‘I don’t lie.’
Castrolami took a small tape-recorder from his pocket. He switched it on and held it out. There was the noise of the park – dogs barking, the kids screaming, the rain on the leaves, and his voice: Can they find, hold and hurt, maybe murder, a lover? She heard her own voice, dismissive: No. His voice again, seeking certainty: In Naples there is no lover, no boy? Her own voice again, giving the certainty: No. Castrolami pressed fast-forward briefly. She heard Castrolami first: So there is a boy here… I have to know. Her response: Yes, but not significant. Again, the fast-forward, Castrolami saying: You go to bed. But you say it’s not ‘significant’… yes? She said, crackling on the tape and distorted: He’s just a boy. We met in a park… It doesn’t mean anything. Querying her, testing her: You won’t pine for him? Heard herself snort, then, I’ll forget him – maybe I have already. ‘I believe you had a passionate affair in London, and that your protestation that the relationship was meaningless was a lie.’
‘I don’t lie.’
‘What was the boy’s name?’
She didn’t know where he was leading her. She saw the tape-recorder dropped into Castrolami’s pocket, as if its work was done. She said, ‘Eddie.’
Castrolami repeated the name, rolled it. ‘Eddie… Eddie… and he’s not significant and fucking him meant nothing?’
So, he was calling her a liar and a whore, implying she slept around. ‘I liked him.’
‘Only liked him?’
‘Yes, I liked him. There, I liked him. In London I liked him. Is that a sin? Do I go to confessional and blubber it to a priest who has his hand in his crotch? It was good in London. This isn’t London. People go on holiday, they fuck on holiday. People go to work conferences, meet others and fuck. People meet in cinemas in strange towns and fuck afterwards. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s what happens and-’
She was cut short. The papers were allowed to unroll, the photograph taken out and passed to her. She held it. Her Eddie was leaning on a gate, arms resting on the top bar. There were young cattle around him, nuzzling and nudging him. She could almost hear his laughter. She hadn’t seen the photograph before. She thought it would have come from an album at his parents’ home.
Castrolami curled his lip. ‘If I was the boy, and you were in my bed, and I said I loved you and asked, with a caress, how you felt about me, and you said I meant nothing to you, I’d be disappointed.’
She saw a trap, a cul-de-sac, and thought she was led into it. She handed back the photograph. ‘Why did you show it me?’
‘Because you lied to me. That boy is huge in your life, as you are in his.’
‘No.’
‘The best boy you ever knew.’
‘No.’
‘Free to sleep with him, fuck him, without your mother criticising who you chose.’
‘Not significant.’
‘We shall see…’ He dropped his voice, more theatre, and was casual, as in conversation. He smiled and held the photograph of Eddie in front of her face. ‘We shall see, Signorina Immacolata, whether you lie or not. He, your insignificant, meaningless bed partner, was taken off the street in Forcella yesterday. Why should the boy have come to Naples if he’s insignificant and meaningless? Why is he in Forcella? What is your response to him being taken?’
‘He’s not important. My evidence is.’
‘Another lie – or the truth?’
‘I’ll stay the course.’
‘A lie or the truth?’
‘I’ll go to court whatever-’ Castrolami’s big fingers made a small tear at the top of the photograph, above Eddie’s head, and then, with a sort of formality, he handed her the photograph. She knew what was expected of her. She did it sharply, but looked away, through the window. The sun clipped the roofs, the water tanks and the satellite dishes, and was above the mountain range. She knew, and had judged it, that the rip would go through the middle of his face – his forehead, between his eyes and down the length of his nose. It would split his lips, his chin and his throat. She did it. She let the two pieces fall to the floor. She said, ‘I’ll go to court, whatever is set against me. I’ll go in memory of Marianna Rossetti. Fuck you, Castrolami.’
He kicked away the two pieces of the photograph, and Rossi came forward to pick them up and bin them. Castrolami said he had to go out. She thought he despised her, but he hadn’t been in the cemetery at Nola.
She went and lay on her bed, heard the main door open, shut, and the key turn.
As he went into the via dei Condotti, Lukas understood why the piazza di Spagna had been chosen for the meeting. He came off the main drag and walked past the fashion houses. It was a good place to watch a man approach the steps, and to see whether he had a tail. He appreciated why they would be paranoid about security and didn’t argue with it. He was later than he would have wanted but Duck Johnstone had been on the phone for more than half an hour and had fed him morsels of intelligence that hadn’t been available last night. He reckoned Duck must have worked through most of it. It wasn’t that Lukas admired dogged hard work, just that he couldn’t abide the taking of shortcuts and easy opt-outs. He knew more about the boy, known now in the links as Echo – the girl was India – enough about him to have rated his journey to Naples as dumb-pig stupid, but Echo would still get his best effort – only effort he knew – to have him on a plane, and in a seat, not in the hold.
He came to the fountain. He knew that a description of his features had been sent ahead, for recognition. He didn’t know whom he would meet, or have a code to exchange. The steps were a good place because he could be watched from more than four and up to seven angles. There were tourists fooling in the fountain at the foot, and locals were waiting to use the water spout for drinking. Lukas went past them, and the museum that was the Keats-Shelley house. He didn’t do poetry – literature – or anything that was outside the confines of freeing poor bastards caught up, usually, in someone else’s fight. Would have said it was full time and… He started to climb the steps. Already the sun flared off the stonework and any shade was filled with sitting youngsters… Hostage rescue, hostage negotiation, hostage profiling and hostage co-ordination were big enough subject areas to swamp Lukas’s mind.
He had been a sniper on the rescue team. He had once fired a live round to kill. He had carried the rifle and been in full kit on a live call-out close to a hundred times, including Ruby Ridge and Waco, but had fired only once. A death shot but not a clean one: the brains, skull fragments and blood of the robber trying to break a siege and bug out of a bank in Madison, Wisconsin, had spattered across the face and spectacles of the cashier he was using as a shield, and the mess had spoiled her dress. The Bureau’s HRT had been called in because the target had crossed state lines. He’d had the cross-wires on the felon’s head for upwards of thirty seconds and had fired a second after the guy’s attention had gone to his right side and the handgun had been moved out from under the woman’s chin. It was a hell of a shot, the rest of the team told him, but a shame about the dress. God only knew what the hairdresser would have found the next time the woman went. He had moved on, ditched the rifle and the big telescopic sight when the Bureau launched the Critical Incident Response Group.
Only one way, an old head had told him, to learn the skills of negotiation – and he had to know about negotiation if he was to command those people. ‘Find the construction cranes,’ the old head had said in a corner of the Quantico parkland, ‘and some good high big-span bridges.’
Suicides went up crane ladders and out on the walkways of bridges. Lukas had taken two years of evenings, days off and holiday time to be on stand-by for a call from a duty officer. Nobody in town, county or state police was queuing to go up a crane to talk to a nutcase who wanted to jump. Cranes and bridges were where ‘teeth were cut’, the old head had said. Couldn’t fail with wannabe suicides and hope to make it in the big-time of terrorist sieges. The way to learn the soft, gentle, persuasive talk, and to calm a situation, was to be a hundred feet up a crane ladder with not much to see of the ‘client’ but the soles of his shoes fifteen further up. He’d met some interesting people and heard some interesting life stories, and had had to breed trust if men and women were to decide to face another day and climb down. He’d never liked heights, but had a top job as a co-ordinator, the negotiator rookies needed to get up high on exercises, and Lukas had had to take them. Leadership was shit. It was said, he heard later, that some jerks climbed and threatened and only wanted the star man to come up after them; he’d gotten a reputation round Quantico and into the suburbs of the capital.