by Dick Francis
“There are quite a few of us . . . round the world.”
“What do you call yourself, if people ask?”
“Safety consultant, usually. Or insurance consultant. Depends how I feel.”
She smiled. “They both sound dull and worthy.”
“Yes . . . er . . . that’s the aim.”
We watched Alessia come back up the hill, cantering now, but slowly, and standing in the stirrups. Though of course I’d seen them do it, I’d never consciously noted before then that that was how jockeys rode, not sitting in the saddle but tipped right forward so their weight could be carried over the horse’s shoulder, not on the lower spine. Alessia stopped beside Bob, who took hold of the horse’s reins, and she dismounted by lifting her right leg forward over the horse’s neck and dropping lightly, feet together, to the ground: a movement as graceful and springy as ballet.
A different dimension, I thought. The expertise of the professional. Amazing to the non-able, like seeing an artist drawing.
She patted the horse’s neck, thanked Bob and came over to us, slight in shirt and jeans, smiling.
“Thanks,” she said to Popsy.
“Tomorrow?” Popsy said. “With the string?”
Alessia nodded, rubbing the backs of her thighs. “I’m as unfit as marshmallow.”
With calmness she watched the final trio of horses school, and then Popsy drove us again erratically back to her house, while the horses walked, to cool down.
Over coffee in the kitchen Alessia rewrote the lists of the music she’d listened to so often, a job she repeated out of generosity, and disliked.
“I could hum all the other tunes that I don’t know the titles of,” she said. “But frankly I don’t want to hear them ever again.” She pushed the list across: Verdi, as before, and modern gentle songs like “Yesterday” and “Send in the Clowns,” more British and American in origin than Italian.
“I did think of something else,” she said hesitantly. “I dreamed it, the night before last. You know how muddled things are in dreams . . . I was dreaming I was walking out to a race. I had silks on, pink and green checks, and I know I was supposed to be going to ride, but I couldn’t find the parade ring, and I asked people, but they didn’t know, they were all catching trains or something and then someone said, ‘At least an hour to Viralto’ and I woke up. I was sweating and my heart was thumping, but it hadn’t been a nightmare, not a bad one anyway. Then I thought that I’d actually heard someone say ‘at least an hour to Viralto’ at that minute, and I was afraid there was someone in the room . . . It was horrible, really.” She put a hand on her forehead, as if the clamminess still stood there. “But of course, when I woke up properly, there I was in Popsy’s spare bedroom, perfectly safe. But my heart was still thumping.” She paused, then said, “I think I must have heard one of them say that, when I was almost asleep.”
“This dream,” I asked slowly, considering. “Was it in English . . . or Italian?”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “I was riding in England. Pink and green checks . . . one of Mike Noland’s horses. I asked the way to the parade ring in English . . . they were English people, but that voice saying ‘at least an hour to Viralto,’ that was Italian.” She frowned. “How awfully odd. I translated it into English in my mind, when I woke up.”
“Do you often go to Viralto?” I asked.
“No. I don’t even know where it is.”
“I’ll tell Pucinelli,” I said, and she nodded consent.
“He found the house you were kept in most of the time,” I said neutrally.
“Did he?” It troubled her. “I . . . I don’t want . . .”
“You don’t want to hear about it?”
“No.”
“All right.”
She sighed with relief. “You never make me face things. I’m very grateful. I feel . . . I still feel I could be pushed over a cliff . . . break down, I suppose . . . if too much is forced on me. And it’s absolutely ridiculous—I didn’t cry at all, not once, when I was . . . in that tent.”
“That’s thoroughly normal, and you’re doing fine,” I said. “And you look fabulous on a horse.”
She laughed. “God knows why it took me so long. But up on the Downs . . . such a gorgeous morning . . . I just felt . . .” She paused. “I love horses, you know. Most of them, anyway. They’re like friends . . . but they live internal lives, secret, with amazing instincts. They’re telepathic . . . I suppose I’m boring you.”
“No,” I said truthfully, and thought that it was horses, not I, who would lead her finally back to firm ground.
She came out to the car with me when I left and kissed me goodbye, cheek to cheek, as if I’d known her for years.
8
Viralto?” Pucinelli said doubtfully. “It’s a village off one of the roads into the mountains. Very small. No roads in the village, just alleyways between houses. Are you sure she said Viralto?”
“Yes,” I said. “Is it one of those hilltop villages with houses all stuck together with red tiled roofs and blinding white walls without windows? All on slopes, shut in and secret?”
“Like that, yes.”
“Would it be an hour’s drive from Bologna? From the house where Alessia was kept?”
“I suppose so . . . If you knew the way. It is not on a main road.”
“And . . . er . . . would it have a bakery?”
After the faintest of pauses he said smoothly, “My men will be up there at once, searching thoroughly. But Andrew . . . it would not be usual to take a kidnapped person there. In these villages everyone knows everyone. There is no room to hide a stranger.”
“Try Viralto on the kidnapper who told you about the first house,” I said.
“You can be sure I will,” he said happily. “He has now confessed that he was one of the four people in masks who abducted Alessia. He also sometimes sat in the house at night to guard her, but he says he never spoke to her, she was always asleep.” He paused. “I have asked him several times every day for the name of the man in the drawings. He says the man’s name is Giuseppe. He says that’s what he called him and he doesn’t know any other name for him. This may be true. Maybe not. I keep asking. Perhaps one day he will tell me different.”
“Enrico,” I said diffidently. “You are an expert investigator. I hesitate to make a suggestion . . .”
A small laugh traveled by wire from Bologna. “You don’t hesitate very often.”
“Then . . . Before you go to Viralto, shall we get Paolo Cenci to offer a reward for the recovery of any of the ransom money? Then you could take that promise and also the drawings of ‘Giuseppe’ with you . . . perhaps.”
“I will also take photographs of our kidnappers and of Alessia,” he said. “Signor Cenci will surely agree to the reward. But . . .” He paused. “Viralto . . . was only a word in a dream.”
“A word which caused sweating and an accelerated heartbeat,” I said. “It frightened her.”
“Did it? Hm. Then don’t worry, we’ll sweep through the village like the sirocco.”
“Ask the children,” I said.
He laughed. “Andrew Machiavelli Douglas . . . every child’s mother would prevent us.”
“Pity.”
When we’d finished talking I telephoned to Paolo Cenci, who said “willingly” to the reward, and then again to Pucinelli to confirm it.
“I am making a leaflet for photocopying,” he said. “The reward offer and all the pictures. I’ll call you if there are any results.”
“Call me anyway.”
“Yes, all right.”
He called me again on the following day, Friday, in the evening, while I happened to be on duty at the switchboard.
“I’ve been up in that damned village all day,” he said exhaustedly. “Those people . . . they shut their doors and their faces and their minds.”
“Nothing?” I asked with disappointment.
“There’s something,” he said, “but I don’t know what.
The name of Viralto was a shock to the kidnapper who talks, but he swears it means nothing to him. He swears it on his dead mother’s soul, but he sweats while he swears. He is lying.” He paused. “But in Viralto . . . we found nothing. We went into the bakery. We threatened the baker, who also keeps the very small grocery store. There is nowhere near his bake-house that Alessia could have been hidden, and we searched everywhere. He gave us permission. He said he had nothing to hide. He said he would have known if Alessia had been brought to the village; he says he knows everything. He says she was never there.”
“Did you believe him?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so. We asked at every single house. We did even ask one or two children. We found nothing; we heard nothing. But ...”
“But . . . ?” I prompted.
“I have looked at a map,” he said, yawning. “Viralto is up a side road which goes nowhere else. But if when one gets to the turn to Viralto one drives past it, straight on, that road goes on up into the mountains, and although it is not a good road it crosses the Apennines altogether and then descends towards Firenze. Above Viralto there is a place which used to be a castle but is now a hotel . . . People go there to walk and enjoy the mountains. Perhaps the Signorina didn’t hear enough . . . perhaps it was at least an hour to Viralto, and longer still to wherever they planned to go. Tomorrow,” he paused, sighing, “tomorrow I am off duty. Tomorrow I expect I will however be on duty after all. I’ll go up to the hotel and blow the sirocco through that.”
“Send some of your men,” I suggested.
After a definite pause he said levelly, “I have given instructions that no one is to act again in this case in any way without my being there in person.”
“Ah.”
“So I will telephone again tomorrow, if you like.”
“Tomorrow I’ll be here from four until midnight,” I said gratefully. “After that at home.”
IN THE MORNING , Saturday, Popsy telephoned while I was pottering round my apartment trying to shut my eyes to undone chores.
“Something the matter?” I asked, interpreting the tone of her hello.
“Sort of. I want your help. Can you come?”
“This instant, or will tomorrow do? I have to be in the office, really, by four.”
“On Saturday afternoon?” She sounded surprised.
“ ’Fraid so.”
She hesitated. “Alessia didn’t ride out with the string yesterday because of a headache.”
“Oh . . . and today?”
“Today she didn’t feel like it . . . Look,” she said abruptly, “I’d say the idea scared her, but how can it, you saw how she rode?” The faint exasperation in her voice came over clearly, accompanying the genuine concern. When I didn’t answer immediately she demanded, “Are you there?”
“Yes. Just thinking.” I paused. “She wasn’t scared of the horses or of riding, that’s for sure. So perhaps she’s scared . . . and I don’t think that’s the right word, but it’ll do for now . . . of being closed in . . . of being unable to escape . . . of being in the string. Like a sort of claustrophobia, even though it’s out in the open air. Perhaps that’s why she wouldn’t go in the string before, but felt all right on her own, up on the Downs.”
She thought it over, then said, “Perhaps you’re right. She certainly wasn’t happy yesterday . . . she spent most of the day in her room, avoiding me.”
“Popsy . . . don’t press her. She needs you very badly, but just as someone there . . . and undemanding. Tell her not to try to go out with the string until she can’t bear not to. Say it’s fine with you, you’re glad to have her, she can do what she likes. Would that be O.K.? Could you say that? And I’ll come down tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” she said sighing. “I’m very fond of her. Come to lunch and wave your wand.”
PUCINELLI TELEPHONED LATE in the evening with the news: good, bad, and inconclusive.
“The Signorina was right,” he said first, sounding satisfied. “She was taken past Viralto, up to the hotel. We consulted the manager. He said he knew nothing, but we could search all the outbuildings, of which there are very many, most used for storage, but once living quarters for servants and carriage horses and farm animals. In one of the old animal feed lofts we found a tent!” He broke off for dramatic effect, and I congratulated him.
“It was folded,” he said. “But when we opened it, it was the right size. Green canvas walls, gray floor-covering, just as she said. The floor of the loft itself was of wood, with hooks screwed into it, for the tent ropes.” He paused. “In the house in the suburbs, we think they tied the tent ropes to the furniture.”
“Mm,” I said encouragingly.
“The loft is in a disused stable yard which is a small distance behind the hotel kitchens. It is perhaps possible she could smell baking . . . the hotel bakes its own bread.”
“Terrific,” I said.
“No, not terrific. No one there saw her. No one is saying anything. The stores of the hotel are kept in the outbuildings and there are great stocks of household items there, also cold stores for vegetables and meat, and a huge freezer room . . . vans make deliveries to these storerooms every day. I think the Signorina could have been taken to the hotel in a van, and no one would have paid much attention. There are so many outbuildings and courtyards at the back . . . garages, garden equipment stores, furniture stores for things not in use, barns full of useless objects which used to be in the old castle, ancient cooking stoves, old baths, enough rubbish to fill a town dump. You could hide for a month there. No one would find you.”
“No luck, then, with the pictures of the kidnappers?” I said.
“No. No one knew him. No one knew the two we have in jail. No one knew anything.” He sounded tired and discouraged.
“All the same,” I said, “you do have the tent. And it’s pretty certain that one of the kidnappers knew the hotel fairly well, because that loft doesn’t sound like a place you’d find by accident.”
“No.” He paused. “Unfortunately the Vistaclara has many people staying there and working there. One of the kidnappers might have stayed there, or worked there, in the past.”
“Vistaclara . . . is that the name of the hotel?” I asked.
“Yes. In the past there were horses in the stable yard, but the manager says they no longer have them, not enough people want to ride in the hills, they prefer now to play tennis.”
Horses, I thought vaguely.
“How long ago did they have horses?” I asked.
“Before the manager came. I could ask him, if you like. He said the stable yard was empty when he started, about five years ago. It has been empty ever since. Nothing has been stored there in case one day it would again be profitable to offer riding for holidays.”
“Pony trekking,” I said.
“What?”
“Riding over hills on ponies. Very popular in some parts of Britain.”
“Oh,” he said without enthusiasm. “Anyway, there were grooms once and a riding instructor, but now they have a tennis pro instead . . . and he didn’t know any of the kidnappers in our pictures.”
“It’s a big hotel, then?” I said.
“Yes, quite. People go there in the summer, it is cooler than on the plains or on the coast. Just now there are thirty-eight on the staff besides the manager, and there are rooms for a hundred guests. Also a restaurant with views of the mountains.”
“Expensive?” I suggested.
“Not for the poor,” he said. “But also not for princes. For people who have money, but not for the jet set. A few of the guests live there always . . . old people, mostly.” He sighed. “I asked a great many questions, as you see. No one at all, however long they had lived there, or been employed there, showed any interest in our pictures.”
We talked it over for a while longer but without reaching any conclusion except that he would try “Vistaclara” on the talkative kidnapper the next day: and on that next day, Sunday, I drove down agai
n to Lambourn.
Alessia had by that time been free for nearly two weeks and had progressed to pink varnish on her nails. A lifting of the spirits, I thought.
“Did you buy the varnish?” I asked.
“No . . . Popsy did.”
“Have you been shopping yet on your own?”
She shook her head. I made no comment, but she said, “I suppose you think I ought to.”
“No. Just wondered.”
“Don’t press me.”
“No.”
“You’re as bad as Popsy.” She was looking at me almost with antagonism, something wholly new.
“I thought the varnish looked pretty,” I said equably.
She turned her head away with a frown, and I drank the coffee Popsy had poured before she’d walked out round her yard.
“Did Popsy ask you to come?” Alessia said sharply.
“She asked me to lunch, yes.”
“Did she complain that I’ve been acting like a cow?”
“No,” I said. “Have you?”
“I don’t know. I expect so. All I know is that I want to scream. To throw things. To hit someone.” She spoke indeed as if a head of steam was being held in by slightly precarious willpower.
“I’ll drive you up to the Downs.”
“Why?”
“To scream. Kick the tires. So on.”
She stood up restlessly, walked aimlessly round the kitchen and then went out of the door. I followed in a moment and found her standing halfway to the Land Rover, irresolute.
“Go on, then,” I said. “Get in.” I made a questioning gesture to where Popsy stood, pointing to the Land Rover, and from the distance collected a nod.
The keys were in the ignition. I sat in the driver’s seat and waited, and Alessia presently climbed in beside me.
“This is stupid,” she said.
I shook my head, started the engine, and drove the way we’d gone three days earlier, up to the silence and the wide sky and the calling birds.
When I braked to a stop and switched off, Alessia said defensively, “Now what? I can’t just . . . scream.”