get to kill one. Eddie shivered. Did it fucking matter whether the man had a wife he went home to sleep beside, or small children to play with at the end of a long, hard day of smoking, kicking and punching? Did he talk about kicking, punching and guarding over supper with his wife and kids? Eddie knew nothing. Did the man say to his woman that it had been a good day at work?
To think, to imagine, was all the independence left to him. Better off without them. He turned, which hurt his ribs and tried to get on to his other side so that his back was to the man, but the pain was too bad. He managed only to flop on to his back, which left him more vulnerable: his privates were unprotected. He rolled back. He was where he’d started. Better to have stayed put, better not to think and not to imagine.
There had been the one chance. He’d given it his best shot, but it hadn’t succeeded. And he was condemned, which was what Immacolata had done for him, and the certainty of it gave him a sort of peace.
Were the foot-soldiers of the Borelli clan inside the Palace of Justice?
Immacolata had been given a soft drink, iced, and now was brought down a corridor, guns in front of and behind her.
Did Salvatore, Il Pistole, have access here?
She could smell the gun oil, the chilli on their breath and the scent from their armpits.
A door was knocked at respectfully. A pause. Then it was opened and a smartly dressed woman, who might have been as old as her mother, gazed at her with the expression that was devoid of approval or criticism, then stepped aside. She was walked through an outer office. She realised now that the guns were gone. So this was the sanctum into which her father’s foot-soldiers and even Salvatore were thought unable to penetrate. An inner door was rapped on. Another pause, long enough to indicate that work must be completed, then a call: ‘Enter.’ Of course the prosecutor had not looked up. His head was low over carpets of papers that were rumpled across the desk.
She was not asked to sit.
She realised then that this was deliberate – a casualness meant to implant in her the certainty that she was not extraordinary. There were many files on the floor and she wondered if they had been laid out to a purpose: they carried the names in heavy indelible ink of Lo Russo, Contini, Mazzarella, de Lauro, Misso and Caldarelli. It might have been done to demonstrate to Immacolata that she was a small fish, that she swam in a big sea, but she didn’t know.
He asked, ‘A good journey, Signorina?’
‘I sat in a car. It was satisfactory.’
‘I’m told your mind is made up.’
‘I said so.’
‘You will give evidence?’
‘I said I would so I will.’
‘I regret that your decision may cost the life of Eddie Deacon. I regret that.’
‘I will give evidence.’
‘And you will not, Signorina, be surprised if I seek to stiffen your resolve.’
She was told where she would be taken. She turned on her heel. It was a grander exit than had been her entry. She knew they did not trust her word.
*
Salvatore stood by a broken wardrobe. Under its plywood sides, back and doors there were dozens of cellophane-wrapped shirts. None of the packaging had been opened, none of the shirts used.
The man sat in his chair. The television played. He seemed oblivious to the movement around him.
The apartment was filled with men.
The truth came slowly to them all – to Salvatore and to the men of the Sail clan. He was Davide. He was an electrician and could be relied upon to fix a broken fusebox, to route power round a meter box and bypass it. He would come at any time, was so helpful. He was a man of routine and went to the city centre, down the long hill, on the bus every week and would mutter to any who listened that he thought, that week, he needed a new shirt. He was a man who polished the window behind his chair, which fronted on to the walkway. When he had been ordered to stand, there had been a secreted mirror in his chair, like a woman kept in her handbag to check her eye makeup or lipstick. He was almost unique in the great block in that he had allowed a fugitive to enter his apartment. Either his main door had been unlocked, or he had seen the fugitive and decided to aid him. Nothing fitted. Only suspicion meshed.
With the suspicion, the adding of the parts, came realisation of a truth.
The apartment was searched, stripped bare.
The camera was found.
The cables from the camera led to the recording box.
The recording box and its loaded tapes were lifted from the hidden recess.
The wire that ran from the recording box to the audio microphone, the pinhead type fitted to the outside wall, was ripped clear.
And he stood. None of the men, the clan foot-soldiers or Salvatore, seemed aware of him as he left his chair and the television. He took a last glimpse at the screen. It was afternoon scheduling, too late for the midday film and too early for the girls to be topless; they wore flimsy one-piece swimming costumes and pranced cheerfully. He did not, of course, bolt for the front door. He went down the corridor.
He did not know what he had achieved in his recent life.
Could not know to what use the handlers had put the information he had supplied.
He understood that the men who swarmed in his apartment were, almost, in shock at what they had found, and that time was short for him. Soon enough heads would clear and thoughts would focus. He went down the corridor towards his bathroom.
‘Duck here. Can you speak?’
‘Wait one-’
Lukas was in the corridor, had passed the main desk, where his ID was checked, had been through the metal detector, and turned. It raised eyebrows that he went back through the doors and on to the street, then into the square. He made for a central point, and it didn’t concern him that he had intruded into the middle of a soccer game. The kids buzzed round him.
‘Shoot.’
‘It’s like you’ve been on the dark side of the earth.’
‘Nothing to report. Didn’t report because I had nothing.’
‘I’m not nagging.’
‘I didn’t report because I had nothing to report. One-syllable stuff.’ The ball came by him and he hoofed it away. The kids clapped. ‘There’s no intelligence. There are no assets that anyone will share. Every agency here is fighting a breezy turf war. The contact, my door-opener, thinks the spooks are less than frank. Duck, how many times we heard that? But it’s just his reading of body language. I have nothing to do. I can’t advise on negotiation because we haven’t reached that status. I can’t suggest how a rescue might be launched because we don’t have a location. There’s no role for a co-ordinator if no negotiation’s in place, and there’s nowhere for a storm team to assault. Sorry and all that, Duck. That’s pretty goddam obvious. It’s frustrating.’
‘You want to hear about something?’ The voice rasped in Lukas’s ear.
‘What is it?’
‘Could I try you with a snatch off the Niger Delta, about sixty klicks into the Gulf, an oil-flow platform? Yanks, Canadians and three Brits. What makes it different is that local workers were killed when the hostage-takers came on board the rig so they can’t simply be paid off. The temperature’s hot. Chevron have the rig and their security people asked for you. I’m merely passing it on.’
‘You could tell them I’m spoken for, regrets and all that.’
‘Any idea how much longer?’
‘It’ll move fast.’
‘Too fast for you?’
‘Maybe.’
He liked Roddy ‘Duck’ Johnstone, trusted him and was appreciated, and he thought the call didn’t yet have purpose. It was peculiar for the boss not to needle in on a point without preamble – without crap.
