The Collaborator Read online

  She looked at him. ‘I’ll go the course, whatever they throw at me.’

  She stood then, feet a little apart, shoulders back. Her coat was now open and had dried on her, her blouse stretched across her breasts. She slipped her hand into the damp crook of his arm and they walked together.

  It was a good morning by the river. The rain and cloud had cleared and Lukas was hunched on the step with his friend.

  Squatting on a canvas stool, Philippe drew with crayons on heavy white paper pinned to a wooden board. With midday coming, it was close to the high seventies and in the afternoon the temperature might hit eighty. But where he had taken his pitch there was shadow from the doorway. Down and across the street, there was a foot bridge over the river, marked by a larger-than-life-size statue of Thomas Jefferson. Lukas didn’t know much about Jefferson’s life and times, but it was a good place for the artist. Tourists from the United States came and took photographs of the statue, then seemed to want to remember the place with something more authentic, so they purchased his crayon drawings of the statue, the bridge, the river, and the Louvre, which was on the far side of the Seine. Usually, when he was at home, Lukas would come to that doorway and settle beside his friend. If his friend was concentrating, he would sit quietly and do some thinking of his own.

  If they talked it was about little things. The price of bread, the state of the football championship, whether the weather was lifting or closing in. He would never pry into Philippe’s life, and in return he was not asked, when he came back after a week or three, or a month, where he had been or why. There was always, in late September, a strong odour rising off the river because its level was low, and when he looked upstream he could see the little island covered with Notre Dame. He came to this place, unwound his emotions, let them slacken, and was distanced from where he’d been – Afghanistan, Iraq, an Uzbek or Tajik city, the jungle of the high mountains in Colombia – and Philippe wouldn’t press him. Why was the man his friend? In one limited area there was total and compelling frankness between them. Philippe said his work was shit, and Lukas never disagreed. He valued honesty – men and women died when assault-squad commanders or hostage negotiators and co-ordinators fought little patches of territory and declined to be truthful. The work was shit, but it sold and fed his friend, and meant there was a place for at least another month where Lukas could find company.

  He was anonymous here, which suited him. He didn’t carry a mobile in Paris, but the way he lived his life meant he was seldom far from the telephone on the small table inside the apartment’s front door, and a light flashed if a call had come in and a message had been left. He always hesitated a couple of seconds, no more, before he picked it up when the light flashed red.

  They’d gone round it for a long time and had now reached consensus. Philippe, busy on Jefferson’s face, the second work since the discussion had begun, was certain who would win the weekend’s football games, and Lukas agreed. In his own trade, he knew that disagreement killed.

  Three times a day, Lukas was out of his apartment, but seldom for more than two hours. It was always a stampede to catch up when the call came and the light flashed red.

  Philippe shared his flask – it was good coffee, as always.

  4

  He disliked to ask a favour, to place himself in debt or obligation to any man. He hadn’t asked one but Castrolami had endured an uncomfortable, awkward day, but now he had purpose. They were out of the city and on to the motorway. It was not yet dusk, but the sun was sinking and it would be evening when they left Heathrow, night when they reached Fiumicino. The man from the embassy drove.

  In the hours since they had left the park, they had shopped – underclothes for her in a chain store. He had passed her euros from his wallet, which she had placed in her purse, then used British currency – he thought her the daughter of her father because she hadn’t given him change for what she had purchased. He had hustled her. They had been brought fifteen minutes in the car away from the park and he thought they were nearer to the heart of the city but distanced from where she lived and where her brother might be. Then she found a nightdress, a washbag and the items to go with it. For himself there was a sandwich in a cardboard and cellophane wrapping. He had not discussed with her the possibility of her returning to the apartment and packing a bag: it had been stated as fact that there was no question of her going near her street. They had stopped outside a railway station near the shopping area, and she had walked with him to a fast-photo booth and done portraits. Then they had killed time.

  Had Mario Castrolami been prepared to ask for favours a choice might have presented itself.

  He could have used the embassy man to contact the London police and request a secure room – in a police station, wherever – for them to wait in. In Naples, it was common talk among the Squadra Mobile and the carabinieri that the British police, in particular the London force, were self-serving and unhelpful to the point of obstruction. They lived, it was said, in a fantasy land of imagined and patronising superiority… So he had no secure room with the London police. He believed he must take precautions against a collapse of her determination, a sea-change in her mood: he couldn’t rely on her to say where they could lie up for the day – there might be a back doorway on to a street through which she could slip and disappear. Nor was he prepared to take Signorina Immacolata into the embassy to wile away the hours. He didn’t know the personnel so he didn’t trust them: he had had the driver from the ambassador’s staff park a block away from the embassy; then had given him the photographs of her from the booth. The man had been gone for half an hour, then returned with the new passport. It was not yet noon, so they had gone to another park. She had said it was Hyde Park. The rear doors of the car had been locked, and the radio turned up.

  It was slow on the six-lane motorway.

  Castrolami couldn’t have taken her out on the first available flight with seats free. He wasn’t prepared to move her until a signal came to him, via his mobile, that the extradition unit had eyeball on Vincenzo Borelli. She had not complained, had accepted what was incarceration, had refused food, had not asked for a lavatory, had not made empty conversation. It suited him that he was not required to do small-talk, and that others would begin the detailed debrief. He was not much more, really, than the bag-carrier. He neither liked nor disliked her, was neither attracted to nor disgusted by her. Her breathing was steady, giving no indication of stress… but he kept an eye on the front windscreen. The driver had a day-old copy of Corriere della Sera, and had heaved the news and arts sections over his shoulder and into Castrolami’s lap while keeping the sport pages. But Castrolami hadn’t looked at the paper and neither had she. They had watched the movement in the park – pedestrians, pram-pushers and horse-riders – and hadn’t talked. The call had come. His bladder had hurt, but he had known the vigil was near to its end. He didn’t know how she felt now that the surveillance team had eyeball on her brother, and didn’t ask.

  They were leaving behind the tower blocks of London and the sun was dipping down. He had half expected her to crumple and look for comfort from him – she’d get fuck-all if she did. A bag-carrier didn’t do nurse. She sat bolt upright and her lip wobbled occasionally, but there were no tears.

  Further out of the city, the traffic speeded up. The mobile-phone messages had told him of the eyeball in London, the readiness at the palace in Naples, the teams gathered in briefing rooms at the Questura and at the barracks in piazza Dante. He had gutted her for headline information before they had gone on the shopping jaunt and that information had gone. He doubted that she could, now, step back.

  He had made one accommodation to his principle of refusing to ask favours. At the terminal the car was met – only a protocol chief, but sufficient, carrying the printouts of two tickets.

  The plastic bag dangled from her fist. It was the symbol, he reckoned, of how far she had come. Her possessions were in one cheap bag, and they consisted of underwear, washing kit and a
nightdress. Then there was whatever she had in her handbag. Castrolami handed his passport and the one she would use to the protocol guy. They were examined, the title pages flicked, and they were taken through locked doors and into hidden corridors where only permanent Heathrow staff had access. They emerged into a departure area, were given the printouts and brought to a Passport Control desk – one at the end, which had a Position Closed sign but where a young woman sat. She looked at the pages, at the faces, handed the documents back. There was a screen ahead, and he saw that the Rome flight had been called. He had been told that if the traffic was heavy on the motorway, and they were late, the flight would be delayed. He had a hand on her arm and steered her towards the pier, then hooked out his mobile, dialled, waited, was connected.

  He said where they were, confirmed the schedule. He was told the operation had been named Partenope. He shut the mobile and switched it off. They came to the last exit off the pier. He thought she had walked well, not stumbling, not faltering. Maybe she was, as he had suspected, a hard bitch under the veneer of sadness at the death of a friend, hard and uncaring.

  Would she stay the course? They all said they would, but only a few did, and were alive, able to build a new life, when the trials were over.

  He stood aside and let his hand fall from her arm. He couldn’t read her, couldn’t pierce her thoughts. She stepped from the pier inside the aircraft. Castrolami had had to stifle the urge to shove her the last metre, but it had not been necessary. He showed the boarding cards and a woman led them into business class, then to the front row where no other passengers would need to pass them and look at their faces.

  The door was closed, the engines gained power. She had her belt fastened. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel, whether I am strong?’

  He shook his head, then turned his face away and closed his eyes, as their speed on the runway gathered.

  He put the phone down, gave the order of confirmation. Operation Partenope was named after the Siren woman who seduced men having lured them on to rocks and then killed them, and who had ultimately failed and had committed suicide by drowning and who lay in a pauper’s grave, if mythology were believed, among the sunk foundations of the buildings between the via Solitaria and the via Chiatamone. Operation Parthenope had legs and ran.

  The prosecutor eased his hand off the receiver and saw that his palm had left a sweat sheen on it. He believed he presided over the dismantling of a clan. It would be, he could predict, an opportunity for a minister in Rome to speak of a blow of the ‘greatest significance’ to the heart of the city’s criminal activities. If it worked well, he would receive a congratulatory message from the minister. He could reflect on a durable heart, because many times central government had claimed such blows against it, and on the columns of men and women in patrol cars and riot wagons leaving the yards behind the Questura and piazza Dante. In London, more officers and guns would be moving into position to arrest the eldest brother. It was synchronised, choreographed. The silence fell over the room. They must wait. He was brought coffee. He pictured now the columns of vehicles snaking across the city – routes would have been worked out so that they seemed to head away from target locations, then swing back, giving minimal warning of their approach – and only now, inside the cars and wagons, would the officers know who they moved against. The prosecutor hated the lack of trust, was shamed by it. He regarded it as the single most impressive creation of the clans.

  At about this time in the evening, the curtain would have been rising for the second act of the opera, a Mozart, for which he had begged tickets from a cousin. He had cried off in mid-afternoon and his wife had sighed and said she would find someone else to take with her. He was marginally disappointed to miss the performance. Opera soothed him. He believed fervently that whatever hours he worked at the palace he must enjoy something of life beyond.

  Silence was good because words – at a moment such as this – were inadequate.

  She was said to be strong – Mario Castrolami’s verdict – and she would need to be, if the arrest programme was successful.

  A battering ram broke open the street door, forcing the lock. A small boy, reared on extravaganzas of video-screen warfare, watched big-eyed, in fascination. What he played at was happening. He was across the street, had a vantage-point between two parked cars and was almost hidden by a lamppost. He watched the uniformed guy with the ram step aside, and a charge of black-clad police plunged through the broken door. The boy recognised the firearms they carried in Hackney, east London. They were on display often enough. If he had had a friend with him he would have been able to report that the men were from the specialist firearms team, CO19, that they had Heckler & Koch machine pistols and Glock 9mm handguns, and one at the back had a Taser immobiliser. Now he heard wood splintering, oaths, frantic shouting, then quiet. Up on the first floor, a policeman drew the curtain, denying the child a clear view into the lit room.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The prisoner was hustled into the doorway, out on to the step, then brought fast down the flight to the pavement. The boy knew him.

  All the kids of his age knew Vincenzo – Vinny to them. His sister, too. They ran messages for Vinny, the Italian, would take a piece of paper to the other side of Hackney, up to Seven Sisters or south to Hoxton, a tiny scrap of cigarette paper that was folded up smaller than the bitten-down nail on the child’s little finger. They were paid for taking messages. This boy, and all the boys, knew the Italian as a gangster of style… real life and bigger than in the games they played in the arcades and on their machines. They idolised Vinny but were never close to his sister. She wasn’t there – only him. There was a moment when he could see, so clearly, Vinny’s face. The streetlight he was under threw enough illumination to reach across the street, and the blue lamp was circling on a police car. Plenty of light fell on Vinny’s face. Magnificent… ‘Fuckin’ fantastic,’ the child thought. Then the police gloves, black leather, came down on top of Vinny’s head and pushed him into the car. Handcuffs on his wrists – had seen them as Vinny was brought down the steps from the broken door – but not a mark on his face. There were no cuts on his mouth or round his eyes and his shirt wasn’t ruffled. The boy understood. To fight would have been pathetic. Scum would have fought.

  The child reckoned he knew about gangsters, and had no ambition in his life but to have the status and stature of Vinny, the Italian. If he had fought they would have belted him, like they did the big black guy, bouncer at the club off Kingsland Road. It had taken eight pigs to get him down, and then they’d kicked shit out of him and more. He caught Vinny’s eye. The child was nine but thought himself the friend of Vinny, the big man from Naples that was somewhere way down south. In that moment, he was certain that the Italian gave him the slightest nod of recognition. Then a policeman was in front of him, telling him, ‘Go and get fucking lost, kiddo.’ The car had gone down the street, and the guys in black were spilling out down the steps from the main door.

  It was a big man’s cool, a top man’s, that he didn’t fight and didn’t get himself thugged. The child thought that Naples, wherever it was, was a prize place if it was where Vinny had come from – proud, not frightened, ignoring all the guns round him and going at his own pace into the back of the car. He wondered where the sister was, and whether she would go in the cage with her brother. The car had gone round the corner at the end of the street, headed, he thought, for Lower Clapton Road and the Hackney police station.

  The policeman was blocking his view of the front door, so he got ‘fucking lost’, but only to the corner. There, he sat on a low wall near to the Kentucky Fried Chicken place. He’d wait there for the sister to come and warn her not to go in the cage.

  A window exploded out and glass crashed down into the street, which was enough to tilt eyes upwards. Heads were already craning at the block’s front door where carabinieri, in protective gear, stood guard. A flashlight was aimed up three storeys and locked on to the window. The man appeare
d and screamed.

  The crowd knew who the carabinieri had come for.

  In that narrow street, spanning the top end of Forcella and the southern extremity of the Sanità labyrinth, they all knew who Giovanni was. Before the first of the attack wave had levered themselves out of the wagon and sprinted for the door, on the warning of their approach the street had been blocked with boxes, cartons from shops, pallets from building sites, rubbish and debris. Gas canisters were loaded in the barrels of some of the rifles confronting the crowd of local people and plastic baton round launchers were aimed at them. The second wave had had to negotiate a storm of abuse, and when the crowd had heard the door broken down above them, the first rocks had been thrown at the men in the cordon.

  There was a gasp. He was naked. His body glistened. Giovanni had screamed, but now he swung clear of the window, evaded a heavy gloved fist that attempted to grab his arm, reached out and caught the downpipe from the gutter. His legs hung free, and the crowd saw the hair between them, at the trunk. A half-brick arced up and reached the broken window. The crowd heard the oath of a casualty. It was encouragement.

  The fugitive slithered up the pipe, then took hold of the old ironwork guttering and the two nearest stanchions. Rocks and cobblestones, apples, potatoes, melons rained against the carabinieri at the entrance and at the window where arms attempted to grab Giovanni. Obvious – he’d been in the shower. As he sought to lever himself on to the gentle slope of the tiles, high above the streetlights, the beam still held him, and there were flashes from a score of mobile phones. His genitalia wobbled, danced, girls screamed, mothers giggled and old women shrieked happy obscenities. It was a huge effort, but he succeeded. Giovanni lifted a leg high and lodged his foot on the tiles. Then he was up, and standing.