Killing Ground

Chapter Nineteen

No flash overtakings, no hammering on the horn when he was behind a lorry. Peppino drove with caution. He had the power in the big car to go fast. No blinking of the headlights when he was behind a tractor. Peppino didn't talk. Charley thought she read him.

There were soldiers at a checkpoint on the ring road, and more soldiers and another checkpoint at the cramped little town of Altofonte, and after they had weaved through the narrowed streets and bumped on the rough cobbles and then climbed there was a third checkpoint. Each time, as he was waved down by the flashing torch, Peppino lowered the window and produced his documents and was a study in politeness. Each time at the checkpoints she saw the young soldiers and their guns and their drab and ill-fitting uniforms. They made a show of checking the papers and they shone lights around the interior of the car, over Angela's face and the children's and over Charley as she held the carrycot on her lap. She reckoned most of them were not from the island, strangers, as she was. She thought that Peppino drove steadily so that he could be certain he did not attract attention, and he was gracious in his courtesy to the soldiers each time he was gestured forward.

After the third checkpoint, Charley turned and looked back through the rear window and she could see the lights of cars that followed them away, and far in the distance and far below were the patterns of lights that were the city. Peppino had the radio on. The RAI station played solemn music, German classical music, and she thought it would be a mark of sympathy for the magistrate who had been killed. She did not know whether they were followed, and she did not know who might follow. She could not press the button, send the tone signals for the Stand-by alert because she feared that a transmission would interfere with the radio in the car. She must take it on trust that they followed, that someone was close by.

She held the carrycot tightly, and the hand of Francesca was on her elbow and gripped it.

She remembered the road.

It was the road along which Benny had driven her. They skirted the lit homes of Piana degli Albanesi where, Benny had told her, a Greek itinerant population had settled five hundred years before. So much going on in her mind but she remembered that bloody useless, bloody irrelevant, morsel of information. The headlights of Peppino's car, and the lights of the cars behind him, wafted on the road bends across tended, rich fields and found the same opaque flowers and the same horses. He meant nothing to her, he had been used, he had been available. She thought that now he would be sitting alone in his small room and writing tracts for his pamphlets, or he would be at a meeting and spewing words. He meant nothing to her because he was ineffective. She sat in the back of the car with the children and she thought that Benny Rizzo was a loser. It was she, Codename Helen, who held the power. They climbed. A few times, not often, the rock outcrops were close enough to the road for her to see the harshness of them. It was what she had come for, it was where she wished to be, it was her story.

Once, a car passed them, swerved by them at speed, and she saw the backs of the heads of men in the car… She took it on trust that she was followed, that there were men close by, men who would listen.

And Angela knew. Angela who was silent and who sat upright and so still and who gazed unmoving into the cones of glare thrown forward by the headlights, she knew.. . Charley saw the sign for

Corleone and the car slowed and the lights caught at a flock of goats that meandered in the road. And Axel Moen had told her that if she aroused serious suspicion then she would be killed – and the men who killed her, afterwards, would eat their meal and think nothing of it. She felt the strength flow in her.

At the airport of Punta Raisi…

In a door that should have been locked, a key turned.

Along a corridor that should have been lit, a light was switched off.

Outside the door of Departures, in shadow, an officer of the Guardia di Finanze passed his I/D card to a man, and was promised that his co-operation would not be forgotten.

In the cockpit of an aircraft, fuelled and waiting for passengers to board, a technician reported a malfunction in the avionics and called for a delay of the flight until the fault was repaired.

Axel Moen sat alone, apart from the other passengers, and waited.

One car was up ahead, and one car was close behind the target, and the third car held back.

Harry Compton thought they did it well. It was his training and he didn't find a fault.

Three times now the car up ahead of the target and the car tailing the target had exchanged positions. He was in the car that held back. It was plenty of miles since he had last seen, clearly, the target car, been close enough to read the registration, and it was plenty of minutes since he had last seen the tail lights of the target car. 'Vanni Crespo was in the front passenger seat and he had a cable earpiece hooked in, and Harry Compton was in the back with the American.

So calm in the car, unreal.

It was like an exercise, like routine. It was the quiet in the car that unnerved him.

They said, back home, he thought it was on his assessment file, that he was good at stress handling. Christ, true shit, he had never known hard stress. Easier if the radio had been blasting, if there had been static howl and frantic shouts, but 'Vanni Crespo had the earpiece hooked in and he would whisper to the driver and sometimes they'd slow and sometimes they'd accelerate, but he was not a part of it and it was unreal. The American shivered beside him. The American had the stress bad. It was the American who pulled Harry Compton back from reckoning that it was all unreal.

There had been nothing, no signal, coming into his head, hitting the curves of his skull. Each kilometre or so, regular as a church clock, 'Vanni Crespo turned and looked back at him and queried with his eyes, and each kilometre he shook his head. Nothing, no signal, and each kilometre or so the American cursed, because he had the stress bad.

Must have been another kilometre gone, because 'Vanni Crespo turned and he shook his head again and the American cursed. He laid his hand on the American's and felt the shiver.

'You reckon it's a bum?' the American murmured.

'She's there, she's followed. Can't say that-'

'She's not called you up?'

'She's not.'

'Why wouldn't she?'

'Don't know, maybe it's not possible. How the hell do I know?'

'I reckon it's a bum.'

'If that's what you want to think…'

'What I want is a piss.'

'Not in my pocket.'

There was always one of them, Harry Compton thought, sure as hell there was always one man in a surveillance job or on a tail job who had the stress bad and who needed to jabber. They had only been in position three minutes, all sweating and all tensed up and all on the adrenalin edge, when the gates to the villa drive had been opened and the big car had pulled out. He'd seen her then, in the light thrown by a street lamp, sat in the back of the big car and looking straight ahead, and he'd seen her chin jutted out like it was set in a way of defiance. His eyes had lingered on her for three, four seconds. He'd thought she'd looked, no lie, just bloody magnificent. There had been a woman in the front, just seen the flash of her, classily dressed. There had been the man driving. It was his talent to be sharp on recognition and the profile of the head had registered, the sighting such a damn long time ago in the hotel restaurant on Portman Square. .. He had seen the woman and the man who drove, but it was the jutting chin of the girl that captured him. They'd made it by three minutes, and the stress had built from that time.

'God, I'd give a heap of my pension for a piss.'

Most cruel was the silence in his ear. The inductor piece was a poor fit. All the time he was aware of the pressure of its presence. Harry Compton waited for it to bleep, was dominated by it, and there was only silence. He could not help but think of her, what

'Vanni Crespo had said about her. So boring, her life, so tedious. Her life in the villa, behind the big gates he had seen opened, was a routine of dressing kids, feeding kids, walking kids to school, reading to kids, cleaning kids' rooms, washing kids, putting kids to bed, and waiting… He might just, if he ever was posted to an undercover course, stand up, tell the instructor that he talked bullshit, and talk about the miracle of an untrained operative who had survived boredom and tedium.

'Where's this?' There was the hiss in Dwight Smythe's voice.

They were into a queue of cars. There was a road block up ahead and beyond the road block were the lights of a town that fell the length of a hillside.

'Vanni Crespo turned. His face was screwed in concentration, as if the radios were going from the two cars ahead. 'It is Corleone.'

'What does that mean, 'Vanni?' Harry Compton asked. 'What does it tell you?'

'It is their snake pit, it is where they come from. It is where they kill, it is where they are comfortable. It is a time-'

Dwight Smythe shuddered. 'I'd give more than all my pension for a piss.'

'Would you please be quiet? You distract me. Understand, it is a time and a place of maximum danger to her when she goes with them into their snake pit…'

They drove through the lit town.

It was where she had walked with Benny Rizzo.

They drove beside the piazza and then up the narrowing main street. The shops were closed, and the bars were empty, and the market had been dismantled for the night. She remembered what Benny Rizzo had told her. Corleone was the place of Navarra and Liggio and Riina, and now it was the place of Mario Ruggerio. They drove where she had walked, and where a trade unionist had walked, but then a gun had been in the trade unionist's back, but then the men of the town had hurried to their homes and locked their doors and shuttered their windows. They drove past the same doors and the same shuttered windows, and past the church, and over the bridge beneath which the torrent of the river fell into a gorge, and it was where the body of the trade unionist had been dumped so deep that the crows would not find it.. . 'He was our hero and we let him go.

All we had to do, every one of us, was to pick up a single stone from the street, and we could have overwhelmed the man with the gun. We did not pick up a stone, we went home'… She felt the weight of her arrogance. It was as if she thought that she alone could pick up the stone from the street. Axel Moen had taught her the arrogance.. . The boy, piccolo Mario, was excited, and his father quietened him and told him that the journey was nearly complete. The road climbed out of the town.

There was a junction, there was a road sign to Prizzi, there was the turning to a hotel.

A coach was parked outside the hotel. It was an English touring coach. The coach came from Oxford and had TV and a lavatory at the back. Some of the tourists were still in the coach, wan and tired and beaten faces peering and blinking at the windows as the headlights of Peppino's car caught them. Some of the tourists, those with fight in them, were with the courier and the driver at the steps of the hotel, and the argument raged.

Charley heard the protest of the tourists and the shrugged answers of the manager who held the high ground at the top of the steps and who guarded his front door.

'Why can't you help us?'

The hotel was closed.

'We are only looking for a simple meal. Surely…?'

The hotel's dining room was closed.

'It's not our fault, is it, that in this God-forsaken place we had a puncture?'

They must find another hotel.

'Is this the way you treat tourists to Sicily, feeding money into your damned economy – show them the door?'

The hotel was closed for a private function.

'Where is there another hotel where we might, just, find a degree of hospitality?'

There were many hotels in Palermo.

It was, for Charley, the confirmation. The hotel was closed for a private function.

Peppino had opened the door for his wife, studied manners. Small Mario was out of the car and running, and Francesca was chasing him. Charley lifted the carrycot from the car, and the bag. The tourists were sullen and bad-tempered and they stamped away with their courier towards the coach in the shadow of the car park. She was the donkey.

Charley trailed after the family with the weight of the carrycot and the bag. She was the dog's body, and there was the weight of the watch on her wrist. She did not look round, she did not turn to see whether there were car lights back down the hill. The manager ducked his head in respect to Angela and shook Peppino's hand warmly and he tousled the hair of small Mario and pinched the cheek of Francesca. He ignored the young woman, the donkey, who struggled up the steps with the carrycot and the bag. He'd bloody learn. They'd all bloody learn, before the night was finished… He ignored Charley but he made a remark about the baby in the carrycot, spoke of the beauty of the sleeping baby.

They went through the lobby of the hotel.

There were three men in the lobby, young and wearing good suits, with neatly cut hair, and they had their hands held across their groins. They watched. They did not move forward, they did not come to help her, they watched her. There was no receptionist at the desk in the lobby. Charley saw the precise lines of room keys, perhaps fifty keys. The hotel, of course, was closed for a private party… She was the horse made of wood, she was trundled through the gates on rollers, she was Codename Helen, she was the point of access… The manager ushered Angela and Peppino and the children, oiling respect, across the lobby towards the dining room door. He knocked. An older man opened the door and there was a smile of welcome. It came very sharp to her, to Charley, the thought of what Axel Moen had said. The older man had a hard and bitter face that the smile did not mask, and the smile had gone and the older man had seen her. 'If you arouse serious suspicion, they will kill you and then eat their dinner, and think nothing of it…' She listened.

'Who is she?'

'She is, Franco, the bambinaia of our children.'

She heard the exchange between Peppino and the man, anger meeting hostility.

'I was not told she was coming.'

'It is a party for the family, perhaps why you were not told.'

'I am responsible. There is no place laid for her.'

'Then make a place for her. She was cleared. She has been investigated to the satisfaction of my brother.'

Her thoughts were a fast jumble. In the street, knocked down. In the photograph, a boy dead beside a motorcycle. Her bag snatched from her. A boy from the tower blocks dead and with his mother grieving over him. Her handbag returned by Peppino. She stood, she waited, she played the dumb innocence of ignorance. The man, Franco, gazed at her, then stood aside and she followed the family into the dining room.

It was a long and narrow room. There was a single table in the centre of the room.

There were fifteen places laid at the table, the best glasses and the best crockery and the best cutlery, and there were flowers. At the side of the room was a long buffet table with hot plates and with mixed salads.

She stood inside the door. She had no place there. She was there because Angela had made the battleground for her. Angela knew… What depth of viciousness, what pit of vengeance, what total hatred. Angela knew… Angela walked the length of the table, serene, a queen. Charley put the carrycot on the floor, and she knelt beside it, and she could see Angela walk towards the family at the far end of the dining room. She understood why Angela had dressed her best, why she had worn her most precious jewellery. The family were peasants. Angela brushed the cheek of her mother-in-law with her lips, the barest gesture. She let her father-in- law peck at her face, only once.

There was the grinning Carmelo, big and awkward and constrained in an old suit, and she held his hands and made a show of kissing him. There was the sister, gaunt and with her dress hanging on bony shoulders. Another woman stood behind the parents of Mario Ruggerio, and Angela went to her and held her momentarily, and the woman had a teenage boy and a teenage girl with her. The woman's eyes flitted nervously, and she tugged at the waist of her dress as if not comfortable in it and the teenage boy had a sullen face, and the girl was dumpy with puppy fat. Charley watched. She busied herself at the carrycot, and she watched as Angela greeted each of them. And she saw that each of them gestured towards her or glanced at her, as if they queried her presence, as if they checked who she was.

Peppino was beside her.

Peppino asked, considerate, 'You have everything you need?'

'I'll have to heat the baby's bottle. Evening feed.'

'You will amuse the children if they are bored?'

'They seem pretty excited,' Charley said.

'It is a family party, Charley.'

'You won't notice me.'

'Would you like a drink, anything?'

Charley grimaced. 'Not while I'm working. Don't worry about me, just have a lovely evening.'

They did notice her. They noticed her as if she were a wasp at a tea table, as if she were a mosquito in a bedroom. They noticed her and they asked. The man, Franco, looked at her and his eyes had the coldness of suspicion. She made the baby comfortable. She did not know where they were, nor if they listened…

The voice was from behind him.

'Signore, I do apologize for disturbing you…'

He turned, reflex. The card, for a moment, was held in the palm of a hand. He saw the flash of the photograph on the card, he read the words in heavy print 'Guardia di Finanze', and he saw the emblem.

'There is a telephone call for you. I was asked to be discreet. You should take the call in a place of privacy. Please, could you follow me?'

He pushed himself up. He trailed after the man. The man was heavily built with wet, sleeked black hair and a waddling walk. Axel Moen was led to a door in the shadowed extremity of the departure lounge. On the door was a 'No Entry' sign. The loudspeakers were calling the flight for Rome.

'I am sure it will only take a moment – you will not miss your flight.'

The man smiled. His hand was on the door, and he stood aside so that Axel Moen would go first. He opened the door. The darkness gaped at Axel Moen, and the weight of the man bullocked him through and into the corridor. The door slammed behind him, the blackness was around him. The startled shout, 'Oh, Christ, shit,' spinning, clawing at the man. The blow hit him. He sagged. He fought for his life. He had no weapon, not a pistol and not a knife and not a baton. In the darkness, blows and kicks hammering him, hands and fists dragging on him, he thought there were four men. To protect his life, biting, scratching, kneeing… There was a gag in his mouth, pulled tighter, and he could not scream. No help would come, no light would flood the darkness of the corridor. Alone, Axel Moen fought dirty for his life, and there were four of them who tried to take it, precious, from him.

Dwight Smythe urinated noisily into a scrub bush.

Harry Compton bit at his lip.

'Vanni Crespo had the guys around him. Took Harry Compton back to his youth, when he played sports, when the team came together before the first whistle and the arms were around the shoulders and they hugged for strength, took him too far back.

Like 'Vanni Crespo was the captain of a team and talked the final tactics… They were parked down the road from the hotel, difficult to be certain in the darkness but he reckoned they were a clear four hundred metres from the lights of the hotel.

Dwight Smythe blundered to Harry Compton's side and was pulling up the zipper.

'What do we do?'

Harry Compton snapped, 'We close our bloody mouths. We wait till we're told what to do.'

'Where is she?'

'We'll be told.'

'Ever thought of taking up medicine? It's a wonderful bedside manner you have.'

Harry Compton watched. The men broke from 'Vanni Crespo. Going for the first whistle of the game, lining up the positions… checking radios, arming the weapons, sliding the masks down over their faces, loading the gas canisters into satchels. They were off the road, up a track and round a corner from the road, and the town of Corleone was below them, and the hotel was above them. He needed to say it… There were six men who had broken from the huddle with

'Vanni Crespo, and two had flaked away into the darkness towards the hotel on the left of the road, and two had waited for the headlights of a car to pass and then crossed the empty road to go towards the hotel on the right of it, and the last two had gone to one of the cars and eased the doors silently open and sat inside, and there was the glow of their cigarettes… He needed to say it, as if to clean himself.

'There's something, 'Vanni, that I have to tell.'

'Is it important?'

'Not important to anyone but me.'

'Can it keep?'

'What I have to say… I am a boring little fucker. I am a smalltown policeman. I am out of my depth. I interfered, and I did not know what I was putting my nose into. I thought I was clever, I thought it right at the time, and I blew the smooth running of your operation out of the water. I thought she was pressured, an innocent, and I started a ball going down a hill. When I realized the stakes, when I learned about her, then it was too late to stop the ball going down the hill. I feel a guilt. I apologize.'

He couldn't see, in the darkness, 'Vanni Crespo's face.

He heard the voice, cold with dislike. 'Don't apologize to me. Keep it for him. He backed off rather than argue with you. To argue was to lose time. You thought of your status, he thought of his agent. Go find Axel Moen after this and make your apologies.'

She had been to the buffet.

She had held the plates for small Mario and for Francesca, and let them choose, and put the squid and the salad and the shrimps and the salami slices and the olives on their plates.

She had gone back to the table, and she had cut the squid pieces smaller and knifed through the salad for small Mario, lazy little bastard. She had cut everything on the plate of Francesca. She had poured water from the bottle for the children.

She had the last place at the table.

At the far end of the table, at the head of the table, was the empty chair.

On the far side of the table, at the far end, was the woman with the nervous eyes who was not comfortable in her dress. Charley had not been introduced, not to any of them, but then she was only the donkey. Next to the empty chair was a place of honour – she would be his wife. She had broad, working hands, her stomach bulged in the dress. She toyed with the squid and she picked up the prawns with her fingers, did not shell them, crunched them in her mouth.

Then Agata Ruggerio, the matriarch of the family, who scowled, and Charley thought her complaint was that she was dispossessed from the chair taken by the wife, frowned because she would not sit beside her eldest son. Then Peppino, who talked dutifully with his mother.

Next on that side was the sister. When the wine was passed round, pointedly it was carried past the sister. Her face was yellowed, her fingers shook and food fell from her fork. An empty chair was beside the sister, Maria. Then the teenage boy with the sullen face, then Francesca. The boy made a remark to her and Charley pretended that she did not understand. The remark was in the dialect of the Sicilian countryside. She knew he wanted the oil for the salad passed to him, but she pretended that she did not understand him. She let small Mario, next to her, pass the brat the oil. She wondered what was his life and what would be his future, the teenage boy who was the son of her target. She wondered whether he was already addicted to the power of his father, or whether he could walk away from that power and make a different life. She wondered if he would ever hold hands with children and dance around his father…

Beyond small Mario, on Charley's side of the table, was the teenage girl, self-conscious with her weight but scooping food into her mouth, then an empty place, then Franco… Franco watched her. Each move she made was watched by Franco. He had small, fine hands with pared nails. She would have shivered if the hands of Franco had touched her… Next was Carmelo, the simple brother, who lived with his ageing parents, and then there was

Angela… Angela was politeness. Angela was beautiful. Angela was the crowned queen. Angela played a part as much as Charley played a part. Angela asked after Rosario's health, talked with the old contadino beside her as if his health mattered to her, and talked about the rabbits that he bred as if his rabbits were important to her.

Next to Rosario, at the head of the table, was the empty chair.. . She had gained access, she was the little dog's body, she had power over all of them…

'Are you not going to eat, Charley?'

She was far away. She had won the access, had taken the power, she was with Axel Moen on the cliff and by the river and in the cathedral

…

'What? Sorry…'

Small Mario pulled a face at her, like she was a cretin. 'Are you not going to eat?'

Franco watched her. His gaze lanced her. Too wrapped in her own thoughts. To think of Axel Moen was a mistake, to make a mistake was to invite suspicion. She stood.

There was a murmur of conversation along the length of the table. She went to the buffet counter. God, how long, how bloody long…? She must eat, not to eat was to make a mistake. There was a ripple of applause behind her. She did not turn. She smelt the tang of the smoke from a small cigar. There was a shout of congratulation behind her, and the hammering of cutlery on the table. She did not turn. There was a growl from an old throat, Rosario's throat, of pleasure. She put squid on her plate and salad and sliced ham. She turned to go back to her chair. The plate shook in her hand. She could not control the shake of her hand. Her plate clattered down onto the table, and he looked at her, as if then he noticed her.

He was at the far end of the table.

He was bent over his mother. His opened fist rested on his mother's shoulder, and he looked down the length of the table to her. For a moment there was a frown. She saw Peppino's lips move, did not hear what he said, what Peppino explained. Charley sat.

There was another man, and she heard the name Tano used by Franco, and there was a sour spark between them. At the buffet counter, behind her, was the presence of Tano, and the lotion scent of his body. The plate of food was in front of her, and she did not dare to eat because she did not think she would be able to control her knife and her fork.

He left his mother and he went to his wife. There was a grim sadness in the wife's face, and a steadfastness, and she offered her cheek to him. He kissed his wife's cheek. He went to the teenage girl and to the teenage boy and they kissed him with formality, as if they kissed a stranger. He went to his place at the head of the table, and in the silence Tano laid a filled plate in front of him. He looked around him. The silence cut the room.

Tano filled his glass. He drank from the glass, he banged the glass down onto the table.

He shouted…

'Piccolo Mario – come to your uncle!'

The big smile played on his face. The room exploded with laughter. The little boy catapulted from his chair and ran the length of the table and jumped onto Mario Ruggerio's lap. He started to eat, spearing his food with his fork, fondling the child.

Tano spoke to Franco, pointed to her, and Franco shrugged and gestured towards Peppino. She saw the chilled smile on Angela's face as her child was touched. The talk bayed around her.

There was a magnetism about the eyes of the man.

She thought the presence of the man was all in the eyes.

They were wide, deep-set eyes that were clear blue in colouring. There was a tiredness in the bulged flesh under the eyes, but the eyes glistened with alert life.

The eyes roved over the table. The eyes caught Charley. If she had had her knife in her hand, she would have dropped it. She was a pheasant in a car's lights. She was a mouse that a stoat closed on. When the eyes caught hers, Charley looked away.

He terrified her.

Such a small man, except for the eyes. Such an ordinary man, except for the eyes…

The baby cried.

He wore a well-cut suit and a white shirt and a simple tie of deep green.

The baby's scream grew.

Eating, he made a play of one-handed boxing with small Mario, and the child squealed in happiness, and there was soft sentiment at the mouth of Mario Ruggerio, not in the darting eyes…

The baby howled.

Charley did not know whether she could stand, whether she could walk. The fear held her. Angela looked at her, flicked her fingers and pointed to the carrycot. Peppino looked at her, savage, and gestured to the baby. She pushed herself up. She steadied herself against the table… She did not know whether they listened, whether they were close by… He was so small and he was so ordinary and his face was pasty, dull, and the hands that played with the child were roughened. She staggered to the carrycot. She knelt. She lifted out the baby. She held the baby. She picked up the bag with the baby's feed. She went, sleepwalked, towards the door to the kitchen.

'Please…'

She stopped.

The voice was tyres on gravel. 'Please may I see my nephew?'

He whispered in the little boy's ear. Small Mario slipped from his knee. The boy had the sulky look of a rejected lapdog.

The voice was waves on shingle. 'Please bring my nephew to me.'

She walked towards him. She was dazed. The steps were automatic, robotic. His eyes never left her. She trembled as she moved closer to him. She went past Francesca and past the teenage girl, past the empty chair, past Maria and Peppino and Agata Ruggerio.

She held the baby tight against her body, and the baby was quiet. His eyes never wavered from hers, she was mesmerized by his eyes, clear blue. She was close to him.

She smelt the stale scent of the cigars. He held out his arms, and she went past his wife.

He reached out with his arms. The big hands brushed against her arms and he took the baby Mauro. He smiled. There was a titter of appreciation around the table. He smiled an aged gentleness. The softness came to the old face, the lines of his face cracked in pleasure. What she noticed, he held the baby but his eyes never left hers.

'And you are the English bambinaia? You are Carlotta?'

'They call me Charley, that's my English name.'

'You are very welcome at our small celebration. We are not used in our family to a person such as yourself, but Angela brings to our family new horizons. Angela is the first of our family to have required a bambinaia. But we are humble people, and my mother did not have the money for someone to come into the midst of her home to look after her children. My wife, she has reared our son and our daughter, she has been able to do that without paid help in her house. But Peppino is a great success and we are all proud of his success. We measure the degree of his success that he can afford a bambinaia to help Angela with her children.'

The head of the baby was thrown back and the baby screamed, piercing.

'Why does the baby cry?'

'For his feed, it's the time for his feed,' Charley said.

The big hand, so carefully, brushed the fine hair on the baby's head. Charley did not dare to look at Angela. The broad fingers made little loving patterns on the baby's scalp.

'Then you should do your work, you should feed my nephew.'

She saw the power of the hands and the fingers. They held the baby and passed the baby back to Charley. The eyes gazed into her face, as if they stripped her, as if they searched for the lie. If she could have run, she would have. She was stunned. She walked dreaming towards the push doors of the kitchen. He had killed the father of Benny Rizzo, and he had sat piccolo Mario on his knee. He had climbed to power and killed a man from Agrigento, and he had played the sweet uncle with piccolo Mario. He had had her attacked and robbed so that her bag could be searched and he had killed the thief, and he had reached with loving arms for the baby Mauro… She backed into the push doors of the kitchen… He had bombed a car that morning and killed a magistrate and two of the magistrate's bodyguards, and he had brushed his fingers on the soft hair of baby Mauro… She stood inside the kitchen, she gasped for breath… He was an evil, heartless bastard, Axel Moen had said it. He had fought for power with the delicacy of rats in a bucket, Axel Moen had said it. He sat a child on his knee and he stroked the hair of a baby… Where the fuck was Axel Moen?… Until the men stood, she had thought the kitchen was empty. They were by the outer door of the kitchen, and one had been on a stool and one had been on a chair. She walked towards them.

'Hold the baby, please/ Charley said. 'And would you, please, heat a saucepan of water?'

They were young, they were dressed in suits of charcoal-grey. They were neat and scrubbed clean. She put down the bag on the far side of the central shining-steel work area. She walked boldly – Christ, it was a lie – round the work area. One, smaller and shorter and more powerful, hesitated and then clattered his machine-pistol down on his chair, and he had the awkwardness of a man who does not hold babies. She went to him, she gave him the baby Mauro to hold. She faced the second man.

'A saucepan of water, please, heated. It is for his nephew,' The second man slid a pistol into his trousers' waist and looked around him, looked for a saucepan.

She went back to the bag. No staff, of course. The food prepared, the food left, no witnesses to the gathering of the Ruggerio family. She understood why it was possible for Angela to have demanded her presence, nothing of substance would be said in front of Carmelo who was simple and Maria who was an alcoholic. The shorter man cooed at the baby, the second man searched cupboards for a saucepan. She slipped to her knees.

She put the baby's bottle on the work surface, where they would see it. She had regained the calm. The pattern of the code was in her mind. She heard water surge into a saucepan. The one who held the baby was coming closer to her, as if to watch her. Her hands were in the bag. She felt the button on the watch on her wrist. She made the rhythm of the call. She heard the second man put the saucepan down on a burner, and the shorter man was closer to her. There was laughter behind her, through the push doors. She made the call again, the pulse tone for Immediate Alert. The shorter man looked over the top of the work surface, and Charley lifted a clean nappy from the bag

…

She did not know if anyone listened, if anyone was near.

'You are certain?'

'The first time was three long tones, three short tones, that's-'

'That's Immediate Alert.'

'Repeated, three long, three short-'

'Then we go.'

They ran to the cars. For a moment 'Vanni Crespo was bent at the window and talking urgently to the hooded carabineri men, then he split from them. He was breathing hard. He turned the ignition, stamped the clutch and then the accelerator.

'Vanni Crespo drove smoothly. He was up against the bumper of the other car, no lights. Harry Compton was beside him. He felt a desperate and sickening loneliness. He had made his confession and tried to purge himself, and he had failed. The vomit was in his throat. She was the girl with the mischief in her face, the girl who posed in her graduation gear. 'Vanni Crespo had said she was in the snake pit. He was passed a pistol, Axel Moen's gun. He could have said, truth, that he was not firearms-trained. He could have said, honest, that it would be a catastrophe if he were involved in a shooting in Sicily. He took it. The American whimpered behind him.. . There would be two men going through the kitchen and two men going through the ground-floor fire exit, co-ordinated on 'Vanni Crespo's radio, and they would go through the front bloody door

… There was truth, honesty, in the American's whimper. So frightened, but he had responsibility for her, he had to go through the front door, and he couldn't chicken out of the responsibility.

They drove up the road towards the hotel, no lights.

'Vanni Crespo murmured. 'Don't look at her. Don't acknowledge her, or you kill her

… if we are not already too slow.'

Harry Compton was sick over his trousers, over the pistol.

With her backside, Charley forced the push doors open. The baby was quiet. She held the baby against her. There had been an empty chair, and the chair was now taken. He had wet, sleeked black hair, and she thought the man had just washed, and the fatness of his face was flushed, and the eye that she could see was reddened and closed. He held a handkerchief to the cheek that she could not see. The doors swung shut behind her.

Angela looked at her, and the wife and Maria and Franco, brief glances. Mario Ruggerio held court. They were absorbed by his story. She did not understand the story because she had not heard the start of it, but the laughter rippled as if on cue when he paused, when he coughed on the smoke of his cigar, when he spat phlegm into his napkin. Rosario and Agata, Carmelo and Franco and Peppino did not look at her, but hung on the story of Mario Ruggerio. She walked quietly behind them, the length of the table. The man with the sleeked hair, the man who had come late, stared at her. The eyes of the man with the sleeked hair followed her, and he swivelled his head, and there was first the puzzlement, and then the confusion, and then – Charley saw it – the dawning of recognition. He scraped his chair back on the tiled floor, he rose from his chair. He went, rolling on his hips, past Maria and Peppino, past Agata and the wife…

Charley was laying the baby in the carrycot.

The story of Mario Ruggerio was at a peak. They were rapt. His evening, his gathering, his celebration for the family. And his eyes flashed anger and she thought the man with the sleeked hair wilted. But the interruption was made, the story was destroyed. The eyes of Mario Ruggerio, that had glistened like warmed milk when the child had sat on his knee and when the baby was held on his lap, blazed. She saw the shiver of the man.

'Yes, Carmine? What, Carmine?'

His hand, gripping the handkerchief, came away from his cheek. His cheek was a web of weeping nail lines, scratches. The handkerchief, blood-red on white, jabbed at her. The fist that held the handkerchief pointed to her. He stammered, 'In the cathedral, when the American was in the cathedral, she was there… I saw her… She was in the cathedral, she was close to the American… I saw her…'

It was a little moment of death. She heard the denunciation. It was a moment of serious suspicion. They had not yet finished their meal. They had eaten the salad and fish buffet. They had taken the pasta from the hot plates. There was meat on the hot plates and there were fruit bowls. Axel Moen had said they would kill her, and then eat their meal, and think nothing of it. He gazed the length of the table at her and his eyes, clear blue, squinted at her, and she saw the suspicion growing.

'Come here.' A rasped command. 'Come.'

Only the children did not understand. She walked slowly past the faces, she saw in the faces hostility and hatred. Angela looked straight ahead, Angela alone was impassive. She walked towards him. She would say that the American had spoken to her, yes. She would say that she had joined a tour of the cathedral and that the American had been beside her, yes. She would say that the American had pestered her, yes…

They would know she lied. She would not be able to hold the he against the clear blue eyes.

She walked past the meat in the dishes on the hot plates and past the bowls of fruit.

She was drawn to him. She could not help herself but go to him, moth to a light. His hand reached for her. He took her wrist. The strength of his hand closed over her wrist and the watch of dull steel.

She would not be able to maintain the lie.

The two men in the lobby were covered by guns. The manager stood and faced the wall and held his hands high.

'Do we come with you?' the American murmured.

'It is not necessary,' 'Vanni said.

He had the report on his radio from the kitchen area, two men disarmed. In the car park was a driver lying on the tarmacadam with his wrists handcuffed behind his back.

He would go himself, it was his own business. He would have taken Axel Moen… He felt, then, a great tiredness, there was no elation and there was no pride. He took his I/D from his pocket and slipped his pistol into his belt. He pushed open the door to the dining room.

He heard her voice, strong. 'There was an American, yes, pestering me, yes, I told him to get lost, yes.. /

He walked briskly alongside the table and he held up his I/D card.

There would be no resistance, not from the family gathering, because to resist was to throw away the dignity that was most precious

… It was a good likeness, the computer-enhanced photograph of Mario Ruggerio was close to the reality of the man who now let slip the wrist of the young woman… They were all the same when they were confronted. They were all passive. If the bastard had swung from his chair and dived towards the kitchen door, then it would have made for a moment of excitement.

None of the bastards did, ever. He was so ordinary, old and weary and ordinary. That night in Palermo there were seven thousand troops deployed to find him, five thousand policemen hunted him, the agents of the ROS and the DIA and the Guardia di Finanze and the squadra mobile searched for him, and he was so fucking ordinary. He would crave respect, he would want to go with his dignity, as all of the bastards did. No handcuffs, because he should not be humiliated in the presence of his family. No guns, because he should not be humiliated in the sight of the children. He had let slip the young woman's hand and she backed away from him. He would ask for a moment of time with his wife and his children, and 'Vanni would give it him. In the car park, out of sight of those he loved, he would offer his wrists for the handcuffs, as all the bastards did.

Just an ordinary old man, a peasant, and he peered up at the I/D card held in front of him, and satisfied himself.

'Vanni did not look at the young woman. To recognize her would be to kill her.

'Herb, it's Bill Hammond here. I'm not on secure. Herb, we scored. We got the fat cat, the kid took us to him. Actually, it was you that scored, Herb, because you authorized it

… Nice of you to say that… No, I'm at the airport. Too right, I'll be getting straight down to the Justice people, get them out of bed, bet your life, get them off the nest…

Yes, Dwight was right there, on the ground, it was him that called me, he was integral to the liaison, he did well… No, that's my problem, Axel Moen's not with me… I don't know what the fuck's happened, but he didn't get the flight… You ever been here, Herb? You ever tried to raise sense out of Palermo when the last flight's gone?… OK, he's a big boy, but I just don't understand why he wasn't on the flight… That's right, Herb, it was his kid that pulled it.'