In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

Wars, Hamilcar Barca held it against the Romans for three years, but in more modern times it became famous mainly because of the cult of Santa Rosalia after whom my mother had been named. My grandfather’s villa was at the foot of the mountain just outside the village of Valdesi.

I suppose, when you thought about it, he’d come a long way. He was born in Velba, a village in Western Sicily which was depressingly typical of the region, a dung heap where most children died in their first year and life was roughly equivalent to what it had been in England in mediaeval times.

His father was a share-cropper and the living that gave was of a kind that barely maintained life. Of his early years I knew little for certain, but by the time he was twenty-three he was a gabellotto, a mixture of tax collector and land agent whose function was to screw the share-croppers down and keep them that way.

Only a mafioso could have the job so he was on the way up at an early age. God knows what had happened in between – a killing or two – perhaps more, which was the usual method for any youngster to make his way in the Honoured Society.

He might even have spent some time as a sicario, a hired killer, but I doubted that. It didn’t fit into the code – his own very individual conception of what was honourable and what was not. The idea of making money out of prostitution, for example, filled him with horror because he believed in the sanctity of the family and gave to the Church. On the other hand, the organisation he served had killed so many of its opponents over the years that in many towns murder was a commonplace.

The lights of the car picked out a couple of old women trudging towards us festooned with baskets.

“What in the hell was that supposed to be?” Burke demanded.

“They’re coming in for tomorrow’s market.”

“At this time of night?”

“The only way they can secure a good pitch.”

He shook his head. “What a bloody country.”

I looked into the night at the lights of the city. “That’s one Sicily, but out there in the darkness is another. A charnel house for generations. The bread-basket of the Roman Empire based completely on slave labour. Ever since then the people have been exploited by someone or other.”

“I didn’t really take it all in,” he said. “This Mafia stuff. I thought it was all in the past.”

“I can think of one place that’s had better than a hundred and fifty killings in four years – a town of less than twenty thousand inhabitants. You won’t find me a place in the world of comparable size that can match that.”

“But why?” he said. “I just don’t get it.”

“People play games of one sort or another all the time, haven’t you ever noticed that?”

“I don’t follow you.”

I could have told him that he’d been playing soldiers all his life – even in the Congo – but there would have been no point. He wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about and I’d have offended him needlessly.

“Let me put it this way. In the suburbs of Los Angeles or London, the struggle to keep abreast of the next man, the cut and thrust of business, or even an affair with someone else’s wife, adds that little touch of drama to life that everyone needs.”

“And what does that prove?”

“Nothing in particular. In Sicily, it’s an older game, that’s all, and rather more savage. The ritual of vendetta – an eye for an eye, neither more nor less. And the rules may seem a little barbaric to outsiders. We kiss the wounds of our dead, touch our lips to the blood and say: In this way may I drink the blood of the one who killed you.”

Even thinking of it touched something inside me – a coldness like a snake uncoiling.

“You said we,” Burke observed. “You include yourself in?”

I stared out into the distance where an early cruise ship passed beyond the headland, a blaze of lights, a world of its own. I thought of school in London at St. Paul ’s of Wyatt’s Landing, of Harvard and laughed.

“In any village in Sicily if I spoke my grandfather’s name and declared my relationship, there would be men who would kiss my hand. You’re in another world here, Sean. Try to get that into your head.”

But I don’t think he believed me – not then. It all seemed too improbable. Belief would come later.

There was no resemblance at all between the Barbaccia villa and Hoffer’s place. To start with the walls were at least two thousand years older, for like most country houses it had been built on the Roman site. They were about fifteen feet high and the villa itself was of Moorish origin and stood in the centre of a couple of acres of semi- tropical garden. Ciccio braked to a halt and sounded his horn.

The gatekeeper wasn’t armed, but then he didn’t need to be. A man appeared from the lodge behind him wrestling with two bull mastiffs of a breed common to the island since Norman times and another came out of the bushes holding a machine pistol.

The gatekeeper wore a neat khaki uniform and looked more like an insurance clerk with his moustache and steel-rimmed spectacles. There was a kind of impasse while he and his friends stared at us and the dogs didn’t bark, which was somehow even more sinister.

I opened the door, got out and approached. “I’m expected,” I said. “You must have been told.”

“One man, signor, not three. No car passes through these gates except the capo’s. A rule of the house.”

I produced the Walther very carefully from my pocket and there was a hollow click as the gentleman with the machine pistol cocked it. I passed the Walther through the bars, butt first.

“My calling card. Send it to Marco – Marco Gagini. He’ll tell you who I am.”

He shrugged. “All right, you can come in, but the others stay outside with the car.”

Marco came round the bend of the drive on the run and slowed to a halt. He stared past me at the Mercedes, at Burke and Ciccio, then nodded. “Open the gates – let them in.”

The gatekeeper started to protest. “You know the rule – only house cars allowed inside.”

Marco shook him by the lapel. “Fool, does a man kill his own grandfather? Get out of the way.”

He wrenched the Walther from the gatekeeper’s hand, dropped it into his pocket and pushed him towards the lodge. The gates, it seemed, were electronically controlled. They swung back with a slight whisper and Marco joined us.

“I’ll ride up to the house with you.”

We got into the rear beside Burke and Ciccio drove on slowly. “Things have changed,” I said to Marco. “Getting into Fort Knox would be easier.”

“An electronic device runs round the top of the walls,” he told me seriously. “So no one can get in that way. Usually, as you just heard, cars other than our own aren’t allowed through. We discovered an explosive device in one a few years back when the capo was giving a party. If it had gone off it would have taken the villa with it.”

“A nice way to live.”

Perhaps the irony in my voice escaped him or else he chose to ignore it. “There have been eight attempts on the capo’s life in the last few years. We have to be very careful. Who is this man you have brought with you?” he added in exactly the same tone.

“A friend of mine – Colonel Burke. He thought I might need some help.”

“I can feel the gun in his pocket. Most uncomfortable. Tell him it will not be needed.”

“I know enough Italian to understand that much,” Burke said and transferred his Browning to the other pocket.

The Mercedes halted at the bottom of a broad flight of steps that lifted to a great oaken door banded with iron which I’d always understood had had an arrow or two in it in its day.

I think that until that moment nothing had possessed any reality for me. I was home again, which was what it came down to, and it was as if some part of me – some essential part – simply didn’t want to know.

Burke followed me out and Marco told Ciccio to take the Mercedes round to the courtyard at the rear. It moved away smoothly. I turned and found my grandfather standing at the top of the steps.

He was as large as Burke and looked smaller only because his shoulders were stooped a little with age. At that time he must have been sixty-seven or eight and yet there was still colour in the long hair and carefully trimmed