Picture of Defeat

by John Harris

  ‘They will want to know about the marocchino,’ Tamara said. ‘He must not terrify any more women. And they will doubtless be pleased to know that Corneliano Romandi is not far away.’

  ‘They may even recover the painting,’ Tassinari added.

  Unfortunately, they had arrived at just the wrong moment because the questura was bubbling with excitement at the news, which had just arrived, that the Allies had finally burst through the line at Cassino and were racing towards Rome. Chief of Police Renza, a fat man with eyes like a spaniel, was sitting at a desk, sweating in front of a fan that was directed on to his body, and had to be bullied to listen to what they had to say. When he finally dragged his attention from the radio, however, he was all ears. The news about the breakthrough had interrupted a consultation about dealing with the bandits in the area, so there were delighted smiles all round at the news of Corneliano.

  ‘This is good,’ Renza said. ‘We thought he was near here, but we have been waiting to be certain. We shall now catch him. We know there’s a black market convoy of tyres due to move north to Rome as soon as it’s freed. Now that the Germans have pulled back and the Americans are moving forward, the black market is moving with it. Corneliano knows that as well as we do and will try to stop it.’ He paused and examined his nails, his expression thoughtful. ‘This painting you mention that was stolen, Signor Sergente,’ he went on slowly. ‘Is it valuable?’

  ‘It’s a Detto Banti.’

  Renza had clearly never heard of Bocco Detto Banti, but he put on a good performance of pretending he had. ‘I see. And its value, Signor Sergente?’

  ‘Over a million lire. The Italian Government is interested in it. As also is the British Government and the American Government.’

  ‘A prize worth having, I think.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Renza nodded slowly. ‘We’ll get your painting and the fittings from your hearse back for you, Sergente. It so happens that we have learned that Corneliano has a woman in Spazzi and he’s visiting her tonight. We intend to be outside Spazzi, in two detachments, a hundred yards apart so that we shall be certain to trap him. Perhaps the Signore Sergente would like to be present.’ Renza’s smile became encouraging, then suddenly it slid away and was replaced by a puzzled frown. ‘Incidentally,’ he ended, ‘why is the Signore Sergente travelling in a hearse?’

  The found a small albergo, where they took rooms for the night. It was bare and spartan but there was a small stone-floored restaurant alongside where they could guarantee a meal. ‘Nothing special, Signori,’ the proprietor explained. ‘These days, there is never anything special in Italy. But it is a meal. Perhaps cabbage soup. With’ – he shrugged, obviously considering Pugh a sympathetic listener – ‘perhaps a little tinned beef. You understand?’ He placed his finger alongside his nose. ‘One doesn’t question where it comes from.’

  Foscari decided he was going to accompany Pugh on Renza’s ambush, and as they left the restaurant they hitched at their belts and pulled their clothes more tightly round them.

  Tamara was worried. ‘Will there be guns?’ she asked.

  ‘I suspect so.’

  ‘You will not get shot, Piu?’

  He grinned. ‘I’ll try not to.’

  ‘I should not like you to be shot.’

  ‘It’s not something I’m keen on myself.’

  Pugh and Foscari watched as the carabinieri and the pubblica sicurezza groups gathered at the police station. They all had obsolete weapons and there were a lot of jokes about dying, but they climbed into cars and began to drive out of the town along the straight road that led northward, parallel with the road the armies were using. Because the armies didn’t frequent this route, it was regularly used by black marketeers, swindlers, gangsters and crooks.

  Spazzi was typical of the villages on the slopes of the hills behind Naples. It was crooked, with twisting streets and knuckled alleys, its brown-tiled roofs hiding pink-, green- and blue-washed houses. Most of the life of the place went on in the streets, in the flare of the welcome warming sun. Black-garbed women were washing and feeding their children and preparing the meals on the pavement, watched by lean dogs and groups of aimless men leaning against the walls, their hands in their pockets.

  They waited before they moved, then they stopped close to a bend shadowed by a grove of trees. Rain had not fallen for some time and the day’s heat had turned the recent mud to dust. The policemen took up positions on either side of the road that ran alongside the town and pushed out a light two-wheeled cart they borrowed from a neighbouring farm to make a roadblock.

  The first car to appear was powered by gas and was full of people, all of whom had papers that were blatantly false. It was stacked with contraband – American cigarettes, nylons, torch batteries, tins of bully beef, packets of K rations, needles, cloth, nails, watches, spectacle frames; all articles in short supply which would fetch a good price on the black market. Curiously it also contained coffin handles from which, with a sheepish look at Pugh, Foscari helped himself. ‘If they can,’ he said, ‘I think we can, Signor Sergente.’

  Renza was very stern and upright, despite the pleadings, the offers of bribes, the whispered promises. He didn’t show much interest in the contents of the car but prowled round it, staring at the tyres.

  ‘These are British Dunlops,’ he announced. ‘Army issue.’

  ‘No,’ the owner of the car said. ‘Italian Pirellis. I got them from my brother. See, the name’s there.’

  Renza was not impressed. ‘The British markings have been burned off with electricity,’ he said, ‘and these stamped on afterwards. The tyres must be removed.’

  There was a wail of protest but he was adamant, and immediately there was a hurried consultation, more whispering, more bribes. Renza was like a rock, and the police jacked up the rear of the car.

  ‘How do we get home?’ the driver asked in despair.

  ‘On the rims.’

  ‘It will ruin the wheels.’

  ‘Then you must buy new ones.’

  ‘There aren’t any to be had.’

  Renza shrugged. ‘Then I fear you will have to stop driving. Be satisfied. You have not been arrested. Your car’s full of contraband but I intend to take only the tyres.’

  The car drove off, rattling and clattering on empty rims and, as the confiscated tyres were rolled to the police lorry, Foscari looked sad and shocked.

  ‘They’ll end up in the same place,’ Pugh said grimly. ‘On the black market. The police aren’t very well paid.’

  By this time they had stopped several other cars. All those with a bribe to offer were allowed to pass. Those who argued had their goods confiscated. At the end of two hours with no sign of Corneliano it was beginning to look as if the information they’d received about him was wrong, but then, suddenly, a lorry appeared on the horizon.

  ‘Eh!’ one of the policemen shouted. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s Corneliano!’

  Moving behind the cart, the policemen clicked off the safety catches of their weapons. The lorry, which was travelling at speed, was driven by a man who could well have been the goumier who had attacked Tamara, his brown face half hidden by a woollen hat. The police headlights had half blinded him but he made no attempt to stop and, as the police opened fire, the lorry slewed across the road, its windscreen smashed, dropped a wheel in the ditch, leapt into the air and performed a spectacular somersault. As it hit the ground and burst into flames, the policemen started running.

  When they reached the lorry, the driver was lying alongside, with what looked like a broken neck, and another man trapped in the cabin, was screaming vainly for help. A lot of black market tyres had burst out of the back. While the police were trying to drag things clear to get at the trapped man, a second lorry came roaring out of the darkness and they all had to run for safety. The new arrival burst through the flames and smoke and, followed by shots from the policemen, smashed into the cart. It was like an explosion, with planks, shafts and p
ieces of wood flying in all directions, then, as the cart collapsed in splinters, the two wheels rolling away, the lorry vanished into the night, the engine missing badly as though the collision had done some damage. As they recovered their breath, they realised that the man in the burning lorry was dead.

  Everybody began to argue about whose fault it was. But Renza reassured them. ‘Have no fear,’ he said. ‘I know where they will have gone. Since we haven’t got Corneliano and don’t look like getting him, we’ll pick them up instead.’

  Leaving two men behind to guard the wreckage, he directed the rest back to their vehicles and they headed after the vanished lorry. After a while they turned off the road and ground their way along a stony, uneven track to where they could see a large low-slung building against the night sky. There was a barn-like structure alongside, with farm implements leaning against the walls, among them an ancient wooden plough. Two oxen placidly eyed the police vehicles as they approached.

  Renza stopped them well away from the house and they advanced on foot, all keeping their heads down in case a blast of fire came from the group of shabby buildings. They found the lorry that had escaped, marked by bullet holes, hidden behind the barn and still loaded with tyres and spare parts.

  Renza nodded and gestured, and his men headed for the house. To their surprise they heard music, and as they burst in they found themselves facing a roomful of men and women dancing to a mandolin and a piano accordion. As the police appeared, the dancing stopped. Renza stared at the couples, his eyes searching the faces. There was no sign of Corneliano.

  ‘Who are all these people?’

  ‘Guests,’ one of the women said. ‘There has been a christening. They came for the celebrations.’

  ‘In a lorry full of black market tyres? Where is the baby?’

  ‘Its mother took it home. It was badly in need of feeding.’

  One of the policemen, searching the other rooms, reappeared, pushing before him a man whose shirt was soaked with blood. The woman who had first spoken shrugged. ‘You know what it’s like,’ she said. ‘Get half a dozen men together and a couple of bottles of wine, and there’s bound to be a fight. Somebody says something and out comes a knife.’

  The police lined everybody up along the wall. One of the men turned out to be a deserter from the American army, another a weasel-like little man with a Liverpool accent who had gone missing as soon as he set foot ashore at Salerno and had been living on his wits ever since. There was a lot of loot, too, but Pugh had a feeling that very little would find its way to the amasso, the government pool where retrieved stolen goods were stored. And there wouldn’t be any tyres among it, he felt sure.

  ‘There are only four of them,’ the police sergeant said, as the captives were led away.

  ‘We’ll get no promotion with four,’ Renza said, nodding to his men. ‘We need more. Go into the village. Pick up a few more. Make sure they’ve got records. It won’t be difficult. Everybody has a record these days.’

  As they pushed the men into the police vehicles, Pugh watched expressionlessly. The men they had picked up had accepted with resignation the charges against them, though they had been nowhere near the ambush. It was the way things were done and promotion gained.

  Back in Origono, Police Chief Renza was disappointed that Corneliano had not turned up but was optimistic that they would have another chance. Later Pugh was called to the questura.

  ‘Have no fear, Sergente,’ Renza said. ‘We’ll find your painting. Our information was wrong. It wasn’t Spazzi where Corneliano went. It was Sili, across the valley, and it’s not a woman, it’s cards. Corneliano likes gambling and, what is more, he likes winning – so he cheats. We know he’ll be in Sili tonight. Aldo Calo told us. He lost a lot of money to him a week or two ago and he wants his own back. He says there are drugs in the house. He says your painting’s there, too.’

  Tamara was unhappy about what was going on. ‘I would rather they kept the painting,’ she said, ‘than have you in danger, Piu.’

  ‘No danger to me,’ Pugh pointed out. ‘I’ll be keeping my head down. But the painting’s there and I’ve got to be around to identify it. There might be a whole houseful of paintings.’

  It took a day or two to lay on the raid because Renza had to call up the pubblica sicurezza again for extra men, while the Canadian army, which was running the area, offered to supply a few more. But on the day they had decided to make the raid, they heard the Allies were on the point of entering Rome and as they clung to the radio, listening to the BBC’s broadcasts, no one would listen to Pugh’s protests. In the end, the raid was postponed and the following day they learned that the Americans had entered the capital. Renza was delighted.

  ‘Tonight!’ he said. ‘Tonight we will do it. They will have been celebrating the liberation of the Città Eterna. They will be drunk and unable to resist.’

  The same procedure was gone through, the same minute attention to detail, as if the policemen suspected Corneliano was too clever for them. In the evening they gathered as before, with their ancient weapons and the same jokes about dying, then at midnight, they climbed into cars and lorries and drove round the valley to the town of Sili situated on the slopes at the other side. It turned out to be a replica of Spazzi, with the same crooked alleys and steep streets. Because the grind of gears might alert their quarry, they stopped the vehicles at the bottom of the hill and climbed out. Nobody spoke and Renza gave his orders by signs.

  Two or three policemen from the local station appeared and led them via the back streets to a square in the centre of the town. They moved silently, keeping close to the walls and making the most of the shadows. Eventually, they stopped outside a square house standing alone, separate from the rest, surrounded by a narrow strip of land.

  ‘The house of Galo,’ one of the local policemen said. ‘That’s where he is. We saw him go in. He’s not come out yet.’

  Renza ordered half his men to the back of the house. Gesturing imperiously, he instructed the remainder to fan out so that all four sides of the house were covered. For a long time, they waited, whispering urgently, then finally, just when Pugh was beginning to wonder what was holding up the operation, he saw Renza lift his revolver.

  The crash of the shot echoed round the village. At once shutters were flung open on all sides of the square and almost immediately they heard the thunder of a volley from the back of the house. There was no other movement and the shutters were immediately slammed to again. For a long time there was silence, then a policeman appeared through the darkness, keeping to the shadows as if he expected retaliatory fire from somewhere.

  ‘We’ve got him,’ he announced. ‘He got on the roof through a window at the back. He’s in the courtyard.’

  They moved warily to the back of the building. In the courtyard a man lay across the wreckage of an old barrow, relaxed as though asleep. He was half on his side, face downwards, one knee drawn up, one arm flung out. On his hip was a pistol holster, but it was empty, and close to his right hand was a Beretta sub-machine gun. A puddle of blood lay beneath his head.

  Renza looked at Pugh. ‘This is Corneliano?’

  Pugh nodded. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘You can swear to this?’

  ‘His clothes are the same. His face is that of the man who stopped us.’

  Renza laid a hand on Pugh’s arm. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘We must investigate the house. There may be members of the gang inside. You had better keep your head down.’

  Returning to the shadows, Pugh waited. For a long time there was silence but no more shooting. After a while one of the police cars appeared and went round the back of the house. Two minutes later it drove off into the darkness at speed. Then men appeared carrying suitcases. One of them handed Pugh a bag containing the chrome lamp-holders and the decorative wreaths, cherubs, skulls and leaves from Ciasca’s old hearse.

  ‘Yours, I think,’ he said.

  Eventually, Renza appeared. With him he had a man. He was sm
all and looked frightened. Renza gestured to his men and they took the man away to a car.

  ‘Is that Galo?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘What’ll happen to him?’

  ‘He’ll die, of course.’

  ‘Who’ll kill him?’

  Renza shrugged. ‘Corneliano’s family. They’ll get him. There’ll be no mark on him but he’ll be dead. A hat-pin through the ear to the brain. A sharpened rod up the backside to the stomach. The human body has several useful orifices.’ He indicated the man with the suitcase. ‘We found the drugs.’

  Pugh drew a deep breath. ‘And the painting?’ he asked.

  Renza shrugged, his face expressionless. ‘There was no sign of the painting,’ he said. ‘It seems to have disappeared.’

  Four

  ‘The police took it, didn’t they?’ Tamara said.

  ‘Yes,’ Pugh agreed. ‘They took it.’

  ‘They are very poorly paid, of course,’ she said slowly.

  She didn’t seem to mind as much as he’d expected. ‘There are still 28 million lire-worth of canvasses,’ she said. ‘And I’m glad they captured the bandit.’

  ‘They didn’t capture him,’ Pugh said. ‘They shot him.’

  By daylight, Sili was packed with newspapermen, not only Italians from Naples but Americans and British from Rome. Naples was now old hat and they had milked the capture of Rome to the limit, so the death of someone like Corneliano, who had often featured in their stories for his boldness, gave them something extra. The British, who in England had four small pages as big as a pocket handkerchief to fill, weren’t too concerned with the case because it had to compete with the home news and the news from other theatres of war, but the Americans with their massive journals had plenty of room. Corneliano had been in the news for some time, and they were linking him to the growing anarchy in Italy. Their stories sounded almost as if they’d been lifted from La Nazione, the black news magazine the Italians loved to read, with its stories of shattered bodies, air crashes, sinking ships and murders.