He walked on till he reached the ristorante attached to the sailing club at the end of the half-kilometre esplanade. There was a closed telephone booth in the hallway leading from the street door to the inner eating sanctum. He had to wait some minutes for two giggling girls to finish. Neither bothered to glance at the frail built boy as they plunged out, loud in their shared noise.
This near to the capital the telephone booths were equipped with Rome directories. He flicked through the first pages of the scruffed edition of the Yellow Pages, running down the addresses and numbers listed under Commissariati PS with his cleaned fingernail. At the bottom of the page he found the answer.
Questura Centrale – v. di S Vitale 15 (46 86).
This would stir the bastards.
He would carry the fight to them, as Franca would have wished, carry it right to the doors of the Questura where they sat with their files and their minions and their computers. They would hear of Giancarlo, the hacks and lackeys would hear his name.
He was trembling, taut as a whiplash at the moment it cracks on a horse's back. The shaking convulsed his palms and the gettoni rattled dully in his fist.
No nearer, no further from Harrison, the child had sat down. He was cross-legged, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands supporting his chin, the kindergarten pose, listening to a teacher's story.
Like you're a bloody animal, Geoffrey, like he's found a fox half dead in a gin-trap, and he has the patience to wait and see what happens. All the hours in the world the child had to be patient, too young for a watch, for a sense of fleeting time.
Harrison's attempts to draw him closer, to engage those small sharp fingers in the binding knots had failed. All the nodding and gesturing with his head had been ignored except for the few times when his most violent contortions had gathered a flash of fear to his face and the child's slim muscles had stiffened and prepared for escape. Don't get excited, Harrison had learned, and for God's sake, even with the eyes, don't threaten him. The child has to be kept there, his confidence has to be conserved, he has to be wooed.
You want to keep him there, Geoffrey, with Giancarlo coming back? Giancarlo and the P38 coming back with the food, and you're trying to keep the child there?
God, I don't know, and the moments were marching, the hands would be sliding on the watch face on his wrist.
There was almost a sadness on the child's face as Harrison peered into its shallow depths. He would be a kid from a farmhouse, self-sufficient, self-reliant in his entertainment, a creature of the woods, and owing loyalty and softness only to his parents.
A pleasant child. You'd fine one like this on the Yorkshire uplands or the Devon moors, or on the far west shoreline of Ireland's Donegal. God knows how to communicate with the blighter. Can't frighten him, can't please him. If there had been a child of his own, but Violet had said that her figure… Can't blame bloody Violet, not her fault you don't know how to talk to a child.
Hope was fleeing from Harrison. His head movements became less frequent, and he noticed that when he subsided into inertia then the start of boredom glazed the child's eyes. That way he would leave, pick himself off the earth and wander on his way.
That's what he should do, lie still, bore the kid out, and hope that he was gone before Giancarlo was back; that was saving the kid.
That was the proper way, that was diving clothed into an icy pool to pluck a baby out.
God, I don't want him to go. The fear came again, the horror of being abandoned by this child mind, and he nodded again with his head and wore the pantomime face of the clown in his urgency.
Hating himself, with the fever in his eyes as he called mutely for the child to come forward, Harrison strained to hear the footfall of the returning Giancarlo.
'Pronto, Questura.'
Giancarlo stabbed with his finger at the button that would release a gettone to fall into the caverns of the machine.
'Questura..
'Please, the office of Dottore Giuseppe Carboni?'
'A m o m e n t… '
Thank you.'
'For nothing, sir…'
A hesitation, the sounds of connection. Perspiration dribbled down Giancarlo's chest.
'Yes..
'May I speak to Dottore Giuseppe Carboni.'
'He is very busy at the moment. In what connection…?'
'In connection with the Englishman, 'Arrison.'
'Can I help myself? I work in Dottore Carboni's office.'
' I must speak with him directly. It is important.'
There would be a taping of all incoming calls for Carboni.
Giancarlo assumed that, but unless suspicions Were aroused the trace procedures would not be automatic. He kept his voice calm, regulated.
'A m o m e n t… who is it calling?'
Giancarlo flushed. 'It does not matter…'
'A moment.'
More delays and he fed another gettone. He smiled mirthlessly. Not the time to lose the call for lack of coins. His last two rested in his hand. More than sufficient… He started, clenched at the receiver.
'Carboni speaking. What can I do for you?'
The voice seemed to come from a great distance, a whispering on the line as if there were a great tiredness and the resignation was heavy.
'Listen carefully, Carboni. Do not interrupt. This is the spokes-man of the Nuclei Armati Proletaria…'
Don't gabble, Giancarlo. Remember that you are kicking them. Remember that you are hurting them as surely as the P38 in Franca's hand.
'… We hold the Englishman, 'Arrison. If Franca Tantardini has not been released and flown out of Italy to the territory of a friendly Socialist nation by nine o'clock tomorrow morning, then the multinationalist 'Arrison will be executed for his crimes against the proletariat. There is more, Carboni. We will telephone again this evening, and when your name is asked for then the call must be put through to you immediately, and in your room must be Franca Tantardini. We will speak to her ourselves.
If the connection is not made, if Comrade Tantardini is not there to talk to us, then 'Arrison will be killed. The call this evening will come at twenty hours…'
Forty seconds on the revolving hand of his watch since he had announced the source of the communication. And the trace system would be in operation. Mad, Giancarlo, mad. It's the behaviour of a fool. .. Is that understood?'
Thank you, Giancarlo.'
The boy's head jolted forward, fingers white and bloodless on the plastic telephone. A breathy whisper. 'How did you know?'
'We know so much, Giancarlo. Giancarlo Battestini. Born Pescara. Father, a clothes shop there. One metre sixty-eight tall.
Weight on release from Regina Coeli, sixty-one kilos. Call again, Giancarlo… '
Another twenty seconds departed on his watch, lost. Giancarlo snapped, 'You will have her there. You will have Comrade Tantardini on this telephone?'