Dick Francis - The Danger

'Very upsetting,' Eagler observed as we strolled away. 'But she'll get her kid back, with a bit of luck, not like some I've dealt with. Little kids snatched at random by psychos and murdered… sexual, often. Those mothers… Heartbreaking. Rotten. And quite often we know the psychos. Know they'll probably do something violent one day. Kill someone. We can often arrest them within a day of the body being found. But we can't prevent them. We can't keep them locked up for ever, just in case. Nightmare, those people. We've got one round here now. Time bomb waiting to go off. And some poor kid, somewhere, will be cycling along, or walking, at just the wrong time, just the wrong place. Some woman's kid. Something triggers the psycho. You never know what it is. Something small. Tips them over. After, they don't know why they've done it, like as not.'

'Mm,' I said. 'Worse than kidnappers. With them there's always hope.'

During his dissertation he'd given me several sideways glances: reinforcing his impressions, I thought. And I too had been doing the same, getting to know what to expect of him, good or bad. Occasionally someone from Liberty Market came s across a policeman who thought of us as an unnecessary nuisance encroaching on their jealously-guarded preserves, but on the whole they accepted us along the lines of if you want to understand a wreck, consult a diver.

'What can you tell me that you wouldn't want those two girls to hear?' he asked.

I gave him a small smile; got reserved judgement back.

'The man who kidnapped Alessia,' I said, 'recruited local talent. He recruited one, who roped in another five. The carabinieri have arrested those six, but the leader vanished. He called himself Giuseppe, which will do for now. We produced a drawing of him and flooded the province with it, with no results. I'll let you have a copy of it, if you like,' I paused. 'I know it's a long shot. This horse thing may be truly and simply a coincidence.'

Eagler put his head on one side. 'File it under fifty-fifty, then.'

'Right. And there's today's note…'

'Nothing Italian about that, eh?' Eagler looked genial. 'But local talent? Just the right style for local talent, wouldn't you say?'

'Yes, I would.'

'Just right for an Italian leaning over the local talent's shoulder saying in broken English "tell her to telephone her husband, tell her not to inform the police".' He smiled fleetingly. 'But that's all conjecture, as they say.'

We turned as of one accord and began to stroll back to the car.

'The girl jockey's a bit jumpy still,' he said. 'It does that to them. Some are jumpy with strangers for ever.'

'Poor girl,' he said, as if he hadn't thought of freedom having problems; victims naturally being vastly less interesting than villains to the strong arm of the law.

I explained about Tony Vine being at that moment with John Nerrity, and said that Nerrity's local force would also by now know about Dominic. Eagler noted the address and said he would 'liaise'.

'I expect Tony Vine will be in charge from our point of view,' I said. 'He's very bright, if you have any dealings with him."

'All right.'

We arranged that I would send the photostats of Giuseppe and a report on Alessia's kidnapping down to him on the first morning train; and at that point we were back at the car,

'Right then, Mr Douglas.' He shook my hand limply as if sealing a bargain, as different from Pucinelli as a tortoise from a hare; one wily, one sharp, one wrinkled in his carapace, one leanly taut in his uniform, one always on the edge of his nerves, one avuncularly relaxed.

I thought that I would rather be hunted by Pucinelli, any day.

John Nerrity was a heavily-built man of medium height with greying hair cut neat and short; clipped moustache to match. On good days I could imagine him generating a fair amount of charm, but on that evening I saw only a man accustomed to power who had married a girl less than half his age and looked like regretting it.

They lived in a large detached house on the edge of a golf course near Sutton, south of London, only about three miles distant from where their four-legged wonder had made a fortune on Epsom Downs.

The exterior of the house, in the dusk of our arrival, had revealed itself as thirties-developed Tudor, but on a restrained and successful scale. Inside, the carpets wall-to-wall looked untrodden, the brocade chairs un-sat-on, the silk cushions unwrinkled, the paper and paint unscuffed. Unfaded velvet curtains hung in stiff regular folds from beneath elaborate pelmets, and upon several glass and chromium coffee tables lay large glossy books, unthumbed. There were no photographs and no flowers, and the pictures had been chosen to occupy wall-space, not the mind; the whole thing more like a shop-window than the home of a little boy.

John Nerrity was holding a gin and tonic with ice clinking and lemon slice floating, a statement in itself of his resistance to crisis. I couldn't imagine Paolo Cenci organising ice and lemon six hours after the first ransom demand: it had been almost beyond him to pour without spilling.

With Nerrity were Tony Vine, wearing his most enigmatic expression, and another man, sour of mouth and bitter of eye, who spoke with Tony's accent and looked vaguely, in his flannels and casual sweater, as if he'd been out for a stroll with his dog.

'Detective Superintendent Rightsworth,' Tony said, introducing him deadpan. 'Waiting to talk to Mrs Nerrity.'

Rightsworth gave me barely a nod, and that more of repression than of acknowledgement. One of those, I thought. A civilian-hater. One who thought of the police as 'us' and the public as 'them', the 'them' being naturally inferior. It always surprised me that policemen of that kind got promoted, but Rightsworth was proof enough that they did. The old ridiculous joke of 'Where do the police live? In Letsby Avenue,' crossed my mind; and Popsy would have appreciated my struggle to keep a straight face.

Alessia and Miranda had come into the sitting room close together and a step behind me, as if using me as a riot shield: and it was clear from John Nerrity's face that the first sight of his wife prompted few loving, comforting or supportive feelings.

He gave her no kiss. No greeting. He merely said, as if in a continuing conversation, 'Do you realise that Ordinand isn't mine to sell? Do you realise we're in hock to the Emit? No, you don't. You can't do anything. Not even something simple like looking after a kid.

Miranda crumpled behind me and sank to the floor. Alessia and I bent to help her up, and I said to Miranda's ear, 'People who are frightened are often angry and say things that hurt. He's as frightened as you are. Hang on to that.'

'What are you mumbling about?' Nerrity demanded, 'Miranda, for Christ's sake get up, you look a wreck. He stared with disfavour at the ravaged face and untidy hair of his son's mother, and with only the faintest flicker of overdue compassion said impatiently, 'Get up, get up, they say it wasn't your fault.'

She would always think it had been, though; and so would he. Few people understood how persistent, patient, ingenious and fast committed kidnappers could be. Whomever they planned to take, they took.

Rightsworth said he wanted to ask Mrs Nerrity some questions and guided her off to a distant sofa, followed by her bullish husband with his tinkling glass.

Alessia sat in an armchair as if her legs were giving way, and Tony and I retreated to a window seat to exchange quiet notes.

'He…' Tony jerked his head towards Nerrity, 'has been striding up and down here wearing holes in the effing carpet and calling his wife an effing cow. All sorts of names. Didn't know some of them myself.' He grinned wolfishly. 'Takes them like that, sometimes, of course.'