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 gesture. 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
