What was bizarre about the choreography was that he had not stopped – he hadn’t since he had sat alone in the Afghan restaurant and waited – to consider that Immacolata might have decided that he was a boring no-hoper, a saddo and a loser, and that a summer fling was over as autumn came on. Never thought of it. He had a BA (Hons) in Modern Languages, only a 2:2 – they called it a Desmond at that university in the Thames Valley – and at the end of four years’ study was supposed to possess some capability at analysis. He had left with a good knowledge of German, fair French and some Spanish, with a smattering of Italian, which might take him over the front page of a newspaper.
He knew Berlin, having walked the pavements and worked in all-night cafes during summer vacations, and could get himself around Paris without glancing every five minutes at a map, and he wouldn’t have been lost in Barcelona. He didn’t know Rome or Naples, but he had once spent two days in Milan, having climbed on the wrong train in Geneva when he should have been going to Montpellier in France, coming from Munich. It mattered not. It was not in the temperament of Eddie Deacon to worry at a problem, as if he needed to untie a tight knot in a length of string. He either ran from problems or tilted at them. If she had indeed walked out on him she could say so to his face: clear, one-syllable words. Not possible, not his Mac. Second point, chewed on briefly in the aircraft cabin: police at the flat, a brother taken away, the flat searched, everything about her hidden from him like her address. Was she ‘dodgy’, or ‘bent’? Weighed it. Didn’t care. She was his Mac.
There was no doubt. He had to go to Naples. He had to find her. He’d pull a face, she’d grimace and shrug a bit, ask him what the hell he was doing there – in a street, whatever it looked like, whatever via Forcella looked like. He’d say he wanted a fresh roll for his breakfast, maybe some croissants. She would look surprised, astonished, then grin. He’d laugh. Both laughing, hugging and holding tight. It was what he thought. Nothing about a broken door, police on the step, a wild kid who was expert on breaking and entering, maybe no more than ten years old. Nothing about sitting for several hours in a restaurant, hurting, and hurting worse in his bedroom where her dressing-gown hung and her magazines lay about. Nothing about talking to, pleading with a blow-up photograph on a wall. They would do it, meeting again, just casual, as if nothing had happened and no wounds had been cut into him. He never saw her solemn, sullen, serious, because Mac was always the photograph on the wall.
Who knew what love was? They didn’t talk about love in the little house they shared in Dalston. Love was not an agenda area with the guy from HM Revenue and Customs, the club waiter, the rail-ticket seller or the perpetual student. Love was in movies, books, magazines. Screwing and shagging were real – rare but attainable with a good alcohol flow – but love was off-limits. The definition of love, as known to Eddie Deacon, was an ache in his guts, a yearning and the bloody awful misery of not seeing that face coming round the corner and the little wave, then feeling her touch… And the bloody child had put chocolate on the sleeve of his jacket, and the bloody woman’s hand was on his knee and her fingers were tightening. They were long over the Alps.
The light was failing, and the sun had dipped below the wing. The child was gobbling chocolate to get the box finished and the woman was going into white-knuckle time because the engine pitch had changed, and Eddie sensed that the descent had started. At that time, he should have been educating a roomful of immigrants – all his chums from the Baltics, the Balkans and North Africa – on the intricacies of Murder in Mesopotamia or Death on the Nile or Murder on the Orient Express, didn’t really matter which. Like pressing a button on the staff-room computer keyboard, he deleted them, erased them.
It was early in the evening and a city’s lights were on. The aircraft yawed and the undercarriage rumbled as it was lowered. Of course he had come. He was Eddie Deacon, and he wanted nothing more than to see her, hear her, feel her – and there was no logic in it and no more analysis of what he knew.
The wheels hit, a good landing, feathered, and he didn’t know of anything he should fear.
He came out of the car fast, slammed the door, waved off the driver. For Mario Castrolami this was foreign territory. What he had seen of Collina Fleming was enough to curl his lip. He tasted the first trace of bile in his throat. He had heard it was a hill for millionaires, the big ones, and the apartments were broad built, their balconies had expensive plants on them and the plots were surrounded by barricades. Dogs barked behind electronically controlled gates and porters patrolled the front doors. He thought the hill was about privilege and wealth. Castrolami, investigator in the carabinieri ROS, detested privilege and lacked wealth. Could have done… Could have blocked enquiries, made files disappear, given advance warning by public phone, with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece, of a raid planned for the following dawn. All of that would have filled an offshore account. He lived in Vomero, the comfortable area of Naples, but on the north side of the Castel Sant’Elmo, and he needed to be a gymnast and to stand on tiptoe on a chair to peer through a skylight for a minuscule glimpse of the sea and the east promontory of Capri. He thought the hill oozed money.
A woman passed him as he went to the gate. It was late September and Castrolami’s tie was loose and there was sweat in his armpits. She wore a fur coat, and carried a dog under one arm. Where Castrolami lived, on the wrong side of Vomero, there were stray cats that would have killed that toy dog and eaten it. She looked up, saw him, dismissed him as irrelevant and went by – probably thought him a plumber or an insurance salesman. There was no porter on this block and he rang the bell, gave his name and the gate was unlocked. He carried a thin cardboard file and a small overnight bag. He loathed Rome, and hoped the bag would be needed for a night or two, no more.
He was admitted.
He asked how she was. Rossi, the young one, gestured – something of amusement and something of frustration.
The older one was Orecchia. ‘She stays in her room. It was about her mother. We find it often enough. There’s the excitement and drama, the centre-of-stage hour, then the moment of reality and the fear. She’s frightened of her mother. You understand, we’re not interrogators. At this stage we’re here to protect her and maintain the security of the safe-house. She wants to stay in her room, hide at the back of her cave so we don’t drag her out. She won’t eat, she won’t talk, she won’t…’
Castrolami smiled. He did a grim, dark smile well.
He went to the door. It was less than twenty-four hours since he had brought Immacolata Borelli to this address, and less than twelve since he had been told she had refused to speak to the prosecutor, and only half a dozen since the file had landed on his cluttered desk. They used him, at the Palace of Justice, as a bulldozer. That evening, he should have been with his friend, who painted views of the mountain, at an exhibition of modern art in a church on the riviera di Chiaia and afterwards… They took for granted, at the Palace of Justice, that the bulldozer did twenty-four/seven.
He didn’t knock.
The light was off, but the blinds were not drawn and the street-lamps far below threw up enough for him to see her. She lay on her back, her legs together, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t turn to face him but said quietly, ‘I don’t want anything to eat or drink.’ He put the light on, hit all the switches, and she jerked her head sideways. He went to the table and put the file on it. Then he walked towards her. He took her right arm at the wrist, heaved her off the bed and she nearly fell. He said nothing and dragged her to the table, her feet slithering on the floor. He kicked back a chair, made room for her, pressed her down on the seat.