She walked towards the river.
Around the table in the annexe, there had been no criticism of Castrolami’s long absence from his chair. Reports were brought to the collator who beavered at them, opened computer cross-files, pushed paper at the others. The psychologist drew a word profile of Salvatore, enforcer to the Borelli clan, and painted a psychopath’s portrait. Lukas put bricks in place, built contact: he murmured, never allowing his voice to intrude, to both men the hopes he harboured for the hostage’s behaviour, how Eddie Deacon should be.
Should be… combating the sense of disbelief that ‘this is actually happening, and to me’, confronting fear and holding on, however grimly, to a sense of control. He should establish a routine for himself, and learn the routine of his captors. Regrets and sentimentality should be ruled out, unacceptable. Talk with his guards should be kept to a minimum and attempts to ingratiate himself with them would usually be doomed; they ‘don’t like a crawler or a whiner’, Lukas had said, or a guy who hit back and antagonised; ‘he’s best staying quiet’ and should never complain. He should not be uncooperative or short-tempered, and should not compromise his integrity. Always he should be remote from the cause of the hostage-taker. When a phone rang, or more paper was brought, Lukas would back off.
‘And escape?’ the psychologist had asked. ‘Does he work towards an escape attempt?’
‘Should he, shouldn’t he?’ the collator demanded, and the men behind – the storm squad – murmured support for an answer, an opinion.
Lukas said, ‘Eddie Deacon’s a nice guy, a second-rate guy, a teacher. He’s in a bunker, a cell, probably in darkness, likely hooded. Assuming he breaks clear of restraints, chains, gets through a door, a trap, he will have no knowledge of what’s beyond. Again, assuming he gets out of the building, he doesn’t know where he is, on hostile ground. Who will help him? Escape is the measure of desperation at a last resort. Almost inevitably it will fail.’
‘You paint a black picture,’ the psychologist said.
‘His situation is black.’
‘He depends on us,’ the collator said.
‘A failed attempt arouses a reaction of extreme brutality.’
He heard footsteps stamping along a corridor, then across the operations room.
‘Usually, then, they kill.’ Lukas saw Castrolami’s entry. He questioned with his eyes, spoke the name of the girl, and the collator – as if it was his personal cross to bear – shook his head.
Castrolami lifted a phone, dialled. Lukas heard him tell a minder in Rome that he had walked twenty-four times round the piazza Dante, and had thought. Then he told the minder where to find Immacolata Borelli, bit his lip and rang off. The breath sang through his teeth, like dice rolled but not yet settled.
Gerald Seymour
The Collaborator
14
He had crossed the space, the chain dragging behind him.
He was against the door, standing, and when he pressed an ear to the crack below the upper hinge he could make out, very faint, voices and music. He couldn’t understand what was said or by whom, or distinguish what music was played.
Once the pin had come clear of the wall and the chain was free, Eddie had not stopped to consider, step by step, his actions. He had gripped the nail tighter in his fist and had crawled across the space, groping in the darkness until he reached the door. He had moved his fingers up the smooth metal sheeting nailed to the wood, then listened. He would have worried if the sounds had been more distinct.
He didn’t think he would be heard.
A glass is half fulclass="underline" the nail would enable him to break out, flee for freedom. A glass is half empty: he would fail, be mutilated, butchered, buried in secrecy and some day, some time, someone would find this place and read his name. He scratched with the nail tip in the blackness and trusted that he had fashioned the capital characters: EDDIE. Didn’t do a message, or an epistle, didn’t do an approximation of a date, didn’t make a heart and arrow and gouge ‘Immacolata’, just did his name and thought that if, some time, it was read and files were turned up, it might just be that the bastard who had him there would face some sort of retribution. He didn’t believe that to have done his name with the nail was the same as admitting defeat, accepting ultimate failure. He didn’t know whether it could be deciphered.
Eddie began to work on the lower hinge, sank down to his knees. He knew what he had to do. His dad, back in Wiltshire, had given over the inside end of the garage to shelves and boxes. Neat as a hardware-shop display, he had about every tool a man could ever want and plenty more. His mum shrugged about it, and Eddie had sort of sneered, but his dad had the tools to get the hinge off in about two minutes flat. Now Eddie didn’t sneer. He used the nail, first off, to try to open a fraction of a gap between the hinge and the metal sheet – and didn’t like to think again about a glass being half empty.
And didn’t like to think about whether his name could be read or was just the scratching of an imbecile.
Minutiae dominated Eddie Deacon’s existence. Top of the list was the depth that the nail tip could go down behind the hinge bar, starting at two millimetres, estimate, and needing to open right out so that it could go down more than ten, and likely twenty. Then there were the screws to be loosened, and he had no screw-driver. Any time before he had been ‘lucky’ and had caught that flight, ‘lucky’ again and had caught the train from Rome Eddie Deacon would have said, ‘Fuck it,’ or ‘No can do,’ and walked away from the problem. Would have said, before, that Eddie Deacon did not take off hinges, the lower one first, without the necessary tools. He would have said that it was impossible to dislodge two old hinges, both held in with likely rusted screws, without a cordless or powered drill – and he had only a single nail that was slightly bent halfway up.
He did not acknowledge ‘impossible’.
Through the focus came small solutions. He had the pin extracted from the wall as a lightweight hammer. He had a handkerchief in his pocket, dirty and disgusting, and could fold the corner and use it as a wad across the nail head to dull the hammer sound. He had the bucket – and he had the thought of the knife: he could feel, on his head, on his hands and in his privates, what the knife would cut.
He had no way of judging time.
Eddie hit the nail three or four times, then stopped, listened, let the quiet cling round him, and the darkness, then repeated, listened again, and had the nail behind the hinge bar by – his estimate – five millimetres. Double that insertion, then utilise the bucket, and he reckoned he made progress, did well and Voices, louder music, as if an internal door were opened. He scurried, hands and knees again, back towards the far wall, used his fingers to find the hole where the pin had been, jammed it home, stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket, put the nail into his right trainer against his instep. He had his back against the wall, had found the hood and slipped it on, and his knees were drawn up, his head dropped and resting on them. He waited.
Seemed a damned eternity.
Couldn’t be certain, but Eddie thought that men had come close to the door and had started a bloody conversation. He resented that, was pissed off that he’d heard them, had backed away from his work and now sat idle, wasting time and- The bolt opened – which told him, because now he listened hard for everything, that it was lightweight, and a key turned. A heavy key. The door was opened.
Through the hood he realised a torch powered against his body.
The voice was the same as before, the bastard’s voice: ‘You did not eat. Why did you not eat?’
Didn’t eat because he’d been too busy – got that, bastard? ‘I wasn’t hungry.’
‘If I bring you food you should eat it.’
‘I wasn’t hungry.’
‘Did you drink?’
He’d needed the water – hot work, dragging out a pin, in the stifling space with flaked concrete making a dustcake in his throat, and heavy work, trying to ram a nail tip behind a hinge bar. ‘Thank you, yes.’