and the black shape of the crash helmet was above her.
Falling, and the boot came into her face. The boot came from below a scarlet-painted fuel tank, and on the tank was an eagle's head. The boot savaged her.
She held the handbag strap and she was dragged on the pavement. Kicked again, and letting loose of the strap and covering her face.
On the pavement and the foul filth of the motorcycle exhaust blasting at her, choking. The gloved hand came down, crude, bulged fingers, and caught at the necklace that was the present of her uncle, and ripped at it, and it broke, and was coiled in the gutter beside her.
Charley lay on the pavement, and under her body was the shopping bag. She sobbed into the dirt of the pavement.
The motorcycle was gone.
A man walked past her, and looked away. She sobbed and she swore. Two women, queens in their finery, quickened their step and hurried by her. She wept and she cursed.
Kids were going by her, fast little trainer shoes scurrying. After them were high heels and shoes of worked leather. In pain, she wept. In anger, she cursed. The pain was in her chest and her face and her elbows and her knees. The anger was for all of them, the fucking bastards, who hurried by. She pushed herself to her knees, Christ, and it hurt because her knees were red-raw from being dragged, and she could see right down to the Via della Liberta, and across she could see a soldier on the far corner with his rifle held in alertness and he didn't come to help her. As if she carried a yellow flag, bloody leprosy, bloody HIV, was quarantined, they went by her, the fucking bastards. She was on her feet, she staggered, she lurched towards a man, and she saw the horror on his face, and he pushed her away. She fell. She was on the pavement.
'Are you all right?'
'Course I'm not bloody-' She looked up at him.
He was bent down and close to her. 'You are a tourist, yes? English, German?'
'English.'
He was young, maybe a couple of years older than herself. Concern was on his face, and sincerity, sympathy.
'Nobody helped me, nobody tried to stop him.'
'People are afraid here, afraid to be involved.'
'Bloody bastard cowards.'
'Afraid to interfere. It is different to England, I apologize.'
Such kindness. He was tall. He had a fine, angled face, strong bones in the cheeks. He pushed the falling hair back from his forehead.
'I haven't broken anything. I just feel so angry. I want to get him, kick him. There was a soldier across the road, a bloody great gun, didn't move.'
So soothing. 'He could not help you. It might have been a diversion. In Palermo anything is possible. You are a foreigner, you would not understand. Can I help you?
Take my hand. The soldier would have been disciplined. If he had left his place and come to you, it could have been a diversion, it could have been an attack on the home that he guards. It is Palermo.'
He took her hand. He had long and delicate fingers. She felt them close on her hand.
He lifted her up. The anger had gone. She wanted to be held and she wanted to cry. He picked up her bag from the shop.
'It happens every day in Palermo. They target tourists.'
'I'm not a tourist, I've come here for a job. It was my first day in Palermo. The job's in Mondello. I'm sorry that I swore. I am Charley Parsons.'
He grinned, embarrassed. 'But that is a man's name.'
A smile cracked her face. 'Charlotte, but I am Charley to everyone.'
'I am Benedetto Rizzo, but I am called Benny. You are sure there is no bad injury?'
'I am not going to hospital. Damn, shit, fuck. Sorry, and thank you.'
'I was in London for a year, people were very kind to me. I worked in the McDonald's near Paddington railway station. I apologize that this is your first experience of Palermo.'
Charley said, 'Trouble is, I feel like a fool. I was warned to be careful – I was bloody miles away. I just feel… humiliated. I was warned, and I forgot. Excuse me, you said that in Palermo people are afraid to be involved, afraid to interfere, but you were not afraid.'
'It is our city, our problem. You should not dissociate yourself from responsibility from a problem. If nobody does anything, then the problem will never be solved, it's what I believe.'
She looked into his face. 'Small people can change something, is that what you think?'
'Of course.'
He crouched. His hand, the long fingers, were in the gutter and the filth, and he lifted up the broken chain of poor gold. He seemed to Charley to recognize its value to her.
He lifted it with care and he placed it in her hand.
'I'm sorry, I am a teacher, I…'
'I was a teacher in England.'
'Then you will know – I have to be back. I have my class, at the elementary school behind the Piazza Castelnuovo.' He grinned. 'Maybe if I am not back, there will be a riot of the children, maybe the police will have to come with gas.'
Her face was puffing from the bruises, her elbows were scraped, the knees under the tears in her jeans were oozing blood.
Charley grimaced. 'I can't go to a bar, not looking like this. I am really grateful for what you did for me, for your kindness. When I am repaired, can I buy you a drink?
Please let me.'
He wrote for her his address and a telephone number, gave it to her.
'But you are all right, Charley?'
'I'm fine, Benny. It's just my bloody dignity that's damaged.'
Aching throughout her body, Charley limped with her shopping bag towards the bus stop. Only when she stood at the bus stop did she realize that the bloody bastard hadn't gone for her watch, that the watch was on her wrist.
Axel watched the bus come.
He saw her, in pain, drag herself up onto the bus.
As the bus drove away, the bus for Mondello, her face was in the window for a moment in his vision. She was white-faced except for the vivid bruising where the boot had caught her, and she seemed to him to be in shock.
He was on the pavement, a few feet from the bus, close enough to see the markings on her face.
Axel had seen it all. He had seen her, Codename Helen, come out of the boutique, carrying her bag, alive with pleasure, and he had seen the motorcycle accelerating down the side street towards her, and then weave through a gap in the parked cars and come onto the pavement. He had seen each detail of the attack, the snatch of the bag, her being dragged behind the motorcycle, the motorcycle stopping on the pavement and the boot going into her face, and the gloved fist going for her throat, and the motorcycle accelerating away down the pavement before it cut between the cars and out onto the side street.
He had not tried to intervene.
He would have intervened if it had been life-threatening. If he had intervened, if it had been life-threatening, if he had used his firearm, if the police had been called, then his cover was broken.
He had recognized the situation from the moment the motorcycle had moved on her.
It was a bag snatch, it was the life of Palermo. It was not worth the breaking of his cover. From his viewpoint across the side street he had satisfied himself that the situation was, by the terms on which he operated, harmless. The young Palermitan had come to her and helped her, and he had seen her weep and then curse and then soften as she was dosed in his sympathy, and at the end he had seen the small and rueful grimace on her face. She had not needed him.
And Axel did not need the smart talk of Dwight Smythe who pushed paper in the London embassy, nor of Bill
