October Men

But you mean to say he's alive—and—?'

Boselli nodded sagely. 'Alive, Signor Richardson, and positively connected with this.'

'But I thought the Bastard was drummed out of the Party back in the fifties?'

'So he was. And Segato with him. That is what worries us now—he does not fit the pattern.'

'You mean your Communists have gone respectable?'

Boselli snorted. 'They will never be that! But they pretend to respectability, and Ruelle—he is a creature from the Dark Ages, a man of violence. A Neanderthal.'

'Phew!' Richardson scratched his head. 'And old David's in the middle. I'm damn glad you've got him safe and sound.'

He stared at Boselli suddenly. 'He ducked you both at Ostia, then—just like that?'

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'So it would seem, signore. There was some—some confusion, you understand—'

He stopped, at a loss for a moment as he realised how grossly he was understating the nightmare situation which had developed in the aftermath of the shooting.

In spite of Porro's best efforts they had been quite unable to contain events. First the local police had arrived, their zeal apparently strengthened by a determination not to let the Pubblica Sicurezza hog any of the limelight. Rumours of a clash between Fascist and Maoist student factions had quickly blossomed into a Roman gangland battle, and then into a terrorist-anarchist bloodbath, which in turn had drawn crowds of sightseers, squads of journalists and a convoy of screeching ambulances. Two busloads of German tourists who had just entered the excavations added a dimension of babel to the confusion.

Confusion was a totally inadequate word for it, and it had taken no special talent for either the assassins or the Englishman and his wife to make their getaway in the last precious moments before it had descended; ironically it had been Boselli and Porro who had been first trapped and then humiliated. . . .

Boselli just managed to control an involuntary shudder at the memory of it as he became aware that Richardson was still staring at him, curiosity and puzzlement mixed on his face.

'There was—some confusion,' he repeated mechanically.

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Richardson smiled, but wryly this time. 'I can imagine it.'

He paused. 'I wonder what the devil he was up to?'

'Ruelle?'

'Him too.' The half-Englishman nodded. 'Perhaps him most of all. But I was actually wondering what Dr. Audley was doing in Ostia Antica in the first place.'

Boselli watched him sidelong. In repose, now unsmiling again, the brown face was too long, the jaw too angular, for good looks. But more than that there was an underlying worry in the expression which had escaped him until now. So the English too did not know everything, or did not know quite how to control what they had set loose in Italy.

It was a timely reminder that they were not to be trusted.

Even in the days of their power and glory that had been true; now, in their age of decline, they would be as dangerously unpredictable as an old bull. In that respect at least George Ruelle and his fatherland were now disturbingly alike.

XII

LITTLE RAT-FACE BOSELLI had spoken the truth about Audley's detention, anyway. The villa was new and surpassingly ugly, its salmon-pink tiles and bright red ironwork at odds with the colours of nature all around it. But if it lacked elegance as a home it was a decidedly superior temporary jail, the more so when its prisoner was established comfortably under a gay awning at the far end of the terrace dummy2

with bottles on the table beside him.

Audley did not get up as they approached him.

'Well—hullo, Peter.'

It was a low-key welcome, at least when coming from a man who had been plucked off the autostrada by the cops, no matter how well they had behaved or how comfortably they had bestowed him; there was more resignation in it than pleasure, and no surprise at all. But that was pretty much to be expected: Audley had had time since his arrest to compute most of the angles, with the arrival of someone from the department figuring in at least one of them. And being Audley he could be relied on at least not to play the guiltless innocent.

'Hullo, David.'

He looked tired, though, thought Richardson. And also there was something else he had never before seen in the big man's face, an obstinate blankness like a safety door closed against him.

'This is Signor Boselli, of General Montuori's staff in Rome, David,' he began cautiously.

'Signor Boselli,' Audley nodded. He gestured towards the table. 'You'll join me? The drinks here are on the house, it seems.'

He turned up two fresh glasses and splashed wine into them, topping his own up afterwards. But the wine bottle had been hardly touched before, Richardson noted, while the aqua dummy2

minerale was almost empty.

David lounged back in his chair. 'So you've come to bail me out, young Peter. I'm very grateful.'

'We have to work our passage first, David.'

'Indeed?' Audley murmured blandly. 'Go on, Peter.'

'After what happened at Ostia you're not the most popular Englishman in Italy, you know.'