not leave the mortuary where a still-born baby lies. From behind the door was the sound of the violation of the office of Rocco Tardelli. He had come to the meeting and he had heard the gestures that would be made.
'Do you know what happens at this moment? Do you know the reality of what happens? In the apartment of my dead colleague, and in the office of my dead colleague, there are now artisans working with oxyacetyline cutters so that the personal safes at his home, at his workplace, may be opened. For each safe he kept only one set of keys, and the keys were on his person and his person is bits. We have not found his keys in the Via della Croci. He had only one set of keys because he did not trust those with whom he worked. He employed no secretary, no aide, no staff. He did not trust us.
That is the kernel of my problem, that a brave man could not trust his colleagues.
Maybe in one of his safes will be his description of an avenue of enquiry that he did not share because he had no trust. And Mario Ruggerio will laugh at our gestures and celebrate and walk in freedom. Yes, my attitude is negative.'
From a distance, the tail watched the house and the closed street and the parked cars and the carabineri with their guns and flak vests and balaclava masks. The arrival at the house was reported.
'How long have we got?' Harry Compton fidgeted his fingers.
'Enough time/ the Italian said.
In London, of course, there were police undercover men and women. They'd be undercover in Vice or Organized Crime or with Drugs Squad. Harry Compton didn't know any of them. They'd have the full back-up. They'd have a chief superintendent wetting his smalls for them each night. They'd have support. He stood in the apartment.
The man seemed to have no interest in the packing of his few effects. The bag was packed by the Italian and the Afro-American. The man, Axel Moen, had let them in, like he didn't care that they trampled through his life, and he'd gone to the table against the wall on the far side of the room from the window. The light came badly from the small ceiling bulb, and he sat in shadow and wrote. Harry Compton stood by the door beside the big policeman who wore the anorak of the carabineri, who held the machine-gun. He watched, he was an intruder present at the end of a dream, and he was responsible for the waking.
The Italian collected the books on archaeology, Roman and Greek and Carthaginian antiquities, and the Afro-American took the clothes from the wardrobe and the chest and folded them and laid them with precision in the bag, and the man sat in shadow and wrote busily on a big notepad.
The man hadn't spoken as they had driven from the barracks to the narrow street.
They'd brought three cars, and they'd blocked off the street ahead of the house and before it. Harry Compton, stretching his mind, could not imagine what it would be like to live undercover, without back-up. The bag was packed, was zipped shut. The room was stripped of the presence of Axel Moen. The Afro-American was about to speak, probably he'd something asinine on his tongue about planes not waiting, but the Italian had touched his arm. Axel Moen, sitting in the shadow of the room, wrote his letter, and the Italian guarded his last rites as a vixen would have protected a cub.
They'd get him out, Harry Compton thought, get him on the flight, get shot of the responsibility for him, and then he would make his pitch for the girl. There was fierce argument in the street below. There was a hammering cacophony of horns because the street was blocked by three cars and by armed men. Harry Compton's pitch about the girl would be that they should drive from the airport to the villa, wherever it was, and lift the girl out. If she wanted to go screaming, then she could go that way, if she wanted to go kicking, then she could kick, if she needed to be handcuffed, if she needed a strait-jacket, then he would oblige, if she argued, the way he felt, he'd tape her mouth.
He could recognize the symptoms of fear. He was so bloody aggressive. They should get the man on the flight, they should get the girl out of the villa, they should close down on the place and turn their backs to it, fuck the hell out of it and go. The aggression came from the fear. The fear came from the growing dusk falling on the street, the guns that guarded them. And the man kept on with his writing, like there wasn't a hurry, like the flight would wait… She'd kill him, Fliss would, if he came back without a present for her, and she wouldn't understand, and he wouldn't tell her why he hadn't gone shopping, why he hadn't even bought anything for Miss Frobisher, wouldn't tell her of his fear…
The notepaper, three sheets, was folded. There was shouting on the stairs, a woman's voice, shrill. The man, Axel Moen, in his own time, took an envelope from the drawer of the table, and put the sheets of notepaper into the envelope. He slipped his hand into the breast pocket of his shirt and lifted out a small gold wrist-watch, a woman's watch, and placed it in the envelope with the sheets of notepaper. He licked the flap of the envelope and fastened it down. He wrote a name on the envelope, and there wasn't the light for Harry Compton to read the name, and he gave the envelope to Dwight Smythe.
They went out through the door. They had stripped the room and taken the identity from it. The dream was gone. Harry Compton had killed the dream… The woman was at the bottom of the stairs and she shouted her abuse at the policeman who barred her, at them as they came down. He caught the drift. She screamed at them in a patois of English and Italian. She had taken a spy into her house. What would happen to her?
They had endangered her. The whole street knew a spy had lived in her house. Who would protect her? She was not answered. She spat in the face of Axel Moen.
The car doors slammed. They pulled away into the dusk. The dream was dead.
From a distance, the tail watched as the men came out of the house. A description was given of the long- haired American. It was reported that he carried a travel bag.
Charley asked, 'What should I wear?'
Peppino lounged on the big chair in the living room. His papers were around him. He looked up and at the first moment there was annoyance at the distraction, and then the slow grin came to his face.
'Whatever makes you feel good.'
She was in control. She felt no fear. The darkness gathered outside the living-room windows and she saw the shadow shape of the gardener pass.
'I'd want to wear the right thing – wouldn't want to get it wrong.'
'If you would like it, I will come and help you choose what you should wear.'
'Good.'
She had the power over him. He stood. He glanced furtively towards the kitchen.
Angela was in the kitchen with the children and their colouring books and their crayons. She had the power over them all. The power flushed in her… Axel Moen would have sworn at her, and warned her
… The power was a narcotic in her. She led him into her room. He followed. He waited at the door. She drew the curtains of the window and then she crouched down at her chest of drawers and took out the blouse that he had paid for, and the drawer was left open and he would be able to see her neatly folded underwear… She did not care that Angela knew the lie, and she did not care that Axel Moen would have sworn and warned… She faced him, and she held the blouse of royal blue across her chest so that he could see the line of it and the cut of it, and swivelled with it and then tossed it on the bed. She sought control. She went to the wardrobe, and he drifted towards her. She heard the brush of his feet, coming closer to her. She took the skirt of bottle-green from the clip hanger in the wardrobe and she held it across her hips and stomach and thighs. She felt the warmth of his breath on the skin at her shoulders and she knew the scent of him. His fingers touched her and groped under her arms and towards her breasts. She demanded control. She lifted him, she collapsed him.
'Sorry, Peppino, it's 'curse' time – bad luck.'
The tail was a motorcycle and a car. The motorcycle was ahead and the car followed.
The pillion passenger on the motorcycle used a mobile phone to report that the convoy had taken the route to the Punta Raisi Airport.
They took the ring road west of the city. At the junction with the autostrada, the convoy was flagged down for a road block. They had to slow for the driver of the lead car to wave his I/D at the soldiers and to point back to the two following cars. They slowed enough for Axel to see the illuminated turning to Mondello. He was sandwiched between 'Vanni Crespo and the Englishman, and the Englishman had the plastic bag between his feet. Dwight Smythe was in front, beside the driver. There was no talk in the car, so they heard each transmission on the radio between the driver of the lead car and their driver and the driver of the chase car. They accelerated through the road block, away from the sign to Mondello and into the long tunnel. Axel wondered where she was, what she did… He thought of her on the cliffs at her home, and he thought of her pushing the pram towards the Saracen tower,
