Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

Fangio drove him away.

It was the clumsiest killing Salvatore had done, without finesse, and the first in which he had not known a man’s name or what he was accused of. Because he had kicked the boy, because he had limped, it was the worst of his killings.

The bucket was crucial to Eddie. The nail eased the hinge bar a few more millimetres from the steel surface of the door, at last enough for the rim of the bucket. There was insufficient leverage from the nail for the heavy effort of shifting the screws. The bucket did the job.

The first hinge, the lower one, was loosened. One more heave, the big effort, all the muscles in use, and it would come apart. Eddie didn’t finish it off. He didn’t know when the bastard would come back. Couldn’t take off one hinge, then start to free the other: he had to do the break-out when both hinges were ready – a few moments of heaving – to come away. When he had used the galvanised-steel bucket, which stank, the noise of the screws moving, the scraping against the steel and the splintering of the wood had seemed to shriek in the black space… But no one had come.

He had heard nothing, not even the faint voices and the murmur of music.

One last time he had the bucket rim behind the hinge bar and dragged it back, the sound screaming at him. The sweat ran on his shirt, and his knees were still damp from crawling in the urine, but he felt a glow of triumph.

The kicking hadn’t hurt, couldn’t compete with the elation. He was Eddie Deacon, ‘steady Eddie’. Many said that nothing flapped or fazed him. He didn’t do football and hadn’t the tribal loyalties of those who howled and yelled when a goal went in or didn’t. A woman from Algeria, in a class taken by Eddie Deacon, had gone into labour, and he had cleared the room, except for a woman who could help, then called the ambulance and had taken his coffee in the staff room, as if it wasn’t a big event. There had been a- Didn’t matter what else there had been because everything in Eddie’s old life had been to the shredder. He clenched his fist, didn’t punch in the air, but allowed it to shake as if that was good enough.

Nobody would have recognised him now. All who had been in his life would have recoiled at the sight and smell of him, wouldn’t have understood the ecstasy of moving a hinge bar with the rim of a galvanised bucket.

He started again.

He was up on his toes to give himself the fraction of height that helped, and had the nail tip on the angle where the upper hinge’s bar was flush against the steel plate, had the filthy handkerchief folded as a cushion on the nail head. He beat down on it with the pin from the chain.

There was a little give and he thought the nail tip was down by a millimetre or two, but it might have been wishful thinking – or even bloody fantasy. Nothing before in his life that was measured in a couple of millimetres had been important to Eddie Deacon.

It was late morning in the annexe off the operations room. The ROS men were back on their chairs, legs splayed out in front of them, and a couple snored quietly. One used a multiple-blade knife to clean the dirt from beneath his fingernails, and another read a magazine called Fur, Feather and Fin, seeming interested in waterproof socks. A fifth chewed gum and had a list in front of him of what was included in a personal survival kit, available in a mail-order offer; he elbowed Pietro, distracting him from the socks, and told him that this PSK had two non-lubricated condoms for water-carrying. He was Luigi.

The collator often worked alongside the ROS men. They seemed good at taking rest where it was offered, on a hard-backed chair, a floor or in a car. In fact, they seemed to rest more than anything else and had the weird magazines, everything about the kit they wore and how to improve it. But the collator knew that, when the location surfaced, they would be running, awake and alert. Pietro did not speak to him. Neither did Luigi. He was not regarded as having a useful opinion on condom water-carriers or water-resistant socks. It was nothing personal – the psychiatrist was similarly ignored. Both men would have agreed that they found the personnel of the storm team extraordinary: could face amazing crises, could hibernate mentally in lists, and could be mawkishly sentimental, cold-blooded or uncaring, and juvenile in their humour. Both men had a deep, sincere respect for them.

Castrolami was not in the annexe, but was on the end of a mobile signal. The man, Lukas, was with him.

They talked. A question and an answer, a pause for maybe five minutes, then some more talk.

It took time to get round to the psychiatrist’s big question: ‘This American – whatever he is – is he good? Is he the best? Is he a man who talks well? Does he deliver?’

Then the collator’s big answer: ‘He has the pedigree of a prizewinning mastiff. Can he deliver? Tell me the circumstances.’

‘Some would say it’s an insult to our professionalism that he’s here.’

‘Some, also, would say his presence was not asked for.’

‘If he succeeds, and delivers the English boy, our reputations are denigrated.’

The collator grinned, flashed his teeth, showed mischief. ‘Have faith in our city. Naples doesn’t bow the knee to foreigners.’

The ROS man interrupted their murmurs, hit Pietro again with his elbow and told him that this personal survival kit, top-of-the-range in America, had a brass snare wire, a length of fishing-line, six hooks with four weights, and a leader trace with an integrated swivel. Both men – as if at a signal – laughed, were close to collapse and held each other. They wondered whether the PSK was designed for the third world of Secondigliano or the via Baku of Scampia, and whether two condoms would be enough. The collator and the psychologist returned to their screens.

A phone rang. The collator answered, listened, put down the receiver. ‘They have the Borelli girl.’

‘What’s she going to do? Stay or quit?’

‘Do we have her or not?’

Castrolami was told. He showed no enthusiasm, no excitement.

‘Do you believe her?’

Lukas hovered. He didn’t crowd Castrolami.

Castrolami took a big breath, as if that was necessary when a decision of importance was taken, and let the air whistle out again between his teeth. He said, ‘Bring her down to us. She’s not hidden now. If she runs on these streets she’s committing suicide. That will end the shit. Bring her.’

They walked.

‘Things you have to understand, Lukas.’

‘What things?’

A square stretched out in front of them, with big churches on two of the four sides; on a third there was a view of the sea’s horizon. They were near to a fountain with statues at the four corners; no water flowed and the basins where the water might have been were filled with cardboard, plastic and other junk. The statues were of crouched lions but each had been decapitated, and the centre of the square was populated with kids’ bikes, plastic tractors and tricycles, and plastic garden furniture. It should be a fine place, Lukas thought. In Paris it would have been a fine place. Castrolami told him it was the old mercato.

‘Do I get a lecture in history?’ Lukas asked quietly, and the smile flickered.

‘It was the last year of the eighteenth century. The English navy restored a Bourbon tyrant to the throne. The piazza dei Mercato was the execution site, it was where those who had sided, erroneously, with the Napoleonic revolutionaries, were brought for hanging. Many thousands died here over several months, kicking the air, to the drunken jeers of the lazzaroni, the street thugs. One hangman was a dwarf and it pleased the crowd when he climbed, like a monkey, on to the shoulders of the condemned, putting more weight on the strangulation. Women were hanged here and abused – it was a true terror. It satisfied the mob – it was their narcotic. It has not died in Naples. On the streets they like a good killing and a display of horror. Nothing has changed, Lukas. If we deny them the ears, fingers or penis of the boy coming through the post, or hand-delivered, they will be angry. Certainly, they will not help us. It is a lesson of Naples I learned many years ago, and learned well: the mob enjoys death.’