Killing Ground Read Online Free Page A

Harbour and Fish Creek, from Jacksonport and Ephraim, they would have stared at a stranger coming in the dusk and followed him with binoculars and peered from behind curtains. Far in the distance, back beyond the bend in the lane, he heard the engine. It sounded to Axel Moen like the two-stroke power of a brush cutter or a small chainsaw. He dragged a last time on the cigarette and dropped what was left of it down onto the tarmacadam and tramped it with his boot and then kicked the mess of it towards the weeds. He saw the narrow wash of light from up the lane, back beyond the bend.
    'You're a mafia man, right? Have to be a specialist in mafia if you're based down in Rome. What's—?
    'Mafia's generic. Don't you work "organized crime"?'

    'You going to play smart-ass? Actually, if you want to know, I am personnel, I am accounts, I am administration. Because of people like me, arrogant shits get to run around and play their games. What's this young woman—?'
    'Lima Charlie November, that's LCN, that's La Cosa Nostra. I work La Cosa Nostra, we don't call it "mafia".'
    'Forgive me for breathing - I apologize. Best of my knowledge, La Cosa Nostra, mafia, is Sicily, is Italy, is not quite adjacent to here.'
    'Why don't you just go wrap yourself round the heater?'
    The scooter's light was a small beam, dully illuminating the bank and hedge at the top of the lane, then sweeping lower and catching the woman with the dog, then swerving and reflecting in the lenses of the binoculars in the window, then finding the moving curtain at the bungalow that advertised bed-and-breakfast. He saw the arm of the rider wave twice. The scooter came down the hill and was slowing. The brakes had a squeal to them, like a cat's howl when its tail is trapped. The scooter came to a stop in front of the bungalow where the light shone 'welcome' above the porch. The engine was killed, the light was doused. He had not seen a photograph of her. He knew only the barest of her personal details from the file. No way that he could have had a decent picture of her in his mind, but when she was off the scooter and tugging the shape of the helmet from her head, when she shook her hair free, when she started to push the weight of the scooter into the driveway in front of the garage, when she walked under the light above the porch, she seemed to be smaller, slighter, than he had imagined.
    He turned a key in the latch, pushed the door open. The hall light Hooded over an ordinary young woman, and he heard her call that she was back, an ordinary young woman's voice. The door closed behind her.
    Dwight Smythe, above the sound of the heater, called from behind him, 'So, when are you going to bust in, no invite?' Axel walked back towards the Cherokee Jeep. So, when are you going to start to shake the ground under her feet?'
    Axel swung himself into the passenger seat. 'So, do I go short of answers?'
    Axel said quietly, 'About a quarter of an hour for her to read a letter. Don't ask me.'
    Dwight Smythe arched his eyebrows, spread the palms of his hands wide over the wheel. 'Would I dream of asking, would I, what a young woman from down here has to do with DEA business, with organized crime, with La Cosa Nostra in Sicily . . . ?'
    The professor had said, 'If you take the hip and pelvis of Italy and think about it, and look at the map up there, well, that's the piece that's joined to Europe, and that's the bit that's high-class tourism and finance . . .'
    When the rookies were not on Crime Simulation or Firearms Procedures or Physical Education or Legal classes or Defensive tactics, when they were not crowded into the Casino School or the Engineering Research Facility or the Forensic Laboratory, then they sat in on Public Affairs. It was nine years since Dwight Smythe had listened to the professor at the Public Affairs lecture.
    'Come on down and you've the thigh of Italy, which is agriculture 'and industry. Move on lower, and you have the knee joint, Rome administration,