get sort of neurotic, because it can't be confirmed and it can't be denied. You know what I do each morning? I go out where she is, I watch her, I see her take the kids to school. I'm not close up, you understand. I'm two hundred metres away, three hundred, but I see her. I see her take the kids to school and I see her do the shopping. Sometimes, when she comes into the city, I follow her, I see where she goes and who she meets. I'm there, I'm a goddam shadow… You see, she's alone, it's like she's in a pit with them… I didn't go last night, and I didn't go this morning. Maybe they've seen me near her, maybe I'm providing a pattern for them. Maybe, if I'm there each day, I give them a chance to see the pattern… I'm cut off from her, I can't watch her, I can't protect her.'
He saw the shrug of Axel Moen, like a dream had died. The music played loud.
Harry Compton said, boorish, 'My instructions are to terminate this operation, to bring her home immediately.'
The cigarette was stubbed into the ashtray. The man had taken a pad from his pocket and he wrote briskly on it. Harry Compton waited. He had thought the man would fight and the man had crumpled. He had recognized the stress of Axel Moen and he saw now only a spent relief. The single sheet of paper was torn from the pad and passed to him.
Axel Moen lifted the bedside telephone and dialled. He read the message again. He understood. He took the telephone from Axel Moen. He shivered, as if he crossed a chasm.
'Hello, hello… I am afraid that I do not speak Italian… I do apologize for the intrusion… I am the chaplain to the Anglican church on Via Mariano Stabile, just out from England for a few weeks. Miss Charlotte Parsons came to our service last Sunday
… Oh, she's out at the moment, is she? Please, could you pass a message to her? I wanted her to know that we have an escorted tour this afternoon of the cathedral, with a guide. She seemed so interested in church history in Palermo. Three o'clock we are meeting outside the cathedral. We would be so delighted to see her if her duties permit it. Thank you so much…'
When the maresciallo had returned to the apartment he had not disturbed the magistrate.
He allowed the poor bastard to sleep. He had crossed the hall of the apartment, walking on his toes, and he had heard the dull snoring of the magistrate. His report on the residence in the Giardino Inglese would wait. He should have gone off duty, should have gone home to catnap for a few hours. He stayed on. He sat quiet in the kitchen, nursing the cold coffee, when the day shift arrived. They were all quiet men when they came, the driver of the chase car, the passenger for the chase car, Pasquale, all subdued.
They were making the breakfast, heating the bread rolls when the alarm bleeped in the bedroom. It was good that he had slept, the poor bastard, and the maresciallo wondered if he had taken another pill. He had not yet shaved when he came to the kitchen door. He was a figure of wreckage.
'I spoke, as you requested, with the portiere, who declined to be co-operative. I made a call. My friend on night duty at the Questura gave me what I needed… The portiere had a conviction at the assizes in Caltanisetta, many years back, but a conviction for theft. If it were known that the portiere of such a building had a conviction, then he would lose his job… now, he was co-operative. Giuseppe Ruggerio is a banker, he is a man of ostentatious wealth. He has the apartment, and he has a villa for the summer on the coast. His family – his wife and his children, a foreign girl who helps the signora with the children – are at the villa. The villa is at Mondello. Sometimes Giuseppe Ruggerio is at the villa, sometimes at the Giardino Inglese. At the moment he is in Mondello. I have the address of the villa. Dottore, I have to tell you that I was not kind to the portiere. He made the wise decision to be more co- operative. Three weeks ago, perhaps a little longer, Giuseppe Ruggerio took his family away for a weekend and men used the apartment. He knows that because there was a rubbish bag left out for him to clear, and he saw that there were many cigarettes in the rubbish, and the waste from food and bottles, but the portiere was sensible, he saw none of the men. It is the classic indication, dottore, as you will know better than I, of the use of the apartment as a covo.
That is all I have to report.' The maresciallo shrugged, as if it were nothing that he reported, and he saw the frail smile break on the magistrate's mouth, like there was light, small and faint light.
The magistrate shuffled away, scraping his slippers on the floor of the hallway. At the table they ate the bread rolls, and drank the coffee, and read the newspapers. He kept his secret, but the eyes of Pasquale were never off him. He heard the voice of the magistrate, from the office, across the hallway, into the kitchen.
The maresciallo chewed on his bread… Was the captain, 'Vanni Crespo, available to take a call?
He drank the coffee… When was it expected that the captain, 'Vanni Crespo, would return?
He glanced over the headlines of the newspaper… Would the captain, 'Vanni Crespo, meet with Dr Rocco Tardelli at five o'clock that afternoon at the posto di polizia at Mondello?
All the time that he ate, drank, read, he kept his secret and avoided the eyes of the young man, Pasquale. His name was called. He heard the reedy voice of the magistrate.
He was a dour and hard man, he was not popular with those who worked for him and nor did he seek popularity. He surrounded himself, picked the team, with men of a similar black-humoured resignation. They were unique in the service, they were aloof from the other teams of ragazzi, they guarded the magistrate who was the 'walking corpse'. He could make an error of selection and when he knew his error then it was rectified. He heard his name called and with a studied slowness he finished his mouthful and drank another gulp of the coffee and folded his newspaper. He went to the office in the living room, and he closed the door after him. He loved the man, he loved Rocco Tardelli as if they were family, he loved the poor bastard who sat at his desk in old pyjamas and a frayed dressing- gown. He thought he had brought the glimmer of light to the magistrate.
'You called, dottoreT Said in complaint.
'I have asked 'Vanni Crespo of the ROS to meet me this afternoon in Mondello. I want to see it for myself, the villa of Giuseppe Ruggerio.'
'To go to Mondello is to take an unnecessary risk.'
'I have to go, please, I have to see. I believe I have missed an opportunity, I believe the opportunity was there for me, I believe I have no one to blame but myself.'
'Then we go to Mondello,' the maresciallo said without kindness. 'We take the unnecessary risk.'
It was not in his way to show kindness to the man he loved.
'Thank you.'
He said brusquely, 'Dottore, the matter of the boy. I filed my assessment on the boy.
I have the answer to my recommendation, that he should be dismissed. You could, if you wish, intervene on his behalf, you could countermand the order.'
For a moment the magistrate tapped a pencil on the surface of his desk. 'If he is inefficient then he endangers us, if he endangers us, he should be got rid of. I will work here until we go to Mondello.'
Charley trudged up the hill, carried the day's shopping… Her mother would, that morning of the week, be going with her father to the supermarket in Kingsbridge, walking down the same aisles, groping for the same boring packaged food, grumbling at the cost, like she sleepwalked. The bell would be ringing in the playground for her 2B class to come back inside and, that morning of the week it would be painting, followed by reading, followed by arithmetic. Danny Bent would be walking his cattle from the milking parlour up the lane to the 15-acre field, and Fanny Carthew would be dusting her pictures and thinking she had talent, and Zach Jones would already be settled at his window and would be polishing his binoculars for another day of prying into strangers' lives, and Mrs Farson would be on her doorstep complaining to anyone who'd the inclination to listen that the Tourist Board did nothing for her and the County Council was mean with grants. The bird would be on the cliff perch, that morning and every morning of the week, high over the sea. She missed the bird, she missed only the killer peregrine falcon… She rang the bell at the gate. The 'lechie' admitted her. She walked up the path to the villa, and halfway up the path she stopped, and she pointed imperiously to dead leaves at the path for the 'lechie' bastard to clear.
Angela was in the kitchen. Peppino had gone to work. The baby slept in the carrycot on the kitchen table.
'There was a call for you.'
'For me? Who?'
'You did not tell me you had been to church last Sunday.'
'Sorry, no, I didn't.'
'It is not necessary, Charley, to apologize because you went to church. They rang for you.'
'For me? Why?'
'The priest rang, the chaplain. You told them you were interested in the history of Palermo.'
