eyes had lingered on her for three, four seconds. He'd thought she'd looked, no lie, just bloody magnificent. There had been a woman in the front, just seen the flash of her, classily dressed. There had been the man driving. It was his talent to be sharp on recognition and the profile of the head had registered, the sighting such a damn long time ago in the hotel restaurant on Portman Square. .. He had seen the woman and the man who drove, but it was the jutting chin of the girl that captured him. They'd made it by three minutes, and the stress had built from that time.
'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
