their flagging morale and drove them on.
' It's beside the station,' Vellosi stormed down his telephone to a maggiore of the Pubblica Sicurezza. 'Right beside the station, this pensione, so get the photograph of Battestini down to the ticket counters, get it among the platform workers. Check him through all the trains to Reggio yesterday morning. Find the ticket inspectors on those trains, find their names, where they are now, and get that picture under their noses.'
There was so much commitment, so much cajoling and abuse that for a full minute Giuseppe Carboni stood ignored in the doorway of Vellosi's office. He bided his time; he would have his moment. And it would be choice, he thought, choice enough for it to have been worth his while to abandon his desk at the Questura and come unannounced to the Viminale. Vellosi was on his way for another prowl along the corridor to chase and jockey his men when he careered into the solid flesh wall of the policeman.
'Carboni, my apologies.' Vellosi laughed. 'We have been very busy here, we have been going hard… '
'Excellent, Vellosi, excellent.' A measured reply, tolerant and calm.
'… you will forgive my hurry, but we have discovered an important connection..
'Excellent.'
'The boy of the NAP, Battestini… the one we missed when we took Tantardini, this is the kernel of this matter, it was he who killed the gorilla in the hotel. We have established that, and this Claudio was from those who took your H a r r i s o n… we have not been idle.'
'Excellent.'
Vellosi saw the smile on Carboni's face, as though the man had picked up a book and found it already familiar. His revelation won no recognition of achievement.
'And are you prospering too, Carboni?' Subdued already, Vellosi braced himself. 'Tell me.'
Carboni led the head of the anti-terrorist squad back to his desk. With his heavy rounded fingers he produced from a neat briefcase two facsimile documents. He laid them on the desk, carelessly pushing aside the piles of handwritten notes that had accumulated there through the morning. With his forefinger, Carboni stabbed at the upper sheet.
'This is the statement taken from Battestini by the polizia more than eighteen months ago… after his arrest for some student fracas. It carried his handwriting at the bottom.'
' I have seen it,' Vellosi said curtly.
Carboni pulled clear the under sheet. 'This is the statement from the Nappisti found at Seminara along with Harrison's card.
Observe the writing, Vellosi, observe it closely.'
Vellosi's nose was a few inches from the papers as he held them to the light.
'It has been checked. At Criminalpol they ran it through the machines for me. The scientists have no doubt that they match.'
Carboni savoured the moment. It was perhaps the finest of his professional life. He stood among the gods, the princes of the elite force, the cream of the anti-subversion fighters, and he told them something they had not seen for themselves. 'Giancarlo Battestini, nineteen years old, born in Pescara, university drop-out, probationer of the NAP, he is the one who has taken Geoffrey Harrison. Harrison is in Battestini's hands, and I venture to suggest that is the limit and extent of the conspiracy.'
Vellosi dropped back to his chair. A hush spread across the room and on into the corridor and further offices. Men in shirtsleeves holding cigarettes and plastic coffee beakers crowded to the doorway. 'Is it possible for one man – a mere boy – to have achieved all this?'
'Vellosi, it has happened.' The pleasure shone on Carboni's face. ' I won't detain you, but you should know we are sifting the reports of stolen vehicles from the area of the city of Reggio – there are not many, not at the times that fit. Two cinquencentos, but they would be too small for the purpose. There was a BMW but that is a conspicuous car. Close to the main station at Reggio, a few minutes' walk away, there is reported missing within ninety minutes of the arrival of the rapido from Roma a one-two-seven. It is red, and the registration is going out now.
There is the same problem as always with the road blocks because we do not know where to set them, but if it is on the radio and the lunchtime television, then perhaps…'
'Shut up, Carboni.' Vellosi spoke quietly. He reached up with both arms, put them round Carboni's neck and pulled the ill-shaven face towards him. Their cheeks met, the kiss of friends and equals. 'You're a genius, Carboni, nothing but a genius.'
Carboni blushed, swung on his heel and left with a little wave of his fingers for farewell. He had stirred Vellosi's ant hole, changed its direction, shifted the whole basis of the enquiry.
'Well, don't stand about,' Vellosi snapped at his audience.
'We've let an amateur show us what's happening, point to what's been staring at us for hours. We have more in a day than we had in a month with Moro. Use it.'
But for Moro he had had time. For Harrison he had less than twenty-four hours till the expiry of the ultimatum.
Vellosi scuffed among his papers till he found the photograph of Battestini. He searched the mouth and the jaw line and the set of the eyes for information, scrabbling to catch up, scratching to make do with diminishing hours, the tools of a policeman's trade.
'The little bastard could be anywhere.' And Vellosi swore and reached for his coffee that was cold.
He must go back to the basics, back to deep and quiet thought in the midst of the noise surrounding him, back to analysis of the minimal factual evidence available.
Start again, start from the beginning. Return to the face of Battestini, drag from those features the response that should be made.
Giancarlo Battestini, imprisoned in Rome after studying in the capital's university, and a member of an NAP cell in that city.
Could the boy have links with the far countryside? Likely or unlikely? Vellosi flexed his fingers. The answer was obvious. The boy would know nothing of Calabria. A city boy, a town boy, a foreigner in the Mezzo Giorno.
He turned and called to a colleague, who stubbed his cigarette, drained his coffee and came to him.
'Battestini would not believe he could survive in the countryside, it is beyond his experience. Correct?'
'Correct.'
'He would try to return to the city?*
'Possible.'
'In the files he is linked only with Rome: would he try to get back here?'
'Perhaps.'
'He is divorced from Pescara. He has nothing there. And if he comes back towards Rome he must come by car because he cannot take a prisoner by train.'
'Probable.'
The momentum carried Vellosi on. 'If he comes by road he must decide for himself whether he will attempt speed on the autostrada, or whether he will go for the safer and slower old roads.'
' I think he would choose the autostrada.'
Vellosi slapped his fist into the palm of his other hand. 'And he must stop… '
'For petrol.'
'He has to stop.'
'Certain.'
'Either at a station on the autostrada or he must come off and use a toll gate and a station off the main route.'
' If he is coming to Rome, if he is coming by car, if he is on the autostrada, then that is correct.'
Vellosi thrust his chair behind him, rose to his full height and shouted, 'Work on the petrol stations and the autostrada tolls.
Each side of Naples. Call Carboni, tell him that too.'
His colleague was no longer beside him.
Vellosi slumped back into his seat. There was no one to praise him, no one to smile and slap his back and offer congratulations.
To himself he muttered, over and over again, 'The boy will come back to the city, the boy will return to
