We don't want any political trouble with the English: the sick feeling worsened. Between them Narva and the General dummy2
represented an appalling range of political and professional problems, never mind Ruelle and these English, who between them personified danger.
"So just don't go on thinking you can call all the shots just because you've got Dr. Audley," Richardson went on coolly.
"I want to see him—and quickly."
Boselli nodded humbly. "We are on our way to see him now, signore."
"Good. And I hope you haven't roughed him up, either."
Boselli tried to look shocked.
"It was just a thought." Richardson gave a conspiratorial nod towards the two men in the front of the car. "Some of your Pubblica Sicurezza special squads can be a bit heavy-handed, especially when they want to show off in front of the Carabinieri."
"I assure you there has been nothing like that. We have merely detained him."
"I'm glad to hear it. Because we're going to need him, Signor Boselli—you and me both, since we're about to give each other the fullest co-operation, that is."
No smile this time, Boselli noted. Perhaps the half-Englishman also required a success for his record.
"You can rely on me, signore." Perversely, he was not wholly forging the sincerity in his voice. His brief, false moment of power had been heady, but followed by self-doubts even before Richardson had bitten back as he realised that he still dummy2
didn't know what course of action to follow next. But clearly the half-Englishman knew what to do, and by hanging to his coattails he, Boselli, might yet salvage something, taking the credit for success and at least sharing the blame for failure.
And already he had learnt something to tell the Generaclass="underline" the English were angry about Narva's interference in their North Sea and desperately worried that it should not become an issue of their domestic politics. In such circumstances even the General would wish to move cautiously.
"You can rely on me," he repeated, "Signor Richardson."
"Fine. And Peter is the name—I'm Pietro in these parts."
"I too am Pietro."
"Well I'd better stick to Peter, then. And the first thing you can do for me, Pietro, is tell me about this shooting of yours.
What the hell happened?"
"It was in Ostia, signore—Peter. Ostia Antica."
"The old ruins? What was David Audley doing there?"
"We hoped you could tell us." Boselli shrugged. "Could he have been meeting someone?"
"It's possible. But who started the shooting?"
"We followed him, but—we were ambushed. One of our men was killed, another wounded, as I have told you. And one of theirs."
"Killed?"
Boselli nodded, looking past Richardson at a small family dummy2
saloon they were overtaking. It was piled high with boxes and battered cases on the roof rack and bulging with children: they had passed many such cars already, families travelling southwards—homewards—from the northern factories for their annual holidays.
He remembered the ant which had stopped, bewildered, at the edge of the pool of blood in the dust. He thought he would never see an ant again without remembering that moment: ants and blood were linked together forever now.
"Yes."
"Identified?"
Boselli had already faced this question, and nothing had happened since to change his decision. It was high time the two half-Englishmen were introduced to each other.
"Yes. His name was Mario Segato. Aged fifty-six. Foreman plumber on a construction site in Avezzano—that's about a hundred kilometres east of Rome."
"I know where it is. You mean he wasn't a pro?" Richardson frowned. "A foreman plumber?"
"He was a foreman plumber." Boselli hugged the full story to himself for one final second. "But there was a time when he had a different occupation."
"Which was—"
"Bodyguard to George Ruelle."
"George—George Ruelle?" Richardson sat up. "You don't mean Bastard Ruelle?"
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"You know him?"
"Know him? I thought he was dead! I thought he'd been dead for years."
"But you know him."
"No, but I've heard of him. My first cousin—my second cousin's father—knew him before he moved north. He said that was the best thing that happened to Campania since the Krauts retreated—the Bastard heading for Rome where the action was. He really was a bastard in the fullest sense of the word. The Italian Stalin, that was his ambition, Enrico said.
But you mean to say he's alive—and—?"
Boselli nodded sagely. "Alive, Signor Richardson, and positively connected with this."
"But I thought the Bastard was drummed out of the Party back in the fifties?"
"So he was. And Segato with him. That is what worries us now—he does not fit the pattern."
"You mean your Communists have gone respectable?"
Boselli snorted. "They will never be that! But they pretend to respectability, and Ruelle—he is a creature from the Dark Ages, a man of violence. A Neanderthal."
"Phew!" Richardson scratched his head. "And old David's in the middle. I'm damn glad you've got him safe and sound."
He stared at Boselli suddenly. "He ducked you both at Ostia, then—just like that?"
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"So it would seem, signore. There was some—some confusion, you understand—"
He stopped, at a loss for a moment as he realised how grossly he was understating the nightmare situation which had developed in the aftermath of the shooting.
In spite of Porro's best efforts they had been quite unable to contain events. First the local police had arrived, their zeal apparently strengthened by a determination not to let the Pubblica Sicurezza hog any of the limelight. Rumours of a clash between Fascist and Maoist student factions had quickly blossomed into a Roman gangland battle, and then into a terrorist-anarchist bloodbath, which in turn had drawn crowds of sightseers, squads of journalists and a convoy of screeching ambulances. Two busloads of German tourists who had just entered the excavations added a dimension of babel to the confusion.
Confusion was a totally inadequate word for it, and it had taken no special talent for either the assassins or the Englishman and his wife to make their getaway in the last precious moments before it had descended; ironically it had been Boselli and Porro who had been first trapped and then humiliated. . . .
Boselli just managed to control an involuntary shudder at the memory of it as he became aware that Richardson was still staring at him, curiosity and puzzlement mixed on his face.
"There was—some confusion," he repeated mechanically.
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Richardson smiled, but wryly this time. "I can imagine it."
He paused. "I wonder what the devil he was up to?"
"Ruelle?"
"Him too." The half-Englishman nodded. "Perhaps him most of all. But I was actually wondering what Dr. Audley was doing in Ostia Antica in the first place."
Boselli watched him sidelong. In repose, now unsmiling again, the brown face was too long, the jaw too angular, for good looks. But more than that there was an underlying worry in the expression which had escaped him until now. So the English too did not know everything, or did not know quite how to control what they had set loose in Italy.
It was a timely reminder that they were not to be trusted.
Even in the days of their power and glory that had been true; now, in their age of decline, they would be as dangerously unpredictable as an old bull. In that respect at least George Ruelle and his fatherland were now disturbingly alike.
XII
LITTLE RAT-FACE BOSELLI had spoken the truth about Audley's detention, anyway. The villa was new and surpassingly ugly, its salmon-pink tiles and bright red ironwork at odds with the colours of nature all around it. But if it lacked elegance as a home it was a decidedly superior temporary jail, the more so when its prisoner was established comfortably under a gay awning at the far end of the terrace dummy2