He was on his side.
His wrists were fastened together behind his back, held with a plastic stay that had been pulled tight and cut into the skin, but with so much pain elsewhere that was a small matter and he ignored it. His ankles had new manacles. He was on his side and had been since they had dumped him. He had been able to lift his knees into his stomach, twist his shoulder and chest towards them, drop his head and shorten his neck, and he had kept his eyes tight shut. Eddie knew he was condemned. They had not hooded him. It seemed unimportant to them that he saw their faces. One was contorted in rage and had new scars across one cheek. He had kicked and punched hard. One had laughed each time he had kicked and punched, and had the blood on his T-shirt. Eddie knew a name. He had heard the one whose testicles he had kneed call another Salvatore. Again, it had not seemed important to them that a name had been used within his earshot. It was confirmation that he was condemned. The one they called Salvatore was the man who had taken him in the via Forcella, who had kicked him before, who seemed to have a slack, irresolute mouth and vacant, distant eyes.
Between the first beating and the second – the one from Salvatore and the one from the man with the scarred face – he had almost called out to Immacolata to end it for him, back off, quit, refuse. He had slid into weakness, but he had ditched it in the gap between the second and third beatings. He had thought of little between the third and fourth, nothing coherent. After the fourth, now, he had no thought of anything beyond survival for the next five or ten minutes.
He did not have a noble, romantic or heroic thought. All gone. He existed in a vacuum, no hope and no despair, where no intellect was admitted. He was the animal in the snare or the burrow, or the treble-hooked fish unable to reach the reed bed. He did not consider a greater picture, the rule of law over the supremacy of criminality, that might govern Immacolata. Eddie thought of nothing beyond lying still and managing the pain in his ribs and the pain in his forearm, which might be broken, and the pain in his lip, which was bloody and swollen, and the pain in his eyes where the bruising had spread. His vision was through tear-wet slits. He didn’t think of his class filling a room, or the guys in the house, didn’t think any longer of Immacolata. They had nothing to do with his possible survival for the next five or ten minutes.
They hadn’t closed the door on him. He could see, through the open door, the shoes, trainers, that had kicked him and they were propped on other chairs, and he could see the fists that had punched him, which cradled cigarettes – one was wrapped in a handkerchief and the blood showed through.
The inspiration of escape was behind him.
He could see a spider. It was in the angle between the wall and the ceiling. A monster of a spider, with a fortress of close mesh around it and a food store. It moved lethargically. Eddie wondered how long it took a spider to weave a web of that extent. It was his first thought – other than survival – since the fourth beating. Who was the enemy of the spider? Who threatened it? His mind turned, cranked, on the queries and…
Salvatore had gone, was no longer in the room with the others, but the one with the shirt wound, blood in the chest from the nail, came to the door and stood there, tobacco smoke playing across his face. He was a grown man, might have been thirty. Eddie didn’t understand how a man of thirty could be as savage as a cat with a victim as helpless as a winged songbird. He didn’t have the clarity to think it through. The man watched him. Was it work for a man? The man was older than Eddie. He guarded prisoners, kicked and punched them. Maybe he might just get to kill one. Eddie shivered. Did it fucking matter whether the man had a wife he went home to sleep beside, or small children to play with at the end of a long, hard day of smoking, kicking and punching? Did he talk about kicking, punching and guarding over supper with his wife and kids? Eddie knew nothing. Did the man say to his woman that it had been a good day at work?
To think, to imagine, was all the independence left to him. Better off without them. He turned, which hurt his ribs and tried to get on to his other side so that his back was to the man, but the pain was too bad. He managed only to flop on to his back, which left him more vulnerable: his privates were unprotected. He rolled back. He was where he’d started. Better to have stayed put, better not to think and not to imagine.
There had been the one chance. He’d given it his best shot, but it hadn’t succeeded. And he was condemned, which was what Immacolata had done for him, and the certainty of it gave him a sort of peace.
Were the foot-soldiers of the Borelli clan inside the Palace of Justice?
Immacolata had been given a soft drink, iced, and now was brought down a corridor, guns in front of and behind her.
Did Salvatore, Il Pistole, have access here?
She could smell the gun oil, the chilli on their breath and the scent from their armpits.
A door was knocked at respectfully. A pause. Then it was opened and a smartly dressed woman, who might have been as old as her mother, gazed at her with the expression that was devoid of approval or criticism, then stepped aside. She was walked through an outer office. She realised now that the guns were gone. So this was the sanctum into which her father’s foot-soldiers and even Salvatore were thought unable to penetrate. An inner door was rapped on. Another pause, long enough to indicate that work must be completed, then a calclass="underline" ‘Enter.’ Of course the prosecutor had not looked up. His head was low over carpets of papers that were rumpled across the desk.
She was not asked to sit.
She realised then that this was deliberate – a casualness meant to implant in her the certainty that she was not extraordinary. There were many files on the floor and she wondered if they had been laid out to a purpose: they carried the names in heavy indelible ink of Lo Russo, Contini, Mazzarella, de Lauro, Misso and Caldarelli. It might have been done to demonstrate to Immacolata that she was a small fish, that she swam in a big sea, but she didn’t know.
He asked, ‘A good journey, Signorina?’
‘I sat in a car. It was satisfactory.’
‘I’m told your mind is made up.’
‘I said so.’
‘You will give evidence?’
‘I said I would so I will.’
‘I regret that your decision may cost the life of Eddie Deacon. I regret that.’
‘I will give evidence.’
‘And you will not, Signorina, be surprised if I seek to stiffen your resolve.’
She was told where she would be taken. She turned on her heel. It was a grander exit than had been her entry. She knew they did not trust her word.
*
Salvatore stood by a broken wardrobe. Under its plywood sides, back and doors there were dozens of cellophane-wrapped shirts. None of the packaging had been opened, none of the shirts used.
The man sat in his chair. The television played. He seemed oblivious to the movement around him.
The apartment was filled with men.
The truth came slowly to them all – to Salvatore and to the men of the Sail clan. He was Davide. He was an electrician and could be relied upon to fix a broken fusebox, to route power round a meter box and bypass it. He would come at any time, was so helpful. He was a man of routine and went to the city centre, down the long hill, on the bus every week and would mutter to any who listened that he thought, that week, he needed a new shirt. He was a man who polished the window behind his chair, which fronted on to the walkway. When he had been ordered to stand, there had been a secreted mirror in his chair, like a woman kept in her handbag to check her eye makeup or lipstick. He was almost unique in the great block in that he had allowed a fugitive to enter his apartment. Either his main door had been unlocked, or he had seen the fugitive and decided to aid him. Nothing fitted. Only suspicion meshed.