Killing Ground (12 page)

Away beyond Bolt Head, off Start Point, she saw the first flash of the lighthouse, the raking beam.

'Is it necessary to be like that, so careful?'

'Yes.'

'That's what I have to learn?'

'It's best that you learn, fast, to be careful.'

She shivered, the cold caught her. His windcheater had none of the quilted thickness of hers, but the cold did not catch him and he did not shiver. She felt dominated and small. Said with acid deliberateness. 'Yes, Mr Moen. Right, Mr Moen. Three bloody bags full, Mr Moen. I'll send the fax in the morning.'

'Tell me about yourself.'

'Excuse me, shouldn't you be doing the talking. Who, what, you are. Where I'm going.

Why.'

He shook his head. 'Who, what, I am doesn't concern you.'

She snorted in fake derision. 'Brilliant.'

'It's about being careful.'

She felt the cold, the wind on her back, night wind hacking at the strength of her anorak. 'Where I'm going and why.'

'In good time. About yourself.'

She took a big breath. He watched her and his face was shadowed, but she did not think that if a flashlight had been shone on his features, or the full beam of the lighthouse on Start Point, she would have seen any damned encouragement. As if she was being manipulated, as if she was one of the marionettes that were stored in the cupboard behind her desk in 2B's classroom . . .

She blurted, 'I'm Charlotte Eunice Parsons, everyone calls me "Charley". I'm pretty ordinary—'

'Don't talk yourself short, and don't look for compliments.'

'Fat chance. I'm an only child. My parents are David and Flora Parsons. Dad was an engineering manager at the naval dockyard at Plymouth, it was his whole life - well, and me - until two years ago, when he was made redundant, the "peace dividend". We lived then in Yelverton, which is up on the edge of the moor, north of Plymouth. He didn't think he could afford to stay there, so they upped and moved. He packed in the bowls club and the tennis club, cinemas and shops, he's paranoid about being hard-up, broke. He bought the bungalow, he took his place in a gossipy and inquisitive little society, mean-minded. God knows why, my mother went along with it. Where they are now, they're boring and sad and empty. Do you think I'm being foul?'

'Doesn't matter what I think.'

She gazed out at the sea, at the darkening mass of the water, at the white foam spurts on the rocks, at the distant light rotating from Start Point. She thought she spoke a truth, and that truth was important to Axel Moen.

'I can't afford to live away from home, all I've got went into that silly little bike. If I had a promotion, a better job, when I've more experience, then I could quit and go and live in my own place. Not yet. Their lives are boring, sad, empty, so they're looking for a star, and I fit the role. It's always been like that, but it's worse now. There's days I could scream - don't think I'm proud of being a right hitch - and there's nights I'm ashamed of myself. The trouble with being a star, you learn as a kid how to milk it, you get to play the little madam. Not before, but there are times now that I disgust myself.

They wanted me to be quality at tennis, but I was ordinary and Dad couldn't see that.

They wanted me top of the form atschool, and when I wasn't, it was the teacher's fault, not because I was just another average kid. They wanted me to go to university, and when I didn't get the grades, Dad said the examiners had made a mistake. What saved me, what sort of opened the window to me, was going to Rome and being with Giuseppe and Angela, they were really lovely, they were wonderful. But you want me to spy on them?'

'I want access, yes.'

She peered ahead. He wouldn't have seen it. She gazed down the depth of the rock face to where a crag hung out as a limp finger. A falcon worried with its killing beak at the feathers under its wing. It was personal to her, the peregrine. Sometimes, when she came to this place, she saw it, sometimes she heard the crying call of the female. If it came, she would see it because she could recognize the fast movements of the bird in flight and its rigid profile when it perched on the finger of rock. The bird was her own, nothing to do with him. It flew. She lost the sight of the bird.

'I came back from Rome and went to training college. I suppose I was a spoiled little cow from home and a patronizing little cow from Rome. I didn't seem to find it necessary to make friends. All right, let's have it straight. I thought most of the other students were pretty trivial, and they thought I was pretty stuck-up, you know what that means? I didn't have a boyfriend, not one of the students, but there were a few sweaty sessions with one of the lecturers, one of those who always apologizes and cries afterwards and moans about his wife, but he used to give me good marks. Are you married?'

'No.'

'Ever been married, Mr Moen?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Just stay with the story, Charley.'

'Please yourself. I've only once ever done anything worthwhile in my life, what I thought was worth doing. You see, when you know how to milk, it's the big temptation to stay on the gravy train - God, that's rotten mixed metaphors. When you can get what you want without trying, you get complacent, you stop trying. Big deal, but I went last summer to Brightlingsea, it's a small dock on the east coast, other side of London.

There was a protest there against the export of calves to Europe. They were shipping the calves across for fattening up and then slaughter. It's the veal trade. It's revolting. I was there for a month, bawling and hollering and trying to stop the lorries. Yes, I thought that was worth while. Are you from a city or from the country?'

'North-west Wisconsin.'

'Is that country?'

'Big country.'

'So you wouldn't care about the animals, you'd say that farmers have to live, people have to eat, animals don't feel fear and pain.'

'It's not important what I think.'

'Christ. What else do you want to know? What colour knickers I wear, when my period is? You're a bloody bundle of fun, Mr Moen.'

'I think I've heard enough.'

She stood. Her hair was jostled on her face. The wind had risen and now that she no longer talked in his ear she had to shout against the roar of waves battering on rocks.

'Could we murder something, like a drink?'

He murmured, 'I don't drink, not alcohol.'

'My bloody luck, a bloody temperance nut. Hey, I'll drink, you watch. And while I drink you can tell me whether what I am going to do is worthwhile - or don't you have an opinion on that?'

Charley strode towards the car park. It was her big exit. She pounded up the path from the bench and the cliff face. She was going fast and ahead of him. Her foot, in the black darkness, tripped on a stone. She was falling . . . 'Shit.' She was stumbling and trying to hold her balance . . . 'Bugger.' He caught her, held her up, and she shook his hand off her arm and stormed on.

'Yes, Dr Ruggerio ... Of course, Dr Ruggerio, of course I'll tell C harlotte that you rang, I'll tell her exactly what you said ... It is difficult, Dr Ruggerio, she has a very good position at the moment, hut . . . Yes, Dr Ruggerio, we're very gratified to know that you and your wife regard Charlotte so highly . . . Yes, she's a lovely young woman .. . We are, as you say, very proud of her ... I know she's thinking very hard about your offer.

She's out at the moment, something connected with school work . . . Send a fax or telephone to Palermo, yes, I'll see she does that tomorrow . . . You're very kind, Dr Ruggerio . . . Yes, yes, I'm sure she'd be very happy with you again . . . My wife, yes, I'll pass on your best wishes ... So good to speak to you. Thank you. Goodnight.'

He put down the telephone. David Parsons glanced once, briefly, at the graduation photograph of his Charlotte that hung in the place of honour in the hall. He went into the sitting room. Flora Parsons looked up from her needlework, the cover for a cushion.

'God, you're a coward.'

'That's not called for.'

'Eating out of his hand and he's soft-soaping you. Crawling to him.'

'He sent you his best wishes . . .'

'The letter comes, then the American's here. Half the village wants to know who he is. Where's Charley now? I haven't an idea. Where is she? I'm frightened for her.'

'As soon as she's back, I'll speak to her.'

'You won't, you're a coward.'

It was her bravado, and when she'd finished she had only a few coins left in her purse.

Back to the bar, refusing his offer to buy the second round. A pint of Exmoor draft for herself, and a double malt whisky for herself, and another cup of decaffeinated coffee for Axel Moen with milk in a plastic carton and sugar in a paper sachet.

While she'd drunk the first pint and the first double malt whisky, while he'd sipped the first coffee, she'd told him about the timbered, low-ceilinged pub. She had given him the history - supposed to be a smugglers' den, and a hundred years earlier it was supposed to have been used as a lodging for a hanging judge in the Monmouth rebellion round-up, supposed to be . . .

He'd looked barely tolerant, uninterested. He lit another cigarette. 'OK, listen, please.

What you saw when you had your drive round, pushers' territory, small-time—'

She interrupted. 'I wouldn't describe an addicted baby in spasm as "small-time", nor would I call an overdosed corpse "small-time". I'd—'

'Be quiet, and listen. What you saw was the symptom of a strategic problem. Too many law-enforcement people spend their time, the resources given them, chasing thieves and muggers and pushers because it looks good and they get to seem busy. But they're attacking the wrong end of the problem. Let me explain. Take a big company, let's talk of a mega-multinational. We'll take Exxon or General Motors or the Ford Motor Company, they're the major three American corporations. The total of their turnover, last set of figures I saw, $330 billion - get that figure in your mind - but the man you see is the salesman from the General Motors or Ford showroom, or if it's Exxon he's the guy who takes your money at the filling station. For the salesman or the guy on the cash till you should read "thieves and muggers and pushers".

Narco-trafficking, the last set of figures, runs directly alongside those of General Motors and the Ford Motor Company and Exxon, so we are talking serious money -

you with me? - but organized crime is not only about narcotics, you can add in the profits from money washing, from arms trading, from illegal-immigrant rackets, loan sharking and kidnapping and hijacking, from extortion. What the whole thing comes to, worldwide, is figures too big to comprehend, but we try. The figure is $3 million billion. It leaves the top corporations for dead . . . Hang on in there.'

She bolted at the beer. He sat opposite her. The cigarettes went from his mouth to the ashtray, were stubbed, were lit, were smoked. He talked quietly and she clung to his words, as if he'd opened a door to her that showed a sea without a horizon.

'Hanging, but it's from my fingernails.'

She won a quick smile that did not last.

'The salesmen of General Motors and the Ford Motor Company don't count, nor the guy on the cash till at an Exxon filling station, they're about as important as the thieves and muggers and pushers. Where it matters is head office. Get in the elevator at head office, head on up past the accountants and lawyers and the marketing people and the public affairs people, keep going up in the elevator, up past the vice-presidents for sales and finance and internationals and image, research and development, keep on till it stops or hits the sky. You are, Charley, in the presence of the chief executive officer. He matters. What he decides affects folk. He is god. His level is strategic.'

She felt minuscule, a pygmy. The whisky glass was empty, just the dregs of the Exmoor draft left.

'There are mafias in Italy, in the United States, in Japan and Hong Kong, in Colombia and Brazil, in Russia. Each of those mafias has a chief executive officer, one man, because there's no space for a gang session in a mafia or in a corporation, who acts pretty much like the chief executive officer of General Motors, the Ford Motor Company or Exxon. He lays down guidelines, he plans for the future, he takes an overview, and if there are major problems, then he gets to roll up his sleeves and go hands-on into detail. I'll hit some differences. The mafia chief executive officer lives out of a hole in the ground, on the run, hasn't a thirty-storey tower for staff, hasn't a floor of IBM computer gear. Your corporation guy, take away his support and his computer, he'd fall on his face . . . not his mafia opposite. The mafia chief executive officer lives with a wolf-pack. To survive he has to be feared. If he is thought to show weakness, he will be torn to pieces. He stays cunning and he stays ruthless. I'm getting there, Charley, nearly there . . .'

'Fingers are getting a bit tired, nails are starting to crack.' She hoped to make him laugh, another bloody failure. She did not believe he had talked this through before, she did not think it was rehearsed. It was not, Charley's opinion, a familiar and patterned story. It made her warm, with the whisky, to believe she was not carried along a rutted story track.

'There's a commonplace. The mafias in Italy and the United States, Japan and Hong Kong, Colombia and Brazil, in Russia, have a sincere respect for the mafia of Sicily, La Cosa Nostra. La Cosa Nostra, out of Palermo, out of desperate little towns hanging in poverty off the sides of mountains, is the role model of international crime. It's where it started, where it's bred, where it lives well. They call it, in Italy, la piovra, that's an octopus. The tentacles spread out all over Europe, into your country, all over the world, into my country. Hack one off and another grows. You have to get to the heart of the thing, kill the heart, and the heart is in those little towns and in Palermo.'

She trembled. Her hands were splayed out on the table. She whispered, 'What do you want of me?'

'You offer the possibility of access to the chief executive officer of La Cosa Nostra.

It's why I came to find you.'