Dick Francis - The Danger

'I can't think,' he said to me, 'except of Alessia. I think of her as she was as a little girl, and at school, and learning to ride. She was always so neat, so small, so full of life…' He swallowed, turned away and walked into the library, and in a few seconds I heard bottle clink against glass.

After a while I went after him.

'Let's play backgammon,' I said.

'I can't concentrate.'

'Try.' I got out the board and set up the pieces, but the moves he made were mechanical and without heart. He did nothing to capitalise on my shortcomings, and after a while simply fell to staring into space, as he'd done for hour after hour since we'd left the money.

At about eleven the telephone at his elbow brought him out of it, but sluggishly.

'Hello?… Yes, Cenci speaking…' He listened briefly and then looked at the receiver with an apathetic frown before putting it back in its cradle.

'What was it?' I said.

'I don't know. Nothing much. Something about my goods being ready, and to collect them. I don't know what goods… he rang off before I could ask.'

I breathed deeply. 'Your telephone's still tapped,' I said.

'Yes, but what's that…" His voice died as his eyes widened. 'Do you think…? Do you really?'

'We could see,' I said. 'Don't bank on anything yet. What did he sound like?'

'A gruff voice.' He was uncertain. 'Not the usual one.'

'Well… let's try, anyway. Better than sitting here.'

'But where? He didn't say where.'

'Perhaps… where we left the ransom. Logical place.'

Hope began swelling fast in his expression and I said hastily, 'Don't expect anything. Don't believe. You'll never be able to stand it, if she isn't there. He may mean somewhere else… but I think we should try there first.'

He tried to take a grip on things but was still hectically optimistic. He ran through the house to where the car stood waiting near the back door, where I'd parked it. Putting on my cap I followed him at a walk, to find him beckoning frantically and telling me to hurry. I climbed behind the wheel stolidly and thought that someone had known Cenci was at home when he was normally in the office. Perhaps his office had said so… or perhaps there was still a watcher. In any case, I reckoned that until Alessia was safely home, a chauffeur in all things was what I needed to be.

'Do hurry,' Cenci said. I drove out of the gates without rush. 'For God's sake, man…'

'We'll get there. Don't hope…'

'I can't help it.'

I drove faster than usual, but it seemed an eternity to him; and when we pulled up by the shrine there was no sign of his daughter.

'Oh no… oh no.9 His voice was cracking. 'I can't… I can't

I looked at him anxiously, but it was normal crushing grief, not a heart attack, not a fit.

'Wait,' I said, getting out of the car. 'I'll make sure.'

I walked round to the back of the shrine, to the spot where we'd left the ransom, and found her there, unconscious, curled like a foetus, wrapped in a grey plastic raincoat.

Fathers are odd. The paramount emotion filling Paolo Cenci's mind for the rest of that day was not joy that his beloved daughter was alive, safe, and emerging unharmed from a drugged sleep, but fear that the press would find out she had been more or less naked.

'Promise you won't say, Andrew. Not to anyone. Not at all.'

'I promise.'

He made me promise at least seven separate times, though in any case it wasn't necessary. If anyone told, it would be Alessia herself.

Her lack of clothes had disturbed him greatly, especially as he and I had discovered when we tried to pick her up that her arms weren't through the sleeves of the raincoat, and the buttons weren't buttoned. The thin grey covering had slid right off.

She had the body of a child, I thought. Smooth skin, slender limbs, breasts like buds. Cenci had strangely been too embarrassed to touch her, and it had been I, the all-purpose advisor, who'd steered her arms through the plastic and fastened her more discreetly inside the folds. She had been light to carry to the car, and I'd lain her on her side on the rear seat, her knees bent, her curly head resting on my rolled-up jacket.

Cenci sat beside me in front: and it was then that he'd started exacting the promise. When we reached the villa he hurried inside to reappear with a blanket, and I carried her up to her half-acre bedroom in woolly decency.

Ilaria and Luisa were nowhere to be found. Cenci discarded the cook as too talkative and finally asked in a stutter if I would mind very much substituting clothes for the raincoat while he called the doctor. As I'd seen her already once, he said. As I was sensible. Astonished but obliging I unearthed a shift-like dress and made the exchange, Alessia sleeping peacefully throughout.

She was more awkward than anything else. I pulled the blue knitted fabric over her head, fed her hands through the armholes, tugged the hem down to her knees and concentrated moderately successfully on my own non-arousal. Then I laid her on top of the bedclothes and covered her from the waist down with the blanket. Her pulse remained strong and regular, her skin cool, her breathing easy: sleeping pills, probably, I thought; nothing worse.

Her thin face was calm, without strain, long lashes lying in half-moon fringes on taut cheeks. Strong eyebrows, pale lips, hollows along the jaw. Hair tousled, clearly dirty. Let her sleep, I thought: she'd have little peace when she woke up.

I went downstairs and found Cenci again drinking brandy, standing up.

'Is she all right?' he said. 'Fine. Just fine.'

'It's a miracle.'

'Mm.'

He put down the glass and began to weep. 'Sorry. Can't help it,' he said.

'It's natural.'

He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, 'Do all parents weep?'

'Yes.'

He put in some more work with the handkerchief, sniffed a bit, and said, 'You lead a very odd life, don't you?'

'Not really.'

'Don't say she had no clothes on. Promise, me, Andrew.'

'I promise.'

I said I'd have to tell Pucinelli she was safe, and, immediately alarmed, he begged for the promise again. I gave it without impatience, because stress could come out in weird ways and the return of the victim was never the end of it.

Pucinelli was fortunately on duty in the ambulance, though presumably I could have spread the news directly via the wire-tappers.

'She's home,' I said laconically. 'I'm in the villa. She's upstairs.'

'Alessia?' Disbelief, relief, a shading of suspicion.

"Herself. Drugged but unharmed. Don't hurry, she'll probably sleep for hours. How's the siege going?'

'Andrew!' The beginnings of exasperation. 'What's been going on?'

'Will you be coming here yourself?'

A short pause came down the line. He'd told me once that I always put suggestions into the form of questions, and I supposed that it was true that I did. Implant the thought, seek the decision. He knew the tap was on the telephone, he'd ordered it himself, with every word recorded. He would guess there were things I might tell him privately.

'Yes,' he said. I'll be coming.'

'And of course you'll have a great lever now with those two kidnappers in the flat, won't you? And - um - will you bring the ransom money straight here when you lay your hands on it? It does, of course, belong to Signor Cenci.'

'Of course,' he said dryly. 'But it may not be my decision.'

'Mm. Well… I photographed all the notes, of course.'

A pause. 'You're wicked, you know that?'

'Things have disappeared out of police custody before now.'

'You insult the carabinieri!' He sounded truly affronted, loyally angry.

'Certainly not. Police stations are not banks. I am sure the carabinieri would be pleased to be relieved of the responsibility of guarding so much money.'