Lukas said, droll, ‘If there’s a restaurant the guys use, maybe they’d do us the favour of cooking it. My news is useful. I look at you, friend, and say to myself that yours is between disaster and catastrophe. Get it over with.’
‘We have lost the girl.’
He saw the grin wiped off Lukas’s face. ‘What did she take?’
‘Her bag, money, her ID. She went early and-’
‘What clothes?’ He used Italian now, as if the pretended ignorance of the language was no longer important.
Castrolami said he didn’t know of any.
‘Did she take knickers and a spare bra?’
Castrolami said he didn’t know.
‘Just an opinion, and humbly put. I know very little of women, enough to fill the back of a postage stamp, but I doubt they travel far without next-to-the-skin necessities. Think about it. Each item you’ve spoken of, however small, it’ll be there – usually is. I make, of course, only a suggestion. It might be worth thinking about the little things.’
Castrolami looked sharply at him, wondered if he was mocked – realised he wasn’t. He thought he saw honesty in Lukas’s face. He couldn’t criticise a man who had confessed to failure with women. After all, he had no medals in relationships. He turned behind him, poked a finger at the chest of a man from the ROS, perhaps his favourite in the unit. The guy had unevenly cut hair that fell to his shoulders, and his cheeks, jaw and upper lip were painted with stubble. He told the man to take the fish, and its spike, to Donato at the restaurant on the piazza Gesu Nuovo, book a table for a dozen that evening, or whenever cause for rejoicing was justified, and ask for the beast to be prepared for cooking. The big man heaved it off the table and carried it out, but the stink stayed.
‘What was your news, Lukas?’
He was told, and instructed the collator on action, if any. He didn’t rate what he’d learned against the importance of the girl having gone, but he took the suggestion given him, and went back outside to pace, think and scratch at his memory. It had started as a bad day and Castrolami thought it had the potential to get worse.
Twin celebrations grew in pitch. A senior police officer took a call in his car and was heard by his driver to say, ‘They’ve lost her? Tell me again… Incredible… If they’ve lost her, can they hold the mother, the brothers? Will the case against the Borelli clan collapse?… Incredible…’
The driver, an elderly policeman with little in his life to create excitement, and little to augment his status, told a colleague that Immacolata Borelli was loose on the streets. The colleague told a cousin who ran a quality furniture chain. The cousin, meeting a young man who sought to bring in a comprehensive contract for the refurnishing of an apartment in the bank section of the city, repeated the story – and the young man was Massimo, nephew of the flamboyant Umberto. Word rushed along certain selected channels that Immacolata Borelli had fled protective custody. From the lawyer’s office, news of it was inside the gates of Poggioreale within an hour, and within an hour and a half it would be behind the walls of the Posilippo gaol at the far end of the Gulf. At both prisons the foot-soldiers offered congratulations, which were received by Gabriella Borelli, and by Giovanni and Silvio Borelli. Within two hours, the message had infiltrated the top-security prison on the eastern outskirts of London, HMP Belmarsh. Men and women crowded around the mother and her sons. It was felt that power had been restored, an old order retained.
Davide, the agent who was Delta465/Foxtrot, saw more movement on the walkway that early morning, and recognised the clothing as that worn by a blindfolded man. He noted the presence, and his memory would be backed by the tapes. He did not himself sift and evaluate what he saw. It was for his handlers to make definitions of priority.
*
Salvatore held the torch. He alone went into the chamber. Two men, neither known to him, held back and guarded the door. More were on the walkway. He couldn’t complain of the number of men allocated, but had thought, still thought, the price to be exacted from Carmine Borelli was cruel. The door was left ajar behind him. He was good, the boy, disciplined. He had the hood over his upper face and eyes, and seemed grateful when told food had been brought. It was fruit, some cold pasta, coffee in a plastic cup, more cheese and water. He bent and took the boy’s ankle in his hands. The leg kicked clear, but he stayed at the task and checked that the chain did not cut deep. He thought it a gesture of kindness: he was not familiar with compassion, could not have explained why he showed it, here, now. The boy had his head ducked down and did not respond. He let his hand brush the boy’s arm, only a slight touch, and the boy shrank from him, his fist clenched.
Since he had been eleven or twelve, people had recoiled from close contact with him – other children, women, old men and men in their prime had backed away. His reputation now was that of a killer – no conscience, no mercy, no love. Salvatore needed that reputation to survive in Naples – but he did not think it important that a foreigner, an outsider, a stranger, should have that fear of him – but he would still, of course, cut off the boy’s ear, finger or penis. There were confusions in the mind of Il Pistole. He did not love and did not attract it. The nearest he knew of ecstasy was not in laughter with a friend, or in the penetration of a girl. It was when he looked deep into the eyes of a man he would kill and saw the spreading terror. It was the greatest thrill in Salvatore’s life. He didn’t know how he would go to his own death, but swore to anybody who needed to be told that he would not be taken alive, locked away and left to rot in Novara, Ascoli or Rebibbia: he would not be captured, arrested, and if there was a hallucinating nightmare in his life, it was the moment of failure, capture, and the parade past the camera flashes, and of being merely a number on a landing of a cell block. He did not hate the boy. What was more difficult for Salvatore: he wasn’t indifferent to him either. Confusing.
‘What is your name?’
‘My name is Eddie.’
‘What is that, Eddie?’
‘It’s not Eduardo. It’s Edmondo, but I’m called Eddie. That’s my name.’
The hood masked most of the face, but the mouth was good, hair grew clumsily around it and the skin was clear. Salvatore despised men who had acne and pimples. The replies were hesitant, soft-spoken. He saw that the bucket had not been used, and that only part of the food was eaten.
‘You have not finished the food.’
‘No.’
‘I brought food for you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But you do not eat it.’
‘I apologise that I did not eat the food you very kindly brought me.’
‘All right – I have brought more food and more water.’
‘Thank you.’
Was the gratitude sincere? Always, Salvatore craved to know what people thought of his character, his actions. So difficult to know with certainty… Was he generous? Was he intelligent? Was he handsome? Was he the best company, the best in bed, the best enforcer in all Naples? He didn’t know who could tell him. He had been thanked for the food and had received an apology, but he couldn’t judge sincerity from a dropped, hooded head. He had killed men, had shot or strangled them, because they had not offered him respect.
‘You are from London.’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you do in London?’
‘I am a teacher, a language teacher.’
‘I speak English very good.’
‘Very good.’
Was that respect? He had gone into a bar in Sanita and a man had spat on the floor, just in front of his feet, a metre from Salvatore’s shoes. That was not respect. A man, who had known his face and identity, had parked a saloon car on a street in the piazza Mercato so that Fangio’s scooter was blocked in, then had told Fangio to ‘go fuck your mother’ but his eyes had been on Salvatore. That was not respect.
‘In London you met Immacolata?’