There was a crowd at the main entrance of the block.
He was not jeered or jostled. He was stared at. The black overalls were close round their prisoner and hustled him to the transport, but the crowd didn’t push or surge. Eddie thought they wanted either their beds or to get back to their work and trade. It was a far place that he had come to and he didn’t know them and they didn’t know him, so he gave them no greeting or acknowledgement.
The suit stood beside the door of a minibus. The prisoner was in already. The suit waited for him.
Eddie came to the door.
The suit said, ‘I’d known him for less than one week. He was the best… What are you? Are you worth the life of the best? But you didn’t think of that…’
He climbed in. He was driven away.
20
It was still dark when they left the hospital, a great cavern of a building on the edge of the Scampia district. The pronto soccorso section was as grim a place as Eddie had known and he had been left with two black overalls on a plastic seat in a corridor, and the world had gone by him – beaten-up tarts, overdosed druggies, knife-wound victims, complicated pregnancies. He had known it was a formality but had sat still, and a nurse had come with a bowl and a towel and had cleaned his face wounds and had stitched, expertly, his lips, and he had had sutures under his right eye. He had not mentioned the pain in his ribcage, had thought it disrespectful of Lukas’s injuries. A little after the American consul had arrived, with a phalanx of security around him, Castrolami had emerged from behind the swing doors. It had been obvious when they had gone in that the injuries were terminal, that Lukas was dead, but Eddie supposed it necessary for them to go through the procedures of resuscitation and fail. Castrolami – the suit had given his name in the minibus in a curt growl and had not offered a hand for the greeting – had walked up to him in that wide corridor outside the emergency section, and had flicked his fingers as a gesture for Eddie to follow him and had kept walking. He might have been the damn dog.
They did not use the minibus. There were hugs and cheek-brush kisses between Castrolami and one called the Tractor, another called the Engineer and a third called the Bomber, and the one who had a sniper rifle – uncased – made a joke of complaining that he had not been given the opportunity to shoot. Eddie realised then that the prisoner was gone, would have been transferred to a different wagon and taken away. Beside the minibus was a marked carabinieri saloon, with a uniformed driver and an escort, and the engine idled. He was put into the back and Castrolami slumped beside him.
They left the hospital where a body would now be wheeled towards the mortuary building.
Not much to talk about. He was the best… What are you? Are you worth the life of the best? There was no warmth on offer, nothing that soothed the jumbled confusion in his mind. He supposed that, by now, a telephone call would have been made to England, to a corner of Wiltshire, to a bungalow in a lane, and that lights had flashed on in answer to the persistence of a bell, and that his parents now sat on their bed, in their night clothes, in shock and relief – his mother might have gone to make two mugs of cocoa. He couldn’t face making a call himself – would have to, but later. They sat silent and they looked out of their different windows.
The light grew, came slowly.
He did not ask where they went, why. What are you? Wasn’t prepared to try to answer, and the blood of the ‘best’ was caking his T-shirt and jeans. They didn’t go towards the city, but drove away from it and the first light, soft gold, was above distant hills.
There was no beauty, no majesty alongside the road.
They went by homes and small farms, scorched orchards, compact factory units and ribbon developments of advertising hoardings. He thought of the orderly, managed greenery of the village where he had spent his childhood; here there was anarchy. The sun peeped a fraction higher, and the first glimpse of a segment, still gold, was over the hills’ horizon.
Castrolami had taken from his pocket an old leatherbound notepad, with scuffed corners, and had started to write busily. It would have been his memory jottings for his report on the death of the ‘best’.
Eddie was, and he realised it, an intruder, not wanted.
He felt no anger at this but accepted it and sat deep on the seat, and the car was driven fast on empty roads. He had, of course, no watch, but if he craned forward he could see the dash in front of the driver, and thought they had been travelling for a little more than half an hour.
There was a sign beside the road, and the driver slowed and the escort studied his map, then written instructions. The place was called Nola.
They went into the heart of it, past a cathedral-sized church. The low sun was nestled on the tower, the road was rough, the pavements worse, and a very few hurried to be at work. Eddie thought the place desolate, as if hope had gone.
He did not ask why they had come here, for what purpose.
Nobody had fed him, nobody had offered him coffee or water, or a beer. He saw more churches, and the road took them along the perimeter of a hospital’s grounds. Then they veered off a main route and headed on narrower, meaner streets.
The driver stopped a few metres short of a cemetery’s main gates. They were of heavy ironwork and closed; Eddie assumed they were locked. There was a pedestrian’s door at the side… He could have played hard. He could have sat in the car and demanded explanations. A man was dead, the ‘best’ man. The man with the caved chest and the chair-leg-thin arms and the knees that had nothing pretty to them was in the mortuary. He followed Castrolami out of the car. He was led.
First light bloomed inside the small gate. A man was lit as he swept dried leaves, and when he saw them, he eased himself on to his witch’s broom and Castrolami must have asked the question with his eyes because the sweeper gestured to his right and watched them.
There was a girl’s statue on a plinth, life-size, and a single rose slotted by her hand. She had the sadness of youth snatched and her name, carved in the stonework, was Angelabella. He went through avenues of small chapels, all with artificial flowers flourishing, and some had candles burning and displayed photographs of the long-deceased when they had lived and enjoyed health. A great piazza for the dead opened in front of him and Castrolami. He was considered responsible for the loss of the ‘best’. He queried nothing, was obedient.
Between concrete paths there were gravestones, more flowers, more candles and more sepia photographs. At the far end of the square of the dead there was a wall with five layers of sealed shelves each large enough to take an adult’s corpse, and more flowers decorated it. Two men stood against it and the sun caught their faces.
One waved to Castrolami, who acknowledged and switched course.
He saw her.
She would have noticed the two men’s reaction and she stood, her hand across her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun, low and growing in intensity.
She did not run towards him. He followed Castrolami, kept Castrolami’s pace.
In his ear: ‘She wanted this. Myself, I would have thrown you on the plane, the first. She wanted to be here when news came of whether you had survived or not. Her friend is here, her most valued friend. Her friend is here because of the toxic pollution of what we call the Triangle of Death. The pollution is by the Borelli family, in part, over many years. It is why she has collaborated. It is in memory of her friend, a tribute.’
‘I was second to her friend?’
‘You were second, Eddie, to her friend. You could not compete… It is ludicrous to be here, but we are. You do not have long.’