Killing Ground (43 page)

Alfred Rogers, DLO, Rome.

He had thought once that the young woman, in the graduation photograph on the wall above the telephone, was not his concern. He felt a keen sense of shame. He locked the report in the wall safe. 'I think I'll push off then. I'm about wrapped up.' 'Best place, squire, in bed with the missus. They don't thank you here for playing all conscientious.

Don't mind me asking - you seen .1 ghost or something? Sorry, sorry, just my little joke

. . .'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Come on, kids.'

When she'd woken, Peppino was already up and sitting in the living room with work papers. When she'd gone into the kitchen to get the kids' breakfast and to warm the milk for the baby, the sink had been filled with the dirtied dishes topped by saucepans and Angela had been making coffee. Not possible for her to examine the padded seat of the chair at the end of the dining table, not possible for her to check the number of plates used, or the number of knives and forks. She thought herself pretty damn clever to have offered to wash the dishes. Right, pretty damn clever that she had noticed the 'lechie'

pick up a cigarillo end at the back of the villa near the door in the wall. He smoked cigarettes, foul Italian ones, and Angela didn't smoke cigarillos and Peppino didn't smoke cigarillos, and the old man from last night would hardly have been sent out through the kitchen and past the gas tank and the rubbish bins for a sharp puff. And there was the jumbled memory of her dream.

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

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

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

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

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

'That is bloody unfair.'

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

Go home.'

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

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

'It won't happen again.'

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

'I am doing my best.'

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

'I am sorry.'

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

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

'That is pathetic.'

'I did my damn best . . .'

'Did he come?'

'Does he smoke cigarillos?'

'How the hell should I know?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The conclusion?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'So this is home?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Look to the mountain,' Benny said.

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

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

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

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

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