SCO report: 'Ignorant but he has intuition and intelligence, his actions are most hard to predict'.
Squadra mobile report: 'Violent, aggressive, vindictive, with above-average shrewdness and determination'.
DIA report: 'He has power over life and death, an incredible personal presence, and a streak of violent sadism, BUT (my emphasis, AR) he is reduced to a miserable condition because he cannot move openly, cannot live with his family openly. He is submerged in the terror of assassination, exists in an atmosphere of tension and fear, hence violent paranoia.'
Magistrate Rocco Tardelli (investigating Ruggerio) in a recent report to Min. of Justice: '[Ruggerio] is a supreme strategist, believes future of LCN is in international dealings, acting as broker for cartels, Triads, Yakuza, Russian mafia. His reputation goes ahead of him, he is seen as combining experience with shrewdness. If he achieves domination of LCN, he will seek to direct the enormous power of that organization beyond Italian frontiers.'
At a time when the effort of the Italian state against LCN is losing impetus, it would seem that Ruggerio has taken control.
(See attached for GIUSEPPE RUGGERIO.)
Alfred Rogers, DLO, Rome.
He had thought once that the young woman, in the graduation photograph on the wall above the telephone, was not his concern. He felt a keen sense of shame. He locked the report in the wall safe. 'I think I'll push off then. I'm about wrapped up.' 'Best place, squire, in bed with the missus. They don't thank you here for playing all conscientious.
Don't mind me asking – you seen. 1 ghost or something? Sorry, sorry, just my little joke
…'
Chapter Thirteen
' You will be late, Charley. Can that not wait?' Angela shouted from the kitchen door.
She was hurrying along the back path, past the gas tank and the rubbish bins, to the washing-line. Her bras and knickers and T-shirts and jeans dripped in her hands. The washing-line was behind the villa. Beyond the washing-line was the rear wall to the property. Recessed into the wall was a strong wooden door with a padlock fastening it shut. The wall was too high for her to see over, but above the wall was the coarse scree and rock-sheer slope of the cliff.
'Won't be a second, Angela – won't be a minute.'
She grabbed a fistful of pegs from the plastic bag hanging from the washing-line. She was pegging the clothes to the line. She saw the bastard. Hey, 'lechie', libertino, getting a thrill from watching bras and knickers hung out? Want to get your dirty hands on them? He stood beside the barrow and when she challenged him with her gaze, he started to scratch with his broom at the path to the door in the wall. He bent. The old hand, weathered and bony and dirty, reached down to the ground beside the path and he picked something up, and threw it into the barrow. She saw it. She saw the crushed end of a cigarillo on the top of the leaves in the barrow.
The line of clothes was complete. She stopped, she considered, then she ran back to the villa.
Angela had the children ready on the front patio, and the pram with baby Mauro, and the shopping list for the day.
'Don't bother to wash up last night's dishes, Angela, I'll do that when I'm back. And it's all right for me to get a bit of culture into the system this afternoon? I'll see you.
Come on, kids.'
When she'd woken, Peppino was already up and sitting in the living room with work papers. When she'd gone into the kitchen to get the kids' breakfast and to warm the milk for the baby, the sink had been filled with the dirtied dishes topped by saucepans and Angela had been making coffee. Not possible for her to examine the padded seat of the chair at the end of the dining table, not possible for her to check the number of plates used, or the number of knives and forks. She thought herself pretty damn clever to have offered to wash the dishes. Right, pretty damn clever that she had noticed the 'lechie' pick up a cigarillo end at the back of the villa near the door in the wall. He smoked cigarettes, foul Italian ones, and Angela didn't smoke cigarillos and Peppino didn't smoke cigarillos, and the old man from last night would hardly have been sent out through the kitchen and past the gas tank and the rubbish bins for a sharp puff. And there was the jumbled memory of her dream.
Not pretty damn clever that she had slept… shit… had failed to stay awake.
Her mind was compartments. One compartment was walking down the hill and easing the pram around the dog dirt and the street rubbish and the road holes, taking the children to school and kindergarten, having the purse and the shopping list. A separate compartment was the lie and the watch on her wrist, and dirty plates in a sink, and a chair, and a cigarillo end… She dropped small Mario at school and walked Francesca to the kindergarten door. She was in the piazza, a hand resting casually on the pram's handle, and there was the blast of a horn. She was studying the shopping list. She swung round. Peppino waved to her and then powered away in his big car. She waved back. If she were pretty damn clever, clever enough to arouse suspicion, then would it be Peppino who strangled her, knifed her, beat her and then took his dinner? She bought the milk and fresh bread rolls. She was going to the fruit stall.
'Keep walking, down to the sea, don't turn.'
A cold and harsh voice. God, and the bloody voice was without bloody mercy. She stiffened her back, like she was trying to show defiance, but she did as she was told and she walked down to the main road, waited for the lights, never turned, pushed the pram across the road. She leaned against the rail. The baby was waking and she rocked the pram gently.
'If you can't cope with it, then you should say so, and you should quit.'
'That is bloody unfair.'
The growled voice, the sharp accent, rasped behind her. 'If you can't handle it then go.
Go home.'
She stared out over the water. The small fleet of fishing boats was putting out to sea, riding the swell. The wind freshened on her face. 'I'm doing what I can.'
'You want the list? Item, you give your communications to a goddam child to play with. He plays, we scramble. We had a helicopter up, we had a full team out – you fouled up.'
'It won't happen again.'
'Won't happen if you quit. Item, you send Stand-by last night. I am sitting with company, holed up in a car, till half after three this morning. I have a heavy team on Ready till half after three. Did you forget to send Stand Down?'
'I am doing my best.'
'If your best isn't better, then you should go home.'
'I am sorry.'
'Goddam should be. Why didn't you send Stand Down?'
She heaved the breath into her lungs. The wind whipped her hair. She said, small voice, 'I thought he might come. It was a little family party for Giuseppe's father's birthday. I wasn't included. I was told it would be "tedious" for me. I tried to stay awake in my room, I tried. I went to sleep.'
'That is pathetic.'
'I did my damn best…'
'Did he come?'
'Does he smoke cigarillos?'
'How the hell should I know?'
'Then I don't know if he came.'
'Think about going home if you can't do the job.'
She turned. She broke the rule he had made. She faced Axel Moen. She saw the coldness in the eyes of Axel Moen, and the contempt lined at the mouth of Axel Moen, and the anger cut in the frown of Axel Moen. She wanted to touch him, and she wanted him to hold her… She turned away from him. There would be a storm because the wind was rising.
He said, hacking the words, 'If you can't handle it, then you should walk out.'
She was watching the fishing fleet, diminishing, riding the wave crests. She went to buy the fresh fruit.
Back at the villa, Charley found that Angela had finished washing the plates and cutlery from the previous night, and they had been put away in the cupboards, and the upholstered chair in the dining room had been brushed with the other chairs, and she could not see whether it had been sat on.