They were leaving behind the tower blocks of London and the sun was dipping down. He had half expected her to crumple and look for comfort from him – she’d get fuck-all if she did. A bag-carrier didn’t do nurse. She sat bolt upright and her lip wobbled occasionally, but there were no tears.
Further out of the city, the traffic speeded up. The mobile-phone messages had told him of the eyeball in London, the readiness at the palace in Naples, the teams gathered in briefing rooms at the Questura and at the barracks in piazza Dante. He had gutted her for headline information before they had gone on the shopping jaunt and that information had gone. He doubted that she could, now, step back.
He had made one accommodation to his principle of refusing to ask favours. At the terminal the car was met – only a protocol chief, but sufficient, carrying the printouts of two tickets.
The plastic bag dangled from her fist. It was the symbol, he reckoned, of how far she had come. Her possessions were in one cheap bag, and they consisted of underwear, washing kit and a nightdress. Then there was whatever she had in her handbag. Castrolami handed his passport and the one she would use to the protocol guy. They were examined, the title pages flicked, and they were taken through locked doors and into hidden corridors where only permanent Heathrow staff had access. They emerged into a departure area, were given the printouts and brought to a Passport Control desk – one at the end, which had a Position Closed sign but where a young woman sat. She looked at the pages, at the faces, handed the documents back. There was a screen ahead, and he saw that the Rome flight had been called. He had been told that if the traffic was heavy on the motorway, and they were late, the flight would be delayed. He had a hand on her arm and steered her towards the pier, then hooked out his mobile, dialled, waited, was connected.
He said where they were, confirmed the schedule. He was told the operation had been named Partenope. He shut the mobile and switched it off. They came to the last exit off the pier. He thought she had walked well, not stumbling, not faltering. Maybe she was, as he had suspected, a hard bitch under the veneer of sadness at the death of a friend, hard and uncaring.
Would she stay the course? They all said they would, but only a few did, and were alive, able to build a new life, when the trials were over.
He stood aside and let his hand fall from her arm. He couldn’t read her, couldn’t pierce her thoughts. She stepped from the pier inside the aircraft. Castrolami had had to stifle the urge to shove her the last metre, but it had not been necessary. He showed the boarding cards and a woman led them into business class, then to the front row where no other passengers would need to pass them and look at their faces.
The door was closed, the engines gained power. She had her belt fastened. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I feel, whether I am strong?’
He shook his head, then turned his face away and closed his eyes, as their speed on the runway gathered.
He put the phone down, gave the order of confirmation. Operation Partenope was named after the Siren woman who seduced men having lured them on to rocks and then killed them, and who had ultimately failed and had committed suicide by drowning and who lay in a pauper’s grave, if mythology were believed, among the sunk foundations of the buildings between the via Solitaria and the via Chiatamone. Operation Parthenope had legs and ran.
The prosecutor eased his hand off the receiver and saw that his palm had left a sweat sheen on it. He believed he presided over the dismantling of a clan. It would be, he could predict, an opportunity for a minister in Rome to speak of a blow of the ‘greatest significance’ to the heart of the city’s criminal activities. If it worked well, he would receive a congratulatory message from the minister. He could reflect on a durable heart, because many times central government had claimed such blows against it, and on the columns of men and women in patrol cars and riot wagons leaving the yards behind the Questura and piazza Dante. In London, more officers and guns would be moving into position to arrest the eldest brother. It was synchronised, choreographed. The silence fell over the room. They must wait. He was brought coffee. He pictured now the columns of vehicles snaking across the city – routes would have been worked out so that they seemed to head away from target locations, then swing back, giving minimal warning of their approach – and only now, inside the cars and wagons, would the officers know who they moved against. The prosecutor hated the lack of trust, was shamed by it. He regarded it as the single most impressive creation of the clans.
At about this time in the evening, the curtain would have been rising for the second act of the opera, a Mozart, for which he had begged tickets from a cousin. He had cried off in mid-afternoon and his wife had sighed and said she would find someone else to take with her. He was marginally disappointed to miss the performance. Opera soothed him. He believed fervently that whatever hours he worked at the palace he must enjoy something of life beyond.
Silence was good because words – at a moment such as this – were inadequate.
She was said to be strong – Mario Castrolami’s verdict – and she would need to be, if the arrest programme was successful.
A battering ram broke open the street door, forcing the lock. A small boy, reared on extravaganzas of video-screen warfare, watched big-eyed, in fascination. What he played at was happening. He was across the street, had a vantage-point between two parked cars and was almost hidden by a lamppost. He watched the uniformed guy with the ram step aside, and a charge of black-clad police plunged through the broken door. The boy recognised the firearms they carried in Hackney, east London. They were on display often enough. If he had had a friend with him he would have been able to report that the men were from the specialist firearms team, CO19, that they had Heckler amp; Koch machine pistols and Glock 9mm handguns, and one at the back had a Taser immobiliser. Now he heard wood splintering, oaths, frantic shouting, then quiet. Up on the first floor, a policeman drew the curtain, denying the child a clear view into the lit room.
He didn’t have to wait long. The prisoner was hustled into the doorway, out on to the step, then brought fast down the flight to the pavement. The boy knew him.
All the kids of his age knew Vincenzo – Vinny to them. His sister, too. They ran messages for Vinny, the Italian, would take a piece of paper to the other side of Hackney, up to Seven Sisters or south to Hoxton, a tiny scrap of cigarette paper that was folded up smaller than the bitten-down nail on the child’s little finger. They were paid for taking messages. This boy, and all the boys, knew the Italian as a gangster of style… real life and bigger than in the games they played in the arcades and on their machines. They idolised Vinny but were never close to his sister. She wasn’t there – only him. There was a moment when he could see, so clearly, Vinny’s face. The streetlight he was under threw enough illumination to reach across the street, and the blue lamp was circling on a police car. Plenty of light fell on Vinny’s face. Magnificent… ‘Fuckin’ fantastic,’ the child thought. Then the police gloves, black leather, came down on top of Vinny’s head and pushed him into the car. Handcuffs on his wrists – had seen them as Vinny was brought down the steps from the broken door – but not a mark on his face. There were no cuts on his mouth or round his eyes and his shirt wasn’t ruffled. The boy understood. To fight would have been pathetic. Scum would have fought.