Killing Ground

Chapter Twelve

It doesn't matter what it says.' The detective superintendent swung his chair so that he faced the window.

Harry Compton held the audio-cassette in his hand, then made the gesture and dropped it on the desk, onto his unread report. 'I had a hell of a drenching. I crawled through the garden.'

'What do you want, a medal? We are not playing at Scouts.'

Harry Compton had come to work bubbling in a froth of personal satisfaction. Had left the kit, smeared in dried mud, outside the locked door of Stores section. Up to his desk in the open-plan area, first one in apart from Miss Frobisher, and she too must have realized that a jackpot had been won because he had the success gleam in his eye, and she had put the kettle on and made him a mug of her own particular coffee, which was not the muck out of the vending machine in the corridor. He had listened to the tape, twice. Gone through the last Oasis track, the clean conversation, the start of the first Elton John track. He had typed his report, transcribed the tape, underlined in red the references to Roberto Calvi and then sat on his hands while the office filled and waited for his detective superintendent to get to work.

'What I am trying to say, Roberto Calvi is not a name that trips off the tongues of every pair of business people sitting down for a little chat on how to make a good buck.'

'You don't cop on quick, do you?'

The detective superintendent was searching his drawer and coming up with his cigarette packet. About two days in every five, it was said, the detective superintendent tried to pack in his smoking, and the intention usually lasted about an hour or up to Ihe first of the morning's crises. But two days out of five he could be foul-tempered and sarcastic with it.

'I used to think, Harry, you were quite bright, a clever little sod. Right now I reckon you're dumb. Hear me, and I'll do it slowly. This is politics. We stumbled into something, we pushed it a bit, took it to the bosses, and they've claimed it as their own.

That is politics. The politics are between us, way above me, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, way above their London man. It's good politics for us to have a stick to belt the DEA with because that's the route to trading. We make a noise, a high-level noise, we promise to make their life difficult. And to shut us up we get something in return – could be equipment, could be priority on an investigation in their back yard, could be computer access or something from their phone-tap capability, anything – that is politics. Politics are on the high ground, you and I are in the gutter. Don't make bloody faces, Harry, don't bloody sulk. While you were doing the gardening down in Surrey last night, and hunting medals, the commander had the AC (SO) beating his ears for half an hour. Up above the clouds they see this as good politics and your suggestion would screw those politics, ditch the chance of trading lor something in return. We play

"civilized". Your suggestion, lift this Ruggerio man, would blow apart the DEA's insertion of that young woman – what's her bloody name?'

'Miss Charlotte Eunice Parsons. Sorry you'd forgotten.'

'Can't help being clever, can you? That young woman's insertion into a mafia family is now politics.'

Harry Compton flared. 'She was pressured.'

'She's between a rock and a hard place. She's for bartering for political advantage.

She's about as irrelevant as an individual as bloody Giles Blake and bloody Ruggerio.'

The cigarette smoke hung between them. The noise of the traffic below wafted through the window. He was flattened. Harry Compton reached forward and picked off the desk his report and his audio-cassette.

'I'm sorry, Harry.' The detective superintendent had his head down. 'I was the one who flew it high, got the kite into the wind, and fucked up. You've done well, and no thanks to me. If I authorized, here, now, what you want, quite reasonably, I'd be dead in the water. Don't think I feel good.'

'I doubt you do.'

'Give that bugger in Rome, idle sod, another belt, then get yourself down to Devon like I told you.'

'Thank you.'

'I want to bury those arrogant bastards, poaching from our patch, so get me a profile on Miss Charlotte Eunice Parsons… and don't make waves that splash me.'

'Charley? Where are you, Charley?'

She lay on the sunbed. The warmth played on her body. She lay on her back and she splayed out her legs so that the sun's heat was on her thighs. Her eyes were closed, but she could hear the scrape of the brush used by the 'lechie' on a path further down the garden. Each time that the motion of the brush was silenced she assumed that he gazed at her. She had looked in the dictionary that morning, after coming back from the school and the kindergarten, to find the word. The word was libertino. That was too good a word, in translation, for a lecher, foul old bastard with his peering eyes…

The watch was on her wrist. The watch would not leave her wrist, not when she was in the bath or the shower, not when she was in the sea. The white ring on her wrist, under the watch, would not be touched by the sun. But the rest of her body, too damn right, that would get the sun…

She had rung Benny that morning from a pay-phone in a bar facing onto the piazza, after she had dropped the children at school and kindergarten, and heard his voice that was distant and unsure, and gushed her thanks for the day in the countryside, and resurrected the invitation for him to guide her around the duomo and the Quattro Canti and the Cappella Palatina and the Palazzo Sclafani. She'd bullied him and told him when she could next be in

Palermo. She wanted the sun to have been on her, on all of her body except for her wrist, when she went into Palermo to see Benny. God, he wasn't much, didn't have much other than a dream, was all that was on offer.

She hadn't thought, not when she had sat on the cliff with Axel Moen, not when she had stood beside the river with Axel Moen in Rome, not on the train, not in Mondello, not in the villa, that the waiting would be so bloody hard. And it was worse now, the waiting, because she had seen the helicopter and the men with the guns, seen the response of Axel Moen to the pressing of the panic button. So bloody hard to wait. She opened her eyes, blinked at the brightness. The gardener was some fifteen paces from her and used the brush with a desultory and bored motion, and he looked away when she caught his glance. She rolled over onto her stomach. She twisted her hands over her back and unfastened the straps of the bikini top. She had never thought the waiting would be so bloody hard. Maybe it would all be waiting, maybe it would never happen, maybe it was just the illusion of Axel Moen. God, it was eating at her, the waiting.

'Here, Angela. I'm here.'

She pushed herself up and the bikini top fell away. Her elbows took her weight. She could not see the gardener, but away behind I he bushes there was the scrape of his brush. Angela came from the patio. She saw Angela's face, distracted, and there was a tautness. Angela had seen her.

The lips pursed, the frown dug deeper. 'I don't think, Charley, that is suitable.'

Bloody hell, but Charley grinned. 'You used to.'

Snapped. 'That was Civitaveccia, that was not Palermo. Please make yourself decent.'

Did she want to talk about it? Was now the time to press it? Would there be tears?

The lie came first. Each day she thought that Angela was more distanced from her. It was not in the interest of the lie to flush out the feelings of Angela Ruggerio, poor bitch.

Charley acted the lie, the chastened girl, and slipped her arms through the straps of the bikini and wriggled to fasten the clasp. Angela held a small piece of paper in her fingers, and her purse, and the fingers moved restless and wretched. It was all going to come, one day. Whether the lie was served or not, the confidences would gush and the tears would follow. Charley sat up.

She said cheerfully, 'Expect you're right.'

'I have a list for the shops.'

'Right, I'll do it when I get the children.'

'For now, Charley.'

It was hell's hot out there. It was all right in the heat lying nine-tenths stripped, but it was bloody hot to be traipsing back down the hill, and in two hours she would be going to get the children. But she lived the lie.

'No problem.'

Charley stood. Gently she took the list for the shopping from Angela's fidgeting fingers. A long list, a list for a meal for guests, not for a meal around the table in the kitchen where they ate when Peppino was away. She scanned it – oils, sauces, vegetables for a salad and vegetables for cooking and meat, mineral water, wine, cheese and fruit.

As if Angela pleaded with her. 'You don't tell Peppino that I forgot, you don't tell him

…'

'Of course not.' She tried to smile comfort.

'Am I pathetic to you?'

'Don't be daft.' She didn't want the tears, didn't want the confidences. 'So how many are coming?'

'It is tomorrow the birthday of Peppino's father. It is the eighty-fourth birthday tomorrow of Peppino's father. Peppino's father and his mother. Did I tell you that Peppino's father and mother lived near to Palermo?' Her voice was brittle, slashing.

'They are peasants, they are ignorant, they are not educated, but Peppino would want them fed well, and I forgot.'

'Peppino, he won't be here-'

'Back this evening, hurrying back from wherever.' A sneer flickered the muscles at her mouth. 'Back because it is the birthday of his father, which I forgot.'

Charley interrupted briskly, 'So the children, yes? You and Peppino, yes? His parents?

Me?'

'Of course, you live with us, of course you are there.'

Charley smiled. 'That's for four, six, and me, which makes seven. I'll go and get changed.'

She took the list and the purse. She headed for the patio.

'For eight – it is possible that someone else comes/ Angela said, from behind Charley.

'But I do not think I would be told.'

Charley stopped. She didn't turn. She thought that if she turned, Angela Ruggerio might see the brightness in her eyes. Charley said, 'Eight, fine, I'll buy for eight. I'll just chuck on a skirt and a T-shirt.'

Every time before he had ridden in the lead car, and sometimes he was given the keys to drive the lead car. But the maresciallo had promised that he was watched, as a probationer, and from their keen watching they would have seen his tiredness. Pasquale had been told to drive the chase car. He could not blame the tiredness on the baby, or on the soft and rhythmic snoring of his wife beside him, the tiredness was from the nightmare that had stayed with him through the night.

The route chosen by the maresciallo for the journey between the Palazzo di Giustizia and Ucciardione Prison took them around the sharp bends of the Piazza San Francesca di Paoli, onto Via Mariano Stabile, from Mariano Stabile a sharp left for Via Roma and then Piazza Sturzo, then straight on before the final right turn into Via della Croci, which would run them the last stretch to the gates of Ucciardione. The route of every journey in the city was decided first by the maresciallo, who poured over the street maps each morning, who badgered Tardelli for his day's programme and the timing of the programme. The routes chosen by the maresciallo were not communicated to a central switchboard for fear of betrayal or interception. Now, one thing for Pasquale to drive the lead car,. mother thing for him to take the chase car and have his speed and cornering and acceleration and braking determined by the car in front. He was stressed.

He did not have the traffic opening ahead of him in response to the blue lamp and the siren wail, he had rear brake lights and the winking indicator to guide him, and his horizon was the back of Tardelli's head, and the sun was in his eyes.

Because they had teased and mocked him, he had slept falteringly with the nightmare. livery street they went down, every piazza they crossed, was parked up. Cars and vans and motorcycles were at the side of every street and piazza, half on the tarmacadam and half on the pavings. 'Why a bomb? Why a huge explosion? Why a jeweller's shop?' All through the night, twisting and tossing in his bed beside his sleeping wife, near his sleeping baby, the nightmare had been of parked cars and parked vans and parked motorcycles. They could wait for a day or a week or a month, and they would know the inevitability that the lead car and the chase car must travel between the Palazzo di Giustizia and Ucciardione Prison, they could wait and watch a particular route and know the options for the journey were limited, and they could hold the detonator switch. And after the nightmare, after he had showered and shaved, after he had sat at the table in the kitchen while his wife fed their baby, he had seen on the television the picture of an armour-reinforced Mercedes, burned out and on its side, a death cage.

The sun was in his eyes, the tiredness was in his mind. It was the skill of a driver of a chase car that he should always anticipate the speed and cornering and acceleration and braking of the lead car. Pasquale did not see, in front of the lead car, the woman push her baby buggy out from the pavement and into the road. The junction of Via Carini and Via Archimede, parked cars and vans and motorcycles. The brake lights of the lead car blazed. At Pasquale's horizon, the head of Tardelli jerked forward. The man beside him swore, let loose his machine-gun, flung his hands forward to brace himself.

Pasquale stamped the brakes. Pasquale swerved as the tail of the lead car seemed to leap back at him. The sun was brilliant in his eyes.

The woman with the baby buggy was back on the pavement, arms up and shouting.

The lead car was surging away. Pasquale had locked the wheels, was skidding. The siren screamed above him. He hit the lamppost. He was in shock and dazed. The woman was thrusting the baby buggy towards him, stationary against the lamppost, yelling in hysteria. The crowd was looming around him, hostile and aggressive. He threw the reverse. He clattered into something, didn't bother to look behind him. He pulled forward and nudged the crowd aside, and a man spat at his windscreen. He accelerated. Ahead was the open road. He could not see the light on the roof of the lead car, he could not hear the siren of the lead car.

Pasquale, in his tiredness, with the sun in his eyes, could have wept.

The man beside him spoke with a patronizing calmness into the radio.

'No, no, no, no ambush, no emergency, no panic. Yes, that's the problem, the idiot can't drive. The engine sounds like shit, a lamppost, we'll get there. If I have to rope the idiot up and make him pull it, we'll get there. Over, out.'

He tried to go faster, but the bumper bar was loosened and scraping the road. When they reached the gates of Ucciardione, as the gates were opened by the police, Pasquale could see two of the crew of the lead car, and they were clapping him home, cheering their applause, laughing at him.

'I have to know more.'

Desperation. 'I don't know more.'

'Then we do not do business.'

Pleading. 'I told you what I knew, everything.'

'It is a disappointment to me, which means there will be a disappointment for you.'

Snivelling. 'Everything I knew I told you, and you promised…'

The magistrate scratched the scalp under his thick grey hair, and then he swung his spectacles from his face and took the arms of the spectacles, where they would fit over his ears, into his mouth. He chewed the plastic. It was his tactic. The tactic was to permit the silence to cling in the interview room. The prisoner was a criminal killer, but Tardelli, in truth, felt some slight sympathy for the wretch. The wretch had crossed over, had tried to co-operate, hut with inadequate information. The next day was the tenth day, and without information of substance he would not be justified in requesting an extension of the surveillance operation. The wretch tried to barter other names, other crimes, but they were not of interest to the magistrate.

'You have to tell me more about Mario Ruggerio and the Capo district.'

' I was told he used the bar. I was told he had the stomach pain. That is all.'

'Not enough. Where did he stay?'

'I don't know.'

'The bar is sold, new owner. The old owner, conveniently, has died. I have no one to ask but you. How often did he go?'

'I don't know.'

'What did he wear?'

'I don't know.'

'Who was he with?'

'I don't know.'

The magistrate laid his spectacles carefully back on the table. The door opened quietly and closed quietly. He shut the file that he had studied and lifted his briefcase from the floor and placed the file in it. The youngest of his ragazzi, Pasquale, stood by the door. There were many approaches, differing tactics, that he employed when questioning Men of Honour. He could be stern or gentle, contemptuous or respectful.

He could make them believe they were integral to an investigation or that they were irrelevant rubbish. He clicked the catch on his briefcase.

He said, uninterested, 'You see, my friend, when you are taken back to your cell you will have completed the programme of subterfuge visits to this room. Your mother, a good and devout woman, I am certain, requested that I see you, and I obliged her. Not again because I am a busy man. Let me explain to you the consequences of your lack of detailed knowledge about Mario Ruggerio and your failure to gain protection status.

There will be someone, I assure you, on the landing of your cell who will know that three times you have been taken to the medical unit. There will also, I assure you, be someone in a different block who, from a high window, will have seen me arrive here three times. Someone will have seen your movements, and someone will have seen my movements. You have to hope those people do not meet, do not talk, do not compare what each has seen. But there is much talk in a place such as this, many meetings. I see that you will have a visit from your wife this afternoon, later. I suggest you talk to your wife, to the mother of your children, and tell her of our meetings, because I believe she might have the possibility of persuading you to remember more. Try hard to remember.'

The prisoner was taken out.

The magistrate said, 'The problem, Pasquale, is that I must deal each day with such a man. It is possible to be desensitized, to be dragged down, to lie with them in filth. You think I am vicious, Pasquale? He won't get the protection status, but after a few days, for him to consider the depths of his memory, of his knowledge, I will transfer him to somewhere on the mainland where he is safer. When you lie in filth you become dirtied.'

He came home from the early shift. He dumped the two plastic bags on the kitchen table. His wife ironed a skirt.

Through the kitchen's open window came the noise of the tower block, music and shouting and the crying of children and the smell of drains. One more year… Perhaps a small apartment by the sea on the east of the island, near Messina or Taormina or Riposto, where La Cosa Nostra was less formidable, perhaps a bungalow with two bedrooms and a pension from the state.

She hated what he did, and she did not look up from the ironing-board.

Giancarlo poured himself a glass of juice. He drank the lemon juice that she had made. He took the bags from the table and carried them to the cupboard. There were four cardboard boxes on the floor of the cupboard, one for potatoes, one for fruit, one for green vegetables and one for lemons. Another kilo of potatoes, another kilo of apples and a kilo of oranges, another cauliflower and a half- kilo of spinach, and three more lemons. He looked down at the boxes, all close to being filled.

She hung the skirt on a wire hanger. She took a blouse from the washing basket.

He closed the door of the cupboard.

'It is finished. From tomorrow you do your own shopping.'

Giancarlo took his pistol from the shoulder holster under his lightweight jacket, and cleared it and took out the magazine. She went on with the ironing. He went to their bedroom to rest. After tomorrow there would be no more lemons for the cardboard box in the kitchen cupboard, and no more potatoes or green vegetables or fruit. He had been too long in the job of surveillance to feel a sense of failure.

Franco drove. It was an old Fiat 127, a model that was no longer in production. The bodywork was rusted, but the engine, beneath a layer of oil and grime left for casual police inspection, was finely tuned and capable of powering the car to a speed of 170 kilometres per hour. It was the right car to bring a humble and elderly priest from a country village to a home in mourning. Nothing was left to chance, everything had been prepared with care, the movement of the humble and elderly priest was the responsibility of Franco. Franco, with a day's stubble on his face and wearing a poorly fitting coat and a tie that was not quite straight against the collar of a shirt that was a centimetre too tight, drove slowly because Mario Ruggerio did not like to be thrown around in a fast car. The radio set in the dash between the knees of Franco and the priest did not play the music and talk of the RAI stations but was tuned to the extremity of the VHF band to receive warnings of military road blocks from the two cars that travelled ahead and warnings, from the car behind, of any possible suspicion of a police tail.

The sun was down now over the mountains to the west. The lights of Catania merged with the dusk.

The responsibility of moving Mario Ruggerio to the home, in mourning, of the man from Catania brought rare pride to Franco. There would be police, not in uniform, on the pavement outside the apartment block. There would be hastily rigged cameras, positioned by men dressed in the overalls of the telephone company or the electricity company, covering the front and the rear of the apartment block. The number of the Fiat 127 and its paint colouring would be noted, of course, but by the morning the car would have been resprayed and the registration plates would have been changed. A humble and elderly priest, from the country, would not be harassed by the police, not questioned or body-searched, in the aftermath of death. The pride of Franco came from his belief that the responsibility given him provided an indication, clear as mountain water, that he was now the favourite of Mario Ruggerio – not Carmine, who was an arrogant idiot, not Tano, who was a toad and blown out with self-importance. He believed that more responsibility would be given him until he stood at the right shoulder of Mario Ruggerio, undisputed as the consigliere to Mario Ruggerio. The radio stayed silent. No military road blocks on the approach to the apartment block and no tail. The bastards would be relying on the surveillance teams on the street and the remote cameras. He drove along the street, and when he started to change down through his gears he nudged Mario Ruggerio, respectfully, and pointed to the ashtray.

The humble and elderly priest stubbed out a cigarillo, coughed hard, spat into a handkerchief. He pulled up smoothly in front of the main entrance to the apartment block, where the street lights were brightest. When he was out of the car, when he would be seen by the surveillance men and by the cameras, Franco seemed to examine a scrap of paper, as if directions had been written on it, as if he were a stranger to the city, as if he merely brought a humble and elderly priest from a village in the country.

Two young men stood in the shadow near to the door, and there would have been two more across the street, and two more down the street, and they would have cameras.

The priest walked with the help of a hospital stick, one that had a reinforcing clamp for the upper arm, and Franco walked with him as if ready to take his other arm should the priest stumble. The priest murmured a greeting, perhaps a blessing, to the policemen as he passed them, and they ignored him. The priest walked hesitantly over the marble floor of the hallway to the block as if such luxury were not a part of his life in the village. They took the elevator. The face of Mario Ruggerio was impassive. Franco could not read his thoughts. The man was magnificent. The man had such authority.

Small, old, and such presence. The empire of the man extended across the width of the island, the length of Europe, the ocean, and Franco was his favourite. It was typical of the magnificence of the man that he came to the front door of the apartment and rang the bell for admittance to the home of a slaughtered rival.

The door was opened.

Franco carried a pistol strapped to his shin. He felt a winnowing of fear.

The apartment was crowded with the supporters of the dead rival and the family. A moment's gesture, Mario Ruggerio's hand on franco's arm, a grip that was steel-hard, the order that he should stay back, and he was passed the hospital stick. Mario Ruggerio, murderer, now capo di tutti capi because a rival had been removed, went forward and the supporters and rivals backed off and made an aisle for him. Franco saw that none dared catch his eye, none had the courage or the stupidity to denounce him.

Franco followed, into the living room, and he waited by the door as Mario Ruggerio approached the widow, black-clothed, sitting, eyes reddened. The widow rose to greet him. He took the widow's hands and held them in his own. He spoke the words of sincere sympathy. He brought respect. He declined the offer of alcohol from the son of the dead man, a juice would be most welcome. He gave dignity. Gravely, Mario Ruggerio, watched by Franco, thanked the son of the dead man for the juice. His presence was accepted because he brought respect, gave dignity, to a dead man. Franco understood. The power of Mario Ruggerio, dressed as a humble and elderly priest, over La Cosa Nostra was absolute.

For more than an hour Mario Ruggerio talked with the widow and the widow's son and the widow's family. When he left, he hobbled on his hospital stick past the policemen on surveillance duty, past the cameras.

With two cars in front and one behind, Franco, who was swollen with pride, drove him back to Palermo through the night's darkness.

She looked the prisoner straight in the eye, and when he dropped his head, she reached forward and lifted his chin so that he must look at her.

She was the daughter of the capo of the Kalsa district of the city. Her brothers followed in the footsteps of her father.

Across the table, in a low voice so that she would not be heard by the guards and by the other prisoners and their families, she spat at him her message.

'I will tell my children, not your children, my children, that they no longer have a father. I will tell them that they should forget their father. To me, to my children, you are dead. You listened to your mother, always to your mother, so now your mother can wipe your arse for you, but not me and not my children. If I am offered protection, then I will refuse it. What you intend will bring shame on you and on me and on your children. It now disgusts me that I lay with you and made children for you. You swore the same oath as my father, the same oath as my brothers, and you betray the oath. I tell you your future, from the time that I leave here, from the time that I meet with my father and my brothers. Wherever they put you, look to see if anyone is behind you when you stand on steep steps. When you approach any group, consider which man carries the knife. When you lie at night and hear a footstep, consider whether the rope is brought for your throat. When you eat, consider whether the poison is in your food. That is your future. Not my future, not the future of my children, who have no father. To me, to them, you do not exist, never existed.'

She let his chin fall. The tears flowed on his cheeks. With poise, without looking back, she walked to the door.

'What I am saying, Bill – you secure at your end?'

'Secure. Go.'

'I'm saying there is regular shit stirring at this end.'

'Am I dumb, Ray? What's your end to do with it?'

'This show, Codename Helen, the baggage your guy came for.'

'That's our problem.'

'My problem too. I got mugged by one of the local people here. Quote, "Taken it upon yourselves, you arrogant bloody people, to pressurize and then send a small-town girl to Palermo for some bloody operation you've dreamed up. Who've you cleared it with?", end quote. Bill, that's why it's my problem.'

'Where's that going to lead?'

'Why I'm sweating on it, don't know. I've been in this city, Bill, three years. In three years you get to know the way people work. Here they work devious. The old lion is losing his sight, got flea scrapes, yellow teeth, but he still thinks he hunts with the best of the pride. I'm accused of getting hold of his tail and twisting it. He's angry, and he's quiet, which means he's thinking devious.'

'You're away ahead of me, Ray.'

'I thought you should know, they may try to fuck us about.'

'Aren't we all going in the same direction?'

'Wouldn't that be nice? What I'm getting to, it would raise a powerful shit-smell if anything happened, unpleasant, to Codename I lelen, to your bit of baggage, like I might be run out of town, like it would go all the way to the top floor. I'll stay close.

Goodnight, Bill. I just have a bad feeling.'

He put down the telephone. He switched off the scrambler, then dialled again. He told his wife that he was about through for the evening, and he gave her the name and address of the restaurant in the Fulham Road where he'd meet her. He was clearing his desk when he realized that Dwight Smythe was still at his desk outside, and it was always necessary, when the secure scrambler was used, to speak that bit louder.

'Did you hear that, Dwight?'

'Sorry, but it would have been difficult not to.'

'What are you thinking?'

'Same as I told you first time, same as you ignored. The plan was crazy. When a crazy plan gets disseminated, goes to the top, when the big guys have to guarantee a crazy plan, they run for cover. You're out on your own, Ray, but I expect you thought of that.'

She lay on her bed and she turned the pages of her book.

'If that's everything, Angela, I'll get on with the children's baths,' Charley had said. 'I think you've done wonders.'

'Thank you for your help,' Angela had said.

And Charley had gone into the living room, where Peppino, home an hour before and jacket off and whisky in his hand and tie loosened, sat and where the children played with the presents that had been brought them. There was a battery-powered car that piccolo Mario raced across the tiled floor, and a doll that Francesca had stripped and then dressed again. For Angela there was a silk headscarf, and for Charley there was a box of lace handkerchiefs. She had left Angela in the kitchen with the pasta ready to go into a saucepan and the sauce already mixed, the meat thin-sliced and in the refrigerator, the vegetables washed, the fruit in a bowl and the cheese on the wood block. The wine was chilled and the mineral water. Beyond Peppino and the children, in the dining alcove, the table had been laid by Charley for eight people.

'Come on, Mario and Francesca, bath time, come on,' Charley had said.

'So soon, so early?' Peppino had asked.

Charley had glanced down at the watch on her wrist. 'Think I'd better be getting on because then I'll need a shower and time to change. I thought I'd wear what you-'

And Peppino had said, so casual, 'I don't think you need to be with us, Charley. I understand Angela told you that it is my father's birthday – family talk, Sicilian talk. I think that for you it would be very tedious, very boring for you.'

'Don't worry about me, I'll just sit-'

And Peppino had said, 'My father and mother are from the country here, Charley. I think it would be difficult for you to understand their dialect. They would not be at ease with a stranger – not a stranger to us but to them – so it is better that you do not sit with us tonight. Angela will put the children to bed.'

'Of course, Peppino. I quite understand…'

Into the dining alcove, to the table, and Charley had stripped a laid place and removed a chair. Seven places left, and seven chairs. She had gone into the kitchen and told Angela, without comment, that Peppino thought she would be bored by dinner with his parents. She had watched Angela, and seen the woman's face stiffen, and she had wondered whether Angela would stride from the kitchen and into the living room and make an issue of Charley at dinner. Angela had nodded, as if she did not have the will to fight. She had bathed the children, dressed them in their best clothes and brought them back to Peppino. She had made herself a sandwich in the kitchen. She had gone to her room.

She tried to read. She lay on her bed, dressed, and she turned the pages and learned nothing from them. She listened. A car came. She heard the murmur of voices and the happy shouting of the children. She heard footsteps in the corridor, beyond her door, which she had left an inch ajar. She heard the sounds of the kitchen.

She tried to read…

For Christ's sake, Charley…

She turned the page back because she was absorbing nothing of what she read.

For Christ's sake, Charley, it is just a job of work.

She put the book on the table beside her bed.

For Christ's sake, Charley, the job of work is playing the lie.

She pushed herself up off the bed. She straightened her hair.

It was what she had come for, travelled for, it was why she had left the bungalow and the class of 2B. She took a big breath. She put a smile on her face. She walked out of her room, and she went first towards the kitchen, and she saw the dirtied plates of the pasta and meat courses, and there was another plate beside the cooker that had a saucepan lid put on it as if to keep the plate warm. She went along the corridor towards the voices in the dining alcove beyond the living room. She came into the living room and the smile was fixed hard on her face. Only the children bubbled laughter at the table and played with the car and the doll, but the talking died. The chair at the head of the table was empty. She kicked away the quaver in her voice, spoke boldly.

Charley asked Angela if she could help by putting the children to bed.

Angela and Peppino sat opposite each other, then the children, then the two old people. There was a smear of annoyance on Peppino's face, and the expression of Angela was pain. At the end of the table, either side of the empty place and the empty chair, were the parents of Peppino. The old man wore a poor-fitting suit, but good cloth, and his collar and tie drooped from a thin neck. The old woman wore black, with white sparse hair gathered in a bun. Charley had seen their house, she had walked past the open door of their house, she had heard the radio playing in their house and smelt the cooking in their house.

Peppino said, 'That will not be necessary, Angela will see the children to bed. Thank you for the offer. Goodnight, Charley.'

He did not introduce her. The eyes of the old man were on her, bright in his aged and lined face. The old woman looked at her, disapproving, then started again to peel the skin from an apple.

Charley smiled. 'Right, I just wondered. It will be good to get an early night.'

She went back to her room. She again left the door an inch ajar. She sat on the bed.

Her fingers rested on the face of her wrist-watch. She wondered where he was, whether Axel Moen listened. Plain to her that she was not welcome, and there was the empty chair, and there was the food kept warm on the plate. The rhythm of the codes played in her mind. Where was he? Did he listen? Her finger edged towards the button on the watch on her wrist.

She made the signal. She paused. She made the signal again. Where was he? Would he have heard it? She pressed the button, the same rhythm.

The excitement ran in her. It was her power…

She went to the bathroom, washed and peed, and back in her room she undressed. The pulse tone she had sent, three times, was her power

…

For a moment she held the bear close to her, as if the bear should share the excitement that was hers because of the power. She switched off the bedside light. She lay in the darkness. Trying to stay awake, hearing sounds in the kitchen, hearing the flushing of the lavatory, hearing the children going with Angela to their rooms, hearing the indistinct murmur of the voices. Trying to stay awake, and drifting, with the finger resting on the button of her wrist- watch, and drifting further, as if the excitement exhausted her. When she drifted, she dreamed. When she came through from each dream, sporadic, she jerked herself awake and killed each dream and looked at the fluorescent face of her watch. Ten o'clock coming, and eleven, and midnight, and the dreams were harder to kill, and she drifted faster, further.

She dreamed of the young man in the newspaper photograph with the throat cut and the blood spread, and of the story that Benny had told, and of the helicopter.

She dreamed of the shadow in the doorway, and of her door closing.

She dreamed of the hovering helicopter and the men in balaclavas, and of the soft-shoe shuffle in the corridor, and of Axel Moen standing under the trees beyond the beach sand… Charlie slept.

'What time is it?'

'It's thirty minutes on from when you last asked.'

'What the hell's she at?'

'You want me to go to the door, wake the house, request to speak to her, then ask her?'

'She sent the Stand-by.'

'She sent the Stand-by. She has not sent Immediate Alert, nor has she sent Stand Down.'

'It is six hours since she sent Stand-by.'

'Correct, Axel, because it is now three o'clock, which is half an hour after we last had this discussion.'

'Don't understand it.' 'What I understand, Axel, I am quite pleased that I did not call out the heroes of the carabineri. Overtime, the need for a report, I am very pleased.'

'I'll kick her butt.'

'She will be very bruised. You said that half an hour ago, and an hour ago.'

'But, it is just goddam unprofessional.'

'Exactly, Axel. Because she is not a professional.'

They sat in the car. The last of the discos had long closed, the piazza bars had shut, the kids on the motorcycles and the scooters had roared away into the night. Mondello was emptied. The street where they were parked, off the piazza and a block from the shoreline, was deserted. Axel took a Lucky Strike from the packet and swore under his breath and passed the packet to 'Vanni and 'Vanni took the last cigarette from the packet. The match flashed in the interior of the car.

'That sort of settles it, doesn't it? I mean, I'm not goddam sitting here without cigarettes.'

Axel crushed the empty packet. He dropped it on the floor beside 'Vanni's finished packet and beside the squashed wrapping of the pizzas they'd eaten. They smoked.

They eked out their cigarettes until their fingers burned. They dropped their cigarettes through the open windows.

'What do you think?'

'I think, Axel, that we go to bed. You are angry?'

'I'll kick the butt off her.'

'I think – you know what I think? I think, and you will not love me,' 'Vanni grinned wide. 'I think you care, and I think you are very frightened for her.'

'I'll kick her so's my foot hurts.'

There was only the night duty officer as company for Harry Compton.

In a mood of stubborn anger he had telephoned Rome, and been told by Alf Rogers that the report was coming, but late that night, and he said that he would wait on.

There was a phrase the commander liked to use, something about the primary work of S06 being 'putting faces to illegality', a phrase recited to visiting politicians and bureaucrats. In front of the detective sergeant, on his desk, was the source of that stubborn anger. A camera at Heathrow had put a face to illegality. Italian passport-holder Bruno Fiori, seven hours earlier, had passed through Terminal Two, Heathrow. The photograph, taken by a camera on a high wall bracket, showed him presenting the Italian passport at the emigration desk, and the order that the holder of that passport should not be delayed, not be quizzed, not be made aware of any investigation, had been most specific. The bastard had gone through, without let or hindrance, to his flight. The photograph showed a smoothly handsome man, well dressed, relaxed, and the bastard should have been in the interrogation rooms or in a cell.

A bell rang. The bell was piping and sharp. The night duty officer was pushing up from his chair, but Harry Compton waved him down and back to his newspaper. He hurried through to Miss Frobisher's office, abandoned and left pristine for the morning.

The message churned from the printer. He read…

TO: Harry Compton, S06.

FROM: Alfred Rogers, DLO, British Embassy, Via XX Settembre, Rome.

SUBJECT: MARIO RUGGERIO.

DOB. 19/8/1934.

POB. Prizzi, western Sicily.

PARENTS. Rosario b. 1912 (still living) and Agata b. 1913 (still living).

Their other children – Salvatore b. 1936 (imprisoned), Carmelo b. 1937

(mentally subnormal), Cristoforo b. 1939 (murdered 1981), Maria b. 1945, Giuseppe b. 1954 (see below).

FAMILY. Married Michela Bianchini (from LCN Trapani family) 1975.

Salvatore (s) b. 1980, Domenica (d) b. 1982. Living now in Prizzi.

DESCRIPTION. Height 1.61 metres. Weight (est.) 83 kilos. Blue eyes. No surgical scars known of. Believed of heavy and powerful build (no photograph for 20+ years, no positive sighting in that period). Not known whether dark-brown hair now greyed or dyed, also nk whether wears spectacles routinely.

He carried the sheets of paper back to his desk.

'Like a mug of coffee, squire? Just making one for myself.' The night duty officer was folding away his newspaper.

'No, thank you.'

BIOGRAPHY. Formal education, elementary school, Prizzi, 1939-43.

Travelled with his father – contraband lorry driver. 1951 – convicted of attempted murder, Court of Assizes, Palermo (victim alleged to have denied him 'sufficient respect'). In Ucciardione Prison alleged to have strangled two fellow prisoners, no witnesses, no evidence. Released 1960, having become sworn Man of Honour. Not arrested since. Charged in absentia with murder, narco trafficking, much else. Believed FBI/DEA have sufficient evidence for indictment in USA. An ally of Corleonesi (Riina, Provenzano, etc.), but thought to have maintained independence. In power struggle (post-Corleonesi arrests) indications that RUGGERIO is responsible for disappearance of Agrigento capo and most recent murder of Catania capo.

'You all right, squire? Sure you won't have a coffee? There's a sandwich here, missus always makes enough for a bloody tea party.'

'No, thank you.'

'Just asking. Only you look like someone's grabbed your goolies and given them a god-almighty twist. Didn't mean to interrupt…'

ASSESSMENT. Extraordinarily secretive, reputation of taking extreme care of his personal security, no successful wire taps, no documentation found. Has also tightened overall security of 'families' in LCN under his control, introduced cellular system, hence no recent information provided against him by the pentito (super-grass) programme. Seen by Italian authorities as ruthless killer.

SCO report: 'Ignorant but he has intuition and intelligence, his actions are most hard to predict'.

Squadra mobile report: 'Violent, aggressive, vindictive, with above-average shrewdness and determination'.

DIA report: 'He has power over life and death, an incredible personal presence, and a streak of violent sadism, BUT (my emphasis, AR) he is reduced to a miserable condition because he cannot move openly, cannot live with his family openly. He is submerged in the terror of assassination, exists in an atmosphere of tension and fear, hence violent paranoia.'

Magistrate Rocco Tardelli (investigating Ruggerio) in a recent report to Min. of Justice: '[Ruggerio] is a supreme strategist, believes future of LCN is in international dealings, acting as broker for cartels, Triads, Yakuza, Russian mafia. His reputation goes ahead of him, he is seen as combining experience with shrewdness. If he achieves domination of LCN, he will seek to direct the enormous power of that organization beyond Italian frontiers.'

At a time when the effort of the Italian state against LCN is losing impetus, it would seem that Ruggerio has taken control.

(See attached for GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO.)

Alfred Rogers, DLO, Rome.

He had thought once that the young woman, in the graduation photograph on the wall above the telephone, was not his concern. He felt a keen sense of shame. He locked the report in the wall safe. 'I think I'll push off then. I'm about wrapped up.' 'Best place, squire, in bed with the missus. They don't thank you here for playing all conscientious.

Don't mind me asking – you seen. 1 ghost or something? Sorry, sorry, just my little joke

…'