'Years later, General dalla Chiesa came to Palermo to take the post at the Prefettura.
He found himself mocked, sneered at, obstructed and alone. Each initiative he tried to make against La Cosa Nostra was blocked by the corruption of the Government. In desperation he telephoned for a meeting with the American consul in the city. I drove him there, to see Ralph Jones. I sat in on the meeting. The general begged of Jones that the Government of the United States should intervene with Rome, 'do something at the highest level'. At the finish of the meeting, the general told Jones the story of Palma di Montechiaro, and he said, 'All I ask is for somebody to take my arm and to walk with me.' I drove him back to the Prefettura. At the end of the day he dismissed me. His wife came to take him home. He was killed, with his wife, that night in Via Carini. He was killed because he was alone, because nobody had taken his arm and walked with him.'
'What do you want of me?'
'Vanni's voice was close and hoarse. 'Should you not take her arm, Codename Helen's arm, and walk with her when she is alone, and give her comfort?'
'I can't give her the strength. She must find it for herself.'
The bystander walked away from the archaeologist, left him to his research.
'No.'
'I'm sorry, Mr Parsons, but I have to be quite clear about this. My question was, did you have a telephone call a week ago from Bruno Fiori?'
'Same answer, no.'
They sat across the fireplace from Harry Compton. He thought they were scared half out of their minds.
'And you don't know an Italian who uses the name of Bruno Fiori?'
'No.'
'Would you care to look at this, Mr Parsons?'
He was deep in his chair in the small front living room, and reaching into his briefcase, and he passed to the man the printout list of the telephone calls. The woman sat close to her husband and her eyes were down and staring at the card he had given them. His card had that effect on people, 'Metropolitan Police Fraud Department, Harry Compton, Detective Sergeant, Financial Investigator' frightened the shit out of them.
The man glanced at the list of calls made from the hotel room, two London numbers and his own number.
The man glowered back defiantly, like he was trying to show that he wasn't scared half out of his mind. 'Yes, that's my number.'
The woman said, eyes never leaving the card, 'It was Dr Ruggerio who called.'
The man's glance flashed at his wife, then, 'We were telephoned by Dr Giuseppe Ruggerio. And may I ask what business that is of yours?'
'Better that I ask the questions. Why did this Giuseppe Ruggerio telephone you?'
'I'm not going to be interrogated, without explanation, in my own home.'
'Please, Mr Parsons, just get on with it.'
He wrote a fast shorthand note. He heard the name of Charlotte, an only daughter.
He could see from his chair out through the open door of the living room and into the hall. He could see the photograph of the young woman in her graduation gown and her mortarboard at a cheeky angle. He heard the story of a summer job in 1992. And a letter had come, and the invitation for a return to minding children. The information came in a slow and prompted drip. Charlotte had given up her job and was now in Sicily. The wife had gone to the kitchen and come back with an address, and Harry wrote it on his pad and underlined the words 'Giardino Inglese'.
The father said, 'Dr Ruggerio telephoned but Charlotte was… she was out. I spoke to him, he just said how much they wanted her. I was against it, her going. She's thrown up a good job. God knows what she's going to do when she gets back. Jobs aren't on trees.'
The mother said, 'They're a lovely family. He's such a gentleman, Dr Ruggerio, very successful, banking or something. David thinks that life is all work, and what's work done for him? Chucked out without thanks, redundant. I said that she would only be young once. They treat her like one of the family. If she hadn't gone, she'd have been old before her time, like us.'
He closed his notebook, slipped it into his pocket. He stood. He was asked again why he had an interest in Dr Giuseppe Ruggerio, and he smiled coolly and thanked them for their hospitality, not even a bloody cup of tea. He went out into the hall. He looked at the photograph of the young woman and made a remark that she was a grand- looking girl. He took his coat from the hook. The man opened the door for him. He could hear the sea beating on shingle away in the evening darkness. A woman was across the lane, clinging to a dog's leash and staring at him as he stood under the porch light. He saw a man hunched in a lit window across the lane and peering at him through small binoculars. Behind a board advertising bed-and-breakfast (Vacancies), a curtain fell back to its place. God, what a dreary and suspicious little backwater. He started down the path to the gate.
The hiss of the woman. 'Aren't you going to tell him?'
The man's whisper. 'It's not his business.'
'You should tell him.'
'No.'
'You should tell him about the American…'
Harry Compton stopped, turned. 'What should I know? What A merican?'
TO: Alfred Rogers, DLO, British Embassy, Via XX Settembre, Rome.
FROM: D/S Harry Compton, S06.
Please get your leg off the beautiful women and ditch the bottle you will inevitably be busting open. Do me SOONEST a P check on Dr GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO, Apt 9, Giardino Inglese 43, Palermo, Sicily.
Ruggerio believed to be in finance, banking? Interests me because he uses alias of BRUNO FIORI. Don't break a blood vessel at the chance of actually doing something useful. Come up with the goods and I'll stand you a half-pint at the Ferret and Ferkin on your next extended (!) leave.
Bestest, Harry.
He had the scent, the smell was in his nostrils. He gave the sheet of paper to Miss Frobisher for transmission to the DLO, jammy sod, in Rome. Bloody good job, that one, soft old number. His detective superintendent was out of the building. It would have to keep, what he had to share, but there was a good bounce in his step. The day that the invitation to travel down to Palermo had reached Charlotte Parsons there had pitched up on her doorstep an American from the embassy, from the Drug Enforcement Administration. 'He said that if I talked about him, what he said to me, then I might be responsible for hurting people.' He'd bloody well find out, too right, what Americans were doing running round foreign territory to scoop up compliant and untrained agents.
Charlotte Parsons's father had said that his daughter was 'pressured' to travel. The boss would like it. Harry's boss had been skewered and minced and chewed by the FBI the last summer at the Europol fraud conference in Lyon. He'd come back bruised from France, worked over for suggesting that international crime was a figment of American imagination. He'd said, loud, at a seminar that international crime was a fantasy-land, and been told for all to listen that he was talking rubbish and that the Brits were just part-time players. Harry had heard it from the inspector who'd travelled as the detective superintendent's bag-carrier. If the Americans had taken an English girl, 'pressured' her, dragged her in, then his boss would not mind hearing of it, too right.
Chapter Eight
In two years, not more than three years, he would have sufficient money to buy the pizzeria.
Each time that he was paid, in American bills, he sent them by post to his son. He had enough money already to buy a pizzeria in Palermo, nearly enough money to buy a pizzeria in Milan or Turin, hut to buy a pizzeria in Hanover, near to the railway station, was more costly. His son and his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren lived in Hanover. They were, and he thought it was quite shameful to his own dignity, a part of the immigrant underclass in Germany. JHis son worked at night in the kitchen of a trattoria in Hanover, his daughter-in-law went to the trattoria in the mornings to clean it and to lay the tables. When there was sufficient money his son would use it to buy a pizzeria, and he would go to Hanover with his wife and with his son and he would live the last of his days there. The
