been asked if he wanted to eat, drink, smoke. He yelled it back at the small man who sat cross-legged on the walkway. Nobody listened to him. Why did nobody listen? In Forcella, in Sanita, men listened when he spoke. He didn’t have to raise his voice. He could whisper and men would crane forward to hear what he said, and others would hush those at the back. If he was angry, men were fearful. If he made a joke, men laughed.
‘I don’t want anything.’
‘It’s just that it’s a long time since you ate or drank, Salvatore. Myself, I could do with a cigarette and-’
‘Anything except that you look at the time. Look.’
The man had a gentle voice. ‘Use my name,’ he said. ‘It’s Lukas. What I always say is that a guy’s name is the most important thing he owns. I’m Lukas, you’re Salvatore, he’s Eddie. I don’t want to be hustled by time.’
‘Look at your watch.’
‘All right, easy, all right. Can I say something, Salvatore? The gun. Can the gun be moved from where it is? Eddie’s head? You’re tired, course you are. Can you just shift the gun a little? They frighten me, guns do.’
‘Look at your watch – see the time.’
‘How about you move the gun and I look at my watch? Is that reasonable? You’re tired, that situation, your hand might slip. Maybe you have a hair trigger. We don’t want an accident.’
‘Look at the time.’ He couldn’t now see his own watch. Hadn’t seen it since the man had come forward and offered food, then sat, and Salvatore hadn’t dared to move, not a centimetre, and the guns’ aim was on him. The way his arm was across the boy’s chest, and his own head was half buried in the hair at the back of the boy’s skull, didn’t allow him to see the face of his watch… but now he heard the chime, distant. A church’s clock, a church’s bell. Could have been the Church of the Resurrection he had passed on Fangio’s pillion. Midnight’s strike… If a player of importance, a figure who was respected, let a given deadline drift, allowed an ultimatum to slip, then face – authority – was lost, could never be regained.
‘That is fair exchange, Salvatore. You move your pistol, shift it a little, and I’ll check my watch. Listen, friend, all I’m here to do is to help.’
He screamed. He heard his own voice, detached from it, as if it was another who howled in the night, a cat’s cry. ‘Where is she? Where is her statement? Where is the retraction? Answer me.’
The gentle voice was so reasonable, and there was a shrug, helpless, from the small shoulders and the hands gestured it. ‘Way above my level, that sort of decision, Salvatore. Nobody tells me anything. The jerks who make that sort of decision, they’d have gone home long ago. People like us are left out of bed, no food and no water and no goddam cigarettes, and there’ll be no decision from them till the morning comes. Better, Salvatore, for you, for me and for Eddie, that we sort this out ourselves, and I can go home, and Eddie can, and you can go get some sleep.’
It was like honey, the voice, sweet and cloying and satisfying, and he knew the deadline of an ultimatum had gone and could not be clawed back… If he killed the boy then he, himself, was dead, and he could see the light reflected from the scope’s lens. He couldn’t clear it from his mind: did he want to die?
He cocked the pistol, scraped metal on metal, and the sound echoed along the concrete of the walkway and filtered through the washing lines, and the hammer was back. He had no hatred of the boy. He had no love for Gabriella Borelli, or loyalty to Pasquale Borelli who had created him. He loved the respect that was shown him. A slow gathering smile came to his face but his stomach growled and his throat was dry, and he craved to smoke, and his finger tightened on the trigger stick, squeezed on it.
The watch face was in front of his mouth, and it looked as though Lukas examined the time it showed and had difficulty in that light. He murmured, lips barely moving, ‘Don’t shoot. Don’t respond.
‘You were asking me the time, Salvatore, about five minutes past-’
The shot was fired.
Lukas saw the flash and the recoil of the weapon, and saw the boy flinch, cringe, sag, but he was held up by the arm and the belt. There was no blood.
He knew that if a second shot was fired it would be a killing shot.
What a fucking way to live, what a fuck-awful job to have… He had stood once in a corner of the board room of Ground Force Security, had been a day back from Baghdad and had come out with a freed hostage, and Duck had led the directors in celebration drinks – Lukas wouldn’t have been there had there not been delays at Heathrow from the baggage handlers. He had been sober and his employers had not. One had quoted, declaimed it, a Shakespeare speech: their King Harry on the eve of the battle. ‘And gentlemen in England now abed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here…’ Not if the ‘here’ was a mud-wall village beyond the conurbation of Ba’aquba. Likewise, not if the ‘here’ was a stinking, foul, dirt-laden walkway on the third level of the Sail. Bullshit… And any right-minded person, valuing sanity, should have been ‘now abed’. But it was what Lukas did, and was all he knew. He had slipped out of that boardroom and doubted that any of them had noticed that he, the cause of their celebration, had quit on them. He had the watch again in front of his face.
‘Next time will be for real. I’m not usually this much of a glory-hunter, but I fancy it’s time to go and do some walking.’
There was no answer in his earpiece. He didn’t expect it. It was the side show. It was the B flick. The main event was Miss Immacolata and her denunciation, and the boy was rated as secondary. He could do what he damn well pleased.
He called forward, ‘I think I have that message, Salvatore. You should trust me. I am here to help, and best for all of us – if I am to help – is that you give me trust. Watch me.’
Lukas stood. He had seen so many men, women and children with a knife close to their throats or wired explosives round their bodies or a pistol against the soft skin at the back of an ear. He had seen mute terror on the faces of the old and the young, and sometimes he had been far back from them, linked only by a closed-circuit camera or binocular vision, and a few times he had been close and they had seen him, and the burden was goddam near intolerable then because of the dependence on him focused from their eyes, as if he was a final chance. Maybe most of those people – intelligent or stupid, experienced in the world or innocents – had been side-show material or B-flick fodder. There were some he’d lost and they’d had a half-minute of fame, posthumous. There were some he’d helped to save and they might, just, have secured a full fifteen minutes in the limelight. Only an idiot without a life, without an idea of a proper job, without a bed, would have been there, midnight gone, and the next bullet drawing blood, and feeling the night cold in his knees. What Castrolami had not asked: would he ever, all these years in, forget the basics that underpinned success, lose the mischief and excitement, and ever just get – so simple – goddam bored, been there and seen it? Questions not asked were those not needing answers. He flexed – so damn tired… Not a long time left for the resolving of it. Folk in Charlotte went up into the hills and hiked trails at weekends, on public holidays and for their summer vacations. They took cabins, and the last morning there was a cut-off when the cabin had to be vacated and them gone, forgotten, no sign of them left behind. Lukas thought that by five, before the dawn, they would be off the third level, out of the Sail and driving away down the road from Scampia. He appreciated the agreement made, through third parties, between Castrolami and the local big-shot player. By first light, the ROS team would be gone and the dealers would be back, and Salvatore was either in handcuffs or dead, and Eddie Deacon was either in a body-bag or walking free. It wasn’t a big window of time but more than sufficient for Lukas to climb through. What bothered him, this time, he cared about the target – which was shit. Didn’t do concern and emotion, except… Saw the face and the fear, saw the hair and the pistol barrel, saw the eyes and the bruises and the lips and the swelling and the cheeks and the cuts.
He said it again, pleasant, like he talked to a friend, a trusting one. ‘Just watch me, Salvatore. Watch me very carefully.’
He bent and pulled loose the knots on his laces, then kicked off his trainers and used his toe to shift them to the side. Then he ducked down again and pulled off the socks. He couldn’t remember how long he’d worn them, and smelled them. He dropped them on to the trainers and stood in his bare feet.
‘Just as I say, Salvatore, keep watching me.’
He did it as a palming motion, slipped his hand past his ear and extracted the gear, moulded and flesh- coloured. He hadn’t expected Castrolami in his ear, or wanted it, and he admired the investigator for not burdening him with queries, hesitancies. The palm went into the pocket of the lightweight windcheater, then Lukas shed the coat and tossed it on to the pile. He had never done a strip before, but the tiredness ate him and he sought to push the matter on – force it. His shirt went next, unbuttoned, taken off, discarded.
‘Watch me, Salvatore, watch me all the time and have trust in me. I’m here to help Eddie and to help you.’
