The Danger

She shivered.

'And as for coming in to see you when you were asleep… maybe they looked on you with friendship… Maybe they wanted to be sure you were all right, as they couldn't see you when you were awake.'

I wasn't sure whether I believed that last bit myself, but it was at least possible: and the rest was all true.

The lads are not the kidnappers,' I said.

'No, of course not.'

'Just other men.'

She nodded her smothered head.

'It's not the lads' eyes you dream about.'

'No.' She sighed deeply.

'Don't ride with the string until you feel OK about it. Popsy will arrange a horse for you up on the Downs.' I paused. 'Don't worry if tomorrow you still feel churned up. Knowing the reason for feelings doesn't necessarily stop them coming back.'

She stood quiet for a while and then disconnected herself slowly from my embrace, and without looking at my face said, 'I don't know where I'd be without you. In the nut-house, for sure.'

'One day,' I said mildly, 'I'll come to the Derby and cheer you home.'

She smiled and climbed into the Land Rover, but instead of pointing its nose homewards I drove on over the hill to the schooling ground.

'Where are you going?' she said.

'Nowhere. Just here.' I stopped the engine and put on the brakes. The flights of hurdles and fences lay neat and deserted on the grassy slope, and I made no move to get out of the car.

'I've been talking to Pucinelli,' I said.

'Oh.'

'He's found the second place, where you were kept those last few days.'

'Oh.' A small voice, but not panic-stricken.

'Does the Hotel Vistaclara mean anything to you?'

She frowned, thought, and shook her head.

'It's up in the mountains,' I said, 'above the place called Viralto, that you told me about. Pucinelli found the green tent there, folded, not set up, in a loft over a disused stable yard.'

'Stables?' She was surprised.

'Mm.'

She wrinkled her nose. 'There was no smell of horses.'

'They've been gone five years,' I said. 'But you said you could smell bread. The hotel makes its own, in the kitchens. The only thing is…' I paused, '… why just bread? Why not all cooking smells?'

She looked forward through the windscreen to the peaceful rolling terrain and breathed deeply of the sweet fresh air, and calmly, without strain or tears, explained.

'At night when I had eaten the meal one of them would come and tell me to put the dish and the bucket out through the zip. I could never hear them coming because of the music. I only knew they were there when they spoke.' She paused. 'Anyway, in the morning when I woke they would come and tell me to take the bucket in again… and at that point it would be clean and empty.' She stopped again. 'It was then that I could smell the bread, those last few days. Early… when the bucket was empty.' She fell silent and then turned her head to look at me, seeking my reaction.

'Pretty miserable for you,' I said.

'Mm.' She half smiled. 'It's incredible… but I got used to it. One wouldn't think one could. But it was one's own smell, after all… and after the first few days I hardly noticed it. She paused again. 'Those first days I thought I'd go mad. Not just from anxiety and guilt and fury… but from boredom. Hour after hour of nothing but that damned music… no one to talk to, nothing to see… I tried exercises, but day after day I grew less fit and more dopey, and after maybe two or three weeks I just stopped. The days seemed to run into each other, then. I just lay on the foam mattress and let the music wash in and out, and I thought about things that had happened in my life, but they seemed far away and hardly real. Reality was the bucket and pasta and a polystyrene cup of water twice a day… and hoping that the man with the microphone would think I was behaving well… and like me.'

'Mm,' I said. 'He liked you.'

'Why do you think so?' she asked, and I saw that curiously

she seemed glad at the idea, that she still wanted her kidnapper to approve of her, even though she was free.

'I think,' I said, 'that if you and he had felt hate for each other he wouldn't have risked the second ransom. He would have been very much inclined to cut his losses. I'd guess he couldn't face the thought of killing you… because he liked you.' I saw the deep smile in her eyes and decided to straighten things up in her perspective. No good would come of her falling in love with her captor in fantasy or in retrospect. 'Mind you,' I said, 'he gave your father an appalling time and stole nearly a million pounds from your family. We may thank God he liked you, but it doesn't make him an angel.'

'Oh…' She made a frustrated, very Italian gesture with her hands. 'Why are you always so… so sensible?'

'Scottish ancestors,' I said. 'The dour sort, not the firebrands. They seem to take over and spoil the fun when the quarter of me that's Spanish aches for flamenco.'

She put her head on one side, half laughing. 'That's the most I've ever heard you say about yourself.'

'Stick around,' I said.

'I don't suppose you'll believe it,' she said, sighing deeply and stretching her limbs to relax them, 'but I am after all beginning to feel fairly sane.'

NINE

July crept out in a drizzle and August swept in with a storm in a week of little activity in the London office but a good deal in Italy.

Pucinelli telephoned twice to report no progress and a third time, ecstatically, to say that Cenci's offer of a reward had borne results. The offer, along with the kidnappers' pictures, had been posted in every possible public place throughout Bologna and the whole province around; and an anonymous woman had telephoned to Paolo Cenci himself to say she knew where a part of the ransom could be found.

'Signor Cenci said she sounded spiteful. A woman scorned. She told him it would serve "him" right to lose his money. She wouldn't say who "he" was. In any case, tomorrow Signor Cenci and I go to where she says the money can be found, and if she is right, Signor Cenci will post a reward to her. The address to send the reward is a small hotel, not high class. Perhaps we will be able to find the woman and question her.'

On the following evening he sounded more moderately elated.

'It was true we found some of the money,' he said. 'But unfortunately not very much, when you think of the whole amount.'

'How much?' I asked.

'Fifty million lire."

'That's… er…' I did rapid sums, 'nearly twenty-five thousand pounds. Hm… The loot of a gang member, not a principal, wouldn't you say?'

'I agree.'

'Where did you find it?' I asked.

'In a luggage locker at the railway station. The woman told Signor Cenci the number of the locker, but we had no key. We had a specialist to open the lock for us,'

'So whoever left the money thinks it's still there?'

'Yes. It is indeed still there, but we have had the lock altered. If anyone tries to open it, he will have to ask for another key. Then we catch him. We've set a good trap. The money is in a soft travel bag, with a zip. The numbers on the notes match the photographs. There is no doubt it is part of the ransom. Signor Cenci has sent a reward of five million lire and we will try to catch the woman when she collects it. He is disappointed, though, as I am, that we didn't find more.'

'Better than nothing,' I said. 'Tell me how you get on.'

There were two usual ways to deal with 'hot' money, of which the simplest was to park the loot somewhere safe until the fiercest phase of investigation was over. Crooks estimated the safety margin variously from a month to several years, and were then fairly careful to spend the money far from home, usually on something which could instantly be resold.

The second, more sophisticated method, most used for large amounts, was to sell the hot money to a sort of fence, a professional who would buy it for about two-thirds of its face value, making his profit by floating it in batches onto the unsuspecting public via the operators of casinos, markets, fairgrounds, racecourses or anywhere else where large amounts of cash changed hands quickly. By the time the hot money percolated back to far-flung banks the source of it couldn't be traced.