The Danger

Some of Paolo Cenci's million quid could have been lopped by a third in such laundering, some could have been split between an unknown number of gang members, and some could have been spent in advance on outgoings, such as renting the suburban house. The expenses of a successful kidnapping were high, the ransom never wholly profit. All the same, despite its risks, it was the fastest way to a fortune yet devised, and in Italy particularly the chances of being detected and caught were approximately five per cent. In a country where no woman could walk in the streets of Rome with a handbag over her arm for fear of having it razored off by thieves on motorcycles, kidnapping was regarded as a fact of life, like ulcers.

Pucinelli telephoned two days later in a good mood to report that the woman who had collected the reward had been followed home without challenge and had proved to be the wife of a man who had served two terms in jail for raids on liquor stores. Neighbours said the man was known for chasing girls, his wife hot-bloodedly jealous. Pucinelli thought that an arrest and search of the man on suspicion would present no problems, and the next evening reported that the search had revealed the luggage locker ticket in the man's wallet. The man, identified as Giovanni Santo, was now in a cell and pouring out information like lava from a volcano.

"He is stupid,' Pucinelli said disparagingly. 'We've told him he will spend his whole life in jail if he doesn't co-operate, and he's shit scared. He has told us the names of all the kidnappers. There were seven of them altogether. Two we already have, of course, and now Santo. At this minute we have men picking up three others.'

'And Giuseppe?' I asked, as he stopped.

'Giuseppe,' he said reluctantly 'is not one of them. Giuseppe is the seventh. He was the leader. He recruited the others, who were all criminals before. Santo doesn't know Giuseppe's real name, nor where he came from, nor where he's gone. I'm afraid in this instance Santo speaks the truth.'

'You've done marvels,' I said.

He coughed modestly. 'I've been lucky. And Andrew… between us privately I will admit it… it has been most helpful to talk to you. It clears things in my mind to tell them to you. Very odd.'

'Carry right on,' I said.

'Yes. It's a pleasure,' he said; and he telephoned three days later to say they now had all six gang members in custody and had recovered a further hundred million lire of Cenci's money.

'We have also taken recordings of all six men and had voice prints made and analysed, but none of them is the voice on the tapes. And none of them is the man you saw, of whom we have the picture.'

'Giuseppe,' I said. 'On the tapes.'

'Yes,' he agreed gloomily. 'None of them knew him before. He recruited one as a stranger in a bar, and that one recruited the other five. We will convict the six, there's no doubt, but it's hollow without Giuseppe.'

'Mm.' I hesitated. 'Enrico, isn't it true that some of the students who joined the Red Brigades in their hot-headed youth grew out of it and became ordinary blameless citizens?'

'I've heard so, but of course they keep the past secret.'

'Well… it just struck me a day or two ago that Giuseppe might have learned the techniques of kidnapping from the Red Brigades, when he was a student, perhaps, or even as a member.'

Pucinelli said doubtfully, 'Your Identikit pictures don't match anyone with a criminal record."

'I just wondered if it might be worthwhile to show those pictures to ex-students of about the same age, say twenty-five to forty, at perhaps some sort of students' reunion? It's a faint chance, anyway.'

'I'll try,' he said. 'But the Red Brigades, as I'm sure you know, are organised in small cells. People in one cell can't identify people in other cells because they never meet them.'

'I know it's a long shot and involves a lot of probably fruitless work,' I agreed.

'I'll think about it.'

'OK.'

'All the universities are closed for summer vacations.'

'So they are,' I said. 'But in the autumn…'

'I will think about it,' he said again. 'Goodnight, friend. Sleep well.'

Alessia heard from her father about the recovery of some of the ransom and from me of the capture of six of the kidnappers. 'Oh,' she said blankly.

'Your man with the microphone isn't among them.' 'Oh.' She looked at me guiltily, hearing, as I did, the faint relief in her voice. We were sitting in Popsy's minute tree-shaded garden where four lounging chairs squeezed onto a square of grass and low stone surrounding wails failed to obscure views of stableyard on three sides. We were drinking iced coffee in the heat wave which had followed the storms, clinking the cubes and being watched politely by equine heads peering in rows over half-doors.

I had invited myself down on my day off, a move neither Alessia nor Popsy had objected to, and I'd found Popsy alone when I arrived, as usual out in her yard.

'Hello,' she said, as I drew up. 'Sony about the wet." She was standing is green gumboots, hose In hand, watering the lower hind kg of a large chestnut horse. Bob held its head. Its eyes blinked at me as if bored. The water ran in a stream across the yard to a drain. 'It's got a leg,' Popsy said, as if that explained things.

I stifled a desire to say that as far as I could see it had four.

'Alessia walked along to the shops,' she said 'She won't be long.' She squelched away and turned off a tap, flinging the hose in loose coils beside it. 'That'll do for now, Bob,' she said. 'Get Jamie to roll up chat hose.' She dried her hands on the seat of her trousers and gave me a bright blaze from the green eyes.

'She rides, you know,' she said as Bob led the watered horse off to an empty box, 'but only up on the Downs. She goes up and down with me in the Land Rover. We don't discuss it. It's routine.

'How is she otherwise?'

'Much happier, I'd say.' She grinned hugely and clapped me lightly on the shoulder. 'Don't know how anyone so cold can bring someone else to life.'

'I'm not cold,' I protested.

'No?' She considered me quizzically. 'There's a feeling of iron about you. Like a rod. You don't smile much. You're not intimidating… but I'm sure you could be, if you tried.'

I shook my head.

'Do you ever get drunk?' she said.

'Not often.'

'Never, more like.' She waved a hand towards the kitchen. 'Like a drink? It's so bloody hot.'

We went into a cool interior with her shaking off her gumboots on the doorstep, and she brought white wine from the refrigerator in the kitchen in fawn socks.

'I'll bet for instance,' she said, pouring, 'that you never get helpless giggles or sing vulgar songs or generally make an ass of yourself.'

'Often.'

She gave me an 'oh yeah' look and settled her large self comfortably onto a kitchen chair, putting her heels up on the table.

'Well, sometimes,' I said.

She drank some wine cheerfully. 'What makes you giggle, then?' she asked.

'Oh… one time I was with an Italian family during a kidnap and they all behaved like a comic soap opera at the top of their voices, and it was painful. I had to go upstairs sometimes to stop myself laughing… awful giggles over and over, when really the whole thing was deadly dangerous. I had terrible trouble. My face was aching with the effort of keeping it straight.'

'Like wanting to explode in church,' Popsy said, nodding.

'Just like that.'

We sipped the cold wine and regarded each other with friendliness, and in a moment or two Alessia appeared with a bag of groceries and a welcoming smile. There was colour in her cheeks at last, and a sort of rebirth taking place of the girl she must have been before. I could see a great difference in even the carriage of her head; self respect returning to straighten the spine.

I got up at the sight of her and kissed her cheek in greeting and she put the groceries on the table and gave me a positive hug.