October Men

by Anthony Price

  And yet, perversely, this discomfort aroused in him a determination to do the job his wife had thrust upon him. When he had blundered out of the cottage he had been half decided to save himself the unpleasantness—and very possible danger—of catching the little sods in the act by warning them of his advance with a bit of well-judged noise. But now, as he moved silently from the grass verge to the springy turf of the lawn, the smouldering irritation inside him ignited into a murderous rage.

  He’d learn they little buggers!

  There was a lot in life that irritated Charlie Clark: big cars and noisy motorcycles, long hair and short skirts, letters from government ministries asking him questions he didn’t want to answer or telling him things he didn’t care to know about, and the high price and the low strength of beer. And most of all being bullied by anyone in the world but his wife—he didn’t like that much either, but he reckoned it was more or less covered by the promise he’d made to the vicar when they’d gone to the altar together.

  But always the enemy had been either intangible or plainly beyond his reach—always except those two times.

  It was queer that he could never remember either of those two episodes in any detail. He could really only remember what had happened before and what had happened after.

  There had been the quick, clever boy at the village school, who had mocked him once too often. And then there had been blood on Charlie’s knuckles afterwards, and no more mocking.

  And the second time had been more like tonight, even though he had had a rifle in his hands then, not a cranky old twelve-bore.

  Not unlike this very night, though it had been much warmer, as was only to be expected in foreign parts. Almost as dark, anyway, except that they’d been fools that time too, and showed a bit of a light to guide the patrol.

  Charlie’s eyes picked up the glimmer of the torch inside the Old House the moment he came out from the lane on to the springy turf of the lawn. They’d drawn the curtains now, but it was a powerful bright light, that was sure. Only trouble, it was in a first-floor room—he knew the downstairs pretty well, but wasn’t so sure of the lie of the upstairs.

  And there’d been more smell the last time, the rich smell of farmyard middens. But then it’d been a farmhouse, longer and lower than this one, huddled into the ground almost. There was talk in the platoon that the farmers kept all their money in boxes under their beds, not trusting the foreign banks—which showed they had some sense, Charlie had thought, seeing as he didn’t trust the banks at home either—and also that it was all in gold francs, too. By the time of the raid Charlie had privately searched several farmhouses with those gold francs in mind, but either it was an old wives’ tale or someone had been there before him; personally he doubted the story, for all the farms seemed to him poor and rough, without a decent suite of furniture between them, not at all like those he was used to in Sussex, where farmers were usually men of substance and very often gentlemen, too.

  Still, they didn’t ought to have treated that old farm the way they had, throwing the grenades through the windows and kicking in the doors, all shouting like savages.

  Charlie knew he had shouted with the rest, and kicked too, but that had only been because he’d been angry, red, raging angry at being drilled and marched one way, then marched another way, and forced to cower in ditches in terror of bombs and bullets, with never a chance to get his own back. But it’d never do to kick in the door of the Old House, even the old kitchen door and even if it hadn’t been solid seasoned oak, which he reckoned wouldn’t reward anyone’s boot. And anyway—she’d given him a key, he had it somewhere, thought Charlie confusedly, fumbling for reality in his mind while he searched his jacket with his free hand.

  He had to get it right, just like the sergeant had taught him, making him repeat it until he had the meaning by heart: First you creeps up quiet-like, to take ‘em by surprise—then you goes in noisy, to frighten the bollocks off ‘em!

  And first he did get it right, with the key hardly scratching the keyhole it entered. But no amount of care could stop the lock clicking unmistakably, or the latch clattering or the hinges creaking—it was as though the whole door had turned against him, bit by bit, damn it.

  Charlie clutched the twelve-bore against his chest and stood irresolutely, listening to the absolute silence of the house ahead of him.

  It was a silence which confused him far more than it frightened him, until the memory of the flashing light in the upstairs room came back to him—the evidence of his own eyes.

  The time had come to be noisy!

  With a furious growl and in total darkness Charlie launched himself across the kitchen. The first chair in his way went spinning; he banged into the edge of the table, driving it back so that it overturned another chair. But the table’s position orientated him to the passage door. Three more skidding paces, hobnails skittering on the stone floor, brought him against it. Behind him something breakable crashed to the floor.

  Four more paces took him down the passage to the foot of the stairs—the last footfall was muffled by the carpet with the eastern writing on it that his wife had told him never to put a boot on. Well, he’d got both boots on it now!

  The tingling silence abruptly descended around him again. And yet not a true silence any more, but the moment when the gamekeeper and the poacher sensed each other’s presence in the same covert, the moment of held breath and stretched senses.

  It had not been like this in the farmhouse, it had been just how the sergeant had wanted it, all noise and terror.

  Charlie reached out for the light switch.

  “I knows you’re up there,” he said in a loud voice. “You just come on down quiet, an’ don’t make no trouble. Police is comin’. So you just come on down.”

  He clicked the switch.

  There was bursting paper-bag noise—that had been the farmhouse noise he’d never been able to recall—and a hornet stung his ear.

  Same noise with same result: as the man at the head of the stairs sighted the pistol again, this time on Charlie’s heart, Charlie shot him dead.

  II

  VILLARI’S MANNERS, OR more exactly his attitude towards those whom he considered inferior to himself, had not improved, that was evident.

  First the fellow had idly fingered the files and envelopes on Boselli’s desk, disarranging their mathematical relation to one another. Then he had admired himself in the little round mirror beside the door, patting the golden perfection of his hair and checking his flawless complexion. And then he had sauntered over to the window to gaze without apparent interest over the roofscape towards the Vittorio Emanuele monument. And finally, when he deigned at last to speak, he didn’t even bother to turn round to face Boselli.

  “Who’s this guy Audley then?”

  Boselli stared at the well-tailored back with hatred. If looks could kill he felt that his would have materialised into six inches of steel angled slightly upwards just beneath the left shoulder blade.

  “Audley?” The anger blurred his voice.

  “The guy you’re getting steamed up about, yes.”

  It was typical of Villari to use that aggravating and unfair “you,” even though he’d come running across a heat-stricken Rome obediently enough himself. But then Villari had always known when to temper his native insolence with a shrewd instinct for the whims of his superiors. The feet that kicked the Bosellis of the world at every opportunity trod very carefully on the carpets of men like Raffaele Montuori.

  “We’re not getting steamed up.”

  “So you’re not getting steamed up—fine.” Villari moved across the airless room, back to the mirror again. “You’re not getting steamed up, but you’re here.”

  That “here” carried the same disparagement as the earlier “you,” turning Boselli’s own beloved sanctuary, with its rows of battered steel cabinets and its signed portrait of John XXIII into an unspeakable slum.

  “And you are here too,” replied Boselli acidly. He mopped his
brow with the big silk handkerchief his eldest daughter had given him on his last birthday, fancying as he did so that Villari had chosen even those words “steamed up” with deliberate scorn also. For all his North Italian, almost Scandinavian blondness, the younger man showed not a sign of discomfort in the swelter—it was Boselli himself, the Roman, who was already wilting.

  But that bitter little thought raised another much more interesting one which momentarily chased away Boselli’s private discomforts. There had to be a reason for the General to recall this gilded Clotheshorse from his leave beyond the fact that he happened to be here in Rome. If the General had wanted someone from Venice or Messina —or Benghazi—he wouldn’t have thought twice about summoning him. So it was Villari and none other that he wanted now. And since Villari combined fluency in the North European languages with the right colouring and an ability to withstand extremes of temperature, cold as well as hot, it must be that Villari was needed to check up on Audley in England.

  Which meant that the General was committed to a line of action, or was at least on the very brink of commitment.

  And that was a useful thing to know, even though he had not as yet the faintest idea what Audley—

  Villari suddenly loomed up directly in front of the desk, cutting off this intriguing line of reflection. He placed his hands precisely on the two corners—the desk creaked alarmingly as it took his weight—and leaned forward until his face was less than fifty centimetres from Boselli’s.

  “Little man, little man—“ Villari’s smile was as devoid of good humour as it was of friendship “—I can hear the cogs and wheels whirring in your little brain but you haven’t answered my question. And when I ask a question I expect you to provide an answer.”

  Boselli sat up stiffly and drew back in the same instant, the faint smell of expensive cologne in his nostrils.

  “I haven’t been told to answer any questions,” he snapped. “I have no authorisation to answer questions.”

  “Authorisation?” The grin became frozen, but there was a glint of anger in Villari’s eyes now. “You have the soul of a clerk, little Boselli. A clerk you were born and a clerk you will die.”

  He straightened up slowly. “But I don’t need to lose my temper, because I have my own way with clerks. It’s a very simple way—let me show you how I treat clerks who bandy words with me. You could call it my authorisation—“

  He put his hand in the middle of Boselli’s desk and with an unhurried movement, before Boselli could even think of stopping him, swept half the surface clear.

  A second too late, unavailingly, Boselli jerked forward in an attempt to stop the cascade of paper, grabbing desperately and clumsily, catching nothing. Villari watched him scrabbling on his knees for a moment and then, as though bored with the whole affair, turned away towards the window again.

  “You’re—mad,” Boselli heard himself muttering in anguish as he sorted the jumbled documents. “It’ll take me hours—hours—“ He cut off the complaint as he realised that it would only give Villari more satisfaction. He had no dignity left to salvage and no hope of lodging any sort of complaint without further humiliating himself (the crafty swine had calculated that exactly). Silence was all that remained to him.

  But silence did not seem to worry Villari. He merely waited until the papers had been shovelled more or less into their correct files, and the files had been piled more or less in their original places, in a mockery of their original neatness. Then he advanced again.

  Instinctively Boselli set his hands over the files in a pathetic attempt to protect them.

  Villari laughed.

  “If you could see yourself!” He shook his head. “Better death than disorder! So we start again, then: who is the man Audley? Speak up, clerk.”

  Boselli sighed. “What makes you think it is Audley who concerns you?”

  Villari looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as though undecided as to whether or not to assault the files again. Then, to Boselli’s unbounded relief, he relaxed; the game of bullying had palled, or more likely the need for information from a beaten opponent commended itself more urgently.

  “Well, he seems to concern you, little Boselli. His name is written all over your files—three folders all to himself, and one from the Foreign Ministry. What a busy fellow he must be!” The manicured hand pointed carelessly. “And isn’t that a photograph too?”

  He tweaked open one of the covers and twisted round the contents.

  “Hmm… Not a particularly prepossessing type. In fact he reminds me of a bouncer I met in a club in Hamburg—he thought he was a hard man.” Villari sniffed at the memory, then held the photograph up at arm’s length for a more critical look. “The suit’s okay— you can’t beat the English for tailoring—but he’s filling it too much … a big tough guy running to seed.” He nodded to himself. “A bit like that actor of theirs who’s always getting into scrapes with the cops. Another tough one.”

  Boselli smiled inwardly then, permitting himself to be drawn into the game at last by Villari’s crass error of judgement.

  “You’re looking at the wrong half of the face. Look at the eyes and the forehead.”

  Villari blanked off the squashed nose and square jaw with his other hand and stared at the photograph again. He shrugged. “So—a hard man with a brain. But don’t let him fool you, clerk: if you let him talk you into a dark alley he’ll still break you in small pieces and feed you to the birds.”

  “Then he has kept that side of his character remarkably secret,” observed Boselli with prim satisfaction. “He has a doctorate from the University of Cambridge in England—he is Dr. David Longsdon Audley.”

  Villari flicked the photograph carelessly on to the table, so that it skidded across the open file and fell to the floor beside Boselli’s foot. Then, with elaborate indifference, he turned away towards the window for the third time.

  Only this time Boselli watched him with a tremor of satisfaction. It was little enough recompense for that act of vandalism, but it was a start. And there was more to come.

  “He’s been a member of Sir Frederick Clinton’s self-styled Research Group for quite a few years,” he went on with smug innocence. “I’m rather surprised you haven’t heard of him.”

  Villari appeared not to have heard. For several minutes he remained gazing at the distant skyline as though it interested him, deepening Boselli’s pleasure appreciably. Of course he would have heard of the old fox Clinton, and possibly even of the Research Group. But the records showed that he had never encountered either of them personally—perhaps another reason why the General was using him now—and he was too puffed up with his own importance to admit it to Boselli. Conceding ignorance would be unthinkable for him, very different as it was from brutally demanding information.

  Finally Villari spoke, only to Boselli’s chagrin he did so in almost accentless English.

  “This Dr. Audley—is he a dottore doctor or a professore doctor?”

  Boselli struggled with the mixture of foreign and Italian words for a moment, and before he could quite disentangle the sentence Villari had grabbed the chance of explaining it with deliberately patronising helpfulness.

  “An historian,” Boselli cut through the explanation irritably. “He is an historian.”

  “A historian?” The interest trickled out of Villari’s tone. “A teacher of history?”

  “He writes—he’s written a history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. And he’s written books on medieval Arab history. He—“

  Villari waved his hand. “Okay, okay—he’s a real historian too. So what has he done to interest us?”

  Boselli looked at him unhappily for a few seconds. Then he shrugged—there was no way of skirting the question and no way of answering it. “I haven’t the faintest idea. He—General Montuori, that is—he instructed me to examine our information on him—on Audley, I mean. He didn’t tell me why.”

  “And naturally you hadn’t the guts to ask him. That figures.”r />
  “When the General wants us to know, he’ll tell us. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Villari reached over and hooked the telephone off its cradle with a ringer. “And I like to know what I’m doing.” He started to dial.

  “It’s no good ringing the General’s secretary,” Boselli stood up in alarm. “She promised to let me know the moment the General was free.”

  “I’m not phoning that old cow—tits to her! I’m phoning the General.”

  Boselli was appalled and elated at the same time. The General’s private number was sacrosanct: this Clotheshorse would be hanged, crucified, flayed and impaled. But it was his—Boselli’s—phone on which the unthinkable crime was being perpetrated, rendering him an accessory. At the very least he would be banished to some far-off province still ruled by the Communist Party.

  “Hey, General—Armando Villari here, General—“

  “Armando—good to see you again, my boy!” The General came beaming from behind his vast desk towards Villari, without even a glance for Boselli.

  “General.” Villari acknowledged the enthusiasm as though it was nothing less than his right, but with a touch of caution now. “This is a hell of a time to want anyone to work.”

  “Hah!” The General embraced him, keeping his arm round the broad shoulders as he turned back towards the desk. “I know you, boy, I know you! It’s those big German girls of yours—you like the big girls, eh? I know it—don’t deny it, boy—I remember them myself when I was your age. Fine breasts and wonderful hips! What hips they had!”

  The bitterness rose in Boselli’s throat like bile as he watched the hand squeeze the shoulder affectionately. He recognised the whole vomit-making scene for what it was: through some ghastly aberration of judgement the General was identifying himself with the Clotheshorse, or at least his youth, part of which had been spent back in the Duce’s day training with the German Special Forces in Bavaria. But that was something which was never mentioned now, an episode very carefully overlooked, if not forgotten—that the General should even indirectly mention it now was an extraordinary personal gaffe.