Angilù had a key to the field guards’ room and went there early enough not to be disturbed, stars still bristling in the thick blue western sky, the east thinning out with streaky red. The bloom of lamplight revealed the room much as Angilù remembered it. A particular atmosphere of menace and relaxation and self-regard. Hair oil and clothes brushes and boot polish and oil for leather, hats, boots, a mirror, a Christ, a Saint Rosaria, chairs and ashtrays. Weapons were not visible. They were in a cupboard that the Prince called the armoury. (His own English shotguns were kept in an armoury in the house.) Angilù opened the door. Holsters and harnesses hung like bridles for horses. Long barrels of rifles pointed upwards. In a drawer Angilù found two pistols, holsters and bullets. He picked up a gun and weighed it in his palm. He spun the barrel and listened to its clicks. He pocketed it. No need for a holster.
The door opened. One of the guards, a tall, thick-featured man named Giuseppe with violet marks of sleeplessness under his eyes. Angilù saw them as their eyes met. Giuseppe hesitated, his mouth shaping to say something. After all, he knew about the burned trees, the dead dog. Everybody did. But all he said was ‘Good morning’. And there it was, the silence that filled Angilù with rage. People in a trance, in a dream, blind with fear, silent even though they knew. Angilù would blow it all up but for now he said nothing. He picked up a cardboard packet and poured some bullets into his left hand. Golden and heavy, fat as bees. He dropped them into his other pocket, replaced the box, closed the cupboard and walked out of the room, out into the brightening day.
48
He was back at the coppiced wood. Beyond the straight trucks, out of reach, could be seen the slow, green glinting of the river. Will was trying to work out what he had to do. He could feel his father at a distance, a ferment of anger in the house. Will’s father was dead, of course. Remembering that transferred Will into his father’s presence. His father was at his desk in his study, turned away in his swivel chair. Paper and an open book were outspread before him. Will’s father was dead. He turned around in the chair to speak to his son but he was too tired. He was pale, terribly weak, after the awful effort of dying. He had that ugly scratch by his nose.
Back in the wood, The Wind in the Willows was somehow involved. The animals weren’t like they were in the book. They were disgusting, low to the ground, coarse-haired, fidgeting and shaking and suddenly scurrying away out of sight. Will needed to chase them. That part of the dream didn’t last long. It gave way to a new task. The trees were information of some kind. Their pattern was like Morse code. In the wood somewhere was his younger brother who knew already, who understood. Will turned around looking for him and was blinded by sunlight, hot on his face. That was what woke him up. He was sweating.
The Wind in the Willows appearing in his dream was particularly ridiculous and shaming. He regretted having the book by his bedside. His thoughts would have been sharper, less confused had he been reading his father’s Lucretius. Will felt smeared with shame at the dream, shame which intensified as he remembered another part: he was back at the fish pond. The cover was off. With a kind of tingling pleasure he was dropping tins of food down to the shivering prisoners below, naked in their filth. Anonymous soldiers waited and watched.
Through the shutters came blades of white light and the dry racket of insects and birds. Will kicked off his sheet and got up.
Water to wash his face and to organise his hair. Uniform on.
Samuels had some bad news. ‘Just had one of the local police in. There’s someone else been shot, in Montebianco this time. Funnily enough, no one saw anything. Shotgun wound. Close-range. Not a Fascist, though. Seemed sure about that. A Communist. But, you know, yesterday’s Fascist …’
‘If nobody saw it then nothing happened. It’s the bloody tree falling in the forest with no one to hear. Bury the man and carry on.’
‘Are you losing faith in the powers of justice?’
‘I’ll see. I’m off to Palermo to meet Major Kelly about the Albanese thing.’
‘Had a message from Albanese yesterday. Said he was aware of some black market activity that we should look into.’
‘I’m sure he is.’
49
Palermo had an air of Miss Havisham’s madness about it, grandly baroque and broken up with sudden sky and heaps of rubble. The streets were sordid with people, untrustworthy people, lounging against walls, talking together, watching him pass. Markets seemed to have reopened and fishermen were clearly going out again. Will had to pilot his motorcycle on tiptoe through people ambling around trays of fish, bartering with sheets of the AMGOT money that was already smeared and stained. Revving his engine did nothing to hurry them. There were small red fish with large, simple eyes. There were normal-looking grey fish and on its own, upright on a table, the extraordinary head of a swordfish, like something from a natural history museum. Its long, lordly blade angled up into the air. Behind, its body was sliced, missing sections that had already been sold, gaps of absence.
Will kept twisting in his saddle, alert to every stranger. He was not going to let himself be pickpocketed again. It was a relief to be out of this crowd and riding away.
Will had forgotten how glorious the building was in which AMGOT was headquartered. Stucco and gilt, marble and mosaics. Footsteps were repeated in quick echoes.
Will was shown in to see Major Kelly. He was seated at a large, lion-foot desk. Behind him on the wall, surrounded by an ornate frame, Saint Jerome contemplated his work of translation in rich oil paint. Major Kelly rose to shake Will’s hand. He asked the man who had shown Will in to return with some coffee.
Will sat down and began explaining his concerns about Albanese, the anonymous denunciations and the testimony of Angilù Cassini and Prince Adriano. Will did so quickly and precisely. Major Kelly listened sitting back in his chair, so still that the reflections in his spectacles didn’t move. When Will had finished, he leaned forwards and said that it was good Will had come to him with these anxieties.
The coffee arrived.
‘“Anxieties” might not be quite the word,’ Will said.
‘Whatever you want to call it. Look, I know we picked up some pretty interesting characters to help us out with Operation Husky. Our Italian friends in America are a — what shall I say? — an enterprising group of people. I was always assured we were vetting them thoroughly. I don’t know anything about Albanese in particular. He wasn’t in gaol. Some of the guys came out of prison here. I guess you knew that.’
Kelly lifted a hand and plucked his spectacles from his face. The effect for Will was strangely disconcerting. He saw that Kelly looked quite different to how Will had thought he looked. Beneath his spectacles, his eyes were bigger. There was a greater distance between his nose and upper lip. His nude head, with large pink eyelids and smooth cheeks, was uncanny to look at. Will realised that the spectacles somehow summarised and finished Kelly’s face, fronted for it. After he replaced his spectacles, hooking them around his ears again, Will was left to fit his appearance back together.
‘I guess what I could do is get some questions asked and let you know. Is that the sort of thing you’re after?’
‘At least. I want more. I think I should step in and relieve Albanese of his powers until we know, frankly, who the hell he is.’
A smile lit up Kelly’s face. ‘I see. Action. Command. Good for you, kid. It’s what this island needs if we’re going to make a peace that will last. There’s politics brewing in Palermo, I’m telling you. Separatists. Communists. It’s all going to get messier before it gets clean.’