The Memory Trap

expecting me up there. I don't exist — remember. So just hold Cuccaro for one hour, Paul. And that's an order. Then you can all come up and admire the view with me. Understood?'

Another twitch. 'You know ... I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't think you were enjoying yourself, David — ' The final click of the door, and then the thickness of the window and the sound of the engine drowned the rest of Mitchell's considered judgement, so that Audley was spared it.

Then the taxi began to nose its way through the crowd.

Mitchell wasn't stupid, of course: his last shot had been a bull, right in the centre of the target. And his previous shot dummy1

had been an inner, too close to the bull for comfort maybe.

But then he had been on-target all along, towards the end of the exchange: the whole thing had been a cock- up, from start to now, from London-and-Berlin to London-and-Capri —

There was a map in a plastic folder, prudently attached to a piece of string, on the back seat. And, translating kilometres into miles, Capri wasn't very big, mercifully.

'Villa Jovis?' He inquired politely.

The taxi-driver shrugged. ' Piazza, signor.'

Audley found the Piazza on the map. Cuccaro had said it was

'a long walk' to the ruins, hadn't he? But it was no more than a mile-and-a-bit, maybe even less. And distances on land always confused naval men.

Or had it been Mitchell who had said that? But it didn't matter, anyway. Because he no longer wanted to think about either Mitchell or Cuccaro —

He paid the driver off eventually, with what seemed a lot of Mitchell's Monopoly-money. But presumably the clock had been ticking down there, in the Marina Grande, far below.

It was no good looking around: he wouldn't spot anyone if he'd miscalculated, or if Mitchell hadn't held Cuccaro. And it wasn't because the place was too crowded, the narrow streets dummy1

and tiny squares, because they weren't and it wasn't — not this late in the season, and in the middle of the day — the mezzogiorno so beloved of all Mediterranean peoples (and maybe Richardson had calculated that, too?). It was, simply, that he was in the middle of his own calculated risk now, so that there was no one he would know, friend or foe, to be able to spot, in any case.

Except Peter himself. And it was Peter's job to spot him now, not the other way round.

Peter Richardson —

The truth was that he hadn't really known the man very well, all those years ago, whatever Butler and everyone else might think from the record, either from what Fred Clinton might have chosen to add to it by way of footnotes, or because of his established reputation for never-forgetting. But he could feel his memory expanding under pressure (as it always did). . .

and he knew more now, of course — however surprising Cuccaro's information had been—

Mitchell had said it would be a long walk. But that hadn't meant anything: he could walk anyone off their feet, any time. And it was a small island, with small (but mercifully well-signposted!) paths directing him to the Villa Jovis, with anything like an actual road soon left far behind —narrow dummy1

paths winding among desirable holiday residences tucked behind walls and gardens, or separated by tiny hillside vineyards —But it was a long walk, by God!

Maybe not surprising, at that . . . Or, trying to imagine Richardson short of cash was the first challenge: with Peter the money had always been evident if not just short of flashy

— not just the always-new car (and the always new, but never serious, girl), but also the throwaway asides (that first time he had known more about Cheltenham racecourse than Cheltenham GCHQ). And it had been old money too, everyone had assumed (of the sort old Fred Clinton notoriously preferred in his recruits): old blue- blooded maternal money, derived from the legendary principessa and her palazzo inheritance. Fred had been almost as happy with that as with the alpha-plus results from the aptitude tests . . .

although, as it had transpired, someone had blundered there too, in not discerning that there had been no true inclination towards scholarship, let alone the happy drudgery of research, to go with those special aptitudes —

There were blue flowers here, trailing in wild profusion in an overgrown hedge beside a vineyard, with the harbour below like a mill-pond full of toy boats. But in fact . . . they weren't flowers at all: they were weeds — he could remember them from the distant past of long-ago Italian holidays, festooning the farm hedgerows on the approaches to Paestum. And they dummy1

had stirred his pale Protestant English gardener's soul with a curious mixture of admiration and envy and disapproval then, that mere weeds could be so spectacular: weeds were entitled to be both rare and beautiful, but had no right to be so outrageously colourful. But then, of course, they had been Italian weeds —

Richardson was half-Italian, that was what he must take account of. And wasn't it always said of Anglo-Italians that they could be the very devil?

He was getting close to the Villa Jovis now: he could even make out what might be the ruins among the trees on the skyline, surmounted by the statue of Tiberius which he had first seen from far below. And the landscape around him had changed: he had left the cosy holiday homes, with their gardens, behind him. Now there was only one path under the shoulder of the ridge, with secluded houses hidden among the trees on his right and a rock- strewn hillside on his left.

And no more blue flowers: the hillside was spotted with what looked like English buttercups among the boulders.

He stopped trying to make excuses for Peter Richardson.

Very devil or not, the man had made devilish complications out of what should have been a simple mission —