Killing Ground (56 page)

The last thing she heard, when she split from the group of tourists, was Axel's voice.

Axel was speaking harsh conversational German. She thought that he talked in German, had chosen one of the group to speak with, in case he was followed, in case he had been watched, as if to draw a tail from her. She learned. She walked up the aisle towards the low-set door through which the sunshine pierced the gloom. They were at the door - God, they were so bloody obvious - the black American and the Englishman.

The black American took half a stride towards her but the Englishman caught his arm.

She looked through them, she went past them.

What she had wanted, more than anything she had ever wanted, was to be held and loved by Axel Moen . .. and the bastard walked out on her. She was alone. It would be a fantasy for her to be held and loved by the bastard, have the buttons undone and the zip pulled down by the bastard, only a dream. The bastard . . .

The sun hit Charley's face. Just a little bit of a girl, was she? Could be given the big talk, could she? Could be pitched in, could she? Change of plan. Could be aborted, could she? The brightness of the sun burst on her eyes. Charley walked. The anger consumed her. The target of the anger was Axel Moen who quit on her, and the Afro-American, and the Englishman who looked scared fit to piss . . .

Charley walked fast down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.

They were pathetic.

She strode down the Via Marqueda and over the Piazza Verdi and onto the Via Ruggero Settima. She was going to the room of Benny Rizzo. She would use him because he was available. Going to his room to unbutton and unzip, use him as a substitute because he was available. She went into the street behind the Piazza Castelnuovo, and past the closed gates of the school where he taught. She pushed her way into the building and she scrambled fast up the stairs. At the landing, outside his door, were two black plastic rubbish bags, filled. She pressed the bell. She heard no sound from inside. She kept her finger on the bell. She needed him. He did not have a death threat because he was ineffective. He was not killed as his father had been because he was not noticed. The bell shrilled behind the door.

'He is not here.'

An old woman came up the stairs. It was the woman she had seen going to church.

'Not back from school?'

'Not coming back, gone.' The woman put down her shopping bags and was searching her handbag for the key to her door.

'What do you mean?'

'Did he not tell you?' The slyness was on her face. 'Not tell you that he was taking the ferry for Naples? You do not believe me?'

The old woman bent and her claw nails tore at the tops of the black plastic bags. The rubbish was revealed, the pamphlets and the sheets from the photocopier, and the books. Charley saw the poster, crumpled, a pool of blood on the street and the slogan caption 'Basta!'. She was alone . . . She heard the laughter of the old woman ... It would be her story, hers alone, that would be told . . . She ran back down the stairs.

They drove into the yard at the back of the police station. The magistrate looked around the cars parked in the yard. The boy, Pasquale, had driven badly, and the maresciallo had cursed him. He looked for the familiar face. The boy had been told, and the boy would believe he was betrayed, the boy would not understand that he was saved. For one more day only the boy would have to travel past the endless ranks of parked cars and parked vans and parked motorcycles. He did not expect to be thanked by the boy because the boy would never be told that he was saved. At the far end of the yard was a butcher's delivery vehicle. He saw 'Vanni. 'Vanni jumped out of the vehicle and came quickly across the yard. He was dressed as a butcher. He stank as a butcher. 'Vanni slipped down into the car, beside the magistrate.

'Thank you for coming, 'Vanni. I talk while we go.'

'Whatever, please . . .'

Out on the street, and the chase car had dropped back, and the light was off the roof, they went slowly. Perhaps the boy had forgotten how to drive as a normal motorist, but they burst a junction when they should have given way, and twice the boy missed his gears, and the curse of the maresciallo was in the boy's ear. Maybe, one day, the kind and good boy, Pasquale, would understand what had been done for him . . . They travelled on the road round the crescent of the beach.

'One may be intelligent, and at the same time display stupidity. One can see everything, and at the same time be blind. One can be supreme in complicated analysis, and at the same time lose the obvious. I hunt Mario Ruggerio, and I have been stupid, blind, I have missed the obvious. The family will be the core of his life.'

They came to the old town, and they passed the Saracen tower.

'To strangers and rivals he will display a psychopathic cruelty, but for his family he will have only a sickening sentimentality . . . Four years ago, in Rome, I met with his youngest brother. His brother was Giuseppe, he was a bright and alert businessman, a credit to the enterprise of the modern Italian - don't laugh, I checked, he actually paid his taxes in full. It was impossible to believe that he came from the same peasant stock as his eldest brother.'

The maresciallo gave the whispered directions to the boy. They turned towards the hill over Mondello, went slowly up a narrow and cobbled street.

'He attacked me, he criticized me for calling him to an interview at the SCO building.

He said that he should not have been persecuted for his blood relationship. I apologized.

I forgot him. The memory of him died in an unread file, forgotten. This morning I hear that he returned three years ago to Palermo. I hear that he lives in great affluence. He has a home that is a palace in the Giardino Inglese, he has a villa here.'

They wove a way round a gaping hole where electricity men worked, they went past the high walls and the big gates and the leaping dogs.

'He is connected in business with the wealthiest of the city, he is frequently abroad, he is a success. I could go to my peers, 'Vanni, I could again request resources for surveillance, I could beg and plead for resources, and I would again be criticized for the persecution of an innocent. I can come to you, 'Vanni, I can talk of an old friendship.'

The maresciallo turned. His finger came fast from its resting place on the safety of his machine-gun, and pointed to the gates of the villa. There was wire on the top of the gates, and there was shattered glass set into the top of the wall beside the gates. Again the sharp hissed whisper of the maresciallo and the boy braked the car. Through bushes, between trees, over the gate and the wall was the roof of the villa and the upper windows.

'I can ask for the team of the Reparto Operativo Speciale to move on this villa, no connection with me. I can ask it of you . . . Never have we found the banker of Mario Ruggerio, never have we known the link of Mario Ruggerio to the international situation. I think, perhaps, it was under my feet, beneath my eyes . . . You will do it for me?'

'No.'

'For friendship, 'Vanni, for the trust we have in each other.'

'No, I cannot.'

'Search it, turn it over, hunt for a notebook or a deposit book, an address book. I am in darkness. Please.'

He caught the collar of the butcher's coat, and 'Vanni would not look into his face.

'Vanni stared at the floor of the car. He said dully, 'I cannot - I would compromise an operation.'

'What operation?'

The maresciallo had heard the footfall first. He was twisted in his seat. He held the machine-gun just below the level of the door's window.

'I told you that it was not in my gift to give . . .'

The boy heard the footfall and his hands were rigid on the wheel and the gearstick.

'. . . I am sorry, I cannot share it.'

Tardelli turned. She walked past the car. She did not look into the car. She wore a cut-away blouse low on her shoulders and clean jeans. Her head was high, and her chin was out, and she walked with a brisk purpose. He saw the strength in her face and the boldness of her walk. She went to the gate ahead of them and she reached up to the bell.

He saw no fear in her. She scratched at her back, removing an irritation. There was no weight to her, no size to her. She was 'an agent of small importance'. He slapped Pasquale, the boy, on the shoulder, and made the gesture. He looked away from her. As the gate opened, as a servant stood aside for her, the car powered away.

'You know why we do not win, 'Vanni? You knew, and you did not mark it for me, you did not share. We cannot win when we fight harder against each other than we fight against them.'

He slumped back in his seat. The darkness was around him.

In the evening Salvatore received the visit of his mother. She came alone and she told him that his father suffered that day from the problem with his chest. He thought her more frail than when he had last seen her, but it was two years since she had been declared well enough to make the long journey to Asinara. He could not kiss his mother because he was a prisoner subject to a harsh regime, there was a screen of thick glass beween them. He asked about the health of his father and the health of his brother, Carmelo, and the health of his sister. He did not speak the name of his elder brother into the microphone that linked them, nor did he speak the name of his youngest brother. He told his mother that his own health was satisfactory. He showed no emotion, no misery

- to have complained or to have wept would be to show a loss of dignity in the presence of the prison officials. From her handbag his mother took a handkerchief. She blew her nose into the handkerchief. She held the handkerchief, and her crabbed old fingers unwound the single sheet of cigarette paper. The cigarette paper was, for a short moment, revealed in the palm of her hand, close to the glass screen. He read the message. His mother crumpled the paper into her handkerchief, put her handkerchief back into her handbag. He told his mother that he hoped she would be able to visit him again soon, and that then his father might be well enough to come with her. Salvatore had been nine years old when he had first come to the damp and dark visiting rooms of Ucciardione to see his father. He had been sixteen years old when he had first come with his mother to the same rooms to see his elder brother. He had been nineteen years old when his mother had first come to visit him. He understood the workings of the prison, as if it were a home to him. After the termination of the visit, as he was escorted back to his cell, Salvatore Ruggerio requested a meeting with the governor. He walked with dignity to his cell, and men stood aside for him, and men ducked their heads in respect to him. At each step of the iron staircase, at each pace on the stone landings, he felt the power of his brother that settled on him. At his cell door he repeated the request, that he should meet with the governor. The door of the cell was locked behind him. He stood heavily on his bed. He could see between the bars of the cell. He looked at the lights of the city, and he remembered the message from his brother that had been shown him.

A delivery van was moved. In its place, on the junction of the Via delle Croci and the Via Ventura, a car was parked. In the back of the car, hidden beneath a tartan rug, was a wooden tea chest.

The city woke, the city shimmered. The pall of the night mist hung on the city and would disintegrate under the climbing sun. The pollution haze would come to the city choking from the exhaust fumes of cars. Another day had started in the cruel history of the city . . .

Salvatore, the brother of Mario Ruggerio, stood respectfully in front of the governor of Ucciardione Prison and said, that day, he must speak in private with the magistrate, Dottore Rocco Tardelli.

... Through that cruel history, the Palermitans had learned when catastrophe would strike. Nothing tangible to place a hand on, nothing to see with their eyes, but a sense that was personal to the people of that city allowed them to know when catastrophe was close . . .

The men of Mario Ruggerio were in place. Tano watched the parked car and the mobile telephone was in his hand. Franco sat in the warmth of the sunshine on a bench and held an opened newspaper and observed the soldiers who protected the apartment and the two cars parked against the kerb. Carmine leaned against the door of the bar where he had clear sight of the entrance gates used by magistrates when they came to Ucciardione Prison.

. . . The men of the city hurried to their work, or they lounged on the street corners and they waited. The women of the city washed the nightclothes or went early to the market and were anxious to be home where they could wait. There was a quiet about the city as there always was when a man was isolated, had been through history when disaster edged near . . .

Using an old razor so that he would not risk cutting his jowled throat, Mario Ruggerio shaved carefully at the basin of the small room on the first floor in the Capo district and, as of habit, washed in cold water.

. . . The normality of the city was a superficial thing. Deep in their hearts, deep in their veins, deep in their minds, the people of the city knew that catastrophe was close, disaster was near, and they waited. It was a city of killing and violent death, as it had been since the time of the Romans and the Vandals, through the time of the Normans and Moors and the Spanish, over the time of the Fascists, now in the time of La Cosa Nostra. A shivering excitement that morning held the city in thrall . . .

The governor of Ucciardione Prison relayed the message of Salvatore Ruggerio that he requested a visit, that day, from the magistrate, Dottore Rocco Tardelli.

. . . The people of the city did not know the place or the time or the target, but the instinct of history was with them, and the inevitability. They understood when a servant of the state was ridiculed, isolated. They waited . . .

The boy, Pasquale, took the bus to work on the last day that he would act as bodyguard to the 'walking corpse'.

. . . The fascination with death, the majesty of murder, gripped the lifeblood of the city. A stranger would not have seen it. But the people of the city knew and watched, waited . . .