Killing Ground

Chapter Thirteen

' You will be late, Charley. Can that not wait?' Angela shouted from the kitchen door.

She was hurrying along the back path, past the gas tank and the rubbish bins, to the washing-line. Her bras and knickers and T-shirts and jeans dripped in her hands. The washing-line was behind the villa. Beyond the washing-line was the rear wall to the property. Recessed into the wall was a strong wooden door with a padlock fastening it shut. The wall was too high for her to see over, but above the wall was the coarse scree and rock-sheer slope of the cliff.

'Won't be a second, Angela – won't be a minute.'

She grabbed a fistful of pegs from the plastic bag hanging from the washing-line. She was pegging the clothes to the line. She saw the bastard. Hey, 'lechie', libertino, getting a thrill from watching bras and knickers hung out? Want to get your dirty hands on them? He stood beside the barrow and when she challenged him with her gaze, he started to scratch with his broom at the path to the door in the wall. He bent. The old hand, weathered and bony and dirty, reached down to the ground beside the path and he picked something up, and threw it into the barrow. She saw it. She saw the crushed end of a cigarillo on the top of the leaves in the barrow.

The line of clothes was complete. She stopped, she considered, then she ran back to the villa.

Angela had the children ready on the front patio, and the pram with baby Mauro, and the shopping list for the day.

'Don't bother to wash up last night's dishes, Angela, I'll do that when I'm back. And it's all right for me to get a bit of culture into the system this afternoon? I'll see you.

Come on, kids.'

When she'd woken, Peppino was already up and sitting in the living room with work papers. When she'd gone into the kitchen to get the kids' breakfast and to warm the milk for the baby, the sink had been filled with the dirtied dishes topped by saucepans and Angela had been making coffee. Not possible for her to examine the padded seat of the chair at the end of the dining table, not possible for her to check the number of plates used, or the number of knives and forks. She thought herself pretty damn clever to have offered to wash the dishes. Right, pretty damn clever that she had noticed the 'lechie' pick up a cigarillo end at the back of the villa near the door in the wall. He smoked cigarettes, foul Italian ones, and Angela didn't smoke cigarillos and Peppino didn't smoke cigarillos, and the old man from last night would hardly have been sent out through the kitchen and past the gas tank and the rubbish bins for a sharp puff. And there was the jumbled memory of her dream.

Not pretty damn clever that she had slept… shit… had failed to stay awake.

Her mind was compartments. One compartment was walking down the hill and easing the pram around the dog dirt and the street rubbish and the road holes, taking the children to school and kindergarten, having the purse and the shopping list. A separate compartment was the lie and the watch on her wrist, and dirty plates in a sink, and a chair, and a cigarillo end… She dropped small Mario at school and walked Francesca to the kindergarten door. She was in the piazza, a hand resting casually on the pram's handle, and there was the blast of a horn. She was studying the shopping list. She swung round. Peppino waved to her and then powered away in his big car. She waved back. If she were pretty damn clever, clever enough to arouse suspicion, then would it be Peppino who strangled her, knifed her, beat her and then took his dinner? She bought the milk and fresh bread rolls. She was going to the fruit stall.

'Keep walking, down to the sea, don't turn.'

A cold and harsh voice. God, and the bloody voice was without bloody mercy. She stiffened her back, like she was trying to show defiance, but she did as she was told and she walked down to the main road, waited for the lights, never turned, pushed the pram across the road. She leaned against the rail. The baby was waking and she rocked the pram gently.

'If you can't cope with it, then you should say so, and you should quit.'

'That is bloody unfair.'

The growled voice, the sharp accent, rasped behind her. 'If you can't handle it then go.

Go home.'

She stared out over the water. The small fleet of fishing boats was putting out to sea, riding the swell. The wind freshened on her face. 'I'm doing what I can.'

'You want the list? Item, you give your communications to a goddam child to play with. He plays, we scramble. We had a helicopter up, we had a full team out – you fouled up.'

'It won't happen again.'

'Won't happen if you quit. Item, you send Stand-by last night. I am sitting with company, holed up in a car, till half after three this morning. I have a heavy team on Ready till half after three. Did you forget to send Stand Down?'

'I am doing my best.'

'If your best isn't better, then you should go home.'

'I am sorry.'

'Goddam should be. Why didn't you send Stand Down?'

She heaved the breath into her lungs. The wind whipped her hair. She said, small voice, 'I thought he might come. It was a little family party for Giuseppe's father's birthday. I wasn't included. I was told it would be "tedious" for me. I tried to stay awake in my room, I tried. I went to sleep.'

'That is pathetic.'

'I did my damn best…'

'Did he come?'

'Does he smoke cigarillos?'

'How the hell should I know?'

'Then I don't know if he came.'

'Think about going home if you can't do the job.'

She turned. She broke the rule he had made. She faced Axel Moen. She saw the coldness in the eyes of Axel Moen, and the contempt lined at the mouth of Axel Moen, and the anger cut in the frown of Axel Moen. She wanted to touch him, and she wanted him to hold her… She turned away from him. There would be a storm because the wind was rising.

He said, hacking the words, 'If you can't handle it, then you should walk out.'

She was watching the fishing fleet, diminishing, riding the wave crests. She went to buy the fresh fruit.

Back at the villa, Charley found that Angela had finished washing the plates and cutlery from the previous night, and they had been put away in the cupboards, and the upholstered chair in the dining room had been brushed with the other chairs, and she could not see whether it had been sat on.

'The conclusion?'

Giancarlo stood with the others of the team, all of them except for those who had done the last night shift. It was not routine for the squadra mobile surveillance unit to meet with an investigating magistrate who tasked them at the beginning of an operation and at the end of an operation, but it was the requirement of this small and sad man. The small and sad man sat on his desk, his legs a little too short for his feet to reach the floor, and his arms were hunched across his chest. Giancarlo thought, a ridiculous thought and inappropriate, that the magistrate had in his eyes the dull tiredness of death, that the dimmed room had the gloom of a cella dei condannati a morte. They had nothing to say and nothing to report, but he had insisted on seeing them.

There was no conclusion. No sighting of Ruggerio, no trace of Ruggerio. But it had been three teams of only three men, and a labyrinth such as the Capo would swallow a hundred men. It had been a gesture, but the gesture was a token.

'Thank you for your endeavour.' The endeavour was to walk and to stand and to look at faces and to try to match the faces of old men to a photograph. The photograph was twenty years old. Some computer-enhancements of photographs were good, some were useless. They might have seen him, might have stood beside him.'Thank you for your commitment.'

'For nothing…' The leader of the unit gazed, embarrassed, at the floor.

And Giancarlo held the present behind his buttocks. That moment he wondered how often there was laughter in this room. Like a mortuary, this room, like a place of black weeds and hushed voices. A place for a man who was condemned… Did the poor bastard, small and sad, condemned, it was said, ever get to laugh? The men on the door outside, condemned with him, it was said, they didn't seem fun creatures who would make the poor bastard laugh. Giancarlo was the oldest on the team, the most experienced, the one who gave no respect to any man, and he had been chosen to offer the gift to the small and sad man, to make him laugh.

'As an appreciation of working for you, dottore…'

Giancarlo handed the parcel, wrapped in shiny paper and bound with gift tape, to the magistrate. They watched as his nervous fingers unbound the tape and unwrapped the paper.

Lemons cascaded on the desk, lemons bounced, lemons fell to the floor, lemons rolled on the carpet.

He understood. A quick smile slipped to his mouth. He knew their work, knew the difficulty of going into the Capo district day after day and finding a process that enabled them to blend with the crowds in the alleyways. He slipped off the desk and came to Giancarlo and pecked a kiss on each of the man's cheeks, and Giancarlo thought it was the kiss of a condemned man.

When it was the time for exercise, when the bells clamoured and the keys scraped in the doors' locks, the prisoner stayed on the bunk bed.

The men with whom he shared the cell went on their way for exercise in the yard below. A carceriere saw him sitting hunched on the lower bunk and asked the prisoner why he was not going to exercise and was told that he had a headcold.

When the landing of the block was quiet, as it would be for thirty minutes, the prisoner stood. It surprised him that his hands did not shake as he unbuckled his belt.

Holding his belt, he scrambled up onto the upper bunk. He could see now, through the squat window, through the bars, the panorama of Palermo. The window of the cell was open. A hard wind came on his face. Through the bars he could see the mountains above Palermo. In the mountains was the home of his mother, in the city was the home of his wife and his children. As he hooked the buckle of his belt around a bar at the window he heard only the howl of the wind.

His wife had told him that he was dead. The magistrate had told him he would die by the push, or by the knife thrust, or by poison.

He pulled the belt hard and tested that it was held strong by the bar.

Suicidio was a crime against the oath he had taken many years before. When a man took his own life he lost his dignity and his respect, and that was a crime against the oath.

The prisoner wound the end of the belt around his throat and knotted it. There was not an adequate drop from the top bunk bed, nor was the belt long enough, for him to break his neck when he slid his weight clear. He would strangle himself to death.

He had nothing more to tell the magistrate, nothing more to tell of Mario Ruggerio.

He mouthed a prayer, and he tried to find in his mind the faces of his children.

He was suspended, kicking, choking, writhing, and below the cell window men walked the monotonous circles of exercise.

'So this is home?'

'This is Cinisi, and it is my home.'

'Quite a nice-looking little place, a lot of character,' Charley said brightly.

She looked up the main street, the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. At the end of the street was a granite mountain face, and above the rim of the mountain there was a clear azure sky in which cloud puffs raced in the wind. Against the grey rock face, dominating the street below, was the church that had been built with sharp and angular lines.

'My father, before they killed him, called Cinisi a mafiopoli,' Benny said.

He held the door of his car open for her. She thought it a nicelooking place, and the character was in the smart terraces of houses that flanked the main street. The windows of most of the houses were masked with shutters, but there were potted plants on the balconies and the paint was fresh on the houses' walls, white and ochre, and the main street was swept clean in front of the houses. Set in the paving between the houses and the street were flowering cherry trees, and under the trees was a scattering of pink blossom.

'I can't see anything, Benny, can't feel it. Maybe I could not see much in Corleone, maybe I could feel something in Prizzi, but not here. There doesn't seem to be anything to touch.'

'Look to the mountain,' Benny said.

Charley wore her best skirt, which she had bought with Peppino's money, and her best blouse. She stood with the sun and the wind on her thighs and shins. The force of the wind tunnelled down the main street. She stood boldly with her feet a little apart, as if to brace herself. There was scrub on the lower slope of the mountain, where the fall was less severe, but higher on the rock wall nothing grew. The mountain was a harsh presence above the main street.

'It's a mountain, it's rock, it's useless.'

He touched her arm, a small gesture as if to direct her attention, and there was a softness in his voice. 'You are wrong, Charley. Of course you are wrong, because you do not live here, you do not know. They own the mountain, they own the rock, they own the quarries. Did you not come on the plane to Palermo?'

'Came by train,' Charley said. Axel Moen had told her that the vulnerable time for an agent was the sea change between overt and covert, the journey from safety to danger, told her it was good to take time on the journey to reflect on the sea change. Charley lied. 'I thought it was wonderful to come by train, sort of romantic, on a train through the night and crossing a continent.'

'Because they own the mountain and the rock and the quarries, they wanted the airport for Palermo built here. The runways are two kilometres from here. There is too much wind and the mountain is too close, but that was not important because they owned the mountain, the rock, the quarry. Cinisi was a place of farms and vines and olive trees, but they turned the contadini off their land, and the stone made the base for the runways, the stone could be a base for the concrete, and they came to own the airport. They own everything that you see, Charley, every person.'

They were outside a smart house. There were recently fitted hardwood surrounds to the windows and a heavy hardwood door with a polished brass knocker.

'Is your mother inside?'

'Yes.'

She said with mischief, 'And waiting for your washing?'

'Yes.'

'Can she wait a little longer for your washing?'

'Of course – what do you want?'

'I want to see where they killed your father, where you were in the car when they killed him.'

Perhaps she had startled him. His lips narrowed and his eyes glinted and his cheeks were taut. He walked away from her. She followed him. Benny went past small groups of old men who stood in the sun and let the wind grab at their jackets, and they did not meet his eyes, and he did not look at them. A woman with shopping stopped as he came close to her, and then in ostentation she turned her back on him to stare into the window of an alimentari. As he went by them, three boys who gossiped and sat astride their scooters revved their engines so that the black exhaust fumes carpeted his face. Charley followed. He stopped, as if challenging her, pointed to a gelateria, every sort of ice-cream, every flavour, and she shook her head. At the top of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele was the piazza of Cinisi. A priest came from the church and saw Benny and looked away and hurried on, his robe driven by the wind against the width of his hips.

There were more men in the piazza, more boys idle and squatting on their motorcycles.

She was making him live the moment again, and she wondered if he hated her. He talked her through the chronology of a death, as if he were a tourist guide in the duomo or at the Quattro Canti or at the Palazzo Sclafani. He pointed to the street beside the church.

'It was done there. I had been late at the school for instruction in the violin. My father had collected me on his way back from I errasini. He came for me because it was raining, and they would have known which afternoon I stayed at the school for music, and they would have known that if it were raining he would collect me. It was not important to them that I was in the car, that I was ten years old. That afternoon it was convenient for them to kill my father…'

There was a bar on the corner of the piazza. The wind gusted the wrapping of a cigarette packet past the closed door to the bar. It had been seventeen, eighteen years before – of course, there was nothing to see. A narrow street leading into a pretty piazza under the shadow of the church of San Silvestro, a killing zone.

'What had he done? What had your father done?' She knew that she would take him to bed, that day or that night.

'He told the contadini that they should not give up their land. He said that they would be robbed if they agreed to sell their land. He said that they were farmers and they should continue to harvest the olives and the oranges and to grow maize. He said that if they sold their land and the airport was built, they would never work again because the jobs made by the airport would go to people from Palermo, who were not contadini. He said to the people that the success of the airport would be a triumph for the mafiosi, and a disaster for the contadini. He was only a shopkeeper, but he was an honest man, his honesty was respected. There was a time when people began to listen to him. My father called a meeting of all the people in the town and the peasants who had the olives and the oranges and the maize. The meeting was to be here, where we stand. My father was going to tell the people that they should oppose the building of the airport. The meeting was for that evening.'

'So they killed him, to silence him.' She would lie with him on a bed, that day or that night.

'Because he obstructed them, and because he made fun of them. The night before, I had heard my father in the bedroom practise the speech he would make. He had many jokes to tell about them. The family in Cinisi at that time, destroyed now, replaced, was the family of Badalamenti. He spoke of the "Corso Badalamenti" where they lived and of the leader of the family as "Geronimo Badalamenti". He had jokes to tell about the wealth that would come from the airport when they had stolen the land from the contadini, about the Badalamenti family eating from silver plates and taking baths with hot water from gold taps. He was a threat to them because he would laugh at them, and have the people laugh with him.'

'What happened? Tell me what happened?' On a bed she would take the clothes from his body, that day or that night.

'How is it important to you? Why do you wish to know?'

'Please, tell me.'

The sneer was at his face, and the wind caught at the fineness of his hair. 'You are a nanny for a rich family. You take your money for minding small children, for doing the work of their mother. Why-?'

'See, touch, feel, so that I can understand.'

'Am I an amusement to you?'

'No, I promise. Help me to understand.' She would take the clothes from his body and kneel over his body and kiss his body, that day or that night.

'A car crossed the piazza and it stopped in front of my father's car. He did not recognize the people in the car because he shouted at them. Did they not know where they were going? Did they not look where they were going? It was late in the afternoon, the light was going because of the rain. Already in the piazza the preparations had been made, there was the sound equipment for my father, there was a place for him to speak from. He shouted at the people in the car because he thought he would be late for the meeting. There was another car that came behind us, it drove into us. I saw one man only. The man had a small machine-gun and he came from the front towards us and he threw a small cigar from his mouth and he raised his machine-gun. There were more men, with guns, but I did not see them because my father pushed me down in the seat.

He tried to protect me. If he had been alone, I think he would have attempted to run, but I was with him and he would not have left me. There were eighteen shots fired, thirteen of the shots hit my father. The priest who came, who was there first, before the carabineri and the ambulance, the priest said that il was a miracolo that the child was not hit. I think credit was given to the killers of my father because I was not hit. I can remember still the weight of his body on me, and I can remember still the warmth of his blood on me. Someone brought my mother. She came, and the body of my father was lifted off me. My mother took me home.'

'It happened here?'

'Where you stand is where the car stopped to block my father. Do you wish to learn more?'

'So that I may understand…' She would kiss his body and put his hands on her body and find his love, that day or that night.

'Two days later there was the funeral for my father. Where we stand now I walked then with my mother, and the whole length of the Corso and the width of the piazza was lined with the people of Cinisi, and the church was filled. There were eight thousand people then living in Cinisi and around the town, and three thousand came to my father's funeral, and the priest denounced the barbarity of the mafiosi. It was a fraud, it meant nothing. It was a spectacle, like a travelling theatre on a festival day. The airport was built on the land stolen from the contadini. The people who had filled the church, stood on the Corso and in the piazza, were bent to the will of the Badalamenti family.

There was a short investigation, but the carabineri told my mother that guilt could not be proved. They own the town, they own the airport, they own the lives of everybody here.'

'Why, Benny, do they not kill you?'

His head hung. She thought she had slashed at his pride. He looked away from her and he murmured in bitterness, 'When opposition is ineffective, they do not notice it.

When opposition is only an irritation, they ignore it. When opposition is threatening, they kill it. Do you seek to humiliate me because I am alive, because my father is dead?'

'Let's get your washing home,' Charley said.

They walked back down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. She took his hand and led him, set the pace for him. It was useful for her to be able to touch warm blood and feel the weight of a father's body and to see the shock in a child's face… She should think about going home, Axel Moen had said. She should think about going home if she could not do the job, Axel Moen had said… He did not speak, they reached the car, he lifted a filled pillowcase from the floor at the back of the car. The gale, funnelled down the main street, beat on them. He rang the bell at the door.

She was introduced.

She played the part of the innocent.

She was offered juice and a slice of rich cake.

She was the nanny to a rich family from Palermo, and she was ignorant.

She talked, innocent and ignorant, with Benny's mother. The mother had darting sparrow's movements and bright cobra's eyes. Charley thought the woman must have quite extraordinary courage. She had trained, since her loss, as an accountant. She could live anywhere on the island, work anywhere in Sicily or on the mainland, but she had chosen to stay. She wore a bright scarlet skirt and a grass-green blouse, as if it would have been a defeat to take to widow's black. The courage of the woman, Charley thought, would come from facing each day the people of the town who had stood aside when her man was butchered, and from facing each day the people who had filled the church and lined the Corso for her man's burial. Charley ate her cake and drank her juice, sucked in the strength of the woman. The courage of the woman was in walking, each day, up the Corso, past the home of the people who had ordered her man's killing, and seeing their families in the bars, and standing with them in the shops, and knowing that they slept well at night.

If she were not to quit, go home, walk away, she needed that courage.

She waited for the woman to clear away the glasses and the plates. She waited for the woman to take the pillowcase to the washing-machine in the kitchen.

Charley reached for Benny's hand. The hand was limp. She controlled him. She led him to the staircase of cleaned and polished wood. She heard the churning motion of the washing-machine. The door to the bathroom was open. The door to the principal bedroom, the woman's room, was open. She led Benny through the door that had been shut, into his room. It was cool in the room because the shutters were closed and the sunlight came in zebra lines, filtered, onto the single bed, onto the skin rug on the floor, onto the picture above the bed. The picture was from a newspaper. A car was isolated in an empty street. The body of a man was beside the car. A woman stood near to the car and held a small child against her. Giving space to the body and the woman and the child was a crowd of onlookers. Charley fed from the photograph, as she had eaten the cake and drunk the juice. She must draw strength from the woman and the child.

She took the jacket from his shoulders and he made no move to help her.

She knelt and slipped the shoes from his feet, and the socks.

She took the tie from his throat and the shirt from his chest and loosed the trousers at his waist. She stripped the man bare, and she saw the tremble of his knees and the smooth flatness of his stomach, and she saw the heave of his chest below the hair mat.

She thought he pleaded to her. She heard, from below, the rattle of the plates being rinsed and the clatter of the glasses.

He lay on the bed. She squatted over him. She kissed the mouth and the throat and the chest and the stomach of Benny, drank the juice of his sweat. She made lines with the nails of her fingers on his skin and tangled his hairs. Only when the moaning was in his throat, as the wind moaned in the cables outside the shuttered window, did he reach for her. He tore at the buttons of the blouse and at the clasp of her bra and at the waist of her skirt. She had control of him. She put the rubber over him, as she had known she would.

Charley rode the man.

Not the lecturer from college on the carpet, not the guy from the picket line in the caravan, not the schoolteacher who had lifted her, bruised, bleeding, scarred, from the pavement.

Charley held his head, and her fingers, frantic, searched for the pony-tail of blond hair that was held tight with an elastic band. Charley pounded her fingers into the pale face with the day of stubble beard on it. Charley pulled the arms around her, muscled and powerful. He drove at her, hard in her, as if he were trying to buck her from him.

She murmured the name of the man… 'Axel… Fuck me, Axel. ..'

He came, he was sagging, he was spent.

She crawled off him. He tried to kiss her, to hug her, to hold her, but she pushed him back and down onto the bed. She took the rubber off him. She walked, cruel and vicious bitch, from the bedroom to the bathroom and she flushed the rubber down the lavatory.

She sat on the seat. She wondered where he was and whether he had watched her. Her fingers rested on the nakedness of her arm, on the coldness of the watch on her wrist.

She came back into the room. He lay on the bed and his arm was across his face so that he should not see her.

Charley started to dress.

'Who killed your father?'

'My father is mine. He is not your business.'

She was dressing fast, snatching at the crumpled heap of clothes. 'Is it good to be so ineffective that one is unnoticed? Who killed him?'

'When a man from Catania is to be killed they bring in an assassin from Trapani, when a man from Agrigento is to be killed they find a man in Palermo.' He hissed the explanation. 'It is an exchange of favours, a barter of services. When a man from Cinisi is to be killed-'

'They bring a killer from Prizzi? Is it good to be only an irritation and ignored?'

'What is it to you?' His arm was off his face. He pushed himself up on the bed. She thought he had a fear of her.

'I'll take the bus back,' Charley said. 'I'll go on the bus because your mother won't have had time to dry your washing and iron it. You're safe from Mario Ruggerio, Benny, because he won't even have noticed you.'

Carmine brought the minister to the apartment.

The apartment was at Cefalu and the business of the minister was at Milazzo, which was nearly 150 kilometres to the east.

Carmine had been given, by Mario Ruggerio, responsibility for bringing the politician from the oil refinery at Milazzo to the holiday apartment at Cefalu. It was a serious and important responsibility. The minister was now in charge of the budget for Industry, but Mario Ruggerio had told Carmine that the minister was a rising star and eyed Finance. A half-year before the minister had sent a signal; in a speech in Florence he had spoken of the glory of a united

Italy and the duty of all Italians to support their fellow citizens of Sicily. Mario Ruggerio had read the code of the signal: government funds should continue, as before, to cascade onto the island, and the supply of government money, trillions of lire, were the lifeblood of La Cosa Nostra. A month before, the minister had sent a second signal; on a late-night television programme broadcast by a private channel, he had warned of the excesses of the judiciary in Palermo in their use of pentiti as trial witnesses. Two signals, two coded messages that the minister was ready to do business with Mario Ruggerio. A contact through an intermediary at a Masonic meeting in Rome, and now Carmine had the responsibility of bringing the minister in secrecy from Milazzo to Cefalu. Not simple, not for an arrogant shit like Tano, not for a fool who had air in his brain like Franco, to bring a minister from Milazzo to Cefalu. The responsibility was entrusted to Carmine because he had the intelligence to arrange the security necessary for the meeting. The minister had toured the oil refinery with his guides and his guards, had worn the hard hat, had walked alongside the kilometres of pipelines, had stood in the control areas with the technical directors and his guards, and had pleaded a headache from the fumes of the refinery. The minister had taken refuge in his hotel room. The guards of the minister of Industry, not a prime target, were relaxed. They had been called, at Carmine's direction, to the end of the hotel corridor for refreshment. In the few moments when the distraction of the guards was total, the minister had been brought from his room, through the door on which the 'Non Disturbare' sign hung, and out onto the fire escape.

Carmine drove the car from Milazzo to Cefalu. He had given the minister a flat cap to wear, and the minister had a scarf half across his mouth. The beauty of Carmine's plan, the guards in the hotel would never admit to loss of control of their subject, they would never confess that the minister had been given an opportunity to leave his hotel room unseen.

He took the car into the parking area under the apartment block. He parked beside the Citroen BX, the only other car there. The tourists, they would be Germans, had not yet come to Cefalu to scorch themselves on the beach and to wander in the Piazza del Duomo.

The minister, at the base of the concrete steps, hesitated, but Carmine smiled reassurance. The stupid bastard was already hooked, the stupid bastard had nowhere to go but up the concrete steps. He led. They climbed. The minister panted. Three raps at the door of the second-floor apartment.

The door was opened. The damp of the winter had been at the wood of the door, warped it, and it whined as it was opened.

The small body of Mario Ruggerio was framed in the door, and his head ducked as if in respect to the minister's rank, and the smile on his face was of gratitude that a man of such importance had made the journey to visit him. He wore baggy trousers that were hoisted with a peasant's braces to the fullness of his stomach, and the old grey jacket that was his favourite, and he took the minister's hands and held them in welcome. And the old worn face of the peasant brushed a kiss to each side of the minister's cheeks. He gestured with his hand, humbly, that the minister should come into the apartment.

Carmine was not a party to the meeting. He closed the door.

Carmine waited.

He assumed that by the next morning a bank draft for, perhaps, a million American dollars would have been transferred to an account in Vienna or in Panama or to the Caymans or to Gibraltar. Mario Ruggerio said, always said, that there was a price for every man, and perhaps the price for a minister of the state was a million American dollars. And Mario Ruggerio would know because he had already found out the price for judges and for policemen and for a cardinal and for… It was the power of Mario Ruggerio, Carmine was under the protection of that power, that he could own those at the very heart of the state. There was so much that could be bought with a million American dollars – the blocking of investigations, the opening of contract opportunities, recommendations and introductions abroad. He stood outside I he door and basked in the glory of the power of Mario Ruggerio. One day, at some time, when Mario Ruggerio tired of the glory of power, stepped aside, then it would be Carmine who replaced him…

An hour later Carmine led the minister back down the concrete steps. Three hours later, when refreshments were again offered to the guards, the minister climbed the fire escape of the hotel in Milazzo. Four hours later, the minister appeared at his door and called to his guards that the headache from the oil refinery fumes was gone.

The telephone rang.

It shrilled through the darkened apartment. In the kitchen the ragazzi of the magistrate had their own telephone and their radio. They pretended an indifference each time the telephone rang, talked louder among themselves, took a greater interest in their card game. They pretended they did not listen, after the telephone call, for the quiet scrape of Tardelli's feet coming from his room to the kitchen. Pasquale felt the new mood of the protection team. The joke, sad, sick, had been against him, but he recognized now that the joke affected all of them. He had been the sole target of the joke – 'Why a jeweller's shop?' – but it claimed them all. Less talk, raucous, of the last two days of overtime and screwing women and holidays. More talk, sombre, of the last two days of greater speed in the cars, less predictable routes, more weapons training.

Each time the telephone rang they waited for the scrape of Tardelli's feet coming from his room to the kitchen, stiffened, pretended, listened. Pasquale suffered each night the dream of a parked car or a parked van or a parked motorcycle exploding in fire as they passed, and he knew the bomb would be reinforced with ballbearings and detonated via the link between a mobile phone and a telephone pager. He knew it, they all knew it, because the maresciallo had told them what he had heard from Forensics. He knew, they all knew, and the maresciallo did not need to tell them, that there was no protection against the bomb in the parked car or van or on the pannier of a motorcycle. They waited, they listened, as they did each time the telephone rang in the apartment.

He came, scraping his feet, to the kitchen door. There was a greyness to the colour of his cheeks, his fingers moved, fidgeting in a clasp across his stomach. With his eyes he apologized.

'I have to go out.'

The maresciallo said breezily, 'Of course, dottore – the Palazzo, the Palace of Poison?'

'There is a church beside the prison…'

'On the Piazza Ucciardione, dottore? When would you like to go?'

'Please, I would like to go now.'

'Then we go, now – no problem.'

'He took his life. The man I played a game with, made fear for, to help his memory, he hanged himself in his cell.'

He was gone, shuffling through the hallway for his coat. The maresciallo mapped out a route to the Piazza Ucciardione, a route past the close-packed parked cars and vans and motorcycles with panniers. They lifted their vests off the floor, they took the machine-guns from the table and the draining board beside the sink and the work surface beside the cooker. The radio carried the message, staccato, to the troops in the street below the apartment. They took him out. They hurried him down the staircase, with the two drivers stampeding ahead so that the engines of the cars would have been started before he hit the pavement. They ran across the pavement, into the last light of the afternoon, and the gale scorched grit into their faces. Pasquale was front passenger in the chase car, and the maresciallo was behind him. Sirens on. Lights on. At the end of the street, as the soldier held up the traffic, they swerved onto the main road and past the lines of parked cars and vans and motorcycles. They went faster than usual, as if it were necessary now always for them to go faster than the time taken by a man to react and press the last digit on a mobile telephone linked to a pager.

'Pasquale. What are you, Pasquale?'

The voice of the maresciallo whispered in his ear. His eyes were on the traffic ahead, and on the line of parked cars, vans, motorcycles they hurtled past. He held the machine-gun hard against his chest.

'What are you, Pasquale?'

'I don't understand.'

'You want me to tell you what you are, Pasquale? You are. 1 stupid and pathetic cretin. You do not have a magazine loaded.'

His hands were rigid on the stock and trigger guard of the machine-gun. He looked down. He had not loaded a magazine, thirty-two rounds, into it. He bent and laid the machine-gun on the floor between his feet. He took his pistol from the shoulder harness.

The cars swerved, screamed, cornered.

The journalist from Berlin was settled comfortably in his chair. The embassy was a little piece of home for him. There was a strong beer from the Rhineland on the table beside him. To be back in Rome again was to have returned to Europe, to have left that Arab world of half-truths, coded statements and conceit. He had telephoned his editor for more cheques to be sent him and they would arrive in the morning at the American Express. He had won a few more days… As a veteran of so many wars, he was reluctant to make the last leg home and have it said in the office, by younger, ankle-snapping colleagues, that he had failed. In truth, so far his journey in search of the mafia was a failure, but he believed that a few more days in Rome, distanced from this war that he could not sense or smell, would supply him with the copy for his article.

There was a counsellor at the embassy who liaised for the Bundeskriminalamt with the Italian agencies. He wrote a sharp shorthand note of what he was told. .. We had the opinion, five, six years ago that the collapse of the Christian Democrat machine, and those of the communists and socialists, would remove from the mafia the protection they had enjoyed for forty years. We thought then that for Italy a new era of clean politics was coming. We were wrong. There was the businessman's Government that followed. Far from attacking the mafia this Government took a most dangerous line. Anti-mafia magistrates in Palermo were denounced as self-seekers and opportunists, the pentiti programme was condemned for making bad law. There was a small window of opportunity to strike against the mafia after the killing of Falcone and Borsellino, when the public, in outrage, demonstrated against criminality, but the opportunity was not grasped. I believe it now lost. What I hear, it is increasingly difficult to persuade prosecutors and magistrates to travel to Sicily, there is on-going and debilitating rivalry between the many agencies, there is incompetence and inefficiency. The Italians forever plead with us to make greater efforts against a common enemy, but – hear me – look at the construction of the businessman's Government. There was a neo-Fascist appointed to the Interior Ministry, there are men with proven criminal associations introduced to the peripheries of power. Would we wish for such people to have co-operation given them? Should they be granted access to BKA files? Only because the Sicilian mafia pushes drugs and dirty money into Germany do we have an interest in the matter of organized crime in Italy. The British, the Americans, the French, we are all the same. We are obliged to be interested as long as the Italians demonstrate their unwillingness to tackle their own problem. But Sicily is a sewer of morality, and our interest achieves nothing. Do I disappoint you?'

There were two women in the church, in black, kneeling, several rows of seats ahead of him.

He had taken a place near the back of the church on Piazza Ucciardione, and at the far end of the seats from the aisle.

He knelt. He could hear the traffic outside and he could hear the beat of the wind against the upper windows of the church. In his mind, in silence, his knees cold on the floor tiles, he prayed for the soul of the man who had hanged himself…

It was what he had chosen. It was the fifteenth year since he had chosen to come with his wife and children to Palermo, brought by ambition and the belief of career advancement. It was the fourth year since he had chosen to stay in Palermo, in the comfort of his obsession, after his wife had left with the children. Huddled on his knees, he prayed for the spirit of a wretch. To come to church, to pray, he must have an armed guard at the door to the priest's room, he must have a maresciallo sitting with a machine-gun three rows behind him, he must have a young guard with a sullen and chastised face standing at the door of the church with a pistol in his hand, he must have two armed guards on the outer steps of the church. There was no more ambition. The ambition was dried out, a cloth left on the line in the sun. The ambition had been overwhelmed by the assassination of his character, by the drip of the poison, by the scheming stabs at his back in the Palazzo di Giustizia. He was left only with the obsession of duty… for what? The obsession hanged a man by the throat until his windpipe was crushed… for what? The obsession brought the risk of death, high probability, to five wonderful men who were his ragazzi

… for what? The obsession brought him closer, each day, to the flower- covered coffin that would be filled with what they could find of his body… for what?

The priest watched him. The priest was often in the prison across the piazza. The priest knew him. The priest did not come to him and offer comfort.

If he sent the message, if he cut the obsession from his mind, then on offer would be a bank account abroad and a position of respect in Udine and the return to his family and the last years of his life lived in safety. To send the message would be so easy.

Within a few hours a message would reach the small man, the elderly man, whose photograph had been aged twenty years by a computer

…

He pushed himself up from his knees. He faced the altar and he made the sign of the cross. He turned. The magistrate, Rocco Tardelli, saw the face of the youngest of the ragazzi. To reject the obsession would be to betray Pasquale, who had come with his wife's flowers and who had crashed the chase car and who had forgotten a magazine for his machine-gun, to betray all of them who rode with him, gave their lives to him. Each day the weight, the burden, he thought, was heavier. Back to his office where the obsession ruled him, back to the files and the computer screen, back to the aged photograph.

He laughed out loud.

His laughter cracked the quiet of the church, and the women who prayed turned and glowered at the source of the noise, and the priest by the altar scowled hostility at him.

He laughed because he remembered the long-haired American who had introduced into Palermo 'an agent of small importance'. There was a manic peal to his laughter. If 'an agent of small importance' should lead to Ruggerio, succeed where his obsession failed

… He bowed his head.

'It is a difficult life, maresciallo, for us all. I apologize for my unseemly behaviour.'

They closed around him as he walked out of the church and hurried him the few paces to his armour-plated car.

'… It's Bill Hammond… Yes, Rome… Not too bad. Hey, Lou, when did you get to Personnel? That's a good number, yes?…

Lou, this is not official, I'm looking for guidance. No names, OK?

… Something we're doing down here, I can't talk detail, it might, might, get unstuck. One of my people, he's put a heck of a time into it. If it gets unstuck I'd want some candy for him. What you got going, foreign placement?… What sort of guy?… No, not a high-flier, not like you, Lou. He's a field man, not a computer guy, one of those people that scratch in the dirt.

The sort who's going nowhere but that we wouldn't want to lose, you with me? If it gets unstuck, I wouldn't want a bear with a thorn in its ass round my patch, and I'd want to see him right… Lagos? Is that all you got, Lagos in Nigeria?… Yes, we could dress Lagos up. Yes, I could make it sound like San Diego. Be kind to me, Lou, don't fill the Lagos slot till you've heard back from me. It's just that too many people have gotten involved, and they're sort of squeamish people… Yes, we could have lunch when I'm next over, that would be good…'

It was dusk when Harry Compton drove down the lane. He saw the light, bright in the porch of the bungalow, but it was not his intention to visit David and Flora Parsons. He stopped halfway down the hill at the outer gate to the farmyard. They had nothing they would willingly offer him about their daughter that he did not already know. The obvious way was rarely the best way. When a child was missing it was from the neighbours that detectives learned whether the disappearance was 'domestic' or a genuine abduction. When a company had gone crooked it was the competitors who most often dished the serious filth.

He ignored the dog snapping at the back of his trouser legs.

He rapped on the back door of the farmhouse.

Daniel Bent, aged sixty-nine, farmer… 'What's she done? If you've come from London, there's something she's done. Don't expect you to tell me. You want to know what I think of her? Write this down. She's a stuck-up little bitch. When she came here with her parents, they're all right but just feeble, you could see from the first day that she didn't think we were good enough. Doesn't say anything, of course not, but it's in her feckin' manner. She's superior. Look at her, butter wouldn't melt in her, but under the skin she's a right little superior madam, and hard as feckin' nails. That's not what you expected to hear, is it?'

He went on down the lane.

He rang the bell of a pretty cottage where the honeysuckle rambler was greening.

Fanny Carthew, aged eighty-one, artist… 'I don't like to speak ill of people, particularly young people, but it would be difficult for me to speak well of her. You'll think I'm rather old-fashioned. You sometimes find the unpleasant trait of pushiness in that class of girl. You see, she's manipulative. She looks for self-advancement through people she can manipulate. It's not my business as to what trouble she's in, why a policeman has come all the way from London, but I doubt you'd want lies from me…

She seeks to control people. If she perceives someone to be useful to her, then she is their friend, if she decides they are no longer useful to her, then they are ignored. Quite a few of us offered a little hand of friendship when she came four years ago, but we've now been outgrown, we don't matter. "Determined" would be the nice description, but I'd prefer to call her ruthless. Well, I've said it. Two years ago my daughter came down with her boy, Gavin, a very quiet boy and academic. The Parsons girl took him onto the cliffs and then she persuaded him to climb down, sort of taunted him. Well, it was all right for her, she knows the place, but my daughter lives in Hampstead, very few cliffs.

He managed to get back up the cliffs, but he was quite traumatized, quite affected.

Normally he wouldn't have done anything so idiotic, but she'd taunted him. What I mean, there's a rather soft exterior but underneath there is something quite distastefully tough.'

He knocked.

The shouted response told him the door was not locked, he should come on inside.

Zachary Jones, aged fifty-three, disabled… 'Can't stand her. She'll look at you, all sweetness, but the eyes are the give-away, she's reckoning your importance to her. If you don't measure up, then you're ditched. I thought she might be company for me. I'm not much, but I've good stories to tell, I can get a giggle out of people. She used to come here, drink a beer and smoke a fag, and her pompous goddam father would have burst blood vessels if he'd known. Even used my toothpaste to clean her breath. Hasn't the time of day for me now. So she's in trouble or you wouldn't be here. Bloody good. No tears from me. I'll not deny it, she's a pretty little face – what she's short of is a pretty little mind. It's like she's trying to capture people all the time, capture and milk them, and when they're dry she walks away. I'd not trust her as far as I could throw her.'

The light from the porch of the bungalow shone across half the lane.

There was a fresh spit in the air, and the sea crashed in the dusk on the shingle. He went in shadow past the creaking 'Vacancies' sign.

Daphne Farson (Mrs), aged forty-seven, bed-and-breakfast… 'You stay out in the kitchen, Bert, this is none of your business.. . My Bert thinks the sun shines out of Miss Parsons's bum, he'll hear nothing against her, but he's stupid. I thought I liked her once. I gave her work the first summer she was here, helping with the beds and cleaning up in the season. It was good pocket money for a schoolgirl. Doesn't speak to me now, like I'm beneath her, because she's been to college and had an education. I haven't an education, but I know kids. She went to college but she didn't have any friends, no one ever came to see her in the holidays. My nephew's been to college, Bert's brother's boy, his home's like a damn dormitory in the holidays. She can't make friends because she's so bloody, excuse the French, superior. Tell you what I think, I think she sets herself targets, and if you can't help her reach the targets, then you don't exist. She's a very hard young woman. If you weren't strong with her, then she'd destroy you… Bert, put the kettle on, and there's cake in the tin.'

He saw a clergyman and an odd-job gardener and a crab fisherman and the District Nurse and a retired librarian.

He built a picture of Charlotte Eunice Parsons.

He had not heard a good word said of her. Some had hacked her with a meat cleaver and some had stabbed her with a stiletto.

He sat in his car halfway up the lane. With his pencil torch he leafed through the pages of his notebook. Harry Compton was not a psychologist, nor was he an expert in the science of personality, but he thought he knew her better for what he had been told. He wrote in his notebook, and she was in his mind.

CONCLUSION: A very strong-willed and focused young woman. DEA most fortunate to have unearthed her. The danger, she will push to the end, she will hazard herself to reach her target (whatever that may be).

She will not have the necessary background to assess fully the hazard of a covert operation(?) in Sicily. Because of her quite obvious determination to succeed, I fear for her safety.