Gerald Seymour - The Collaborator

She didn’t talk about her mother. The tape-recorder was not produced. She didn’t speak of Vincenzo in the British prison, Belmarsh, or of Giovanni and Silvio, in the Poggioreale gaol. She made no more accusations against her father, locked in a solitary cell of the maximum-security block in Novara.

Her plastic bag was filled.

She had cooked an omelette, with cheese and diced ham, had mixed a dressing and tossed a salad, and had about emptied the refrigerator of bread and fruit. She had drunk a glass of water from the tap, as they had, and she had cleared the table. They had offered to help and been curtly refused.

Immacolata washed up the plates and bowls and the frying pan, the knives and forks.

They were behind her, still at the table.

She could have asked if there was news of Eddie Deacon. She did not. They hadn’t spoken of anything significant, major or minor, of the purchase of the padlock and it being left to rust on a chain on the Ponte Milvio, a place of history. She used scalding water and no plastic gloves. The pain flushed her skin and she didn’t know whether they approved of what she was doing or thought her a cold, heartless, treacherous bitch. Knives and forks clattered on to the draining-board.

Immacolata had not asked for information on what was being done to save Eddie Deacon’s life. She knew she wouldn’t be answered. They would have shrugged, pleaded their junior rank, and she would have demeaned herself. The salad bowl and the frying pan dripped on the draining-board, and she attacked the plates.

Her problem – why she washed up and would then mop the floors and wipe the surfaces – chewed inside her. A junction reached, two turnings for choice. To take one betrayed the death agonies of Marianna Rossetti, to take the other condemned Eddie Deacon. There was no middle road. A plate broke. Maybe it had already been cracked, or she had put it down too forcefully on the draining-board. Without thinking, she collected the pieces, laid them out and looked to see if the damage could be repaired. Only for a moment. She picked the pieces up, marched across the floor to the bin, dumped them and let the lid slam.

She was finishing. Orecchia came from the table, gestured that he would help to dry up, but she waved him away. She wondered, briefly, who would be here next – a pentito from the Camorra, from the far south or Sicily? She had thought once that the hill, with its views, its fences, its guard dogs and its money, could be a home. She would never come back here. She saw a future of cars with privacy windows, false identities, and apartments that displayed nothing personal. No friends. She supposed, one day, they would give her a number to ring if she had difficulties. She would not, after a few more days or weeks, see Orecchia or Rossi again. There would be no friends. She would not love.

It hurt too much to think of Eddie Deacon.

She cleared the draining-board, made the correct piles on the shelves – and wondered if, for a department of the ministry that dealt with housing collaborators, she should write a confessional note reporting the broken plate. Then she went to the cupboard and brought out the mop. All the rooms would be cleaned. Orecchia and Rossi would understand that she needed to purge the place of her presence. She was a memory that would be erased, as if she had never been there. But she would have left something. She bit her lower lip hard, felt no pain but the warmth of blood. Without what she left, Immacolata would be a changed person.

She would not know how, again, to love.

The prosecutor’s car had brought him to the city hall. He did not see the mayor or any elected politician, but an official in the Interior section of the city’s bureaucracy. ‘We believe the successful prosecution of the entire Borelli family is a matter of great importance to the administration of Naples.’

In his own world, at the Palace of Justice, the prosecutor was a king, an emperor, and had – almost – the authority of a Bourbon.

‘We are concerned that the image of the city is fractured, that national leaders from the north regard us as a nest of anarchy and criminality, and that the city is ungovernable.’

He was not in his own world. Power, absolute, resided in this building, and when he was summoned, the prosecutor came.

‘Without a mark of success, we face the very grave dangers of attacks on the city’s budget as supplied by central government – it would be reflected in police and carabinieri budgets. There is the expression, “throwing good money after bad”, and it is used frequently in reference to our society. We have to succeed. The election, also, looms.’

A small mountain of paper was on his desk, with foothills of files on the carpet around it, but in acknowledgement of that power he must show dutiful attention.

‘There can be no question of a bargain being done. We deal, Dottore, with justice and we are not in a souk. Justice comes first, always. The case against the Borelli family will be prosecuted with full rigour. The mayor, or a principal in his administration, wishes – very soon – to give a media conference at which the iron-fisted determination of the city hall will be shown as resolute against organised criminality.’

The prosecutor nodded, seemed to show what was required of him: respect.

‘If the young man dies – and no negotiation will be deployed – it is believed that such a tragedy can be turned to advantage as a clear indication of the barbarity of the clans, their ruthlessness. If… We demand there is no weakening.’

He was dismissed. He had stood throughout and had not been given coffee. What angered the prosecutor most: he had been dragged across the city, brought here, lectured, and he agreed with each sentiment voiced. Nothing was negotiable. He left through the ornate double doors. He wondered how high a level of deceit was required to save the boy, and whether the man, Lukas, who had been in his office was capable of lying to that level.

A priest said, in brisk Italian, ‘Yes, he came here. He came to my church of San Giorgio Maggiore. I’m told he waited a long time for me. Before, he had been the length of via Forcella and back, and had asked where he could find Immacolata Borelli. Her last home was with her grandparents. He was a stranger and no one would tell him. If a stranger asks for the directions to the home of an old clan leader and his wife, no one will tell him… except me. I told him. I realise now that I should not have, but I did. And the boy has “disappeared”, a way of saying he has been kidnapped, and will be used to pressurise the granddaughter, Immacolata. I know Immacolata. If she had stayed, if she had taken a young man from her own class, from another family, I would have been asked to marry her in my church, and I doubt I would have refused. It would have been a grand wedding, followed by an obscenely lavish party, and horrible amounts would have been spent on the principals’ clothing. A heap of banknotes would have been given me for the repair of the church roof and most of those notes would have tested positive for recent cocaine exposure. A predecessor of mine refused, and he was not supported by the hierarchy, and his condemnation of the killing of a child in a gun battle was not backed. For a few days after the girl died there were demonstrations of hostility towards the clan. The anger was a wind that blew out very soon, and the priest was isolated, under threat. When the TV cameras had gone, and their lights, he was alone. He is now in Rome, and when he comes back to visit his mother and father he has an explosion-proof car to travel in and armed bodyguards to escort him. Our cloth and our collar do not protect us. There are bullet marks by the main door and you passed them. It is not easy to stand against such a force. You wish me to ask in my pulpit on Sunday for information to be given to the police concerning the boy. I would be wasting my breath. They are the state, not you, Dottore Castrolami. They have complete power, complete authority. Even inside this house of God I feel the fear. It is always with us. It shames me, but it’s there. Fear is in the fabric of this street, this church, this congregation, this priest. A priest stood out against the Casalesi clan and was shot dead. You say you have few hours left, and you have no idea where the boy is held. I’m grateful for the trust you place in me that you can give me information so sensitive, and I can suggest only that you pray for good fortune and that the sun will shine on your endeavour. It is Naples. We are all, believe me, friend, powerless in the face of this force of evil. We lack the strength to stand against it. But I tell you, friend, if it is one or the other – the force of justice exerted against the family of Forcella or the boy’s life – I choose justice. I feel inadequate, a failed man, not only today but every day I serve here. I will pray for the boy, but privately. The Church has little use for another hero, less for another martyr.’