Eddie assumed they were locked. There was a pedestrian’s door at the side… He could have played hard. He could have sat in the car and demanded explanations. A man was dead, the ‘best’ man. The man with the caved chest and the chair-leg-thin arms and the knees that had nothing pretty to them was in the mortuary. He followed Castrolami out of the car. He was led.
First light bloomed inside the small gate. A man was lit as he swept dried leaves, and when he saw them, he eased himself on to his witch’s broom and Castrolami must have asked the question with his eyes because the sweeper gestured to his right and watched them.
There was a girl’s statue on a plinth, life-size, and a single rose slotted by her hand. She had the sadness of youth snatched and her name, carved in the stonework, was Angelabella. He went through avenues of small chapels, all with artificial flowers flourishing, and some had candles burning and displayed photographs of the long- deceased when they had lived and enjoyed health. A great piazza for the dead opened in front of him and Castrolami. He was considered responsible for the loss of the ‘best’. He queried nothing, was obedient.
Between concrete paths there were gravestones, more flowers, more candles and more sepia photographs. At the far end of the square of the dead there was a wall with five layers of sealed shelves each large enough to take an adult’s corpse, and more flowers decorated it. Two men stood against it and the sun caught their faces.
One waved to Castrolami, who acknowledged and switched course.
He saw her.
She would have noticed the two men’s reaction and she stood, her hand across her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun, low and growing in intensity.
She did not run towards him. He followed Castrolami, kept Castrolami’s pace.
In his ear: ‘She wanted this. Myself, I would have thrown you on the plane, the first. She wanted to be here when news came of whether you had survived or not. Her friend is here, her most valued friend. Her friend is here because of the toxic pollution of what we call the Triangle of Death. The pollution is by the Borelli family, in part, over many years. It is why she has collaborated. It is in memory of her friend, a tribute.’
‘I was second to her friend?’
‘You were second, Eddie, to her friend. You could not compete… It is ludicrous to be here, but we are. You do not have long.’
Her arms were not outstretched, welcoming. They were behind her back. The light on her face did not flatter and there were bags under her eyes, lines at her mouth and a frown of worry. He thought her drably dressed – a plain grey skirt, a blouse that seemed darker – her hair was uncombed and she wore no lipstick.
Castrolami moved aside. The two men behind her edged clear.
He was in front of her. He was as far from her, and from the bulge of the blouse, as he had been from Lukas when he had thought the ‘best’ man was impatient, might have been bored and looked tired enough to drop. It was the face of the girl he had slept with and laughed with and… He was not certain he knew her, and he let his hands hang and hers were behind her back.
‘You survived?’
Not the moment for the trite or the sarcastic. ‘Yes, I survived.’
‘You are hurt? You have wounds.’
A shrug, a grin that dragged on the sutures. ‘I’m fine – like if I walked into a door.’
‘I couldn’t help you.’
‘You could have helped me. You chose not to help me.’
‘It was not easy.’
‘You made a choice.’ Eddie gazed into her eyes, held them.
‘Do you understand the choice?’
‘I understand that my life was of secondary importance.’
‘Eddie, that is so pompous. Can you not…?’ She looked away, broke the intensity of the contact.
He said, ‘Sort of puts me in my place – second place.’
‘Should we talk of what’s been, the past?’
He smiled, almost managed to laugh, and the pain was in his ribs at the thought of letting his chest heave. ‘In the past, here – in this damn country, in Naples – there were people of quite outstanding courage. Top of the list, he was called Lukas and he tried to save me – he’s my past. There’s a fish-seller down via Forcella and he gave me the warning before the bastard bounced me, which was big – he’s in my past. A man in that block, when I’d broken free and was running and the dogs of hell were after me, he opened a door for me. I don’t know what happened to him, or the fish-seller, but Lukas died and I lived and… What bit of the past do you want to talk about?’
‘I put a padlock on a bridge in Rome, and I threw the key in the river,’ Immacolata said. The sun was in her eyes, worse than before. It made her squint, and took more of the prettiness off her.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about. Am I supposed to be impressed? What’s special about a padlock on a bloody bridge?’
She shrugged.
Eddie grimaced. ‘Do I get to see the padlock – whose significance escapes me – that doesn’t have a key?’
‘Maybe.’
‘When is “maybe”? Some day, some time?’
‘Perhaps… Go home.’
He swung on his heel and his trainer ground at the gravel chips on the avenue between the headstones. He walked briskly and Castrolami had to stretch his stride to catch him. The sun had now risen, up and flush on him.
Castrolami said that if they used the light and the siren they would be at Capodicino in time for the first flight of the day and to buy a new shirt.
An hour later… Marco Castrolami wore the suit that was kept on a hanger in a cupboard of his work area, a clean shirt and tie, and he escorted Salvatore, Il Pistole, from the front entrance of piazza Dante. Men of the ROS section held the arms of the prisoner – the Tractor and the Bomber – but their identities were obscured by balaclava masks with eye slits. The camera flashes exploded in the hitman’s face. He winced and turned away, which gave an impression of fear that would be frozen irrevocably in the digital memories. Castrolami saw a reporter he recognised, an eager young woman, but couldn’t remember her name or whether she was employed by Cronaca or Mattino, or an agency, and he murmured as he passed her: ‘He always threatened to kill himself rather than face arrest. In fact, confronted with firearms, he didn’t choose suicide-by-cop but surrendered without a fight – hardly a hero’s end.’ He would not normally have spoken to what he usually termed the ‘vermin pack’, but the day was not usual.
He had dropped his charge at the airport, in time for the first London flight out of Capodicino, had shaken the hand formally and muttered gruffly something about ‘good fortune for the future’ and ‘better to cut Naples out of any future travel plans’, had cuffed his shoulder in an awkward gesture, had not mentioned Lukas’s death, and had seen the boy met by his consul, who would do the ticket, then take him in search of the shirt, and had left him.
He had not, in years, allowed himself to be photographed for the Naples dailies, but it was not a normal day. With the hitman on his way to a life sentence, he would go back to piazza Dante, clear his desk and cupboard, then write the letter to his superior. His personal effects would be in a plastic bag and he would drop off his ID at the front desk and slip away. No fanfare, no party… He would not be in Luciano’s trattoria that night where the ROS men were due to eat, finally, swordfish steaks. He would be out of Naples by the end of the day.
Salvatore was driven away in a convoy of sirens and lights, en route for Poggioreale. What had Castrolami’s years in the city of magnificence and squalor, beauty and rank ugliness, glory and shame achieved? He would go up north, maybe drive a taxi or work in a cheese shop. Perhaps he had achieved something, perhaps he had not – more could not have been asked of him.
A day later… Men from the Misso clan spread out in the Sanita district, through the little businesses where the carved-wood madonnas watched trading from behind screens of lit candles, and called at the shops and bars that had been under the protection and control of the Borelli family. And men from the Mazzarella clan came to the via Forcella and the via Duomo and the via Carbonara, and walked in freedom and safety on the narrow alleys. Guns were carried and remained hidden. Premises were not earmarked for petrol bombing after dark. It was a seamless
