'She was driving home, she was alone.' Carpenter spewing it out.
'No one with her, no friends with her…? '
'So, if we get the man out, that is what we have to confront him with.' A light, chilled laugh from Vellosi. 'Incredible, Carboni, when a man's cup is overfilled '
' It is criminal that at this time a woman should be alone.' A distaste hung in Carboni's words.
' I suppose no one thought about it,' said Carpenter dully.
At the junction to the lake road they saw the stationary rows of lorries and vans parked on the grass verge. They passed queues of walking men in uniform, the headlights glinted on the metal of firearms, and there were glimpses of cordons forming in the fields.
The car winged on down the steep hillside before turning hard to the right along a weeded driveway with a military barrier and a concentration of elderly brick buildings awaiting them. Carpenter tried to loose the load of self-pity and stared about him as the car stopped.
The doors snapped open, Carboni was out quickly, and mopped himself and turned to Carpenter. 'It used to be a flying-boat station, long before the war, with its lake frontage. It is a place now just for dumping the conscripts. They maintain a museum, but nothing flies. But we are close to the wood here and we have communications.' He took Carpenter's arm. 'Stay near to me, now is the time for you to wish me well.'
They were swept through the ill lit door of the administration block, Carpenter elbowing to keep contact with the bustling Carboni, and on into a briefing room. Hands out to greet Carboni, hugging and rubbed cheeks, a clutch of bodies around him, and Carpenter relegated to a chair at the back while the policeman found sufficient yet reluctant silence to make a short address on his plan. Another surge of the men in suits and uniforms and battledress, and Carboni, the emperor of the moment, was speeding for the doorway. They won't stop for you, Archie.
They won't hang about for that bloody Englishman. Carpenter shoved and pushed, winced as a Beretta holster dug at his stomach and won his way to Carboni's side. In the wedge at the door Carboni smiled at him, looking up, perspiring.
' I have made a great decision. The anti-terrorist unit demanded the right to lead, so did the carabinieri. Both thought they were best fitted. I have satisfied everybody. The carabinieri will come from the north, Vellosi's men from the south. I am an Italian Solomon. I have sliced Battestini in two.'
Carpenter stared coldly at him.
'Allow me one levity, I have nothing else to laugh at. At any moment Battestini may kill your man, he may already have done so. We are going forward in the dark, we are going to stumble in the dark through the wood.'
'You're not waiting for daylight?'
To wait is to take too great a risk. If you pray, Carpenter, now is the moment.'
They were out of the building.
Muffled, subdued orders. Men in the grey half light hitching over their heads the heavy, protective clothing that would halt all rounds other than high velocity. The cocking and arming of weapons. Ripples of laughter. Tramping feet away into the last remnants of the night. Should have a bloody stirrup cup, Archie, and a red coat, and a man to shout Tally Ho'.
The group with Carboni at its heart set off towards the road, and walking beside him was a short, firm-bodied man who wore torn trousers and boots and a thick sweater and carried an old shotgun broken and crooked, farmer's style, across his inner elbow.
From the hard bare mattress of her cell bed, Franca Tantardini heard the soft-soled footsteps in the outside corridor. A bolt was drawn back, a key inserted and turned, and the man who had been her interrogator let himself in.
He smiled at the woman as she lay with her head propped on her clasped hands, with the golden hair spilling on the one pillow.
' I have some news for you, Franca. Something that you would wish to know.'
Her eyes lit at first, then dulled, as if her interest betrayed her before the discipline triumphed.
' I should not be telling you, Franca, but I thought that you would wish to hear of our success.'
Involuntarily she half rose on the bed, her hands forsaking her neck, propping her up now.
'We know where he is. Your little fox, Franca. We know where he hides, in what wood, close to which village. They are surrounding the place now. At first light they will move in on your little fox.'
The light from the single bulb behind its casing of close-mesh wire bit down at the age lines of her face. The muscles at her mouth flickered.
'He'll kill the pig first.'
The interrogator laughed softly. 'If he has the courage, when the guns are around him.'
'He'll kill him.'
'Because Franca told him to. Because Franca from the safety of her cell ordered it. His pants will be wetted, his hand shaking, guns round him, aimed on him, and he is dead if he does what his Franca has told him.'
'He will do as he was ordered.'
'You are certain you can make a soldier from a bed-wetter, that was what you called him, Franca.'
'Get out.' She spat her hatred.
The interrogator smiled again. 'Let the dream be of the failure, Franca. Good night, and when you are alone think of the boy, and think of how you have destroyed him… '
She reached down beside her bed for the canvas shoes, snatched at one and hurled it at the man in the open doorway. Wide and high, and bouncing back from the wall. He chuckled to her and grinned.
She heard the key in place, the bolt thrust across.
The noise of Giancarlo twisting from his side to his back was the agent that roused Geoffrey Harrison from sleep. As soon as he woke the bite of the wire at his wrists and ankles was sharp. The first, instinctive stretch of his limbs tautened the flex, dug the knots into the underflesh of his wrists and ankles. A man who awakens in hell, who has purchased a great vengeance. Nothing but the bloody pain, first sensation, first thought, first recollection.
God, the morning that I die.
The mental process that became a physical happening, and his body cowed to a foetal position of fear. No protection, nothing to hide behind, nothing to squirm to. The morning that I die. He felt the tremble and the shudder take him, and the awareness was overwhelming. God, the morning that I die.
The first precious beginnings of the day were seeping into the wood. Not the sunlight, but its outriders in the grey pastel that permitted him to detect the lines of the nearest tree-trunks. This morning, with the birds singing, at nine o'clock. Another shape, suffused and vague and hard to alert himself to, as Giancarlo rose and stood above him and looked down. Giancarlo, called by Harrison's movements and inspecting the fatted goose of the feast.
'What time is it, Giancarlo?' He could hear the watch ticking on his wrist, could not see it
'A little past four… '
The little bastard had learned the role of gaoler, thought Harrison, had taken on the courtesy of the death cell attendant.
The hushed tone, and 'Don't you worry, lad, it doesn't hurt and it's quick'. The warm eyes of sympathy. Well, that never helped a poor lad who was going to swing at nine. What do you know about that, Geoffrey? I read it. That was other people, Geoffrey, and half the fucking population saying 'And a damn good thing too'. That's for a criminal. 'No sympathy' and 'Deserves all he's getting'. That's for men who've shot policemen and raped kids.
That's not for bloody Geoffrey Harrison.
'Did you sleep?'
'Only a little.' Giancarlo spoke simply. ' It was very cold on the ground.'
' I slept very well. I didn't dream.'
Giancarlo peered down at him, the definition of his face growing with the slow coming light.
T h a t is good.'
'Are you going to get some food?' He could have kicked himself when he'd said it, could have spat on himself.
' I am not going for any f o o d… not n o w… later, later I will eat.'
Cheaper to feed one. More economic to sustain the single person family. Silly man, Geoffrey. Should have
