Killing Ground (33 page)

Luv, Alf.

Harry Compton stood over Miss Frobisher as she typed the reply for transmission to Rome. She oozed her disapproval, as if in the days of her youth, the days of carrier pigeons, certain standards prevailed in communications. And he didn't care what she thought and ignored her curled upper lip because the excitement ran with him.

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

FROM: D/S Harry Compton, S06.

Two half pints coming your way. We concerned about use of your body with lady from SCO - could lead to Post-coital Stress Disorder and her requirement for counselling. Do not, repeat NOT, share our interest in GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO with Yankee cousins, nor with locals.

Bestest, Harry.

'Do I really need to know this?'

The grievance, the story of the 'pressurization' of a young girl from south Devon, was climbing the ladder. From Detective Sergeant Harry Compton to his detective superintendent. From the detective superintendent to the commander of S06. From the commander to the assistant commissioner (Specialist Operations). At each step of the ladder the grievance was elaborated.

'I rather think, Fred, that you do - and I'd like to hear the views of colleagues.'

Around the polished table, bright in spring light thrown through the plate-glass windows, in a room on the sixth floor of the New Scotland Yard building, were the commanders who headed what they believed to be the elite specialized teams of the Metropolitan Police. Comfortable in their chairs, at the end of their monthly meeting, were the men who ran Anti-Terrorist Branch, International and Organized Crime, the Flying Squad, Special Branch, Royal and Diplomatic Protection and S06.

The assistant commissioner moved behind them, refilling the coffee cups from a jug.

'Right, shoot then.'

'Am I peeing in a gale? None of you knew that the DEA, our American friends, were recruiting in this country?'

Gestures and shrugs and shaken heads from Anti-Terrorist branch and Special Branch and from Royal and Diplomatic Protection, hardly likely to have been blown past their desks. The I ;lying Squad man said that he rarely dealt with Americans, when he did it was FBI and, snigger, then when he was short of a good meal on expenses.

International and Organized Crime denied flatly that he had joint operations with DEA currently in place.

'Get to the point, please.'

'Of course, Fred. I am not a happy man, I regard this situation as intolerable.

American agencies are based in this country on the very clear understanding that they operate through us, and that means they do not have the right to run independent operations. What we know, no thanks to them, is that a DEA operative flew here from Rome in pursuit of a letter sent from Palermo to a Miss Charlotte Parsons, teacher and first job, aged twenty-three, just a naive youngster. The letter the DEA tracked was an invitation to Miss Parsons that she should go to work for a Palermo family as a child-minder and nanny. The DEA wanted that girl in that household, they worked her over, they put quite intolerable pressure on her. A member of my team has established, at stiletto point, from I )evon and Cornwall, that the locals behaved like cowboy bullies at the DEA's request, took the girl on a tour of druggie housing ••states, to a morgue to gawp at an overdose victim, to a hospital to visit a narcotic-addicted baby. That is disgusting abuse of influence.'

'I've not heard anything that I want to know.'

'It is our belief that Miss Parsons is now exposed to real hazard. Whether you want to know it or not, sir, you'll hear it. Sorry, but this gets up my nose. Not any old family, no, but a quality, tasty, mafia family. Miss Parsons has been kicked by the DEA's boot into l he Ruggerio family. She has gone to work for the younger brother of Mario Ruggerio.'

The commander paused for effect. Not that Royal and Diplomatic Protection, paring his nails, knew who the hell Mario Ruggerio was, nor Anti-Terrorist Branch, who was swirling the coffee dregs in his cup, nor Special Branch. Flying Squad was gazing at the ceiling, frowning, trying to gather in a memory of that name. He gestured to International and Organized Crime.

'Yes, I know the name. It's in most of that interminable stuff the Italians chuck at us.

Mario Ruggerio is coming through, fast- track, to fill the vacuum created when the Italians finally put a bit of their act together and lifted Riina and Bagarella. Same mould as Liggio or Badalamenti or Riina, a peasant who's made the big time.'

'And a killer?'

The commander of the International and Organized Crime unit grimaced. 'That's integral to his job description. Riina had a hundred and fifty killings down to him, forty done himself, mostly manual strangulation. Goes without saying.'

'Kills without hesitation, kills what threatens?'

'Reasonable assumption.'

The assistant commissioner rapped his silver pencil on the table, hard. 'Where are we going?'

'When challenged their Country Chief gave us a right put-down. I'll tell you where we're going. The DEA, the Americans, have inserted this innocent young woman, untrained and with zero experience of undercover, into a prime and vicious mafia family. Stands to reason, the Americans see her as an access source. Christ, down there the Italians cannot even protect their own judges and magistrates who're ring-fenced with hardware - what sort of protection are they going to be able to give this young woman? Nil.'

The hps of the assistant commissioner pursed. 'Do I not hear a little of injured pride?

Wasn't there a word of a little spat in Lyon last year, the Europol conference, rather a public put-down of one of your people? I would hope, most sincerely, that we are not edging into vendetta country.'

'I resent that.'

The assistant commissioner smiled, icily. 'And we are, I believe, supposed to be on the same side, wouldn't you agree?'

'There are potential consequences. Because of the possible consequences, I felt it my duty to raise this matter. A naive and pressurized young woman has been inserted into an area of hazard. Take the bad side. She's blown out. Our little Miss Parsons, of south Devon, schoolteacher, ends in a ditch with her throat cut and her body showing all the marks of sadistic torture. Italian media, with their cameras, crawling all over her body, our papers and TV picking it up. Going to try to wash our hands of responsibility, are we? Going to say, are we, that she was put in this position of real danger from right under our bloody noses, and we did nothing? A lamb to the slaughter, and we did nothing? Would you, gentlemen, sit on your backsides if it were your daughter?

'Course you bloody wouldn't, you'd raise the bloody roof.'

'What do you want?'

The commander of S06 said, 'Try me on what I don't want - I don't want bloody Americans running riot in this country on recruitment trawls, short of consideration of consequences.'

'I said, what do you want?'

'I want Charlotte Parsons extricated. You postured that we were on the same side.

The same side is co-operation. They didn't co-operate. I want the Americans sent a message. I want Charlotte Parsons brought home.'

'Shit in the fan,' from Special Branch.

'Would kind of knock down bridges,' from Royal and Diplomatic I 'rotection.

'Poor friends, the Americans, if peeved. They'd not enjoy interference,^' from Flying Squad.

'I rely on their help, be reluctant to see them offended,' from Anti-Terrorist Branch.

'I'm taking S06's position, we'd be hung on lampposts if it went sour, if she came back in a box,' from International and Organized Crime.

'1 want her brought home before harm comes to her.'

Silence fell. The assistant commissioner stared out of the window. Where the buck should stop was in front of him, in front of the neatly piled papers on which his silver pencil beat a slight tattoo, the commander of S06 watched him. The commander was going no higher, but the assistant commissioner was five years the younger and would have his eyes on the top job and the knighthood. Squirming, wasn't he? Working over the tangent lines of consequences. Wriggling, wasn't he? The commander of S06 felt himself in good shape because the responsibility for consequences was now shared with his superior and with his colleagues. But the bastard, true to form, fudged.

'Before we confront the DEA, I want more information on Mario Ruggerio.'

'Like what he has for breakfast, what colour are his socks?'

'Steady, my friend - detail on Mario Ruggerio. There's a slot in my diary same time next week, just the two of us. I'm sure it'll keep for a week. Don't want to run before we can walk. And, so that I can better evaluate, I want to know more about this girl.'

'Hello - wasn't any trouble finding it.'

She had lied again, but then the lying was a habit. Good at lying, Charley had told Angela that it was important for her to go again to Palermo. So reasonable a lie, so fluent. 'It's the same as if you've been a driver in an accident, Angela, then you have to get back behind the wheel as quickly as possible. It's really kind of you to offer, but I need to be alone, just as I was alone then. I don't want anyone with me. I want to walk the streets, get it out of my system. Tell you what, Angela, I'm not taking that lovely bag that Peppino bought, I'm going to buy one of those stomach things that tourists have. I don't know what time I'll be back ... I have to do this for myself, I have to put it behind me.'

The gardener had let her out of the gates, the bloody 'lechie', and she had almost run down the street from the villa in impatience to get clear of the place. Peppino was long gone, driven away while she was still asleep. She had already taken the children to school and kindergarten. The baby was sleeping. When she'd talked to Angela, lied, she'd thought that Angela was close to spitting out the great confidences. Little Charley, she could be a vicious little bitch, she hadn't wanted to hang around and hear the confidences, nor the weeping. Stick to the pills, Angela, keep popping them. She had run to get the bloody miserable place behind her . . .

'You are well, recovered?'

'Do I look awful?'

'The bruise has gone, the scratches are good.' He was so damn solemn. 'You do not look awful.'

'Aren't you going to invite me in?'

She grinned, she felt mischief. He was so damn solemn, and so damn shy. He stepped aside with courtesy.

'It is a big mess, I am sorry.'

'No problem.'

She was early. Because she had lied well and run fast down to the sea shore in Mondello she had caught the bus before the one she had planned to take into Palermo.

She wore her tight jeans that hugged her waist and contoured her stomach and thighs, and the T-shirt with the wide cut at the neck that left her shoulders bare. She stepped through the door. She had taken time, unusual for her, with her lipstick and with her eyes, and she wondered now, as Benny let her into his apartment, if Angela would have registered that she had been careful with her cosmetics, might have known she lied.

Perhaps it was a mistake to have been careful with the lipstick and with her eyes, and maybe Axel bloody Moen would have slagged her off for it. The apartment was a single big room of an old building. A small cooker in a dark corner beside a washbasin that was filled with dirty plates and mugs, a wardrobe and a chest, a single bed not made and with the pyjamas lying dumped on it, a table covered with papers and a hard chair and an easy chair that was covered with clothes. There were posters on the walls.

'I was going to clean it, but you are early.' Said as an apology, without criticism.

'It's lovely. It's what I don't have . . .'

It was what she yearned for, her own place and her own space. A place, space, where she was not a lodger in her mother's home, not a paid guest in Angela Ruggerio's villa.

She was a lying little bitch and a bullying little bitch. She had invited herself into his life. She went to the basin and ran the water till it was hot. She didn't ask him if he wanted his plates and his mugs cleaned, she did it. She ignored him and he hovered behind her. The poster on the wall above the basin was of a pool of blood on a street and the single slogan, 'Basta!'. When she had finished at the washbasin she went to the bed and stripped back the sheets .and saw the indentation where his body had been, and she made the bed neatly and folded hospital corners as her mother had taught her. She put his pyjamas under the pillows. It was a narrow bed, a priest's bed, and she wondered if it whispered when his body moved on it, a chaste bed. The poster, fastened with Sellotape to the wall above the bed, was of white doves rising. She didn't look at him, it was her game with him, and at the chair she started to fold the clothes and to take a suit back to the wardrobe. In the bottom of the wardrobe she found dirty shirts and socks and underpants; she assumed he went back to his mother every week with a bag of washing. She turned. Beside the door was a poster on the wall showing, black and white, the long snaking column of a funeral and mourners. Her hands were on her hips.

Charley grinned. It was her cheek.

'Another Sicilian boy who needs a woman to look after him. Christ, how did you survive in London?'

She had embarrassed him. 'Where I lived, there were men and there were women. I used to bring back the left-over chips at the time we closed the McDonald's - they would have been thrown away. I fed the women, the women did my washing and they cleaned my room.'

'Grieves me to hear there's a male chauvinist piggery alive and well in London.'

He did not understand. He stood awkwardly. What she liked about him, he seemed so bloody vulnerable.

'So, that was me saying thanks, saying you were brilliant. Thanks for being brilliant when everyone else looked the other way. Now, I've been really conscientious, I've read the guidebook. I want to see the duomo, the Quattro Canti on the Marqueda, the old market in the Vucciria. I want to get to the Palazzo Reale for the Cappella Palatina.

I reckon we can do the Palazzo Sclafani as well before lunch. Big lunch, a good bottle, then if we've the stamina—'