The pentito Contorno had broken the law of omerta and thirty of his relations by blood and by marriage had been butchered in a proxy attempt to halt the information flow he dribbled. There was a saying of the peasants on the island: 'A man who is really a man never reveals anything even when he is being stabbed.' The pentito Buscetta had turned away from the code of silence and thirty-seven of his relations had been murdered. Another saying of the peasants on the island: 'A man who is deaf and blind and silent lives a hundred years in peace.' The pentito Mannoia was now a terrified man, existing on Valium tablets, in crisis. He had heard a woman refer to her pentito brother as 'a relative of my father'. It was an earthquake in their lives when they gave up the silence. Each year one of the prisoners who sat at the bare table in the bare room, hemmed in by the bare walls of the bunker, was useful to the magistrate. Five a year were rubbish wretches.
It was a sparring game for Tardelli and the prisoner.
'Why do you wish to take advantage of the Award Legislation under the conditions of the Special Protection Programme?'
The eyes of the prisoner were on the choked ashtray. He stammered, 'I have decided to collaborate because La Cosa Nostra is only a gang of cowards and assassins.'
He could be cruel. Rocco Tardelli, mild-mannered and roundshouldered, could be vicious.
'I believe it more probable that you seek to "collaborate" because you face the sentence of ergastolo. You face the rest of your life in prison, here, in Ucciardione.'
'I have rejected La Cosa Nostra.'
'Perhaps you have only rejected the sentence of life in Ucciardione.'
'I have information…'
'What is the information?'
'I have information on the location where Mario Ruggerio lives.'
'Where does he live?'
The prisoner snorted, the furtive eyes lanced upwards towards the magistrate. 'When I have the guarantee of the Special Protection.. .'
'Then you go back to your cell, and you consider. You do not seek to bargain with me.
Back and consider.'
'I can tell you where is Mario Ruggerio.'
'When you have told me, then we think on the Protection Programme. Then I evaluate and make my recommendation to the Committee. You talk, or you go back to your cell. It is not for you to make conditions.'
It was important for the magistrate, Rocco Tardelli, to set the rules from the first interview. A thousand men had been received into the Protection Programme. The budget was exhausted, safe houses were filled, carabineri and military barracks bulged with the pentiti and their families. Most were useless. Most bartered long sentences of imprisonment for stale information. To a dedicated investigator, as was Rocco Tardelli, it was distasteful to exchange freedom for tired news.
'But I have come to you…'
'And told me nothing. Consider your position.'
Tardelli stood. The interview was concluded. Most of those he met, the true leaders of La Cosa Nostra, were men he treated with due respect. It puzzled him, frequently, that such gifted men should require criminality to buttress their yearning for dignity.
Because they had lost their dignity, it was hard for him to offer a pentito due respect.
The prisoner, the blanket again over his head, was escorted back to the medical area.
The doctor would call for prison staff to return him to the shared cell on the third floor of the block. The magistrate gathered up his briefcase from the floor, his cigarette packet from the table, his coat from the hook on the door. With his guards, he hurried down the corridor.
The sunshine hit their faces.
'You see, my young friend, Pasquale, maker of babies, I have to make him suffer. He has made the first move, but he will have thought he can control me. I have to show him that he does not. He will have thought he can offer me information, step by step, a little at a time, as he demands further privileges. That is not acceptable. I have to be able to judge that he will tell me everything that he knows. I have to be patient…'
They paused at the car, the armoured Alfa. The lights were flashed at the gate sentries. The engines roared. The gates swung open. The sidearms and the machine-pistols were cocked.
'Is he a jewel, Pasquale, or is he false gold?'
'Please don't talk to me, not when we are moving, please.'
He tucked down into the darkened interior of the car. The young man, Pasquale, was in front of him, the maresciallo drove.
He leaned forward, he caught the back of the young man's seat. It was a compulsion for him, to share and to talk. There was no one for him to talk with but the ragazzi. He despised himself, but to talk at times was the craving of an addict.
'You know, if I was afraid, if I could not tolerate the fear any longer, I could send a signal. There are routes by which a signal could be sent. Certain people, in the Palace of Poison or in the Questura, even in the barracks of the carabineri, would send a signal, pass a message. I have only to say, in confidence, that a prisoner asked for me. In confidence, I would give that prisoner's name. In confidence, binding such a person to secrecy, I could say that I have rejected the offer of information from that prisoner. It would be a signal that I was now afraid. The message would be passed on, it would be heard. It would be understood that I was no longer a threat. If, in confidence, I sent that signal, then I could again go to a restaurant, go to the cinema, go to the opera at the Politeama, go to the hairdresser…'
The young man, Pasquale, sat rigid in front of him.
The magistrate said sadly, 'I have to believe that I can live with the fear.'
'I hear we cocked your posh grub. You won't find me crying, Harry. Wife was out, so mine last night was sausage, oven chips and beans.'
'Didn't do too bad, sir.' Harry chuckled. 'Managed five courses, two gins for aperitif, bottle of white and red, brandy to wash it down
…'
'Did we screw you?'
The detective superintendent, it was his show, led the detective sergeant out of the senior partner's office and across the hall and out through the front door, down the steps and across to the pavement where the Transit van was parked. Harry stood back to allow his superior to hand over the cardboard packing case first to the constable at the rear doors. They paused, each of them, wrung their hands, pretty damn heavy the boxes were.
'I was beginning to get the taste for it. Quite a good restaurant, actually, for a hotel.'
'Till we horned in. Come on, next load.'
They went back into the building on Regent Street, looking straight ahead and ignoring the white-faced junior partners and the secretaries who had little handkerchiefs clasped in their hands as if to safeguard them from the Domesday collapse of their world. It was inevitable, what had happened the previous evening, because of the shortage of manpower in S06 and the constant juggling of priorities. Listening to Giles Blake's assessment of the immediate future of the gilts market, toying with the cod to make it last because they were slow on their food at the next table and hearing the announcement break into the canned nothing music. 'Would Mr Harry Compton please come to reception to take a telephone call? Mr Harry Compton to reception, please.'
Getting a judge out of his club and back to chambers, phoning the wife and pleading excuses, going through the evidence dossier with the judge and asking for a Schedule 1