The tingling silence abruptly descended around him again.
And yet not a true silence any more, but the moment when the gamekeeper and the poacher sensed each other's presence in the same covert, the moment of held breath and stretched senses.
It had not been like this in the farmhouse, it had been just how the sergeant had wanted it, all noise and terror.
Charlie reached out for the light switch.
"I knows you're up there," he said in a loud voice. "You just come on down quiet, an' don't make no trouble. Police is comin'. So you just come on down."
He clicked the switch.
There was bursting paper-bag noise—that had been the farmhouse noise he'd never been able to recall—and a hornet stung his ear.
dummy2
Same noise with same result: as the man at the head of the stairs sighted the pistol again, this time on Charlie's heart, Charlie shot him dead.
II
VILLARI'S MANNERS, OR more exactly his attitude towards those whom he considered inferior to himself, had not improved, that was evident.
First the fellow had idly fingered the files and envelopes on Boselli's desk, disarranging their mathematical relation to one another. Then he had admired himself in the little round mirror beside the door, patting the golden perfection of his hair and checking his flawless complexion. And then he had sauntered over to the window to gaze without apparent interest over the roofscape towards the Vittorio Emanuele monument. And finally, when he deigned at last to speak, he didn't even bother to turn round to face Boselli.
"Who's this guy Audley then?"
Boselli stared at the well-tailored back with hatred. If looks could kill he felt that his would have materialised into six inches of steel angled slightly upwards just beneath the left shoulder blade.
"Audley?" The anger blurred his voice.
"The guy you're getting steamed up about, yes."
It was typical of Villari to use that aggravating and unfair dummy2
"you," even though he'd come running across a heat-stricken Rome obediently enough himself. But then Villari had always known when to temper his native insolence with a shrewd instinct for the whims of his superiors. The feet that kicked the Bosellis of the world at every opportunity trod very carefully on the carpets of men like Raffaele Montuori.
"We're not getting steamed up."
"So you're not getting steamed up—fine." Villari moved across the airless room, back to the mirror again. "You're not getting steamed up, but you're here."
That "here" carried the same disparagement as the earlier
"you," turning Boselli's own beloved sanctuary, with its rows of battered steel cabinets and its signed portrait of John XXIII into an unspeakable slum.
"And you are here too," replied Boselli acidly. He mopped his brow with the big silk handkerchief his eldest daughter had given him on his last birthday, fancying as he did so that Villari had chosen even those words "steamed up" with deliberate scorn also. For all his North Italian, almost Scandinavian blondness, the younger man showed not a sign of discomfort in the swelter—it was Boselli himself, the Roman, who was already wilting.
But that bitter little thought raised another much more interesting one which momentarily chased away Boselli's private discomforts. There had to be a reason for the General to recall this gilded Clotheshorse from his leave beyond the fact that he happened to be here in Rome. If the General had dummy2
wanted someone from Venice or Messina —or Benghazi—he wouldn't have thought twice about summoning him. So it was Villari and none other that he wanted now. And since Villari combined fluency in the North European languages with the right colouring and an ability to withstand extremes of temperature, cold as well as hot, it must be that Villari was needed to check up on Audley in England.
Which meant that the General was committed to a line of action, or was at least on the very brink of commitment.
And that was a useful thing to know, even though he had not as yet the faintest idea what Audley—
Villari suddenly loomed up directly in front of the desk, cutting off this intriguing line of reflection. He placed his hands precisely on the two corners—the desk creaked alarmingly as it took his weight—and leaned forward until his face was less than fifty centimetres from Boselli's.
"Little man, little man—" Villari's smile was as devoid of good humour as it was of friendship "—I can hear the cogs and wheels whirring in your little brain but you haven't answered my question. And when I ask a question I expect you to provide an answer."
Boselli sat up stiffly and drew back in the same instant, the faint smell of expensive cologne in his nostrils.
"I haven't been told to answer any questions," he snapped. "I have no authorisation to answer questions."
"Authorisation?" The grin became frozen, but there was a dummy2
glint of anger in Villari's eyes now. "You have the soul of a clerk, little Boselli. A clerk you were born and a clerk you will die."
He straightened up slowly. "But I don't need to lose my temper, because I have my own way with clerks. It's a very simple way—let me show you how I treat clerks who bandy words with me. You could call it my authorisation—"
He put his hand in the middle of Boselli's desk and with an unhurried movement, before Boselli could even think of stopping him, swept half the surface clear.
A second too late, unavailingly, Boselli jerked forward in an attempt to stop the cascade of paper, grabbing desperately and clumsily, catching nothing. Villari watched him scrabbling on his knees for a moment and then, as though bored with the whole affair, turned away towards the window again.
"You're—mad," Boselli heard himself muttering in anguish as he sorted the jumbled documents. "It'll take me hours—hours
—" He cut off the complaint as he realised that it would only give Villari more satisfaction. He had no dignity left to salvage and no hope of lodging any sort of complaint without further humiliating himself (the crafty swine had calculated that exactly). Silence was all that remained to him.
But silence did not seem to worry Villari. He merely waited until the papers had been shovelled more or less into their correct files, and the files had been piled more or less in their original places, in a mockery of their original neatness. Then dummy2
he advanced again.
Instinctively Boselli set his hands over the files in a pathetic attempt to protect them.
Villari laughed.
"If you could see yourself!" He shook his head. "Better death than disorder! So we start again, then: who is the man Audley? Speak up, clerk."
Boselli sighed. "What makes you think it is Audley who concerns you?"
Villari looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, as though undecided as to whether or not to assault the files again.
Then, to Boselli's unbounded relief, he relaxed; the game of bullying had palled, or more likely the need for information from a beaten opponent commended itself more urgently.
"Well, he seems to concern you, little Boselli. His name is written all over your files—three folders all to himself, and one from the Foreign Ministry. What a busy fellow he must be!" The manicured hand pointed carelessly. "And isn't that a photograph too?"
He tweaked open one of the covers and twisted round the contents.
"Hmm. . . . Not a particularly prepossessing type. In fact he reminds me of a bouncer I met in a club in Hamburg—he thought he was a hard man." Villari sniffed at the memory, then held the photograph up at arm's length for a more critical look. "The suit's okay— you can't beat the English for dummy2
tailoring—but he's filling it too much ... a big tough guy running to seed." He nodded to himself. "A bit like that actor of theirs who's always getting into scrapes with the cops.