outside the S06 office was quiet, in their library. He had gutted what they had in their library, the files that were headlined 'Mafia/Sicily', and then he had driven over to New Scotland Yard and kicked the doziness out of the night duty man in Organized Crime (International) and read more. He had taken in the statistics of product, volume, profit of La Cosa Nostra – and the figures of homicide, bombings, extortion cases – and the photographs of the Most Wanted – and the assessments and intelligence digests.
The night duty man must have warmed to him, had seemed pleased to talk, to break the boredom of the empty hours. The night duty man had coughed through a life story.
Northern Ireland as liaison with the local force for Anti-Terrorist, a stress-created breakdown and shipped out to a desk job. Handling informers, the twilight people in the Provo ranks who were turned, had built the stress. Running 'players' with a future of torture, and then a bullet in the skull, had bred the breakdown. 'They get dependent on you, you're not supposed to, but you get involved with them, you put them in place and you use them and you manipulate them. They lead bloody boring lives and they're there for one moment in time that matters. You've put them there for that one moment; if they can't handle the one moment of something that's important then they're dead.'
He thought he was sharp, he hoped to make the grade through night study for the business management degree, and he had realized, when he had finished with the files, that he was going into water where he would be out of his depth… Christ, miserable Miss Mavis inquisitive Finch, counter clerk in the bank on the Fulham Road who had filed the disclosure report on the cash deposit of Giles bloody Blake, had pitched him in… He'd gone back home to Fliss, some God-awful hour, and she'd sulked and said it was her mother's anniversary he'd be missing…
Dwight Smythe grinned. 'Maybe we get to share a room tonight, maybe we leave the light on…'
The American tried again on the mobile telephone. It was the fourth time since they had landed that he had tapped the numbers for Axel Moen's telephone, the fourth time the call had not been answered.
'So what's to do?'
Dwight Smythe flashed his teeth. 'Ride into town, get that big room with the bright light, and wait. You got anything else to suggest?'
They took a taxi into Palermo.
The journalist from Berlin waved his bank note for 20,000 lire at the steward. He thought the bar of La Stampa Estera to be the most dismal drinking hole that he knew, a heavy and darkened room and company to match. But they should know, the journalists who worked the Rome beat, the reality of the strength of La Cosa Nostra. He bought his second round of drinks, and none of those he entertained complained and demanded the right to buy. They drank what he bought, and he believed they mocked him. He was not proud of himself for coming to such a place and seeking the input of fellow trade hacks, but his story was littered, so far, with cavities and loose ends. He needed their assessments. Was the corruption in central government so widespread? Was there indeed a third tier of bankers and politicians, generals and secret servicemen, who protected the principals of the organization? Was a victory in Sicily possible? What was the lifestyle of the capo di tutti capi and how did he evade arrest? They mocked him, and they drank the Scotch he bought and the beers.
A magazine writer from Rotterdam said, 'Never go down there, a played-out story.
Go to Sicily, and all you end with is confusion. What my people are interested in is the Tower at Pisa, after the last earthquake, whether it's going to fall on a bus-load of our tourists.'
A freelance writer from Lisbon said, 'I can't get a word in the paper about Sicily.
Haven't been down there for nine months. It's expensive. Anyway, the food in Palermo is revolting. Nothing changes. It is the most tedious story in Europe. Now the Brazilian who is playing for Juventus, the striker, that is a page lead…'
An agency lady from Paris said, 'The mafia? The mafia make my people go to sleep.
If I want anything in the paper, and I have to want it because I am paid by the line, then I write about fashion and I write about the new gearbox in the Ferrari.'
A super-stringer on retainer to a London daily said, 'Nobody is interested, nobody cares, Sicily might be another planet. It is where they make an art form of deception, an industry of misinformation. Do you think they will use your story? I doubt it, I think you chase fool's gold.'
An Italian woman under contract to nine evening newspapers in Japan said, 'There is no interest because the mafia story is not about real people. The judges, the policemen, the criminals, they are the characters of a cartoon strip. People we can understand, people we can believe in, they do not exist in Sicily…'
The telephone rang. They listened. When the telephone was on secure, and the voice strength was diminished, then the magistrate always shouted. It was past midnight, it was quiet in the kitchen. In deference to the magistrate's request they did not play the radio in the kitchen late at night. If they played the radio late at night then the cow from the next apartment, with the common wall, would come in the morning and rail against the magistrate that she could not sleep. It was as if the ragazzi believed their man had sufficient problems without adding the cow's complaints. They listened.
'… I do not believe it, 'Gianni… How is that possible? Why was I not told?… We all have a work load, 'Gianni, we are all buried under a work load… Yes, I have it, I have written it. Of course, I am grateful… I told you, I look for any light, I do not know where I will find the light…'
There was a time of silence and then they heard the shuffle of his feet.
He came to the kitchen door. He wore his slippers and a robe over his pyjamas. There was a grey tiredness in his face, and his hair hung clumsily on his forehead. The maresciallo snapped his fingers at Pasquale.
Pasquale asked, 'Dottore, would you like juice, or coffee, or tea?'
The shaken head. Pasquale wondered if the magistrate had taken a pill. He had gone to his bedroom a good hour before. He could have taken a pill, he could have been deep in sleep. There were four of them round the table with their newspapers and their cards and the filled ashtray.
'Nothing, thank you. Maresciallo, please, I ask a favour of you. It is only a request because what I ask is outside the remit of your duties. What I ask is forbidden, you would be within your rights to tell me that what I ask is not possible.'
Pasquale watched the face of the maresciallo, and the face was impassive and gave no answer. They were not permitted to shop for the magistrate, and they did. They were not permitted to cook for him, or to clean the apartment.
'It is always the family, correct? I follow the family of Ruggerio and always it leads me into darkness. There has been a member of his family that I have missed – my own fault, I cannot justify my error: his youngest brother. The error is with me because, four years ago, I interviewed this brother in Rome. The youngest brother is Giuseppe Ruggerio, a businessman, he attacked me with what I believed to be justification. Was it his fault that his eldest brother was a mafioso? What more could he do than leave Sicily, make his own life away from the island? Was I not guilty of persecution? I believed him, erased him from my memory. I can make excuses. I can justify why I let the trail slip from me. But, the reality, I am humiliated. Now, I am told – I grovel because it was my error – the youngest brother is in Palermo. I have his address. I want confirmation that he is here. I ask you, maresciallo, to go and confirm for me that Giuseppe Ruggerio now lives in Palermo. It is always the family. Please…'
It was forbidden that the ragazzi should shop, cook, clean for the man they protected.
A more serious offence, to take active part in an investigation. Grim-faced, the maresciallo reached out and took a scrap of paper from the magistrate. Pasquale saw an address written in pencil on the scrap of paper. They faced the same danger as the man.
Because they rode with him and walked with him they were as exposed to risk as he was. Pasquale understood why the maresciallo took the scrap of paper and lifted his coat from the draining board, and checked his pistol and went out of the kitchen. They walked with death, together.
Chapter Sixteen
The great wooden horse figure was being towed by men in modern dress into a farmyard, and the men carried firearms and were swarthy-faced, hard-weathered-faced, and from the pockets of their trousers and their jackets and their anoraks spilled American dollar bills, and there were dollar bills in the mud and ignored, and they started to search the interior of the wooden horse figure, clambered into the hatch door in the horse figure's belly,
