She wondered if Angela, back in the bedroom, smiled or cried, whether a fuck changed her life, whether flowers would lift her spirits.
She took the purse from the kitchen drawer. Back down the path between the flowerbeds, back past the gardener, back through the gates, and she slammed them behind her and the lock clicked into place. Back past the fury of the guard dogs, and past the workmen who leered at her and stripped her from the sewerage trench. Back to the piazza…
Right, Giuseppe Ruggerio, right. Expensive flowers. At the stall she took from the housekeeping purse a note for 50,000 lire. Not enough. She took a note for 100,000.
She gave the 100,000-lire note to the man. What would the signorina like? She shrugged, she would like what she could have for ?40 sterling, and he should choose.
She took the wrapped bunch, chrysanthemums and carnations, and crooked them on her elbow. She was walking away.
'Go down to the sea front.'
The voice was behind her.
'Don't look round, don't acknowledge.'
The voice, quiet, belted her.
Charley obeyed. She didn't turn to see Axel. She fixed her eyes ahead of her, took a line between the Saracen tower and the fishermen's pier. She assumed he followed her. The American accent had been sharp, curt. She walked through the piazza. She waited for the traffic and crossed the road. She stood beside an old man who sat on a stool on the pavement, and in front of him was a box of fresh fish with ice around them, and he held up an ancient black umbrella to shadow his fish.
'Keep walking, slowly, and never turn.'
Charley walked. The sea was blue-green, the boats in the sea rolled at their moorings.
She thought he was very close, near enough to touch her. The voice behind her was a murmur.
'How does it go?'
'Nothing goes.'
'What does that mean?'
'Nothing happens.'
Said cold, 'If it happens, anything happens, it'll be quick, sudden. Is there any sign of suspicion?'
'No.' She looked ahead, out over the sea and the boats, and she tried to show him her defiance. 'I'm a part of the family, it's just a damned miserable family, it's-'
'Don't whine… and don't ever relax. Don't go complacent.'
'Aren't you going to tell me?'
'Tell you what?'
'The test. Did your gadget work?'
'It was OK.'
She flared, she spat from the side of her mouth, but the discipline held and she did not turn to face him. 'Just OK? Brilliant. I've been wetting myself. If you didn't know, it's my link. My road to the outside. It's like a morgue in there. I feel so much better to know that your gadget works 'OK'. Not magnificent, not incredible, not wonderful.'
'It was OK. Remember, because it's important, don't be casual. Keep walking.'
'When'll I see you again?'
'Don't know.'
'You bastard, do you know what it's like, living the lie?'
'Keep walking.'
She was able to smell him, and she heard the light tread of his footfall behind her. She walked on with the flowers. The tears welled in her eyes. Why, when she cried out for praise, did he have to be so damned cruel to her?
She could no longer smell him, no longer hear him. She wondered whether he cared enough to stand and watch her go. She smeared the tears out of her eyes. She carried the flowers back to the villa. Bloody hell. In less than an hour and a half she would be going again into the town to collect the children. Peppino was dressed. Peppino thanked her and smiled gratitude. He told her that she was very welcome in their home, and that they so much appreciated her kindness to the children, and she had not had a day off, and she should go tomorrow on the bus to Palermo, and he winked and took a wad of notes from his pocket and peeled off some for her and told her of a shop on the Via della Liberta where the girls went for their clothes, young girls' clothes. He was sweetness to her, and he took the flowers into the bedroom to Angela. Charley went for her book.
Her book, on the table beside the bed, alongside the photograph of her parents, had been moved.
She felt the cold running over her.
Only slightly moved, but she could picture where it had been, a little over the edge of the table.
She could tell nothing from the clothes hanging in her wardrobe. She could not recall exactly where her sausage-bag had been on top of the wardrobe.
She thought that her bras had been on top of her pants in the middle drawer of the chest, and now they were underneath.
Charley stood in her room and she breathed hard.
'Is that all you said?'
'I said the test transmission had been OK, I told her that she was not to relax. Because nothing has happened she should not be complacent.'
'That's all?'
'There wasn't anything else to say.'
The archaeologist was hunched down on the stone slab and his back was against the square-fashioned rock that was the base of the cloister column. He sketched rapidly, and to reinforce the detail of his work he used a tape to measure height and width and diameter. It was natural, when an expert came to the duomo and studied the history of the construction of the cathedral, that a busy-minded and prying bystander should come to talk with him, question him, disturb him. So natural that none of the tourists or the priests or the guides took note of the archaeologist and the bystander. There was a bag by the feet of the archaeologist, and from the bag a chrome aerial was extended to its full length, but the aerial was wedged between the spine of the archaeologist and the base rock of the column and was hidden from the echoing flow in the cloisters of the tourists and the priests and the guides.
'Vanni said, 'You make it hard for her, very hard.'
Axel did not look up from his sketch pad. 'She has to find her own strength.'
'You gave her no comfort.'
'That's crap.'
'Did I tell you the story about dalla Chiesa?'
'General dalla Chiesa is dead.'
'Vanni grinned. 'I don't wish to be impertinent to my friend, to the eminent archeologo, and I think you are most sensible to pursue the cover, give it authenticity. I think it is right you are not 'complacent' – but an archeologo takes lessons from the past, and General dalla Chiesa is of the past and offers lessons.'
'It is difficult to study detail when one is subject to the boring interruption of a stranger, don't you think?'
'Vanni said, conversational, 'There was a story that the general told of when he was a young carabiniere officer in Sicily, some years before he achieved the fame of destroying the Brigate Rosse. He had a telephone call from a captain under his command who was responsible for the town of Palma di Montechiaro, which is near to Agrigento. The captain told dalla Chiesa that he was under threat in the town from the local capo. He went to the town, he met the captain. He took the captain's arm, held his arm, and walked with him up the street of Palma di Montechiaro and back again. They walked slowly, so that everyone in the town could see that he held the captain's arm.
They stopped outside the home of the capo. They stood in silence outside that house until it was quite clear, no misunderstanding, that the captain was not alone. Do you still listen to me, my friend the archeologo?'
Axel did not look up from his sketch pad and his calculations. 'I listen to you.'
