The Danger

She said 'What?' glancing at me and away.

'That if I'm doing you no good, you will try someone else.'

'A shrink?'

'Yes.'

She looked at her shoes. 'All right,' she said; and like any psychiatrist I wondered if she were lying.

Popsy's steaks came tender and juicy, and Alessia ate half of hers.

'You must build up your strength, my darling, Popsy said without censure. 'You've worked so hard to get where you are. You don't want all those ambitious little jockey-boys elbowing you out, which they will if they've half a chance.'

'I telephoned Mike," she said. 'I said… I'd need time.'

'Now my darling,' Popsy protested. 'You get straight back on the telephone and tell him you'll be fit a week today. Say you'll be ready to race tomorrow week, without fail.'

Alessia looked at her in horror. 'I'm too weak to stay in the saddle… let alone race.'

'My darling, you've all the guts in the world. If you want to, you'll do it.'

Alessia's face said plainly that she didn't know whether she wanted to or not.

'Who's Mike?' I asked.

'Mike Noland,' Popsy said. 'The trainer she often rides for in England. He lives here, in Lambourn, up the road.'

'He said he understood,' Alessia said weakly.

'Well of course he understands. Who wouldn't? But all the same, my darling, if you want those horses back, it's you that will have to get them.'

She spoke with brisk, affectionate commonsense, hallmark of the kind and healthy who had never been at cracking point. There was a sort of quiver from where Alessia sat, and I rose unhurriedly to my feet and asked if I could help carry the empty dishes to the kitchen.

'Of course you can,' Popsy said, rising also, 'and there's cheese, if you'd like some.'

Alessia said horses slept on Sunday afternoons like everyone else, but after coffee we walked slowly round the yard anyway, patting one or two heads.

'I can't possibly get fit in a week,' Alessia said. 'Do you think I should?'

'I think you should try sitting on a horse.'

'Suppose I've lost my nerve.'

'You'd find out.'

'That's not much comfort.' She rubbed the nose of one of the horses absentmindedly, showing at least no fear of its teeth. 'Do you ride?' she asked.

'No,' I said. 'And… er… I've never been to the races.'

She was astonished. 'Never?'

I've watched them often on television.'

'Not the same at all.' She laid her own cheek briefly against the horse's. 'Would you like co go?'

'With you, yes, very much.'

Her eyes filled with sudden tears, which she blinked away impatiently. 'You see,' she said. 'That's always happening. A kind word… and something inside me melts. I do try… I honestly do try to behave decently, but I know I'm putting on an act… and underneath there's an abyss… with things coming up from it, like crying for nothing, for no reason, like now.'

'The act,' I said, 'is Oscar class.'

She swallowed and sniffed and brushed the unspilt tears away with her fingers. 'Popsy is so generous,' she said. 'I've stayed with her so often.' She paused. 'She doesn't exactly say "Snap out of it" or "Pull yourself together", but I can see her thinking it. And I expect if I were someone looking at me, I'd think it too. I mean, she must be thinking that here I am, free and undamaged, and I should be grateful and getting on with life, and that far from moping I should be full of joy and bounce.'

We wandered slowly along and peered into the shadowy interior of a box where the inmate dozed, its weight on one hip, its ears occasionally twitching.

'After Vietnam,' I said, 'when the prisoners came home, there were very many divorces. It wasn't just the sort of thing that happened after the war in Europe, when the wives grew apart from the husbands just by living, while for the men time stood still. After Vietnam it was different. Those prisoners had suffered dreadfully, and they came home to families who expected them to be joyful at their release.'

Alessia leant her arms on the half-door, and watched the unmoving horse.

'The wives tried to make allowances, but a lot of the men were impotent, and would burst into tears in public, and many of them took offence easily… and showed permanent symptoms of mental breakdown. Hamburgers and coke couldn't cure them, nor going to the office nine to five.' I fiddled with the bolt on the door. 'Most of them recovered in time and lead normal lives, but even those will admit they had bad dreams for years and will never forget clear details of their imprisonment.'

After a while she said, 'I wasn't a prisoner of war.'

'Oh yes, just the same. Captured by an enemy through no fault of your own. Not knowing when - or whether - you would be free. Humiliated… deprived of free will… dependent on your enemy for food. All the same, but made worse by isolation… by being the only one.'

She put the curly head down momentarily on the folded arms. 'All they ever gave me, when I asked, were some tissues, and I begged… I begged… for those.' She swallowed. 'One's body doesn't stop counting the days, just because one's in a tent.'

I put my arm silently round her shoulders. There were things no male prisoner ever had to face. She cried quietly, with gulps and small compulsive sniffs, and after a while simply said, 'Thank you,' and I said, 'Any time,' and we moved on down the line of boxes knowing there was a long way still to go.

SEVEN

Manning the office switchboard day and night was essential because kidnappers kept anti-social hours; and it was always a partner on duty, not an employee, for reasons both of reliability and secrecy. The ex-spies feared 'moles' under every secretarial desk and positive-vetted the cleaner.

That particular Sunday night was quiet, with two calls only: one from a partner in Equador saying he'd discovered the local

police were due to share in the ransom he was negotiating and asking for the firm's reactions, and the second from Twinkle-toes, who wasted a copy of the set of precautions we'd drawn up for Luca Oil.

I made a note of it, saying 'Surely Luca Oil have one?'

'The kidnappers stole it,' Twinkletoes said tersely. 'Or bribed a secretary to steal it. Anyway, it's missing, and the manager was abducted at the weakest point of his daily schedule, which I reckon was no coincidence.'

'I'll send it by courier straight away.'

'And see who's free to join me out here. This will be a long one. It was very carefully planned. Send me Derek, if you can. And oh… consider yourself lucky I'm not there to blast you for Bologna.'

'I do,' I said, smiling.

'I'll be back,' he said darkly. 'Goodnight.'

I took one more call, at nine in the morning, this time from the head of a syndicate at Lloyds which insured people and firms against kidnap. Much of our business came direct from him, as he was accustomed to make it a condition of insurance that his clients should call on our help before agreeing to pay a ransom. He reckoned we could bring the price down, which made his own liability less; and we in return recommended him to the firms asking our advice on defences.

'Two English girls have been snatched in Sardinia,' he said. 'The husband of one of them insured her against kidnap for her two weeks holiday as he wasn't going to be with her, and he's been on to us. It seems to have been a fairly unplanned affair - the girls just happened to be in the wrong place, and were ambushed. Anyway, the husband is distraught and wants to pay what they're asking, straight away, so can you send someone immediately?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Er… what was the insurance?'

'I took a thousand pounds against two hundred thousand. For two weeks.' He sighed. 'Win some, lose some.'

I took down names and details and checked on flights to Sardinia, where in many regions bandits took, ransomed and released more or less as they pleased.

'Very hush-hush,' the Lloyds man had said. 'Don't let it get to the papers. The husband has pressing reasons. If all goes well she'll be home in a week, won't she, and no one the wiser?'

'With a bit of luck,' I agreed.

Bandits had nowhere to keep long-term prisoners and had been known to march their victims miles over mountainsides daily, simply abandoning them once they'd been paid. Alessia, I thought, would have preferred that to her tent.

The partners began arriving for the Monday conference and it was easy to find one with itchy feet ready to go instantly to Sardinia, and easy also to persuade Derek to join Twinkletoes at Luca Oil. The Co-ordinator wrote them in on the new week's chart and I gave the request from the partner in Equador to the Chairman.

After about an hour of coffee, gossip and reading reports the meeting began, the bulk of it as usual being a review of work in progress.

'This business in Equador,' the Chairman said. 'The victim's an American national, isn't he?'

A few heads nodded.

The Chairman pursed his lips. 'I think we'll have to advise that corporation to use local men and not send any more from the States. They've had three men captured in the last ten years, all Americans… you'd think they'd learn.'

'It's an American-owned corporation,' someone murmured.

'They've tried paying the police themselves,' another said. 'I was out there myself last time. The police took the money saying they would guard all the managers with their lives, but I reckon they also took a cut of the ransom then, too. And don't forget, the corporation paid a ransom of something like ten million dollars… plenty to spread around.'

There was a small gloomy silence.

'Right,' the Chairman said. 'Future advice, no Americans. Present advice?' He looked around. 'Opinions, anyone?'

'The kidnappers know the corporation will pay in the end,' Tony Vine said. 'The corporation can't afford not to.'

All corporations had to ransom their captured employees if they wanted anyone ever to work overseas for them in future. All corporations also had irate shareholders, whose dividends diminished as ransoms rose. Corporations tended to keep abductions out of the news, and to write the ransoms down as a 'trading loss' in the annual accounts.

'We've got the demand down to ten million again,' Tony Vine said. 'The kidnappers won't take less, they'd be losing face against last time, even if - especially if- they're a different gang.'

The Chairman nodded. 'We'll advise the corporation to settle?'

Everyone agreed, and the meeting moved on.

The Chairman, around sixty, had once been a soldier himself, and like Tony felt comfortable with other men whose lives had been structured, disciplined and official. He had founded the firm because he'd seen the need for it; the action in his case of a practical man, not a visionary. It had been a friend of his, now dead, who had suggested partnerships rather than a hierarchy, advising the sweeping away of all former ranks in favour of one new one: equal.

The Chairman was exceptionally good-looking, a distinctly marketable plus, and had an air of quiet confidence to go with it. He could maintain that manner in the face of total disaster, so that one always felt he would at any moment devise a brilliant victory-snatching solution, even if he didn't. It had taken me a while, when I was new there, to see that it was Gerry Clayton who had that sort of mind.

The Chairman came finally to my report, photocopies of which most people had already read, and asked if any partners would like to ask questions. We gained always from what others had learned during a case, and I usually found question time very fruitful - though better when not doing the answering.

'This carabinieri officer… er… Pucinelli, what sort of a personal relationship could you have with him? What is your estimate of his capabilities?' It was a notoriously pompous partner asking; Tony would have said, 'How did you get on with the sod? What's he like?'

'Pucinelli's a good policeman,' I said. 'Intelligent, bags of courage. He was helpful. More helpful, I found, than most, though never stepping out of the official line. He hasn't yet…' I paused. 'He hasn't the clout to get any higher, I don't think. He's second-in-command in his region, and I'd say that's as far as he'll go. But as far as his chances of catching the kidnappers are concerned, he'll be competent and thorough.'

'What was the latest, when you left?' someone asked. 'I haven't yet had time to finish your last two pages.'

'Pucinelli said that when he showed the drawings of the man I'd seen to the two kidnappers from the siege, they were both struck dumb. He showed them to them separately, of course, but in each case he said you could clearly see the shock. Neither of them would say anything at all and they both seemed scared. Pucinelli said he was going to circulate copies of the drawings and see if he could identify the man. He was very hopeful, when I left.'

'Sooner the better,' Tony said. 'That million quid will be laundered within a week.'

'They were a pretty cool lot,' I said, not arguing. 'They might hold it for a while.'

'And they might have whisked it over a border and changed it into francs or schillings before they released the girl.'

I nodded. 'They could have set up something like that for the first ransom, and been ready.'

Gerry Clayton's fingers as usual were busy with any sheet of paper within reach, this time the last page of my report. 'You say Alessia Cenci came to England with you. Any chance she'll remember any more?' he asked.

'You cannot rule it out, but Pucinelli and I both went through it with her pretty thoroughly in Italy. She knows so little. There were no church bells, no trains, no close aeroplanes, no dogs… she couldn't tell whether she was in city or country. She thought the faint smell she was conscious of during the last few days might have been someone baking bread. Apart from that… nothing.'

A pause.

'Did you show the drawings to the girl?' someone asked. 'Had she ever seen the man, before the kidnap?'

I turned to him. 'I took a photostat to the villa, but she hadn't ever seen him that she could remember. There was absolutely no reaction. I asked if he could have been one of the four who abducted her, but she said she couldn't tell. None of her family or anyone in the household knew him. I asked them all."

'His voice… when he spoke to you outside the motorway restaurant… was it the voice on the tapes?'

'I don't know,' I admitted. 'I'm not good enough at Italian. It wasn't totally different, that's all I could say.'

'You brought copies of the drawings and the tapes back with you?' the Chairman asked.

'Yes. If anyone would like…?'

A few heads nodded.

'Anything you didn't put in the report?' the Chairman asked. 'Insignificant details?'

'Well… I didn't include the lists of the music. Alessia wrote what she knew, and Pucinelli said he would try to find out if they were tapes one could buy in shops, ready recorded. Very long shot, even if they were.'

'Do you have the lists?'

'No, afraid not. I could ask Alessia to write them again, if you like.'

One of the ex-policemen said you never knew. The other ex-policemen nodded.

'All right,' I said. 'I'll ask her.'

'How is she?' Gerry asked.

'Just about coping.'

There were a good many nods of understanding. We'd all seen the devastation, the hurricane's path across the spirit. All of us, some oftener than others, had listened to the experiences of the recently returned: the de-briefing, as the firm called it, in its military way.

The Chairman looked around for more questions but none were ready. 'All finished? Well, Andrew, we can't exactly sack you for coming up with pictures of an active kidnapper, but driving a car to the drop is not on the cards. Whether or not it turns out well this time, don't do it again. Right?'

'Right,' I said neutrally; and that, to my surprise, was the full extent of the ticking-off.