Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  She turned the radio up loud. On the radio was the news of a train strike and a rail strike and an airline strike, and a man had been shot in Misilmeri, and there was a demonstration of pensioners in Rome, and an excavator digging a drain's trench in Sciacca had uncovered the buried bones of four men, and the treasurer of the Milan city administration had been arrested for taking the bustarella, and . . . Christ, it was better listening to the sex. All through the breakfast of the children, all the time that she chewed on an apple and peeled an orange for herself, all through feeding the baby, Charley heard the whisper of the bed.

  When she was ready to take the children to school and kindergarten, when she had laid the baby Mauro in the pram, and taken the housekeeping purse from the drawer and Angela's shopping list from the table, there was the sound of the shower running. She didn't call out. It had sounded like good sex, like the sex the bloody girls at college had bragged of, like the sex Charley hadn't known with the bloody lecturer and the bloody man in his caravan, like the sex she never heard from her mother's bedroom. She went down into Mondello and she saw Francesca into the kindergarten class and she kissed small Mario at the school gate and saw him run inside.

  She walked in the street behind the piazza, where the bars were open behind scrubbed and sluiced pavements, where the trattorias and pizzerias were being prepared for the day with swept floors and laundered tablecloths. She bought salad things from a stall, and cheese and milk and olive oil from the alimentari, and some fresh sliced ham.

  She ticked each item on Angela's list.

  Every morning, when she took the children to school and kindergarten, and shopped, she looked for him, and never saw him.

  That morning she did not linger in the town. Her shopping was completed. She pushed the pram with the sleeping baby back up the hill, past where the workmen were repairing the sewerage pipes, past the leaping and barking guard dogs, back to the villa.

  She whistled sharply at the gate, like she was in charge - she had learned that the bloody Techie', the miserable toad, the gardener, came running when she whistled and opened the locked gate for her. She didn't thank him, ignored him and walked past him. She left the baby, sleeping in the pram, on the patio that was shaded from the rising sun. In the kitchen she put the salad things and the cheese and milk and ham into the refrigerator and the olive oil into the cupboard. She wanted her book.

  She almost crashed into him.

  The door to her bedroom was open. Peppino stood in the corridor beside the open door.

  He said that he had come to look for her. He wore a loose towelled dressing-gown.

  The hair was thick on his legs and on his chest, and he had not shaved. He said that he had not realized she had already gone with the children and with the shopping list.

  Well, she hadn't wanted to disturb him, had she? Wouldn't want to muscle in on a good fuck, would she? He said that he wanted her to buy flowers, fresh cut flowers. Very good, sex and flowers to buy off Angela's misery, no problem in tramping down to the town again and buying I lowers. He was sleek-headed from the shower, and the talc dust was a frost on his chest hair. She thought it amused him, using her .is a messenger, a fetcher and carrier. She wondered if Angela, back in the bedroom, smiled or cried, whether a fuck changed her life, whether flowers would lift her spirits.

  She took the purse from the kitchen drawer. Back down the path between the flowerbeds, back past the gardener, back through the gates, and she slammed them behind her and the lock clicked into place. Back past the fury of the guard dogs, and past the workmen who leered at her and stripped her from the sewerage trench. Back to the piazza . . .

  Right, Giuseppe Ruggerio, right. Expensive flowers. At the stall she took from the housekeeping purse a note for 50,000 lire. Not enough. She took a note for 100,000.

  She gave the 100,000-lire note to the man. What would the signorina like? She shrugged, she would like what she could have for £40 sterling, and he should choose.

  She took the wrapped bunch, chrysanthemums and

  carnations, and crooked them on her elbow. She was walking away.

  'Go down to the sea front.'

  The voice was behind her.

  'Don't look round, don't acknowledge.'

  The voice, quiet, belted her.

  Charley obeyed. She didn't turn to see Axel. She fixed her eyes ahead of her, took a line between the Saracen tower and the fishermen's pier. She assumed he followed her. The American accent had been sharp, curt. She walked through the piazza. She waited for the traffic and crossed the road. She stood beside an old man who sat on a stool on the pavement, and in front of him was a box of fresh fish with ice around them, and he held up an ancient black umbrella to shadow his fish.

  'Keep walking, slowly, and never turn.'

  Charley walked. The sea was blue-green, the boats in the sea rolled at their moorings.

  She thought he was very close, near enough to touch her. The voice behind her was a murmur.

  'How does it go?'

  'Nothing goes.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'Nothing happens.'

  Said cold, 'If it happens, anything happens, it'll be quick, sudden. Is there any sign of suspicion?'

  'No.' She looked ahead, out over the sea and the boats, and she tried to show him her defiance. 'I'm a part of the family, it's just a damned miserable family, it's—'

  'Don't whine . . . and don't ever relax. Don't go complacent.'

  'Aren't you going to tell me?'

  'Tell you what?'

  'The test. Did your gadget work?'

  'It was OK.'

  She flared, she spat from the side of her mouth, but the discipline held and she did not turn to face him. 'Just OK? Brilliant. I've been wetting myself. If you didn't know, it's my link. My road to the outside. It's like a morgue in there. I feel so much better to know that your gadget works "OK". Not magnificent, not incredible, not wonderful.'

  'It was OK. Remember, because it's important, don't be casual. Keep walking.'

  'When'll I see you again?'

  'Don't know.'

  'You bastard, do you know what it's like, living the lie?'

  'Keep walking.'

  She was able to smell him, and she heard the light tread of his footfall behind her. She walked on with the flowers. The tears welled in her eyes. Why, when she cried out for praise, did he have to be so damned cruel to her?

  She could no longer smell him, no longer hear him. She wondered whether he cared enough to stand and watch her go. She smeared the tears out of her eyes. She carried the flowers back to the villa. Bloody hell. In less than an hour and a half she would be going again into the town to collect the children. Peppino was dressed. Peppino thanked her and smiled gratitude. He told her that she was very welcome in their home, and that they so much appreciated her kindness to the children, and she had not had a day off, and she should go tomorrow on the bus to Palermo, and he winked and took a wad of notes from his pocket and peeled off some for her and told her of a shop on the Via della Liberta where the girls went for their clothes, young girls' clothes. He was sweetness to her, and he took the flowers into the bedroom to Angela. Charley went for her book.

  Her book, on the table beside the bed, alongside the photograph of her parents, had been moved.

  She felt the cold running over her.

  Only slightly moved, but she could picture where it had been, a little over the edge of the table.

  She could tell nothing from the clothes hanging in her wardrobe. She could not recall exactly where her sausage-bag had been on top of the wardrobe.

  She thought that her bras had been on top of her pants in the middle drawer of the chest, and now they were underneath.

  Charley stood in her room and she breathed hard.

  'Is that all you said?'

  'I said the test transmission had been OK, I told her that she was not to relax. Because nothing has happened she should not be complacent.'

  'That's all?'

&n
bsp; 'There wasn't anything else to say.'

  The archaeologist was hunched down on the stone slab and his back was against the square-fashioned rock that was the base of the cloister column. He sketched rapidly, and to reinforce the detail of his work he used a tape to measure height and width and diameter. It was natural, when an expert came to the duomo and studied the history of the construction of the cathedral, that a busy-minded and prying bystander should come to talk with him, question him, disturb him. So natural that none of the tourists or the priests or the guides took note of the archaeologist and the bystander. There was a bag by the feet of the archaeologist, and from the bag a chrome aerial was extended to its full length, but the aerial was wedged between the spine of the archaeologist and the base rock of the column and was hidden from the echoing flow in the cloisters of the tourists and the priests and the guides.

  'Vanni said, 'You make it hard for her, very hard.'

  Axel did not look up from his sketch pad. 'She has to find her own strength.'

  'You gave her no comfort.'

  'That's crap.'

  'Did I tell you the story about dalla Chiesa?'

  'General dalla Chiesa is dead.'

  'Vanni grinned. 'I don't wish to be impertinent to my friend, to the eminent archeologo, and I think you are most sensible to pursue the cover, give it authenticity. I think it is right you are not "complacent" - but an archeologo takes lessons from the past, and General dalla Chiesa is of the past and offers lessons.'

  'It is difficult to study detail when one is subject to the boring interruption of a stranger, don't you think?'

  'Vanni said, conversational, 'There was a story that the general told of when he was a young carabiniere officer in Sicily, some years before he achieved the fame of destroying the Brigate Rosse. He had a telephone call from a captain under his command who was responsible for the town of Palma di Montechiaro, which is near to Agrigento. The captain told dalla Chiesa that he was under threat in the town from the local capo. He went to the town, he met the captain. He took the captain's arm, held his arm, and walked with him up the street of Palma di Montechiaro and back again. They walked slowly, so that everyone in the town could see that he held the captain's arm.

  They stopped outside the home of the capo. They stood in silence outside that house until it was quite clear, no misunderstanding, that the captain was not alone. Do you still listen to me, my friend the archeologo?'

  Axel did not look up from his sketch pad and his calculations. 'I listen to you.'

  'Years later, General dalla Chiesa came to Palermo to take the post at the Prefettura.

  He found himself mocked, sneered at, obstructed and alone. Each initiative he tried to make against La Cosa Nostra was blocked by the corruption of the Government. In desperation he telephoned for a meeting with the American consul in the city. I drove him there, to see Ralph Jones. I sat in on the meeting. The general begged of Jones that the Government of the United States should intervene with Rome, "do something at the highest level". At the finish of the meeting, the general told Jones the story of Palma di Montechiaro, and he said, "All I ask is for somebody to take my arm and to walk with me." I drove him back to the Prefettura. At the end of the day he dismissed me. His wife came to take him home. He was killed, with his wife, that night in Via Carini. He was killed because he was alone, because nobody had taken his arm and walked with him.'

  'What do you want of me?'

  'Vanni's voice was close and hoarse. 'Should you not take her arm, Codename Helen's arm, and walk with her when she is alone, and give her comfort?'

  'I can't give her the strength. She must find it for herself.'

  The bystander walked away from the archaeologist, left him to his research.

  'No.'

  'I'm sorry, Mr Parsons, but I have to be quite clear about this. My question was, did you have a telephone call a week ago from Bruno Fiori?'

  'Same answer, no.'

  They sat across the fireplace from Harry Compton. He thought they were scared half out of their minds.

  'And you don't know an Italian who uses the name of Bruno Fiori?'

  'No.'

  'Would you care to look at this, Mr Parsons?'

  He was deep in his chair in the small front living room, and reaching into his briefcase, and he passed to the man the printout list of the telephone calls. The woman sat close to her husband and her eyes were down and staring at the card he had given them. His card had that effect on people, 'Metropolitan Police Fraud Department, Harry Compton, Detective Sergeant, Financial Investigator' frightened the shit out of them.

  The man glanced at the list of calls made from the hotel room, two London numbers and his own number.

  The man glowered back defiantly, like he was trying to show that he wasn't scared half out of his mind. 'Yes, that's my number.'

  The woman said, eyes never leaving the card, 'It was Dr Ruggerio who called.'

  The man's glance flashed at his wife, then, 'We were telephoned by Dr Giuseppe Ruggerio. And may I ask what business that is of yours?'

  'Better that I ask the questions. Why did this Giuseppe Ruggerio telephone you?'

  'I'm not going to be interrogated, without explanation, in my own home.'

  'Please, Mr Parsons, just get on with it.'

  He wrote a fast shorthand note. He heard the name of Charlotte, an only daughter.

  He could see from his chair out through the open door of the living room and into the hall. He could see the photograph of the young woman in her graduation gown and her mortarboard at a cheeky angle. He heard the story of a summer job in 1992. And a letter had come, and the invitation for a return to minding children. The information came in a slow and prompted drip. Charlotte had given up her job and was now in Sicily. The wife had gone to the kitchen and come back with an address, and Harry wrote it on his pad and underlined the words 'Giardino Inglese'.

  The father said, 'Dr Ruggerio telephoned but Charlotte was . . . she was out. I spoke to him, he just said how much they wanted her. I was against it, her going. She's thrown up a good job. God knows what she's going to do when she gets back. Jobs aren't on trees.'

  The mother said, 'They're a lovely family. He's such a gentleman, Dr Ruggerio, very successful, banking or something. David thinks that life is all work, and what's work done for him? Chucked out without thanks, redundant. I said that she would only be young once. They treat her like one of the family. If she hadn't gone, she'd have been old before her time, like us.'

  He closed his notebook, slipped it into his pocket. He stood. He was asked again why he had an interest in Dr Giuseppe Ruggerio, and he smiled coolly and thanked them for their hospitality, not even a bloody cup of tea. He went out into the hall. He looked at the photograph of the young woman and made a remark that she was a grand-looking girl. He took his coat from the hook. The man opened the door for him. He could hear the sea beating on shingle away in the evening darkness. A woman was across the lane, clinging to a dog's leash and staring at him as he stood under the porch light. He saw a man hunched in a lit window across the lane and peering at him through small binoculars. Behind a board advertising bed-and-breakfast (Vacancies), a curtain fell back to its place. God, what a dreary and suspicious little backwater. He started down the path to the gate.

  The hiss of the woman. 'Aren't you going to tell him?'

  The man's whisper. 'It's not his business.'

  'You should tell him.'

  'No.'

  'You should tell him about the American . . .'

  Harry Compton stopped, turned. 'What should I know? What A merican?'

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

  FROM: D/S Harry Compton, S06.

  Please get your leg off the beautiful women and ditch the bottle you will inevitably be busting open. Do me SOONEST a P check on Dr GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO, Apt 9, Giardino Inglese 43, Palermo, Sicily.

  Ruggerio believed to be in finance, banking? Interests me because he uses ali
as of BRUNO FIORI. Don't break a blood vessel at the chance of actually doing something useful. Come up with the goods and I'll stand you a half-pint at the Ferret and Ferkin on your next extended (!) leave.

  Bestest, Harry.

  He had the scent, the smell was in his nostrils. He gave the sheet of paper to Miss Frobisher for transmission to the DLO, jammy sod, in Rome. Bloody good job, that one, soft old number. His detective superintendent was out of the building. It would have to keep, what he had to share, but there was a good bounce in his step. The day that the invitation to travel down to Palermo had reached Charlotte Parsons there had pitched up on her doorstep an American from the embassy, from the Drug Enforcement Administration. 'He said that if I talked about him, what he said to me, then I might be responsible for hurting people.' He'd bloody well find out, too right, what Americans were doing running round foreign territory to scoop up compliant and untrained agents.

  Charlotte Parsons's father had said that his daughter was 'pressured' to travel. The boss would like it. Harry's boss had been skewered and minced and chewed by the FBI the last summer at the Europol fraud conference in Lyon. He'd come back bruised from France, worked over for suggesting that international crime was a figment of American imagination. He'd said, loud, at a seminar that international crime was a fantasy-land, and been told for all to listen that he was talking rubbish and that the Brits were just part-time players. Harry had heard it from the inspector who'd travelled as the detective superintendent's bag-carrier. If the Americans had taken an English girl, 'pressured' her, dragged her in, then his boss would not mind hearing of it, too right.

  Chapter Eight

  In two years, not more than three years, he would have sufficient money to buy the pizzeria.

  Each time that he was paid, in American bills, he sent them by post to his son. He had enough money already to buy a pizzeria in Palermo, nearly enough money to buy a pizzeria in Milan or Turin, hut to buy a pizzeria in Hanover, near to the railway station, was more costly. His son and his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren lived in Hanover. They were, and he thought it was quite shameful to his own dignity, a part of the immigrant underclass in Germany. JHis son worked at night in the kitchen of a trattoria in Hanover, his daughter-in-law went to the trattoria in the mornings to clean it and to lay the tables. When there was sufficient money his son would use it to buy a pizzeria, and he would go to Hanover with his wife and with his son and he would live the last of his days there. The pizzeria in Hanover was the limit of his dream, and he and his wife and his son and his daughter-in-law would take it in turn to sit behind the cash desk. In return for the money, a thousand American dollars a month, he supplied information. The money came to him each month whether the information he supplied was important or whether it was insignificant. The money was a certainty, just as it was a certainty that he could not cease to provide the information.