'You'll keep her safe?'
'If I don't, then I should burn.'
Charley made the children ready for school and kindergarten.
That day, nothing said, nothing to guide her, an atmosphere of savage tension held the villa. She knew the atmosphere well. When her parents scrapped, when she was a child, they fought out of earshot so that their precious daughter would not learn the cause of the argument. She didn't know whether the atmosphere was important or whether it was trivial. When her parents rowed, out of her hearing, it was always something of mind-bending unimportance at the heart of the dispute – where they would go in the car the following Sunday, what they would be eating for supper, what shade of wallpaper was right for the spare bedroom. At home, the precious daughter thought the fighting was pitiful, and kept her distance. It was only an atmosphere, they had kept the cause of the argument from her.
She dressed the children. She washed their faces. The children were sullen with her.
Peppino was on the patio with work papers and the baby was beside him and sleeping in the pram, and Angela was in the kitchen. She collected the books from the children's rooms for their schoolbags.
She went into the kitchen. She told Angela that she was ready to go to school. She made a smile for her face and acted dumb ignorance as though she had not sensed an atmosphere, and Angela nodded distantly, like the children and the school were irrelevant to her.
There was no criticism. 'Angela, sorry… there's no shopping list.' It was said in innocence.
'I forgot the shopping list? I am guilty of forgetting the shopping list?' There was a cold, mocking savagery from Angela. 'Can't you do the shopping for yourself? You live with us, you eat with us. Is it beyond you to decide what we should eat for lunch?'
And Charley smiled again with sweetness. Wasted because Angela's back was to her.
'I think I know what we need. I'll see you.'
The children hadn't kissed their mother. Francesca was snivelling. Small Mario, crossing the hall, kicked viciously at his new toy car and cannoned it over the marble flooring. Charley wondered whether it would work again, and she thought the car cost more than she was paid for a week's work – spoiled little bastard. She took 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.