Killing Ground

Chapter Fifteen

Around him were the smells. He was blindfolded. He could see nothing, not even strips of faint light at the bottom of the cloth over his eyes, nor at the top. The cloth had been wound tight round his head at least three times, and on top of the cloth was a broad, sticky tape. He did not know how many hours, how many days and nights, he had been there.

The smells cloyed at Benny's nose, they hung in his nostrils. They were the smells of animals and of his own body. The smells were of the excreta and the urine and the filthy hair coats of the animals, and of the shit in his trousers, and the piss that was raw-warm on his legs, and the sweat at his armpits and his groin that came from the fear.

His arms had been wrenched behind him when they had dragged him from the vehicle and brought him to the byre. Any movement that he tried to make carried fierce pain because his arms had been looped round a post of coarse wood and his wrists had been lashed tight, and if he tried to move, the sockets of his shoulders seemed about to break. He did not know how many hours he had been there, but he believed that when he next heard men's voices they would have come to kill him. He did not want to hear them come, hear a car reach the barn, hear the voices, because then they would have come to kill him. But, in his fear, Benny strained for the slightest sound. There were the heavy, clumsy movements of the animals in the byre, jostling each other, and there was the grunting of their breathing, and there was the heavy chewing as they ate. Sometimes they touched him, great creatures that seemed in the blackness of his imagination to tower over him, but it was always with gentleness. Sometimes they nuzzled at his face, hot breath, and sometimes they licked the hands that were lashed tight behind the post, slobbering tongues. Because he waited for the car to come, and the voices, he heard every movement of the animals around him. He did not know how many hours it was since the muscles of his stomach had broken and he had messed in his trousers, but the slime was now cold. It was more recently that the piss had burst from his bladder, and his thighs were still wet. It was because of the girl.

The animals heard the car before Benny did. The animals bellowed, great voices booming in the byre. He heard the car. It was because of the girl, and he hated the girl for what she had made him do. The car pulled to a stop, and he heard the tyres on loose stones. He would, if it had not been for the girl, in the afternoon of tomorrow or yesterday – he had lost track of time – have driven after school to Corleone and collected the photocopier and driven it back to San Giuseppe Jato, and would have known that he was involved and caring and playing a part, but the girl had destroyed him. The girl had made him tell the story of his father, and his father had not carried a photocopier back from Corleone to San Giuseppe Jato, his father had fought them, and the girl had made him tell his father's story. He heard a padlock unfastened. It had been the fault of the girl. The hysteria rose in him and he tried to push himself further back against the post.

It was his father who had the blame. He heard the door scrape open. He heard a coughed spit and the smack of a hand on the body of an animal and the sounds of the stampede of the feet of the beasts as if a way was cleared to him. Benny wanted to shout, to plead with them, tell them that it was the fault of the girl, that the blame was with his father.

He had no voice.

His hands were pulled back from the post and the pain riveted in his shoulders. He felt at his wrist the sharp nick of a knife blade, then the twine that had bound him to the post was loosened. He was pulled upright. They laughed. Three separate shouts of laughter, growled and shrill and quiet, and he stood and they would have seen the stain on the front of his trousers and the damp weight in the seat of his trousers. He was led, stumbling, over the fodder floor of the byre.

There was sun on his face, on his cheeks, below the blindfold. He heard birdsong.

His feet caught on the stones. Without warning, the hair of his head was caught and his skull was pushed down, but his scalp caught against a metal edge. He was forced low into the trunk of a vehicle, and there was the slam of the top closing on him. He was crushed, foetal, the way he had lain as a child in his parents' bed, between his mother and his father. The vehicle bumped away and his body was pierced by what he thought was a jack, but it might have been a heavy wrench-spanner. They were taking him away to kill him. The petrol stank in his nose, and the fumes of the exhaust. They would not hear him when he shouted that it was the fault of the girl, that his father should be blamed. He hated the girl. He rejected his father. He was so frightened. He could go into the drum of acid, he could go into the concrete, he could go into the dark depths of the gully where the crows did not feed and where Placido Rizzotto had been thrown. No one knew where to search for him. He had not told his mother that he was going to Prizzi, nor his friends in Palermo, nor the man who owned the photocopier in San Giuseppe Jato, nor the women who wrote the newsletter in Corleone. The vehicle was on tarmacadam and speeding. He wept, and the tears clogged his eyes beneath the cloth blindfold. On his side, squirming in the trunk of the car, choking on the fumes, he screamed for their mercy, but he could not be heard. He wondered if they all shouted for mercy before they went into the drum of acid or the concrete or the gully, if they all rejected their fathers and their girls. The vehicle stopped sharply, and the piss was running warm on his thighs again.

The air was on his face. There were the sounds of other cars and of a motorcycle speeding past, and a dog barked, and radios played.

'Please… forgive me… please…' He heard the croak of his own voice.

He was pulled from the trunk of the vehicle. The piss dribbled hot on his legs. Hands gripped his arms. He was led down a slight slope and his feet were on old cobbles. He could not break free, could not run, he was broken. The arms jerked him back and stopped him. The tape was dragged from the cloth. The cloth was unwound from his face.

ASSASSINO.

The word was in paint on the door. The door was beside a black drainpipe. In front of the door was a plastic bucket of steaming water, and an old brush with stiff bristles floated among the suds of the water. He took the brush from the water, and he started to scrub at the word he had written in paint. The dog that had taken the spray can came and sniffed at him and snarled. Children came and shrieked laughter and held their noses because he stank. As if the house behind the door was empty, there was no sound from inside, no radio, no movement. The girl had destroyed him. He scrubbed at the painted word until his fingers ached and his arms ached and his shoulders ached, until he had removed the trace of his protest. The girl had made him tell the story of his father. He scrubbed until the door was clean, as if the word had never been written. He was broken.

He straightened. The last of the water had been used, the bucket was empty. He placed the brush in the bucket and put the bucket on the step of the door. The road was in shadow and deserted. The children had gone, and the dog, and the men who had brought him. On the cobbles behind him was his wallet, pegged down with a stone.

There was no trace of the word, as there was no trace of his life. He walked away. His car was where he had left it.

Later he would return to his apartment in Palermo, and before he had stripped his clothes and washed his body he would tear the posters from the walls.

'I should apologize, yes? I should ask you to forgive me?'

Charley held the plastic tub of washed, wet clothes. Angela pegged the clothes methodically to the line. It was inevitable. The only surprise to Charley, it had been so long coming. Angela did not look at her and she spoke in a flattened monotone.

'When I told Peppino that I wanted you here, I thought if you came it would be different. I thought it would be the same as it was in Rome. But this is not Rome, it is Palermo. Palermo is not our home, as was Rome. Do I make a confusion for you? You are not an idiot, Charley, you can recognize that we have changed. Why have we changed? Palermo is the true home of Peppino, Palermo is the place for the peasants, it is the place of the family. I knew nothing, in Rome, of the truth of Peppino, I lived my own life and I was happy, and you came, and you were a part of that happiness. Do you look around, Charley, and do you wonder what is now different?'

Charley passed the children's clothes and the pegs. She stayed silent, she could offer no comfort. To offer comfort was to endanger herself.

'We were comfortable in Rome, we had a wonderful apartment, we had the good life. You saw it and you went away. Four years later you come back – what do you find?

We are a new generation of Sicilians, we live like the princes of the Bourbons, the caliphs of the Moors, the nobility of the Normans. An apartment that is a palace, a villa, money so that it ceases to have meaning, jewels, cars from the latest production, always the goddam presents. Do you ask, Charley, alone in your room, where it comes from?

Do you ask how it is that Peppino, a businessman in Rome and ordinary, is now in Sicily a businessman of the superstratum? I would ask, if I were you. But you see, Charley, in Sicily there is the web of the famiglia – I have every material possession I could want, perhaps I seem ungrateful, and I have the family of Peppino…'

The voice drove on, breaking off when a garment slipped from the line because a peg did not hold it. She lived the lie, she had the watch on her wrist, she had the access and she waited for the opportunity. She kept her silence.

'… Do you know, Charley, that while you were in the city on Sunday, when Peppino and I and the children were at Mass, that men came into our home, my home, and they swept it with electronic devices to see that we were not listened to, to see that the police had not placed listening devices in our home, my home? Every second Sunday they come. Why? Have you heard Peppino talk here about confidential business? Never. It is not for industrial sabotage, it is for police microphones. Peppino must be certain that conversations concerning the famiglia are not listened to. Put it together, Charley, the wealth and the family, the affluence and the family. Where does the wealth come from?

From the family…'

In front of Charley was the strong wooden gate set in the high fence. Beside Charley was the path from which the gardener had picked up the crushed tip of a cigarillo. She held Peppino's shirts and the damp ran on her arms. She played her part, the innocent home-help, played the lie.

'… He is a grotesque sham. My Peppino is a creature created by his family. He fulfils a need for the family. What would he be if the need did not exist? A criminal? An extortionist? A killer? Do I upset you, Charley? There are enough of those in the family, they have no need for more. They need the sham that is rispettabilita, you understand me, Charley? They have the wealth, the family, but they need the sham of respectability. I am a part of the sham, I am from the pedigree of the Vatican, I give respectability. He is as criminal, my husband and my children's father, as his family.

Why I am so alone, Charley, so isolated here, so devastated here, why I need you, Charley. He is controlled by his brother, has the criminal guilt of his brother Her voice died, as if in sudden submission. For a moment she looked behind Charley, then at the pegs and washing on the line. Charley thought, like she's trapped, like she has no escape. Charley turned. The gardener pushed the wheelbarrow, on the path round the villa, towards them. She passed Angela the last of Peppino's shirts.

Back in the kitchen the baby was crying. The confessional was finished. Angela, in her kitchen, made the baby's feed, brittle and sharp movements.

Harry Compton and Dwight Smythe met at Heathrow. Each had made his own way west out of the capital, each would have said that there was no requirement to share transport. They met at check-in. If there was mutual respect, they hid it. The detective sergeant of S06 and the office administrator from the DEA were brusque in their greetings, showed a minimum of courtesy. Harry Compton would have said that he, alone, was perfectly capable of extracting Miss Charlotte Parsons. Dwight Smythe would have said that he, alone, was perfectly capable of aborting Axel Moen. They went through Departure, showed no sign of being colleagues who travelled together, they went their separate ways in Duty-Free and the Briton bought Scotch and the American bought Jack Daniel's. They sat on the bench and read newspapers. Each was an intrusion into the world of the other. They were called for take-off.

Cautiously, Pasquale knocked at the door. The call came. He carried the mug of hot coffee into the room, and he went to the magistrate's desk and put the coffee mug down beside the computer's screen.

'Thank you, that is very kind. Very considerate of you. How goes it, Pasquale?'

He grimaced. 'This morning the maresciallo wrote his assessment of me.'

'He read it back to you?'

'That is the regulation, I am entitled to know.' He had come to work at five and then the bedroom door of the magistrate had been open, and the door of the living room had been closed and the light had shone under that door. He saw the wan tiredness on the face of the magistrate.

'It is good coffee. Thank you. What did he write of you? If you do not wish to…'

Pasquale said, 'That I was unsuitable, that I was inefficient, that my enthusiasm did not compensate for my mistakes, that I tried to make a friend of you, that I crashed a car, that I was late for duty, that I had forgotten to load a magazine-'

'You are very young, you have a baby, you have a wife, you have a life in front of you. Is it for the best?'

He said simply, 'It's what I want to do. But the maresciallo says I endanger you and my colleagues by my incompetence.'

'Do you wish my intervention?'

'I would be ashamed if, through your intervention, I held my job.'

'So each of us, Pasquale, each of us has a bad day.'

Such sadness on the magistrate's face, and no attempt to hide it. He bled for the man.

He could not ask the magistrate to intervene for him, could not call that card. More than anything in his police career he wished to succeed in this work. To turn his back on the magistrate, Rocco Tardelli, to return to the uniform, would be humiliation. He hesitated. He was a humble policeman, without rank and without seniority, and he wanted to say something that was of comfort to this older and troubled man. He did not know what he could say. He hesitated, then started for the door.

'Pasquale, please – sometimes it needs a younger mind, sometimes it needs the freshness. I have no lead, I have nothing, I have to begin again. Please. Where does Ruggerio go? What must Ruggerio have?'

He blurted, 'A dentist?'

'How many dentists in Palermo? How many more dentists in Catania and Agrigento and Messina and Trapani? Has he dentures? Does he need a dentist? I cannot have every dentist on the island watched for the one day a year when he is visited by Mario Ruggerio.'

'An optician?'

'I do not know that he wears spectacles and, again, if he does, how many opticians on the island are available to Mario Ruggerio? Help me, with a young mind.'

Pasquale furrowed his forehead, considered. 'You have investigated the family?'

'I ask for a young mind, not the obvious. The family is the beginning, the middle, the end. We have a camera at his father's house. I should not tell you. And I should not tell you, we have a camera and we have audio close to the house of his wife. His brother, a brute, in prison on Asinara – you do me great damage if you repeat what I say – we have audio in his cell. His other brother is handicapped and we forget him. His sister, we forget her, alcoholism. Please, my boy, give us credit for the obvious.'

The apology was on his lips. He stared, amazed. A shock-wave seemed to Pasquale to flow across the magistrate's face. Tardelli jerked out of his chair, slipped, was on the carpet. Pasquale was rooted. He crawled on his hands and knees to the bedroom wardrobe that was so strange in a living and working area. He dragged it open. Files cascaded on him. Closed files and opened files, files held with tape and files bound with string. Pasquale watched. He groped among the files, scanned the titles of the files, pulled more files from the wardrobe. He whistled an aria as the heap of files grew.

Papers scattered and he swept them clear, and they were buried by more files. He found one. He ripped the tape from it. No longer whistling, he now cooed like a dove. The papers fluttered from his hands. He shouted, a noise of exaltation. He held two sheets of paper.

'There was a brother, Pasquale, I interviewed him myself. Four years ago, in Rome, I interviewed him. A banker. So plausible, the link with the criminality of the family cut.

I accepted it. No surveillance, no telephone intercept. I buried the memory. The memory was lost under blankets of information, new strata of information, further leaves of information. My mind lost him. I am ashamed… It is the place to look, isn't it, Pasquale, where you have forgotten to look, where there is no connection?'

He stood. His face, to Pasquale, was ripped by a sort of manic happiness.

He hugged Pasquale.

At the desk he snatched for the telephone. He dialled. He waited and the aria climbed to a peak.

"Gianni? Tardelli, the "walking corpse" of Palermo. 'Gianni, four years ago, in EUR, I met with Giuseppe Ruggerio. Yes, no connection. What of him now?… 'Gianni, call me.'

There were two and a quarter hours between the arrival of the London flight and the departure of the Palermo flight. There was no ceremony. They sat in Bill Hammond's car, Dwight Smythe in the front with the Country Chief and Harry Compton in the back. Bill Hammond had brought coffee from a kiosk.

'It's a sad damned day…'

'What we're saying in London, Mr Hammond, it should never have gone this far,'

Harry Compton said, sparring. 'We are also saying that if there had been correct consultation at the start, then there would never have been this difficulty. I don't think anyone's enjoying it.'

'As you eloquently put it, Bill, it is a "sad damned day" because the plan was irresponsible from the kick-off,' Dwight Smythe said, sullen. 'We are left with dog shit on our shoes.'

It was a new world for Harry Compton. He had never before been overseas for S06.

All pretty structured back in London. A good pattern of seniority to lean against back in London. He sat in the car and held the coffee, had a single sip and thought it gritty.

Perhaps, he had thought, when the two of them were together on the flight, beside each other, they could defrost the chill of the inter-organization spat, and they hadn't. They'd worn their badges, different armies, in cold hostility. Perhaps, he had thought, they'd be given the good treatment when they landed at Rome, and given a good meal and a good briefing and a dose of civilization, and he was uncomfortable in a car out on the edge of a bloody parking area.

'Did I hear you right? Dog shit?'

'That's what I said,' Dwight Smythe intoned.

'And you, what did you call it? A "difficulty"?'

'That's our opinion,' Harry Compton said.

'I wasn't happy, I had cold feet. Hear me through – the plan was brilliant. It's the sort of plan that comes along off the rainbow, and it just stands a chance. It stands a chance because Axel Moen is one hell of a fine operator. He's not you, Smythe, not you, Compton, not a blow-in, not a smart-ass who comes in on the big bird and thinks he knows the fucking game. Axel Moen is top of the tree. What does he get for being top of the tree? He gets a posting to a shit place like Lagos, and a bastard like me dresses Lagos up as a good slot.'

Harry Compton said, 'I don't think obscenities help. Our priority is to get Charlotte Parsons.'

'Where'd they dig you up from? A creche? A nursery? Training school? You don't ever name names. She's a code, she's Codename Helen. You don't throw names in Sicily. You work in Sicily, you have to be big, not a fucking ant. It's a sad damned day when people like you – and you, Smythe – get involved.'

'Has your agent been told that we are bringing Codename Helen home?'

A bitter smile crossed the Country Chief's face. 'You are a funny man, Compton, you make me laugh. You think I'm doing the crap work for you. I messaged him to meet you. You tell him his plan was shit and made a "difficulty". Tell him yourself.'

He thought he was followed, but he was unsure of it. He thought he was followed as he left the duomo in Monreale. As Axel walked away from the cloister he saw, on the other side of the street, a man of middle age and wire-thin build take off his cap and slip it into the hip pocket of his trousers, and a hundred metres further on, at the edge of the piazza, the man wore another cap of a different colour and a different material. A hundred metres further on, by the stalls that sold fish and meat, vegetables and fruit and flowers, the man had gazed into a shop window, studying women's clothes, and Axel had passed by him, and he had not seen him again. He could not be certain that he was followed. Maybe the man, forty- something, with the wire-thin build, had bought a new cap and was dissatisfied with it and put his old cap back on, and maybe he looked at women's underwear because that gave him a jerk-off thrill or because his wife's birthday was coming up, or maybe he followed the procedures of foot surveillance.

Axel breathed hard. In La Paz he had been followed, once, and he had hit the numbers of his mobile and called out the cavalry and two streets later he had walked on a wide pavement that was suddenly crawling with his own guys and with the Bolivian task-force people, and the tail had flaked away. He had no cavalry in Monreale. His training was in surveillance, not in counter-measure tactics. He breathed hard, deep. He assumed, if he was indeed followed, that they would use the technique of the 'floating box'. There would be men ahead of him, men behind him, men on the same side of the street and men on the opposite side of the street. But it was early in the afternoon, and the siesta hours had not started, and the pavements were full. If he ran, suddenly, tried to break out of the box, then he told them, put it up in neon lights, that he knew he was followed. His mind ratcheted, going fast, considering how he should act… His problem, on the busy streets, he could not identify the operators or the command operator of the floating box. He walked faster and slower, he lingered in front of shops and in front of stalls, he passed a tabaccaio, then turned sharply to retrace his steps and went inside and bought a throw-away lighter, and he could not confirm that he was the centrepiece of a floating box, nor confirm that his strained imagination merely goaded him. He walked on. He did not know. He made a long loop, and he came back to the garden terrace at the back of the duomo. He sat on a bench. From the terrace, among the flowers climbing on walls and under the wide shade of the trees, he could look down onto Palermo and the sea, where she had been. Axel did not know if he was watched.. .

'It is the thirteenth.'

'No, the ninth.'

'I do not wish to dispute with you, Mama, but it is the thirteenth.'

'You told me, it was fifteen years ago, that it was the ninth, it is what a mother remembers.'

'Mama, I promise you, it is the thirteenth.'

His father said, growl of the peasant's dialetto, 'Last year you said it was the eleventh, the year before it was the fourteenth, the year before that it was-'

'Papa, I assure you, you are mistaken.'

'No, Mario, it is you that are mistaken. Each year you make a different number and argue with your mother.'

At the start of the viaduct, where it climbed on columns of concrete to cross the river valley and carry the autostrada, No. 186, from Monreale by the high route over the mountains to Partinico, the car was parked on the hard shoulder. Each year they made the argument because each year Mario Ruggerio forgot the number he had given in 1981. The problem, for Mario Ruggerio, he did not know in which column of concrete was the body of his brother.

Franco was at the wheel of the parked car and had his head down in a newspaper.

Franco would not dare to snigger at the ritual dispute over which column of concrete carried the body of Cristoforo. There was a second car parked further back, and a third car stopped at the far end of the viaduct, near the sixtieth column or the sixty-first.

His mother held the lavish bunch of flowers. He could not tell his mother that he hazarded his security each year when he came to the viaduct and then argued over which column of concrete held Cristoforo's body. He could not lash his mother with his tongue because his mother had no fear of him. He could not tell his mother that he did not know in which column of concrete… His father always sided with his mother, as if his father wished to cut him to size. Did they want him to blow up the viaduct, drop it, then dynamite each column of concrete, then break each column with pneumatic drills?

Did they need to know so badly in which column was his brother, Cristoforo?

'I think you are correct, Mama. It is the ninth.'

His mother bobbed her head, satisfied. He loved two people in the world. He loved his small nephew who was named after him, and he loved his mother, loved them more than his own wife and his own children. And he could not spend the day standing in public view on the viaduct and arguing. His father would not let the matter go. His father had three reasons, he accepted, to be in a foul temper.

'You were wrong then, Mario? You accept that you were wrong?'

'Yes, Papa. I was wrong.'

'Cristoforo is in the ninth column?'

'The ninth, Papa.'

The first reason for the foul temper of his father. A young man, the son of a nuisance enemy, had daubed paint on the door of his father's house. The young man could not be adequately punished because the door of the house in Prizzi was covered by an unmanned police camera. If the young man disappeared or was found adequately punished, then the carabineri and the squadra mobile would be swarming through the home of Rosario and Agata Ruggerio and stressing them. The matter was dealt with, the camera would show the act, and the camera would show the contrition. The film from the camera was taken, a poor secret, each fourth night for examination. His father had wanted, personally, to slit the throat of the young man.

The second reason for the temper. The pilgrimage to the viaduct had been delayed for twenty-four hours, missing the exact anniversary of the entombment in concrete, because it had been necessary for Mario Ruggerio to review his security after the close call in the Via Sammartino, and that he would not discuss with his father. His father no longer understood, at eighty-four years of age, his son's life.

The third reason for the temper. It had been a long journey for his parents. He could not guarantee that they were not under surveillance. A bus to Caltanisetta, from the crowded market in Caltanisetta to the rail station, escorted by Carmine. The slow train to Palermo. Picked up by himself and Franco at the Stazione Centrale in Palermo and driven to the viaduct.

He walked back to the start of the viaduct. He counted. He strode towards his parents and the parked car. It was beneath his dignity to rush. He came to the ninth column of concrete. His brother had worked for the Corleonesi of Riina. His brother had been killed by the men of Inzerillo, and Inzerillo was dead from armour-piercing bullets, tested on a jewellery-shop window, in his car. The men who had acted on the orders of Inzerillo were in the bay, once the food for crabs. He had been told the same month, by the Corleonesi of Riina, that they had heard his brother was buried in wet concrete during the construction of the viaduct. The Corleonesi had killed Inzerillo. Mario Ruggerio, with his own hands, with rests to regain his strength, had strangled the four men who had taken Inzerillo's orders. He had only the word of the Corleonesi that Cristoforo's body was in one of the viaduct's columns of concrete. In truth, the cadaver of Cristoforo could be anywhere… It would distress his mother, whom he loved, should he raise a doubt about the ultimate resting place of her favourite son.

'Here, Mama, the ninth column…'

He looked over the edge of the parapet, leaned forward so that he could see the great weather-stained column of concrete. He had thought, and never said so to his father and mother, that his brother had been an idiot to have associated with the Corleonesi of Riina.

His father grumbled, 'But there are two columns, one for each side. Is it the ninth column on the left, or the ninth column on the right?'

'On the right, Papa, the ninth column on the right.'

His mother held the flowers over the parapet. They had cost 50,000 lire at the stall beside the entrance to the Stazione Centrale. He held his mother's arm. She crossed herself. She let the flowers slip from her hand, and they fell far down past the column of concrete and broke apart, scattered, when they hit the rocks of the riverbank.

He still held his mother's arm, to propel her back to the car where Franco waited. His father trailed behind, refusing to be hurried. The ritual was done. He opened the door for his mother, and Franco had the engine running. He helped his father into the car after his mother. It would be bad for the dignity of Mario Ruggerio to scurry, but he went fast to the front passenger door of the car. They powered away. He turned to his mother. It was a question that would not have been appropriate while they mourned the dead Cristoforo.

'Have you had notification of when Salvatore is brought to Ucciardione for the court? When does he come? I would wish you to take a personal message from me to Salvatore…'

"Gianni, I would not have called you if it were not important.. . It is not good enough, my friend, please… Please do not just tell me that he no longer lives on the Collina Fleming. Where does he live? Another place in Rome, in Milan, in Frankfurt or Zurich, where? I think, 'Gianni, I have not much time, how could you understand because you are not in Palermo?… I know, I know, we said there was no connection… I know, I know, he attacked because he was persecuted without cause for the blood relationship.

I am blundering in darkness, 'Gianni, I look for any light, however faint. Please, where now is Giuseppe Ruggerio?'

Axel sat in his room.

He heard the widow, the Signora Nasello, moving on the floor below, and he heard her television. The smell of her cooking came into his room.

Axel sat on the bed in his room.

It was a long time since he had felt true fear, but the memory stayed clean. It was back to his fifteenth year, when he had been with his grandfather out on the water of Eagle Harbour, out from Ephraim and towards the distant shape of Chambers Island, and the storm had come fast out of the mist. Gone after the muskie with his grandfather, trolling big spoons from an open boat. The landmass of the Peninsula State Park, and the lighthouse on the Eagle Bluff, had disappeared, so quick. No sight of land, the white wave-caps above grey, cold water. .. The boat pitching, the bilges filled, the spray coming into the boat, the engine failing. He had felt, in his fifteenth year, a true fear then. His grandfather had spent thirty minutes, seemed an eternity, working at the outboard with the cowling off, and had regained the power. Cold, soaked, frightened, his grandfather had brought him back to the jetty at Ephraim, and not remarked on it…

He had not felt fear in La Paz, not when they had hit the firefight on the estancia airstrip. He had not felt fear when he had been called in by the big guys in Washington and told, serious and heavy, that a video of him arriving at the Grand Jury hearing to testify had been picked up in a house search down in Colombia's city of Cali…

Axel sat on the bed in his room and, with a handkerchief, he wiped each moving part of his dismantled pistol.

He felt the fear because he was alone. The guys in La Paz, the guys in New York, the guys at Headquarters and the guys on the Via Sardegna would have, he reckoned, bet money that Axel Moen didn't know true fear – they would have bet their shirts and their salaries. The bastards didn't know… Couldn't call 'Vanni, he had bad-mouthed 'Vanni.

Couldn't call 'Vanni to tell him that he understood the story of the general who wanted the comfort of having his arm held because he had pissed all over that story. Couldn't call 'Vanni to tell him that he might be under surveillance, and might not, couldn't tell him that he had shit fear because a middle-aged man on the far side of the street had changed caps and then stood in a window and eyed ladies' clothes. He was too goddam proud to be laughed at, as 'Vanni would have laughed at him. The fear held him…

When he had reassembled the pistol he cleared the magazines and let the bullet shells lie on the coverlet of the bed, and then he began carefully to reload the magazines.

She would have understood. If she had been beside him, sitting with him on the bed, he could have told her. He could have said, slow, to her, that he apologized for the bullshit he had given her about being strong. He could have said that it was the tactic to use smart talk to toughen her, and he could have held her hand and talked to her of his fear. He could have kissed her forehead and her eyes and talked about his fear and his loneliness. She'd know the agony of fear. She would be in the villa, and maybe sitting on her bed, and maybe her fingers ran on the face of the watch against the skin of her wrist. The world seemed to him, to Axel, to close around him, as the darkness had closed on him when he had come back from the terrace behind the duomo, when he had made all the clever moves that the instructors predicted would be used by a target under surveillance in a floating box, when he had failed to confirm the tail… He saw her face.

She was in the garden behind the bungalow, and on the cliff near to her home. She was by the river in Rome. She was on the pavement in Palermo and bleeding. She was on the beach and dressing. He saw the frightened bravery on her face. He wanted to be sick. He felt, never before, that he despised himself. She should not have been asked.. . She might be on the patio in the darkness or in her room, alone. She might be with the family, living the lie. She would have the fear, as he had the fear. He shivered.

He reloaded the pistol with the filled magazine, and he pocketed the other magazines. The guys would be at the airport. He could not be at the airport as he had been instructed, because, maybe, he had a tail on him. He thought he knew why they came.

'Is this the way you normally do business?'

'Don't bad-mouth me.'

'Your man said we'd be met.'

'I heard it, like you heard it.'

'Well, where's the welcoming delegation. Where is he?'

'I don't know.'

And Dwight Smythe, again, looked around him. It had been the last flight of the evening into Punta Raisi Airport from Rome. The passengers had gone, gone with their baggage. Policemen watched them, and check-in girls, and porters. They stood in the middle of the Arrivals hall. Harry Compton wouldn't have admitted it, not willingly, wild horses to drag it from him, but he was frightened. Because he was actually frightened, he sneered at the American.

Dwight Smythe, honest, said, 'It's kind of threatening, isn't it? It's just an airport, it's just like any other goddam airport, but you feel sort of sick in the gut. I mean, it's a place you've heard about, read about, seen on the TV, and you're here and your greeter doesn't show and you're kind of scared… When I was at Quantico, where we train, years back, there was a professor who talked to us, Public Affairs, he said, "Down there it's a war of survival, as it has been through history, a bad place to be on the losing side, it's a war to the death." I just push paper, don't aim to get onto the battleground, it's why I'm scared.'

'Thanks.'

'One more thing, but it's worth saying. You gave your evaluation of that kid -

"brilliant, stubborn, tough" – but that doesn't justify what was asked of her. This war's going nowhere, it can't be won. Sending her was a gesture, and that's not right, gestures are lousy. You scared?'

He hesitated. He nodded.

Harry Compton was frightened because he had spent six hours the previous evening, gone on until the street outside the S06 office was quiet, in their library. He had gutted what they had in their library, the files that were headlined 'Mafia/Sicily', and then he had driven over to New Scotland Yard and kicked the doziness out of the night duty man in Organized Crime (International) and read more. He had taken in the statistics of product, volume, profit of La Cosa Nostra – and the figures of homicide, bombings, extortion cases – and the photographs of the Most Wanted – and the assessments and intelligence digests.

The night duty man must have warmed to him, had seemed pleased to talk, to break the boredom of the empty hours. The night duty man had coughed through a life story.

Northern Ireland as liaison with the local force for Anti-Terrorist, a stress-created breakdown and shipped out to a desk job. Handling informers, the twilight people in the Provo ranks who were turned, had built the stress. Running 'players' with a future of torture, and then a bullet in the skull, had bred the breakdown. 'They get dependent on you, you're not supposed to, but you get involved with them, you put them in place and you use them and you manipulate them. They lead bloody boring lives and they're there for one moment in time that matters. You've put them there for that one moment; if they can't handle the one moment of something that's important then they're dead.'

He thought he was sharp, he hoped to make the grade through night study for the business management degree, and he had realized, when he had finished with the files, that he was going into water where he would be out of his depth… Christ, miserable Miss Mavis inquisitive Finch, counter clerk in the bank on the Fulham Road who had filed the disclosure report on the cash deposit of Giles bloody Blake, had pitched him in… He'd gone back home to Fliss, some God-awful hour, and she'd sulked and said it was her mother's anniversary he'd be missing…

Dwight Smythe grinned. 'Maybe we get to share a room tonight, maybe we leave the light on…'

The American tried again on the mobile telephone. It was the fourth time since they had landed that he had tapped the numbers for Axel Moen's telephone, the fourth time the call had not been answered.

'So what's to do?'

Dwight Smythe flashed his teeth. 'Ride into town, get that big room with the bright light, and wait. You got anything else to suggest?'

They took a taxi into Palermo.

The journalist from Berlin waved his bank note for 20,000 lire at the steward. He thought the bar of La Stampa Estera to be the most dismal drinking hole that he knew, a heavy and darkened room and company to match. But they should know, the journalists who worked the Rome beat, the reality of the strength of La Cosa Nostra. He bought his second round of drinks, and none of those he entertained complained and demanded the right to buy. They drank what he bought, and he believed they mocked him. He was not proud of himself for coming to such a place and seeking the input of fellow trade hacks, but his story was littered, so far, with cavities and loose ends. He needed their assessments. Was the corruption in central government so widespread? Was there indeed a third tier of bankers and politicians, generals and secret servicemen, who protected the principals of the organization? Was a victory in Sicily possible? What was the lifestyle of the capo di tutti capi and how did he evade arrest? They mocked him, and they drank the Scotch he bought and the beers.

A magazine writer from Rotterdam said, 'Never go down there, a played-out story.

Go to Sicily, and all you end with is confusion. What my people are interested in is the Tower at Pisa, after the last earthquake, whether it's going to fall on a bus-load of our tourists.'

A freelance writer from Lisbon said, 'I can't get a word in the paper about Sicily.

Haven't been down there for nine months. It's expensive. Anyway, the food in Palermo is revolting. Nothing changes. It is the most tedious story in Europe. Now the Brazilian who is playing for Juventus, the striker, that is a page lead…'

An agency lady from Paris said, 'The mafia? The mafia make my people go to sleep.

If I want anything in the paper, and I have to want it because I am paid by the line, then I write about fashion and I write about the new gearbox in the Ferrari.'

A super-stringer on retainer to a London daily said, 'Nobody is interested, nobody cares, Sicily might be another planet. It is where they make an art form of deception, an industry of misinformation. Do you think they will use your story? I doubt it, I think you chase fool's gold.'

An Italian woman under contract to nine evening newspapers in Japan said, 'There is no interest because the mafia story is not about real people. The judges, the policemen, the criminals, they are the characters of a cartoon strip. People we can understand, people we can believe in, they do not exist in Sicily…'

The telephone rang. They listened. When the telephone was on secure, and the voice strength was diminished, then the magistrate always shouted. It was past midnight, it was quiet in the kitchen. In deference to the magistrate's request they did not play the radio in the kitchen late at night. If they played the radio late at night then the cow from the next apartment, with the common wall, would come in the morning and rail against the magistrate that she could not sleep. It was as if the ragazzi believed their man had sufficient problems without adding the cow's complaints. They listened.

'… I do not believe it, 'Gianni… How is that possible? Why was I not told?… We all have a work load, 'Gianni, we are all buried under a work load… Yes, I have it, I have written it. Of course, I am grateful… I told you, I look for any light, I do not know where I will find the light…'

There was a time of silence and then they heard the shuffle of his feet.

He came to the kitchen door. He wore his slippers and a robe over his pyjamas. There was a grey tiredness in his face, and his hair hung clumsily on his forehead. The maresciallo snapped his fingers at Pasquale.

Pasquale asked, 'Dottore, would you like juice, or coffee, or tea?'

The shaken head. Pasquale wondered if the magistrate had taken a pill. He had gone to his bedroom a good hour before. He could have taken a pill, he could have been deep in sleep. There were four of them round the table with their newspapers and their cards and the filled ashtray.

'Nothing, thank you. Maresciallo, please, I ask a favour of you. It is only a request because what I ask is outside the remit of your duties. What I ask is forbidden, you would be within your rights to tell me that what I ask is not possible.'

Pasquale watched the face of the maresciallo, and the face was impassive and gave no answer. They were not permitted to shop for the magistrate, and they did. They were not permitted to cook for him, or to clean the apartment.

'It is always the family, correct? I follow the family of Ruggerio and always it leads me into darkness. There has been a member of his family that I have missed – my own fault, I cannot justify my error: his youngest brother. The error is with me because, four years ago, I interviewed this brother in Rome. The youngest brother is Giuseppe Ruggerio, a businessman, he attacked me with what I believed to be justification. Was it his fault that his eldest brother was a mafioso? What more could he do than leave Sicily, make his own life away from the island? Was I not guilty of persecution? I believed him, erased him from my memory. I can make excuses. I can justify why I let the trail slip from me. But, the reality, I am humiliated. Now, I am told – I grovel because it was my error – the youngest brother is in Palermo. I have his address. I want confirmation that he is here. I ask you, maresciallo, to go and confirm for me that Giuseppe Ruggerio now lives in Palermo. It is always the family. Please…'

It was forbidden that the ragazzi should shop, cook, clean for the man they protected.

A more serious offence, to take active part in an investigation. Grim-faced, the maresciallo reached out and took a scrap of paper from the magistrate. Pasquale saw an address written in pencil on the scrap of paper. They faced the same danger as the man.

Because they rode with him and walked with him they were as exposed to risk as he was. Pasquale understood why the maresciallo took the scrap of paper and lifted his coat from the draining board, and checked his pistol and went out of the kitchen. They walked with death, together.