Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

‘The old mendicante was right. I’m surprised,’ Rossi said.

‘The old beggar’s usually right,’ Orecchia said.

‘Is she going to jump in after them?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Do we go for her now?’

Orecchia said, ‘As we would for a mourner beside a family grave. Half a minute for contemplation, then we go.’

They had been there a quarter of an hour. They had been sitting on a low railing in the shade of the trees, with the scent of the market’s fruit stalls behind them, and they had waited to see if Castrolami’s judgement was sure or whether it leaked. They had seen her come, with that haughty stride, as if she was of God’s chosen few, on to the bridge – as Castrolami had said she would – and each man had let out an involuntary sigh of relief.

‘Would we have been fired?’

‘Probably “returned to unit”, probably on a trash heap. I think he told very few. It’s contained.’

‘Would you do that? Buy a padlock, waste it, throw away the key?’

‘I know too little about romance.’ A faint grin broke on Orecchia’s face. ‘Come on.’

They stood.

‘How do we treat her?’

‘Like an old friend. How else?’

Orecchia led. They skipped through the traffic, crossed the far pavement and walked out on to the bridge.

Rossi asked, ‘Do we go gently or kick hell out of her?’

Orecchia answered, side of his mouth, ‘I lead, Alessandro, an uncomplicated life. I have a wife who tolerates me, a kid who accepts my usefulness to him as a milch-cow, I have a cat who ignores me but doesn’t scratch. I have an apartment I can afford, I have a cheque in the bank on the first day of each month and an attractive pension fund. I don’t live with a perpetual crisis at my shoulder. They do, the collaborators. She does. I would say, Alessandro, that betrayal brings a heavy burden. It would be attractive to kick her for what she has done to us today, but our anxieties are small in comparison with her agony.’

‘Sensitively put. It does you credit.’ Rossi grinned wryly. ‘But has she capitulated? Is that what this crap, the padlock and the key, is about?’

‘I think not,’ Orecchia said.

She looked proud, the older of the two thought, and seemed in no hurry to leave the bridge. She would have seen them coming from the edge of her vision but made no move. Orecchia had seen the flash of light on the keys but not where they went into the water. Almost magnificent – better than proud, he thought, as she stared up the river. Beside him, Rossi was alert, on the balls of his feet, ready for pursuit. Orecchia was beside her, close but not intruding on her mood.

He said, ‘I think, Signorina, that it is time for us to go back up the hill and continue with our work. Are you ready, or would you like a few moments longer?’

She shook her head.

‘You’re ready?’

She nodded.

He was at her shoulder as they came off the bridge, Rossi behind them. They walked briskly at his pace, and she matched it. She told him she’d paid thirty-five euros for the padlock, and seemed to expect a comment.

Orecchia quoted a frequent remark of his child, usually offered when the father attempted to limit expenditure: ‘I think in this world, Signorina, you get what you pay for. I imagine that for thirty-five euros you have a very fine padlock.’

He wondered if she would be weeping, eyes glistening, but she was not.

Fangio drove him. Salvatore was pillion. The clan that had offered help to Carmine Borelli had asked for a great deal in return – narcotics, an investment portfolio and Salvatore’s services. It might have been that there was a genuine requirement for a stranger’s face among the towers of Scampia, or a need to demonstrate power and humiliate the old man from Forcella. He had been given a photograph of a face and a map that showed a wide street and a cut-through leading off it. Then a bar was marked, built into the ground floor of a fifteen-storey block. Rare for Fangio – the most skilled scooter driver Salvatore knew – to demonstrate apprehension. On the pillion, knees clamped on the padding and one hand in the deep pocket of his leather jacket, Salvatore sensed the older man’s nerves. He, Salvatore, would never grow old. His friend, Fangio, had a less fatalistic mentality and did not look to die that morning. It was not their territory, and others back at the Sail building played with them.

Fangio had studied the map drawn for them, memorised it, did not need directions from Salvatore. In silence, of course, they rode on the high-performance scooter, couldn’t have spoken through the visored helmets. Salvatore leaned with the cant of the machine as they came off the via Arcangelo Ghisleri, and the alley was ahead. They were seen. Watchers tracked them. In unison, Salvatore and Fangio lifted their smoked visors. Without showing their faces they would not have reached the far end of the narrow cut-through. Little enough space but Fangio had to weave between heaps of rubbish bags, most broken open with refuse spilling out. Once he swerved hard and missed, by a tail’s length, a large scurrying grey rat. They went into an enclosed piazza and the bar was under the end of the block. It seemed squashed under the weight of stained concrete above, and weeds sprouted outside. When Salvatore swung his leg off the pillion he walked on a carpet of discarded cigarette tips.

The doors were open. They had little paint and the glass was cracked. It was dark inside except for the glimmer thrown by candles on the carved-wood Madonna. He saw three men sitting at a flimsy table, Formica top on steel tube legs. There were empty cups in front of them and they played cards. The one who faced Salvatore most directly wore a short-sleeved green shirt, was bald and had a goatee-style beard. It was the description he had been given at the Sail. He realised then the extent of the pain in his leg as he limped to the door. Why did his foot hurt? How had he injured it? A kick. Repeated kicks. The big toe of his right foot had been the strike-point when he had kicked the boy. The boy had loved Immacolata, maybe Immacolata had loved the boy. Twice he had thudded his foot against the pelvic bone, which was hard, reinforced. Immacolata had not loved Salvatore, had seemed not to notice him – as if he was merely a paid servant of the clan. So he limped into the bar, and felt a fucking idiot because he couldn’t walk casually, as if he was in control.

He took the pistol from his pocket. Around him chairs scraped and table legs screeched as they were pushed back; the television in the corner seemed louder and dinned into his ears. He fired. Always two shots, and for the head. Salvatore didn’t know the name of the man who pitched forward, whose head fell without the protection of his arms on to the table surface. Blood spilled, the cups jumped, the ashtray flew sideways and emptied, and the cards scattered. He didn’t know the man’s name, or why he had been killed. What hadn’t he done?

He turned. He saw Fangio astride the scooter, gunning the engine; he had lowered his helmet’s visor. A bottle was thrown at him – Sprite, Fanta or Coke. It came from behind the bar and he saw it in flight, then the figure ducked. He was hit full in the face and the bottle broke – his helmet or his nose – he couldn’t see and felt the moisture. A hand clawed at him, another. He fired once more – into the ceiling. He was freed. Couldn’t run so he limped out.

Fangio snatched at him, pulled him clumsily on to the pillion and was gone, and Salvatore realised then that what he had not done was lower his visor as he had gone into the bar. He wiped a sleeve across the bridge of his nose and there was blood on the leather. They went back up the alley and now he had the visor down. He had shown the world his face. Blood was in his nostrils, already caking, and when he snorted to clear it there was a spray on the visor’s screen.