Killing Ground (32 page)

The price was $6,000 a kilo.

He had taken, as he had asked the question, as Peppino had translated the question and the answer, his Casio calculator from his pocket. His finger, for a brief moment, hovered over the 'on' switch. He listened to Peppino's translated answer. He was laughing. He put the calculator back in his pocket. His rough hand was on the Colombian's arm, squeezing it as he chuckled.

'I hope you have a good journey home. Before you go home I hope you will find someone else to do business with, and I hope you enjoyed our humble hospitality.

There was a dear friend in Agrigento with whom you might have made a deal, but he has disappeared. There is another dear friend in Catania, but I hear he has lost the stomach for such trading. Of course, if you have a vest to deflect the bullets, if you have a tank to travel in, you could go to Moscow. You know that if you do business with me, then it is honest business. There are others in many countries who would like what you have on offer, but you would have to be confident that you would not be cheated. If you do business with me, then there is no possibility of deception.'

What was the price he could offer?

The Casio calculator was back on the table. The screen lit. Mario's thick fingers were off the Colombian's arm and tapping the keys.

'Four thousand per kilo. Do you take it or do you leave it?'

The figure was acceptable.

'Four thousand per kilo, delivery over six months, through Rotterdam and Hamburg docks. You can do that?'

That, too, was acceptable.

'I pay on delivery. You understand that I cannot pay for what is not delivered past Customs at Hamburg and Rotterdam?'

That was understood.

'How do you wish to be paid? I can send you heroin, refined or unrefined, for distribution in the North American market. I can make available aircraft, 707s, a Lear executive, whatever, that you can sell on. I can pay through cash transfers, or in stocks or government bonds, whichever currency. How do you wish it?'

The Colombian, Vasquez, wished it in cash, invested and cleaned in Europe.

'For cash, invested and managed in Europe by ourselves in proxy lor you, we charge commission of 10 per cent of profits. Do you wish to use our facilities?'

The offer was accepted.

Peppino did not need the calculator. His mind made the calcu-lations. For five tonnes of cocaine, refined and delivered through the docks at Hamburg and Rotterdam, the Colombians would be paid the sum of $20 million. Five tonnes of cocaine would be sold on to the dealers and pushers and peddlers for a minimum of $45 million. When the dealers and pushers and peddlers released it on the streets of London and Frankfurt and Barcelona and Paris it would be worth $70 million. Initial profit, for minimum risk, was $25 million, and the little bastard, the Colombian, would have known that the old man beside him was perhaps the one individual boss in Europe in whose word he could place trust. Plus $20 million for investment, a profit margin of perhaps 8 per cent a year for total safety. A further income of $1.6 million . . . There had been no raised voices, no vulgar bartering. It had been, Peppino thought, a demonstration of mastery and control. The deal was closed with a handshake, the Colombian's small-boned fist wrapped tight in

Mario Ruggerio's broad fingers. The number of a post-office box on the island of Grand Cayman was given for further communication.

The Colombian was led away.

Mario lit his cigar and coughed. Peppino made the equation. His brother's deal would make a profit of $25 million, plus the commission on the investment, and his brother had no requirement for the money. There was no luxury that he sought, no means to spend the money. The money was the symbol of power. As if to tease Peppino, because Peppino wore a good suit and a good shirt and a good tie, his brother spat phlegm onto the floor and laughed.

Then, like it was an afterthought, something that could so easily have slipped his mind, Mario bent towards the floor and lifted a supermarket shopping bag from beside his feet, put it on the table, pushed it towards Peppino and tipped a handbag from it.

Each stitch of the handbag had been sliced, each panel of the handbag had been cut open. With the handbag were a purse and keys and cosmetics and a credit card and a diary, and tied to the strap was a thin cardigan.

'She is what you called her, a simple girl, but it is necessary always to be careful.'

Peppino took the autostrada back to Palermo. When he saw the road sign for Montelepre he slowed and he looked up towards the mountains. He could not see the town that was built against a rock fall because the rain cloud was too low. What always astonished him about his elder brother was his capacity to merge the broad frame of strategy with the minutiae of close detail, the strategy of a deal with a profit margin of $25 million, along with investment commission, and the detail of a hired help's handbag. He had gone that morning to Montelepre, stood in the rain and walked on the cramped streets, to search for lessons. He accelerated when he was past the turning. His brother had learned all the lessons that could be taught.

The journalist from Berlin had to run to keep alongside her, and her small floral-print umbrella covered only her head and shoulders. The rain ran on his head and his neck.

To the journalist it was quite ludicrous that he should have to conduct what he regarded as an important interview on the street and in the rain with the woman who claimed to have founded the first of Palermo's groups for anti-mafia education. He had waited a week for the interview. Three limes it had been postponed. She was a finely built middle-aged woman, dressed well, and she constantly covered with a slipping scarf the jewellery at her throat. While she talked, while she gave him his interview, she was incessantly yelling into a mobile telephone. The journalist from Berlin was a respected correspondent of his newspaper, he was a veteran of the Russian invasion of Chechenia and of the Gulf War and of Beirut. Palermo defeated him. He could not see the mafia, could not touch it, could not feel it. The woman he had waited to interview did not help him to see, touch, feel. A passing car's tyres carved through a rain lake and drenched his trousers.

'. . . I founded the anti-mafia group in this city at the time of Falcone's maxi-processo in 1986. I believed the trial of four hundred mafia men would make a turning-point. I was a systems manager with Fiat in the north, but I gave up my job, very well paid, to return to Palermo. I have big support in some of the most hard suburbs of deprivation, I am particularly well known in Brancaccio. My car, my Audi, I can leave it in Brancaccio and it will not be destroyed ... I accept that the mafia offers more to young people than the state offers, but it is possible to go forward through education, through the school environment... I have to accept also that progress is very slow, and the culture of the mafia is very strong, but a sense of duty drives me to continue ... I can take you to Brancaccio next week, and you may sit with me while I meet mothers of young boys who may be exposed to the contamination of the mafia, that would be most interesting for you ... I beg your pardon? Do the criminals regard us as a threat to their way of life? Of course we are a threat to them, through the policy of education and group meetings ... If I am a threat, why am I not silenced? I think you are impertinent, I think you are not truly interested . . .'

Charley sat on the patio.

The rain of the day had gone, its legacy fresher and keener air. The light came low and settled as a creeping, blood-red rug on the water of the bay. It should have been a vision for her to marvel at, it should have been a place where she sat and enjoyed a vista of magnificence, but she was alone and she could not find beauty in the sun's fall across the crescent bay. She had given the children their meal, they were in their rooms. Later she would read to them. Angela had taken the baby to the main bedroom. Most of the day Angela had been in the bedroom. Perhaps company enough for her was the sleeping baby and the pill bottles. The joy of the Roman summer had been in the company of Angela Ruggerio, and the woman was now withdrawn, as if overwhelmed.

One reference only, fleeting, to the great bloody god of family, and nothing to follow it.

Sitting in the fresher and keener air, turning the reality in her mind and twisting it, Axel Moen's concept of a visit to the villa by Mario Ruggerio seemed to her to be laughable.

She murmured, 'Sold a bum steer, Charley, sold shop-soiled goods.' Her fingers rested on the button of the wrist-watch. Would he hear her? Would he be running? Such a small action, to press the fast code onto the button. The sun, far out and blood-red on the bay, was losing strength. So bloody alone . . .

The car came.

The gates were opened.

The car came forward. The gates were slammed shut, a gaol's gates closing.

The car came up the drive and stopped.

Peppino was home. He was half across the patio when he saw her alone and in the shadow. He stopped, he turned, and the smile spread on his face.

'Charley, on your own - you are better?'

On her own so that she could better think of reality, and cure herself of the danger of complacency, and better live the lie. 'Been a long day, just sitting quietly.'

'Where is Angela?'

The villa was in darkness. Angela was in her room and maybe she was weeping, and maybe she was at the pills. 'Having a little rest.'

'I have some good news for you.'

Good news might be that there was a ticket for a flight, that she was being sent home, that she was returning to a room in a bungalow, to a classroom in a school. 'What's that?'

As if he played with her, as if he mocked her. He laid his briefcase on the patio table.

He went to the doors and switched on the patio light. The light on the patio made the night fall around her. He opened the briefcase. Smiling such sweetness.

'I told you there was a small possibility that your handbag might be dumped. We are very lucky. It was left near the Questura. Damaged, but containing your possessions.'

So close to her, his waist and his groin beside her head and her shoulders. He took her handbag and her cardigan from the briefcase, and each panel of the bag had been cut, and he said that the thief must have searched for a hidden compartment and something more valuable, and he put the handbag on the table. He gave her the keys and the lipstick and the powder box, and the credit card, and the diary, and he said that thieves were interested only in cash, and he gave her the purse, empty.

Peppino said, 'I am really so sorry, Charley, for your experience.'

She blurted, 'He's dead. The boy who robbed me, he's dead.'

His eyes narrowed. She saw the tension in his body. 'How can you know that?'

Axel Moen would have kicked her. Axel Moen would have slapped her. For a moment she had played the clever bitch. She had come out into the shadows of the patio, into the keener and fresher air, to clear her mind, and bloody waded in with two feet. She hesitated. 'I'm being silly. There was a photograph in the paper. A boy was dead in the street in Brancaccio.'

Soothing. 'But you did not see his face, you said he wore a helmet.'

Retreating. 'I thought I recognized the bike . . .'

'They are scum, Charley. They live on drugs to give them the courage to rob young girls and old women. They steal many bags in a day to feed their revolting habit.

Perhaps, before he had stolen from you, or afterwards, he thieved from a young girl or an old woman whose father or sons had influence. They lead a very dangerous life. You know, Charley, once there were some young boys, not aged more than sixteen years, and they stole the bag of a woman who was married to a mafioso. This criminal identified the boys and had them strangled and had their bodies left in a well. You are a caring person, but you should not concern yourself with the life or death of such scum.'

'Maybe I was wrong about the motorcycle. I am very grateful to you for taking so much trouble.'

His stomach and his groin rested against her shoulder. Always the smile on his face.

He took another handbag of soft leather from his briefcase and laid it in front of her.

'But you have no handbag. I took the liberty, Charley, to replace your handbag.

Please, open it. You see, I remember also that your necklace was broken. I cannot replace its sentimental importance to you, but I do my poor best.'

Angela stood in the doorway, and her hair was dishevelled from sleep, and the blouse hung loose from the waist of her skirt, and she was barefoot. Angela watched.

Inside the handbag was a thin jewellery box. Charley opened the box. The necklace of gold shimmered. She took the necklace in her fingers, felt the weight of the gold links. As she lifted it and draped it at her throat Peppino, so gentle, took it and fastened it, cold against her skin.

Angela turned away.

'Thank you,' Charley said. 'You are very kind to me.'

Peppino asked her to excuse him. He said that he was away early in the morning, that he must pack his bag.

She sat under the patio light, alone, and gazed out over the darkness. God, she wanted so much to be loved and to be held . . .

TO: D/S Harry Compton, S06. FROM:

Alf Rogers, DLO, Rome.

GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO, Apt 9, Giardino Inglese 43, Palermo, interesting because the heroes of the carabineri do not have files on him, Guardia di Finanze likewise, BUT a lady from SCO no doubt fancies my body.

RUGGERIO is a financial fixer, listed by SCO as living at Via Vincenzo Tiberio, Rome. No criminal history. (Unsurprised that locals have lost him

- workload, long lunches and inadequate resources to track movement, cannot cope.) BUT, BUT if we talk about same joker, he is younger brother of MARIO RUGGERIO (Grade A mafia fugitive). Because I am overworked, underpaid, reliant only on my considerable charm, difficult for me to learn more. DEA/FBI (Rome), underemployed and overpaid, have big dollar resources hence greater access than me - do I check with them for more GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO information?

Two pints, please, in Ferret and Firkin.