Chapter Five

At the moment the little girl’s tummy rumbled so loudly there could be no doubt about her hunger and she blushed then giggled and suddenly she was a child again and it was so endearing he laughed to.

‘Dai, tesoro, ti diamo da mangiare.’ [Come on Sweetheart lets feed you.]

He carried her to their canteen and picked up a large hot dog and fries then watched her devour them hungrily barely coming up for air,

‘Caro Dio, povero piccolo mio, stai morendo di fame.’ [Dear God, you poor little thing, you’re starving.]

He went back to the counter and purchased two large cookies for her and was rewarded when her pretty little face broke into a huge grin,

‘Sono per me?’ [Are they for me?]

Carefully placing the glass of milk she had been drinking back on the table,

‘Sì, mia piccola principessa, ho pensato che, dato che hai due mani, potrebbe piacerti un biscotto per ciascuna di esse.’ [Yes my little Princess, I figured that as you have two hands you might like a cookie for each of the them]

He told her keeping his face straight and her squeak of laughter melted all their male hearts as he carried her back to his desk and sat her on his knee chatting to her while he worked and when he was called out onto patrol he passed her over to the next Officer. They all petted and pampered her, buying her food from the canteen or playing silly games, one of them had a pack of cards and she spent a couple of hours learning card games and another taught her how to play noughts and crosses. Many of them had children of a similar age to the little girl and as the night wore on she ended up curled up fast asleep in the arms her original Officer who had returned from his patrol.                                                                                 One thing they all did was snub the two female Officers who had been so cruel to her, normally their night shifts consisted of plenty of flirting and good humoured banter with the men.  Their unreasonable cruelty toward the little girl left them isolated and ignored, instead of the usual banter they were met with disgusted stares and cold shoulders while the men poured all their affection on to the pretty child. They were jealous and resentful as they had given themselves to the male Officers freely revelling in the attention they received, happy to do whatever the men wanted.                                                                   Of course the men had taken advantage and on the night shifts like this one the women would be bent over the desks and used by the men or forced onto their knees to pleasure them during meetings. They did not enjoy being ignored and they plotted between them waiting for their moment and it came at dawn just before they changed shifts the men had all been called out to a disturbance outside a night club and the little girl had been left wrapped in a blanket fast asleep on one of the large comfy chairs they used at their desks. In a fit of jealous pique the two female Officers scooped her up and took the child to the local orphanage run by the Catholic Church leaving her there with the Nuns without a second thought.

In the old days in Italy and Sicily, the Mafia women were very much second class citizens and deemed unimportant to the Police, so a girl child, especially one so young, was completely ignored. As it was, the female Police Officers had been teased and subjected to many sexist remarks fromt their male counterparts but there was no one they could report it to. When they had first applied to join the Sicilian Police Force they had been laughed at telling them it was not a job for women and they should go home and look after their men. They were not as enlightened as most of the Western World’s Forces, sexism was rife but they was determined so they had combined their forces. This sexist treatment of both of them was the last straw though, they had put up with so much and kept their heads down but the way the Commander had dumped the child on one of them without even contemplating any of their male counterparts hurt. His throw away comment that everyone had heard was the nail in the coffin.

‘This is exactly what you females are needed for in my Force, can’t expect my men to know what to do with a small child. Here you are, it is what women are born for now do your job.’

The men had snickered at the blatantly sexist comment and the women had felt totally humiliated, the one who had taken the child used her as a shield to avoid the acid comments and with a nod to her friend she had left the station to head for the Orphanage. The Mother Superior, had accepted the child without question, she understood the Officers anger at the way they had been treated. She saw first hand the sexist attitude of the male Officers and she had seen how they had treated the two women, more than once she had walked into their office and caught them performing sex acts over their desks. The women had not apologised nor had they told the men to stop in fact, quite the opposite, they had encouraged the men to continue moaning louder.                                                                                                                              The Mother Superior had tried talking to the female Officers but they had soon made her see they had no choice, if they refuse any of the men they were reported to their Commander on trumped up charges backed by all their make colleagues. Both women had been reprimanded for minor misdemeanour's thanks to their male colleagues lies and as a punishment from those same men they had been forced to perform degrading sex acts.                                                                                                                                     Being forced to look after the little girl because it was ‘all they were fit for’ had been the last straw and when the female Officer had returned the two of them had written up a report stating clearly where they had left the little girl. Then they had written their letters of resignation. Both had bullet pointed every single sexist problem they had faced in explicit detail with dates, times and witnesses, even detailing how they had been cajoled into having sex with two or three of them at a time.