'You are very young, you have a baby, you have a wife, you have a life in front of you. Is it for the best?'
He said simply, 'It's what I want to do. But the maresciallo says I endanger you and my colleagues by my incompetence.'
'Do you wish my intervention?'
'I would be ashamed if, through your intervention, I held my job.'
'So each of us, Pasquale, each of us has a bad day.'
Such sadness on the magistrate's face, and no attempt to hide it. He bled for the man.
He could not ask the magistrate to intervene for him, could not call that card. More than anything in his police career he wished to succeed in this work. To turn his back on the magistrate, Rocco Tardelli, to return to the uniform, would be humiliation. He hesitated. He was a humble policeman, without rank and without seniority, and he wanted to say something that was of comfort to this older and troubled man. He did not know what he could say. He hesitated, then started for the door.
'Pasquale, please – sometimes it needs a younger mind, sometimes it needs the freshness. I have no lead, I have nothing, I have to begin again. Please. Where does Ruggerio go? What must Ruggerio have?'
He blurted, 'A dentist?'
'How many dentists in Palermo? How many more dentists in Catania and Agrigento and Messina and Trapani? Has he dentures? Does he need a dentist? I cannot have every dentist on the island watched for the one day a year when he is visited by Mario Ruggerio.'
'An optician?'
'I do not know that he wears spectacles and, again, if he does, how many opticians on the island are available to Mario Ruggerio? Help me, with a young mind.'
Pasquale furrowed his forehead, considered. 'You have investigated the family?'
'I ask for a young mind, not the obvious. The family is the beginning, the middle, the end. We have a camera at his father's house. I should not tell you. And I should not tell you, we have a camera and we have audio close to the house of his wife. His brother, a brute, in prison on Asinara – you do me great damage if you repeat what I say – we have audio in his cell. His other brother is handicapped and we forget him. His sister, we forget her, alcoholism. Please, my boy, give us credit for the obvious.'
The apology was on his lips. He stared, amazed. A shock-wave seemed to Pasquale to flow across the magistrate's face. Tardelli jerked out of his chair, slipped, was on the carpet. Pasquale was rooted. He crawled on his hands and knees to the bedroom wardrobe that was so strange in a living and working area. He dragged it open. Files cascaded on him. Closed files and opened files, files held with tape and files bound with string. Pasquale watched. He groped among the files, scanned the titles of the files, pulled more files from the wardrobe. He whistled an aria as the heap of files grew.
Papers scattered and he swept them clear, and they were buried by more files. He found one. He ripped the tape from it. No longer whistling, he now cooed like a dove. The papers fluttered from his hands. He shouted, a noise of exaltation. He held two sheets of paper.
'There was a brother, Pasquale, I interviewed him myself. Four years ago, in Rome, I interviewed him. A banker. So plausible, the link with the criminality of the family cut.
I accepted it. No surveillance, no telephone intercept. I buried the memory. The memory was lost under blankets of information, new strata of information, further leaves of information. My mind lost him. I am ashamed… It is the place to look, isn't it, Pasquale, where you have forgotten to look, where there is no connection?'
He stood. His face, to Pasquale, was ripped by a sort of manic happiness.
He hugged Pasquale.
At the desk he snatched for the telephone. He dialled. He waited and the aria climbed to a peak.
"Gianni? Tardelli, the "walking corpse" of Palermo. 'Gianni, four years ago, in EUR, I met with Giuseppe Ruggerio. Yes, no connection. What of him now?… 'Gianni, call me.'
There were two and a quarter hours between the arrival of the London flight and the departure of the Palermo flight. There was no ceremony. They sat in Bill Hammond's car, Dwight Smythe in the front with the Country Chief and Harry Compton in the back. Bill Hammond had brought coffee from a kiosk.
'It's a sad damned day…'
'What we're saying in London, Mr Hammond, it should never have gone this far,'
Harry Compton said, sparring. 'We are also saying that if there had been correct consultation at the start, then there would never have been this difficulty. I don't think anyone's enjoying it.'
'As you eloquently put it, Bill, it is a "sad damned day" because the plan was irresponsible from the kick-off,' Dwight Smythe said, sullen. 'We are left with dog shit on our shoes.'
It was a new world for Harry Compton. He had never before been overseas for S06.
All pretty structured back in London. A good pattern of seniority to lean against back in London. He sat in the car and held the coffee, had a single sip and thought it gritty.
Perhaps, he had thought, when the two of them were together on the flight, beside each other, they could defrost the chill of the inter-organization spat, and they hadn't. They'd worn their badges, different armies, in cold hostility. Perhaps, he had thought, they'd be given the good treatment when they landed at Rome, and given a good meal and a good briefing and a dose of civilization, and he was uncomfortable in a car out on the edge of a bloody parking area.
'Did I hear you right? Dog shit?'
'That's what I said,' Dwight Smythe intoned.
'And you, what did you call it? A "difficulty"?'
'That's our opinion,' Harry Compton said.
'I wasn't happy, I had cold feet. Hear me through – the plan was brilliant. It's the sort of plan that comes along off the rainbow, and it just stands a chance. It stands a chance because Axel Moen is one hell of a fine operator. He's not you, Smythe, not you, Compton, not a blow-in, not a smart-ass who comes in on the big bird and thinks he knows the fucking game. Axel Moen is top of the tree. What does he get for being top of the tree? He gets a posting to a shit place like Lagos, and a bastard like me dresses Lagos up as a good slot.'
Harry Compton said, 'I don't think obscenities help. Our priority is to get Charlotte Parsons.'
'Where'd they dig you up from? A creche? A nursery? Training school? You don't ever name names. She's a code, she's Codename Helen. You don't throw names in Sicily. You work in Sicily, you have to be big, not a fucking ant. It's a sad damned day when people like you – and you, Smythe – get involved.'
'Has your agent been told that we are bringing Codename Helen home?'
A bitter smile crossed the Country Chief's face. 'You are a funny man, Compton, you make me laugh. You think I'm doing the crap work for you. I messaged him to meet you. You tell him his plan was shit and made a "difficulty". Tell him yourself.'
He thought he was followed, but he was unsure of it. He thought he was followed as he left the duomo in Monreale. As Axel walked away from the cloister he saw, on the other side of the street, a man of middle age and wire-thin build take off his cap and slip it into the hip pocket of his trousers, and a hundred metres further on, at the edge of the piazza, the man wore another cap of a different colour and a different material. A hundred metres further on, by the stalls that sold fish and meat, vegetables and fruit and flowers, the man had gazed into a shop window, studying women's clothes, and Axel had passed by him, and he had not seen him again. He could not be certain that he was followed. Maybe the man, forty- something, with the wire-thin build, had bought a new cap and was dissatisfied with it and put his old cap back on, and maybe he looked at women's underwear because that gave him a jerk-off thrill or because his wife's birthday was coming up, or maybe he followed the procedures of foot surveillance.