'So she makes a mistake, walks down a street, isn't sensible. Maybe she knows that, maybe she won't do it again. She's lonely, she holds a man's hand to whom she has reason to be grateful. You know what I believe?'
'What?'
'Vanni laughed quietly, and whispered, 'I think you are jealous of the 'streak of piss', I think you are jealous of him.'
'You are pathetic.'
Axel walked out on the best friend he had in Sicily, out of the cinema.
A cinema, dark and showing an unpublicized French-language film, empty, was a useful place to meet.
He took a side entrance out. It was a basic precaution, the sort of care that came naturally to him.
He was not aware that, at the front of the cinema, a man watched the builder's van that was parked half on the street and half on the pavement.
TO: Alfred Rogers, DLO, British Embassy, Via XX Settembre, Rome.
FROM: D/S Harry Compton, S06.
Action stations this end, going to a war footing. Big politics being played…
To impress top brass we urgently require updater on MARIO RUGGERIO, inclusive of bullshit you so expert in. My last still applies. The Pepsi/peanut-butter brigade are not, repeat NOT, Need To Know. Hope this does not interfere with your leisure schedule. Think of Queen and Country as you sacrifice your obese body.
Bestest, Harry.
Chapter Eleven
M iss Frobisher handed the brief message to the detective sergeant.
TO: D/S Harry Compton, S06.
FROM: Immigration Desk (EU entrants), Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport.
BRUNO FIORI (Your ref: 179/HC/18.4.96) arrived ex Zagreb 18.35 Monday. Regret not delayed as requested.
Barnes, Dawn, Supervising Officer.
He read it five times, then telephoned the Supervising Officer – Barnes, Dawn. She had one of those chill efficient voices. Yes, Italian passport-holder 'Bruno Fiori' had come off last night's Zagreb flight. Yes, he had been passed through the European Union passengers' desk. Yes, there had been a request from S06, logged, that Italian passport-holder 'Bruno Fiori' should be delayed – had the detective sergeant any idea of how many EU passport holders journeyed through Heathrow at that time of an evening? Yes, he had been positively identified, but the logged request for delay had only triggered with the immigration officer, a new probationer, after the passport had been returned. Yes, that officer had shut down his desk and gone through to Customs, Green Channel and Red Channel, but had failed to find Italian passport-holder 'Bruno Fiori'… 'There's no requirement for that sort of talk, Mr Compton. We do our best. If you don't like our best, then I suggest you refer the matter to the Home Office and request additional funding for Immigration (Heathrow). And a good day to you too.' So that was a brilliant bloody start to Tuesday morning. Giuseppe Ruggerio back in UK, and the hope had been that, if he returned, he would be held first on a passport technicality, and then done over by Customs as a 'random' check and held long enough for the tail to be scrambled. The brilliant bloody start to a Tuesday morning was a quality foul-up. He hammered down the corridor to his detective superintendent.
He explained. 'Shit.'
He showed the communication.
'Bloody hell.'
'So what do I do?' Harry Compton could play dumb-insolent as well as the next. He stood in front of the boss-man, with his hands folded across his groin, and the look of innocence on his face. He knew the track that the investigation had taken, that it had gone up the ladder to the commander, from the commander to the assistant commissioner (Special Operations). He knew the spat with the Americans had reached the stratosphere level.
'It's out of my hands.'
'What's best then – that I bin it?'
'Don't smart-talk me.'
'I rather need to know what I should do. We can put a full surveillance on Blake for a start, go for a full search warrant for Mr Blake. We can shake him up.'
'I'm not permitted to scratch my bloody nose on this one without authorization, not before we've heard from Rome, then I have to have you back down in Devon and a fat lot-'
'What I'm asking, do I do something or do I go back to sifting minimal scams on the good old pensioners' savings?'
Harry Compton thought the biro in the hands of his boss man might just break, big fingers twisting it in frustration. 'You're a clever little chap, Harry.
Put yourself where I am, ringfenced by the God Almighties, make a suggestion that's half sensible.'
'Fair assumption that Fiori, Ruggerio, will go back to his good friend. I'd stake it out, and I'd sweep his paperwork – and I'd belt Alf Rogers hard, so's it hurt, and keep belting him till he delivers.'
'So get on with it, and don't embarrass me. You embarrass me and you'll be back helping old ladies across the road.'
He went back to his office. He phoned the car pool and the Stores section and told them what he wanted. He scrawled the message, and he was whistling because he felt good, and handed it to Miss Frobisher for transmission.
TO: Alf Rogers, DLO, British Embassy, Via XX Settembre, Rome.
FROM: Harry Compton, S06.
Relevant word in my last was 'urgently'. Stop squeezing your blackheads and do some WORK. Soonest, we must have updated biog. on MARIO
RUGGERIO with assessment of links to brother GIUSEPPE. I grovel because I need ACTION. I would have thought you have a small window of opportunity for research between getting out of your pit, paying off your women, and the opening of the many bars you maintain in profit.
PLEASE …
Bestest, Harry.
PS. Don't know where this one's going, but it's tasty.
'Would you like to come, Angela?' No, Angela did not want to come because she had a headache and needed to stay in her room.
'Can I leave Mauro?' Yes, Angela would look after Mauro in her room because the baby was asleep.
And Charley was to be certain that small Mario and Francesca did not get cold – God, and it was 70 degrees out there, and Charley had swum off the beach at Bigbury and at Thurlestone and Outer Hope when it was bloody freezing, when her legs and body and arms were goosed. She thought it would do small Mario good, be a useful lesson to the little blighter, to be in the water and struggling because he could not swim. Small Mario was already getting to be, Charley's opinion, revolting and Sicilian, already standing in front of the mirror to check his hair, already posturing at her as if she were merely the hired help. She'd seen it that week, the difference in the child. She might just make certain that he went right under and took the sea water into his nose. It wasn't the child's fault, just the culture of the place… 'I'll make sure they don't get cold.'
So many times each day Charley had to pinch herself, gouge the nails of her fingers into herself, because then she could keep the reality with the fantasy, marry the mundane of life in the villa with the lie that was tight on her wrist. She had the towels and the swimsuits for the children in a beach bag, and in the beach bag were her own underclothes, because she had already changed into her bikini, and her sun-lotion tube.
She had the bright, coloured water-rings for the kids, and Francesca had found a toy sailing boat from last summer and small Mario had his football.
Angela's call – they would be all right? 'They'll be all right, Angela. Hope your headache gets better…'
The gardener opened the gate for them. She didn't think he knew much about swimming. The gardener
