The Memory Trap

''Wrong profile'?' Mitchell raised an innocent eyebrow.

The trouble was, it wasn't so utterly unthinkable, the next moment, as he thought about it — not, anyway, when he added premature retirement (and in comfort) to Richardson's restless spirit. It had been plain corrosive boredom more than anything else which had in the end parted him from R and D all those years ago, in spite of that wild special aptitude of his which had so captivated Fred Clinton. And boredom, as he well knew himself, was the father of mischief.

But he still wanted more time to think. 'Is smuggling your business then, Captain?' He pretended to study the boat as he spoke, as though that was expected of him.

Smuggling — ?

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'No.'

If smuggling wasn't the connection with Kulik, it was nothing, really — or, it needn't be, need it? Half the world's travellers, who filled the duty-free shops in every airport and chanced their arms with that extra bottle, were petty smugglers at heart —

Brandy for the parson, 'Baccy for the clerk — and if Richardson had merely been supplying that ancient demand

— ?

'Neither is the Mafia my business.' Having waited in vain for him to come back, Cuccaro spoke more sharply. 'But Major Richardson interests them now. That is what the word in Naples is, the Guardia informants say. And that, perhaps, is why he has become . . . unavailable?'

The cosy picture in Audley's mind dissolved. Brandy and

'baccy ... or, up-dated, Lucky Strikes in exchange for the odd Greek vase or Etruscan funeral pot . . . that was one thing.

But the Mafia —

'What's he in to?' Mitchell could contain himself no longer.

'Drugs are where the money is, aren't they?' And, once uncontained, he was irrepressible. 'And now what's it?

'Crack' — ? Isn't that raising the stakes?'

Money! That was what was wrong, damn it! That damn-well was the 'wrong profile' — wasn't it? Except . . . that fifteen years made a nonsense of that cosy picture, too —did they?

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'He's run out of money, has he?' He snapped himself back between them.

Cuccaro frowned at him once more. 'He never had any money.'

Now they were really at odds. 'He had plenty of money, Captain.' The gleaming Richardson-cars and the West Central flat were there in memory to support him. 'He had money from his mother.' Money had always been a huge plus in Fred Clinton's preferences, even before the aptitude tests: if you were heterosexual and well-heeled (and, for choice, not Cambridge!), then with Fred you were over the first fences, they always said. 'And she was rich.'

'And then dead, too.' This time Mitchell was with him.

Because, in his time, Paul Mitchell had been over those same fences, and knew them. And despised what he knew, too.

'With a palazzo all of his very own — right, David?'

Cuccaro shook his head. 'There was no money.'

'No money?' Mitchell accepted the turnabout more readily.

'No palazzo — ?'

Cuccaro's lip curled. 'There is a ... 'palazzo', as you call it.

But it was . . . how do you say? Mortgaged, is it?' He nodded.

'And the Principessa was a great lady. So there was also credit. And bank loans, too.' The nod became a shake. 'He had no money. He had only her debts. And some of them were debts of honour.' He stared at Audley, not Mitchell. 'He had . . . 'bad luck', you said, Professore — ?'

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There was more. 'What else?'

'She died. And she was a great lady, as I have said. So there was not too much inquiry then. But ... it seems now that all her little problems had suddenly become big ones, you see.'

Cuccaro swayed and rolled with the boat's motion, so that his shrug was almost lost with it. 'There was perhaps a certain delicacy in asking questions which could only have made for greater sadness at the time, about her death . . . you understand, Professore?'

'Yes.' From his own tangled childhood Audley understood far better than the man could imagine. But the hell with that!

(And, for that matter, the hell also with whoever hadn't done his job properly, back in the early seventies, on Peter Richardson for Fred Clinton — at least for the time being!).

'Yes.' Mitchell looked sidelong at him, and then back at Cuccaro. 'But. . . hold on a moment. The palazzo —' The damn palace seemed to have become an obsession.

'For God's sake, Mitchell — '

'No.' Mitchell shook him off. 'It was mortgaged . . . and all the rest. But he never lost it — Palazzo Castellamare di San Lorenzo — ' He fixed on the Italian ' — he never lost it,