The Danger

by Dick Francis

  The road we were on seemed deserted, running straight in each direction. There were no woods, no cover, no obstructions. We could probably be seen for miles.

  Cenci stood watching while I opened the trunk, lugged out the box, and carried it to the back of the shrine. The box had just about been big enough to contain the whole ransom, and there it stood on the dusty earth, four-square, brown and ordinary, tied about with thick string to make carrying easier, and cheerfully labeled with red. Almost a million pounds. The house on Mikonos, the snuffbox collection, his dead wife’s jewelry, the revenue forever from the olives.

  Cenci stared at it blindly for a few moments, then we both returned to the car and I reversed and drove away.

  4

  For the rest of that day, Saturday, and all Sunday, Cenci walked slowly round his estate, came heavily home, drank too much brandy and lost visible weight.

  Ilaria, silently defiant, went to the tennis club as usual. Luisa, her aunt, drifted about in her usual wispy fashion, touching things as if to make sure they were still there.

  I drove to Bologna, sent off the films, washed the car. Lorenzo still breathed precariously on his machines and in the meager suburban street the two kidnappers remained barricaded in the third-floor apartment, with talk going on from both sides, but no action, except a delivery of milk for the baby and bread and sausage for the others.

  On the Sunday evening Ilaria came into the library where I was watching the news on television. The scene in the street looked almost exactly the same, except that there was no crowd, long discouraged from lack of excitement, and perhaps fewer fawn uniforms. The television coverage had become perfunctory: repetitive as-you-were sentences only.

  “Do you think they’ll release her?” Ilaria said, as the screen switched away to politicians.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “When?”

  “Can’t tell.”

  “Suppose they’ve told the carabinieri they’ll keep her until those men in the flat go free. Suppose the ransom isn’t enough.”

  I glanced at her. She’d spoken not with dread but as if the question didn’t concern her beyond a certain morbid interest. Her face was unstudiedly calm. She appeared really not to care.

  “I talked to Enrico Pucinelli this morning,” I said. “By then they hadn’t said anything like that.”

  She made a small noncommittal puffing noise through her nose and changed the television channel to a tennis match, settling to watch with concentration.

  “I’m not a bitch, you know,” she said suddenly. “I can’t help it if I don’t fall down and kiss the ground she walks on, like everyone else.”

  “And six weeks is a long time to keep up the hair-tearing?”

  “God,” she said, “you’re on the ball. And don’t think I’m not glad you’re here. Otherwise he would have leaned on me for everything he gets from you, and I’d have ended up despising him.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes had been on the tennis throughout.

  “How would you behave,” I said, “if you had a son, and he was kidnapped?”

  The eyes came round to my face. “You’re a righteous sod,” she said.

  I smiled faintly. She went resolutely back to the tennis, but where her thoughts were, I couldn’t tell.

  Ilaria spoke perfect idiomatic English, as I’d been told Alessia did also, thanks to the British widow who had managed the Cenci household for many years after the mother’s death. Luisa, Ilaria, and Alessia ran things between them nowadays, and the cook in exasperation had complained to me that nothing got done properly since dear Mrs. Blackett had retired to live with her brother in Eastbourne, England.

  The next morning, during the drive to the office, Cenci said, “Turn round, Andrew. Take me home. It’s no good, I can’t work. I’ll sit there staring at the walls. I hear people talk but I don’t listen to what they say. Take me home.”

  I said neutrally, “It might be worse at home.”

  “No. Turn round. I can’t face a new week in the office. Not today.”

  I turned the car and drove back to the villa, where he telephoned to his secretary not to expect him.

  “I can’t think,” he said to me, “except of Alessia. I think of her as she was as a little girl, and at school, and learning to ride. She was always so neat, so small, so full of life . . .” He swallowed, turned away and walked into the library, and in a few seconds I heard bottle clink against glass.

  After a while I went after him.

  “Let’s play backgammon,” I said.

  “I can’t concentrate.”

  “Try.” I got out the board and set up the pieces, but the moves he made were mechanical and without heart. He did nothing to capitalize on my shortcomings, and after a while simply fell to staring into space, as he’d done for hour after hour since we’d left the money.

  At about eleven the telephone at his elbow brought him out of it, but sluggishly.

  “Hello? . . . Yes, Cenci speaking . . .” He listened briefly and then looked at the receiver with an apathetic frown before putting it back in its cradle.

  “What was it?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Nothing much. Something about my goods being ready, and to collect them. I don’t know what goods . . . he rang off before I could ask.”

  I breathed deeply. “Your telephone’s still tapped,” I said.

  “Yes, but what’s that . . .” His voice died as his eyes widened. “Do you think . . . ? Do you really?”

  “We could see,” I said. “Don’t bank on anything yet. What did he sound like?”

  “A gruff voice.” He was uncertain. “Not the usual one.”

  “Well . . . Let’s try, anyway. Better than sitting here.”

  “But where? He didn’t say where.”

  “Perhaps . . . where we left the ransom. Logical place.”

  Hope began swelling fast in his expression and I said hastily, “Don’t expect anything. Don’t believe. You’ll never be able to stand it, if she isn’t there. He may mean somewhere else . . . but I think we should try there first.”

  He tried to take a grip on things but was still hectically optimistic. He ran through the house to where the car stood waiting near the back door, where I’d parked it. Putting on my cap I followed him at a walk, to find him beckoning frantically and telling me to hurry. I climbed behind the wheel stolidly and thought that someone had known Cenci was at home when he was normally in the office. Perhaps his office had said so . . . or perhaps there was still a watcher. In any case, I reckoned that until Alessia was safely home, a chauffeur in all things was what I needed to be.

  “Do hurry,” Cenci said. I drove out of the gates without rush. “For God’s sake, man . . .”

  “We’ll get there. Don’t hope . . .”

  “I can’t help it.”

  I drove faster than usual, but it seemed an eternity to him; and when we pulled up by the shrine there was no sign of his daughter.

  “Oh, no . . . Oh, no.” His voice was cracking. “I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  I looked at him anxiously, but it was normal crushing grief, not a heart attack, not a fit.

  “Wait,” I said, getting out of the car. “I’ll make sure.”

  I walked round to the back of the shrine, to the spot where we’d left the ransom, and found her there, unconscious, curled like a fetus, wrapped in a gray plastic raincoat.

  FATHERS ARE ODD. The paramount emotion filling Paolo Cenci’s mind for the rest of that day was not joy that his beloved daughter was alive, safe, and emerging unharmed from a drugged sleep, but fear that the press would find out she had been more or less naked.

  “Promise you won’t say, Andrew. Not to anyone. Not at all.”

  “I promise.”

  He made me promise at least seven separate times, though in any case it wasn’t necessary. If anyone told, it would be Alessia herself.

  Her lack of clothes had disturbed him greatly,
especially as he and I had discovered when we tried to pick her up that her arms weren’t through the sleeves of the raincoat, and the buttons weren’t buttoned. The thin gray covering had slid right off.

  She had the body of a child, I thought. Smooth skin, slender limbs, breasts like buds. Cenci had strangely been too embarrassed to touch her, and it had been I, the all-purpose advisor, who’d steered her arms through the plastic and fastened her more discreetly inside the folds. She had been light to carry to the car, and I’d lain her on her side on the rear seat, her knees bent, her curly head resting on my rolled-up jacket.

  Cenci sat beside me in front: and it was then that he’d started exacting the promise. When we reached the villa he hurried inside to reappear with a blanket, and I carried her up to her half-acre bedroom in woolly decency.

  Ilaria and Luisa were nowhere to be found. Cenci discarded the cook as too talkative and finally asked in a stutter if I would mind very much substituting clothes for the raincoat while he called the doctor. As I’d seen her already once, he said. As I was sensible. Astonished but obliging I unearthed a shiftlike dress and made the exchange, Alessia sleeping peacefully throughout.

  She was more awkward than anything else. I pulled the blue knitted fabric over her head, fed her hands through the armholes, tugged the hem down to her knees and concentrated moderately successfully on my own nonarousal. Then I laid her on top of the bedclothes and covered her from the waist down with the blanket. Her pulse remained strong and regular, her skin cool, her breathing easy: sleeping pills, probably, I thought; nothing worse.

  Her thin face was calm, without strain, long lashes lying in half-moon fringes on taut cheeks. Strong eyebrows, pale lips, hollows along the jaw. Hair tousled, clearly dirty. Let her sleep, I thought: she’d have little peace when she woke up.

  I went downstairs and found Cenci again drinking brandy, standing up.

  “Is she all right?” he said.

  “Fine. Just fine.”

  “It’s a miracle.”

  “Mm.”

  He put down the glass and began to weep. “Sorry. Can’t help it,” he said.

  “It’s natural.”

  He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Do all parents weep?”

  “Yes.”

  He put in some more work with the handkerchief, sniffed a bit, and said, “You lead a very odd life, don’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Don’t say she had no clothes on. Promise me, Andrew.”

  “I promise.”

  I said I’d have to tell Pucinelli she was safe, and, immediately alarmed, he begged for the promise again. I gave it without impatience, because stress could come out in weird ways and the return of the victim was never the end of it.

  Pucinelli was fortunately on duty in the ambulance, though presumably I could have spread the news directly via the wiretappers.

  “She’s home,” I said laconically. “I’m in the villa. She’s upstairs.”

  “Alessia?” Disbelief, relief, a shading of suspicion.

  “Herself. Drugged but unharmed. Don’t hurry, she’ll probably sleep for hours. How’s the siege going?”

  “Andrew!” The beginnings of exasperation. “What’s been going on?”

  “Will you be coming here yourself?”

  A short pause came down the line. He’d told me once that I always put suggestions into the form of questions, and I supposed that it was true that I did. Implant the thought, seek the decision. He knew the tap was on the telephone, he’d ordered it himself, with every word recorded. He would guess there were things I might tell him privately.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be coming.”

  “And of course you’ll have a great lever now with those two kidnappers in the flat, won’t you? And . . . um . . . will you bring the ransom money straight here when you lay your hands on it? It does of course belong to Signor Cenci.”

  “Of course,” he said dryly. “But it may not be my decision.”

  “Mm. Well . . . I photographed all the notes, of course.”

  A pause. “You’re wicked, you know that?”

  “Things have disappeared out of police custody before now.”

  “You insult the carabinieri!” He sounded truly affronted, loyally angry.

  “Certainly not. Police stations are not banks. I am sure the carabinieri would be pleased to be relieved of the responsibility of guarding so much money.”

  “It is evidence.”

  “The rest of the kidnappers, of course, are still free, and no doubt still greedy. The money could be held safe from them under an official seal in a bank of Signor Cenci’s choosing.”

  A pause. “It’s possible that I may arrange it,” he said stiffly, not quite forgiving. “No doubt I will see you at the villa.”

  I put the telephone down with a rueful smile. Pucinelli himself I trusted, but not all law-enforcers automatically. In South American countries particularly, where I had worked several times, kidnappers regularly bribed or threatened policemen to look the wrong way, a custom scarcely unknown elsewhere. Kidnappers had no scruples and seldom any mercy, and many a policeman had had to choose between his duty and the safety of wife and children.

  Within ten minutes Pucinelli was back on the line.

  “Just to tell you . . . things are moving here. Come if you want. Come into the street from the west, on this side. I’ll make sure you get through.”

  “Thanks.”

  The partners wouldn’t have approved, but I went. I’d studied many case histories of sieges and been to lectures by people involved in some of them, but I’d never been on the spot before at first hand: too good a chance to miss. I changed from Spanish chauffeur to nondescript onlooker, borrowed the family’s runabout, and was walking along the Bologna street in record time.

  Pucinelli had been as good as his word: a pass awaiting me at the first barrier saw me easily through to the still-parked ambulance. I went into it as I’d left, through the nearside passenger door, and found Pucinelli there with his engineer and three men in city suits.

  “You came,” he said.

  “You’re kind.”

  He gave me a small smile and briefly introduced me to the civilians: negotiator, psychiatrist, psychiatrist.

  “These two medical gentlemen have been advising us about the changing mental state of the kidnappers.” Pucinelli spoke formally; they nodded gravely back.

  “Mostly their mental state has been concerned with the baby,” Pucinelli said. “The baby has cried a lot. Apparently the milk we sent in upset its stomach even worse.”

  As if on cue the bug on the apartment produced the accelerating wail of the infant getting newly into its stride, and from the faces of the five men in front of me it wasn’t only the kidnappers who were finding the sound a frazzle.

  “Forty minutes ago,” Pucinelli said, turning down the baby’s volume, “the deep-voiced kidnapper telephoned here and said they would come out if certain conditions were met. No airplane . . . they’ve abandoned that. They want only to be sure they aren’t shot. In about twenty minutes . . . that’s one hour from when they telephoned . . . they say the mother will leave with the baby. Then one of the kidnappers will come out. There are to be no carabinieri anywhere in the apartments. The stairs must be clear, also the front door and the pavement outside. The mother and baby will come out into the road, followed by the first kidnapper. He will have no gun. If he is taken peacefully, one of the children will leave, and after an interval, the father. If the second kidnapper is then sure he will be safe, he will come out with the second child in his arms. No gun. We are to arrest him quietly.”

  I looked at him. “Did they discuss all this between themselves? Did you hear them plan it, on the bug?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “They telephoned you very soon after Alessia was home.”

  “Suspiciously soon.”

  “You’ll look for the radio?” I said.

  “Yes.” H
e sighed. “We have been monitoring radio frequencies these past few days. We’ve had no results, but I have thought once or twice before this that the kidnappers were being instructed.”

  Instructed, I thought, by a very cool and bold intelligence. A pity such a brain was criminal.

  “What do they plan to do with the money?” I asked.

  “Leave it in the apartment.”

  I glanced at the screen which had shown the whereabouts of the homer in the ransom suitcase, but it was dark. I leaned over and flicked the on-off switch, and the trace obligingly appeared, efficient and steady. The suitcase, at least, was still there.

  I said, “I’d like to go up there, as Signor Cenci’s representative, to see that it’s safely taken care of.”

  With suppressed irritation he said, “Very well.”

  “It’s a great deal of money,” I said reasonably.

  “Yes . . . yes, I suppose it is.” He spoke grudgingly, partly, I guessed, because he was himself honest, partly because he was a communist. So much wealth in one man’s hands offended him, and he wouldn’t care if Cenci lost it.

  Across the street the apartment’s windows were still closed. All the windows of all the apartments were closed, although the day was hot.

  “Don’t they ever open them?” I asked.

  Pucinelli glanced across at the building. “The kidnappers open the windows sometimes for a short while when we switch off the searchlights at dawn. The blinds are always drawn, even then. There are no people now in any of the other apartments. We moved them for their own safety.”

  Down on the road there was little movement. Most of the official cars had been withdrawn, leaving a good deal of empty space. Four carabinieri crouched with guns behind the pair still parked, their bodies tense. Metal barriers down the street kept a few onlookers at bay, and the television van looked closed. One or two photographers sat on the ground in its shade, drinking beer from cans. On the bug the colicky crying had stopped, but no one seemed to be saying very much. It was siesta, after all.