The Danger

by Dick Francis

  “If you care to walk off along there on your own and see if you want to, I’ll wait here.”

  Without looking at me directly she did exactly as I’d said, sliding down from the Land Rover and walking away. Her narrow figure diminished in the distance but stayed in sight, and after a fair while she came slowly back. She stopped with dry eyes at the open window beside me and said calmly, “I can’t scream. It’s pointless.”

  I got out of the Land Rover and stood on the grass near her. I said, “What is it about riding in the string which makes you feel trapped?”

  “Did Popsy say that?”

  “No, she just said you didn’t want to.”

  She leaned against the front fender of the Land Rover, not looking at me.

  “It’s nonsense,” she said. “I don’t know why. On Friday I got dressed to go. I wanted to go . . . but I felt all churned up. Breathless. Worse than before my first big race . . . but the same sort of feeling. I went downstairs, and it got much worse. Stifling. So I told Popsy I had a headache . . . which was nearly true . . . and yesterday it was just the same. I didn’t even go downstairs . . . I felt so wretched, but I just couldn’t . . .”

  I pondered, then said, “Start from getting up. Think of riding clothes. Think of the horses. Think of riding through the street. Think of everything separately, one by one, and then say at what thought you begin to feel . . . churned up.”

  She looked at me dubiously, but blinked a few times as she went through the process and then shook her head. “I don’t feel churned now. I don’t know what it is . . . I’ve thought of everything. It’s the boys.” The last three words came out as if impelled; as if unpremeditated and from the depths.

  “The boys?”

  “The lads.”

  “What about them?”

  “Their eyes.” The same erupting force.

  “If you rode at the back they wouldn’t see you,” I said.

  “I’d think of their eyes.”

  I glanced at her very troubled face. She was taking me out of my depth, I thought. She needed professional help, not my amateur common sense.

  “Why their eyes?” I said.

  “Eyes . . .” She spoke loudly, as if the words themselves demanded violence. “They watched me. I knew they did. When I was asleep. They came in and watched.”

  She turned suddenly towards the Land Rover and did actually kick the tire.

  “They came in. I know they did. I hate . . . I hate . . . I can’t bear . . . their eyes.”

  I stretched out, put my arms round her and pulled her against my chest. “Alessia . . . Alessia . . . It doesn’t matter. What if they did?”

  “I feel . . . filthy . . . dirty.”

  “A kind of rape?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “But not . . . ?”

  She shook her head silently and conclusively.

  “How do you know they came in?” I said.

  “The zip,” she said. “I told you I knew every stitch of the tent . . . I knew how many teeth in the zip. And some days, it would open higher than others. They undid the zip . . . and came in . . . and fastened it at a different level . . . six or seven teeth higher, ten lower . . . I dreaded it.”

  I stood holding her, not knowing what to say.

  “I try not to care,” she said. “But I dream . . .” She stopped for a while, then said, “I dream about eyes.”

  I rubbed one of my hands over her back, trying to comfort.

  “Tell me what else,” I said. “What else is unbearable?”

  She stood quiet for so long with her nose against my chest that I thought there might be nothing, but finally, with a hard sort of coldness, she said, “I wanted him to like me. I wanted to please him. I told Papa and Pucinelli that his voice was cold . . . but that was . . . at the beginning. When he came each time with the microphone, to make the tapes, I was . . . ingratiating.” She paused. “I . . . loathe . . . myself. I am . . . hateful . . . and dreadfully . . . unbearably . . . ashamed.”

  She stopped talking and simply stood there, and after a while I said, “Very often people who are kidnapped grow to like their kidnappers. It isn’t even unusual. It’s as if a normal human being can’t live without some sort of friendly contact. In ordinary criminal prisons, the prisoners and warders grow into definitely friendly relationships. When a lot of hostages are taken, some of them always make friends with one or more of the terrorists holding them. Hostages sometimes beg the police who are rescuing them not to harm their kidnappers. You mustn’t, you shouldn’t, blame yourself for trying to make the man with the microphone like you. It’s normal. Usual. And . . . how did he respond?”

  She swallowed. “He called me . . . dear girl.”

  “Dear girl,” I said myself, meaning it. “Don’t feel guilty. You are normal. Everyone tries to befriend their kidnappers to some extent, and it’s better that they should.”

  “Why?” The word was muffled, but passionate.

  “Because antagonism begets antagonism. A kidnapped person who can make the kidnappers like her is much safer. They’ll be less likely to harm her . . . and more careful, for her own sake, not to let her see their faces. They wouldn’t want to kill someone they’d grown to like.”

  She shivered.

  “And as for coming in to see you when you were asleep . . . maybe they looked on you with friendship . . . maybe they wanted to be sure you were all right, as they couldn’t see you when you were awake.”

  I wasn’t sure whether I believed that last bit myself, but it was at least possible: and the rest was all true.

  “The lads are not the kidnappers,” I said.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Just other men.”

  She nodded her smothered head.

  “It’s not the lads’ eyes you dream about.”

  “No.” She sighed deeply.

  “Don’t ride with the string until you feel O.K. about it. Popsy will arrange a horse for you up on the Downs.” I paused. “Don’t worry if tomorrow you still feel churned up. Knowing the reason for the feelings doesn’t necessarily stop them coming back.”

  She stood quiet for a while and then disconnected herself slowly from my embrace, and without looking at my face said, “I don’t know where I’d be without you. In the nut-house, for sure.”

  “One day,” I said mildly, “I’ll come to the Derby and cheer you home.”

  She smiled and climbed into the Land Rover, but instead of pointing its nose homewards I drove on over the hill to the schooling ground.

  “Where are you going?” she said.

  “Nowhere. Just here.” I stopped the engine and put on the brakes. The flights of hurdles and fences lay neat and deserted on the grassy slope, and I made no move to get out of the car.

  “I’ve been talking to Pucinelli,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  “He’s found the second place, where you were kept those last few days.”

  “Oh.” A small voice, but not panic-stricken.

  “Does the Hotel Vistaclara mean anything to you?”

  She frowned, thought, and shook her head.

  “It’s up in the mountains,” I said. “Above the place called Viralto, that you told me about. Pucinelli found the green tent there, folded, not set up, in a loft over a disused stable yard.”

  “Stables?” She was surprised.

  “Mm.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “There was no smell of horses.”

  “They’ve been gone five years,” I said. “But you said you could smell bread. The hotel makes its own, in the kitchens. The only thing is . . .” I paused, “. . . why just bread? Why not all cooking smells?”

  She looked forward through the windscreen to the peaceful rolling terrain and breathed deeply of the sweet fresh air, and calmly, without strain or tears, explained.

  “At night when I had eaten the meal one of them would come and tell me to put the dish and the bucket out through the zip. I could never hear them coming because
of the music. I only knew they were there when they spoke.” She paused. “Anyway, in the morning when I woke they would come and tell me to take the bucket in again . . . and at that point it would be clean and empty.” She stopped again. “It was then that I could smell the bread, those last few days. Early . . . When the bucket was empty.” She fell silent and then turned her head to look at me, seeking my reaction.

  “Pretty miserable for you,” I said.

  “Mm.” She half smiled. “It’s incredible . . . but I got used to it. One wouldn’t think one could. But it was one’s own smell, after all . . . and after the first few days I hardly noticed it.” She paused again. “Those first days I thought I’d go mad. Not just from anxiety and guilt and fury . . . but from boredom. Hour after hour of nothing but that damned music . . . no one to talk to, nothing to see . . . I tried exercises, but day after day I grew less fit and more dopey, and after maybe two or three weeks I just stopped. The days seemed to run into each other, then. I just lay on the foam mattress and let the music wash in and out, and I thought about things that had happened in my life, but they seemed far away and hardly real. Reality was the bucket and pasta and a polystyrene cup of water twice a day . . . and hoping that the man with the microphone would think I was behaving well . . . and like me.”

  “Mm,” I said. “He liked you.”

  “Why do you think so?” she asked, and I saw that curiously she seemed glad at the idea, that she still wanted her kidnapper to approve of her, even though she was free.

  “I think,” I said, “that if you and he had felt hate for each other he wouldn’t have risked the second ransom. He would have been very much inclined to cut his losses. I’d guess he couldn’t face the thought of killing you . . . because he liked you.” I saw the deep smile in her eyes and decided to straighten things up in her perspective. No good would come of her falling in love with her captor in fantasy or in retrospect. “Mind you,” I said, “he gave your father an appalling time and stole nearly a million pounds from your family. We may thank God he liked you, but it doesn’t make him an angel.”

  “Oh . . .” She made a frustrated, very Italian gesture with her hands. “Why are you always so . . . so sensible?”

  “Scottish ancestors,” I said. “The dour sort, not the fire-brands. They seem to take over and spoil the fun when the quarter of me that’s Spanish aches for flamenco.”

  She put her head on one side, half laughing. “That’s the most I’ve ever heard you say about yourself.”

  “Stick around,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose you believe it,” she said, sighing deeply and stretching her limbs to relax them, “but I am after all beginning to feel fairly sane.”

  9

  July crept out in a drizzle and August swept in with a storm in a week of little activity in the London office but a good deal in Italy.

  Pucinelli telephoned twice to report no progress and a third time, ecstatically, to say that Cenci’s offer of a reward had borne results. The offer, along with the kidnappers’ pictures, had been posted in every possible public place throughout Bologna and the whole province around; and an anonymous woman had telephoned to Paolo Cenci himself to say she knew where a part of the ransom could be found.

  “Signor Cenci said she sounded spiteful. A woman scorned. She told him it would serve ‘him’ right to lose his money. She wouldn’t say who ‘he’ was. In any case, tomorrow Signor Cenci and I go to where she says the money can be found, and if she is right, Signor Cenci will post a reward to her. The address to send the reward is a small hotel, not high class. Perhaps we will be able to find the woman and question her.”

  On the following evening he sounded more moderately elated.

  “It was true we found some of the money,” he said. “But unfortunately not very much, when you think of the whole amount.”

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Fifty million lire.”

  “That’s . . . er . . .” I did rapid sums, “nearly twenty-five thousand pounds. Hm . . . The loot of a gang member, not a principal, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I agree.”

  “Where did you find it?” I asked.

  “In a luggage locker at the railway station. The woman told Signor Cenci the number of the locker, but we had no key. We had a specialist to open the lock for us.”

  “So whoever left the money thinks it’s still there?”

  “Yes. It is indeed still there, but we have had the lock altered. If anyone tries to open it, he will have to ask for another key. Then we catch him. We’ve set a good trap. The money is in a soft travel bag, with a zip. The numbers on the notes match the photographs. There is no doubt it is part of the ransom. Signor Cenci has sent a reward of five million lire and we will try to catch the woman when she collects it. He is disappointed, though, as I am, that we didn’t find more.”

  “Better than nothing,” I said. “Tell me how you get on.”

  There were two usual ways to deal with “hot” money, of which the simplest was to park the loot somewhere safe until the fiercest phase of investigation was over. Crooks estimated the safety margin variously from a month to several years, and were then fairly careful to spend the money far from home, usually on something which could instantly be resold.

  The second, more sophisticated method, most used for large amounts, was to sell the hot money to a sort of fence, a professional who would buy it for about two thirds of its face value, making his profit by floating it in batches onto the unsuspecting public via the operators of casinos, markets, fairgrounds, racecourses or anywhere else where large amounts of cash changed hands quickly. By the time the hot money percolated back to far-flung banks the source of it couldn’t be traced.

  Some of Paolo Cenci’s million quid could have been lopped by a third in such laundering, some could have been split between an unknown number of gang members, and some could have been spent in advance on outgoings, such as renting the suburban house. The expenses of a successful kidnapping were high, the ransom never wholly profit. All the same, despite its risks, it was the fastest way to a fortune yet devised, and in Italy particularly the chances of being detected and caught were approximately five percent. In a country where no woman could walk in the streets of Rome with a handbag over her arm for fear of having it razored off by thieves on motorcycles, kidnapping was regarded as a fact of life, like ulcers.

  Pucinelli telephoned two days later in a good mood to report that the woman who had collected the reward had been followed home without challenge and had proved to be the wife of a man who had served two terms in jail for raids on liquor stores. Neighbors said the man was known for chasing girls, his wife hot-bloodedly jealous. Pucinelli thought that an arrest and search of the man on suspicion would present no problems, and the next evening reported that the search had revealed the luggage locker ticket in the man’s wallet. The man, identified as Giovanni Santo, was now in a cell and pouring out information like lava from a volcano.

  “He is stupid,” Pucinelli said disparagingly. “We’ve told him he will spend his whole life in jail if he doesn’t cooperate, and he’s shit scared. He has told us the names of all the kidnappers. There were seven of them altogether. Two we already have, of course, and now Santo. At this minute we have men picking up three others.”

  “And Giuseppe?” I asked, as he stopped.

  “Giuseppe,” he said reluctantly, “is not one of them. Giuseppe is the seventh. He was the leader. He recruited the others, who were all criminals before. Santo doesn’t know Giuseppe’s real name, nor where he came from, nor where he’s gone. I’m afraid in this instance Santo speaks the truth.”

  “You’ve done marvels,” I said.

  He coughed modestly. “I’ve been lucky. And Andrew . . . between us privately I will admit it . . . it has been most helpful to talk to you. It clears things in my mind to tell them to you. Very odd.”

  “Carry right on,” I said.

  “Yes. It’s a pleasure,” he said; and he telephone
d three days later to say they now had all six gang members in custody and had recovered a further hundred million lire of Cenci’s money.

  “We have also taken recordings of all six men and had voiceprints made and analyzed, but none of them is the voice on the tapes. And none of them is the man you saw, of whom we have the picture.”

  “Giuseppe,” I said. “On the tapes.”

  “Yes,” he agreed gloomily. “None of them knew him before. He recruited one as a stranger in a bar, and that one recruited the other five. We will convict the six, there’s no doubt, but it’s hollow without Giuseppe.”

  “Mm.” I hesitated. “Enrico, isn’t it true that some of the students who joined the Red Brigades in their hot-headed youth grew out of it and became ordinary blameless citizens?”

  “I’ve heard so, but of course they keep the past secret.”

  “Well . . . it just struck me a day or two ago that Giuseppe might have learned the techniques of kidnapping from the Red Brigades, when he was a student, perhaps, or even as a member.”

  Pucinelli said doubtfully, “Your Identikit pictures don’t match anyone with a criminal record.”

  “I just wondered if it might be worthwhile to show those pictures to ex-students of about the same age, say twenty-five to forty, at perhaps some sort of students’ reunion. It’s a faint chance, anyway.”

  “I’ll try,” he said. “But the Red Brigades, as I’m sure you know, are organized in small cells. People in one cell can’t identify people in other cells because they never meet them.”

  “I know it’s a long shot and involves a lot of probably fruitless work,” I agreed.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “O.K.”

  “All the universities are closed for summer vacations.”

  “So they are,” I said. “But in the autumn . . .”

  “I will think about it,” he said again. “Goodnight, friend. Sleep well.”

  ALESSIA HEARD FROM her father about the recovery of some of the ransom and from me of the capture of six of the kidnappers.