The fire brigade had turned out in a rush with their single rickety fire engine, a dozen scared Italians and Arabs clinging to the sides. But the appliance had a semi-flat tyre, the hoses were perished, and a bucket chain had to be formed from the sea. Half the town and half the Italian garrison was involved, men in uniform standing in line next to women and teenagers and Zuqi Arabs who depended on the factory for a livelihood. For a while they seemed to have the blaze under control and an attempt was made to salvage some of the produce, so that the streets around were full of dark figures hurrying away under the weight of chairs, tables and sideboards.
They were just winning the battle when the wind got up and started to fan the blaze and in no time the place went up properly, because, in addition to wood, the factory contained paint, thinners and varnish which fuelled the flames so that they roared skywards, drawing in gusts of air like a furnace to drag in loose sheets of paper, dust, leaves and scraps of rubbish. The fronds of nearby palms streamed out, the trees themselves bending towards the blaze. Finally the RAF appeared and started to bomb the fire. It wasn’t exactly a good night for Scarlatti.
With Zuq a little more battered than it had been, its white walls scorched and scarred, and the charred remains of the furniture factory stark against the sky, 64 Light Vehicle Repair Unit returned to their camp a little depressed that they had not been swept to safety.
Though they didn’t know it, they had been lucky because it hadn’t been a good night for Faiani either. One of the last shells that had landed had destroyed what had once been the office of the Director of Harbour Control.
Faiani heard about it as he and Scarlatti worked over the returns to find out what damage had been done. Disappearing on the excuse that his leg was giving him trouble and he needed to see a doctor, Faiani headed for the harbour.
The whitewashed building that had housed the police was a pile of wreckage, with the remains of office furniture still smouldering with the papers which had once been records and were now fluttering in the hot breeze among the debris. There was no sign of any of the occupants.
‘Shell,’ one of the men clearing a path past the ruins told Faiani. ‘Last night.’
‘What happened to them?’
The soldier shrugged. ‘I don’t think they were killed,’ he said. ‘I saw them being pushed into an ambulance.’
Climbing into the little Fiat he drove, Faiani headed for the hospital, only to find that Captain Bianchi had already been put aboard a ship for Italy, and he limped slowly back to his car, deep in thought. It was going to take a day or two before anyone else was appointed to take Bianchi’s place and another few days before his successor could set himself up with a base and an office and a squad of men. By that time the group calling themselves 64 Light Vehicle Repair Unit might well have disappeared.
Faiani frowned. It seemed to him that the best thing he could do was make the investigations himself. He’d had the training and, with that idiot Scarlatti sending supplies as if he and the man who called himself Count Barda were bosom friends, it wouldn’t be difficult to look around occasionally. In the meantime, he would try to find out something about the so-called Barda. He could, he realized, be wrong and could easily make a fool of himself. And if he did, then he could be in trouble. People with titles had influence and he could well be making a rod for his own back. But Faiani was a dogged young man who had grown up in a poor home in Naples and had a chip on his shoulder that prevented him ever being too fond of people who were fit and whole and wealthy. He decided he would move with care. The first thing would be to contact some old colleagues in the police department in Naples and get them to send him some details about Count Barda, because he still had a feeling that the man he’d spoken to wasn’t Count Barda.
As the day wore on, Dampier’s group began to recover their spirits. They hadn’t been hurt and no one had so far shown any interest in them, and they settled themselves once more to wait. Nevertheless it occurred to Rafferty that near the harbour wasn’t exactly the best place to be and he found a new site at the other side of the town alongside an old Arab cemetery with its curious coffin-like graves carrying a stone at both head and foot. There were one or two palms nearby and a few spiky-leaved cacti, with here and there bunches of whitened thorn trees and scrubby bushes bearing an aromatic scent. Though they missed the cooler breezes from the sea, it was far from unpleasant.
Their nearest neighbour was a nomad Arab encampment among the dunes, a dozen low, square black tents with dogs, asses, camels, chickens, goats and sheep. The children all had flies round their eyes and nostrils and Dampier’s group saw sleeping babies with their faces covered with them. The women peeped shyly at them from behind the men, who came on their flat horny feet to exchange midget-sized eggs, fruit and goats’ cheese for coffee and sugar. It was noticeable that inside the Arabs’ tents on the usual dusty rugs there were one or two surprisingly new armchairs, a little scorched perhaps but serviceable nevertheless, and that their owners were keeping their chickens in
