He told Anna Borelli of his uncle’s meeting with the prosecutor. She did not reply immediately, but instead coughed, hard and grating, then spat phlegm ahead of her and let her laced shoe step in it.
They were near to the gate now. There, they would face banks of cameras and metal detectors, and they would go to cubicles for body searches. He was struck, always, by the quiet. With staff, some three thousand souls were inside the walls of rough-carved basalt from Vesuvio, but there was almost silence. Like many in the city, Massimo, the clerk, enjoyed the rewards of association and could not quite bring himself to break the link. Her voice was harsh in his ear. ‘We should have drowned the bitch at birth. Now we should slice up that boy, use a bacon cutter on him, and send her the pieces.’
Massimo knew the old woman had made coffee for the boy, had brought him a slice of cake, and would have smiled and simpered at him while her husband went for the man, Salvatore. He had, in truth but unspoken, admired Immacolata Borelli. She was four years older than him, and had hardly seemed to notice him, but he had often thought of her – and his uncle would have approved.
‘She has to be broken. Only when he is in pieces will she break. Tell the fat fool that – tell your uncle. Salvatore will understand.’
The smells hit him. He couldn’t have said which was stronger, the urine, the sweat or the disinfectant. They went through the side gate.
Salvatore rode the pillion. The problem revolved in his mind. Would he use a sharpened short-bladed knife, a chopping knife or a knife with a line of tooth points? A knife for an ear, and a different one for a finger? And which one for a penis? It was what he thought of as he rode and his chest was tight against Fangio’s back. They wove through the traffic, went fast, and the pistol barrel was hard in his groin. The problem, and the wind on his shirt, ripping at his shoulders, gave him a sense of power. They had gone through Secondigliano, were now far away from his own territory, Sanita and Forcella. They were high above the bay and crossed the ground of the Licciardi and Contini clans. That part of Secondigliano was called by everyone, maybe even a postman, Terzo Mundo. If Secondigliano was the third world – another problem – what was Scampia? It was the war ground. He was used by Pasquale or Gabriella Borelli to enforce authority perhaps once a month and no more than twice. On these streets, and in Scampia, there were bodies on the pavements most nights. They had come off the Quadrivio di Secondigliano, gone past the low-security prison, the towers were to their left and they were on via Roma Verso Scampia. He had read a week ago, before the idiocy had started, in Il Mattino, that a sociologist had said: ‘If you live in Scampia you have no hope of anything ever being better. You cannot have optimism. You have nothing and no possibility of legal work or anything that is psychologically rewarding. It is a prison. The boy growing up here as a teenager might as well be locked in the cells of a goal.’ He had read that because it was on the same page as the story about himself, named, with a photograph. He had thought it a shit article about a shit place. He lived in safe-houses scattered through Forcella and Sanita, he was optimistic, his picture was on the screen of kids’ phones, and he was rewarded. One day, one day, he would drive a Ferrari on the seafront at Nice and stay in a hotel, where a movie star would have stayed, and it would not be Gabriella Borelli in his bed – one day.
He saw the Sail again.
Fangio took him towards the great weather-stained mountain of concrete. He supported Carmine Borelli’s decision to bring the boy here for safe-keeping, but he thought the old man had given too much in return: too much of a percentage of a shipment coming to the Naples docks in three weeks, too much of a share in a contract for the rebuilding of a sewage system on the north side of Sanita. He thought them peasants, contadini, here, but he had masked his anger when the weapon was taken from him and he was blindfolded.
They were on the via Baku. Salvatore did not know where Baku was, in what country, or why a street in Scampia was named after it.
They were waved down. He said who he and Fangio were, where he went and by whose authority, and he gave the registration of the van, its maker and colour, and then he was allowed to go through.
There had been that knot of men, another at the outer end of via Baku and more at the junction of the viale della Resistenza, otherwise near emptiness… He knew that, from every angle, he was watched.
He laughed.
The scooter swerved – Fangio had twisted. He laughed because he had remembered the scratched line in the manacles. He laughed at the effort, wasted.
He thought escape from here, from the Sail in Scampia, was impossible – as impossible as from the maximum-security wing at Novara, or the one for Sicilians at Rebibia. Impossible. He had not resolved which knife he would use, which blade.
He was jolted. The braking of the van, no warning, threw Eddie forward and his shoulder cannoned against the bulkhead. The back door was opened. No ceremony. A blanket was draped over him. He was moved fast. No voices.
Eddie thought it had been four or five paces from the van and into a building. He couldn’t see, but he could smell – all the human smells but, above all, decay. They had hustled him inside but it seemed they were happy to slow and go at their own pace now, wherever they were. He was taken up a staircase. He didn’t know whether it was enclosed or open, but there was no wind on his hands, and no sun’s warmth, and the rest of his body was covered with the blanket.
He was not hit.
Small mercy. He was thankful.
Another flight of stairs – he’d tried to count. To count was to be positive. Reckoned, as best he could, that he was on a third floor, then went along some sort of corridor – it was wide because men were alongside him, to his left and his right, and they had his arms at the elbows. Not a word spoken. Would have said he went a clear hundred paces along the walkway.
Heard a knock, heard a door open in an instant response. Was jostled through the gap, narrow because one man led, he followed and another man had to wait to come behind. Now he heard a television set blaring, but not near. Bolts were drawn back, and another door opened. He was pushed and pulled inside a room, and knew the space was small and that there was no open window because he was hit by clammy warmth, suffocating.
A chain was put on Eddie’s ankle – he felt its weight, tight against the bone. The blanket was pulled off, and the plastic strip that had gouged his wrists was cut.
The door closed, was bolted.
The sound of the television was gone, and silence crushed him. He did not start to learn his new prison, its dimensions. He slumped – stood against a wall, bent his knees and let his weight take him to his haunches, then toppled over. The chain tightened and he lay on his side. He had not bothered to remove the hood.
He wondered if he was beaten.
Lukas walked. It was good for him to feel the air of the city, to breathe it and learn from it. It might be the last chance he had to indulge himself, and he was mean with his time, did not willingly waste it. He soaked up what was around him.
He called it a ‘tipping point’, and had identified it from what Castrolami had told him. A mobile call, the Italian’s phone clamped to his ear, the frown deepening, the gasps on the cigarette faster and deeper, the phone shut down. They had been close to the barracks at piazza Dante. He had been told of the meeting at which an official at the Palace of Justice had met the corrupt lawyer, one of those who always ran with bad guys, a photograph and a demand. He had asked them if he could walk, feel the small streets.
They crowded close to him. Hanging washing made an arch over him. Cooking scents fed him. Lukas went to a chapel, paid to go past the door, stood in awe and stared at Sammartino’s Veiled Christ, so lifelike, marble made into flesh and cloth, and was in the majesty of the place for three minutes, no more, had learned and had pondered on the tipping point.