by Dick Francis
Dominic shook his head: a fraction only, but a definite negative.
“Was his name David?”
Dominic shook his head.
“Was his name Giuseppe?”
Dominic’s eyes didn’t waver. He shook his head.
I thought a bit. “Was his name Peter?”
Dominic did nothing except look at me.
“Was his name Dominic?” I said.
Dominic almost smiled. He shook his head.
“Was his name John?”
He shook his head.
“Was his name Peter?”
Dominic was still for a long time; then, slowly, very slightly, he nodded.
“Who’s Peter?” Alessia asked.
“The man who took him for a ride in a boat.”
Dominic stretched out a hand and briefly touched the pictured face with one finger before drawing back.
“Ciao bambino,” he said again, and tucked his head against his mother.
One thing was crystal clear, I thought. It wasn’t Giuseppe-Peter who had most frightened Dominic. The baby, like Alessia herself, had liked him.
EAGLER SAID, “ I thought the boy wouldn’t talk. Superintednt Rightworth told me he’d tried, but the child was in shock, and the mother was being obstructive about treatment.”
“Mm,” I said. “Still, that was yesterday. Today Dominic has positively identified the photostat as being one of the kidnappers, known to him as Peter.”
“How reliable do you think the kid is?”
“Very. He certainly knew him.”
“All right. And this Peter—and I suppose he’s the one the kidnappers are talking about on those tapes—he’s Italian?”
“Yes. Dominic had learned two words from him: ciao bambino.”
“Luv-a-duck,” Eagler said quaintly.
“It seems also,” I said, “as if Giuseppe-Peter has a fondness for Verdi. Alessia Cenci said her kidnappers played three of Verdi’s operas to her, over and over. Dominic is humming ‘The Soldiers’ Chorus’ from Il Trovatore, which was one of them. Did you by any chance find a cassette player in that house?”
“Yes, we did.” He sounded as if nothing ever again would surprise him. “It was up in the room where the kid was kept. There were two tapes there, and yes, laddie, one was Verdi. Il Trovatore.”
“It’s conclusive, then, isn’t it?” I said. “We have a practitioner.”
“A what?”
“Practitioner. Sorry; it’s what in Liberty Market we call a man who kidnaps on a regular basis. Like a safe-breaker or a con-man. His work.”
“Yes,” Eagler agreed. “We have a practitioner; and we have you. I wonder if Giuseppe-Peter knows of the existence of Liberty Market.”
“His constant enemy,” I said.
Eagler almost chuckled. “I daresay you made things too hot for him in his part of Italy, flooding the place with what is obviously a recognizable portrait. It would be ironic if he’d decided to move to England and came slap up against you all over again. He’d be speechless if he knew.”
“I daresay he’ll find out,” I said. “The existence of Liberty Market isn’t a total secret, even though we don’t advertise. Any kidnapper of experience would hear of us sometime. Perhaps one of these days there’ll be a ransom demand saying no police and no Liberty Market, either.”
“I meant you, personally, laddie.”
“Oh.” I paused. “No, he wouldn’t know that. He saw me once, in Italy, but not here. He didn’t know then who I worked for. He didn’t even know I was British.”
“He’ll have a fit when he finds his picture all over England too.” Eagler sounded cheerfully smug. “Even if we don’t catch him, we’ll chase him back where he came from in no time.”
“You know,” I said tentatively, “you and Pucinelli might both flash that picture about among horse people, not just put it up in police stations. Many crooks are ostensibly sober citizens, aren’t they? Both of the kidnaps that we’re sure are his work are to do with racing. They’re the people who’d know him. Someone, somewhere, would know him. Perhaps the racing papers would print it.”
“It’s a pity I can’t compare notes with your friend Pucinelli,” Eagler said. “I sometimes think police procedures do more to prevent the exchange of information than to spread it. Even in England it’s hard enough for one county to get information from another county, let alone talk to regional coppers in Europe.”
“I don’t see why you can’t. I can tell you his phone number. You could have an interpreter this end, standing by.”
“Ring Italy? It’s expensive, laddie.”
“Ah.” I detected also in his voice the reluctance of many of the British to make overseas calls: almost as if the process itself was a dangerous and difficult adventure, not just a matter of pressing buttons.
“If I want to know anything particular,” Eagler said, “I’ll ask you to ask him. Things I learn from you come under the heading of information received, origin unspecified.”
“So glad.”
He chuckled. “We had our three kidnappers in court this morning: remanded in custody for a week. They’re still saying nothing. I’ve been letting them stew while I listened to all the tapes, but now, tonight, and with what you’ve just told me, I’ll bounce them out of their socks.”
15
Eagler opened his oysters, but they were barren of pearls. He concluded, as Pucinelli had done, that none of the arrested men had known Giuseppe-Peter before the day he recruited one of them in a pub.
“Does Giuseppe-Peter speak English?” I asked.
“Yes, apparently, enough to get by. Hewlitt understood him, right enough.”
“Who’s Hewlitt?”
“Kidnapper. The voice on the ransom tape. Voiceprints made and matched. Hewlitt has a record as long as your arm, but for burglary, not anything like this. The other two are in the same trade; housebreaking, nicking silver and antiques. They finally gave their names, once they saw we’d got them to rights. Now they’re busy shoving all the blame onto Peter, but they don’t know much about him.”
“Were they paid at all?” I asked.
“They say not, but they’re lying. They got some on account, must have. Stands to reason.”
“I suppose Giuseppe-Peter didn’t telephone the house in Itchenor, did he?”
There was dead silence from Eagler. Embarrassment, I diagnosed.
“He did,” I suggested, “and got a policeman?”
“Well . . . there was one call from someone unknown.”
“But you got a recording?”
“All he said,” said Eagler resignedly, “was ‘Hello.’ My young P.C. thought it was someone from the station and answered accordingly, and the caller rang off.”
“Can’t be helped,” I said.
“No.”
“Did Hewlitt say how Giuseppe-Peter knew of him? I mean, you can’t go up to a perfect stranger in a British pub and proposition him to kidnap.”
“On that subject Hewlitt is your proverbial silent stone. There’s no way he’s going to say who put him up. There’s some things, laddie, one just can’t find out. Let’s just say that there are a lot of Italians in London, where Hewlitt lives, and there’s no way he’s going to point the finger at any of them.”
“Mm,” I said. “I do see that.”
I TELEPHONED ALESSIA to ask how she was feeling and found her full of two concerns: the first, her own plans for a comeback race, and second, the predicament of Miranda and Dominic.
“Miranda’s so miserable and I don’t know how to help her,” she said. “John Nerrity’s being thoroughly unreasonable in every way, and he and Miranda are now sleeping in different rooms, because he won’t have Dominic sleeping in the room with them, and Dominic won’t sleep by himself.”
“Quite a problem,” I agreed.
“Mind you, I suppose it’s difficult for both of them. Dominic wakes up crying about five times every night, and won’t go to sleep again unless Miranda strokes h
im and talks to him, and she says she’s getting absolutely exhausted by it, and John is going on and on about sending Dominic to hospital.” She paused. “I can’t ask Popsy to have her here to stay. I simply don’t know what to do.”
“Hm . . . How much do you like Miranda?”
“Quite a lot. More than I expected, to be honest.”
“And Dominic?”
“He’s a sweetheart. Those terrific eyes. I love him.”
I paused, considering, and she said, “What are you thinking? What should Miranda do?”
“Is her mother still with her?”
“No. Her mother has a job and doesn’t seem to be much help.”
“Does Miranda have any money except what John gives her?”
“I don’t know. But she was his secretary.”
“Yeah. Well . . . Miranda should take Dominic to a doctor I know of, and she should go and stay for a week near someone supportive like you that she can be with for a good deal of every day. And I don’t know how much of that is possible.”
“I’ll make it possible,” Alessia said simply.
I smiled at the telephone. She sounded so whole, her own problems submerged under the tidal wave of Dominic’s.
“Don’t let Miranda mention my name to her husband in connection with any plan she makes,” I said. “I’m not in favor with him, and if he knew I’d suggested anything he’d turn it down flat.”
“But you brought Dominic back!”
“Much to his embarrassment. He’d sacked us two days earlier.”
She laughed. “All right. What’s the name of the doctor?”
I told her, and also told her I’d telephone the doctor myself, to explain the background and verify Dominic’s need.
“You’re a poppet,” Alessia said.
“Oh, sure. What was it you said about going racing?”
“I rode out with the string today and yesterday, and I can’t understand why I didn’t do it sooner. I’m riding work for Mike Noland tomorrow and he says if I’m fit and O.K. he’ll give me a ride next week at Salisbury.”
“Salisbury . . . races?” I said.
“Yes, of course.”
“And, um, do you want an audience?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You’ve got it.”
She said goodbye happily and in the evening rang me at home in my apartment.
“It’s all fixed,” she said. “Miranda said your doctor sounded a darling, and she’s taking Dominic there first thing tomorrow. Then she’s coming straight down here to Lambourn. I’ve got her a room in a cottage owned by a retired nanny, who I went to see, and who’s pleased with the whole idea, and John raised no objections, absolutely the contrary, he’s paying for everything.”
“Terrific,” I said, with admiration.
“And Popsy wants you down again. And so does Miranda. And so do I.”
“I give in, then. When?”
“Soon as you can.”
I went on the following day and also twice more during the following week. Dominic slept better because of a mild liquid sleeping draught in his nightly bottle of milk and progressed to eating chocolate drops and, later, mashed bananas. The ex-nanny patiently took away rejected scrambled eggs and fussed over Miranda in a way which would have worn my nerves thin but in that love-deprived girl produced a grateful dependency.
Alessia spent much of every day with them, going for walks, shopping in the village, all of them lunching most days with Popsy, sunbathing in the cottage garden.
“You’re a clever clogs, aren’t you?” Popsy said to me on my third visit.
“How do you mean?”
“Giving Alessia something so worthwhile to do.”
“It was accidental, really.”
“And encouraged.”
I grinned at her. “She looks great, doesn’t she?”
“Marvellous. I keep thinking about those first days when she was so deathly pale and shaky. She’s just about back to her old self now.”
“Has she driven anywhere yet, on her own?”
Popsy glanced at me. “No. Not yet.”
“One day she will.”
“And then?”
“Then she’ll fly . . . away.”
I heard in my voice what I hadn’t intended or expected to be there: a raw sense of loss. It was all very well mending birds’ broken wings. They could take your heart off with them when you set them free.
She wouldn’t need me, I’d always known it, once her own snowstorm had settled. I could have tried, I supposed, to turn her dependence on me into a love affair, but it would have been stupid: cruel to her, unsatisfactory to me. She needed to grow safely back to independence and I to find a strong and equal partner. The clinging with the clung-to wasn’t a good proposition for long-term success.
We were all at that moment out in Popsy’s yard, with Alessia taking Miranda slowly round and telling her about each horse as they came to it. Dominic by then had developed enough confidence to stand on the ground, though he hung on to Miranda’s clothes permanently with one hand and needed lifting to her hip at the approach of any stranger. He had still not said anything else, but day by day, as the fright level slowly declined, it became more likely that he soon would.
Popsy and I strolled behind the two girls and on an impulse I squatted down to Dominic’s height and said, “Would you like a ride on my shoulders?”
Miranda encouragingly swept up Dominic and perched him on me with one leg past each ear.
“Hold on to Andrew’s hair,” Alessia said, and I felt the little fingers gripping as I stood upright.
I couldn’t see Dominic’s face, but everyone else was smiling, so I simply set off very slowly past the boxes, so he could see the inmates over the half-doors.
“Lovely horses,” Miranda said, half anxiously. “Big horses, darling, look.”
We finished the tour of the yard in that fashion and when I lifted Dominic down he stretched up his arms to go up again. I hoisted him onto my left arm, my face level with his. “You’re a good little boy,” I said.
He tucked his head down to my neck as he’d done so often with Miranda, and into my receptive ear he breathed one very quiet word, “Andrew.”
“That’s right,” I said, equally quietly, “and who’s that?” I pointed at Miranda.
“Mummy.” The syllables weren’t much more than a whisper, but quite clear.
“And that?” I said.
“Lessia.”
“And that?”
“Popsy.”
“Very good.” I walked a few steps with him away from the others. He seemed unalarmed. I said in a normal voice, “What would you like for tea?”
There was a fairly long pause; then he said, “Chocolate,” still quietly.
“Good. You shall have some. You’re a very good boy.”
I carried him further away. He looked back only once or twice to check that Miranda was still in sight, and I reckoned that the worst of his troubles were over. Nightmares he would have, and bouts of desperate insecurity, but the big first steps had been taken, and my job there too was almost done.
“How old are you, Dominic?” I asked.
He thought a bit. “Three,” he said, more audibly.
“What do you like to play with?”
A pause. “Car.”
“What sort of car?”
He sang “Dee-dah dee-dah dee-dah” into my ear very clearly on two notes, an exact imitation of a police car’s siren.
I laughed and hugged him. “You’ll do,” I said.
ALESSIA’S RETURN TO race-riding was in some respects unpromising as she came back white-faced after finishing last.
The race itself, a five-furlong sprint for two-year-olds, had seemed to me to be over in a flash. Hardly had she cantered down to the start, a bent figure in shining red silks, than the field of eighteen were loaded into the stalls and set running. The red silks had shown briefly and been swamped, smothered by a rainbow wave which left them slowing in
the wake. The jockey sat back onto her saddle the moment she passed the winning post, stopping her mount to a walk in very few strides.
I went to where all except the first four finishers were being dismounted, where glum-faced little groups of owners and trainers listened to tale after tale of woe and disaster from impersonal jockeys whose minds were already on the future. I heard snatches of what they were saying while I waited unobtrusively for Alessia.
“Wouldn’t quicken when I asked him . . .”
“Couldn’t act on the going . . .”
“Got bumped . . . shut in . . . squeezed out.”
“Still a baby . . .”
“Hanging to the left . . .”
Mike Noland, without accompanying owners, noncommittally watched Alessia approaching, then patted his horse’s neck and critically inspected its legs. Alessia struggled to undo the buckles on the girths, a service Noland finally performed for her, and all I heard her say to him was “Thanks . . . Sorry,” which he received with a nod and a pat on the shoulder: and that seemed to be that.
Alessia didn’t spot me standing there and hurried away towards the weighing room; and it was a good twenty minutes before she emerged. She still looked pale. Also strained, thin, shaky, and miserable.
“Hi,” I said.
She turned her head and stopped walking. Managed a smile. “Hello.”
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“You saw.”
“I saw that the horse wasn’t fast enough.”
“You saw that every talent I used to have isn’t there anymore.”
I shook my head. “You wouldn’t expect a prima ballerina to give the performance of a lifetime if she’d been away from dancing for three months.”
“This is different.”
“No. You expected too much. Don’t be so . . . so cruel to yourself.”
She gazed at me for a while and then looked away, searching for another face. “Have you seen Mike Noland anywhere?” she said.
“Not since just after the race.”
“He’ll be furious.” She sounded desolate. “He’ll never give me another chance.”
“Did he expect his horse to win?” I asked. “It started at about twelve to one. Nowhere near favorite.”