Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  Cautiously, Pasquale knocked at the door. The call came. He carried the mug of hot coffee into the room, and he went to the magistrate's desk and put the coffee mug down beside the computer's screen.

  'Thank you, that is very kind. Very considerate of you. How goes it, Pasquale?'

  He grimaced. 'This morning the maresciallo wrote his assessment of me.'

  'He read it back to you?'

  'That is the regulation, I am entitled to know.' He had come to work at five and then the bedroom door of the magistrate had been open, and the door of the living room had been closed and the light had shone under that door. He saw the wan tiredness on the face of the magistrate.

  'It is good coffee. Thank you. What did he write of you? If you do not wish to . . .'

  Pasquale said, 'That I was unsuitable, that I was inefficient, that my enthusiasm did not compensate for my mistakes, that I tried to make a friend of you, that I crashed a car, that I was late for duty, that I had forgotten to load a magazine—'

  'You are very young, you have a baby, you have a wife, you have a life in front of you. Is it for the best?'

  He said simply, 'It's what I want to do. But the maresciallo says I endanger you and my colleagues by my incompetence.'

  'Do you wish my intervention?'

  'I would be ashamed if, through your intervention, I held my job.'

  'So each of us, Pasquale, each of us has a bad day.'

  Such sadness on the magistrate's face, and no attempt to hide it. He bled for the man.

  He could not ask the magistrate to intervene for him, could not call that card. More than anything in his police career he wished to succeed in this work. To turn his back on the magistrate, Rocco Tardelli, to return to the uniform, would be humiliation. He hesitated. He was a humble policeman, without rank and without seniority, and he wanted to say something that was of comfort to this older and troubled man. He did not know what he could say. He hesitated, then started for the door.

  'Pasquale, please - sometimes it needs a younger mind, sometimes it needs the freshness. I have no lead, I have nothing, I have to begin again. Please. Where does Ruggerio go? What must Ruggerio have?'

  He blurted, 'A dentist?'

  'How many dentists in Palermo? How many more dentists in Catania and Agrigento and Messina and Trapani? Has he dentures? Does he need a dentist? I cannot have every dentist on the island watched for the one day a year when he is visited by Mario Ruggerio.'

  'An optician?'

  'I do not know that he wears spectacles and, again, if he does, how many opticians on the island are available to Mario Ruggerio? Help me, with a young mind.'

  Pasquale furrowed his forehead, considered. 'You have investigated the family?'

  'I ask for a young mind, not the obvious. The family is the beginning, the middle, the end. We have a camera at his father's house. I should not tell you. And I should not tell you, we have a camera and we have audio close to the house of his wife. His brother, a brute, in prison on Asinara - you do me great damage if you repeat what I say - we have audio in his cell. His other brother is handicapped and we forget him. His sister, we forget her, alcoholism. Please, my boy, give us credit for the obvious.'

  The apology was on his lips. He stared, amazed. A shock-wave seemed to Pasquale to flow across the magistrate's face. Tardelli jerked out of his chair, slipped, was on the carpet. Pasquale was rooted. He crawled on his hands and knees to the bedroom wardrobe that was so strange in a living and working area. He dragged it open. Files cascaded on him. Closed files and opened files, files held with tape and files bound with string. Pasquale watched. He groped among the files, scanned the titles of the files, pulled more files from the wardrobe. He whistled an aria as the heap of files grew.

  Papers scattered and he swept them clear, and they were buried by more files. He found one. He ripped the tape from it. No longer whistling, he now cooed like a dove. The papers fluttered from his hands. He shouted, a noise of exaltation. He held two sheets of paper.

  'There was a brother, Pasquale, I interviewed him myself. Four years ago, in Rome, I interviewed him. A banker. So plausible, the link with the criminality of the family cut.

  I accepted it. No surveillance, no telephone intercept. I buried the memory. The memory was lost under blankets of information, new strata of information, further leaves of information. My mind lost him. I am ashamed ... It is the place to look, isn't it, Pasquale, where you have forgotten to look, where there is no connection?'

  He stood. His face, to Pasquale, was ripped by a sort of manic happiness.

  He hugged Pasquale.

  At the desk he snatched for the telephone. He dialled. He waited and the aria climbed to a peak.

  "Gianni? Tardelli, the "walking corpse" of Palermo. 'Gianni, four years ago, in EUR, I met with Giuseppe Ruggerio. Yes, no connection. What of him now? . . . 'Gianni, call me.'

  There were two and a quarter hours between the arrival of the London flight and the departure of the Palermo flight. There was no ceremony. They sat in Bill Hammond's car, Dwight Smythe in the front with the Country Chief and Harry Compton in the back. Bill Hammond had brought coffee from a kiosk.

  'It's a sad damned day . . .'

  'What we're saying in London, Mr Hammond, it should never have gone this far,'

  Harry Compton said, sparring. 'We are also saying that if there had been correct consultation at the start, then there would never have been this difficulty. I don't think anyone's enjoying it.'

  'As you eloquently put it, Bill, it is a "sad damned day" because the plan was irresponsible from the kick-off,' Dwight Smythe said, sullen. 'We are left with dog shit on our shoes.'

  It was a new world for Harry Compton. He had never before been overseas for S06.

  All pretty structured back in London. A good pattern of seniority to lean against back in London. He sat in the car and held the coffee, had a single sip and thought it gritty.

  Perhaps, he had thought, when the two of them were together on the flight, beside each other, they could defrost the chill of the inter-organization spat, and they hadn't. They'd worn their badges, different armies, in cold hostility. Perhaps, he had thought, they'd be given the good treatment when they landed at Rome, and given a good meal and a good briefing and a dose of civilization, and he was uncomfortable in a car out on the edge of a bloody parking area.

  'Did I hear you right? Dog shit?'

  'That's what I said,' Dwight Smythe intoned.

  'And you, what did you call it? A "difficulty"?'

  'That's our opinion,' Harry Compton said.

  'I wasn't happy, I had cold feet. Hear me through - the plan was brilliant. It's the sort of plan that comes along off the rainbow, and it just stands a chance. It stands a chance because Axel Moen is one hell of a fine operator. He's not you, Smythe, not you, Compton, not a blow-in, not a smart-ass who comes in on the big bird and thinks he knows the fucking game. Axel Moen is top of the tree. What does he get for being top of the tree? He gets a posting to a shit place like Lagos, and a bastard like me dresses Lagos up as a good slot.'

  Harry Compton said, 'I don't think obscenities help. Our priority is to get Charlotte Parsons.'

  'Where'd they dig you up from? A creche? A nursery? Training school? You don't ever name names. She's a code, she's Codename Helen. You don't throw names in Sicily. You work in Sicily, you have to be big, not a fucking ant. It's a sad damned day when people like you - and you, Smythe - get involved.'

  'Has your agent been told that we are bringing Codename Helen home?'

  A bitter smile crossed the Country Chief's face. 'You are a funny man, Compton, you make me laugh. You think I'm doing the crap work for you. I messaged him to meet you. You tell him his plan was shit and made a "difficulty". Tell him yourself.'

  He thought he was followed, but he was unsure of it. He thought he was followed as he left the duomo in Monreale. As Axel walked away from the cloister he saw, on the other side of the street, a man of middle age and wire-thin buil
d take off his cap and slip it into the hip pocket of his trousers, and a hundred metres further on, at the edge of the piazza, the man wore another cap of a different colour and a different material. A hundred metres further on, by the stalls that sold fish and meat, vegetables and fruit and flowers, the man had gazed into a shop window, studying women's clothes, and Axel had passed by him, and he had not seen him again. He could not be certain that he was followed. Maybe the man, forty- something, with the wire-thin build, had bought a new cap and was dissatisfied with it and put his old cap back on, and maybe he looked at women's underwear because that gave him a jerk-off thrill or because his wife's birthday was coming up, or maybe he followed the procedures of foot surveillance.

  Axel breathed hard. In La Paz he had been followed, once, and he had hit the numbers of his mobile and called out the cavalry and two streets later he had walked on a wide pavement that was suddenly crawling with his own guys and with the Bolivian task-force people, and the tail had flaked away. He had no cavalry in Monreale. His training was in surveillance, not in counter-measure tactics. He breathed hard, deep. He assumed, if he was indeed followed, that they would use the technique of the 'floating box'. There would be men ahead of him, men behind him, men on the same side of the street and men on the opposite side of the street. But it was early in the afternoon, and the siesta hours had not started, and the pavements were full. If he ran, suddenly, tried to break out of the box, then he told them, put it up in neon lights, that he knew he was followed. His mind ratcheted, going fast, considering how he should act . . . His problem, on the busy streets, he could not identify the operators or the command operator of the floating box. He walked faster and slower, he lingered in front of shops and in front of stalls, he passed a tabaccaio, then turned sharply to retrace his steps and went inside and bought a throw-away lighter, and he could not confirm that he was the centrepiece of a floating box, nor confirm that his strained imagination merely goaded him. He walked on. He did not know. He made a long loop, and he came back to the garden terrace at the back of the duomo. He sat on a bench. From the terrace, among the flowers climbing on walls and under the wide shade of the trees, he could look down onto Palermo and the sea, where she had been. Axel did not know if he was watched . .

  .

  'It is the thirteenth.'

  'No, the ninth.'

  'I do not wish to dispute with you, Mama, but it is the thirteenth.'

  'You told me, it was fifteen years ago, that it was the ninth, it is what a mother remembers.'

  'Mama, I promise you, it is the thirteenth.'

  His father said, growl of the peasant's dialetto, 'Last year you said it was the eleventh, the year before it was the fourteenth, the year before that it was—'

  'Papa, I assure you, you are mistaken.'

  'No, Mario, it is you that are mistaken. Each year you make a different number and argue with your mother.'

  At the start of the viaduct, where it climbed on columns of concrete to cross the river valley and carry the autostrada, No. 186, from Monreale by the high route over the mountains to Partinico, the car was parked on the hard shoulder. Each year they made the argument because each year Mario Ruggerio forgot the number he had given in 1981. The problem, for Mario Ruggerio, he did not know in which column of concrete was the body of his brother.

  Franco was at the wheel of the parked car and had his head down in a newspaper.

  Franco would not dare to snigger at the ritual dispute over which column of concrete carried the body of Cristoforo. There was a second car parked further back, and a third car stopped at the far end of the viaduct, near the sixtieth column or the sixty-first.

  His mother held the lavish bunch of flowers. He could not tell his mother that he hazarded his security each year when he came to the viaduct and then argued over which column of concrete held Cristoforo's body. He could not lash his mother with his tongue because his mother had no fear of him. He could not tell his mother that he did not know in which column of concrete . . . His father always sided with his mother, as if his father wished to cut him to size. Did they want him to blow up the viaduct, drop it, then dynamite each column of concrete, then break each column with pneumatic drills?

  Did they need to know so badly in which column was his brother, Cristoforo?

  'I think you are correct, Mama. It is the ninth.'

  His mother bobbed her head, satisfied. He loved two people in the world. He loved his small nephew who was named after him, and he loved his mother, loved them more than his own wife and his own children. And he could not spend the day standing in public view on the viaduct and arguing. His father would not let the matter go. His father had three reasons, he accepted, to be in a foul temper.

  'You were wrong then, Mario? You accept that you were wrong?'

  'Yes, Papa. I was wrong.'

  'Cristoforo is in the ninth column?'

  'The ninth, Papa.'

  The first reason for the foul temper of his father. A young man, the son of a nuisance enemy, had daubed paint on the door of his father's house. The young man could not be adequately punished because the door of the house in Prizzi was covered by an unmanned police camera. If the young man disappeared or was found adequately punished, then the carabineri and the squadra mobile would be swarming through the home of Rosario and Agata Ruggerio and stressing them. The matter was dealt with, the camera would show the act, and the camera would show the contrition. The film from the camera was taken, a poor secret, each fourth night for examination. His father had wanted, personally, to slit the throat of the young man.

  The second reason for the temper. The pilgrimage to the viaduct had been delayed for twenty-four hours, missing the exact anniversary of the entombment in concrete, because it had been necessary for Mario Ruggerio to review his security after the close call in the Via Sammartino, and that he would not discuss with his father. His father no longer understood, at eighty-four years of age, his son's life.

  The third reason for the temper. It had been a long journey for his parents. He could not guarantee that they were not under surveillance. A bus to Caltanisetta, from the crowded market in Caltanisetta to the rail station, escorted by Carmine. The slow train to Palermo. Picked up by himself and Franco at the Stazione Centrale in Palermo and driven to the viaduct.

  He walked back to the start of the viaduct. He counted. He strode towards his parents and the parked car. It was beneath his dignity to rush. He came to the ninth column of concrete. His brother had worked for the Corleonesi of Riina. His brother had been killed by the men of Inzerillo, and Inzerillo was dead from armour-piercing bullets, tested on a jewellery-shop window, in his car. The men who had acted on the orders of Inzerillo were in the bay, once the food for crabs. He had been told the same month, by the Corleonesi of Riina, that they had heard his brother was buried in wet concrete during the construction of the viaduct. The Corleonesi had killed Inzerillo. Mario Ruggerio, with his own hands, with rests to regain his strength, had strangled the four men who had taken Inzerillo's orders. He had only the word of the Corleonesi that Cristoforo's body was in one of the viaduct's columns of concrete. In truth, the cadaver of Cristoforo could be anywhere ... It would distress his mother, whom he loved, should he raise a doubt about the ultimate resting place of her favourite son.

  'Here, Mama, the ninth column . . .'

  He looked over the edge of the parapet, leaned forward so that he could see the great weather-stained column of concrete. He had thought, and never said so to his father and mother, that his brother had been an idiot to have associated with the Corleonesi of Riina.

  His father grumbled, 'But there are two columns, one for each side. Is it the ninth column on the left, or the ninth column on the right?'

  'On the right, Papa, the ninth column on the right.'

  His mother held the flowers over the parapet. They had cost 50,000 lire at the stall beside the entrance to the Stazione Centrale. He held his mother's arm. She crossed herself. She let the flowers slip from h
er hand, and they fell far down past the column of concrete and broke apart, scattered, when they hit the rocks of the riverbank.

  He still held his mother's arm, to propel her back to the car where Franco waited. His father trailed behind, refusing to be hurried. The ritual was done. He opened the door for his mother, and Franco had the engine running. He helped his father into the car after his mother. It would be bad for the dignity of Mario Ruggerio to scurry, but he went fast to the front passenger door of the car. They powered away. He turned to his mother. It was a question that would not have been appropriate while they mourned the dead Cristoforo.

  'Have you had notification of when Salvatore is brought to Ucciardione for the court? When does he come? I would wish you to take a personal message from me to Salvatore . . .'

  "Gianni, I would not have called you if it were not important . . . It is not good enough, my friend, please . . . Please do not just tell me that he no longer lives on the Collina Fleming. Where does he live? Another place in Rome, in Milan, in Frankfurt or Zurich, where? I think, 'Gianni, I have not much time, how could you understand because you are not in Palermo? ... I know, I know, we said there was no connection ... I know, I know, he attacked because he was persecuted without cause for the blood relationship.