Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  International and Organized Crime denied flatly that he had joint operations with DEA currently in place.

  'Get to the point, please.'

  'Of course, Fred. I am not a happy man, I regard this situation as intolerable.

  American agencies are based in this country on the very clear understanding that they operate through us, and that means they do not have the right to run independent operations. What we know, no thanks to them, is that a DEA operative flew here from Rome in pursuit of a letter sent from Palermo to a Miss Charlotte Parsons, teacher and first job, aged twenty-three, just a naive youngster. The letter the DEA tracked was an invitation to Miss Parsons that she should go to work for a Palermo family as a child-minder and nanny. The DEA wanted that girl in that household, they worked her over, they put quite intolerable pressure on her. A member of my team has established, at stiletto point, from I )evon and Cornwall, that the locals behaved like cowboy bullies at the DEA's request, took the girl on a tour of druggie housing ••states, to a morgue to gawp at an overdose victim, to a hospital to visit a narcotic-addicted baby. That is disgusting abuse of influence.'

  'I've not heard anything that I want to know.'

  'It is our belief that Miss Parsons is now exposed to real hazard. Whether you want to know it or not, sir, you'll hear it. Sorry, but this gets up my nose. Not any old family, no, but a quality, tasty, mafia family. Miss Parsons has been kicked by the DEA's boot into l he Ruggerio family. She has gone to work for the younger brother of Mario Ruggerio.'

  The commander paused for effect. Not that Royal and Diplomatic Protection, paring his nails, knew who the hell Mario Ruggerio was, nor Anti-Terrorist Branch, who was swirling the coffee dregs in his cup, nor Special Branch. Flying Squad was gazing at the ceiling, frowning, trying to gather in a memory of that name. He gestured to International and Organized Crime.

  'Yes, I know the name. It's in most of that interminable stuff the Italians chuck at us.

  Mario Ruggerio is coming through, fast- track, to fill the vacuum created when the Italians finally put a bit of their act together and lifted Riina and Bagarella. Same mould as Liggio or Badalamenti or Riina, a peasant who's made the big time.'

  'And a killer?'

  The commander of the International and Organized Crime unit grimaced. 'That's integral to his job description. Riina had a hundred and fifty killings down to him, forty done himself, mostly manual strangulation. Goes without saying.'

  'Kills without hesitation, kills what threatens?'

  'Reasonable assumption.'

  The assistant commissioner rapped his silver pencil on the table, hard. 'Where are we going?'

  'When challenged their Country Chief gave us a right put-down. I'll tell you where we're going. The DEA, the Americans, have inserted this innocent young woman, untrained and with zero experience of undercover, into a prime and vicious mafia family. Stands to reason, the Americans see her as an access source. Christ, down there the Italians cannot even protect their own judges and magistrates who're ring-fenced with hardware - what sort of protection are they going to be able to give this young woman? Nil.'

  The hps of the assistant commissioner pursed. 'Do I not hear a little of injured pride?

  Wasn't there a word of a little spat in Lyon last year, the Europol conference, rather a public put-down of one of your people? I would hope, most sincerely, that we are not edging into vendetta country.'

  'I resent that.'

  The assistant commissioner smiled, icily. 'And we are, I believe, supposed to be on the same side, wouldn't you agree?'

  'There are potential consequences. Because of the possible consequences, I felt it my duty to raise this matter. A naive and pressurized young woman has been inserted into an area of hazard. Take the bad side. She's blown out. Our little Miss Parsons, of south Devon, schoolteacher, ends in a ditch with her throat cut and her body showing all the marks of sadistic torture. Italian media, with their cameras, crawling all over her body, our papers and TV picking it up. Going to try to wash our hands of responsibility, are we? Going to say, are we, that she was put in this position of real danger from right under our bloody noses, and we did nothing? A lamb to the slaughter, and we did nothing? Would you, gentlemen, sit on your backsides if it were your daughter?

  'Course you bloody wouldn't, you'd raise the bloody roof.'

  'What do you want?'

  The commander of S06 said, 'Try me on what I don't want - I don't want bloody Americans running riot in this country on recruitment trawls, short of consideration of consequences.'

  'I said, what do you want?'

  'I want Charlotte Parsons extricated. You postured that we were on the same side.

  The same side is co-operation. They didn't co-operate. I want the Americans sent a message. I want Charlotte Parsons brought home.'

  'Shit in the fan,' from Special Branch.

  'Would kind of knock down bridges,' from Royal and Diplomatic I 'rotection.

  'Poor friends, the Americans, if peeved. They'd not enjoy interference,^' from Flying Squad.

  'I rely on their help, be reluctant to see them offended,' from Anti-Terrorist Branch.

  'I'm taking S06's position, we'd be hung on lampposts if it went sour, if she came back in a box,' from International and Organized Crime.

  '1 want her brought home before harm comes to her.'

  Silence fell. The assistant commissioner stared out of the window. Where the buck should stop was in front of him, in front of the neatly piled papers on which his silver pencil beat a slight tattoo, the commander of S06 watched him. The commander was going no higher, but the assistant commissioner was five years the younger and would have his eyes on the top job and the knighthood. Squirming, wasn't he? Working over the tangent lines of consequences. Wriggling, wasn't he? The commander of S06 felt himself in good shape because the responsibility for consequences was now shared with his superior and with his colleagues. But the bastard, true to form, fudged.

  'Before we confront the DEA, I want more information on Mario Ruggerio.'

  'Like what he has for breakfast, what colour are his socks?'

  'Steady, my friend - detail on Mario Ruggerio. There's a slot in my diary same time next week, just the two of us. I'm sure it'll keep for a week. Don't want to run before we can walk. And, so that I can better evaluate, I want to know more about this girl.'

  'Hello - wasn't any trouble finding it.'

  She had lied again, but then the lying was a habit. Good at lying, Charley had told Angela that it was important for her to go again to Palermo. So reasonable a lie, so fluent. 'It's the same as if you've been a driver in an accident, Angela, then you have to get back behind the wheel as quickly as possible. It's really kind of you to offer, but I need to be alone, just as I was alone then. I don't want anyone with me. I want to walk the streets, get it out of my system. Tell you what, Angela, I'm not taking that lovely bag that Peppino bought, I'm going to buy one of those stomach things that tourists have. I don't know what time I'll be back ... I have to do this for myself, I have to put it behind me.'

  The gardener had let her out of the gates, the bloody 'lechie', and she had almost run down the street from the villa in impatience to get clear of the place. Peppino was long gone, driven away while she was still asleep. She had already taken the children to school and kindergarten. The baby was sleeping. When she'd talked to Angela, lied, she'd thought that Angela was close to spitting out the great confidences. Little Charley, she could be a vicious little bitch, she hadn't wanted to hang around and hear the confidences, nor the weeping. Stick to the pills, Angela, keep popping them. She had run to get the bloody miserable place behind her . . .

  'You are well, recovered?'

  'Do I look awful?'

  'The bruise has gone, the scratches are good.' He was so damn solemn. 'You do not look awful.'

  'Aren't you going to invite me in?'

  She grinned, she felt mischief. He was so damn solemn, and so damn shy. He stepped aside with c
ourtesy.

  'It is a big mess, I am sorry.'

  'No problem.'

  She was early. Because she had lied well and run fast down to the sea shore in Mondello she had caught the bus before the one she had planned to take into Palermo.

  She wore her tight jeans that hugged her waist and contoured her stomach and thighs, and the T-shirt with the wide cut at the neck that left her shoulders bare. She stepped through the door. She had taken time, unusual for her, with her lipstick and with her eyes, and she wondered now, as Benny let her into his apartment, if Angela would have registered that she had been careful with her cosmetics, might have known she lied.

  Perhaps it was a mistake to have been careful with the lipstick and with her eyes, and maybe Axel bloody Moen would have slagged her off for it. The apartment was a single big room of an old building. A small cooker in a dark corner beside a washbasin that was filled with dirty plates and mugs, a wardrobe and a chest, a single bed not made and with the pyjamas lying dumped on it, a table covered with papers and a hard chair and an easy chair that was covered with clothes. There were posters on the walls.

  'I was going to clean it, but you are early.' Said as an apology, without criticism.

  'It's lovely. It's what I don't have . . .'

  It was what she yearned for, her own place and her own space. A place, space, where she was not a lodger in her mother's home, not a paid guest in Angela Ruggerio's villa.

  She was a lying little bitch and a bullying little bitch. She had invited herself into his life. She went to the basin and ran the water till it was hot. She didn't ask him if he wanted his plates and his mugs cleaned, she did it. She ignored him and he hovered behind her. The poster on the wall above the basin was of a pool of blood on a street and the single slogan, 'Basta!'. When she had finished at the washbasin she went to the bed and stripped back the sheets .and saw the indentation where his body had been, and she made the bed neatly and folded hospital corners as her mother had taught her. She put his pyjamas under the pillows. It was a narrow bed, a priest's bed, and she wondered if it whispered when his body moved on it, a chaste bed. The poster, fastened with Sellotape to the wall above the bed, was of white doves rising. She didn't look at him, it was her game with him, and at the chair she started to fold the clothes and to take a suit back to the wardrobe. In the bottom of the wardrobe she found dirty shirts and socks and underpants; she assumed he went back to his mother every week with a bag of washing. She turned. Beside the door was a poster on the wall showing, black and white, the long snaking column of a funeral and mourners. Her hands were on her hips.

  Charley grinned. It was her cheek.

  'Another Sicilian boy who needs a woman to look after him. Christ, how did you survive in London?'

  She had embarrassed him. 'Where I lived, there were men and there were women. I used to bring back the left-over chips at the time we closed the McDonald's - they would have been thrown away. I fed the women, the women did my washing and they cleaned my room.'

  'Grieves me to hear there's a male chauvinist piggery alive and well in London.'

  He did not understand. He stood awkwardly. What she liked about him, he seemed so bloody vulnerable.

  'So, that was me saying thanks, saying you were brilliant. Thanks for being brilliant when everyone else looked the other way. Now, I've been really conscientious, I've read the guidebook. I want to see the duomo, the Quattro Canti on the Marqueda, the old market in the Vucciria. I want to get to the Palazzo Reale for the Cappella Palatina.

  I reckon we can do the Palazzo Sclafani as well before lunch. Big lunch, a good bottle, then if we've the stamina—'

  'I am sorry . . .'

  'What for?'

  'You did not give me a telephone number for you. I could not telephone you.' He hung his head. 'I do not have the time to walk in Palermo.'

  Charley blinked. Trying to be casual, trying not to show that she had looked forward to the day, the escape, ever since she'd rung him. 'So you got your room cleaned up and you don't have to do the guide bit, lucky old you. I suppose that makes us quits.'

  He fidgeted. 'I have the day off from the school. It was my intention to escort you around Palermo. I have the school, and I have another life. For the work of my second life I have to deliver, urgently, some things.'

  'I'll come.'

  'I think, Charley, you would find it very boring.'

  As if he sought to dismiss her. Shit. She could turn round and she could walk out of the door. As if he told her that she intruded.

  'Try me. What's the second life? I've nowhere else to go. I mean, the duomo has been there best part of a thousand years, expect it'll keep another week. Where have you got to go?'

  'I have to go to San Giuseppe Jato, and then to Corleone . . .'

  'Heard of Corleone. Interesting, yes? Never heard of the other one. Is that countryside?'

  'It is into the country.' He seemed to hesitate, as if undecided. She gazed back into his quiet almond-coloured eyes. Come on, Benny, don't play the bloody tosser. She could not tell him about the claustrophobia she had fled from for a day. 'I am a teacher, but I have also other work. I have to see people in San Giuseppe Jato and in Corleone, and I think you would not find it interesting.'

  'Then I'll sit in the car.'

  'My other work is for the Anti-Mafia Co-ordination Group of Palermo - how can that be of interest to you? Can we not fix another

  day?'

  Her chin jutted. Axel bloody Moen would have told her to run, not to bother to close the door, run and keep running. The watch was on her wrist. His fingers, twisting, were fine and gentle, a pianist's. She should never relax. His face was of narrow angles, but without threat. She understood the posters on the walls of the room. She challenged him.

  'I think that might be of more interest than the duomo. I think I might learn more about Sicily than from the Quattro Canti and the Cappella Palatina, yes?'

  As a response he went to the door and unhooked his anorak. He looked around him, as if his room had been invaded, as if he had been boxed and bullied, as if he were too polite to complain, from the basin with the cleaned plates and mugs, to the chair from which the clothes had been taken, to the bed that had been made. He led her outside and onto the wide landing above the old staircase. He turned two keys in the heavy mortice locks.

  'Safer than Fort Knox.'

  So polite. 'I'm sorry, I don't understand.'

  'Just something you say, forget it, something silly. Benny, why do you work against the mafia?'

  He started to walk to the staircase. He said, matter-of-fact, 'Because the mafia killed my father. When he was driving me home from the school, they shot him.'

  Pasquale had run along three blocks from where the bus had stopped, and run into the building, and not waited for the elevator, and run up three flights of stairs, and leaned panting against the wall while he waited for the apartment door to be opened. He was seven minutes late. He had not overslept, he was late because his car had not started, battery gone, and the man on the floor below who had the jump leads was not at home, and ... He was let inside. Jesu, and they were waiting for him, and they wore their vests and they carried their guns. The magistrate, Tardelli, sat in a chair in the hall with his coat on and his briefcase between his feet, and he looked up at Pasquale and there seemed to be sympathy on his face. The one who drove the chase car scowled and looked at his watch pointedly. The one who rode passenger in the chase car stared at the ceiling as if he did not wish to have a dog in this fight. The one who sat in the back of the chase car stared at him hard and without pity.

  The maresciallo said, 'We would have gone without you, but it is against regulations to go when we do not have the full complement. Dr Tardelli has been obliged to wait for you.'

  Panting hard. 'Car didn't start - battery gone - my apologies, dottore - one minute, please, one minute . . .'

  He felt sick. He felt like dirt. He stumbled away to the spare bedroom, still decorated and furnished for two of
the children taken by their mother back to the north. Beside the wardrobe, empty, was the reinforced-steel gun box, full. Fumbling for the key that opened the gun box, and knowing the angered presence of the maresciallo behind him.

  Jesu, the wrong key. Finding the correct key. Taking out the Heckler & Koch, dropping a magazine that clattered on the wood floor. Blessings to Mary the Virgin that he had refilled the magazine the previous evening because it was routine that magazines must be emptied at the end of each shift or the mechanism might jam, grovelling thanks to Mary the Virgin that he had refilled the magazine. Snatching the Beretta 9mm with the shoulder holster from his numbered hook, and more magazines for the Beretta, and a box of bullet shells for the Beretta because he had not filled those magazines.

  Crouching down and searching in the heap for the bulk of his vest. He stood. He had to peel off his coat, sling the harness of the holster for the Beretta. He had to heave the vest over his head, heavy onto his shoulders. He had to throw on his coat again. The box of bullet shells for the Beretta into the coat pocket, and the emptied magazines. He slapped one magazine into the machine- pistol, and the eyes of the maresciallo were fixed on him, and, thank Jesu, he remembered to check that the safety was on. He breathed hard.

  For a moment he stood. Blessings to Mary the Virgin. He came back into the hall and they all stared at him, and there was no movement to the front door, still business to be completed inside, and the expression of the magistrate was sympathy, and the shrug which said the matter was beyond his intervention.

  The maresciallo beckoned with his finger, an instruction to follow. Pasquale went after him into the kitchen. The maresciallo pointed with his finger. The flowers his wife had bought, the bright flowers he had taken to the magistrate's apartment, were dumped in the trash can under the sink. Alive, still with colour, thrown away.

  'You are, Pasquale, pretend to be, a close-protection guard. You are not the servant of Dr Tardelli, nor are you his friend. Whether you have sympathy for him or a dislike of him, you do your job, and you take your money, and you go home. What you do not do is snivel sentiment. I will not have on my team any man who, remotely, becomes emotionally involved. I come back from three days away and I find that little presents, little gifts of flowers, have been given. Your job is to protect Dr Tardelli, not to make a friendship. He is a target, a principal target, and the best way to protect him is to remain aloof from him as a personality. We do not travel each day with a friend, but with a paccetto. To you he should be just a parcel that is taken from here and delivered safely to a destination. You should not try to wrap ribbons around a parcel. You are on assessment, on probation, and I remember everything. If you are ready, may we, please, leave?'