Killing Ground

by Gerald Seymour

  The priest watched him. The priest was often in the prison across the piazza. The priest knew him. The priest did not come to him and offer comfort.

  If he sent the message, if he cut the obsession from his mind, then on offer would be a bank account abroad and a position of respect in Udine and the return to his family and the last years of his life lived in safety. To send the message would be so easy.

  Within a few hours a message would reach the small man, the elderly man, whose photograph had been aged twenty years by a computer . . .

  He pushed himself up from his knees. He faced the altar and he made the sign of the cross. He turned. The magistrate, Rocco Tardelli, saw the face of the youngest of the

  ragazzi. To reject the obsession would be to betray Pasquale, who had come with his wife's flowers and who had crashed the chase car and who had forgotten a magazine for his machine-gun, to betray all of them who rode with him, gave their lives to him. Each day the weight, the burden, he thought, was heavier. Back to his office where the obsession ruled him, back to the files and the computer screen, back to the aged photograph.

  He laughed out loud.

  His laughter cracked the quiet of the church, and the women who prayed turned and glowered at the source of the noise, and the priest by the altar scowled hostility at him.

  He laughed because he remembered the long-haired American who had introduced into Palermo 'an agent of small importance'. There was a manic peal to his laughter. If 'an agent of small importance' should lead to Ruggerio, succeed where his obsession failed

  ... He bowed his head.

  'It is a difficult life, maresciallo, for us all. I apologize for my unseemly behaviour.'

  They closed around him as he walked out of the church and hurried him the few paces to his armour-plated car.

  '. . . It's Bill Hammond . . . Yes, Rome . . . Not too bad. Hey, Lou, when did you get to Personnel? That's a good number, yes? . . .

  Lou, this is not official, I'm looking for guidance. No names, OK? . . . Something we're doing down here, I can't talk detail, it might, might, get unstuck. One of my people, he's put a heck of a time into it. If it gets unstuck I'd want some candy for him. What you got going, foreign placement? . . . What sort of guy? . . . No, not a high-flier, not like you, Lou. He's a field man, not a computer guy, one of those people that scratch in the dirt.

  The sort who's going nowhere but that we wouldn't want to lose, you with me? If it gets unstuck, I wouldn't want a bear with a thorn in its ass round my patch, and I'd want to see him right. . . Lagos? Is that all you got, Lagos in Nigeria? . . . Yes, we could dress Lagos up. Yes, I could make it sound like San Diego. Be kind to me, Lou, don't fill the Lagos slot till you've heard back from me. It's just that too many people have gotten involved, and they're sort of squeamish people . . . Yes, we could have lunch when I'm next over, that would be good . . .'

  It was dusk when Harry Compton drove down the lane. He saw the light, bright in the porch of the bungalow, but it was not his intention to visit David and Flora Parsons. He stopped halfway down the hill at the outer gate to the farmyard. They had nothing they would willingly offer him about their daughter that he did not already know. The obvious way was rarely the best way. When a child was missing it was from the neighbours that detectives learned whether the disappearance was 'domestic' or a genuine abduction. When a company had gone crooked it was the competitors who most often dished the serious filth.

  He ignored the dog snapping at the back of his trouser legs.

  He rapped on the back door of the farmhouse.

  Daniel Bent, aged sixty-nine, farmer . . . 'What's she done? If you've come from London, there's something she's done. Don't expect you to tell me. You want to know what I think of her? Write this down. She's a stuck-up little bitch. When she came here with her parents, they're all right but just feeble, you could see from the first day that she didn't think we were good enough. Doesn't say anything, of course not, but it's in her feckin' manner. She's superior. Look at her, butter wouldn't melt in her, but under the skin she's a right little superior madam, and hard as feckin' nails. That's not what you expected to hear, is it?'

  He went on down the lane.

  He rang the bell of a pretty cottage where the honeysuckle rambler was greening.

  Fanny Carthew, aged eighty-one, artist ... 'I don't like to speak ill of people, particularly young people, but it would be difficult for me to speak well of her. You'll think I'm rather old-fashioned. You sometimes find the unpleasant trait of pushiness in that class of girl. You see, she's manipulative. She looks for self-advancement through people she can manipulate. It's not my business as to what trouble she's in, why a policeman has come all the way from London, but I doubt you'd want lies from me . . .

  She seeks to control people. If she perceives someone to be useful to her, then she is their friend, if she decides they are no longer useful to her, then they are ignored. Quite a few of us offered a little hand of friendship when she came four years ago, but we've now been outgrown, we don't matter. "Determined" would be the nice description, but I'd prefer to call her ruthless. Well, I've said it. Two years ago my daughter came down with her boy, Gavin, a very quiet boy and academic. The Parsons girl took him onto the cliffs and then she persuaded him to climb down, sort of taunted him. Well, it was all right for her, she knows the place, but my daughter lives in Hampstead, very few cliffs.

  He managed to get back up the cliffs, but he was quite traumatized, quite affected.

  Normally he wouldn't have done anything so idiotic, but she'd taunted him. What I mean, there's a rather soft exterior but underneath there is something quite distastefully tough.'

  He knocked.

  The shouted response told him the door was not locked, he should come on inside.

  Zachary Jones, aged fifty-three, disabled . . . 'Can't stand her. She'll look at you, all sweetness, but the eyes are the give-away, she's reckoning your importance to her. If you don't measure up, then you're ditched. I thought she might be company for me. I'm not much, but I've good stories to tell, I can get a giggle out of people. She used to come here, drink a beer and smoke a fag, and her pompous goddam father would have burst blood vessels if he'd known. Even used my toothpaste to clean her breath. Hasn't the time of day for me now. So she's in trouble or you wouldn't be here. Bloody good. No tears from me. I'll not deny it, she's a pretty little face - what she's short of is a pretty little mind. It's like she's trying to capture people all the time, capture and milk them, and when they're dry she walks away. I'd not trust her as far as I could throw her.'

  The light from the porch of the bungalow shone across half the lane.

  There was a fresh spit in the air, and the sea crashed in the dusk on the shingle. He went in shadow past the creaking 'Vacancies' sign.

  Daphne Farson (Mrs), aged forty-seven, bed-and-breakfast . . . 'You stay out in the kitchen, Bert, this is none of your business . . . My Bert thinks the sun shines out of Miss Parsons's bum, he'll hear nothing against her, but he's stupid. I thought I liked her once. I gave her work the first summer she was here, helping with the beds and cleaning up in the season. It was good pocket money for a schoolgirl. Doesn't speak to me now, like I'm beneath her, because she's been to college and had an education. I haven't an education, but I know kids. She went to college but she didn't have any friends, no one ever came to see her in the holidays. My nephew's been to college, Bert's brother's boy, his home's like a damn dormitory in the holidays. She can't make friends because she's so bloody, excuse the French, superior. Tell you what I think, I think she sets herself targets, and if you can't help her reach the targets, then you don't exist. She's a very hard young woman. If you weren't strong with her, then she'd destroy you . . . Bert, put the kettle on, and there's cake in the tin.'

  He saw a clergyman and an odd-job gardener and a crab fisherman and the District Nurse and a retired librarian.

  He built a picture of Charlotte Eunice Parsons.

  He had not heard
a good word said of her. Some had hacked her with a meat cleaver and some had stabbed her with a stiletto.

  He sat in his car halfway up the lane. With his pencil torch he leafed through the pages of his notebook. Harry Compton was not a psychologist, nor was he an expert in the science of personality,

  but he thought he knew her better for what he had been told. He wrote in his notebook, and she was in his mind.

  CONCLUSION: A very strong-willed and focused young woman. DEA most fortunate to have unearthed her. The danger, she will push to the end, she will hazard herself to reach her target (whatever that may be).

  She will not have the necessary background to assess fully the hazard of a covert operation(?) in Sicily. Because of her quite obvious determination to succeed, I fear for her safety.

  Chapter Fourteen

  She rang the bell.

  She hadn't telephoned ahead, hadn't called to be certain he would be in his apartment.

  Charley kept her finger on the button. She could hear the shrill baying of the bell behind the door. There was no response, no shout from Benny that he was coming, no slither of footsteps from behind the door. She had her finger a long time on the bell and she swore under her breath.

  When the door beside Benny's scraped open, bolts drawn back and locks turned, she took her finger from the bell button. The couple coming through the door beside Benny's were elderly and dressed for Sunday. The man wore a suit and the woman wore black with a dark-grey headscarf over her hair. They eyed her, they seemed to indicate to her that it was not appropriate to make so great a noise on a Sunday morning, then looked away. It was Palermo. They did not ask if they could be of help, they did not tell her if they knew where Benny was. It was Palermo, and they minded their own affairs, did not involve themselves. The man in his suit performed the ritual of locking the door behind him, two keys. Not easy to gauge their wealth. His suit was poor and his watch looked ordinary and his shirt was well washed. Her dress and coat were tired and the scarf on her hair was frayed at the hems and her brooch was very simple. It was Palermo, they made a fortress of their home, guarded their possessions, however meagre, and they hurried to commune with their God and carried their Bibles and their prayer-books. Her finger was off the bell's button, the couple were going, slow and unsure, down the formal staircase, and again Charley cursed. She cursed Benny for not being there when she came for him. She had not considered that he might not be there, and waiting.

  Sunday morning . . . Peppino going with Angela and the children to Mass, not to the church nearest the villa in Mondello, but to their regular church beside the Giardino Inglese. She had begged a lift, she had said that she would wander in Palermo and made a joke that Sunday morning was the safest morning to be alone on the streets. She had left them, as they had mingled outside their church with the professionistici and the wives in their finery and the children in their smart best. Now she cursed Benny Rizzo because he was not in his apartment, not available to her. Perhaps he had gone to his mother, perhaps he had gone to deliver a photocopier, perhaps he had gone to a talk-shop meeting. She felt raw annoyance, and she stamped her way down the staircase and out into the sunshine. She could not see him, and she wondered if he was there, and if Axel Moen watched her.

  Sunday morning . . . She walked aimlessly. She was on the pavement of the Via della Liberta. The heat was rising. The sun was bright. The street was taped off as the long-distance runners prepared for their race. They were slapping their bodies, or jogging nervously at the thought of pain, and some were checking that they had brought the silver foil to wrap around themselves after the exhaustion and dehydration of the run. The pavements were her own. A few responded to the tolling church bells and hurried past her. She went by shuttered restaurants and darkened shops, past the strident monuments of cavalier men posturing on rampant horses, past the deserted market of the Borgo Vecchio with the empty, skeletal frames of the stalls. She had no map with her, she did not know where she was going. She passed the shadowed alleyways that led into an old quarter, and the modern blocks of the new buildings on the harbour front, and she saw the towering hulks of the waiting car ferries. She was so alone. She had not considered that Benny would not be there, waiting, available. She stared at the prison, the ochre walls in which weeds grew, the guards with the rifles on the walkway above the wall, at the high, small windows from which underpants and socks hung to dry, at the patrolling military truck in which the soldiers carried rifles, where Peppino would be taken and where Angela would go with small Mario and Francesca and the baby at visiting times. She had needed him, needed Benny, and she despised him.

  Sunday morning . . . Charley walked without purpose. She went by cats that glowered at her, then ripped at the rubbish bags, past packs of dogs that slunk from her.

  She lingered outside the Teatro Massimo, where the walls were boarded against the vandals and the weather, where pigeon dirt and vehicle fumes had stained the walls in equal measure. She stood under the trees beside the derelict building and looked at the horses that were harnessed to the carrozzi, and she thought of the picket line of decent people at Brightlingsea and of how they would have responded to the dismal horses hooked to the empty tourist carriages. There was a lovely roan-and-white horse with its head down in passive acceptance. She was at the Quattro Canti. It was where Benny should have brought her. Shit, it wasn't much. Shit, all the fuss in the guidebook. Shit, the statues were grimed, fume-polluted, crumbling. So alone, so miserable, so lost . . .

  She swore again because he was not with her, was not available.

  She was on Via Mariano Stabile. The church was a red-stone building. She heard the singing of the hymn, familiar. She did not go to church at home, nor did her father and nor did her mother. The red of the church was so out of place in the grey and ochre of Palermo. She did not go to church at home because there she was never alone and miserable and lost. She crossed the street to the church. She stood outside the opened iron gates. It was so bloody unfair that she was alone and miserable and lost.

  The words were faint, feeble. A reedy chorus.

  Then sings my soul, my saviour come to me,

  How great Thou art, how great Thou art.

  She was drawn to the door. She walked into the grey light of the church, broken only where the sun was against the many-coloured glass of the window. The door slammed shut behind her and faces turned to notice her, then looked away. She stood at the back.

  She saw the plaques remembering the long-dead. The organ rose in a crescendo, not matched by the scattered voices.

  Then I shall bow in humble adoration, and then proclaim, My God, how great Thou art. . . Then sings my soul, my saviour come to me, How great Thou art, how great Thou art.

  It was the end of the service. A woman came and spoke to her, in piping English.

  Was she new to Palermo? Had she mistaken the time of Sunday worship? She was most welcome whether or not she could sing - but could she sing? Would she like coffee?

  Charley hoped so much to be wanted, loved, and she said she would like coffee. She went with other ladies, dressed as they would be for church in Exeter or Plymouth or Kingsbridge, up into the living room of the clergyman's apartment beside the church.

  She wanted so much to please and to be welcomed . . . She was told that they were the remnants of a great English society that had been based in Palermo, they were the nannies who had married Sicilians and stayed, they were the artists who had fallen for the light over the mountains and on the sea and stayed, they had come to teach the English language and stayed . . . She was a plaything, exciting because she was new.

  She fled. They wanted her name and her telephone number and her address. She could not lie to them. They wanted to know whether she would sing with the choir, whether she would come to the barn-dance evening, whether she could help with the flowers. If she stayed she would lie. She left them bewildered, confused, she fled out into the bright sun of the street.

  Alone, miserable, lost, she went to
the bus stop on the Via della Liberta that would take her back to the villa at Mondello, and she cursed Benny for not being available.

  In the car, beside her husband, Angela had withdrawn into the web of her mind.

  She wore a fine dress of respectful green, chosen by her husband, and a coat of fox pelts, chosen by her husband. She wore discreet jewellery at her throat and round her wrists and on her fingers, chosen by her husband. Her husband liked the coat of fox pelts and she wore it as if it were a badge of submission. The air-conditioner blew cool air over her. Her face was hidden from him by the dark glasses, chosen by her husband, that protected her eyes from the sun's glare that glittered up from the road. The children were in the back of the car, and the baby was corralled in the special seat, and they were quiet, subdued, as if they caught her mood. In the web of her mind were cascading thoughts . . .

  She loathed Sicily. After Mass they had been to an apartment along the Via della Liberta, near their own apartment in the Giardino Inglese, and they had drunk aperitifs of Cinzano and nibbled at canapes, and her husband had murmured that their host was useful as a contact in business, and deference was shown her by the other wives . . . She had magnificence around her, status, ever more lavish presents brought from abroad . .

  . She loathed the half-truths of the people and the double-talk of their coded whispers.

  She was a prisoner . . . She had asked, quietly, if they could go to their own apartment in the Giardino Inglese, just to visit, not important, to collect clothes and more toys, and her husband had dismissed the suggestion. She had wondered if his woman was there .

  . . She could not leave him. Her upbringing, her schooling, her rearing all served to prevent her leaving her husband. Her upbringing was the influence of her father, Catholic, conservative and working in the diplomatic section of the Vatican. Her schooling was the work of nuns. Her rearing was the effort of her mother to whom divorce was unthinkable and separation was disaster and marriage was for the extent of life. No court in Sicily would give her custody of the children if she left... If her husband recognized her unhappiness, driving the fast route to Mondello, if he cared for her unhappiness, he gave no sign to her. Only once had the mask cracked on his face, the morning he had been called down to the EUR to meet with the magistrate and the investigators of the Servizio Centrale Operativo, only that one morning had the bastard man crumpled - and he had come back, and he had laughed off the ignorance of the magistrate, and the matter was never talked of again. She did not know the detail of his involvement, she was the Sicilian wife kept quiet and beautiful under the weight of presents. She believed now that her husband's involvement was total, and she could not leave. The wife of Leoluca Bagarella had tried to leave, and it was said that she was dead, it was said in the Giornale di Sicilia that her way out was to have taken her life . .