It was a system which seemed to us best, principally because photography left no trace on the notes. The problem with physically marking them was that anything the banks could detect, so could the kidnappers. Banks had no monopoly, for instance, in scans to reveal fluorescence. Geiger counters for radioactive pin dots weren't hard to come by. Minute perforations could be seen as easily by any eyes against a bright light, and extra lines and marks could be spotted by anyone's magnification. The banks, through simple pressure of time, had to be able to spot tracers easily, which put chemical invisible inks out of court. Kidnappers, far more thorough and with fear always at their elbows, could test obsessively for everything.
Kidnappers who found tracers on the ransom had to be considered lethal. In Liberty Market, therefore, the markings we put on notes were so difficult to find that we sometimes lost them ourselves, and they were certainly unspottable by banks. They consisted of transparent microdots (the size of the full stops to which we applied them) which when separated and put under a microscope revealed a shadowy black logo of L and M, but through ordinary magnifying glasses appeared simply black. We used them only on larger denomination notes, and then only as a back-up in case there should be any argument about the photographed numbers. To date we had never had to reveal their existence, a state of affairs we hoped to maintain.
By morning, fairly dropping from fatigue, I'd photographed barely half, the banks having taken the 'small denomination' instruction all too literally. Locking all the money into a wardrobe cupboard I showered and thought of bed, but after breakfast drove Cenci to the office as usual. Three nights I could go without sleep. After that, zonk.
'If the kidnappers get in touch with you,' I said, on the way, 'you might tell them you can't drive. Say you need your chauffeur. Say… um… you've a bad heart, something like that. Then at least you'd have help, if you needed it.'
There was such an intense silence from the back seat that at first I thought he hadn't heard, but eventually he said, 'I suppose you don't know, then.'
'Know what?'
'Why I have a chauffeur.'
'General wealth, and all that,' I said.
'No. I have no licence.'
I had seen him driving round the private roads on his estate in a jeep on one or two occasions, though not, I recalled, with much fervour. After a while he said, 'I choose not to have a licence, because I have epilepsy. I've had it most of my life. It is of course kept completely under control with pills, but I prefer not to drive on public roads.'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
'Forget it. I do. It's an inconvenience merely.' He sounded as if the subject bored him, and I thought that regarding irregular brain patterns as no more than a nuisance was typical of what I'd gleaned of his normal business methods: routine fast and first, planning slow and thorough. I'd gathered from things his secretary had said in my hearing that he'd made few decisions lately, and trade was beginning to suffer.
When we reached the outskirts of Bologna he said, 'I have to go back to those telephones at the motorway restaurant tomorrow morning at eight. I have to take the money in my car. I have to wait for him… for his instructions. He'll be angry if I have a chauffeur.'
'Explain. He'll know you always have a chauffeur. Tell him why.'
'I can't risk it.' His voice shook.
'Signor Cenci, he wants the money. Make him believe you can't drive safely. The last thing he wants is you crashing the ransom into a lamppost.'
'Well… I'll try.'
'And remember to ask for proof that Alessia is alive and unharmed.'
'Yes.'
I dropped him at the office and drove back to the Villa Francese, and because it was what the Cenci chauffeur always did when he wasn't needed during the morning, I washed the car. I'd washed the damn car so often I knew every inch intimately, but one couldn't trust kidnappers not to be watching; and the villa and its hillside, with its glorious views, could be observed closely by telescope from a mile away in most directions. Changes of routine from before to after a kidnap were of powerful significance to kidnappers, who were often better detectives than detectives, and better spies than spies. The people who'd taught me my job had been detectives and spies and more besides, so when I was a chauffeur, I washed cars.
That done I went upstairs and slept for a couple of hours and then set to again on the photography, stopping only to go and fetch Cenci at the usual hour. Reporting to his office I found another box on the desk, this time announcing it had been passed by customs at Genoa.
'Shall I carry it out?' I asked.
He nodded dully. 'It is all there. Five hundred million lire.'
We drove home more or less in silence, and I spent the evening and night as before, methodically clicking until I felt like a zombie. By morning it was done, with the microdots applied to a few of the fifty-thousand lire notes, but not many, through lack of time. I packed all the rubber-banded bundles into the FRAGILE box and humped it down to the hall to find Cenci already pacing up and down in the dining-room, white with strain.
'There you are!' he exclaimed. 'I was just coming to wake you. It's getting late. Seven o'clock.'
'Have you had breakfast?' I asked.
'I can't eat.' He looked at his watch compulsively, something I guessed he'd been doing for hours. 'We'd better go. Suppose we were held up on the way? Suppose there was an accident blocking the road?'
His breathing was shallow and agitated, and I said diffidently, 'Signor Cenci, forgive me for asking, but in the anxiety of this morning… have you remembered your pills?'
He looked at me blankly. 'Yes. Yes, of course. Always with me.'
'I'm sorry…'
He brushed it away. 'Let's go. We must go.'
The traffic on the road was normaclass="underline" no accidents. We reached the rendezvous half an hour early, but Cenci sprang out of the car as soon as I switched off the engine. From where I'd parked I had a view of the entrance across a double row of cars, the doorway like the mouth of a beehive with people going in and out continually.
Cenci walked with stiff legs to be lost among them, and in the way of chauffeurs I slouched down in my seat and tipped my cap forward over my nose. If I wasn't careful, I thought, I'd go to sleep…
Someone rapped on the window beside me. I opened my eyes, squinted sideways, and saw a youngish man in a white open-necked shirt with a gold chain round his neck making gestures for me to open the window.
The car, rather irritatingly, had electric windows: I switched on the ignition and pressed the relevant button, sitting up slightly while I did it.
'Who are you waiting for?' he said.
'Signor Cenci.'
'Not Count Rieti?'
'No. Sorry.'
'Have you seen another chauffeur here?'
'Sorry, no.'
He was carrying a magazine rolled into a cylinder and fastened by a rubber band. I thought fleetingly of one of the partners in Liberty Market who believed one should never trust a stranger carrying a paper cylinder because it was such a handy place to stow a knife… and I wondered, but not much.
'You're not Italian?' the man said.
'No. From Spain.'
'Oh.' His gaze wandered, as if seeking Count Rieti's chauffeur. Then he said absently in Spanish, 'You're a long way from home.'
'Yes,' I said.
'Where do you come from?'
'Andalucia.'
'Very hot, at this time of year,'
'Yes.'
I had spent countless school holidays in Andalucia, staying with my divorced half-Spanish father who ran a hotel there. Spanish was my second tongue, learned on all levels from kitchen to penthouse: any time I didn't want to appear English, I became a Spaniard.