dealing with a 'placed' man, he may be sitting opposite a liar. If he diverts resources, the weight of an investigation, in the direction of a 'placed' man or a liar, then he will be weakened. If he is weakened, then he is isolated. If he is isolated, then he is dead. It is necessary for him to go one short step at a time because he walks through a mine field. Heh, what would you prefer, boy? Would you prefer to be directing traffic in Milan?'
The coffee Pasquale drank was cold. He stood. He took off his jacket, and rolled up his sleeves, and ran hot water into the sink, and started to wash the magistrate's dishes.
Past two in the morning… The night duty manager reflected his annoyance at being called by the porter from his office and his catnap. He studied the computer screen.
'Difficult to help you, Sergeant. That's nearly a week ago. We've had 827 guests through since that night. All right, the date you want
… 391 guests in residence. Bear with me. Are you sure this cannot wait till the morning?'
But Harry Compton, after another evening beavering at the solicitor's files and archives, had chosen to visit the hotel in Portman Square on his way home. It was what was called, a bullshit expression, a 'window of opportunity'. In the morning he would be back at the solicitor's papers, so, definitely, it could not wait.
'Well, of the 391 residents, twenty-one declared Italian passports. Wait again, I'll check the details…'
The fingers flitted over the computer's keys.
'You said, 'resident in Palermo'. No, can't help. Of the Italian passport holders that night, none declared residency in Palermo. You're being economical. Could you tell me why Fraud Squad is here at this wretched hour?'
He felt the blow, like a punch. He swore under his breath.
'Are you sure?'
'That's what I said, friend – none lists residence in Palermo, Sicily.'
'What about the dinner bill? Table twelve in the restaurant, did one of them sign?'
'No can help. That's a restaurant matter. The restaurant's closed, has been cleared for ninety minutes. Have to come back in the morning.'
'Get it open.'
'I beg your pardon.'
Harry Compton, detective sergeant in S06, reckoned he loathed the languid little creep across the reception counter. 'I said, get it open.'
They went into the dim-lit restaurant. A sous waiter was found, smoking, in the kitchen. The keys were produced. A drawer was opened. The receipts and order bills were taken from the drawer. There had been eighty- three diners on the evening that concerned him. He took the bundle of receipts and order bills to a table and asked to be brought a beer…
It was near the bottom of the pile, sod's law, the sheet of paper for table twelve, the printout sheet with the illegible signature and the digits of the room number of the resident. He gulped the beer.
He strode with the sheet of paper back to the reception desk and trilled the bell hard for the night duty manager.
'Room 338, I want that gentleman's card.'
'Are you entitled to that information?'
'I am – and I am also entitled to report to Public Health that a dirty little creature was smoking in your kitchen.'
The bill was printed out for him, with the check-in card carrying the personal details of the guest who had occupied room 338. It was an afterthought. Should have been routine, but he was so goddam tired. The night duty manager was disappearing back to his office.
'Oh, and I require a list of the telephone numbers called from that room. Yes, now, please.'
'Did you go back, where you were before?'
'I did.'
'Never worth it, going back. It seems unimportant, what was once special.'
'I walked from the block along past the tennis club and into Piazza Fleming. It was the way that I used to take small Mario to the school bus.'
'Going back is time wasted, sentimental.'
'If you have any other criticisms to make, could we do them in a job lot and get them over with, Mr Moen? It gets to be tedious, your criticism.'
If Charley annoyed him then, he did not show it. If she amused him, he did not show it. They were by the footbridge, high on the promenade above the water, across from the fortress of Sant'Angelo. She had been at the rendezvous on time and then she had waited. It had been ten minutes after she had come to the bridge that she had seen him, coming easily through a traffic flow, stopping, then skipping forward, confident. He'd told her that he had watched her through those ten minutes and he'd satisfied himself that she was not followed. He hadn't made a big deal of the fact that, his opinion, she might have been followed, just said it and unsettled her. She gazed down into the slow movement of the green-brown water below.
'Are you going to ask me what I did last night?'
'No.'
So Charley did not tell Axel Moen about walking the streets of the centro storico and dousing herself in nostalgia. Nor did she tell him of sitting, anarchic and alone, in a ristorante and eating till her stomach bulged and drinking the best portion of a litre of house wine. She did not tell him that she had showered, walked naked from the bathroom and seen on the television the picture of a man's body in Palermo whose balls were in his mouth, and didn't tell that the night had been a long nightmare.
'What did you do last night?'
The dry voice, as if reciting from a catalogue. 'Went to a party.'
'Could you have taken me?'
'I had someone to go with.'
He stood beside her. He held a padded paper bag in his hand. The labels had been pulled from it. She saw the great tree logs and the big branches, debris of the winter floods, now marooned against the piers of the bridge. She looked up at the fortress of Sant'Angelo. She had been round it, alone, in the summer of 1992, tramped the narrow corridors and climbed the worn steps and marvelled at the symmetry of its architects, so many centuries ago, in creating the perfect circular shape. It had been then a place of friendship.
'I'm here, you're here, so what happens now?'
'You're on board?'
'Of course I'm bloody on board.'
'You don't want to step off?'
She stood her full height. He wasn't looking at her. He was gazing . iway, distant, towards the dome, misted and grey, of St Peter's. She took his arm, a fistful of the arm of his windcheater, and she jerked him round to face her.
'For Christ's sake – I came, didn't I?'
He seemed to hesitate, as if he were troubled. Then Axel launched. Terrorism, Charley, is spectacular. Terrorism makes headlines. You know about the bombs in the City of London, you know about ()klahoma City and the World Trade Center, and about hijackings. You know about the charisma of a Che Guevara or a Carlos or an Adams or a Meinhof because the ideology and profile of those people are plastered all over your television. They don't count. For al the resources we throw against them they are minor-league. But you, Charley, you don't know the name of an internationally relevant criminal. It's like HIV and cancer. HIV, the terrorist, gets the attention and the resources, while cancer, the crime boss, busies itself with the serious damage, but quietly. With an ideology only of greed, organized crime is the cancer that chews at our society, and it should be taken out at source with a knife. In the ideology of greed there is no mercy if an obstacle – you, Charley – gets in the way…'
A small and weak grin. 'Is this your effort to scare me?'
'When you're alone, when you're frightened, then you should know what you've gotten into. Down in Sicily, fair to assume, there's a hundred different programmes, slants, angles of an operation running. You are one in a hundred. That's your importance. You offer a one-in-a-hundred chance of, maybe, getting up alongside the target.
You are Codename Helen, that is the name-'
