He went briskly down the slight hill that was via Forcella. A church door, on his right, opened and he saw a young priest, but their eyes did not meet. The girl was no longer in front of him, and the artist’s grandchild, an operation and a cat’s ailment were ditched from his mind. He was focused. There had been kids at the top of the street and he had seen them stare at him, comatose. It was why he had come at that time, before the street’s awakening.
He imagined how it had been. Eddie Deacon would have come down the street, walked on the hard cobblestones, but later in the morning, kids would have followed him. He wouldn’t have known where he was going, would have stood out as a stranger. He saw the fish stall.
There was a door, the paint flaking off, and immediately beyond it a man was laying out plastic trays and polystyrene boxes, then shovelling ice from a big rubbish bin. There was a van behind him with the rear doors open. Lukas slowed. Not difficult to anticipate the sequence. The ice went on to the trays and into the boxes. The fish were brought from the back of the van and laid out without order, and a car hooted for the van to move. Impatience built. A brief argument followed, the two drivers. All predictable. The van driver slammed his rear doors, gave a finger to the car driver, then pulled away. The man on the stall began to place his fish in the correct trays and boxes. Lukas went forward.
‘Excuse me… it is important for me to meet you. You’re Tomasso?’ When he needed it, he had good enough Italian.
A nod of agreement. A wild look past Lukas’s shoulders, suspicion and anxiety. Sour: ‘If I am?’
‘Please, keep working, and I’m examining your fish. It’s natural. The swordfish is magnificent.’
Wary of an outsider: ‘It was caught yesterday, brought in today. I think it is thirty kilos.’
‘I’ll take it. Tomasso, please listen to me. I am here now, I’ll leave with the fish. I won’t be back. I have come to you to save a man’s life…’
He saw Tomasso flinch. He had nowhere to go. He would have realised that setting out his catch, brought from the market, and preparing for a day’s trading was explicable and that an early-bird customer – even a stranger – was also explicable. He couldn’t run, shout or protest without attracting attention.
‘I’ll have the swordfish, but show me the mullet too. You tried to help the boy, Tomasso. You reported what you’d seen. You’ll never see me again, I promise. When I go, your involvement ceases. All I work for is the safety of the boy and his freedom. Tell me.’
A low voice, guttural, perhaps coarsened by years of nicotine: ‘He saw Carmine and Anna Borelli. He was English, an outsider. I do not know why.’
‘To find Immacolata.’
‘They call her the whore. Everybody in via Forcella now calls her the whore. Before, they called her Signorina Immacolata and she could have anything, everything. I do not know why he came.’
‘To find her.’
‘They would kill me.’
‘It’s to save his life.’
‘I, too, have a family.’
‘Tell me, and I’m gone. I’ll never come back.’
The trays were filled, the fish sorted, the water spray turned on, the scales were set up and the cash tin was opened. The man, Tomasso, looked Lukas straight in the eye. ‘The price for the swordfish is a hundred and fifty euros. The boy stayed upstairs in the Borelli apartment, with the old bitch who is Anna. Carmine came down and sent a message and then he went back. I saw him at the window several times. I regret, sir, that I cannot do a better price for the fish. It is rare. The van arrived and the driver waited, and Salvatore came here, to where you stand. Salvatore is called Il Pistole and he is the assassin of the clan Borelli. Do you follow me?’
‘I do.’
‘You pay me a hundred and fifty euros for the fish, and the old bitch takes fifty euros. They screw me in the market and on the stall. I apologise for the price. I tried to warn the boy with my eyes. He did not react quickly. You say he came to Naples to find Immacolata?’
‘Yes.’
‘He must have believed he was going to her. He looked very happy. Perhaps that is why, when I warned him with my eyes, he was slow. Salvatore put him in the vehicle. Salvatore is the killer, has killed more than he has years. Salvatore took him.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Salvatore would kill me, and would kill the person at the pensione, would kill anyone. It cooks well, the fish. He looked a nice boy.’
Lukas paid him for the fish, and it was wrapped in newspaper and plastic. Blood oozed from where it had been gutted and from the gills. The tail stuck out behind Lukas, the sword in front of him. His promise to Tomasso, a fish-seller and frightened, with reason to fear, was meaningless, so the guarantees had been sculpted with care. Those pledges of anonymity, handed out with the carelessness of jelly babies and chewing-gum, had no value.
He carried the fish out of the street, hoisted on his shoulder, and never looked back. Lukas thought the day had started well.
Rossi’s alarm woke him. He blundered towards the bathroom, showered, shaved and dressed fast. He came into the living room. It was a few minutes past seven and the sunlight stormed through the blinds. He opened them, illuminating Orecchia, and started to whistle a tune popular in the far south, then went to Orecchia and slapped his face gently.
Orecchia jerked up, and groped for the holster under his arm, then saw the grinning Rossi.
Rossi went to the kitchen, switched on the electric kettle and took a carton of juice from the refrigerator. What they had in common, the two men from the Servizio Centrale Protezione, was a love of tea, exported in tins from England; they started each day with a mug, but Rossi also had juice. He called from the kitchen, with the mock-respect of a courtier, and asked if she, the important one, had yet made an appearance. How could Orecchia have known? He’d been asleep. He hadn’t heard her, or been woken by the water system. It was agreed that she was not yet up.
Rossi said, as the kettle boiled, ‘She’s usually washed and dressed by now.’
Perhaps because he was irritated at having been discovered asleep on his watch, Orecchia snapped, ‘Today she isn’t. Today she sleeps.’
‘I only said it was unusual.’
Rossi went down to the ground-floor hall, collected the newspaper from the front gate and came back up. He heard Orecchia in the bathroom, poured the tea, took him a mug, put the rolls into the oven and switched on the television for the breakfast news: more killings in Iraq, a bigger bomb in Afghanistan, instability in the currency markets, defections from the ruling coalition… Time passed.
Orecchia was dressed and smelled good, had used the Hugo Boss stuff. Rossi made a show of recognising it and teased his colleague. They had worked together many times. They had been on a detail that had done a Cosa Nostra killer, and twice had done the escort and security on an ’Ndrangheta bagman. They had been with the collaborator from the Misso clan in Naples, and with a Triad from the Chinese community in Genoa. They knew each other, were regarded by their superiors as of exceptional competence and… Together they had the thought. Rossi, extraordinary for a man who had been with the Guardia di Finanza before transferring to the SCP, could call upon almost poetic imagery. He thought of a wave on its way from the horizon, not yet seen, then closer and noticed for its ripple. Closer still, it seemed to cry that catastrophe approached, broke upon them and swallowed them. They were choking. He was in the spume and under the green darkness of the water, Orecchia too.