The Danger

SEVEN

Manning the office switchboard day and night was essential because kidnappers kept anti-social hours; and it was always a partner on duty, not an employee, for reasons both of reliability and secrecy. The ex-spies feared 'moles' under every secretarial desk and positive-vetted the cleaner.

That particular Sunday night was quiet, with two calls only: one from a partner in Equador saying he'd discovered the local

police were due to share in the ransom he was negotiating and asking for the firm's reactions, and the second from Twinkle-toes, who wasted a copy of the set of precautions we'd drawn up for Luca Oil.

I made a note of it, saying 'Surely Luca Oil have one?'

'The kidnappers stole it,' Twinkletoes said tersely. 'Or bribed a secretary to steal it. Anyway, it's missing, and the manager was abducted at the weakest point of his daily schedule, which I reckon was no coincidence.'

'I'll send it by courier straight away.'

'And see who's free to join me out here. This will be a long one. It was very carefully planned. Send me Derek, if you can. And oh… consider yourself lucky I'm not there to blast you for Bologna.'

'I do,' I said, smiling.

'I'll be back,' he said darkly. 'Goodnight.'

I took one more call, at nine in the morning, this time from the head of a syndicate at Lloyds which insured people and firms against kidnap. Much of our business came direct from him, as he was accustomed to make it a condition of insurance that his clients should call on our help before agreeing to pay a ransom. He reckoned we could bring the price down, which made his own liability less; and we in return recommended him to the firms asking our advice on defences.

'Two English girls have been snatched in Sardinia,' he said. 'The husband of one of them insured her against kidnap for her two weeks holiday as he wasn't going to be with her, and he's been on to us. It seems to have been a fairly unplanned affair - the girls just happened to be in the wrong place, and were ambushed. Anyway, the husband is distraught and wants to pay what they're asking, straight away, so can you send someone immediately?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Er… what was the insurance?'

'I took a thousand pounds against two hundred thousand. For two weeks.' He sighed. 'Win some, lose some.'

I took down names and details and checked on flights to Sardinia, where in many regions bandits took, ransomed and released more or less as they pleased.

'Very hush-hush,' the Lloyds man had said. 'Don't let it get to the papers. The husband has pressing reasons. If all goes well she'll be home in a week, won't she, and no one the wiser?'

'With a bit of luck,' I agreed.

Bandits had nowhere to keep long-term prisoners and had been known to march their victims miles over mountainsides daily, simply abandoning them once they'd been paid. Alessia, I thought, would have preferred that to her tent.

The partners began arriving for the Monday conference and it was easy to find one with itchy feet ready to go instantly to Sardinia, and easy also to persuade Derek to join Twinkletoes at Luca Oil. The Co-ordinator wrote them in on the new week's chart and I gave the request from the partner in Equador to the Chairman.

After about an hour of coffee, gossip and reading reports the meeting began, the bulk of it as usual being a review of work in progress.

'This business in Equador,' the Chairman said. 'The victim's an American national, isn't he?'

A few heads nodded.

The Chairman pursed his lips. 'I think we'll have to advise that corporation to use local men and not send any more from the States. They've had three men captured in the last ten years, all Americans… you'd think they'd learn.'

'It's an American-owned corporation,' someone murmured.

'They've tried paying the police themselves,' another said. 'I was out there myself last time. The police took the money saying they would guard all the managers with their lives, but I reckon they also took a cut of the ransom then, too. And don't forget, the corporation paid a ransom of something like ten million dollars… plenty to spread around.'

There was a small gloomy silence.

'Right,' the Chairman said. 'Future advice, no Americans. Present advice?' He looked around. 'Opinions, anyone?'

'The kidnappers know the corporation will pay in the end,' Tony Vine said. 'The corporation can't afford not to.'

All corporations had to ransom their captured employees if they wanted anyone ever to work overseas for them in future. All corporations also had irate shareholders, whose dividends diminished as ransoms rose. Corporations tended to keep abductions out of the news, and to write the ransoms down as a 'trading loss' in the annual accounts.

'We've got the demand down to ten million again,' Tony Vine said. 'The kidnappers won't take less, they'd be losing face against last time, even if - especially if- they're a different gang.'

The Chairman nodded. 'We'll advise the corporation to settle?'

Everyone agreed, and the meeting moved on.

The Chairman, around sixty, had once been a soldier himself, and like Tony felt comfortable with other men whose lives had been structured, disciplined and official. He had founded the firm because he'd seen the need for it; the action in his case of a practical man, not a visionary. It had been a friend of his, now dead, who had suggested partnerships rather than a hierarchy, advising the sweeping away of all former ranks in favour of one new one: equal.

The Chairman was exceptionally good-looking, a distinctly marketable plus, and had an air of quiet confidence to go with it. He could maintain that manner in the face of total disaster, so that one always felt he would at any moment devise a brilliant victory-snatching solution, even if he didn't. It had taken me a while, when I was new there, to see that it was Gerry Clayton who had that sort of mind.

The Chairman came finally to my report, photocopies of which most people had already read, and asked if any partners would like to ask questions. We gained always from what others had learned during a case, and I usually found question time very fruitful - though better when not doing the answering.

'This carabinieri officer… er… Pucinelli, what sort of a personal relationship could you have with him? What is your estimate of his capabilities?' It was a notoriously pompous partner asking; Tony would have said, 'How did you get on with the sod? What's he like?'

'Pucinelli's a good policeman,' I said. 'Intelligent, bags of courage. He was helpful. More helpful, I found, than most, though never stepping out of the official line. He hasn't yet…' I paused. 'He hasn't the clout to get any higher, I don't think. He's second-in-command in his region, and I'd say that's as far as he'll go. But as far as his chances of catching the kidnappers are concerned, he'll be competent and thorough.'

'What was the latest, when you left?' someone asked. 'I haven't yet had time to finish your last two pages.'

'Pucinelli said that when he showed the drawings of the man I'd seen to the two kidnappers from the siege, they were both struck dumb. He showed them to them separately, of course, but in each case he said you could clearly see the shock. Neither of them would say anything at all and they both seemed scared. Pucinelli said he was going to circulate copies of the drawings and see if he could identify the man. He was very hopeful, when I left.'

'Sooner the better,' Tony said. 'That million quid will be laundered within a week.'

'They were a pretty cool lot,' I said, not arguing. 'They might hold it for a while.'

'And they might have whisked it over a border and changed it into francs or schillings before they released the girl.'

I nodded. 'They could have set up something like that for the first ransom, and been ready.'

Gerry Clayton's fingers as usual were busy with any sheet of paper within reach, this time the last page of my report. 'You say Alessia Cenci came to England with you. Any chance she'll remember any more?' he asked.

'You cannot rule it out, but Pucinelli and I both went through it with her pretty thoroughly in Italy. She knows so little. There were no church bells, no trains, no close aeroplanes, no dogs… she couldn't tell whether she was in city or country. She thought the faint smell she was conscious of during the last few days might have been someone baking bread. Apart from that… nothing.'

A pause.

'Did you show the drawings to the girl?' someone asked. 'Had she ever seen the man, before the kidnap?'

I turned to him. 'I took a photostat to the villa, but she hadn't ever seen him that she could remember. There was absolutely no reaction. I asked if he could have been one of the four who abducted her, but she said she couldn't tell. None of her family or anyone in the household knew him. I asked them all."

'His voice… when he spoke to you outside the motorway restaurant… was it the voice on the tapes?'

'I don't know,' I admitted. 'I'm not good enough at Italian. It wasn't totally different, that's all I could say.'

'You brought copies of the drawings and the tapes back with you?' the Chairman asked.

'Yes. If anyone would like…?'

A few heads nodded.

'Anything you didn't put in the report?' the Chairman asked. 'Insignificant details?'

'Well… I didn't include the lists of the music. Alessia wrote what she knew, and Pucinelli said he would try to find out if they were tapes one could buy in shops, ready recorded. Very long shot, even if they were.'

'Do you have the lists?'

'No, afraid not. I could ask Alessia to write them again, if you like.'

One of the ex-policemen said you never knew. The other ex-policemen nodded.

'All right,' I said. 'I'll ask her.'

'How is she?' Gerry asked.

'Just about coping.'

There were a good many nods of understanding. We'd all seen the devastation, the hurricane's path across the spirit. All of us, some oftener than others, had listened to the experiences of the recently returned: the de-briefing, as the firm called it, in its military way.

The Chairman looked around for more questions but none were ready. 'All finished? Well, Andrew, we can't exactly sack you for coming up with pictures of an active kidnapper, but driving a car to the drop is not on the cards. Whether or not it turns out well this time, don't do it again. Right?'

'Right,' I said neutrally; and that, to my surprise, was the full extent of the ticking-off.

A couple of days later the partner manning the switchboard called to me down the corridor, where I was wandering with a cup of coffee in search of anything new.

'Andrew? Call for you from Bologna. I'll put it through to your room.'

I dumped the coffee and picked up the receiver, and a voice said 'Andrew? This is Enrico Pucinelli.'

We exchanged hellos, and he began talking excitedly, the words running together in my ear.

'Enrico,' I shouted. 'Stop. Speak slowly. I can't understand you.'

'Hah.' He sighed audibly and began to speak clearly and distinctly, as to a child. 'The young one of the kidnappers has been talking. He is afraid of being sent to prison for life, so he is trying to make bargains. He has told us where Signorina Cenci was taken after the kidnap.'

'Terrific,' I said warmly. 'Well done.'

Pucinelli coughed modestly, but I guessed it had been a triumph of interrogation.

'We have been to the house. It is in a suburb of Bologna, middle-class, very quiet. We have found it was rented by a father with three grown sons.' He clicked his tongue disgustedly. 'All of the neighbours saw men going in and out, but so far no one would know them again.'

I smiled to myself. Putting the finger on a kidnapper was apt to be unhealthy anywhere.

The house has furniture belonging to the owner, but we have looked carefully, and in one room on the upper floor all the marks where the furniture has stood on the carpet for a long time are in slightly different places.' He stopped and said anxiously, 'Do you understand, Andrew?'

'Yes,' I said. 'All the furniture had been moved.'

'Correct.' He was relieved. 'The bed, a heavy chest, a wardrobe, a bookcase. All moved. The room is big, more than big enough for the tent, and there is nothing to see from the window except a garden and trees. No one could see into the room from outside.'

'And have you found anything useful… any clues in the rest of the house?'

'We are looking. We went to the house for the first time yesterday. I thought you would like to know.'

'You're quite right. Great news.'

'Signorina Cenci, he said, 'has she thought of anything else?'

'Not yet.'

'Give her my respects.

'Yes,' I said. 'I will indeed.'

'I will telephone again,' he said. 'I will reverse the charges again, shall I, like you said? As this is private, between you and me, and I am telephoning from my own house?'

'Every time,' I said.

He said goodbye with deserved satisfaction, and I added a note of what he'd said to my report.

By Thursday morning I was back in Lambourn, chiefly for the lists of music, and I found I had arrived just as a string of Popsy's horses were setting out for exercise. Over her jeans and shirt Popsy wore another padded waistcoat, bright pink this time, seeming not to notice that it was a warm day in July; and her fluffy grey-white hair haloed her big head like a private cumulus cloud.

She was on her feet in the stable-yard surrounded by scrunching skittering quadrupeds, and she beckoned when she saw me, with a huge sweep of her arm. Trying not to look nervous and obviously not succeeding, I dodged a few all-too-mobile half-tons of muscle and made it to her side.

The green eyes looked at me slantwise, smiling, 'Not used to them, are you?'

'Er…' I said. 'No.'

'Want to see them on the gallops?'

'Yes, please.' I looked round at the riders, hoping to see Alessia among them, but without result.

The apparently disorganised throng suddenly moved off towards the road in one orderly line, and Popsy jerked her head for me to follow her into the kitchen; and at the table in there, coffee cup in hand, sat Alessia.

She still looked pale, but perhaps now only in contrast to the outdoor health of Popsy, and she still looked thin, without strength. Her smile when she saw me started in the eyes and then curved to the pink lipstick; an uncomplicated welcome of friendship.

'Andrew's coming up on the Downs to see the schooling,' Popsy said.

'Great.'

'You're not riding?' I asked Alessia.

'No… I… anyway, Popsy's horses are jumpers.'

Popsy made a face as if to say that wasn't a satisfactory reason for not riding them, but passed no other comment. She and I talked for a while about things in general and Alessia said not much.

We all three sat on the front seat of a dusty Land Rover while Popsy drove with more verve than caution out of Lambourn and along a side road and finally up a bumpy track to open stretches of grassland.

Away on the horizon the rolling terrain melted into blue haze, and under our feet, as we stepped from the Land Rover, the close turf had been mown to two inches. Except for a bird call or two in the distance there was a gentle enveloping silence, which was in itself extraordinary. No drone of aeroplanes, no clamour of voices, no hum of faraway traffic. Just wide air and warm sunlight and the faint rustle from one's own clothes.

'You like it, don't you?' observed Popsy, watching my face.

I nodded.

'You should be up here in January with the wind howling across. Though mind you, it's beautiful even when you're freezing.'

She scanned a nearby valley with a hand shading her eyes. 'The horses will be coming up from there at half-speed canter,' she said. 'They'll pass us here. Then we'll follow them up in the Land Rover to the schooling fences,'

I nodded again, not reckoning I'd know a half-speed canter from a slow waltz, but in fact when the row of horses appeared like black dots from the valley I soon saw what speed she meant. She watched with concentration through large binoculars as the dots became shapes and the shapes flying horses, lowering the glasses only when the string of ten went past, still one behind the other so that she had a clear view of each. She pursed her mouth but seemed otherwise not too displeased, and we were soon careering along in their wake, jerking to a stop over the brow of the hill and disembarking to find the horses circling with tossing heads and puffing breath.

'See those fences over there?' said Popsy, pointing to isolated limber and brushwood obstacles looking like refugees from a racecourse. 'Those are schooling fences. To teach the horses how to jump.' She peered into my face, and I nodded. 'The set on this side, they're hurdles. The far ones are… er… fences. For steeplechasers.' I nodded again. 'From the start of the schooling ground up to here there are six hurdles - and six fences - so you can give a horse a good work-out if you want to, but today I'm sending my lot over these top four only, as they're not fully fit.'

She left us abruptly and strode over to her excited four-legged family, and Alessia with affection said, 'She's a good trainer. She can see when a horse isn't feeling right, even if there's nothing obviously wrong. When she walks into the yard all the horses instantly know she's there. You see all the heads come out, like a chorus.'

Popsy was despatching three of the horses towards the lower end of the schooling ground. 'Those three will come up over the hurdles,' Alessia said. "Then those riders will change onto three more horses and start again.'

I was surprised. 'Don't all of the riders jump?' I asked.

'Most of them don't ride well enough to teach. Of those three doing the schooling, two are professional jockeys and the third is Popsy's best lad.'

Popsy stood beside us, binoculars ready, as the three horses came up over the hurdles. Except for a ratatatat at the hurdles themselves it was all very quiet, mostly, I realised, because there was no broadcast commentary as on television, but partly also because of the Doppler effect. The horses seemed to be making far more noise once they were past and going away.

Popsy muttered unintelligibly under her breath and Alessia said ' Borodino jumped well,' in the sort of encouraging voice which meant the other two hadn't.

We all waited while the three schooling riders changed horses and set off again down the incline to the starting point -and I felt Alessia suddenly stir beside me and take a bottomless breath - moving from there into a small, restless, aimless circle. Popsy glanced at her but said nothing, and after a while Alessia stopped her circling and said, 'Tomorrow…'

'Today, here and now,' Popsy interrupted firmly, and yelled to a certain Bob to come over to her at once.

Bob proved to be a middle-aged lad riding a chestnut which peeled off from the group and ambled over in what looked to me a sloppy walk.

'Hop off, will you?' Popsy said, and when Bob complied she said to Alessia, 'OK, just walk round a bit. You've no helmet so I don't want you breaking the speed limit, and besides old Paperbag here isn't as fit as the others.'

She made a cradle for Alessia's knee and threw her casually up into the saddle, where the lady jockey landed with all the thump of a feather. Her feet slid into the stirrup and her hands gathered the reins, and she looked down at me for a second as if bemused at the speed with which things were happening. Then as if impelled she wheeled her mount and trotted away, following the other three horses down the schooling ground.

'At last,' Popsy said. 'And I'd begun to think she never would.'

'She's a brave girl.'

'Oh yes.' She nodded. 'One of the best.'

'She had an appalling time.'

Popsy gave me five seconds of the direct green eyes. 'So I gather,' she said, 'from her refusal to talk about it. Let it all hang out, I told her, but she just shook her head and blinked a couple of tears away, so these past few days I've stopped trying to jolly her along, it was obviously doing no good.' She raised the binoculars to watch her three horses coming up over the hurdles and then swung them back down the hill, focusing on Alessia.

'Hands like silk,' Popsy said. 'God knows where she got it from, no one else in the family knows a spavin from a splint.'

'She'll be better now,' I said, smiling. 'But don't expect…

'Instant full recovery?' she asked, as I paused.

I nodded. 'It's like a convalescence. Gradual.'

Popsy lowered the glasses and glanced at me briefly. 'She told me about your job. What you've done for her father. She says she feels safe with you.' She paused. 'I've never heard of a job like yours. I didn't know people like you existed.'

'There are quite a few of us… round the world.'

'What do you call yourself, if people ask?'

'Safety consultant, usually. Or insurance consultant. Depends how I feel.'

She smiled. 'They both sound dull and worthy.'

'Yes… er… that's the aim.'

We watched Alessia come back up the hill, cantering now, but slowly, and standing in the stirrups. Though of course I'd seen them do it, I'd never consciously noted before then that that was how jockeys rode, not sitting in the saddle but tipped right forward so their weight could be carried over the horse's shoulder, not on the lower spine. Alessia stopped beside Bob, who took hold of the horse's reins, and she dismounted by lifting her right leg forward over the horse's neck and dropping lightly, feet together, to the ground: a movement as graceful and springy as ballet.

A different dimension, I thought. The expertise of the professional. Amazing to the non-able, like seeing an artist drawing.

She patted the horse's neck, thanked Bob and came over to us, slight in shirt and jeans, smiling.

'Thanks,' she said to Popsy.

'Tomorrow?' Popsy said. 'With the string?'

Alessia nodded, rubbing the backs of her thighs. 'I'm as unfit as marshmallow.'

With calmness she watched the final trio of horses school, and then Popsy drove us again erratically back to her house, while the horses walked, to cool down.

Over coffee in the kitchen Alessia rewrote the lists of the music she listened to so often, a job she repeated out of generosity, and disliked,

'I could hum all the other tunes that I don't know the titles of,' she said. 'But frankly I don't want to hear them ever again.' She pushed the list across: Verdi, as before, and modern gentle songs like 'Yesterday' and 'Bring in the Clowns', more British and American in origin than Italian.

'I did think of something else,' she said hesitantly. 'I dreamed it, the night before last. You know how muddled things are in dreams… I was dreaming I was walking out to race. I had silks on, pink and green checks, and I know I was supposed to be going to ride, but I couldn't find the parade ring, and I asked people, but they didn't know, they were all catching trains or something and then someone said, "At least an hour to Viralto," and I woke up. I was sweating and my heart was thumping, but it hadn't been a nightmare, not a bad one anyway. Then I thought that I'd actually heard someone say "at least an hour to Viralto" at that minute, and I was afraid there was someone in the room… It was horrible, really.' She put a hand on her forehead, as if the clamminess still stood there. 'But of course, when I woke up properly, there I was in Popsy's spare bedroom, perfectly safe. But my heart was still thumping.' She paused, then said, 'I think I must have heard one of them say that, when I was almost asleep.'

'This dream,' I asked slowly, considering, 'was it in English… or Italian?'

'Oh.' Her eyes widened. 'I was riding in England. Pink and green checks… one of Mike Noland's horses. I asked the way to the parade ring in English… they were English people, but that voice saying "at least an hour to Viralto", that was Italian.' She frowned. 'How awfully odd. I translated it into English in my mind, when I woke up.'

'Do you often go to Viralto?' I asked.

'No. I don't even know where it is.'

'I'll tell Pucinelli,' I said, and she nodded consent.

'He found the house you were kept in most of the time,' I said neutrally.

'Did he?' It troubled her. 'I… I don't want…'

'You don't want to hear about it?'

'No.'

'All right.'

She sighed with relief. 'You never make me face things. I'm very graceful. I feel… I still feel I could be pushed over a cliff… break down, I suppose… if too much is forced on me. And it's absolutely ridiculous - I didn't cry at all, not once, when I was… in that tent.'

'That's thoroughly normal, and you're doing fine,' I said. 'And you look fabulous on a horse.'

She laughed. 'God knows why it took me so long. But up on the Downs… such a gorgeous morning… I just felt…' She paused. 'I love horses, you know. Most of them, anyway. They're like friends… but they live internal lives, secrets with amazing instincts. They're telepathic… I suppose I'm boring you.'

'No,' I said truthfully, and thought that it was horses, not I, who would lead her finally back to firm ground.

She came out to the car with me when I left and kissed me goodbye, cheek to cheek, as if I'd known her for years.