believe me.’
The man had paused, as if at an interruption. Now he stood his ground and called to them.
19
‘My name is Lukas. I’m a friend of Eddie’s parents, not a policeman. I’d like to help.’
He twisted a little, lowered his head and murmured to Castrolami below him, ‘This is advice. If you ever incline to hostage-taking and a jerk says, “I’d like to help”, my advice is to shoot him, and fast.’
Lukas had that mischief in his face, but then his head rose and it was gone. He was sober, sombre. ‘I’m here to see if I can help,’ he shouted, throwing his voice down the walkway.
The mischief was off his face but it stayed inside him. First time the mischief had taken root since he had been at the forward airstrip in the mountains beyond Bogota and the captain, Pablo, had asked for advice and it had been suggested that the assault team go in: there was not much else in Lukas’s life that pumped excitement.
The tip of a directional microphone lay in front of his trainers, and by his ankle the comms kid took off his headphones and gave them to Castrolami.
He yelled again: ‘Would be good if I could help to sort this out, and that’s what I want to do – if you’ll allow me.’
Because he now stood square in the centre of the walkway he could see far down it. There had been an accident in the hanging of the washing so there was an avenue of vision for him. He had manoeuvred himself into a position where he had a good eyeball on the boy and on the hood who held him.
‘My name, I’m saying it again, is Lukas. What I’m looking to avoid is anyone getting hurt, and any way I can, I’ll try to help prevent that.’
What Lukas saw: every few seconds, the hood’s head moved and took the boy’s with it, and he rated it as a hell of a hard call for Franco, the sniper, to have a zero on the small piece of skull that was visible as a target. And the bodies were locked together, like they were in stand-up sex out in the yard at a kids’ party. He didn’t rate the chances of the sniper getting a clean shot. And the pistol was against the back of the boy’s head, and Lukas could see in the available light that the finger was inside the loop and against the trigger bar. Most likely a shot to the head – a killing shot – would induce a muscle spasm through the body. Most certainly, a chest shot – whether fatal and into an organ or a wounding shot – would set off a decisive twitch through tissue and ligament and it would go to that finger. A spasm, a twitch, would be sufficient to depress the trigger bar… wasted exercise. They had taught the siege-busters at the Quantico training unit to do a double tap in the head, close range, pistol if possible. Two shots to the brain might suppress a spasm.
‘I told you what I want. I want it. Now you have twenty-five minutes. You use time.’ The voice came back, reedy.
Lukas thought the hood was exhausted. God alone knew how long it had been since he’d slept in a bed. Maybe not for two nights or three. Exhausted and hungry – wouldn’t have eaten proper cooked food. Exhaustion and hunger, to Lukas, balanced out. The hood would be irrational and unpredictable. He would make mistakes and be subject, big-time, to judgement errors. They were the equations Lukas worked on, were what he knew.
Castrolami, below him, beside him, murmured, ‘We have a feed through, the psychologist hears this. He says that Salvatore would dream of a legend – was never taken, killed with honour, will already know that nothing can be negotiated and that he is boxed. Salvatore knows it. He is a killer, he expects to kill. More important than anything to Salvatore is the belief that woven into the legend will be respect. The psychologist says-’
Lukas said, ‘I have his drift. Thank him.’
‘What do you do?’
‘What I try to do is get up close, talk a bit, get the pistol off the boy’s neck, take it from there. Do you want to indulge the hood, give him police-assisted suicide – his legend – or do you want to fuck him?’
‘Charge him, convict him, hear the key turn and lose it, smell the decay as he rots and the years go by. That is a better message than giving him respect.’
‘Harder to achieve, but a goal… Just watch me, just be ready… as they say, on a wing and a prayer.’
He moved forward but slowly. Like he was the tide coming in. Short, crabbed steps and he was gone from Castrolami and the comms kid and was, in a few steps, separated from the Tractor, the Engineer and the Bomber.
Lukas could see the boy’s face, part of it. There was bruising in rings, multicoloured, round the eyes, the cheeks were scarred, the lips grotesque, and there were blood smears from a wound on the forehead and from the nose, and more blood was caked where it had dribbled from the mouth. The boy wouldn’t be standing if he hadn’t been held by the belt and the arm. There had been just blind fear on the face when he had first seen it, but there had been a change, subtle. Like hope was born.
There were many burdens on Lukas’s back and shoulders. The one he liked least was that he gave little packages of fragile hope to hostages when he approached them.
He saw the increasing agitation on the hood’s face, and went slower. He did short steps that were barely the length of his shoe… If the mother-fucker moved the pistol from the boy’s neck, if the mother-fucker moved his own head clear of the boy’s, then he made an opportunity for Franco, the sniper, to shoot with the Beretta M501 rifle. Lukas reckoned, through a 1.5-6 x 42mm Zeiss scope, that the sniper would have a good view, wounds and warts, of the two faces… It would be Castrolami’s call before the sniper fired, and that was not the goal set.
He did not, of course, but he would have liked to offer more of his advice to Castrolami. Would have stopped and turned and the advice would have been: ‘If a little guy who says he’s just there to help ever starts walking towards you – and you’re a hostage-taker – and has a decent, honest smile on his face, and looks concerned for you, just shoot him. Don’t hesitate. Shoot.’ He must have reached close to halfway from the start point to where the boy and the hood were. Would have been about twenty paces from them.
Lukas felt the crisis moment was on him.
The scream: ‘Stop.’
The pistol did not move off the neck and the heads did not separate.
A second scream: ‘Stop. Do not come close.’
At twenty paces, Lukas could be almost conversational. ‘You don’t want me nearer, I’m not coming nearer. Like I said, I’m just here to help. Let’s make a start. I’m Lukas, and I’m not a policeman. I’m a friend of Eddie’s mother and father. I want to help them, and help Eddie, and I want to help you. I want this to end with everybody winning. It’s where I’m headed – everybody wins. You don’t want me closer, I don’t come closer. You’re called Salvatore, yes? Good name. The Saviour, Il Salvatore – it’s a great name to have. Right, I’m going to start doing some helping. Salvatore, what do you need? Do you need some food? We can get pizza up here. You need water? We can do water that’s still or with gas. Cigarettes? Tell me the brand and I can get it.’
The pistol hadn’t shifted and the heads hadn’t separated. It was early. Lukas had time.
‘I will help you, and you can trust me…’
There were some of them, dumb and stupid, exhausted and hungry, who believed they could indeed trust the little guy who came close and offered help, food and drink and cigarettes, and they either stared up at a cell window or were dead, buried.
‘Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.’
He realised, now, many things. Clarity swamped the mind of Salvatore. The walkway was sealed at either end. The apartments fronting on to it were either evacuated or locked and barred. He had no freedom of movement, was as a rat in a corner – with teeth – without anywhere to run. He wondered at what stage Fangio had slipped away on his scooter. No mention made of Immacolata and whether she would retract evidence. No appeal, grovel or beg for the life – safety – of the boy he was close against. If he killed the boy, Eddie, who had slept with Immacolata and was her lover, then he himself was dead. Maybe half a second after he had pulled the trigger, he was dead.
Was it his destiny? Did he crave death?
Didn’t know. Had no one to tell him. Didn’t have Pasquale Borelli, who had taught him to read, write, shoot and kill. Didn’t have Gabriella Borelli to tell him whether he wanted to die, be shot down, and didn’t walk behind her and follow the sway of her hips. Had no one, was alone… He had seen so many. They didn’t lurch back when shot,
