'When'll I see you again?'
'Don't know.'
'You bastard, do you know what it's like, living the lie?'
'Keep walking.'
She was able to smell him, and she heard the light tread of his footfall behind her. She walked on with the flowers. The tears welled in her eyes. Why, when she cried out for praise, did he have to be so damned cruel to her?
She could no longer smell him, no longer hear him. She wondered whether he cared enough to stand and watch her go. She smeared the tears out of her eyes. She carried the flowers back to the villa. Bloody hell. In less than an hour and a half she would be going again into the town to collect the children. Peppino was dressed. Peppino thanked her and smiled gratitude. He told her that she was very welcome in their home, and that they so much appreciated her kindness to the children, and she had not had a day off, and she should go tomorrow on the bus to Palermo, and he winked and took a wad of notes from his pocket and peeled off some for her and told her of a shop on the Via della Liberta where the girls went for their clothes, young girls' clothes. He was sweetness to her, and he took the flowers into the bedroom to Angela. Charley went for her book.
Her book, on the table beside the bed, alongside the photograph of her parents, had been moved.
She felt the cold running over her.
Only slightly moved, but she could picture where it had been, a little over the edge of the table.
She could tell nothing from the clothes hanging in her wardrobe. She could not recall exactly where her sausage-bag had been on top of the wardrobe.
She thought that her bras had been on top of her pants in the middle drawer of the chest, and now they were underneath.
Charley stood in her room and she breathed hard.
'Is that all you said?'
'I said the test transmission had been OK, I told her that she was not to relax. Because nothing has happened she should not be complacent.'
'That's all?'
'There wasn't anything else to say.'
The archaeologist was hunched down on the stone slab and his back was against the square-fashioned rock that was the base of the cloister column. He sketched rapidly, and to reinforce the detail of his work he used a tape to measure height and width and diameter. It was natural, when an expert came to the duomo and studied the history of the construction of the cathedral, that a busy-minded and prying bystander should come to talk with him, question him, disturb him. So natural that none of the tourists or the priests or the guides took note of the archaeologist and the bystander. There was a bag by the feet of the archaeologist, and from the bag a chrome aerial was extended to its full length, but the aerial was wedged between the spine of the archaeologist and the base rock of the column and was hidden from the echoing flow in the cloisters of the tourists and the priests and the guides.
'Vanni said, 'You make it hard for her, very hard.'
Axel did not look up from his sketch pad. 'She has to find her own strength.'
'You gave her no comfort.'
'That's crap.'
'Did I tell you the story about dalla Chiesa?'
'General dalla Chiesa is dead.'
'Vanni grinned. 'I don't wish to be impertinent to my friend, to the eminent archeologo, and I think you are most sensible to pursue the cover, give it authenticity. I think it is right you are not "complacent" – but an archeologo takes lessons from the past, and General dalla Chiesa is of the past and offers lessons.'
'It is difficult to study detail when one is subject to the boring interruption of a stranger, don't you think?'
'Vanni said, conversational, 'There was a story that the general told of when he was a young carabiniere officer in Sicily, some years before he achieved the fame of destroying the Brigate Rosse. He had a telephone call from a captain under his command who was responsible for the town of Palma di Montechiaro, which is near to Agrigento. The captain told dalla Chiesa that he was under threat in the town from the local capo. He went to the town, he met the captain. He took the captain's arm, held his arm, and walked with him up the street of Palma di Montechiaro and back again. They walked slowly, so that everyone in the town could see that he held the captain's arm.
They stopped outside the home of the capo. They stood in silence outside that house until it was quite clear, no misunderstanding, that the captain was not alone. Do you still listen to me, my friend the archeologo?'
Axel did not look up from his sketch pad and his calculations. 'I listen to you.'
'Years later, General dalla Chiesa came to Palermo to take the post at the Prefettura.
He found himself mocked, sneered at, obstructed and alone. Each initiative he tried to make against La Cosa Nostra was blocked by the corruption of the Government. In desperation he telephoned for a meeting with the American consul in the city. I drove him there, to see Ralph Jones. I sat in on the meeting. The general begged of Jones that the Government of the United States should intervene with Rome, "do something at the highest level". At the finish of the meeting, the general told Jones the story of Palma di Montechiaro, and he said, "All I ask is for somebody to take my arm and to walk with me." I drove him back to the Prefettura. At the end of the day he dismissed me. His wife came to take him home. He was killed, with his wife, that night in Via Carini. He was killed because he was alone, because nobody had taken his arm and walked with him.'
'What do you want of me?'
'Vanni's voice was close and hoarse. 'Should you not take her arm, Codename Helen's arm, and walk with her when she is alone, and give her comfort?'
'I can't give her the strength. She must find it for herself.'
The bystander walked away from the archaeologist, left him to his research.
'No.'
'I'm sorry, Mr Parsons, but I have to be quite clear about this. My question was, did you have a telephone call a week ago from Bruno Fiori?'
'Same answer, no.'
They sat across the fireplace from Harry Compton. He thought they were scared half out of their minds.
'And you don't know an Italian who uses the name of Bruno Fiori?'
'No.'
'Would you care to look at this, Mr Parsons?'
He was deep in his chair in the small front living room, and reaching into his briefcase, and he passed to the man the printout list of the telephone calls. The woman sat close to her husband and her eyes were down and staring at the card he had given them. His card had that effect on people, 'Metropolitan Police Fraud Department, Harry Compton, Detective Sergeant, Financial Investigator' frightened the shit out of them.
The man glanced at the list of calls made from the hotel room, two London numbers and his own number.
The man glowered back defiantly, like he was trying to show that he wasn't scared half out of his mind. 'Yes, that's my number.'
The woman said, eyes never leaving the card, 'It was Dr Ruggerio who called.'
The man's glance flashed at his wife, then, 'We were telephoned by Dr Giuseppe Ruggerio. And may I ask what business that is of yours?'
'Better that I ask the questions. Why did this Giuseppe Ruggerio telephone you?'
'I'm not going to be interrogated, without explanation, in my own home.'
'Please, Mr Parsons, just get on with it.'
He wrote a fast shorthand note. He heard the name of Charlotte, an only daughter.
He could see from his chair out through the open door of the living room and into the hall. He could see the photograph of the young woman in her graduation gown and her mortarboard at a cheeky angle. He heard the story of a summer job in 1992. And a letter had come, and the invitation for a return to minding children. The information came in a slow and prompted drip. Charlotte had given up her job and was now in Sicily. The wife had gone to the kitchen and come back with an address, and Harry wrote it on his pad and underlined the words 'Giardino Inglese'.