'God, I'd give a heap of my pension for a piss.'
Most cruel was the silence in his ear. The inductor piece was a poor fit. All the time he was aware of the pressure of its presence. Harry Compton waited for it to bleep, was dominated by it, and there was only silence. He could not help but think of her, what
'Vanni Crespo had said about her. So boring, her life, so tedious. Her life in the villa, behind the big gates he had seen opened, was a routine of dressing kids, feeding kids, walking kids to school, reading to kids, cleaning kids' rooms, washing kids, putting kids to bed, and waiting ... He might just, if he ever was posted to an undercover course, stand up, tell the instructor that he talked bullshit, and talk about the miracle of an untrained operative who had survived boredom and tedium.
'Where's this?' There was the hiss in Dwight Smythe's voice.
They were into a queue of cars. There was a road block up ahead and beyond the road block were the lights of a town that fell the length of a hillside.
'Vanni Crespo turned. His face was screwed in concentration, as if the radios were going from the two cars ahead. 'It is Corleone.'
'What does that mean, 'Vanni?' Harry Compton asked. 'What does it tell you?'
'It is their snake pit, it is where they come from. It is where they kill, it is where they are comfortable. It is a time—'
Dwight Smythe shuddered. 'I'd give more than all my pension for a piss.'
'Would you please be quiet? You distract me. Understand, it is a time and a place of maximum danger to her when she goes with them into their snake pit . . .'
They drove through the lit town.
It was where she had walked with Benny Rizzo.
They drove beside the piazza and then up the narrowing main street. The shops were closed, and the bars were empty, and the market had been dismantled for the night. She remembered what Benny Rizzo had told her. Corleone was the place of Navarra and Liggio and Riina, and now it was the place of Mario Ruggerio. They drove where she had walked, and where a trade unionist had walked, but then a gun had been in the trade unionist's back, but then the men of the town had hurried to their homes and locked their doors and shuttered their windows. They drove past the same doors and the same shuttered windows, and past the church, and over the bridge beneath which the torrent of the river fell into a gorge, and it was where the body of the trade unionist had been dumped so deep that the crows would not find it . . . 'He was our hero and we let him go.
All we had to do, every one of us, was to pick up a single stone from the street, and we could have overwhelmed the man with the gun. We did not pick up a stone, we went home' . . . She felt the weight of her arrogance. It was as if she thought that she alone could pick up the stone from the street. Axel Moen had taught her the arrogance . . . The boy, piccolo Mario, was excited, and his father quietened him and told him that the journey was nearly complete. The road climbed out of the town.
There was a junction, there was a road sign to Prizzi, there was the turning to a hotel.
A coach was parked outside the hotel. It was an English touring coach. The coach came from Oxford and had TV and a lavatory at the back. Some of the tourists were still in the coach, wan and tired and beaten faces peering and blinking at the windows as the headlights of Peppino's car caught them. Some of the tourists, those with fight in them, were with the courier and the driver at the steps of the hotel, and the argument raged.
Charley heard the protest of the tourists and the shrugged answers of the manager who held the high ground at the top of the steps and who guarded his front door.
'Why can't you help us?'
The hotel was closed.
'We are only looking for a simple meal. Surely . . . ?'
The hotel's dining room was closed.
'It's not our fault, is it, that in this God-forsaken place we had a puncture?'
They must find another hotel.
'Is this the way you treat tourists to Sicily, feeding money into your damned economy - show them the door?'
The hotel was closed for a private function.
'Where is there another hotel where we might, just, find a degree of hospitality?'
There were many hotels in Palermo.
It was, for Charley, the confirmation. The hotel was closed for a private function.
Peppino had opened the door for his wife, studied manners. Small Mario was out of the car and running, and Francesca was chasing him. Charley lifted the carrycot from the car, and the bag. The tourists were sullen and bad-tempered and they stamped away with their courier towards the coach in the shadow of the car park. She was the donkey.
Charley trailed after the family with the weight of the carrycot and the bag. She was the dog's body, and there was the weight of the watch on her wrist. She did not look round, she did not turn to see whether there were car lights back down the hill. The manager ducked his head in respect to Angela and shook Peppino's hand warmly and he tousled the hair of small Mario and pinched the cheek of Francesca. He ignored the young woman, the donkey, who struggled up the steps with the carrycot and the bag. He'd bloody learn. They'd all bloody learn, before the night was finished ... He ignored Charley but he made a remark about the baby in the carrycot, spoke of the beauty of the sleeping baby.
They went through the lobby of the hotel.
There were three men in the lobby, young and wearing good suits, with neatly cut hair, and they had their hands held across their groins. They watched. They did not move forward, they did not come to help her, they watched her. There was no receptionist at the desk in the lobby. Charley saw the precise lines of room keys, perhaps fifty keys. The hotel, of course, was closed for a private party . . . She was the horse made of wood, she was trundled through the gates on rollers, she was Codename Helen, she was the point of access . . . The manager ushered Angela and Peppino and the children, oiling respect, across the lobby towards the dining room door. He knocked. An older man opened the door and there was a smile of welcome. It came very sharp to her, to Charley, the thought of what Axel Moen had said. The older man had a hard and bitter face that the smile did not mask, and the smile had gone and the older man had seen her. 'If you arouse serious suspicion, they will kill you and then eat their dinner, and think nothing of it . . .' She listened.
'Who is she?'
'She is, Franco, the bambinaia of our children.'
She heard the exchange between Peppino and the man, anger meeting hostility.
'I was not told she was coming.'
'It is a party for the family, perhaps why you were not told.'
'I am responsible. There is no place laid for her.'
'Then make a place for her. She was cleared. She has been investigated to the satisfaction of my brother.'
Her thoughts were a fast jumble. In the street, knocked down. In the photograph, a boy dead beside a motorcycle. Her bag snatched from her. A boy from the tower blocks dead and with his mother grieving over him. Her handbag returned by Peppino. She stood, she waited, she played the dumb innocence of ignorance. The man, Franco, gazed at her, then stood aside and she followed the family into the dining room.
It was a long and narrow room. There was a single table in the centre of the room.
There were fifteen places laid at the table, the best glasses and the best crockery and the best cutlery, and there were flowers. At the side of the room was a long buffet table with hot plates and with mixed salads.
She stood inside the door. She had no place there. She was there because Angela had made the battleground for her. Angela knew . . . What depth of viciousness, what pit of vengeance, what total hatred. Angela knew . . . Angela walked the length of the table, serene, a queen. Charley put the carrycot on the floor, and she knelt beside it, and she could see Angela walk towards the family at the far end of the dining room. She understood why Angela had dressed her best, why she had worn her most precious jewellery. The family were peasants. Angela brushed the cheek of her mother-in-law with her lips, the barest gestur
e. She let her father-in- law peck at her face, only once.
There was the grinning Carmelo, big and awkward and constrained in an old suit, and she held his hands and made a show of kissing him. There was the sister, gaunt and with her dress hanging on bony shoulders. Another woman stood behind the parents of Mario Ruggerio, and Angela went to her and held her momentarily, and the woman had a teenage boy and a teenage girl with her. The woman's eyes flitted nervously, and she tugged at the waist of her dress as if not comfortable in it and the teenage boy had a sullen face, and the girl was dumpy with puppy fat. Charley watched. She busied herself at the carrycot, and she watched as Angela greeted each of them. And she saw that each of them gestured towards her or glanced at her, as if they queried her presence, as if they checked who she was.
Peppino was beside her.
Peppino asked, considerate, 'You have everything you need?'
'I'll have to heat the baby's bottle. Evening feed.'
'You will amuse the children if they are bored?'
'They seem pretty excited,' Charley said.
'It is a family party, Charley.'
'You won't notice me.'
'Would you like a drink, anything?'
Charley grimaced. 'Not while I'm working. Don't worry about me, just have a lovely evening.'
They did notice her. They noticed her as if she were a wasp at a tea table, as if she were a mosquito in a bedroom. They noticed her and they asked. The man, Franco, looked at her and his eyes had the coldness of suspicion. She made the baby comfortable. She did not know where they were, nor if they listened . . .
The voice was from behind him.
'Signore, I do apologize for disturbing you . . .'
He turned, reflex. The card, for a moment, was held in the palm of a hand. He saw the flash of the photograph on the card, he read the words in heavy print 'Guardia di Finanze', and he saw the emblem.
'There is a telephone call for you. I was asked to be discreet. You should take the call in a place of privacy. Please, could you follow me?'
He pushed himself up. He trailed after the man. The man was heavily built with wet, sleeked black hair and a waddling walk. Axel Moen was led to a door in the shadowed extremity of the departure lounge. On the door was a 'No Entry' sign. The loudspeakers were calling the flight for Rome.
'I am sure it will only take a moment - you will not miss your flight.'
The man smiled. His hand was on the door, and he stood aside so that Axel Moen would go first. He opened the door. The darkness gaped at Axel Moen, and the weight of the man bullocked him through and into the corridor. The door slammed behind him, the blackness was around him. The startled shout, 'Oh, Christ, shit,' spinning, clawing at the man. The blow hit him. He sagged. He fought for his life. He had no weapon, not a pistol and not a knife and not a baton. In the darkness, blows and kicks hammering him, hands and fists dragging on him, he thought there were four men. To protect his life, biting, scratching, kneeing . . . There was a gag in his mouth, pulled tighter, and he could not scream. No help would come, no light would flood the darkness of the corridor. Alone, Axel Moen fought dirty for his life, and there were four of them who tried to take it, precious, from him.
Dwight Smythe urinated noisily into a scrub bush.
Harry Compton bit at his lip.
'Vanni Crespo had the guys around him. Took Harry Compton back to his youth, when he played sports, when the team came together before the first whistle and the arms were around the shoulders and they hugged for strength, took him too far back.
Like 'Vanni Crespo was the captain of a team and talked the final tactics . . . They were parked down the road from the hotel, difficult to be certain in the darkness but he reckoned they were a clear four hundred metres from the lights of the hotel.
Dwight Smythe blundered to Harry Compton's side and was pulling up the zipper.
'What do we do?'
Harry Compton snapped, 'We close our bloody mouths. We wait till we're told what to do.'
'Where is she?'
'We'll be told.'
'Ever thought of taking up medicine? It's a wonderful bedside manner you have.'
Harry Compton watched. The men broke from 'Vanni Crespo. Going for the first whistle of the game, lining up the positions . . .
checking radios, arming the weapons, sliding the masks down over their faces, loading the gas canisters into satchels. They were off the road, up a track and round a corner from the road, and the town of Corleone was below them, and the hotel was above them. He needed to say it . . . There were six men who had broken from the huddle with
'Vanni Crespo, and two had flaked away into the darkness towards the hotel on the left of the road, and two had waited for the headlights of a car to pass and then crossed the empty road to go towards the hotel on the right of it, and the last two had gone to one of the cars and eased the doors silently open and sat inside, and there was the glow of their cigarettes . . . He needed to say it, as if to clean himself.
'There's something, 'Vanni, that I have to tell.'
'Is it important?'
'Not important to anyone but me.'
'Can it keep?'
'What I have to say ... I am a boring little fucker. I am a smalltown policeman. I am out of my depth. I interfered, and I did not know what I was putting my nose into. I thought I was clever, I thought it right at the time, and I blew the smooth running of your operation out of the water. I thought she was pressured, an innocent, and I started a ball going down a hill. When I realized the stakes, when I learned about her, then it was too late to stop the ball going down the hill. I feel a guilt. I apologize.'
He couldn't see, in the darkness, 'Vanni Crespo's face.
He heard the voice, cold with dislike. 'Don't apologize to me. Keep it for him. He backed off rather than argue with you. To argue was to lose time. You thought of your status, he thought of his agent. Go find Axel Moen after this and make your apologies.'
She had been to the buffet.
She had held the plates for small Mario and for Francesca, and let them choose, and put the squid and the salad and the shrimps and the salami slices and the olives on their plates.
She had gone back to the table, and she had cut the squid pieces smaller and knifed through the salad for small Mario, lazy little bastard. She had cut everything on the plate of Francesca. She had poured water from the bottle for the children.
She had the last place at the table.
At the far end of the table, at the head of the table, was the empty chair.
On the far side of the table, at the far end, was the woman with the nervous eyes who was not comfortable in her dress. Charley had not been introduced, not to any of them, but then she was only the donkey. Next to the empty chair was a place of honour - she would be his wife. She had broad, working hands, her stomach bulged in the dress. She toyed with the squid and she picked up the prawns with her fingers, did not shell them, crunched them in her mouth.
Then Agata Ruggerio, the matriarch of the family, who scowled, and Charley thought her complaint was that she was dispossessed from the chair taken by the wife, frowned because she would not sit beside her eldest son. Then Peppino, who talked dutifully with his mother.
Next on that side was the sister. When the wine was passed round, pointedly it was carried past the sister. Her face was yellowed, her fingers shook and food fell from her fork. An empty chair was beside the sister, Maria. Then the teenage boy with the sullen face, then Francesca. The boy made a remark to her and Charley pretended that she did not understand. The remark was in the dialect of the Sicilian countryside. She knew he wanted the oil for the salad passed to him, but she pretended that she did not understand him. She let small Mario, next to her, pass the brat the oil. She wondered what was his life and what would be his future, the teenage boy who was the son of her target. She wondered whether he was already addicted to the power of his father, or whether he could walk away from that power and make a different life. She wondered if he w
ould ever hold hands with children and dance around his father . . .
Beyond small Mario, on Charley's side of the table, was the teenage girl, self-conscious with her weight but scooping food into her mouth, then an empty place, then Franco . . . Franco watched her. Each move she made was watched by Franco. He had small, fine hands with pared nails. She would have shivered if the hands of Franco had touched her . . . Next was Carmelo, the simple brother, who lived with his ageing parents, and then there was
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?'
Killing Ground Page 49
