It went on raining for hours, heavily and without pause. Only when it again began to get dark did it ease off, and by then the ground round the tree was so wet that sitting on it was near to a mud bath. Still, having stood all day, I sat. If it rained the next day, I thought wryly, the mud would wash off.
The night was again long and cold, but not to the point of hypothermia. My skin dried when the rain stopped. Eventually, against all the odds, I again went to sleep.
I spent the damp dawn and an hour or two after it feeling grindingly hungry and drearily wondering whether Giuseppe-Peter would ever come back: but he did. He came as before, stepping quietly, confidently, through the laurel screen, wearing the same jacket, carrying the same bag.
I stood up at his approach. He made no comment; merely noted it. There was a fuzz of moisture on his sleek hair, a matter of a hundred per cent humidity rather than actual drizzle, and he walked carefully, picking his way between puddles.
It was Tuesday, I thought.
He had brought another bottle of soup, warm this time, reddish-brown, tasting vaguely of beef. I drank it more slowly than on the day before, moderately trusting this time that he wouldn't snatch it away. He waited until I'd finished, threw away the straw, screwed the cap on the bottle, as before.
'You are outside,' he said unexpectedly, 'while I make a place inside. One more day. Or two.'
After a stunned moment I said, 'Clothes…'
He shook his head. 'No.' Then, glancing at the clouds, he said, 'Rain is clean.'
I almost nodded, an infinitesimal movement, which he saw.
'In England,' he said, 'you defeated me. Here, I defeat you.'
I said nothing.
'I have been told it was you, in England. You who found the boy.' He shrugged suddenly, frustratedly, and I guessed he still didn't know how we'd done it. 'To take people back from kidnap, it is your job. I did not know it was a job, except for the police.'
'Yes,' I said neutrally.
'You will never defeat me again,' he said seriously.
He put a hand into the bag and brought out a much-creased, much-travelled copy of the picture of himself, which, as he unfolded it, I saw to be one of the original printing, from way back in Bologna.
'It was you, who drew this,' he said. 'Because of this, I had to leave Italy. I went to England. In England, again this picture. Everywhere. Because of this I came to America. This picture is here now, is it not?'
I didn't answer.
'You hunted me. I caught you. That is the difference.'
He was immensely pleased with what he was saying.
'Soon, I will look different. I will change. When I have the ransom I will disappear. And this time you will not send the police to arrest my men. This time I will stop you.'
I didn't ask how. There was no point.
'You are like me,' he said.
'No.'
'Yes… but between us, I will win.'
There could always be a moment, I supposed, in which enemies came to acknowledge an unwilling respect for each other, even though the enmity between them remained unchanged and deep. There was such a moment then: on his side at least.
'You are strong,' he said, 'like me.'
There seemed to be no possible answer.
'It is good to defeat a strong man.'
It was the sort of buzz I would have been glad not to give him.
'For me,' I said, 'are you asking a ransom?'
He looked at me levelly and said, 'No.'
'Why not?' I asked; and thought, why ask, you don't want to know the answer.
'For Freemantle,' he said merely, 'I will get five million pounds.'
'The Jockey Club won't pay five million pounds,' I said.
'They will.'
'Morgan Freemantle isn't much loved,' I said. 'The members of the Jockey Club will resent every penny screwed out of them. They will hold off, they'll argue, they'll take weeks deciding whether each member should contribute an equal amount, or whether the rich should give more. They will keep you waiting… and every day you have to wait, you risk the American police finding you. The Americans are brilliant at finding kidnappers… I expect you know.'
'If you want food you will not talk like this.'
I fell silent.
After a pause he said, 'I expect they will not pay exactly five million. But there are many members. About one hundred. They can pay thirty thousands pounds each, of that I am sure.
That is three million pounds. Tomorrow you will make another tape. You will tell them that is the final reduction. For that, I let Freemantle go. If they will not pay, I will kill him, and you also, and bury you here in this ground.' He pointed briefly to the earth under our feet. Tomorrow you will say this on the tape.'
'Yes,' I said.
'And believe me,' he said soberly, I do not intend to spend all my life in prison. If I am in danger of it, I will kill, to prevent it.'
I did believe him. I could see the truth of it in his face.
After a moment I said, 'You have courage. You will wait. The Jockey Club will pay when the amount is not too much. When they can pay what their conscience… their guilt… tells them they must. When they can shrug and grit their teeth, and complain… but pay… that's what the amount will be. A total of about one quarter of one million pounds, maximum, I would expect.'
'More,' he said positively, shaking his head.
'If you should kill Freemantle, the Jockey Club would regret it, but in their hearts many members wouldn't grieve. If you demand too much, they will refuse, and you may end with nothing… just the risk of prison… for murder.' I spoke without emphasis, without persuasion: simply as if reciting moderately unexciting facts.
'It was you,' he said bitterly. 'You made me wait six weeks for the ransom for Alessia Cenci. If I did not wait, did not reduce the ransom… I would have nothing. A dead girl is no use… I understand now what you do.' He paused. 'This time, I defeat you.'
I didn't answer. I knew I had him firmly hooked again into the kidnapper's basic dilemma: whether to settle for what he could get, or risk holding out for what he wanted. I was guessing that the Jockey Club would grumble but finally pay half a million pounds, which meant five thousand pounds per member, if it was right about their numbers. At Liberty Market we would, I thought, have advised agreeing to that sort of sum; five per cent of the original demand. The expenses of this kidnap would be high: trying too hard to beat the profit down to zero would be dangerous to the victim.
With luck, I thought, Giuseppe-Peter and I would in the end negotiate a reasonable price for Morgan Freemantle, and the Senior Steward would return safely home: and that, I supposed, was what I had basically come to America to achieve. After that… for myself… it depended on how certain Giuseppe-Peter was that he could vanish… and on how he felt about me… and on whether he considered me a danger to him for life.
Which I would be. I would be.
I didn't see how he could possibly set me free. I wouldn't have done, if I had been he.
I thrust the starkly unbearable thought away. While Morgan Freemantle lived in captivity, so would I… probably.
'Tomorrow," Giuseppe-Peter said, 'when I come, you will say on the tape that one of Freemantle's fingers will be cut off next week on Wednesday, if three million pounds are not paid before then.'
He gave me another long calculating stare as if he would read my beliefs, my weaknesses, my fears, my knowledge; and I looked straight back at him, seeing the obverse of myself, seeing the demon born in every human.
It was true that we were alike, I supposed, in many ways, not just in age, in build, in physical strength. We organised, we plotted, and we each in our way sought battle. The same battle… different sides. The same primary weapons… lies, threats and fear.
But what he stole, I strove to restore. Where he wantonly laid waste, I tried to rebuild. He crumbled his victims, I worked to make them whole. His satisfaction lay in taking them, mine in seeing them free. The obverse of me…