Gerald Seymour - Red Fox

' It's nice of you to ring, but I'm a bit out of touch since yesterday evening.'

"They said in London you'd put yourself out in this business.

I was asked to pass on the thanks of the company.'

'That's very kind of you, it was nothing.'

'They thought it was. I have to go out to this EUR place wherever that is, and I have to visit Harrison's missus, so I'd like to meet you before that. First thing.'

Carpenter was aware of a hesitation on the line. A natural request, but it had sparked prevarication.

' I don't think there's very much that I can tell you.'

' I'd like to hear views other than from the company people.

They're Italians, every last one of them. I'd like your views.'

'There really isn't much that I can tell you.'

'Not in the line of duty?' Carpenter clipped in, cold, awake, the brandy disgorged.

' I double between political and security. Security doesn't warrant a great deal of time, and the desk is pretty loaded with the political stuff at the moment. My plate's more than full.'

'So is Harrison's.' A flare of anger from Carpenter. What was the bloody fool at? 'He's British isn't he? Entitled to a bit of help from the Embassy.'

'He is,' came the cautious reply. 'But there's debate in the shop about how much help.'

'You've lost me.'

'I'm sorry, then.'

Carpenter closed his eyes, grimaced. Begin again, Archie boy.

Start all over again.

'Mr Charlesworth, let's not waste each other's time. I'm not a moron, and I've kidnapping coming out of my ears after last night with the locals. I know it's not straightforward. I understand the threat that exists, that Harrison's on the edge. I know it's not just a matter of sitting in the front parlour and waiting for the shareholders to cough up so Harrison can come back and kiss his sweet wife hello. I know the risks for Harrison. They told me about Ambrosio, shot because a mask slipped and he saw his captors. I heard how they chopped Michelangelo Ambrosio. They told me about de Capua. Now on to the other side of things. I did eight years in Special Branch before I moved to ICH. My rank at Scotland Yard was Chief Inspector. This isn't the time for a "need to know" show.'

A laugh on the line. "Thanks for the speech, Mr Carpenter.'

'What's the problem, then?'

' I wouldn't want what I say repeated.'

' I've signed the bloody Official Secrets Act, Mr Charlesworth, just like you have.'

' It's a tedious matter of keeping our hands clean. Theoretically it's a criminal offence to pay ransom money, and it would be damaging to us if we could be linked with such a felony. In the Ambassador's view this is a private matter between ICH and a gang of Italian criminals. He doesn't want us to be seen to be condoning the extortion of money, and he feels that any public involvement could give the impression that we're bending the knee to criminal action. If Harrison worked for Whitehall we wouldn't be paying, it's as simple as that.'

'And a chat in your office… '

'That's involvement in the Ambassador's eyes.'

'That's bloody ridiculous,' Carpenter barked into the telephone.

' I agree, particularly in a country where ransom payment is the normal way of extrication. If you're that well briefed you'll have heard of a man called Pommarici in Milano. He's a prosecutor and has tried to freeze kidnap victims' assets, to prevent payment. He l o s t

… the families said he was endangering the lives of their loved ones. It all went back to the jungle. So what it adds up to is that the Embassy has no role to play. Off the record we can help, but not if it's visible. Do you read me?'

Carpenter slopped back on to his bed. ' I read you, Mr Charlesworth.'

'Give me a ring this afternoon. We'll have an early bite in town.'

' I'd like that,' Carpenter said and rang off. Poor bloody Harrison, but how inconsiderate of him. To get himself kidnapped and embarrass HMG. Not a very good show, my old love.

The wooden shutters, bent and paint-peeled but still capable of restricting light, stayed late across the upper window of the narrow terraced home of Vanni, the driver. The noises made by children and cars in the cobbled street behind the main road through Cosoleto merely lulled the man as he lay in the drowsy pleasure of his bed.

It had been close to midnight when he had returned to his home, and there was the radiance in his worn face to tell his wife that the journey had been profitable. She had not asked what the work had been, what the danger, what the stake, but had busied herself first in the kitchen, then against the muscles of his stomach in the great bed that had been her mother's. And when he had slept she had slid from the sheets and looked with a glowing excitement at the hard roll of banknotes before replacing them in the hip pocket of the trousers thrown with abandon on a chair. A good man he was to her, and a kind man.

While she worked in the kitchen beneath, Vanni was content to idle the early morning hours. Not time yet for him to dress, throw on a freshly ironed shirt, put a sheen on his shoes and drive his car into Palmi for a coffee and a talk with Mario who would make a similar journey if ever he woke – she was an animal, Mario's woman, consumed in the brute passion of the Sicilians.

A coffee with Mario if he had satisfied his woman, if he had the sap to leave his bed.

And when Claudio had returned on the morning rapido, then perhaps they all would be summoned to the villa of the capo to take a glass of Campari and talk of the olive trees, the goat herds, and the death of an old man of the village. They would not speak of anything that was immediate and close to them, but they would smile at their mutual knowledge, and each in his own way reflect a peculiar glory.

At least another hour Vanni could keep to his bed.

At Criminalpol, where the Rome police forensic effort is mounted, the first particles of evidence were being gathered in the scientific analysis section. Brought from the central telephone exchange were recordings of all calls received by ICH in EUR and of those directed to the private number of the Harrisons. One of the most far-reaching advances in the hunt for the kidnappers had been the development of a voice bank programmed for the computer to match similarities. The same man, the electronics decided, who had called ICH with the ransom demand had also made the abortive call to Mrs Harrison. Nothing particular in that. The stir of interest among the technicians came when they fed to the brain scores of recordings made from previous interceptions, and sought a similarity with their latest material. On the read-out screens the file on the Marchetti case was flashed. Eight and a half months earlier. A four-year-old boy. Taken from a foreign national nanny in the Aventino district of Rome. No arrests. No clues left on site. A ransom payment of 250 million paid. Marked notes. No sign of ransom money. The Marchetti communication and the calls on the Harrison case had been made by the same man. Vocal interpretation located an accent from the extreme south.

The night work of machines. The recordings were sent by line to the Questura to await the arrival of Giuseppe Carboni.

The Agente di Custodie hurried from the prison officers' mess to the main gate of the Asinara gaol. He had not eaten the breakfast provided for the men coming off night shift after they had supervised the first feeding of the prisoners. The weight of the message that he must telephone to the contact number bore down on him, spiriting up the fear waves of nausea.

His recruitment as a pigeon for the leading members of the NAP held on Asinara when they wished to communicate with the outside world had been a long-drawn-out affair. As a badger will sniff and dig for choice roots, so members of the group at liberty had discovered the turmoil that the Agente and his family lived with as they devoted themselves to the care of their ailing spina bifida baby. Reports had come back of crippling doctors' bills in the town of Sassari on the Sardinian mainland to the south of the prison bland. There had been word of the inability of the father to pay for visits to Roma or Milano for consultation with specialists.