The child reckoned he knew about gangsters, and had no ambition in his life but to have the status and stature of Vinny, the Italian. If he had fought they would have belted him, like they did the big black guy, bouncer at the club off Kingsland Road. It had taken eight pigs to get him down, and then they’d kicked shit out of him and more. He caught Vinny’s eye. The child was nine but thought himself the friend of Vinny, the big man from Naples that was somewhere way down south. In that moment, he was certain that the Italian gave him the slightest nod of recognition. Then a policeman was in front of him, telling him, ‘Go and get fucking lost, kiddo.’ The car had gone down the street, and the guys in black were spilling out down the steps from the main door.
It was a big man’s cool, a top man’s, that he didn’t fight and didn’t get himself thugged. The child thought that Naples, wherever it was, was a prize place if it was where Vinny had come from – proud, not frightened, ignoring all the guns round him and going at his own pace into the back of the car. He wondered where the sister was, and whether she would go in the cage with her brother. The car had gone round the corner at the end of the street, headed, he thought, for Lower Clapton Road and the Hackney police station.
The policeman was blocking his view of the front door, so he got ‘fucking lost’, but only to the corner. There, he sat on a low wall near to the Kentucky Fried Chicken place. He’d wait there for the sister to come and warn her not to go in the cage.
A window exploded out and glass crashed down into the street, which was enough to tilt eyes upwards. Heads were already craning at the block’s front door where carabinieri, in protective gear, stood guard. A flashlight was aimed up three storeys and locked on to the window. The man appeared and screamed.
The crowd knew who the carabinieri had come for.
In that narrow street, spanning the top end of Forcella and the southern extremity of the Sanita labyrinth, they all knew who Giovanni was. Before the first of the attack wave had levered themselves out of the wagon and sprinted for the door, on the warning of their approach the street had been blocked with boxes, cartons from shops, pallets from building sites, rubbish and debris. Gas canisters were loaded in the barrels of some of the rifles confronting the crowd of local people and plastic baton round launchers were aimed at them. The second wave had had to negotiate a storm of abuse, and when the crowd had heard the door broken down above them, the first rocks had been thrown at the men in the cordon.
There was a gasp. He was naked. His body glistened. Giovanni had screamed, but now he swung clear of the window, evaded a heavy gloved fist that attempted to grab his arm, reached out and caught the downpipe from the gutter. His legs hung free, and the crowd saw the hair between them, at the trunk. A half-brick arced up and reached the broken window. The crowd heard the oath of a casualty. It was encouragement.
The fugitive slithered up the pipe, then took hold of the old ironwork guttering and the two nearest stanchions. Rocks and cobblestones, apples, potatoes, melons rained against the carabinieri at the entrance and at the window where arms attempted to grab Giovanni. Obvious – he’d been in the shower. As he sought to lever himself on to the gentle slope of the tiles, high above the streetlights, the beam still held him, and there were flashes from a score of mobile phones. His genitalia wobbled, danced, girls screamed, mothers giggled and old women shrieked happy obscenities. It was a huge effort, but he succeeded. Giovanni lifted a leg high and lodged his foot on the tiles. Then he was up, and standing.
At shouts from below, he turned and saw the black-clad carabinieri on the roof ridge. Then he would have known he was as trapped as if he had stayed in the shower cubicle or his bedroom. He ripped out a single tile and threw it viciously, two-handed, at the hunters.
It was theatre, and the crowd’s participation in the performance was demanded. Forgotten: the pizzo taken from every shopkeeper, every small man trying to build a business, the extortion that robbed them. Forgotten: the conceit and bullying by the son of a clan leader. Forgotten: the weeping mothers, wives, sweethearts, sisters of those slaughtered to create discipline. Giovanni Borelli had milked the moment.
They had him. His wrists were wrenched behind his back and handcuffed.
Who ruled here?
One carabinieri vehicle was overturned and torched before they brought him out. Three volleys of the plastic baton rounds were fired and a dozen gas canisters. Men in full riot gear, the masks distorting their faces, used their clubs to batter a passageway to a vehicle with mesh over its windows. By then they had found boxer shorts for Giovanni Borelli. The scugnizzi, the urchin kids of the street – the watchers, couriers and wallet thieves – cavorted near to the burning truck. Giovanni was driven away. More gas was fired, but with him gone the anger fled. Show over.
It was said that, within an hour, half of the kids on the north side of Forcella and the south side of Sanita, had transferred the image of the naked Giovanni Borelli to their mobiles’ screens, and that the penis, hair and testicles were in good focus. He was, if briefly, a hero.
A police team from the Squadra Mobile knocked at the door of the old couple’s apartment. When it was opened, they stood back respectfully, as if apologising, and Carmine Borelli stepped aside and allowed them to pass him. The detectives wore their own clothes, rough-wear garments. Their jeans were faded, some torn and ragged at the knees, their sneakers had not been cleaned and their T-shirts were sweat-streaked and creased. They had on, also, lightweight plastic tops with Polizia emblazoned across the chest, and holsters that pulled down their belts. Carmine Borelli, founder of the clan, was treated with deference. The detectives used the mat inside the door to wipe their feet before they went further inside and, in the living room ducked their heads to Anna Borelli, who sat and sewed and watched television, a hundred-centimetre-wide screen that dominated the small room, the sound turned high. She did not acknowledge them and kept her eyes on the needle.
He was given respect because he was of the old guard of clan leaders. His fortune had been founded in the weeks after the Allies had reached the city in the autumn of 1943 when a mercato nero had run free. Its profits, from trading in every commodity that commanded a price, had been huge. It was long ago, and actuality was blurred. Pimping, prostitution, the corruption of medication, the purchase of politicians, the killing of rivals, the theft of funds sent by the military government for the restoration of utilities were unknown to these young detectives, who saw a humble, bent old man in a cardigan, a faded shirt and trousers, with scuffed leather sandals. He was in his eighty-eighth year, and his marriage to Anna had been celebrated, and consummated, sixty-eight years earlier. Together they had chased money and tracked power and… He was asked where his youngest grandson was.
Silvio was brought from his bedroom and was not handcuffed. Now his grandmother discarded her needlework, rose stiffly from her chair and smoothed his hair. The detectives took him down the flight of stairs from the apartment – Carmine and Anna had lived there since their wedding day and it was furnished in the fashion of four decades past – to the lobby on the ground floor. The door was closed quietly by the last detective to leave.