Brute Force

55

The first thing you do when you arrive somewhere is work out how to get away again in a hurry. If we had to do a runner and got split up, I wanted to know where to run to. I wanted to be able to nominate RVs.

I was mugged by sunshine the moment I stepped out of the main door. I pulled on my sun-gigs; they were hanging on a string I'd bought in the London ski shop.

I kept the harbour on my right for about 200 metres, then turned and came back inland on parallel, narrow streets between elegant old buildings. Was nothing ugly in this town?

I mapped it all in my head as I climbed the low hill dominating the waterfront. Behind the castle Lynn had pointed out was a maze of overgrown passageways prowled by semi-wild cats. Further up the slope was a church with a spookily illuminated Madonna in a rocky grotto, and a public park made up of a series of terraced gardens. All good RVs: Lynn would know them.

I found a Co-op mini-market on Corso Giacomo Matteotti and went in and bought one of yesterday's English broadsheets for the price of a paperback, and a couple of baguettes to take back to the apartment. I couldn't find anything resembling cheese and Branston so I settled for a couple filled with, well, Italian stuff.

I followed the road down into Piazza Caprera, which contained the Basilica. The area was pedestrianized. There was a big Christmas tree in one corner, and strings of unlit white bulbs were draped between shops and the church, waiting for last light.

Everybody was wrapped up, though it didn't feel very cold to me. I went into a café and ordered a cappuccino. The place mat had a history of the town in three languages. Maybe that was where Lynn had hoovered up all his knowledge.

'Santa Margherita has a long history,' it told me proudly, 'dating back to the Roman town of Pescino, which was razed first by the Lombards in 641 and then the Saracens in the 1100s. In 1229 it became part of the Republic of Genoa, was raided by Venice in 1432, and by the Turks in 1549. It fell to Napoleon, who renamed it Porto Napoleone, then to Sardinia and in 1861 it joined the new Kingdom of Italy.'

Fine, but the only marauders I needed news of were whoever jumped us in Norfolk.

I got to grips with the front page of the newspaper. Pakistani former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated in a suicide attack. She was leaving an election rally in Rawalpindi when a gunman shot her in the neck and then detonated himself. At least twenty other people died in the attack and several more were injured.

I couldn't be arsed to read on. I put the paper on the table and stretched my legs and arms as I looked out over the piazza. Two immaculately dressed Italian women walked past arm in arm, yabbering away to each other. It seemed impossible to speak Italian without sounding as if you were either having an argument or trying to talk someone into bed. There had to be worse places on earth to sit and pass the time of day. For a moment I almost forgot I was being chased by men in leather jackets who wanted to kill me.

A plan started to form in my head. After my coffee, I'd walk back to Lynn's apartment and we'd have a long discussion about his career since our last contact in 1998. Somewhere in there lay the answer to what bound us together and why someone wanted us both dead.

My cappuccino arrived and I took a sip and went back to the paper.

I scanned the inside pages. Jack and Katie were the most popular first names given to children whose births were registered in Northern Ireland in 2007. Time magazine's Person of the Year was Vladimir Putin. In Britain, the Foreign Secretary was about to visit Libya to tie off some loose ends in the Lockerbie agreement. I could imagine the chaos on the ground as British and local security tried to keep him safe from fundamentalists. Glad it was their problem; I had enough of my own.

I folded it up, paid the bill and started back towards the apartment.