The Memory Trap

The cosy picture in Audley's mind dissolved. Brandy and

'baccy ... or, up-dated, Lucky Strikes in exchange for the odd Greek vase or Etruscan funeral pot . . . that was one thing.

But the Mafia —

'What's he in to?' Mitchell could contain himself no longer.

'Drugs are where the money is, aren't they?' And, once uncontained, he was irrepressible. 'And now what's it?

"Crack" — ? Isn't that raising the stakes?'

Money! That was what was wrong, damn it! That damn-well was the "wrong profile" — wasn't it? Except . . . that fifteen years made a nonsense of that cosy picture, too —did they?

dummy1

'He's run out of money, has he?' He snapped himself back between them.

Cuccaro frowned at him once more. 'He never had any money.'

Now they were really at odds. 'He had plenty of money, Captain.' The gleaming Richardson-cars and the West Central flat were there in memory to support him. 'He had money from his mother.' Money had always been a huge plus in Fred Clinton's preferences, even before the aptitude tests: if you were heterosexual and well-heeled (and, for choice, not Cambridge!), then with Fred you were over the first fences, they always said. 'And she was rich.'

'And then dead, too.' This time Mitchell was with him.

Because, in his time, Paul Mitchell had been over those same fences, and knew them. And despised what he knew, too.

'With a palazzo all of his very own — right, David?'

Cuccaro shook his head. 'There was no money.'

'No money?' Mitchell accepted the turnabout more readily.

'No palazzo — ?'

Cuccaro's lip curled. "There is a ... "palazzo", as you call it.

But it was . . . how do you say? Mortgaged, is it?' He nodded.

'And the Principessa was a great lady. So there was also credit. And bank loans, too.' The nod became a shake. 'He had no money. He had only her debts. And some of them were debts of honour.' He stared at Audley, not Mitchell. 'He had . . . "bad luck", you said, Professore — ?'

dummy1

There was more. 'What else?'

'She died. And she was a great lady, as I have said. So there was not too much inquiry then. But ... it seems now that all her little problems had suddenly become big ones, you see.'

Cuccaro swayed and rolled with the boat's motion, so that his shrug was almost lost with it. 'There was perhaps a certain delicacy in asking questions which could only have made for greater sadness at the time, about her death . . . you understand, Professore?'

'Yes.' From his own tangled childhood Audley understood far better than the man could imagine. But the hell with that!

(And, for that matter, the hell also with whoever hadn't done his job properly, back in the early seventies, on Peter Richardson for Fred Clinton — at least for the time being!).

'Yes.' Mitchell looked sidelong at him, and then back at Cuccaro. 'But. . . hold on a moment. The palazzo —' The damn palace seemed to have become an obsession.

'For God's sake, Mitchell — '

'No.' Mitchell shook him off. 'It was mortgaged . . . and all the rest. But he never lost it — Palazzo Castellamare di San Lorenzo — ' He fixed on the Italian ' — he never lost it, in spite of everything ... So he's been cruising these waters from the start, has he? Paying off the interest — ? And then the capital, too? And then more — ?' He rounded on Audley suddenly. 'It's a bloody showpiece, David — the Palazzo Castellamare di Major Peter Richardson: that's what Rome Station said. The ruddy guides on the tourist coaches point it dummy1

out. Blue-water swimming pool, big white yacht by the private jetty — nothing like this in view, of course.' He swept a hand over the smuggler's boat. 'But he must have been at it for years, to turn his hard luck into all that!' He returned to the Italian. 'How long have they known about it? Or suspected it, even?'

Not long, thought Audley quickly, watching Cuccaro's face.

But then, why should they have suspected anything? There had been no black marks against Major Richardson, he would have passed simply as a rich expatriate Englishman bringing his own money to restore his Italian family fortune.

Cuccaro sighed, and gestured eloquently as only an Italian or a Frenchman could, to gloss over his Guardia colleagues'

failure. 'Not long since, it seems.'

'Only when the Mafia got interested in his act?' Mitchell wasn't letting go. 'Uh-huh?'

Cuccaro's expression hardened. 'It is possible that he has become greedy, after many years of keeping out of their way.

But . . . there was no official inquiry into him until recently —

that is true. And that is how the matter of his mother's death came to light. But that will not be pursued further now, I am informed.'

"The great lady" was safe, if not her son. But that, Cuccaro was informing them, was none of either his business or theirs, anyway. The business in hand was to take Richardson while making sure that Professore Audley neither came to dummy1

grief nor caused any, as he had done in the past.

'Of course.' They were agreed there, actually. What Butler expected of him was results, double quick. But results diplomatically achieved, also. 'I am grateful for your frankness, Captain. You have clarified certain . . . aspects of our mission which disturbed us — Sir Jack Butler and Mr Henry Jaggard.' He threw the names in for respectability.

But when they failed to melt Captain Cuccaro he decided to go for broke. 'And the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, representing Her Majesty's Government.' Only that still didn't seem to work. And if neither Her Majesty nor Mrs Thatcher could blot out his record after all these years, then he must resort to desperate extremes, with Capri altogether too close for comfort now. 'So, if I may, I will take you into our confidence — ?'

'Professore.' With Capri looming, Cuccaro was under the whip too. So, in spite of all his doubts and the lurch of the boat as it cut through the wake of another Capri-Napoli water-bus, he sketched a bow.

'You have not traced Major Richardson yet?' He allowed only two seconds for agreement. 'And neither have we. And that disturbed us. Because we didn't know why he's suddenly become so ... unavailable?' He smiled. 'But now we know.

Thanks to you.'

Cuccaro reached across his chest to take hold of his Kaiser Wilhelm good luck piece. 'But you have rendezvous, I am told

— ?'

dummy1

That was what he wanted, of course.

'Not exactly,' said Mitchell. But then he looked at Audley.

'Only in a general sort of way —' Then he looked past Audley, towards Capri ' — a general locality, I mean, David.'

'And where is that, sir?' The oddly-Americanized "Sir"

betrayed the Italian's dislike: technically, Mitchell also rated

"professore". But Mitchell and Cuccaro were Anglo-Italian chalk-and-cheese.

'Please!' Audley held up his hand. 'You ... or ... the authorities . . . want to talk to Major Richardson, I take it—?'

Cuccaro eyed him warily. 'There are questions to be asked.

And to be answered.'

'About his smuggling activities?'

'If that is what they are.' The Italian paused. 'Then —yes, Professore.'

That was it, of course. Until that sudden Mafia interest had given his game away, Richardson had had everything going for him: his pre-retirement career had not only given him all the requisite smuggling skills to add to his blue-blooded local connections, but it had also endowed him with a certain respectability, as an ex-Intelligence officer. But then, when the balloon finally had gone up, the Italians must at once have thought more than twice about him, with the American Sixth Fleet so often swinging at anchor across this bay, in NATO's main base in the Central Mediterranean: that perfect cover for smuggling — or even the smuggling itself — might dummy1