An idea took hold of me. Caselli was a police officer. I knew that. If I could implicate Shirer, if I could start them making inquiries. … I thrust the photograph towards him, my thumb over the uniform. ‘Do you recognise that man?’ I asked him. He peered forward. His breath smelt faintly of garlic. ‘He has no moustache now.’
‘Yes. That is the American the signorina speak of. It is Shirer.’
‘You think it’s Shirer,’ I said. ‘But it isn’t. His name’s Sansevino. You go and see this fellow you think is Walter Shirer at the Nazionale. Go and talk to him. I think maybe—’
‘Ah, here you are.’ It was Hacket who had interrupted me. ‘I’ve just ordered a car so maybe we can go out to the airport together, eh?’ He had halted, looking from me to Hilda Tucek and the police officer. ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I said quickly. And then to Caselli, ‘You can keep the photograph. It may help Shirer to remember what he did at the Villa d’Este.’
Caselli stared at the photograph and then at me.
‘Wasn’t Shirer the man who escape with Alec?’ Hilda Tucek asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And you are suggesting this Walter Shirer has something to do with my father’s disappearance?’
‘No. I mean—’ I shrugged my shoulders. Probably he had nothing to do with it. But I wanted Caselli to investigate. That was all I wanted. ‘Reece thinks he escaped with his friend, Shirer,’ I said. ‘But he didn’t. He escaped with that man.’ I pointed to the photograph. ‘He was an Italian doctor. He wanted to escape from being tried as a war criminal. Now he pretends he’s Walter Shirer. But he isn’t. He’s Doctor Sansevino. Go and see him,’ I told Caselli. ‘Check the details of his escape. You’ll find—’
‘I do not have to,’ Caselli interrupted. His small eyes were looking at me hard. ‘I know Signer Shirer.’
I turned to Hilda Tucek. She was staring at me blankly. I felt suddenly as though they were all against me. It was no good telling them the truth. They didn’t believe it. No one would believe it.
‘Steady.’ Hacket’s hand gripped my arm. Then he turned to Caselli. ‘A word with you,’ he said. He shepherded them across to the other side of the entrance hall. I could see him talking to them and they were staring at me. Then he was coming back to me and they were leaving the hotel. Hilda Tucek paused momentarily in the doorway, looking at me with a strange uncertainty as though she were reluctant to leave. Then she was gone and Hacket was at my elbow.
‘What did you tell them?’ I asked angrily.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I just explained that you were a little upset this morning — that you weren’t yourself. It’s all right. They won’t worry you now.’ He grinned. ‘I said I was your doctor and had advised a holiday. Have you settled your hotel bill?’
I felt helpless as though I had no will of my own and was drifting on the tide of Hacket’s good nature. I turned and looked at the bill the clerk was pushing towards me.
‘I hope you are not in trouble, signore?’ The clerk beamed at me as though he had said something funny.
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Do you not know who that is? It is il capitano Caselli of the Carabinieri. A very clever man, Capitano Caselli — very clever indeed.’
I handed him four thousand lire notes. ‘You can keep the change,’ I said and picked up my bag. ‘I’m ready now, Mr. Hacket,’ I told the American. ‘Can we stop at a post office? I must send off a cable.’ All I wanted now was to get out of Milan.
‘Sure we can. We’ve plenty of time.’
We arrived at the airport at ten to eleven and the first person I saw as I went into the passenger hall was Reece. He was talking to a stout little man with a bald head and long sideboards. He didn’t see me as we went through. We checked our bags and passports and then sat waiting for our flight. Shortly after eleven the flight from Prague was announced and I saw Reece go out to meet it. I wondered whether Maxwell was arriving. I didn’t see why else Reece should be meeting the Prague plane. A few minutes later our own flight was called and we went down the ramp to the aircraft.
For the second time in the space of a few days I felt a sense of great relief as I found a seat and sank back into it, safe inside the fuselage of an aircraft. The door was fastened and we began to taxi out to the runway. We had a smooth take-off and as the plane rose and Milan vanished below us in a haze of smoke, a great weight seemed to be lifted from my mind. Milan was behind me now. Ahead was Naples, and all I had to do was lie in the sun and relax, just as Hacket had said. Almost for the first time since I’d met Jan Tucek in his office at the Tucek steelworks I felt safe and free.
CHAPTER FOUR
To land at Pomigliano Airport we made a wide sweep that carried us right over Naples. The Bay was a deep blue and Capri an emerald isle. White blocks of flats clawed their way up to the Vomero where the brown bulk of the Castel San Elmo looked out over the city. In the distance the grey ash heap of Vesuvius shone white in the sunlight, a little plume of smoke hanging like a trick cloud over the crater.
‘Looks kind of peaceful, doesn’t she?’ Hacket said. He hadn’t stopped talking since we left Milan. I knew all about his wife and family and the colliery screening business he owned back in Pittsburgh, and I welcomed the change of subject. ‘You wouldn’t think to look at her that she’d produced some sixty major eruptions in the last four hundred years.’ His pale grey eyes gleamed behind the thick, rimless glasses. He gave a chuckle and dug me in the ribs. ‘See Naples and die — eh? Guess the fellow Who dreamed that one up must have been here when she was in eruption.’ He sighed. ‘But she doesn’t look very active now. And I come all the way from Pittsburgh to see that mountain. Geology is my hobby.’
I noticed another puff of gas above the great circle of the crater. ‘Well, she’s more active than when I last saw her in 1945 if that’s any encouragement to you,’ I said.
He had his camera out of its case and was taking a shot of the mountain through the window. When he’d taken it he turned to me again. ‘You were here during the war?’
I nodded.
‘Did you see the eruption in 1944?’
‘No, I just missed it.’
He clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘You missed something big there, sir. My boy — the one that’s running a road haulage business back home now — he was out here. He was driving one of the AMG trucks when they evacuated San Sebastiano. He saw Somma Vesuviana wiped out by the lava flow and watched San Sebastiano gradually engulfed by it. Well, I just had to come and see for myself. He says the dome of the church is still showing just above the solidified surface of the lava rock. And you missed it all?’ He shook his head pityingly as though I’d missed a good film.
‘You can’t choose where you’ll be when there’s a war on,’ I said rather tersely.
‘I guess that’s so.’
‘Anyway, I climbed Vesuvius only a week or two before the eruption.’
‘You did?’ He had swung round in his seat to face me and his eyes gleamed behind the thick lenses. ‘That’s something my boy never done. I kept on asking him, what was it like before the eruption. But he didn’t seem to have taken much notice of Vesuvius until it happened — sort of took it for granted. Now tell me, what was it like? I suppose it was much the same as it is now. Did you go right to the top?’
‘ Yes.’ I was thinking how we’d gone up by the tourist road from Torre Annunziata to where it was blocked by an old lava flow and how we’d climbed the rest of the way on foot. I’d had both my legs then.’ It was very different,’ I murmured.