Francesca's hand. She didn't care that the child held back and snivelled. She yanked Francesca after her, and small Mario trailed after them. It would take more than the bloody children snivelling and sulking to destroy Charley's sense of calm. Again and again it had played in her mind, the taunting of Axel Moen. Like it was her anthem. 'Listen for when I call.
If you've quit, give the gear to someone else who'll listen. Make sure that somebody listens, if you've quit.' Like it was her chorus.
She walked onto the patio. 'Just off to school,' Charley said brightly. 'I'll take the baby.'
Peppino looked up from his papers, balance sheets and projection graphs and account statements. 'Did Angela tell you about this evening?'
'Didn't say anything about this evening.'
'We are out this evening. We will be taking Francesca and Mario. Please, this evening you will look after Mauro?'
'No problem.'
She walked down the path to the gate. The 'lechie' bastard opened it for her. She thought it strange that Angela had not said the family were out that evening. She walked towards the town. She wondered if Axel Moen had already quit, and she wondered who watched her. So calm, because it was now her story, alone, that was played.
The maresciallo had been called by the magistrate. They had spoken in his office.
He came back into the kitchen.
They watched the maresciallo as he took the street map from the table. Dark eyes that were sombre, without lustre, never left him as he studied the web patterns of the street map.
At the sink, Pasquale rinsed the coffee cups and the plates on which they had eaten bread. There was no liquid soap to put in the bowl. They had finished the liquid soap the evening before and none of them had written on the list that was fastened on a magnetic clip to the refrigerator door that it needed replacing. Pasquale did not remark on the absence of liquid soap. It would be the last time that he should wash, as the junior member of the team, the cups and plates and the knives and spoons, and they could find for themselves that the liquid soap was finished. He had told his wife, in the night, when their baby slept, summoned the courage, and she had stood behind him and nursed his head. He had held the bottle of beer in his fists, and with a quiet flatness he had told her that he was rejected, and she had nursed his head against the breasts that suckled their baby. He'd thought she'd wanted to cry in happiness, and she had said nothing. He had held the beer, not drunk from the bottle, and he had told her that he had been betrayed by the magistrate to whom she had sent flowers. He'd thought she'd wanted to kiss him in welling relief, and she had not.
He was already isolated from the team. He was not a part of the team of the older ragazzi that morning. They did not share with him the gaunt black humour that was their own. Nor did they laugh at him. It was not necessary for Pasquale to wash the cups and plates and the knives and spoons, and because they now ignored him they would not have told him to do the job.
The maresciallo said they were going to Ucciardione Prison, and he told them what route they would be using, and Pasquale laid the washed cups and plates and the knives and spoons in neat piles on the draining board beside the sink. He hated them all, he hated the maresciallo who rejected him, and the magistrate who betrayed him, and the older men who ignored him. He hated them. A cup slid from the draining board and, frantic, Pasquale tried to catch it. It fell to the floor, and the handle broke clear, and the cup was cracked, and a chip came free. The maresciallo seemed not to see and went on with the intoning of the route they would use, and the men at the table did not look at him. He knelt on the linoleum floor and picked up the pieces of the cup and put them in the rubbish bin under the sink. He was rejected and betrayed and ignored.
He stood by the sink. He interrupted the litany of the names of the streets and the piazzas. 'When is he coming?'
He saw the dagger glance of the maresciallo. 'Is who coming?'
'When is my replacement coming?'
'He is coming today.'
'When? Do I not have the right to know?'
'When he is available, that is when you are replaced. I apologize, I do not know when, today, he is available.'
The magistrate stood in the doorway. He held a briefcase across his stomach and his overcoat was draped loose on his shoulders. For a moment he was ignored by the maresciallo.
The route was detailed, which streets they would travel on, through which piazzas.
So difficult for Pasquale to hate the man who stood at the kitchen door, but the man had not spoken for him, and that was betrayal. There was such tiredness in the face of the man, there was no light in the eyes of the man. He caught the dulled eyes, and the man looked away. The route was confirmed. There was the clatter of the guns being armed.
The vests were thrown on. There was the thud of the feet down the staircase, and they passed a woman who climbed the staircase and carried a shopping bag from a boutique and bright flowers, and she gave them a glance of contempt.
They were in the sunshine on the pavement. The soldiers had their rifles readied.
The convoy pulled away. The sirens wailed, the tyres screamed on the corner. They went into the streets where there were, close- packed on either side, parked cars and parked vans and parked motorcycles. It was the day when Pasquale's replacement would be available. The maresciallo drove, and Pasquale was beside him with the machine-gun tight in his hands.
The prison was a part of the antiquity of Palermo.
The prison was a place of pain, torture, death, from the history of Palermo.
The walls of Ucciardione Prison, built by the Bourbons to impose their rule, were now covered with weeds in pretty flower, and the mortar crumbled in the joints between the stones. At the base of the walls the military trucks passed in continuous patrol, at the top of the walls the armed guards gazed down, listless, on the exercise yards. Beyond the exercise yards, spread out from the central building like the arms of an octopus, were the cell blocks. The cell blocks had failed to break the resistance of La Cosa Nostra.
The Men of Honour had been sent to the cell blocks by the officials of the king, and the officials of the Fascist Duce, and by the officials of the democratic state – and the officials through history had failed to break the spirit of La Cosa Nostra. It was the place of the Men of Honour, where they ruled and where they tortured and where they killed.
The cell blocks, that day, sweated under the brilliance of the sun.
There was a quiet, that day, in Ucciardione Prison, and word seeped along the corridors, and up iron staircases, and through locked doors, that Salvatore Ruggerio had requested a meeting with Rocco Tardelli, the magistrate who hunted his brother.
The men in the cells blocks waited.
The aircraft lifted. The journalist from Berlin sat rigid in his seat, and the aircraft banked over the beach at Ostia, and climbed, and turned again, and headed north. He thought he returned to the track towards civilization… champagne, yes, he would appreciate a glass of champagne. He thanked the Lufthansa girl… He could not remember when he had last felt such relief at the completion of an assignment. There were no headwinds, no turbulence pockets, it was a steady flight, and he tried to relax.
The problem, his difficulty, and it was a wound to his pride, he did not believe in the story he had written, it was his failure. When the champagne had been brought to him, he pulled down the table flap and laid his briefcase on it. He took his copy from the briefcase. He read back the story he carried home.
'There is the appearance of war on the island of Sicily. There are military road blocks, there are armed men guarding politicians and law-enforcement officials, there is talk of war. But, if there is combat, your correspondent has not found it.
'I remain unconvinced of the reality of conflict. It is possible there is only a delusion of war. My area of confusion, I could find no battle-lines and there is a complete absence of the traditional no-man's-land. There are military commanders and police chiefs who talk a good war, but I could not find, or touch, or feel, their alleged enemy.
'Your correspondent has reported from many of the world's darker corners. In Saigon I met with General
