Salvatore watched the rats from the window and saw them lap the blood of an old man who had played at being an idiot, like cats with milk.
The body lay on the concrete paving, with a crown of weeds for the shattered head, the feet between two overflowing rubbish bins.
Immacolata stepped out of the Alfa, Orecchia and Rossi on either side of her. Two more men had peeled from the police car outside the gate. The front door was open and she saw more men in the hallway. She wore dark glasses that covered most of her cheeks, with a headscarf over her hair: it was a crude disguise, would have fooled few. A man, with no intention of backing off in the face of force, the guns and the threat, watered a flowerbed in the middle of his front garden. She had been told she shouldn’t hesitate on the pavement or the path. Across the street, a couple watched the show – little else would match the arrival of an armed convoy. Orecchia had taken her arm.
She had been to the house before but it seemed an age since she had last walked up that path and gone through the front door to be greeted with the hug and the kiss of the closest friend she had known.
It was because they didn’t trust her that she had been brought here. There had been no consultation. She was a gift-wrapped parcel on a conveyor-belt. She had not spoken in the car but her mind had turned over the previous time she had been on that road out of Naples and across the flat inland plain that stretched to Nola. Then Silvio had driven. Then there had not been a machine pistol on the seat, gas grenades and a vest. She could not have said, tracing that same route, how many days, hours, nights it had been since Silvio had driven her to Nola. The days and nights since had concertinaed, and the spread of time no longer had meaning for her. She couldn’t have said how long it had been since she had run from the basilica, how long since she had paid fifty euros for a ten-euro posy, how long since the heel of her shoe had broken, her clothes had been torn and she had lain on the ground, assaulted and abused. She didn’t know.
She followed Orecchia into the hall. Castrolami was there. He seemed to tower in the place, to minimise it. On the floor, near to his feet, there were two neat piles of female clothing at hip height. Across the hallway there were three black plastic sacks, filled and knotted at the neck. She realised her visit had interrupted a schedule. One of the two piles was of clothes for early spring, late autumn and winter, and she recognised the anorak Marianna had worn on a January day, down on the via Partenope, when they had walked and done the farewells. The next day Immacolata had gone to London. The other pile was of late-spring clothes, which would have lasted through summer and early autumn, and at the top of the heap lay the faded T-shirt with the image of Che that had been a favourite of Marianna. She had arrived, which meant the disposal of her friend’s clothes was delayed. She assumed the plastic bags would go to a rubbish tip, and that the heaps had been sorted carefully and would be taken to a charity – perhaps one overseen by the nuns at the basilica. She could remember her friend in the yellow anorak with the black underarm panels and the North Face logo, and in the guerrilla T-shirt.
Castrolami said, not dropping his voice, seeming not to care if he was overheard, ‘At the palace the decision was taken to provide security for the family as soon as rumour would have reported your collaboration, Signorina. It was thought that the parents of your friend were at risk when you came into our custody, as leverage. Then the boy, your one-time lover, made himself available to them and the threat against the parents was – briefly – reduced. We anticipate that the boy will be murdered. You have not made a public announcement that you are withdrawing your potential testimony and the deadline expires in a few hours. If we had a good line into the kidnap situation we would be able to delay and protract the process. We do not. We cannot rescue him because we don’t know where he is held. He will be murdered very soon, we anticipate tomorrow, unless we can stall and deceive. Then they – the Borelli family – will need more leverage. Possibly they will come here for it. The lives of these people are doubly ruined, Signorina. They have lost their daughter, poisoned by toxic greed, and they should – if they have any sense – pack up, sell their home, leave their employment and move away. They would then have left behind the grave of their daughter, and to visit it they would require an armed escort.’
‘Will they run?’ she asked.
‘For them to answer,’ was his curt response. ‘There is a consequence for your actions. You should know that. If they were to stay, we couldn’t commit the resources for a permanent guard. They would be alone. The support of their neighbours would be temporary and soon they would be alone. Every day they must look over their shoulders and try to spot the killer stalking them. Quite soon, at their places of work, Human Resources will say, “It’s not personal but you bring danger to your colleagues, and it’s with great regret that we must ask you to leave. We must think of the company’s welfare, the school’s, the safety of colleagues and pupils.” If they stay they won’t be forgotten. They’re marked. They’re a permanent way of hurting you. It’s the world in which we live.’
‘Why do I have to see them?’
‘So that you can never say you didn’t know the consequences of your actions. And when the boy is dead and we’re given the body, I’ll drive you to the mortuary – perhaps the small one at the Incurables – so that you can look into his face and see what they’ve done to him. You’ll never be allowed to say you didn’t know.’
She stepped out. She pushed past him. She knew the layout of the house and went right, through a door that bypassed the kitchen entrance, then out through the room where the computer was that Luigi Rossetti used to prepare the modules of his classes for his pupils, and where Marianna had done work she brought home from her college course. The doors were wide open and there was a patio outside, with chairs and a table, and wire mesh on which a vine grew, throwing shade.
Beside that door there was a large cardboard box, whose top flaps had not been folded down so she could see textbooks – the same she had used – and ring binders. She thought they had eradicated their daughter from the home. How long was it? She had kept no track of time, but it might have been a week.
They were sitting down. The garden stretched away, neat and small, and a policeman stood at the far end with a machine pistol slung on his neck from a webbing strap. She saw the hands that had snatched at her clothing, the feet that had kicked her and the mouths that had torn away her dignity. Neither stood and neither waved her to a chair. Nothing, Immacolata thought, is forgiven.
Marianna’s father, Luigi, said, ‘We didn’t want you to come, but they insisted. There is no welcome.’
Marianna’s mother, Maria, said, ‘There is a boy, nineteen, admitted this week to the ospedale. He has followed Marianna to the Santa Maria della Pieta. He may now be in the same bed, but certainly in the same ward, and he has the same symptoms. I don’t know the family but Luigi taught him for a year. It’s said he’ll die the day after tomorrow.’
Luigi said, ‘We haven’t visited the family – we didn’t want to intrude on the crisis afflicting them.’
Maria said, ‘There were others before Marianna. There will be others after the boy.’
‘Will you go?’ she blurted.