trussed and put into a car, which was torched: in Scampia. A man was beheaded with a butcher’s axe: in Scampia. The assassins came to take a man from his mother’s home – he had already fled; his mother, in her nightdress, was shot on her step and bled to death: in Scampia.
He watched, every day and every night, and knew the vagaries of the pulsebeat of the Sail… and a short bus ride from the stop on via Baku was the old city, patronised by the tourists, the lovers of fine arts and the gourmets, who did not know about Scampia.
His eyes flitted between the mirror against his thigh and the game-show. He knew that, in the depths of this monstrous building, a drama played around a hooded man.
‘Don’t ask me any questions. If you ask it will be wasted breath, yours, wasted time, mine. All I can say, what you tell me is of critical importance to the well-being of your friend, of Eddie.’
He had marched them down to the pub. Roddy ‘Duck’ Johnstone had taken a corner table, then gone to the bar, had been given a tray by the barmaid and had come back with two pints for each of the three lads – one missing, still at work – and a single Scotch for himself, six packets of crisps and six of peanuts.
His question: ‘Tough or weak, determined or vacuous, hard or soft, serious or kid-like? Which is Eddie?’
He didn’t need names, hadn’t a tape-recorder and no need of a notepad.
From the club waiter, who would be late at work: ‘He’d like you to think he’s just a lazy tosser, that nothing matters to him, that he’s a push-over. Maybe he was, but not any more. He’s changed. Actually, he’s quite tough. I think he’s pretty determined.’
The PhD student’s contribution: ‘The role he acts is that he’s weak and soft – just a prat, really. Maybe he was. Everything’s altered, though, hasn’t it? A new man, our Eddie. Quite funny to watch it.’
Hunched forward, the Revenue and Customs clerk said, ‘He wanted to seem a kid still, never going to grow up – like the thing he’d run a mile from fast was responsibility. That’s in the past. Gone to the recycle bin. Different guy – and maybe carrying us with him. Tough? Probably, and getting tougher. Determined? Wouldn’t have jacked the job and done what he has if he wasn’t. Hard and serious, I suppose so – but it’s like I said, and us too.’
He listened. He let them tell their anecdotes, put more pints in front of them and didn’t speak until he felt he’d drained them.
Late, Duck asked, ‘What was different? How had he changed? What was new?’
Like a chorus, spoken together: ‘It was Mac. She turned up. That is one fantastic person. Immacolata was what was different. She changed him, maybe us. Immacolata was the new thing. Sorry and all that if we don’t express it well. Immacolata was brilliant. Any guy would be crazy not to go after her. Are you going to tell us what this is all about? What’s of critical importance?’
He bought a last round, more crisps, and left them.
He drove back to his office, went inside. He started to type and tried to express what three pretty inarticulate guys, decent enough, second-rate enough, had said about their friend and about the girl – and didn’t know whether he did a good job or a poor one, and whether he had painted a fair enough portrait of her.
Could she go into the Borghese and run?
Rossi said she couldn’t.
Why not?
‘Because Castrolami has to give permission, and he’s in Naples.’
Why was he in Naples?
‘I think you know, Signorina. Try to remember, please, the lie you told.’
The tape-recorder had been put away. Of course it was foolish to imagine they would allow her to run in the darkness. She worked towards the challenge.
Could they go that evening to a restaurant?
Orecchia said they could not.
Why was it not possible to eat in a restaurant?
‘It requires the permission of the investigating agent, Castrolami, or of the prosecutor. Both are in Naples, and I won’t call them for this. There is food in the kitchen.’
Why were they in Naples?
Orecchia did not look up from his magazine. ‘I think you know very well, Signorina, what business they have in Naples. If you hadn’t lied it would have been different, but you did. You aren’t going to run or to a restaurant.’
She stood then, legs a little apart, pelvis forward, head back, chin jutted, and built on the challenge. ‘Am I difficult? Are many collaborators “difficult”? Will you write a report on me as difficult?’
Rossi said, ‘A few aren’t particularly helpful.’
Orecchia said, ‘Some, not many, go on believing, Signorina, that they’re still on the pedestal they enjoyed while their family was Cosa Nostra or ’Ndrangheta or Camorra. Some, until they have disabused themselves, are “difficult”. We believe they’re frightened of the reality of their situation – which they created of their own free will. You can flounce, pout, stamp, throw plates and slam doors, shout or wave your boobs and fanny at Alessandro, but nothing will change.’
She sucked in her breath, prepared to bare her spirit.
‘I should tell you that Alessandro’s wife is exceptionally attractive. Very much more attractive, mentally and physically, than you.’
She spat the question: ‘What’s happened to him?’
They looked at her dumbly. Perhaps they’d practised their expressions of incomprehension. Orecchia had returned to his magazine, as if he didn’t understand who ‘him’ was. Rossi had not reacted to the description of his wife. Orecchia’s tone had been harsh and unforgiving, as if he had spoken to a child in a school room – not that such a volley of insults had ever been directed at Immacolata Borelli at school. Her mother had brought her on the first day to the Forcella infants’ classroom. The head teacher and the year teacher had been lined up as if she was heiress to the Bourbon dynasty. A seat had been found for her at the front of the room, and the staff had bowed and scraped because she was the daughter of the Borelli clan. Her father had taken her on the first day to the middle school, had materialised from his life as a fugitive, and slipped an envelope stuffed with banknotes into the hand of the head teacher, murmuring about new electronic equipment. It had been pocketed, with discretion. Her eldest brother, Vincenzo, had escorted her to the senior school, and had oozed power as he walked alongside her into the building. At every level of school she had attended, her marks in examinations had been exceptional, her reports remarkable. She was the daughter of the Borelli family, and no teacher would have been stupid enough to mark her down or criticise her. Only at the accountancy and book-keeping college had she been treated, almost, as another kid – and there she had met her friend, Marianna Rossetti, and… Orecchia and Rossi spoke to her as if she was any other child, one who was not given the seat of privilege at the front.
She repeated it, more shrilly: ‘What has happened to him? What has happened to Eddie?’
Their eyes met. Unspoken acceptance that something must be said, something minimal.
Orecchia said, ‘The boy you indicated was unimportant to you? Yes? We don’t know what has “happened” to him.’
Rossi said, ‘Signorina, we are very junior links in a very long chain. We would not be told the latest intelligence. We don’t know.’
‘Castrolami would tell you if he knew anything, or the prosecutor.’
‘We are merely functionaries. They don’t share that sort of information with people at our level.’
Doubt clouded her. ‘You know nothing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing of substance.’
She went to her room, didn’t bang the door but closed it carefully. She stood at the window and gazed out over the roofs, and myriad lights stretched away from her. None was in the home of a friend, or lit the street of a friend, or was driven on a road by a friend. She had no friend in this city. She stripped, let her clothes fall, and stared out of the window at the expanse of lights. The air chilled her skin. It hurt that she didn’t know what had happened to him – hurt that she had made a play in her mind of ignorance.
She knew what happened to members of the family of a collaborator, to their friends and lovers. Ignorance was not a screen behind which she could hide.
She thought it was Orecchia’s voice she could hear, and imagined he had telephoned Naples to tell Castrolami of her hysteria – but had not rated it a problem.
