Mrs Daphne Farson saw them from behind her lace curtains, then lost them when her view was obscured by the sign in her front garden that advertised bed-and-breakfast accommodation. She knew Americans.
The retired clergyman, the occasional gardener, the crab fisherman, the retired librarian, the District Nurse, everyone who lived in that community at the end of the lane beside the sea shore saw the big Cherokee Jeep edge down over the last of the tarmacadam, pause in the car park for summer visitors, reverse, turn, come back up the lane and stop just short of David and Flora Parsons' bungalow. All of them heard the engine stilled, saw the lights doused.
All eyes on the Cherokee Jeep and all eyes on the front door of David and Flora Parsons' bungalow. The waiting time… A small collective shiver of excitement held the community.
'You sure it's right?'
'It's what I was told, a white singled storey in a crap place,' Axel said.
'We got here, so when you going to shift yourself?'
'She's not here.'
'You know that? How do you know that?'
'Because her scooter's not parked in the driveway.'
'Maybe she put it in the garage.'
'Her father's car is in the garage, she leaves the scooter in the driveway, if it matters to you…'
'You haven't been within a thousand miles of here before, you've never met this woman before… How come you know that sort of detail, or am I getting bullshit?'
'I had it checked.'
'You had it checked, down to whether she put a scooter into the garage or left it out in the driveway?'
'Checked.' Axel said it sharply, dismissive, like it was obvious that such a detail would be checked. The headquarters in Exeter of the Devon and Cornwall police, through their liaison officer, had provided information on the progress of an airmail letter through the city's sorting service, information on the hours worked by a young woman teacher, information on the nighttime parking of a scooter. He believed in detail. He thought that with detail people more easily stayed alive.
It had been the idea of Axel Moen. It was the operational plan of Axel Moen. What he wanted most, right now, was to smoke a cigarette. He opened the door beside him, felt the cool of the air, the grip of the sharp wind coming up off the pebble beach, heard the rustle of waves on stones. He reached back and grabbed for a windcheater. He stepped down onto the grass beside the road. Ahead of him, behind a low fence and a trimmed hedge, was the bungalow and the light was on over the door. He lit the cigarette, Lucky Strike, dragged on it, coughed and spat. He saw the shadowed bungalows and cottages, with their lights in the windows, stretching as a haphazard ribbon away up the lane to the bend round which the young woman would come on her scooter.
II It was the sort of place he knew. He wondered where the letter would be-in her room and on her bed or on her dressing table, on a stand in the hall, in the kitchen. He wondered whether she would tear the envelope open before she discarded her coat or her anorak, whether she would let it lie while she took herself to the bathroom for a wash or a pee. He heard Dwight Smythe open his door behind him, then slam it shut.
This young woman, does she know you're coming?'
Axel shook his head.
'You just walking in there, no invite?'
Axel nodded his head, did not turn.
'You feel OK about that?'
Axel shrugged.
He watched the top of the lane, where it emerged from the bend. The woman with the dog stared down the lane at him, and he could make out the man in the window with the small binoculars aimed at him, and he saw the flicker of movement behind the curtains of the house that advertised bed-and-breakfast. It was as it would have been for a stranger driving on a lane on the Door Peninsula, the scrutiny and suspicion. Where the finger of the Door Peninsula cut out into Michigan Bay. And, going north from Egg Harbour and Fish Creek, from Jacksonport and Ephraim, they would have stared at a stranger coming in the dusk and followed him with binoculars and peered from behind curtains. Far in the distance, back beyond the bend in the lane, he heard the engine. It sounded to Axel Moen like the two-stroke power of a brush cutter or a small chainsaw. He dragged a last time on the cigarette and dropped what was left of it down onto the tarmacadam and tramped it with his boot and then kicked the mess of it towards the weeds. He saw the narrow wash of light from up the lane, back beyond the bend.
'You're a mafia man, right? Have to be a specialist in mafia if you're based down in Rome. What's-?
'Mafia's generic. Don't you work 'organized crime'?'
'You going to play smart-ass? Actually, if you want to know, I am personnel, I am accounts, I am administration. Because of people like me, arrogant shits get to run around and play their games. What's this young woman-?'
'Lima Charlie November, that's LCN, that's La Cosa Nostra. I work La Cosa Nostra, we don't call it 'mafia'.'
'Forgive me for breathing – I apologize. Best of my knowledge, La Cosa Nostra, mafia, is Sicily, is Italy, is not quite adjacent to here.'
'Why don't you just go wrap yourself round the heater?'
The scooter's light was a small beam, dully illuminating the bank and hedge at the top of the lane, then sweeping lower and catching the woman with the dog, then swerving and reflecting in the lenses of the binoculars in the window, then finding the moving curtain at the bungalow that advertised bed-and-breakfast. He saw the arm of the rider wave twice. The scooter came down the hill and was slowing. The brakes had a squeal to them, like a cat's howl when its tail is trapped. The scooter came to a stop in front of the bungalow where the light shone 'welcome' above the porch. The engine was killed, the light was doused. He had not seen a photograph of her. He knew only the barest of her personal details from the file. No way that he could have had a decent picture of her in his mind, but when she was off the scooter and tugging the shape of the helmet from her head, when she shook her hair free, when she started to push the weight of the scooter into the driveway in front of the garage, when she walked under the light above the porch, she seemed to be smaller, slighter, than he had imagined.
He turned a key in the latch, pushed the door open. The hall light Hooded over an ordinary young woman, and he heard her call that she was back, an ordinary young woman's voice. The door closed behind her.
Dwight Smythe, above the sound of the heater, called from behind him, 'So, when are you going to bust in, no invite?' Axel walked back towards the Cherokee Jeep. So, when are you going to start to shake the ground under her feet?'
Axel swung himself into the passenger seat. 'So, do I go short of answers?'
Axel said quietly, 'About a quarter of an hour for her to read a letter. Don't ask me.'
Dwight Smythe arched his eyebrows, spread the palms of his hands wide over the wheel. 'Would I dream of asking, would I, what a young woman from down here has to do with DEA business, with organized crime, with La Cosa Nostra in Sicily…?'
The professor had said, 'If you take the hip and pelvis of Italy and think about it, and look at the map up there, well, that's the piece that's joined to Europe, and that's the bit that's high-class tourism and finance…'
When the rookies were not on Crime Simulation or Firearms Procedures or Physical Education or Legal classes or Defensive tactics, when they were not crowded into the Casino School or the Engineering Research Facility or the Forensic Laboratory, then they sat in on Public Affairs. It was nine years since Dwight Smythe had listened to the professor at the Public Affairs lecture.
'Come on down and you've the thigh of Italy, which is agriculture 'and industry. Move on lower, and you have the knee joint, Rome administration, bureaucracy, high life, the corruption of govern- ment You following me? We go south, we have the shin -
Naples,
…. and it's going sour. There is a heel – Lecce. There is a foot – Cosenza. There is a toe – Reggio Calabria. The way I like to think of it, maybe that toe is bare inside sandals, or at most the protection is the canvas of a pair of sneakers. Sandals or sneakers, whichever, they're not the best gear for kicking a rock.. .'
At Quantico, out in the Virginia forest off Interstate Route 95, FBI and Marine Corps territory, where the Drug Enforcement Administration recruit programme is tolerated, as are relations from the wrong side of the tracks, the professor was a legend. Any heat, any cold, the professor lectured Public Affairs in a three-piece suit of Scottish
