Killing Ground (64 page)

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 . . .'