North from Rome (21 page)

Joe started the car. “Don’t guess so much,” he said sharply. “That could lead you into trouble.”

“It already has.” It was midnight now. Lammiter would never make that plane, even if he wanted to. He wouldn’t make any plane tomorrow, or the next day either. He glanced at Joe, who was both silent and angry. “Don’t worry, Joe. My guess was all my own. I don’t think any of the men you are hunting would even notice.”

“Notice what?” Joe tried to be casual. But no one likes hearing his own mistakes.

“When we met, this afternoon, you were talking tough American. You were a man who had knocked around, done
odd jobs, driven cars, become attached to the Di Feo family, then to the princess, part-time handyman, personal retainer, and probably black marketeer on the side. With a heart of gold, of course. But now you aren’t talking that kind of language. Because you aren’t thinking in that kind of language.”

Joe glanced at him sharply.

“I’d say you were now a detective, an agent of some kind, one of Bevilacqua’s bright boys, who’s got several problems to solve. Where did you go to college in America?”

Suddenly, Joe laughed. It was a real laugh. “I like you,” he said, keeping his eyes determinedly on the traffic. “You’ve got a sense of humour. Me, Giuseppe Rocco, one of Bevilacqua’s bright boys...”

“Yes, that’s what I’d say,” Lammiter went on quietly, “except for one thing.”

Joe was guarded now. “What’s that?”

“The licence plate on your car. Its last three numbers are the ones Rosana noticed last night when a car tried to pick her up. It’s the number Brewster noticed when a car tried to run him down. Who could have borrowed your car, Joe?”

“Mannaggia!”
Joe stared at him. For a moment, his face showed alarm; then it became blank again. “So,” he said at last, “the laugh is on me, eh?” He fell silent. But Lammiter noticed that the car’s speed had increased as much as the traffic would allow. Whatever Joe was, he certainly knew how to handle a car.

One of the greatest charms of Rome is the fact that it is still a living city—not just a collection of office buildings, business headquarters, and stores which all close down at night, leaving bleak lights in their windows for cleaners and watchmen. There, the streets were not suddenly emptied after the working day ends, to let the tourists wander around like dispirited ghosts searching through a graveyard. There, the people not only work but live. Round the corner from the main streets are always the little streets and little squares, with apartments and flats and rooms and houses. There are trees, and flowers, and gardens surrounding great villas, the green touch to keep a city from turning into a suffocating blanket of stone and plaster.

Now, as Joe swung away from the noise and light, the car turned into a street where most people had already gone to bed. They abandoned the car there, leaving it beside others equally
nondescript. For a moment, Lammiter had the impulse to run, to get to a telephone. But he wasn’t sure where he was, or in which direction to run, and a running man would attract attention. Besides, Joe’s quick eyes were expecting a little trouble. He nodded, as if congratulating Lammiter on his wisdom, as the American waited for him while he locked the car. Then, at a brisk pace, they cut through a small square, walked across a busy intersection where a large movie house was still open, and entered a long street of high-walled gardens surrounding large villas. There was little stirring, a few pedestrians, an occasional car. The noise of the city’s late pleasure traffic became a distant background to the peace of the night. It seemed warmer here, as if the trees and the flowers had trapped the hot sun and still fondled it in the moonlight. The air was heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and gardenias.

They passed two villas, standing far back from the street, dark and mysterious in their nest of trees. (They looked quite empty, as though the owners had left for their summer places among the hill towns.) As they approached the third garden, Joe pulled a ring heavy with keys from his pocket. Ahead was the entrance to this villa, an enormous double gate of elaborately wrought iron, set into high stone walls, a polished brass bell at one side and a shield with a coat of arms above. They were passing the gates. Joe glanced into the gardens. He swore softly and his pace increased. Lammiter glanced, too.

In that brief moment he saw a gatehouse, dark and empty, and then a villa, standing well back from the street, commanding a circular driveway. Its rooms were lighted, its handsome portico a blaze of hard brilliance. And he saw, too, the coat of arms over the gate, a wolf’s head quartered with three beehives. Wasn’t that the same coat of arms he had glimpsed in miniature today on the door of the princess’s car?

Beyond the main entrance lay a small narrow gate, chained and padlocked, partly overgrown by a tangle of leaves and branches climbing along the wall. But someone had oiled the padlock and the hinges of this unused gate, for Joe unlocked it easily and swung it open soundlessly. Quickly, with a last glance along the quiet street, he pulled Lammiter inside the villa’s garden. Carefully, he closed the gate and secured it once more. They were standing in a stable yard at the gatehouse. The building, Lammiter now saw, was a garage, politely turning its honest utilitarian face towards the yards away from the painted elegance of the villa. (Once it had been a stable and coach house, for he passed a disused horse trough and pump as he followed Joe across the paved yard.)

Joe unlocked a panel of the garage door soundlessly, swung it open a few feet, and beckoned him in. He stood in complete darkness as the door was closed. He could hear Joe fumbling against a wall. A click, and a bare light glared down at them from a high beam. In front of him stood a venerable and highly polished Lancia.

“Quick!” Joe said, pointing to a rough flight of wooden stairs at one end of the garage. “And when you get to the top, wait. Or you’ll break a leg.”

Lammiter left Joe at the light switch and passed three horse stalls, a heap of tyres, neatly stacked oilcans, an ancient carriage, bridles and harness hanging from hooks. Then he began climbing. At the top was a dark recess. He waited there. He had to. The light didn’t penetrate as far as that. Now Joe switched it off, and the blackness was complete again.

The minutes seemed interminable. And then a wooden step gave a faint groan, a more solid piece of blackness stood beside him, and Joe grasped his arm. “One moment,” Joe said, edging past him, opening a narrow door. Beyond was an attic: a floor of bare boards cluttered with islands of trunks and boxes, all striped with the pale white light of stars and moon that came through the slatted shutters of the windows.

“Quiet!” warned Joe angrily. For the pale light was deceptive: Lammiter, on his way over to the nearest window, had misjudged a shadow and stumbled against a pile of harness. There was a smell of dry leather, the feeling of grit under his feet, the sound of a bat’s steady whirr as it circled under the low rafters. He reached the window. It was, more accurately, an oblong for ventilation, tucked into the shade of the pink-tiled roof, with only the slatted shutters for covering. But the view was excellent. He could see the driveway, with the villa far to his right; slightly to his left, almost below him, were the front gates.

“The princess goes to bed late,” he said softly. Joe had no need to tell him to keep his voice almost to a whisper. From the garden the gentle splash of water in some hidden fountain came so clearly into the attic that he needed no reminder that all noise was amplified by the stillness around him or that these ventilation windows were unglazed.

Joe began talking, very quietly, in Italian. Lammiter swung round, almost falling over a couple of leather bags and a typewriter. He stood staring at Joe, who had not taken leave of his senses but was using all of them, in a long complicated conversation over a telephone. In this attic of ancient and abandoned possessions, the small black telephone was a strange intrusion. It had been installed in the wooden frame
of the door itself, inside a panel cut in the jamb.

Joe had been talking about his car, probably (he spoke too quickly for Lammiter to be sure) giving its location. There was something about number plates, and a change; something about watching a garage. And then Joe began talking about Lammiter, for he looked across at the American for a quick moment and then dropped into a dialect. Sicilian possibly, which was completely unintelligible. This part was brief. Very unflattering, Lammiter thought with a smile. It was the first smile he had felt like giving for a long time. A telephone was a great help to morale.

Joe hooked back the receiver into the inside of the panel and swung it shut.

“My turn,” Lammiter said.

“I must wait for a call.”

“I must make one! Or shall I start heaving a few trunks around and give an Apache scream? That’s worse than a rebel yell. I’ve all kinds of sound effects ready to use.”

“I believe you would,” Joe said. But he was almost smiling, and he swung the panel open again. So Lammiter at least had been declared friendly. He stepped carefully over the typewriter case, looked down and exclaimed, “Hey, that’s mine!” but kept on moving as quickly as possible to the telephone. Joe might change his mind.

“I told you they’d be safe,” said Joe. “You should trust me more.”

“I trust as much as I’m trusted.” Lammiter reached in his pocket. “I need some light,” he said angrily, trying to make out Camden’s writing. Was that an eight or a three? He felt for a match.

“Shield it,” came Joe’s quick warning.

Lammiter obeyed, put through the number, and waited. “I gather you aren’t supposed to be here.”

“Only when I’m working on the Lancia. I lock up, hand the key in at the house, get the gates locked behind me. There was a burglary at the villa last year, so now everything is locked and—”

“Sh!” Lammiter said. It was an American voice speaking at the other end of the line. “Camden, please. Bill Lammiter speaking.” Joe had moved across to the ventilation slats. He seemed to be watching the villa, but he was listening. Lammiter was sure of that.

“Oh, yes,” the voice said as if that was no surprise.

“There’s been trouble tonight. Can I reach Camden himself?”

“Just a moment. Here is where he can be reached meanwhile.” A number, vaguely familiar, was rattled off. “Got it?” It was repeated. It was Eleanor Halley’s number.

“That’s enough!” Joe’s urgent whisper came across the still attic. But Lammiter had already got the number. “Shut up!” he said, to silence Joe’s steady stream of fine Sicilian curses: “Bunny? There’s bad news.”

“So I’ve just heard.” Camden’s matter-of-fact voice was a real slice of comfort. “It’s breaking fast. Must be more of an emergency than we guessed.” He paused. Then he said, “There’s trouble here, too, Bill.”

“Something has happened to—” He couldn’t finish. He hadn’t expected that news. And he hadn’t expected the news to hit him this way, either.

“Take it easy. She isn’t here.”

“Isn’t there?” he asked blankly. And then, savagely, “Where the hell is she?”

“Zitty!”
Joe warned from the window. “Sh!”

“Take it easy, Bill,” Camden was saying. “She left a note for the maid. She says she’ll be back on Monday.”

“Monday—” Today was Thursday... No—Friday, now. “And where has she
gone?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Did she take any clothes—any—”

“It’s difficult to judge. The bedroom’s in a state of eruption.”

“She was packing. Going home tomorrow. Look, Bunny, stay there. I’ll be right around.”

“You stay
here!”
said Joe, looking angrily over his shoulder.

“No, don’t come around,” Camden’s voice said. “That gains nothing. The case is in good hands.”

“What happened? For God’s sake, Bunny, tell me what’s been going on?”

“I got in touch with that Englishman I mentioned. He was definitely interested. He wanted to talk to Miss Halley. We telephoned. No answer. I thought we’d better go round to her place and see her. We kept knocking at her door. No answer. So I telephoned the police, they wakened the porter downstairs, and we all got in. There was a lot of packing interrupted and dirty dishes. But no girl. No photographs, either.”

“But—”

“Have you still got that snapshot?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Where are you?”

“In a loft, guarded by a watchdog called Giuseppe Rocco.” There was a quick rush of light footsteps behind Lammiter.

“Giuseppe Rocco?” Camden’s voice repeated. Joe’s hand forced its way between the receiver and Lammiter’s mouth. It was not a happy gesture. Lammiter was never in a mood to be gagged, least of all now. He kicked sideways and aimed the hardest blow he could manage with his free hand at Joe’s chin. “Don’t do that, don’t you ever do that to me!” he said in sudden fury as Joe’s grip was forced off his lips.

Joe’s hand was in his pocket, his balance regained, his knees slightly bent, crouched, ready. His lips were narrowed with an anger that matched Lammiter’s.

“What’s going on there?” Bunny’s voice was suddenly alarmed. “Wait—put Rocco on the phone—here’s a friend of his—Bill, put Rocco on the phone!”

“For you,” Lammiter said, holding out the receiver. Joe straightened his body slowly. His right hand was still in his pocket. His eyes were wary and never left Lammiter, but he took the receiver.

Lammiter sat down on a trunk. There was sweat on his brow. He took out his handkerchief, and inside it he felt the small negative and its print. There was still one piece of identification left about Evans, still one photograph. But Eleanor could identify the man even better. Eleanor... Now a cold sweat broke over his brow.

Whoever was talking to Joe had authority, information, and—finally—instructions to give. Whatever he was saying had a noticeable effect: Joe’s face was astonished, but it was no longer troubled. He even smiled and nodded encouragingly over to Lammiter. Now, thought Lammiter wryly, all I have to worry about is Eleanor.

He waited impatiently for the first sign of the end of Joe’s instructions. But Joe gave his own brief report, in his very best Italian, before the call seemed near an end. Probably he had
been on the telephone no more than five minutes all told, but to Lammiter they seemed an hour. He signalled as Joe was giving his final
“Si, si, capo,”
and held out his hand.