'Then they'll kill him.'
She didn't react beyond a flutter of the eyebrows, a slight and fractional quiver at the mouth, but nothing that he would have noticed if he hadn't been watching her, absorbing her face.
'And if we go to the police and throw it all into their lap, give it to your Mr Carboni, what then?'
'If they see through an indiscretion or a clumsiness that we have offered full co-operation with the police, and if they feel that endangers their security, then too they will kill him.' He turned the knife because the realization of how much he disliked the woman, how alien she was to his background, seeped through him. ' I put it to you, Mrs Harrison, that the people who have your husband will not hesitate to murder him if that serves their purpose better than keeping him alive.'
He paused, allowed the message to sink and spread, find its own water level. He found his advantage growing. The signs of fear were shown by the slight pant in her chest, the motion of the fingers.
'And even if we pay, if the company pays, we still have no g u a r a n t e e… '
He anticipated her. 'There are never guarantees in these matters.' That was about as strongly as he had the stomach to put it. He couldn't bring himself to tell her of Luisa di Capua whose husband had been dead two months before the body was found, and who had received the last ransom note the day before the discovery. 'No guarantees, we would just have to hope.'
He won a shrill, short laugh from her.
'How much will they ask, Mr Charlesworth? How much is my Geoffrey worth on the Italian market?'
'They'll ask for more than they'll be happy to end up with.
Starters would probably be around five million dollars, and they'll settle for perhaps two. Not less than one million.'
'Which I don't have.' She was faster now, and louder and the control was fracturing. 'I don't have it, do you understand that?
Geoffrey doesn't, his parents don't We don't own that sort of money.'
'It's not really your husband that's being ransomed, it's his company. The group will expect the company to pay.'
'And they're tight bastards,' she spat across at him. 'Tight and mean and penny-pinching.'
He remembered the exterior of the block, allowed himself to glance across the interior fittings of the flat.
' I'm sure they will look favourably when they have had the situation explained to them. I had intended to speak to them after I had seen you. I thought that might be valuable to them.'
'So what happens now? What do I do?'
The questions rolled from her, as if Charlesworth were some all-knowing guru on the subject of kidnap reaction. 'We have to await the first contact, probably by telephone. Then it can take quite a time for them to decide what arrangements they want to make for payment.'
'So what do I do, sit by the bloody telephone all day? And I don't even speak the bloody language, just what I need round the shops in the morning. I don't speak their bloody language. I won't know what they're bloody well saying.' Shouting for the first time, dipping into hysteria. Charlesworth fidgeted in the deep chair, willed the session to end.
'We can have it said in the papers that your husband's office is standing by to receive a message.'
'But they're all bloody I t a l i a n s… what the hell do they know about it?'
'A damn sight more than we do, because they live with it every day of the year. Because every one of your husband's senior colleagues knows this can happen to him any time, and a fair few of them will ring their wives each morning as soon as they've sat down at their desks, just so that the woman will know they've made it safely. They know more about this than you or I do, or your husband's company in London. If your husband is to come out of this alive you'll need the help of all his friends in that office.
All of those 'bloody Italians', you'll need all of their help.'
He was out of the chair, backside clear of the cushions, fingers gripping for leverage into the upholstered arm rests. Poor old show, Charlesworth. A stupid, ignorant cow she may be, but not your job to pass judgement. Lost your rag and you shouldn't have done. He sagged back, ashamed that he had battered the remnants of the calm, destroyed the very thing that he had come to maintain. The colour had fled from her face, which had taken a pallid glow in the shock of his counter-attack. Not a whimper from her, not a choke. Only the eyes to give the message, those of someone who has just stepped from a car accident in which driver or passenger has died and who knows dimly of catastrophe but does not have the power to identify and evaluate the debris.
'Mrs Harrison, you mustn't think yourself alone. Many people will now be working for your husband's release. You must believe in that.'
He stood up, shuffled a little, edged towards the door.
She looked up at him from her chair, cheeks very pale below the saucer eyes, knees apart and the gown gaping. 'I hate this bloody place,' she said. 'I've hated it from the day we arrived.
I've hated every hour of it. He'd told me we wouldn't have to stay here, not more than another year, he'd promised me we'd go home. And now you want to go, Mr Charlesworth, well, don't hang about because of me. Thank you again for coming, thank you for your advice, thank you for your help, and thanks to bloody everybody.'
' I'll get a doctor to come round. He'll have something for you.
It's a very great shock, what has happened.'
'Don't bother, don't inconvenience anyone.'
' I'll send a doctor round.'
'Don't bother, I'll be a good girl. I'll sit beside the telephone and wait.'
'Haven't you got a friend who could come and stay with you?'
The old laugh back again, high and clear and tinkling. 'Friends in this bloody hole? You're joking, of course.'
Charlesworth hurried to the door, mumbled over his shoulder,
' I'll be in touch and don't hesitate to call me at the Embassy, the number's in the book.'
Trying to master the different locks delayed his flight sufficiently for him to hear her call from the remoteness of the living room. 'You'll come again, Mr Charlesworth? You'll come again and see me?'
He pulled the door brutally shut behind him, erasing from his ears the trickle of her laughter.
Some five minutes the colonnello spent attempting to marshal the moving waves of photographers and reporters into a straight line. He threatened, pleaded, negotiated the issue of how many paces the prisoner should walk in front of the lenses and microphones before he was finally satisfied with his arrangements in the square internal courtyard of the Questura.
'And remember, no interviews. Interviews are absolutely forbidden.'
He shouted the last exhortation for discipline before the wave of his arm to the polizia who stood shaded in a distant doorway.
When she emerged Franca Tantardini held her head high, jutted her chin, thrust her eyes unwaveringly into the sun. The chains at her wrists dangled against her knees as she walked. Her jeans and blouse were smeared with the street dirt of the pavement outside the Post. To her right the polizia linked arms to hold back the press of cameramen. An officer gripped tightly at each of her elbows; they were not the men who had taken her, not the men who had killed Enrico Panicucci, because those were anonymous and undercover and would not be photographed.
These were men in uniform, spruced, with combed and greased hair and polished shoes, who preened themselves and swelled with importance. She ignored the babble of shouted questions and walked on until she was level with the place where the crowd was densest, the pushing at the police shoulders most acute, the cameras closest. A glance she spared for the scrummaging, then ripped her right arm clear of her escort's hold, swung it aloft into the air, clenched her fist in salute, seemed to hover a smile at the chatter of the camera shutters. The policeman regained his hold, dragged her arm down, she was pulled through a doorway, lost from sight. Show completed. Police taking their kudos, cameramen their pictures. Satisfaction of all parties. A triumphal procession of victor and vanquished, and smoothly done.
From an upper window, unnoticed by the journalists, Francesco Vellosi had watched the courtyard parade. At his side stood an Under-Secretary of the Interior Ministry.
