already there, and immediately stood up. Giovanni was at the table but did not get to his feet. She could accept her eldest, Vincenzo, because he possessed the dynamism of his father, and could feel affection for the youngest, Silvio, because he was helpless, devoid of authority and ambition. She had never considered her daughter of equal importance to the boys. She disliked Giovanni for his painful and prolonged birth, and for his conceit and exploitation of the family name. If he had not been of her blood and had behaved with such arrogance in her presence he would now, like as not, be dead. Dead at the hand of Salvo, Il Pistole. It gave Gabriella Borelli some slight pleasure to know that her middle son, Giovanni, not only loathed Salvo but also feared him.
And Giovanni had cause to fear Salvo.
When she had come into the outer area of the bar, the staff would have begun to prepare coffee for her, a variety that was gentler on her throat than the small, bitter measures the men swore by.
She thought Salvo was similar to a ferocious dog that ran wild and free at night inside the fence of a scrap- metal yard and showed obedience to none but his acknowledged master. Her husband had recruited Salvo and advanced him, had been that master, but on his arrest the young man’s loyalty had turned to her. She believed his devotion to be as honest as that of any slobbering Rottweiler or German Shepherd.
At a light knock on the door, Salvo was up again. He opened it, took the cup and saucer and closed it. He put the coffee in front of her. Indeed, Giovanni had cause to fear Salvo. The young man, recruited and advanced by her husband and now only twenty-four, was a killer. He could kill with a pistol but, if circumstances warranted, he could kill more artistically. He was best known for the pistol. In the Forcella and Sanita districts, the kids had photographs of the Beretta P38 on their mobile-phone screens, and images of the weapon’s owner. As the ultimate enforcer of the Borelli clan Salvo had accumulated enemies. Vendetta blood feuds were no longer practised in Naples, but there were enough stones in the cemeteries around that quarter of the city for many to long for the day when he was a corpse in a crimson pool, or at least looking at a maximum-security cell’s bars.
She sipped her coffee, and her thinly applied lipstick left a pale smear on the cup’s rim.
But hers was a city of betrayals. Gabriella Borelli did not trust readily, so she had brought the son she disliked to the meeting. There should always be a witness. She would never place her faith entirely in one man. She could smell the sweat of sex on her son, seeping through his shirt and off his chest; he didn’t even have the respect for her that would have made him shower afterwards. He flaunted the smell, and she wondered which teenage whore had opened her legs for him. Since Pasquale had been flown north to Novara, she had not taken a man into her bed – had not, but wished she had when she smelt the sweat.
They talked. She controlled a huge financial empire now. It involved property in the city, in other parts of Italy, the holiday resorts of the Balearics and the Canaries, the South of France and on the coast east and west of Spanish Malaga. It covered import and export of goods through the Naples docks and a dozen ports near and far from Italy. Gabriella Borelli, Giovanni and Salvatore could have talked of legal and illegal trading and mentioned millions of euros. They did not. They talked instead of the merits of a power supply. Which was better? Should a two-stroke petrol engine be preferred to one driven by mains electricity but needing a cable plugged into a wall socket? It was all a matter of the time available, the location and whether the power was within easy reach. They considered the problem of a cold petrol engine, and how many pulls there would be on the starter cord – and what if it flooded? Much of the Borelli clan’s business utilised laundered cash and that could be done in the back rooms of a major bank – local, American, German or British – but other matters needed close attention in the rear room of a back-street bar in the depths of Forcella. It was the place to decide between electrical power or a two-stroke engine. Salvatore would not have been consulted on commerce or investments. It was the matter of enforcement that necessitated his presence.
Gabriella Borelli liked Salvo, but was wary of him. In the world of Forcella, and the clans that ran so much of the city and its population, enforcement was critical. Respect must always be secured; lack of respect must be answered. To ignore disrespect showed weakness. To show weakness, even in a trivial matter, was fatal for a clan leader. A moment of perceived weakness was enough to alert circling rivals. A position of power must be reinforced with decisive action. That was Salvatore’s role. Most often the P38 was used for quick, clean intervention, but reputation required innovation. That evening the discussion was on power supplied by petrol or by electric cable.
The decision taken, with Giovanni as a witness, herself sanctioning it, Gabriella Borelli left the bar.
Because she had chosen her way of life, she never complained about it, not even in her thoughts. Her husband would be in gaol for the rest of his life, and her eldest son was a fugitive; her middle son was a vain bastard, and her youngest son was a useless idiot. Her daughter was intelligent but had neither her mother’s commitment to the clan nor the determination to succeed. Gabriella was more than twice Salvo’s age, and he had no future beyond a quick death from a gunshot, or arrest and a long sentence that was slow death. On the street, alone, hugging shadows, both hands gripping the strap of her shoulder-bag, she thought of the arms of the man who killed at her demand, their thin, hairless beauty, his light, narrow fingers, his waist, flat under the T-shirt, and the jeans that bulged when he stood to greet her, to collect her coffee or to escort her from the bar. It was unthinkable. She flushed and… returned to the image of her daughter. A scooter swept past her, its fumes flagged into her face, and the picture was lost.
Eddie had studied the Victorian poets, the Lakes people, and Byron, at the small, unfashionable university in the Thames Valley. If he’d managed the entry to a better university or worked harder where he’d ended up, he would have been qualified to teach those poets, as eventual head of department at a sixth-form college. He hadn’t, so he taught basic English to foreigners, and his high literature was from Agatha Christie.
There was no poetry in his pain. Nothing noble, romantic, or edifying about it. The pain hurt bloody bad, and left an emptiness he couldn’t fill. The hole in his life gaped.
She hadn’t been there. He had gone through the front door, brushed aside the taxman in the hallway, met the man from the ticket desk halfway up the stairs and reached his own door, then fumbled so badly that he couldn’t insert the key. He had started to kick it when the PhD fellow did the honours with the lock. He had snapped the light on, heeled the door shut hard enough for it to slam and had seen the bed, empty – unmade.
What to do?
Too much pain. Yearning for his Mac, not daring to believe she had just walked out on him.
Music was playing downstairs, soul stuff, as if the others had caught his mood and sought to offer solace. He had said it to himself so many times, but he had never felt so bad before. Girls? Yes. Before? Yes. Village girls, university girls and language-school girls? Yes. Kissing? Yes. Groping? Sometimes. Shagging? Not often. Really caring? Not even with the hygiene inspector. It had never really mattered whether he was hooked into a girl or not. He was cold, he was lonely – he was so bloody unhappy. Hadn’t eaten and hadn’t slept much the night before. He asked the question aloud: ‘So, what to do?’
He could see her magazines on the floor, her dressing-gown hanging limp from the hook on the door. The scent of her was still in the room. He could have leaned over, buried his face in the sheets and she would have been there, the sweet smell of her. He did not. He stared at the wall, found her picture. Sat taller and straighter. He told himself, ‘Don’t know what happened, don’t know why it happened – whatever. Going to find out. Going to go to work in the morning, hack the day, and track it down, the problem of Mac, in the evening. Promise? Yes, bloody promise.’
He’d thought he wouldn’t go downstairs and face them. Wrong. He went down and put his head round the door of the communal living room. Eyes looked at him, then evaded him, as if he had the plague. They wouldn’t have known how to react to his unhappiness. The TV was on, bloody football… Yes, they all loved her, as if she was Wendy and they were Peter Pan’s kids – and she cooked wonderful pasta…
Eddie Deacon forced a smile. His voice quavered but he got through it: ‘It’s been a grim day, double-whammy awful. I don’t know where she is, don’t know anything. Tomorrow I’ll find out. Right now I’m going out for a drink or three.’
They all went. They had their arms round his shoulders, in the rain, not a coat among them, and headed for the Talbot, the public bar, as if everything was all right. He’d know tomorrow evening if he’d kept the promise he’d made to himself.
She didn’t sleep. She was in her room with the light off so there wouldn’t be a strip showing under the door when the gang came back and she wouldn’t be called to get up and make coffee or pour beer.
Immacolata knew most of the stories of betrayal in the folklore of her city, although her mother, father and brothers would not: she had gone to a school that had taught her more than how to write a police statement in an interview room. She had been educated. She also knew what happened to the men, yesterday, today or tomorrow,
