The Danger

FIVE

Alessia woke in the evening, feeling sick. Cenci rushed upstairs to embrace her, came down damp-eyed, said she was still sleepy and couldn't believe she was home.

I didn't see her. Ilaria slept all night on an extra bed in Alessia's room at her aunt Luisa's suggestion, and did seem genuinely pleased at her sister's return. In the morning she came down with composure to breakfast and said that Alessia felt ill and wouldn't get out of the bath.

'Why not?' Cenci said, bewildered.

'She says she's filthy. She's washed her hair twice. She says she smells.'

'But she doesn't,' he protested.

'No. I've told her that. It makes no difference.'

Take her some brandy and a bottle of scent,' I said.

Cenci looked at me blankly but Ilaria said, 'Well, why not?' and went off on the errand. She had talked more easily that morning than at any breakfast before, almost as if her sister's release had been also her own.

Pucinelli arrived mid-morning with a note-taking aide, and Alessia came downstairs to meet him. Standing there beside him in the hall I watched the tentative figure on the stairs and could clearly read her strong desire to retreat. She stopped four steps from the bottom and looked behind her, but Ilaria, who had gone up to fetch her, was nowhere to be seen.

Cenci went forward and put his arm round her shoulders, explaining briefly who I was, and saying Pucinelli wanted to know everything that happened to her, hoping for clues to lead him to arrests.

She nodded slightly, looking pale.

I'd seen victims return with hectic jollity, with hysteria, with apathy; all with shock. Alessia's state looked fairly par for the circumstances: a mixture of shyness, strangeness, weakness, relief and fear.

Her hair was still damp. She wore a T-shirt, jeans and no lipstick. She looked a defenceless sixteen, recently ill; the girl I'd seen undressed. What she did not look was the glossy darling of the European racetracks.

Cenci led her to the library, and we scattered around on chairs.

'Tell us,' Pucinelli said. 'Please tell us what happened, from the beginning.'

'I… it seems so long ago.' She spoke mostly to her father, looking seldom at Pucinelli and not at all at me; and she used Italian throughout, though as she spoke slowly with many pauses, I could follow her with ease. Indeed it occurred to me fleetingly that I'd soaked in a good deal more of the language than I'd arrived with, and more than I'd noticed until then.

'I'd been racing here on our local track… but you know that.'

Her father nodded.

'I won the six o'clock race, and there was an objection…'

More nods, both from Cenci and Pucinelli. The note-taking aide, eyes down to the task, kept his shorthand busily flowing.

'I drove home. I was thinking of England. Of riding Brunelleschi in the Derby…' She broke off. 'Did he win?'

Her father looked blank. At the time, shortly after her disappearance, he'd have been unlikely to notice an invasion of Martians in the back yard.

'No,' I said. 'Fourth.'

She said 'Oh,' vaguely, and I didn't bother to explain that I knew where the horse had finished simply because it was she who had been going to ride it. Ordinary curiosity, nothing more.

'I was here… in sight of the house. Not far from the gate. I slowed down, to turn in…'

The classic spot for kidnaps; right outside the victim's house. She had a red sports car, besides, and had been driving it that day with the roof down, as she always did in fine weather. Some people, I'd thought when I'd heard it, made abduction too simple for words.

'There was a car coming towards me… I waited for it to pass, so that I could turn… but it didn't pass, it stopped suddenly between me and the gate… blocking the way.' She paused and looked anxiously at her father. 'I couldn't help it, Papa. I really couldn't.'

'My dear, my dear…" He looked surprised at the very thought. He didn't see, as I did, the iceberg tip of the burden of guilt, but then he hadn't seen it so often.

'I couldn't think what they were doing,' she said. 'Then all the car doors opened at once, and there were four men… all wearing horrid masks… truly horrible… devils and monsters. I thought they wanted to rob me. I threw my purse at them and tried to reverse to get away backwards… and they sort of leapt into my car… just jumped right in…' She stopped with the beginnings of agitation and Pucinelli made small damping-down motions with his hands to settle her.

'They were so fast,' she said, her voice full of apology. 'I couldn't do anything…'

'Signorina,' Pucinelli said calmly, 'there is nothing to be ashamed of. If kidnappers wish to kidnap, they kidnap. Even all Aldo Moro's guards couldn't prevent it. And one girl alone, in an open car…' He shrugged expressively, finishing the sentence without words, and for the moment at least she seemed comforted.

A month earlier, to me in private, he had said that any rich girl who drove around in an open sports car was inviting everything from mugging to rape. 'I'm not saying they wouldn't have taken her anyway, but she was stupid. She made it easy.'

'There's not much fun in life if you're twenty-three and successful and can't enjoy it by driving an open sports car on a sunny day. What would you advise her to do, go round in a middle-aged saloon with the doors locked?'

'Yes,' he had said. 'So would you, if your firm was asked. That's the sort of advice you'd be paid for.'

'True enough.'

Alessia continued, 'They put a hood of cloth right over my head… and then it smelled sweet…'

'Sweet?' Pucinelli said.

'You know. Ether. Chloroform. Something like that. I simply went to sleep. I tried to struggle… They had their hands on my arms… sort of lifting me… nothing else.'

"They lifted you out of the car?'

'I think so. I suppose so. They must have done.'

Pucinelli nodded. Her car had been found a bare mile away, parked on a farm track.

'I woke up in a tent,' Alessia said.

'A tent?' echoed Cenci, bewildered.

'Yes… well… it was inside a room, but I didn't realise that at first.'

'What sort of tent?' Pucinelli asked. 'Please describe it.'

'Oh…' she moved a hand weakly, 'I can describe every stitch of it. Green canvas. About two and a half metres square… a bit less. It had walls… I could stand up.'

A frame tent.

'It had a floor. Very tough fabric. Grey. Waterproofs I suppose, though of course that didn't matter…

'When you woke up,' Pucinelli asked, 'what happened?'

'One of the men was kneeling on the floor beside me, slapping my face. Quite hard. Hurry up, he was saying. Hurry up. When I opened my eyes he grunted and said I must just repeat a few words and I could go back to sleep.'

'Was he wearing a mask?'

'Yes… a devil face… orange… all warts.'

We all knew what the few words had been. We'd all listened to them, over and over, on the first of the tapes.

'This is Alessia. Please do as they say. They will kill me if you don't.' A voice slurred with drugs, but alarmingly her own.

'I knew what I said,' she said. 'I knew when I woke up properly… but when I said them, everything was fuzzy. I couldn't see the mask half the time… I kept switching off, then coming back,'

'Did you ever see any of them without masks?' Pucinelli asked.

A flicker of a smile reached the pale mouth. 'I didn't see any of them again, even in masks. Not at all. No one. The first person I saw since that first day was Aunt Luisa… sitting by my own bed… sewing her tapestry, and I thought… I was dreaming.' Tears unexpectedly appeared in her eyes and she blinked them slowly away. 'They said… if I saw their faces, they would kill me. They told me not to try to see them…' She swallowed. 'So… I didn't… try.'

'You believed them?'

A pause. Then she said 'Yes' with a conviction that brought understanding of what she'd been through vividly to life. Cenci, although he had believed the threats himself, looked shattered. Pucinelli gravely assured her that he was sure she had been right: and so, though I didn't mention it, was I.

'They said… I would go home safely… if I was quiet… and if you would pay for my release.' She was still trying not to cry. 'Papa…'

'My dearest… I would pay anything.' He was himself close to tears.

'Yes,' Pucinelli said matter-of-factly. 'Your father paid.'

I glanced at him. 'He paid,' he repeated, looking steadily at Cenci. 'How much, and where he paid it, only he knows. In no other way would you be free.'

Cenci said defensively, 'I was lucky to get the chance, after your men…'

Pucinelli cleared his throat hurriedly and said, 'Let's get on. Signorina, please describe how you have lived for the past six weeks.'

'I didn't know how long it was, until Aunt Luisa told me. I lost count… there were so many days, I had no way of counting… and then it didn't seem to matter much. I asked why it was so long, but they didn't answer. They never answered any questions. It wasn't worth asking… but sometimes I did, just to hear my own voice.' She paused. 'It's odd to talk as much as this. I went days without saying anything at all.'

'They talked to you, though, Signorina?'

'They gave me orders.'

'What orders?'

'To take in the food. To put out the bucket…' She stopped, then said, 'It sounds so awful, here in this room.'

She looked round at the noble bookcases stretching to the high ceiling, at the silk brocaded chairs, at the pale Chinese carpet on the marble-tiled floor. Every room in the house had the same unselfconscious atmosphere of wealth, of antique things having stood in the same places for decades, of treasures taken for granted. She must have been in many a meagre room in her racing career, but she was seeing her roots, I guessed, with fresh eyes.

'In the tent,' she said resignedly, 'there was a piece of foam for me to lie on, and another small piece for a pillow. There was a bucket… an ordinary bucket, like out of a stable. There was nothing else.' She paused. 'There was a zip to open one side of the tent. It would open only about fifty centimetres… it was jammed above that. They told me to unzip it, and I would find food…'

'Could you see anything of the room outside the tent? Pucinelli asked.

She shook her head. 'Beyond the zip there was just more tent… but folded a bit, I think… I mean, not properly put up like another room…' She paused. 'They told me not to try to get into it.' Another pause. 'The food was always where I could reach it easily, just by the zip.'

'What was the food?' Cenci asked, deeply concerned.

'Pasta.' A pause. 'Sometimes warm, sometimes cold. Mixed with sauce. Tinned, I think. Anyway…' she said tiredly, 'it came twice a day… and the second lot usually had sleeping pills in it.'

Cenci exclaimed in protest, but Alessia said, 'I didn't mind… I just ate it… it was better really than staying awake.'

There was a silence, then Pucinelli said, 'Was there anything you could hear, which might help us to find where you were held?'

'Hear?' She glanced at him vaguely. 'Only the music'

'What music?'

'Oh… tapes. Taped music. Over and over, always the same.'

'What sort of music?'

'Verdi. Orchestral, no singing. Three-quarters of that, then one-quarter of pop music. Still no singing.'

'Could you write down the tunes in order?'

She looked mildly surprised but said, 'Yes, I should think so. All that I know the names of.'

'If you do that today, I'll send a man for the list.'

'All right."

'Is there anything else at all you can think of?'

She looked dully at the floor, her thin face tired with the mental efforts of freedom. Then she said, 'About four times they gave me a few sentences to read aloud, and they told me each time to mention something that had happened in my childhood, which only my father would know about, so that he could be sure I was still… all right.'

Pucinelli nodded. 'You were reading from daily papers.

She shook her head. 'They weren't newspapers. Just sentences typed on ordinary paper.'

'Did you keep those papers?'

'No… they told me to put them out through the zip.' She paused. 'The only times they turned the music off was when I made the recordings.'

'Did you see a microphone?'

'No… but I could hear them talk clearly through the tent, so I suppose they recorded me from outside.'

'Would you remember their voices?'

An involuntary shudder shook her. 'Two of them, yes. They spoke most - but there were others. The one who made the recordings… I'd remember him. He was just… cold. The other one was beastly… He seemed to enjoy it… but he was worse at the beginning… or at least perhaps I got used to him and didn't care. Then there was one sometimes who kept apologising… "Sorry Signorina"… when he told me the food was there. And another who just grunted… None of them ever answered, if I spoke.'

'Signorina,' Pucinelli said, 'if we play you one of the tapes your father received, will you tell us if you recognise the man's voice?'

'Oh…' She swallowed. 'Yes, of course.'

He had brought a small recorder and copies of the tapes with him, and she watched apprehensively while he inserted a cassette and pressed a button. Cenci put out a hand to grasp one of Alessia's, almost as if he could shield her from what she would hear.

'Cenci,' HIS voice said. 'We have your daughter Alessia. We will return her on payment of one hundred and fifty thousand million lire. Listen to your daughter's voice.' There was a click, followed by Alessia's slurred words. Then, 'Believe her. If you do not pay, we will kill her. Do not delay. Do not inform the carabinieri, or your daughter will be beaten. She will be beaten every day you delay, and also…' Pucinelli pressed the stop button decisively, abruptly and mercifully shutting off the worse, the bestial threats. Alessia anyway was shaking and could hardly speak. Her nods were small and emphatic. 'Mm… yes…'

'You could swear to it?'

'… Yes…'

Pucinelli methodically put away the recorder. 'It is the same male voice on all the tapes. We have had a voice print made, to be sure.'

Alessia worked saliva into her mouth. 'They didn't beat me,' she said. 'They didn't even threaten it. They said nothing like that.'

Pucinelli nodded. 'The threats were for your father.'

She said with intense anxiety. 'Papa, you didn't pay that much? That's everything… you couldn't.'

He shook his head reassuringly. 'No, no, nothing like that. Don't fret… don't worry.'

'Excuse me,' I said in English.

All the heads turned in surprise, as if the wallpaper had spoken.

'Signorina,' I said, 'were you moved from place to place at all? Were you in particular moved four or five days ago?'

She shook her head. 'No.' Her certainty however began to waver, and with a frown she said, 'I was in that tent all the time. But…'

'But what?'

'The last few days, there was a sort of smell of bread baking, sometimes, and the light seemed brighter… but I thought they had drawn a curtain perhaps… though I didn't think much at all. I mean, I slept so much… it was better…'

'The light,' I said, 'it was daylight?'

She nodded. 'It was quite dim in the tent, but my eyes were so used to it… They never switched on any electric lights. At night it was dark, I suppose, but I slept all night, every night.'

'Do you think you could have slept through a move, if they'd taken the tent from one room in one place and driven it to another place and set it up again?'

The frown returned while she thought it over. 'There was one day not long ago I hardly woke up at all. When I did wake it was already getting dark and I felt sick… like I did when I woke here yesterday… and oh,' she exclaimed intensely, 'I'm so glad to be here, so desperately grateful… I can't tell you…' She buried her face on her father's shoulder and he stroked her hair with reddening eyes.

Pucinelli rose to his feet and took a formal leave of father and daughter, removing himself, his note-taker and myself to the hall.

I may have to come back, but that seems enough for now.' He sighed. 'She knows so little. Not much help. The kidnappers were too careful. If you learn any more, Andrew, you'll teli me?5

I nodded,

'How much was the ransom?' he said.

I smiled. 'The list of the notes' numbers will come here today. I'll let you have them. Also, do you have the Identikit system, like in England?

'Something like it, yes.'

'I could build a picture of one of the other kidnappers, I think. Not the ones in the siege. If you like.'

'If I hike! Where did you see him. How do you know?'

'I've seen him twice. I'll tell you about it when I come in with the lists.'

'How soon?' he demanded.

'When the messenger comes. Any time now.'

The messenger obligingly arrived while Pucinelli was climbing into his car, so I borrowed the Fiat runabout again and followed him to his headquarters.

Fitting together pieces of head with eyes and mouth, chin and hairline, I related the two sightings, 'You probably saw him yourself, outside the ambulance, the night the siege started,' I said.

'I had too much to think of.'

I nodded and added ears. 'This man is young. Difficult to tell… not less than twenty-five, though. Lower thirties, probably.'

I built a full face and a profile, but wasn't satisfied, and Pucinelli said he would get an artist in to draw what I wanted.

'He works in the courts. Very fast.'

A telephone call produced the artist within half an hour. He came, fat, grumbling, smelling of garlic and scratching, and saying that it was siesta, how could any sane man be expected to work at two in the afternoon? He stared with disillusion at my composite efforts, fished out a thin charcoal stick, and began performing rapid miracles on a sketch pad. Every few seconds he stopped to raise his eyebrows at me, inviting comment.

'Rounder head,' I said, describing it with my hands. 'A smooth round head.'

The round head appeared. 'What next?'

'The mouth… a fraction too thin. A slightly fuller lower lip.'

He stopped when I could think of no more improvements and showed the results to Pucinelli. 'This is the man as your English friend remembers him,' he said, sniffing. 'Memories are usually wrong, don't forget.'

'Thanks,' Pucinelli said. 'Go back to sleep.'

The artist grumbled and departed, and I said, 'What's the latest on Lorenzo Traventi?'

'Today they say he'll live.'

'Good,' I said with relief. It was the first time anyone had been positive.

'We've charged the two kidnappers with intent to kill. They are protesting.' He shrugged. 'So far they are refusing to say anything about the kidnap, though naturally we are pointing out that if they lead us to other arrests their sentences will be shorter.' He picked up the artist's drawings. 'I'll show them these. It will shock them.' A fleeting look of savage pleasure crossed his face: the look of a born policeman poised for a kill.

I'd seen it on other faces above other uniforms, and never despised it. He deserved his satisfaction, after the strains of the past week.

'The radio,' Pucinelli said, pausing as he turned away.

'Yes?'

'It could transmit and receive on aircraft frequencies.'

I blinked. 'That's not usual, is it?'

'Not very. And it was tuned to the international emergency frequency… which is monitored all the time, and which certainly did not pick up any messages between kidnappers. We checked at the airport this morning.'

I shook my head in frustration. Pucinelli went off with eagerness to his interrogations, and I returned to the villa.

Alessia said, 'Do you mind if I ask you something?'

'Fire away.'

'I asked Papa but he won't answer, which I suppose anyway is an answer of sorts.' She paused. 'Did I have any clothes on, when you found me?'

'A plastic raincoat,' I said matter-of-factly.

'Oh.'

I couldn't tell whether the answer pleased her or not. She remained thoughtful for a while, and then said, 'I woke up here in a dress I haven't worn for years. Aunt Luisa and Ilaria say they don't know how it happened. Did Papa dress me? Is that why he's so embarrassed?'

'Didn't you expect to have clothes on?' I asked curiously.

'Well… ' She hesitated.

I lifted my head. 'Were you naked… all the time?'

She moved her thin body restlessly in the armchair as if she would sink into it, out of sight. 'I don't want…' she said; and broke off, swallowing, while in my mind I finished the sentence. Don't want everyone to know.

It's all right,' I said. 'I won't say.'

We were sitting in the library, the evening fading to dark, the heat of the day diminishing; freshly showered, casually dressed, waiting in the Cenci household routine to be joined by everyone for a drink or two before dinner. Alessia's hair was again damp, but she had progressed as far as lipstick.

She gave me short glances of inspection, not sure of me.

'Why are you here?' she said. 'Papa says he couldn't have got through these weeks without you, but… I don't really understand.'

I explained my job.

'An advisor?'

'That's right.'

She thought for a while, her gaze wandering over my face and down to my hands and up again to my eyes. Her opinions were unreadable, but finally she sighed, as if making up her mind.

'Well… advise me too,' she said. 'I feel very odd. Like jet lag, only much worse. Time lag. I feel as if I'm walking on tissue paper. As if nothing's real. I keep wanting to cry. I should be deliriously happy… why aren't I?'

'Reaction,' I said.

'You don't know… you can't imagine… what it was like.'

'I've heard from many people what it's like. From people like you, straight back from kidnap. They've told me. The first bludgeoning shock, the not being able to believe it's happening. The humiliations, forced on you precisely to make you afraid and defenceless. No bathrooms. Sometimes no clothes. Certainly no respect. No kindness or gentleness of any sort. Imprisonment, no one to talk to, nothing to fill the mind, just uncertainty and fear… and guilt… Guilt that you didn't escape at the beginning, guilt at the distress brought on your family, guilt at what a ransom will cost… and fear for your life… if the money can't be raised… or if something goes wrong… if the kidnappers panic.'

She listened intently, at first with surprise and then with relief. 'You do know. You do understand. I haven't been able to say… I don't want to upset them… and also… also…'

'Also you feel ashamed,' I said.

'Oh.' Her eyes widened. 'I… Why do I?'

'I don't know, but nearly everyone does.'

'Do they?'

'Yes.'

She sat quiet for a while, then she said, 'How long will it take… for me to get over it?'

To that there was no answer. 'Some people shake it off almost at once,' I said. 'But it's like illness, or a death… you have to grow scar tissue.'

Some managed it in days, some in weeks, some in years; some bled for ever. Some of the apparently strong disintegrated most. One couldn't tell, not on the day after liberation.

Ilaria came into the room in a stunning scarlet and gold toga and began switching on the lamps.

'It was on the radio news that you're free,' she said to Alessia. 'I heard it upstairs. Make the most of the peace, the paparazzi will be storming up the drive before you can blink.'

Alessia shrank again into her chair and looked distressed. Ilaria, it occurred to me uncharitably, had dressed for such an event: another statement about not wanting to be eclipsed.

'Does your advice stretch to paparazzi?' Alessia asked weakly, and I nodded, 'If you like.'

Ilaria patted the top of my head as she passed behind my chair. 'Our Mr Fixit. Never at a loss.'

Paolo Cenci himself arrived with Luisa, the one looking anxious, the other fluttery, as usual.

'Someone telephoned from the television company,' Cenci said. 'They say a crew is on the way here. Alessia, you'd better stay in your room until they've gone.'

I shook my head. 'They'll just camp on your doorstep. Better, really, to get it over.' I looked at Alessia. 'If you could possibly… and I know it's hard… make some sort of joke, they'll go away quicker.'

She said in bewilderment, 'Why?'

'Because good news is brief news. If they think you had a really bad time, they'll keep on probing. Tell them the kidnappers treated you well, say you're glad to be home, say you'll be back on the racecourse very soon. If they ask you anything which it would really distress you to answer, blank the thoughts out and make a joke.'

'I don't know… if I can.'

'The world wants to hear that you're all right,' I said. 'They want to be reassured, to see you smile. If you can manage it now it will make your return to normal life much easier. The people you know will greet you with delight… they won't find meeting you uncomfortable, which they could if they'd seen you in hysterics.'

Cenci said crossly, 'She's not in hysterics.'

'I know what he means,' Alessia said. She smiled wanly at her father. 'I hear you're paying for the advice, so we'd better take it.'

Once mobilised, the family put on a remarkable show, like actors on stage. For Ilaria and Luisa it was least difficult, but for Cenci the affable host role must have seemed bizarre, as he admitted the television people with courtesy and was helpful about electric plugs and moving furniture. A second television crew arrived while the first was still setting up, and after that several cars full of reporters, some from international news agencies, and a clatter of photographers. Ilaria moved like a scarlet bird among them, gaily chatting, and even Luisa was appearing gracious, in her unfocused way.

I watched the circus assemble from behind the almost closed library door, while Alessia sat silent in her armchair, developing shadows under her eyes.

'I can't do it,' she said.

'They won't expect a song and dance act. Just be… normal.'

'And make a joke.'

'Yes.'

'I feel sick,' she said.

'You're used to crowds,' I said. 'Used to people staring at you. Think of being…' I groped, '… in the winner's circle. Lots of fuss. You're used to it, which gives you a shield.'

She merely swallowed, but when her father came for her she walked out and faced the barrage of flashlights and questions without cracking. I watched from the library door, listening to her slow, clear Italian,

'I'm delighted to be home with my family. Yes, I'm fine. Yes, I hope to be racing again very soon.'

The brilliant lighting for the television cameras made her look extra pale, especially near the glowing Ilaria, but the calm half-smile on her face never wavered.

'No, I never saw the kidnappers' faces. They were very… discreet.'

The newsgatherers reacted to the word, with a low growing rumble of appreciation.

'Yes, the food was excellent… if you liked tinned pasta.'

Her timing was marvellous: this time she reaped a full laugh.

'I've been living in the sort of tent people take on holiday. Size? A single bedroom… about that size. Yes… quite comfortable… I listened to music, most of the time.'

Her voice was quiet, but rock-steady. The warmth of the newsmen towards her came over clearly now in their questions, and she told them an open sports car had proved a liability and she regretted having caused everyone so much trouble.

'How much ransom? I don't know. My father says it wasn't too much.'

'What was the worst thing about being kidnapped?' She repeated the question as if herself wondering, and then, after a pause, said, 'Missing the English Derby, I guess. Missing the ride on Brunelleschi.'

It was the climax. To the next question she smiled and said she had a lot of things to catch up with, and she was a bit tired, and would they please excuse her?

They clapped her. I listened in amazement to the tribute from the most cynical bunch in the world, and she came into the library with a real laugh in her eyes. I saw in a flash what her fame was all about: not just talent, not just courage, but style.

I spent two more days at the Villa Francese and then flew back to London; and Alessia came with me.

Cenci, crestfallen, wanted her to stay. He hadn't yet returned to his office, and her deliverance had not restored him to the man-of-the-world in the picture. He still wore a look of ingrained anxiety and was still making his way to the brandy at unusual hours. The front he had raised for the media had evaporated before their cars were out through the gate, and he seemed on the following day incapably lethargic.

'I can't understand him,' Ilaria said impatiently. 'You'd think he'd be striding about, booming away, taking charge. You'd think he'd be his bossy self again. Why isn't he?'

'He's had six terrible weeks.'

'So what? They're over. Time for dancing, you'd think.' She sketched a graceful ballet gesture with her arm, gold bracelets jangling. 'Tell you the truth, I was goddam glad she's back, but the way Papa goes on, she might just as well not be.'

'Give him time,' I said mildly.

'I want him the way he was,' she said. 'To be a man.'

When Alessia said at dinner that she was going to England in a day or two, everyone, including myself, was astonished.

'Why?' Ilaria said forthrightly.

'To stay with Popsy.'

Everyone except myself knew who Popsy was, and why Alessia should stay with her, and I too learned afterwards. Popsy was a woman racehorse trainer, widowed, with whom Alessia usually lodged when in England.

'I'm unfit,' Alessia said. 'Muscles like jelly.'

"There are horses here,' Cenci protested.

'Yes, but… Papa, I want to go away. It's fantastic to be home, but… I tried to drive my car out of the gate today and I was shaking… It was stupid. I meant to go to the hairdressers. My hair needs cutting so badly. But I just couldn't. I came back to the house, and look at me, still curling onto my shoulders.' She tried to laugh, but no one found it funny.

'If that's what you want,' her father said worriedly.

'Yes… I'll go with Andrew, if he doesn't mind.'

I minded very little. She seemed relieved by her decisions, and the next day Ilaria drove her in the Fiat to the hairdresser, and bought things for her because she couldn't face shops, and brought her cheerfully home. Alessia returned with short casual curls and a slight case of the trembles, and Ilaria helped her pack.

On that evening I tried to persuade Cenci that his family should still take precautions.

'The first ransom is still physically in one suitcase, and until the carabinieri or the courts, or whatever, free it and allow you to use it to replace some of the money you borrowed from Milan, I reckon it's still at risk. What if the kidnappers took you… or Ilaria? They don't often hit the same family twice, but this time… they might.'

The horror was too much. He had crumbled almost too far.

'Just get Ilaria to be careful,' I said hastily, having failed to do that myself. 'Tell her to vary her life a bit. Get her to stay with friends, invite friends here. You yourself are much safer because of your chauffeur, but it wouldn't hurt to take the gardener along too for a while, he has the shoulders of an ox and he'd make a splendid bodyguard.'

After a long pause, and in a low voice, he said, 'I can't face things, you know.'

'Yes, I do know,' I agreed gently. 'Best to start, though, as soon as you can.'

A faint smile. 'Professional advice?'

'Absolutely.'

He sighed. 'I can't bear to sell the house on Mikonos. My wife loved it.'

'She loved Alessia too. She'd think it a fair swap.'

He looked at me for a while. 'You're a strange young man,' he said. 'You make things so clear.' He paused. 'Don't you ever get muddled by emotion?'

'Yes, sometimes,' I said. 'But when it happens… I try to sort myself out. To see some logic'

'And once you see some logic, you act on it?'

'Try to.' I paused. 'Yes.'

'It sounds… cold.'

I shook my head. 'Logic doesn't stop you feeling. You can behave logically, and it can hurt like hell. Or it can comfort you. Or release you. Or all at the same time.'

After a while, he said, stating a fact, 'Most people don't behave logically.'

'No,' I said.

'You seem to think everyone could, if they wanted to?'

I shook my head. 'No.' He waited, so I went on diffidently, 'There's genetic memory against it, for one thing. And to be logical you have to dig up and face your own hidden motives and emotions, and of course they're hidden principally because you don't want to face them. So… um… it's easier to let your basement feelings run the upper storeys, so to speak, and the result is rage, quarrels, love, jobs, opinions, anorexia, philanthropy… almost anything you can think of. I just like to know what's going on down there, to pick out why I truly want to do things, that's all. Then I can do them or not. Whichever.'

He looked at me consideringly. 'Self-analysis… did you study it?'

'No. Lived it. Like everyone does.'

He smiled faintly. 'At what age?'

'Well… from the beginning. I mean, I can't remember not doing it. Digging into my own true motives. Knowing in one's heart of hearts. Facing the shameful things… the discreditable impulses… Awful, really.'

He picked up his glass and drank some brandy. 'Did it result in sainthood?' he said, smiling.

'Er… no. In sin, of course, from doing what I knew I shouldn't.'

The smile grew on his lips and stayed there. He began to describe to me the house on the Greek island that his wife had loved so, and for the first time since I'd met him I saw the uncertain beginnings of peace.

On the aeroplane Alessia said, 'Where do you live?'

'In Kensington. Near the office.'

'Popsy trains in Lambourn.' She imparted it as if it were a casual piece of information. I waited, though, and after a while she said, 'I want to keep on seeing you.'

I nodded. 'Any time.' I gave her one of my business cards, which had both office and home telephone numbers, scribbling my home address on the back.

'You don't mind?'

'Of course not. Delighted.'

'I need… just for now… I need a crutch.'

'De luxe model at your service.'

Her lips curved. She was pretty, I thought, under all the strain, her face a mingling of small delicate bones and firm positive muscles, smooth on the surface, taut below, finely shaped under all. I had always been attracted by taller, softer, curvier girls, and there was nothing about Alessia to trigger the usual easy urge to the chase. All the same I liked her increasingly, and would have sought her out if she hadn't asked me first.

In bits and pieces over the past two days she had told me many more details of her captivity, gradually unburdening herself of what she'd suffered and felt and worried over; and I'd encouraged her, not only because sometimes in such accounts one got a helpful lead towards catching the kidnappers, but also very much for her own sake. Victim therapy, paragraph one: let her talk it all out and get rid of it.

At Heathrow we went through immigration, baggage claims and customs in close proximity, Alessia keeping near to me nervously and trying to make it look natural.

'I won't leave you,' I assured her, 'until you meet Popsy. Don't worry.'

Popsy was late. We stood and waited, with Alessia apologising twice every five minutes and me telling her not to and, finally, like a gust of wind, a large lady arrived with outstretched arms.

'My darling,' she said, enveloping Alessia, 'a bloody crunch on the motorway. Traffic crawling past like snails. Thought I'd never get here.' She held Alessia away from her for an inspection. 'You look marvellous. What an utterly drear thing to happen. When I heard you were safe I bawled, absolutely bawled.'

Popsy was forty-fiveish and wore trousers, shirt and padded sleeveless waistcoat in navy, white and olive green. She had disconcertingly green eyes, a mass of fluffy greying hair, and a personality as large as her frame.

'Popsy…' Alessia began.

'My darling, what you need is a large steak. Look at your arms… matchsticks. The car's just outside, probably got some traffic cop writing a ticket, I left it on double yellows, so come on, let's go.'

'Popsy, this is Andrew Douglas.'

'Who?' She seemed to see me for the first time. 'How do you do.' She thrust out a hand, which I shook. 'Popsy Teddington. Glad to know you.'

'Andrew travelled with me…"

'Great,' Popsy said. 'Well done.' She had her eyes on the exit, searching for trouble.

'Can we ask him to lunch on Sunday?' Alessia said.

'What?' The eyes swivelled my way, gave me a quick assessment, came up with assent. 'OK darling, anything you like.' To me she said, 'Go to Lambourn, ask anybody, they'll tell you where I live.'

'All right,' I said.

Alessia said 'Thank you,' half under her breath, and allowed herself to be swept away, and I reflected bemusedly about irresistible forces in female form.

From Heathrow I went straight to the office, where Friday afternoon was dawdling along as usual.

The office, a nondescript collection of ground floor rooms along either side of a central corridor, had been designed decades before the era of open-plan, half-acre windows and Kew Gardens rampant. We stuck to the rabbit hutches with their strip lighting because they were comparatively cheap; and as most of us were partners, not employees, we each had a sharp interest in low overheads. Besides, the office was not where we mostly worked. The war went on on distant fronts: headquarters was for discussing strategy and writing up reports.

I dumped my suitcase in the hutch I sometimes called my own and wandered along the row, both to announce my return and to see who was in,

Gerry Clayton was there, making a complicated construction in folded paper.

'Hello,' he said. 'Bad boy, Tut tut.'

Gerry Clayton, tubby, asthmatic, fifty-three and bald, had appointed himself father-figure to many wayward sons. His speciality was insurance, and it was he who had recruited me from a firm at Lloyds, where I'd been a water-treading clerk looking for more purpose in life.

'Where's Twinkfetoes?' I said. 'I may as well get the lecture over.

'Twinkletoes, as you so disrespectfully call him, went to Venezuela this morning. The manager of Luca Oil got sucked.'

'Luca Oil?' My eyebrows rose. 'After all the work we did for them, setting up defences?'

Gerry shrugged, carefully knifing a sharp crease in stiff white paper with his thumbnail. 'That work was more than a year ago. You know what people are. Dead keen on precautions to start with, then perfunctory, then dead sloppy. Human nature. All any self-respecting dedicated kidnapper has to do is wait.

He was unconcerned about the personal fate of the abducted manager. He frequently said that if everyone took fortress-like precautions and never got themselves - in his word - sucked, we'd all be out of a job. One good kidnapping in a corporation encouraged twenty others to call us in to advise them how to avoid a similar embarrassment; and as he regularly pointed out, the how-not-to-get-sucked business was our bread and butter and also some of the jam.

Gerry inverted his apparently wrinkled heap of white paper and it fell miraculously into the shape of a cockatoo. When not advising anti-kidnap insurance policies to Liberty Market clients he sold origami patterns to a magazine, but no one grudged his paper-folding in the office. His mind seemed to coast along while he creased and tucked, and would come up often as if from nowhere with highly productive business ideas.

Liberty Market as a firm consisted at that time of thirty-one partners and five secretarial employees. Of the partners, all but Gerry and myself were ex-S.A.S., ex-police, or ex-something-ultra-secret in government departments. There were no particular rules about who did which job, though if possible everyone was allowed their preferences. Some opted for the lecture tour full-time, giving seminars, pointing out dangers; all the how-to-stay-free bit. Some sank their teeth gratefully into the terrorist circuit, others, like myself, felt more useful against the simply criminal. Everyone in between times wrote their own reports, studied everyone else's, manned the office switchboard year round and polished up their techniques of coercive bargaining.

We had a Chairman (the firm's founder) for our Monday morning state-of-the-nation meetings, a Co-ordinator who kept track of everyone's whereabouts, and an Adjuster - Twinkletoes - to whom partners addressed all complaints. If their complaints covered the behaviour of any other partner, Twinkletoes passed the comments on. If enough partners disapproved of one partner's actions, Twinkletoes delivered the censure. I wasn't all that sorry he'd gone to Venezuela.

This apparently shapeless company scheme worked in a highly organised way, thanks mostly to the ingrained discipline of the ex-soldiers. They were lean, hard, proud and quite amazingly cunning, most of them preferring to deal with the action of the after-kidnap affairs. They were, in addition, almost paranoid about secrecy, as also the ex-spies were, which to begin with I'd found oppressive but had soon grown to respect.

It was the ex-policemen who did most of the lecturing, not only advising on defences but telling potential kidnap targets what to do and look for if they were taken, so that their captors could be in turn captured.

Many of us knew an extra like photography, languages, weaponry and electronics, and everyone could use a word processor, because no one liked the rattle of typewriters all day long. No one was around the office long enough for serious feuds to develop, and the Coordinator had a knack of keeping incompatibles apart. All in all it was a contented ship which everyone worked in from personal commitment, and, thanks to the kidnappers, business was healthy.

I finished my journey along the row of hutches, said a few hellos, saw I was pencilled in with a question mark for Sunday midnight on the switchboard roster, and came at length to the big room across the far end, the only room with windows to the street. It just about seated the whole strength if we were ever there together, but on that afternoon the only person in it was Tony Vine.

"Lo,' he said. 'Hear you made an effing balls of it in Bologna.'

'Yeah.'

'Letting the effing carabinieri eff up the R.V.'

'Have you tried giving orders to the Italian army?'

He sniffed as a reply. He himself was an ex-S.A.S. sergeant, now nearing forty, who would never in his service days have dreamed of obeying a civilian. He could move across any terrain in a way that made a chameleon look flamboyant, and he had three times tracked and liberated a victim before the ransom had been paid, though no one, not even the victim, was quite sure how. Tony Vine was the most secretive of the whole tight-lipped bunch, and anything he didn't want to tell didn't get told.

It was he. who had warned me about knives inside rolled up magazines, and I'd guessed he'd known because he'd carried one that way himself.

His humour consisted mostly of sarcasm, and he could hardly get a sentence out without an oiling of fuck, shit and piss. He worked nearly always on political kidnaps because he, like Pucinelli, tended to despise personal and company wealth.

'If you're effing poor,' he'd said to me once, 'and you see some capitalist shitting around in a Roller, it's not so effing surprising you think of ways of levelling things up. If you're down to your last bit of goat cheese in Sardinia, maybe, or short of beans in Mexico, a little kidnap makes effing sense.'

'You're romantic,' I'd answered. 'What about the poor Sardinians who steal a child from a poor Sardinian village, and grind all the poor people there into poorer dust, forcing them all to pay out their pitiful savings for a ransom?'

'No one's effing perfect.'

For all that he'd been against me joining the firm in the first place, and in spite of his feeling superior in every way, whenever we'd worked together it had been without friction. He could feel his way through the psyches of kidnappers as through a minefield, but preferred to have me deal with the families of the victims.

'When you're with them, they stay in one effing piece. If I tell them what to do, they fall to effing bits.'

He was at his happiest cooperating with men in uniform, among whom he seemed to command instant recognition and respect. Good sergeants ran the army, it was said, and when he wanted to he had the air about him still.

No one was allowed to serve in the S.A.S. for an extended period, and once he'd been bounced out because of age, he'd been bored. Then someone had murmured in his ear about fighting terrorists a different way, and Liberty Market had never regretted taking him.

'I put you in for Sunday midnight on the blower, did you see, instead of me?' he said.

I nodded.

'The wife's got this effing anniversary party organised, and like as not by midnight I'll be pissed.'

'All right,' I said.

He was short for a soldier: useful for passing as a woman, he'd told me once. Sandy-haired, blue-eyed, and light on his feet, he was a fanatic about fitness, and it was he who had persuaded everyone to furnish (and use) the iron-pumping room in the basement. He never said much about his origins: the tougher parts of London, from his accent.

'When did you get back?' I asked. 'Last I heard you were in Columbia.'

'End of the week.'

'How was it?' I said.

He scowled. 'We winkled the effing hostages out safe, and then the local strength got excited and shot the shit out of the terrorists, though they'd got their effing hands up and were coming out peaceful.' He shook his head. 'Never keep their bullets to themselves, those savages. Effing stupid, the whole shitting lot of them.'

Shooting terrorists who'd surrendered was, as he'd said, effing stupid. The news would get around, and the next bunch of terrorists, knowing they'd be shot if they did and also shot if they didn't, would be more likely to kill their victims.

I had missed the Monday meeting where that debacle would have been discussed, but meanwhile there was my own report to write for the picking over of Bologna. I spent all Saturday on it and some of Sunday morning, and then drove seventy-five miles westward to Lambourn.

Popsy Teddington proved to live in a tall white house near the centre of the village, a house seeming almost suburban but surprisingly fronting a great amount of stabling. I hadn't until that day realised that racing stables could occur actually inside villages, but when I remarked on it Popsy said with a smile that I should see Newmarket, they had horses where people in other towns had garages, greenhouses and sheds.

She was standing outside when I arrived, looming over a five-foot man who seemed glad of the interruption.

'Just see to that, Sammy. Tell them I won't stand for it,' she was saying forcefully as I opened the car door. Her head turned my way and a momentary 'who-are-you?' frown crossed her forehead. 'Oh yes, Alessia's friend. She's around the back, somewhere. Come along.' She led me past the house and behind a block of stabling, and we arrived suddenly in view of a small railed paddock, where a girl on a horse was slowly cantering, watched by another girl on foot.

The little paddock seemed to be surrounded by the backs of other stables and other houses, and the grass within it had seen better days.

'I hope you can help her,' Popsy said straightly, as we approached. 'I've never known her like this. Very worrying.'

'How do you mean?' I asked.

'So insecure. She wouldn't ride out yesterday with the string, which she always does when she's here, and now look at her, she's supposed to be up on that horse, not watching my stable girl riding.'

'Has she said much about what happened to her?' I asked.

'Not a thing. She just smiles cheerfully and says it's all over.'

Alessia half turned as we drew near, and looked very relieved when she saw me.

'I was afraid you wouldn't come,' she said.

'You shouldn't have been.'

She was wearing jeans and a checked shirt and lipstick, and was still unnaturally pale from six weeks in dim light. Popsy shouted to the girl riding the horse to put it back in its stable. 'Unless, darling, you'd like…' she said to Alessia. 'After all?'

Alessia shook her head. Tomorrow, I guess.' She sounded as if she meant it, but I could see that Popsy doubted. She put a motherly arm round Alessia's shoulders and gave her a small hug. 'Darling, do just what you like. How about a drink for your thirsty traveller?' To me she said, 'Coffee? Whisky? Methylated spirits?'

'Wine,' Alessia said. 'I know he likes that.'

We went into the house: dark antique furniture, worn Indian rugs, faded chintz, a vista of horses through every window.

Popsy poured Italian wine into cut crystal glasses with a casual hand and said she would cook steaks if we were patient. Alessia watched her disappear kitchenwards and said uncomfortably, 'I'm a nuisance to her. I shouldn't have come.'

'You're quite wrong on both counts,' I said. 'It's obvious she's glad to have you.'

SI thought I'd be all right here… That I'd feel different. I mean, that I'd feel all right.'

'You're sure to, in a while.'

She glanced at me. 'It bothers me that I just can't… shake it off.'

'Like you could shake off double septic pneumonia?'

'That's different,' she protested.

'Six weeks of no sunlight, no exercise, no decent food and a steady diet of heavy sleeping pills is hardly a recipe for physical health.'

But… it's not just… physical.'

'Still less can you just shake off the non-physical.' I drank some wine. 'How are your dreams?'

She shuddered. 'Half the time I can't sleep. Ilaria said I should keep on with the sleeping pills for a while, but I don't want to, it revolts me to think of it… But when I do sleep… I have nightmares… and wake up sweating.'

'Would you like me,' I said neutrally, 'to introduce you to a psychiatrist? I know quite a good one.'

'No.' The answer was instinctive. 'I'm not mad, I'm just… not right.'

'You don't need to be dying to go to a doctor.'

She shook her head. 'I don't want to.'

She sat on a large sofa with her feet on a coffee table, looking worried.

'It's you that I want to talk to, not some shrink. You understand what happened, and to some strange doctor it would sound exaggerated. You know I'm telling the truth, but he'd be worrying half the time if I wasn't fantasising or dramatising or something and be looking for ways of putting me in the wrong. I had a friend who went to one… She told me it was weird, when she said she wanted to give up smoking he kept suggesting she was unhappy because she had repressed incestuous longings for her father.' She ended with an attempt at a laugh, but I could see what she meant. Psychiatrists were accustomed to distortion and evasion, and looked for them in the simplest remark.

'I do think all the same that you'd be better off with expert help,' I said.

'You're an expert.'

'No.'

'But it's you I want… Oh dear,' she broke off suddenly, looking most confused. 'I'm sorry… You don't want to… How stupid of me.'

'I didn't say that. I said…' I too stopped. I stood up, walked over, and sat next to her on the sofa, not touching. 'I'll untie any knots I can for you, and for as long as you want me to. That's a promise. Also a pleasure, not a chore. But you must promise me something too.'

She said 'What?' glancing at me and away.

'That if I'm doing you no good, you will try someone else.'

'A shrink?'

'Yes.'

She looked at her shoes. 'All right,' she said; and like any psychiatrist I wondered if she were lying.

Popsy's steaks came tender and juicy, and Alessia ate half of hers.

'You must build up your strength, my darling, Popsy said without censure. 'You've worked so hard to get where you are. You don't want all those ambitious little jockey-boys elbowing you out, which they will if they've half a chance.'

'I telephoned Mike," she said. 'I said… I'd need time.'

'Now my darling,' Popsy protested. 'You get straight back on the telephone and tell him you'll be fit a week today. Say you'll be ready to race tomorrow week, without fail.'

Alessia looked at her in horror. 'I'm too weak to stay in the saddle… let alone race.'

'My darling, you've all the guts in the world. If you want to, you'll do it.'

Alessia's face said plainly that she didn't know whether she wanted to or not.

'Who's Mike?' I asked.

'Mike Noland,' Popsy said. 'The trainer she often rides for in England. He lives here, in Lambourn, up the road.'

'He said he understood,' Alessia said weakly.

'Well of course he understands. Who wouldn't? But all the same, my darling, if you want those horses back, it's you that will have to get them.'

She spoke with brisk, affectionate commonsense, hallmark of the kind and healthy who had never been at cracking point. There was a sort of quiver from where Alessia sat, and I rose unhurriedly to my feet and asked if I could help carry the empty dishes to the kitchen.

'Of course you can,' Popsy said, rising also, 'and there's cheese, if you'd like some.'

Alessia said horses slept on Sunday afternoons like everyone else, but after coffee we walked slowly round the yard anyway, patting one or two heads.

'I can't possibly get fit in a week,' Alessia said. 'Do you think I should?'

'I think you should try sitting on a horse.'

'Suppose I've lost my nerve.'

'You'd find out.'

'That's not much comfort.' She rubbed the nose of one of the horses absentmindedly, showing at least no fear of its teeth. 'Do you ride?' she asked.

'No,' I said. 'And… er… I've never been to the races.'

She was astonished. 'Never?'

I've watched them often on television.'

'Not the same at all.' She laid her own cheek briefly against the horse's. 'Would you like co go?'

'With you, yes, very much.'

Her eyes filled with sudden tears, which she blinked away impatiently. 'You see,' she said. 'That's always happening. A kind word… and something inside me melts. I do try… I honestly do try to behave decently, but I know I'm putting on an act… and underneath there's an abyss… with things coming up from it, like crying for nothing, for no reason, like now.'

'The act,' I said, 'is Oscar class.'

She swallowed and sniffed and brushed the unspilt tears away with her fingers. 'Popsy is so generous,' she said. 'I've stayed with her so often.' She paused. 'She doesn't exactly say "Snap out of it" or "Pull yourself together", but I can see her thinking it. And I expect if I were someone looking at me, I'd think it too. I mean, she must be thinking that here I am, free and undamaged, and I should be grateful and getting on with life, and that far from moping I should be full of joy and bounce.'

We wandered slowly along and peered into the shadowy interior of a box where the inmate dozed, its weight on one hip, its ears occasionally twitching.

'After Vietnam,' I said, 'when the prisoners came home, there were very many divorces. It wasn't just the sort of thing that happened after the war in Europe, when the wives grew apart from the husbands just by living, while for the men time stood still. After Vietnam it was different. Those prisoners had suffered dreadfully, and they came home to families who expected them to be joyful at their release.'

Alessia leant her arms on the half-door, and watched the unmoving horse.

'The wives tried to make allowances, but a lot of the men were impotent, and would burst into tears in public, and many of them took offence easily… and showed permanent symptoms of mental breakdown. Hamburgers and coke couldn't cure them, nor going to the office nine to five.' I fiddled with the bolt on the door. 'Most of them recovered in time and lead normal lives, but even those will admit they had bad dreams for years and will never forget clear details of their imprisonment.'

After a while she said, 'I wasn't a prisoner of war.'

'Oh yes, just the same. Captured by an enemy through no fault of your own. Not knowing when - or whether - you would be free. Humiliated… deprived of free will… dependent on your enemy for food. All the same, but made worse by isolation… by being the only one.'

She put the curly head down momentarily on the folded arms. 'All they ever gave me, when I asked, were some tissues, and I begged… I begged… for those.' She swallowed. 'One's body doesn't stop counting the days, just because one's in a tent.'

I put my arm silently round her shoulders. There were things no male prisoner ever had to face. She cried quietly, with gulps and small compulsive sniffs, and after a while simply said, 'Thank you,' and I said, 'Any time,' and we moved on down the line of boxes knowing there was a long way still to go.