Dick Francis - The Danger

'Why not?' Cenci said, bewildered.

'She says she's filthy. She's washed her hair twice. She says she smells.'

'But she doesn't,' he protested.

'No. I've told her that. It makes no difference.'

Take her some brandy and a bottle of scent,' I said.

Cenci looked at me blankly but Ilaria said, 'Well, why not?' and went off on the errand. She had talked more easily that morning than at any breakfast before, almost as if her sister's release had been also her own.

Pucinelli arrived mid-morning with a note-taking aide, and Alessia came downstairs to meet him. Standing there beside him in the hall I watched the tentative figure on the stairs and could clearly read her strong desire to retreat. She stopped four steps from the bottom and looked behind her, but Ilaria, who had gone up to fetch her, was nowhere to be seen.

Cenci went forward and put his arm round her shoulders, explaining briefly who I was, and saying Pucinelli wanted to know everything that happened to her, hoping for clues to lead him to arrests.

She nodded slightly, looking pale.

I'd seen victims return with hectic jollity, with hysteria, with apathy; all with shock. Alessia's state looked fairly par for the circumstances: a mixture of shyness, strangeness, weakness, relief and fear.

Her hair was still damp. She wore a T-shirt, jeans and no lipstick. She looked a defenceless sixteen, recently ill; the girl I'd seen undressed. What she did not look was the glossy darling of the European racetracks.

Cenci led her to the library, and we scattered around on chairs.

'Tell us,' Pucinelli said. 'Please tell us what happened, from the beginning.'

'I… it seems so long ago.' She spoke mostly to her father, looking seldom at Pucinelli and not at all at me; and she used Italian throughout, though as she spoke slowly with many pauses, I could follow her with ease. Indeed it occurred to me fleetingly that I'd soaked in a good deal more of the language than I'd arrived with, and more than I'd noticed until then.

'I'd been racing here on our local track… but you know that.'

Her father nodded.

'I won the six o'clock race, and there was an objection…'

More nods, both from Cenci and Pucinelli. The note-taking aide, eyes down to the task, kept his shorthand busily flowing.

'I drove home. I was thinking of England. Of riding Brunelleschi in the Derby…' She broke off. 'Did he win?'

Her father looked blank. At the time, shortly after her disappearance, he'd have been unlikely to notice an invasion of Martians in the back yard.

'No,' I said. 'Fourth.'

She said 'Oh,' vaguely, and I didn't bother to explain that I knew where the horse had finished simply because it was she who had been going to ride it. Ordinary curiosity, nothing more.

'I was here… in sight of the house. Not far from the gate. I slowed down, to turn in…'

The classic spot for kidnaps; right outside the victim's house. She had a red sports car, besides, and had been driving it that day with the roof down, as she always did in fine weather. Some people, I'd thought when I'd heard it, made abduction too simple for words.

'There was a car coming towards me… I waited for it to pass, so that I could turn… but it didn't pass, it stopped suddenly between me and the gate… blocking the way.' She paused and looked anxiously at her father. 'I couldn't help it, Papa. I really couldn't.'

'My dear, my dear…" He looked surprised at the very thought. He didn't see, as I did, the iceberg tip of the burden of guilt, but then he hadn't seen it so often.

'I couldn't think what they were doing,' she said. 'Then all the car doors opened at once, and there were four men… all wearing horrid masks… truly horrible… devils and monsters. I thought they wanted to rob me. I threw my purse at them and tried to reverse to get away backwards… and they sort of leapt into my car… just jumped right in…' She stopped with the beginnings of agitation and Pucinelli made small damping-down motions with his hands to settle her.

'They were so fast,' she said, her voice full of apology. 'I couldn't do anything…'

'Signorina,' Pucinelli said calmly, 'there is nothing to be ashamed of. If kidnappers wish to kidnap, they kidnap. Even all Aldo Moro's guards couldn't prevent it. And one girl alone, in an open car…' He shrugged expressively, finishing the sentence without words, and for the moment at least she seemed comforted.

A month earlier, to me in private, he had said that any rich girl who drove around in an open sports car was inviting everything from mugging to rape. 'I'm not saying they wouldn't have taken her anyway, but she was stupid. She made it easy.'

'There's not much fun in life if you're twenty-three and successful and can't enjoy it by driving an open sports car on a sunny day. What would you advise her to do, go round in a middle-aged saloon with the doors locked?'

'Yes,' he had said. 'So would you, if your firm was asked. That's the sort of advice you'd be paid for.'

'True enough.'

Alessia continued, 'They put a hood of cloth right over my head… and then it smelled sweet…'

'Sweet?' Pucinelli said.

'You know. Ether. Chloroform. Something like that. I simply went to sleep. I tried to struggle… They had their hands on my arms… sort of lifting me… nothing else.'

"They lifted you out of the car?'

'I think so. I suppose so. They must have done.'

Pucinelli nodded. Her car had been found a bare mile away, parked on a farm track.

'I woke up in a tent,' Alessia said.

'A tent?' echoed Cenci, bewildered.

'Yes… well… it was inside a room, but I didn't realise that at first.'

'What sort of tent?' Pucinelli asked. 'Please describe it.'

'Oh…' she moved a hand weakly, 'I can describe every stitch of it. Green canvas. About two and a half metres square… a bit less. It had walls… I could stand up.'

A frame tent.

'It had a floor. Very tough fabric. Grey. Waterproofs I suppose, though of course that didn't matter…

'When you woke up,' Pucinelli asked, 'what happened?'

'One of the men was kneeling on the floor beside me, slapping my face. Quite hard. Hurry up, he was saying. Hurry up. When I opened my eyes he grunted and said I must just repeat a few words and I could go back to sleep.'

'Was he wearing a mask?'

'Yes… a devil face… orange… all warts.'

We all knew what the few words had been. We'd all listened to them, over and over, on the first of the tapes.

'This is Alessia. Please do as they say. They will kill me if you don't.' A voice slurred with drugs, but alarmingly her own.

'I knew what I said,' she said. 'I knew when I woke up properly… but when I said them, everything was fuzzy. I couldn't see the mask half the time… I kept switching off, then coming back,'

'Did you ever see any of them without masks?' Pucinelli asked.

A flicker of a smile reached the pale mouth. 'I didn't see any of them again, even in masks. Not at all. No one. The first person I saw since that first day was Aunt Luisa… sitting by my own bed… sewing her tapestry, and I thought… I was dreaming.' Tears unexpectedly appeared in her eyes and she blinked them slowly away. 'They said… if I saw their faces, they would kill me. They told me not to try to see them…' She swallowed. 'So… I didn't… try.'

'You believed them?'

A pause. Then she said 'Yes' with a conviction that brought understanding of what she'd been through vividly to life. Cenci, although he had believed the threats himself, looked shattered. Pucinelli gravely assured her that he was sure she had been right: and so, though I didn't mention it, was I.

'They said… I would go home safely… if I was quiet… and if you would pay for my release.' She was still trying not to cry. 'Papa…'