There was a counsellor at the embassy who liaised for the Bundeskriminalamt with the Italian agencies. He wrote a sharp shorthand note of what he was told. .. We had the opinion, five, six years ago that the collapse of the Christian Democrat machine, and those of the communists and socialists, would remove from the mafia the protection they had enjoyed for forty years. We thought then that for Italy a new era of clean politics was coming. We were wrong. There was the businessman's Government that followed. Far from attacking the mafia this Government took a most dangerous line. Anti-mafia magistrates in Palermo were denounced as self-seekers and opportunists, the pentiti programme was condemned for making bad law. There was a small window of opportunity to strike against the mafia after the killing of Falcone and Borsellino, when the public, in outrage, demonstrated against criminality, but the opportunity was not grasped. I believe it now lost. What I hear, it is increasingly difficult to persuade prosecutors and magistrates to travel to Sicily, there is on-going and debilitating rivalry between the many agencies, there is incompetence and inefficiency. The Italians forever plead with us to make greater efforts against a common enemy, but – hear me – look at the construction of the businessman's Government. There was a neo-Fascist appointed to the Interior Ministry, there are men with proven criminal associations introduced to the peripheries of power. Would we wish for such people to have co-operation given them? Should they be granted access to BKA files? Only because the Sicilian mafia pushes drugs and dirty money into Germany do we have an interest in the matter of organized crime in Italy. The British, the Americans, the French, we are all the same. We are obliged to be interested as long as the Italians demonstrate their unwillingness to tackle their own problem. But Sicily is a sewer of morality, and our interest achieves nothing. Do I disappoint you?'
There were two women in the church, in black, kneeling, several rows of seats ahead of him.
He had taken a place near the back of the church on Piazza Ucciardione, and at the far end of the seats from the aisle.
He knelt. He could hear the traffic outside and he could hear the beat of the wind against the upper windows of the church. In his mind, in silence, his knees cold on the floor tiles, he prayed for the soul of the man who had hanged himself…
It was what he had chosen. It was the fifteenth year since he had chosen to come with his wife and children to Palermo, brought by ambition and the belief of career advancement. It was the fourth year since he had chosen to stay in Palermo, in the comfort of his obsession, after his wife had left with the children. Huddled on his knees, he prayed for the spirit of a wretch. To come to church, to pray, he must have an armed guard at the door to the priest's room, he must have a maresciallo sitting with a machine-gun three rows behind him, he must have a young guard with a sullen and chastised face standing at the door of the church with a pistol in his hand, he must have two armed guards on the outer steps of the church. There was no more ambition. The ambition was dried out, a cloth left on the line in the sun. The ambition had been overwhelmed by the assassination of his character, by the drip of the poison, by the scheming stabs at his back in the Palazzo di Giustizia. He was left only with the obsession of duty… for what? The obsession hanged a man by the throat until his windpipe was crushed… for what? The obsession brought the risk of death, high probability, to five wonderful men who were his ragazzi
… for what? The obsession brought him closer, each day, to the flower- covered coffin that would be filled with what they could find of his body… for what?
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?'