

‘No.’

‘It would be a tragic distortion of reality if the position of this young man was to weigh against the family, my clients.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’m only the messenger.’

‘Again, of course. You don’t have the envelope in which this communication was sent to you? For forensic studies?’

‘I regret that it had been shredded before its contents’ significance was noted.’

‘Could you give a description of the “stranger” who accosted you?’

‘He was behind me. I never saw his face.’

‘Of course.’

There were four directions in which the future career path of the prosecutor could go. He might write the letter, give the notice of termination, go to walk in the beloved Dolomites, quit. He might be transferred to the anti-terrorism force and posted anywhere. There was the chance of promotion to Rome and the chair of command over the three primary prosecutors in Palermo, Reggio Calabria and Naples. He might just soldier on, maintain his office at the palace, beaver away at his work and log seventy hours a week. The last option had a saving grace. One day or night, he would nail this shit bastard and see him dragged away in handcuffs, unable to shield his face, past the lines of flashbulbs, and know that he was headed for the remand cells of the Poggioreale gaol and a chance to share life with pimps, thieves and pushers, the scum of the city. He never lost his temper in public. He did at home – he would pace his living room, his child shut in a bedroom and his wife gone to the kitchen, and howl at the unfairness of life. He stood up.

The lawyer rose awkwardly from his chair. The advantage of the interview room was that it did not have air-conditioning, and was therefore uncomfortable: sweat streaked him. ‘Should I be telephoned, should I be accosted again, is there a response I can give, something that will save this unfortunate from mutilation or death?’

‘No, there is not.’

The lawyer said, a cut in his voice, ‘You play, Professore, with a life.’

‘Do you speak as a link in a chain of negotiation, and therefore as part of a criminal conspiracy, or as the mere messenger?’

He did not expect a reply. The guard outside the door would escort the shit bastard from the building.

How hard was she, the girl? The prosecutor took a lift high up the tower, to look for coffee. Who could read her, and know her break-point? He carried the sheath that protected the paper with the photograph of the staring eyes, the white cheeks under the stubble, colour burned from them by the flash, the tousled hair and the dried blood on the skin. To destroy the Borelli clan would be a triumph but would carry a price. It was indeed, beneath the wide-eyed fear, a pleasant face.

He sawed, and felt the chain link weaken. He hadn’t imagined it – he knew it. He began to think of it, fighting. Began to stiffen with the stress of it – a dream or a nightmare – but kept sawing. The dust was thick on his face and his eyes hurt. He thought of everyone he knew, and wondered if any among them would believe that Eddie Deacon – in a hole with no water and a shit bucket – could break out of handcuffs and fight. His Mac, would she? Couldn’t answer that.

The shower hadn’t been mentioned, or her strip in front of Alessandro Rossi. She was subdued. Immacolata talked of her mother. The tape-recorder was controlled by Rossi and Orecchia prompted. It was general, not the detail required by Castrolami, the prosecutor or his deputy. She scratched in her mind for memories and tried to offer up the minutiae of detail. And between what she had to offer, Orecchia would speak or Rossi, as though events elsewhere had taken centre stage, and the safe-house apartment on the Collina Fleming was no longer of pivotal importance.

Orecchia had said, ‘The position of women in Naples is unique. In Naples a woman can rise higher, faster, than in the south or in Sicily. It was the legislation of 1991, all the collaborators provided for, all the arrests that followed, that took away the glass ceiling, and women flourished. If there’s a problem, what do they do? They call for the women.’

Rossi had said, ‘The women have less loyalty than the men. Pupetta Maresca, first lady of Nola, knows that her son is dead, knows that her son is in the tower supporting a flyover bridge, knows that a cocaine importer killed him, and she moves in with that man and has twins with him. She was a star – not as clever as your mother, but colder.’

She talked of her mother with detachment, as if she was speaking of a stranger she had met casually and briefly.

From Orecchia, ‘The men in the family will usually follow the orders of their father but always the orders of their mother. Another, from near Naples, Anna Mazza from Afragola. Her husband is shot so she sends her thirteen-year-old son to kill the assassin. He fails. All the men in her family are enlisted, and they go to war. Her order, the family of the killer is exterminated, and another family. One of Anna Mazza’s hitmen is killed. The revenge? That killer is taken within a day, tortured with electricity, then crucified against a door – because a woman wanted it.’

From Rossi, ‘We say of the women that they’re clever, they’re ignorant, they can’t read and write, they’re coarse or vulgar, but they’re respected and feared. All of those are true of your mother, except that she’s neither illiterate nor innumerate. She’s clever and she’s feared.’

She talked of her mother holding a meeting in the house, rare, and discussing a pending shipment from Venezuela, and seemed to acknowledge no blood ties, no family.

‘The woman at the clan’s heart enjoys the privilege given her – if she leaves it, she has nothing. Maybe it’s more important to the women than it is to the men.’

‘They say escape is impossible from Poggioreale, but Patrizia Ferriero succeeded in taking out her husband. The scam: she complained he had a severe kidney problem. She was the supreme fixer. She went to a hospital, bought the blood of a kidney patient, then arranged for it to be fed into a dialysis machine brought into Poggioreale to monitor his condition. She was allowed to transfer him to a hospital and he served his sentence in luxury. And she bought the policemen on guard duty with cocaine. Then, one day, he rose, and the police did not look, and he walked out of the hospital. Her driver and bodyguard was a former carabiniere. She was very intelligent.’

She talked in the flat tone about the mother who had not kissed, hugged or praised her.

‘We think women are more capable at criminality, but less visible.’

‘We believe that few women will stand against the lust, an orgasmic attraction, of power.’

‘You owe your mother nothing.’

‘An accident of birth does not have the right to demand loyalty.’ Immacolata said she would go to the kitchen and make lunch. Salad, fruit and cheese. She had not asked if she could run again in the gardens at the Villa Borghese.