Unmoved, Anna Borelli told them what they should – in the future – be paying. In very few of the premises did she offer a reduction or no change in the amount paid monthly in the pizzo. She raised the protection fee, and in so doing she gave the impression that her daughter-in-law had allowed slackness to creep into the affairs of the clan. Those for whom the price was hiked did not complain, bluster, argue. There had been a woman, four years ago, who owned a paint store in the San Giovanni district: she had refused payment, and also to cash a cheque made out for a hundred thousand euros. Men had been imprisoned and the woman had been in the newspapers; and even in Time magazine. There had been demonstrations in support of her, but nothing had changed and people still paid as they had before. The woman lived under police guard now and made no money. An empty gesture, Anna Borelli thought.
With some, she gossiped about their children. With some she talked about her husband – a bladder problem and difficulty in the hips. With a few she recounted the situation in the Poggioreale that faced her grandsons, the misunderstood, persecuted Giovanni, the innocent, gentle Silvio. With others she discussed the circumstances of the incarceration in the north of her only son, Pasquale, and the brutality of the prison officers. All of them, she knew, would have liked to talk about the infame, the treachery of her granddaughter, Immacolata. None did. None dared. The majority had had their pizzo fixed by Immacolata and confirmed by Gabriella Borelli. All knew the girl. She was not spoken of.
The old woman knew that when she left each of the premises, and the door was locked, the shutters dropped, the lights turned off, it would be Immacolata – the whore – whose name flitted on the lips, and there would be sniggers. The bitch was dead. A grandmother had decreed it. The whore, the traitor, the infame was condemned.
Her secret: she knew also what leverage could be exerted on the girl who was damned – as a lemon was squeezed until the pips burst through the rind.
He searched. He crawled on the floor, went as far as the chain permitted him: there was no concrete ridge on this floor and the chain links were double the thickness of those in the bunker. That opportunity would not be repeated. He started again, and searched.
Couldn’t find a thick woollen red sock under the bed or the easy chair or in a corner of his room in Dalston. And couldn’t find a shoe in his room at his parents’ home in Wiltshire. Couldn’t find the big bright-coloured folders with his teaching notes that he’d left lying in the staff room at the college. The idea of Eddie Deacon on his hands and knees in darkness, relying on touch to a methodical, careful, painstaking search would have appeared ludicrous to the guys in the house, or his mum and dad, or to the other lecturers. They would have had him down as a ‘shambles’ in personal organisation, ‘untidy’ to a degree, simply ‘chaotic’. The chain rattled, responding to each movement of his trailing leg.
He wasn’t hungry or thirsty, but it seemed an age since he had eaten the food brought him.
He had lost track of the times when it was necessary to eat and drink. Get up in the morning, in Dalston, wash, shave, do his teeth and use the toilet, then down the stairs and must have a slice of toast from old bread past its date, must have with it a smear of margarine and jam, must have coffee to wash it down. A break for lunch at work. Bells ringing, lecture rooms emptying, and sandwiches, rolls or instant soup in the staff room, must have something or all known forms of life would end. A microwave meal in the evening, or a trip to a cheap Italian, a curry house or the Afghan was a must -do, and the familiar corner seat afterwards in the pub and some pints. Down to his mother and father’s at a weekend and must have a piece of beef, pork or a leg of lamb for lunch – life couldn’t go on without it. Eddie had no watch, no sense of hours passing, no knowledge of when darkness would come beyond the boarded-up window, no hunger and no thirst.
What did he look for? He didn’t know.
Why did he look for something? There was no acceptable alternative. It wasn’t acceptable to lie back and wait for them to come with the knife.
He did the floor and the walls, smoothed them with his fingertips and used the sensitivity of his palms. Didn’t find anything. Found nothing that was of use. Only the clank of the chain kept him company. He had gone round the floor, up the walls and round the blocked window, but had found nothing.
He began again.
He made a change. He took the image of Immacolata out of his mind, as if it was a transparency slide and slotted in a projector, and replaced it with the image of his captor – the man he hated – and kept it in his mind. Like a new day starting. Was he delirious? Was he hallucinating? Was the face a fantasy? It had its use: it concentrated him.
He worked at the search, and had a refrain: he must save himself because no one else would.
The streets around the pensione were raucous, crowded, exploding with noise and movement. Lukas came through the door, which swung shut behind him. Inside there was stillness.
He was handed his key by a small man, dapper and neat.
Lukas thanked him. ‘You’re Giuseppe?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘You’re the day manager?’ Lukas wore his best smile. ‘And it’s night. I thought I’d see you in the morning.’
‘Better at night… and my friend’s baby has a colic so…’ The man shrugged. Lukas recognised the conspiracy. He had asked, on leaving that morning and handing over his key – briefly but not furtively – to meet the next day. He hadn’t expected the duty rosters to be juggled. The man flashed his eyes across the darkened hall, looked briefly, but fast and comprehensively, for an eavesdropper, but the bar was empty, the breakfast room deserted and in shadow. ‘I took my friend’s shift. You are, sir?’
Lukas did a droll grin. ‘I am who my passport says I am.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Truth was, end of a long day, Lukas could not have remembered with certainty which passport he had used when he checked in. It wasn’t that he was difficult, secretive, covert – he just couldn’t remember which goddam passport he’d had, and thought that age crept up on him, stabbed him in the back.
‘It was a Canadian passport, sir,’ the day manager said, impassive.
From under the reception desk, a bottle was produced, with a couple of plastic beakers, and measures were poured. Lukas saw the shake in the day manager’s hand. He didn’t offer money. Might, but later. The best intelligence, in Lukas’s experience, was not bought.
‘It’s about the boy.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I would have talked to you this morning, but you had breakfasts, check-outs, the Dutch complaining about the hot water…’
Still dry: ‘I had the New Zealanders who wanted a reservation in Sorrento for two nights and the Greek couple had fucked – excuse me, sir – till four in the morning, my friend told me, and broke the bed. They want a replacement not repair.’
‘It’s about the boy.’
‘I understood that, sir. Forgive me, sir. The world comes across my lobby, dresses in many ways and has many ages, many disguises. You’re not a tourist. You have no map and no book, and do not ask directions to the Palazzo Reale, the Castel dell’Ovo or the Teatro San Carlo, and no businessman stays here. I understand, sir.’
‘We have to trust each other.’
‘I expected you – someone. I made a telephone call. Perhaps I regret it. I realised afterwards there would be consequences. Someone would come. It is a city where humble people – myself – do not seek attention. I have to trust you… or I walk off the beach and into the sea.’
‘You have my word,’ Lukas said. His right hand took the day manager’s, his left lifted the beaker and brushed it against the other’s. He held the hand while he sipped bad brandy. He respected informants – many did not. The Brits, he knew, had put up bureaucratic barricades to block entry to Iraqi collaborators. They were lonely and unloved by most handlers, seldom thanked for the risk taken. He knew it from the FBI days. Lukas would have thought that a few hundred euros palmed across the desk would have insulted the integrity of the day manager. He did good sincerity when he guaranteed his word – and meant it. Many he had known, attached to Task Force 145 out at Anaconda in the Balad base, who did a year’s Iraq duty, had handled agents, milked their udders dry, then cut them adrift. Lukas had little sentiment, but he appreciated that agents who volunteered help were vulnerable – like the day manager. ‘My word is good.’