'I want to see him—and quickly.'
Boselli nodded humbly. 'We are on our way to see him now, signore.'
'Good. And I hope you haven't roughed him up, either.'
Boselli tried to look shocked.
'It was just a thought.' Richardson gave a conspiratorial nod towards the two men in the front of the car. 'Some of your
'I assure you there has been nothing like that. We have merely detained him.'
'I'm glad to hear it. Because we're going to need him, Signor Boselli—you and me both, since we're about to give each other the fullest co-operation, that is.'
No smile this time, Boselli noted. Perhaps the half-Englishman also required a success for his record.
'You can rely on me, signore.' Perversely, he was not wholly forging the sincerity in his voice. His brief, false moment of power had been heady, but followed by self-doubts even before Richardson had bitten back as he realised that he still dummy2
didn't know what course of action to follow next. But clearly the half-Englishman knew what to do, and by hanging to his coattails he, Boselli, might yet salvage something, taking the credit for success and at least sharing the blame for failure.
And already he had learnt something to tell the General: the English were angry about Narva's interference in their North Sea and desperately worried that it should not become an issue of their domestic politics. In such circumstances even the General would wish to move cautiously.
'You can rely on me,' he repeated, 'Signor Richardson.'
'Fine. And Peter is the name—I'm Pietro in these parts.'
'I too am Pietro.'
'Well I'd better stick to Peter, then. And the first thing you can do for me, Pietro, is tell me about this shooting of yours.
What the hell happened?'
'It was in Ostia, signore—Peter. Ostia Antica.'
'The old ruins? What was David Audley doing there?'
'We hoped you could tell us.' Boselli shrugged. 'Could he have been meeting someone?'
'It's possible. But who started the shooting?'
'We followed him, but—we were ambushed. One of our men was killed, another wounded, as I have told you. And one of theirs.'
'Killed?'
Boselli nodded, looking past Richardson at a small family dummy2
saloon they were overtaking. It was piled high with boxes and battered cases on the roof rack and bulging with children: they had passed many such cars already, families travelling southwards—homewards—from the northern factories for their annual holidays.
He remembered the ant which had stopped, bewildered, at the edge of the pool of blood in the dust. He thought he would never see an ant again without remembering that moment: ants and blood were linked together forever now.
'Yes.'
'Identified?'
Boselli had already faced this question, and nothing had happened since to change his decision. It was high time the two half-Englishmen were introduced to each other.
'Yes. His name was Mario Segato. Aged fifty-six. Foreman plumber on a construction site in Avezzano—that's about a hundred kilometres east of Rome.'
'I know where it is. You mean he wasn't a pro?' Richardson frowned. 'A foreman plumber?'
'He was a foreman plumber.' Boselli hugged the full story to himself for one final second. 'But there was a time when he had a different occupation.'
'Which was—'
'Bodyguard to George Ruelle.'
'George—George Ruelle?' Richardson sat up. 'You don't mean Bastard Ruelle?'
dummy2
'You know him?'
'Know him? I thought he was dead! I thought he'd been dead for years.'
'But you know him.'
'No, but I've heard of him. My first cousin—my second cousin's father—knew him before he moved north. He said that was the best thing that happened to Campania since the Krauts retreated—the Bastard heading for Rome where the action was. He really was a bastard in the fullest sense of the word. The Italian Stalin, that was his ambition, Enrico said.
