Saw a bastard drop, a pipe from which water dripped, the edge of the window frame and the flutter of the curtain.
Eddie went over, and the chain cascaded down. He let his chest and stomach scrape down the iron window fitting, then against the old concrete of the building. His feet kicked. His fists, clenched to give his fingers the strength needed and gripping the bottom of the window frame, took his weight. Then a trainer found the pipe and a fraction of the weight was shed. But, he did not know how long the pipe would carry its share of the weight, and the chain swayed beneath him. He hung.
He played the idiot, a deaf idiot, well. They swarmed through Davide’s living room, shrieking questions at him, and he grinned but barely turned his head from the big screen in front of him where a gunfight blazed. He didn’t answer and left them to think he was afflicted by deafness as well as idiocy. The agent was not deaf and was not an idiot. His years of living the lie in the Sail had required of him the acutest sense of self-preservation. It was irrelevant at that moment whether his hearing was good or impaired: his sanity was on the line. He could not have articulated why he had risen from his chair, gone fast across the worn carpet through the polystyrene takeaway trays and unlocked his door. Their eyes had met. He had looked back through the window, had seen the face and the desperation, the stains on the clothing, the nail in the fist with the dark stain at the tip, and the chain, and he had known that a fugitive ran. Had seen that shirt below a hood, had seen that dark shade of jeans when a prisoner was brought along the walkway. He saw so much of human misery, the arrogance of the clan capo s and the swagger of the foot-soldiers, and he performed his duty and reported to his handlers. He had never before intervened. Not much of an intervention, the unlocking of a door, but a first time. Now he was ignored. Four men at least flowed through his apartment and doors banged but he did not hear the whoop. There was no place of refuge if a search, barely a thorough one, was made but they came out of the corridor. He muttered a short prayer. He dedicated it to Matteo, the patron saint of bank workers and book-keepers – as he had been. He said the prayer again, silently but never allowed his eyes to leave the screen where revolver shots were exchanged in front of a timbered saloon. He could not imagine where the boy had hidden. They were all gone, but one stood in the open door and lit a cigarette.
*
It seemed that his arms were slowly being wrenched from their sockets. He didn’t know for how much longer he could keep it up. Cramp had set into his fingers, which gripped the base of the iron window frame. What sustained him was the diminishing voices. They had been right above him. The voices and the clatter of movement had come so close, within spitting range, but his hands – what little of them would have been visible above the window frame – had been behind the flutter of the curtain. It would have been just a glance, a moment’s check, and they would have seen no place where an adult could hide. Maybe they had then been in twenty apartments, maybe they had ten more to go through, maybe they had gotten careless… and the voices had drifted. Maybe another half-minute and then, God willing, he would begin the attempt to regain the window.
The first stone missed him, was well wide.
The second, thrown harder, more expertly, a better missile, hit the concrete level with his head, around a yard from him.
He swung momentarily, as if he had tried to swat the grit its impact spat at him, on one hand, then clawed the other back into position, and the extra weight had shifted the overflow pipe on which there was room for one foot. Little voices were far below, shrill.
He looked down. Had to tuck his head almost into his right armpit and his view went past flush window sills, to the paving, the rubbish bags, the bushes and the kids… Fucking kids. The chain swung languidly below his foot. Not the kids. Nothing halfhearted about the little bastards. Four of them down there. The smallest had a catapult. Three slung stones up at him, which made a random shower, but the smallest kid had the range, had damn near hit Eddie’s head, and had another stone loaded. Eddie looked back up at the window. Couldn’t look down any more. He heard their shouts – voices that were choirboys’ – and imagined they were all pointing up. Wrong. All except the sod with the catapult. He was hit in the shoulder-blade. Imagined one man looking down from a window and seeing them pointing. The next stone from the catapult hit the back of Eddie’s leg, where it was soft, just above the left knee.
He tried to lift himself. It would have taken the ultimate of his concentration – real focus – to find that strength, channel it and get himself up high enough so that his elbows could go over the window frame. A stone hit the concrete a foot from his eye and level with it. He couldn’t turn his head away – wouldn’t dare destabilise himself. Eddie knew his strength was going, and with it the heart.
The drop was below him, and the kids bayed, and more had come, and it was a chorus below his feet and the chain with the pin attached. Too much pain in his fingers.
Where it all ended. Some God-fuck-forsaken awful housing estate somewhere out of Naples.
Get it over with. Get it done. He had only to loosen his grip and it was over, done. The pain would be gone from his hands and he would have peace and… would hit the paving, a potato sack. Eddie felt tears welling.
His wrist was grasped.
He couldn’t look up. First one hand had taken his left wrist, then a second. He thought of the old man in the chair and sobbed, in silence, thanks to him. He didn’t doubt that the grip on his arm was strong and wouldn’t fail him. He’d hug him, kiss him. His foot was off the pipe and his hands had lost their hold on the window frame. He was reliant. When did he know?
A truth came to Eddie Deacon when a third hand and a fourth, then a fifth had a grip on him. Two hands on his left wrist, two more on his right and a fifth had a fistful of his shirt. He was lifted. He saw the faces. There was blood on one, and blood on another man’s T-shirt. And there was the man who had put him in the van on via Forcella, whose eyes seemed to dance with laughter.
He was pulled up, lifted through the window, then thrown down on to the floor. The tears came.
*
As the investigator in charge of the case, Marco Castrolami had the prime place at the end of the table. It was rare for this committee to be called together, but he thought it worth the effort. There were few other places he could go. The meeting had lasted twenty-four minutes, on the wall clock behind his chair, and its usefulness was exhausted.
Around the table were the head of the carabinieri criminal-intelligence section for the province of Campania, the officer who headed intelligence-gathering for the Naples police, the senior intelligence co-ordinator of the Guardia di Finanza, and a dapper, slight man who seemed to offer no name and was set apart from the rest.
Castrolami said, ‘I repeat, for the final time, that only a few hours are now available to save the life of this British boy, Eddie Deacon. I repeat that all surveillance of principals has failed to find – as best I know – a pattern of movements or intercepts that can locate him. I hope you will all examine your memories with due diligence. Whatever else you have in on-running investigations, I request your help. So, I repeat, has anyone even the smallest information on where the Borelli clan is holding this boy? Please.’
His eyes travelled round the table: to his colleague, to the police officer he had known for a dozen years of late-night drinking, bitching, complaining and laughing, to the fiscal policeman who was new in the city. They had all shaken their heads or used their hands to gesture ignorance. Last, his glance rested on the official from the secret service, who was doodling on a sheet of paper. He looked up and Castrolami lip-read his quiet answer: ‘Nothing.’ But it was not said aloud.
He stood. He had no more to offer.
They came off the autostrada, through the toll booth, and on to the slip-road. Below, far to the west, were the city and the sea, its beauty and its magnificence.
In the glove box, Orecchia had found a lightweight raincoat, flimsy, but sufficient for what he needed. If it hadn’t been there he would have used a newspaper. He covered the machine pistol with it, then switched off the flashing light behind the radiator grille.
Now Rossi caught her eye, accepted the contact. There was a query in his expression and she nodded decisively. She was prepared for the last stage of the journey, into Naples.
And memories swept her. Immacolata knew the features and signs of the road. She knew the filling station, owned by the Mauriello clan, and the garden centre that seemed to have hectares of rattan furniture on display and was owned by the Nuvoletta clan. There was the restaurant beside the dual-carriageway where her father had taken her and she had met the Lo Russo family – she had been seventeen and had taken an instant dislike to the boy whose company she was supposed to enjoy. It would have been a good alliance, and her father had laughed all
