PISTOLS FOR TWO –

BREAKFAST FOR ONE

Matthew J. Dick

Dragon International Independent Arts

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © Matthew J. Dick 2009

First published in the United Kingdom in 2009 by

Dragon International Independent Arts

ISBN 978-1-907386-17-6 (e-book)

Also available in hardcover (978-1-907386-06-0)

and paperback (978-1-907386-03-9)

The right of Matthew J. Dick to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

Dragon International Independent Arts

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Matthew J. Dick is frequently described by those who have had the pleasure of his acquaintance as “at once masculine, sensitive and poetic”, apparently without irony. An idler and a shirker, he tries to avoid challenging activity of any kind lest he finds it tedious. More acute (awake) readers may interpret this as a fear of failure, but that is entirely untrue: Dick has no fear of failure, it being a life-long companion of his.

The author is often charged with being a killjoy, an accusation which never fails to delight him. He dislikes coriander. Intensely.

I

Sound chaps, the Romans, I’ve always maintained. Forever copying the Greeks in everything they did and passing it off as their own to much more acclaim than the damned Hellenes ever achieved. And if one of the buggers got found out for killing his father, they’d sew him up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a snake and a monkey and throw the lot into the Tiber to thrash it out amongst themselves. Sensible policies, no doubt.

Adulterers across the water in Athens fared little better. If they were caught with Adam’s arsenal somewhere unconstitutional, they had a radish stuffed up the fundament for their trouble and were paraded about the place like some lewd grocery display. Quite what this was supposed to achieve is anybody’s guess, and I for one can’t see the benefit of forcing a large root vegetable up a chap’s backside if he happens to be rogering the tasty bit of tunic at number 29 on the sly behind his wife’s back.

You may take it on sound authority, ladies and gentlemen, that whoever it was that said “thieves and rogues have the best luck, if they do but ’scape hanging” was never marked out as an adulterer in ancient Greece. It’s difficult to talk out of one’s arse with a radish lodged firmly between one’s cheeks, although I speak, happily, not from experience.

I’ve been called a good many things in my time, usually not unjustly, and rogue and knave have been persistent repeaters. So, by all accounts, I should have been blessed with some of the best luck available from the pot. Not bloody so, and you shall see what a rotten time I had of it in the run-up to that Italian farce a few years back.

I’d set aside some time for a jaunt back to Oxon to catch up with some old friends. The excuse, if we needed it, was the granting of a doctorate to old Chopper Davenport, an academic anomaly if ever you’ve heard of one, and if you knew Chopper well enough you’d understand why.

The dissembling wretch had handed in his thesis—something to do with the image of the phallus in Roman wall paintings—and had demanded our presence to assist in drinking his health. He’d apparently gone into his viva, charmed the trousers off the examiners by his talking utter balls (I use the term advisedly), purloined another few thousand out of the old fools for ‘further research’ and was now declaring his intention to charter the bar at every pub between Carfax and Banbury by way of celebration. Needless to say I’d packed the very afternoon I’d got wind of his plans and was in Oxford by six o’clock.

The evening went smoothly until around two the following morning. We’d had an insultingly good meal at the Turf and were working our way through any pub into which we could gain post-last orders’ admittance (something of a pre-eminent reputation had our host), all the while heading vaguely north to Park Town where Chopper’s parents kept an impressive house.

The usual suspects were all in attendance. Woodbine Harris and Shocking Watson had returned to the fold from various misguided notions of attempting gainful employment up north; and Dutch Hughes, like Chopper, had stuck around in Oxford and been doing sterling work sitting on his backside whilst thinking of what to do with his life, his trust fund depreciating daily. We’d all perfected the art of idling to an expert degree, and now Chopper was getting rewarded for it magna cum laude, as the damned Americans say.

We’d lost our host somewhere around midnight after he’d fallen foul, yet again, of a pair of buxom beauties. I fairly near joined him myself when the little minxes flashed their Cupid’s kettledrums outside All Souls after Woodbine averred that he could make them bounce without touching and put a fiver on the matter. He grabbed a handful of each and gave them a squeeze, handing over the cash pseudo-grudgingly.

I’d thought twice quickly enough, though—of the ladies in question one looked as if her hair had been cut by the local Council and possessed a face that could curdle milk at twenty paces, and the other had an arse on her that resembled two badly parked cars. Chopper was not so easily put off, and he sloped off into the night with the pair, the three of them looking like an obscene sideshow act.

Dutch had succumbed to his one virtue, gambling. He’d been last seen in the Three Goats’ Heads playing crib for a tenner a peg with a couple of tattooed roughnecks and their athletic entourage, each of them suitably built for a sojourn at Sandhurst. Good luck to him, thinks I, as the rest of us left to find distraction elsewhere.

Woodbine, Shocking Watson and I found ourselves kicking our heels as we wandered through Jericho, a far stretch from being ready for bed and each primed for further devilment. Of the three of us, Watson and I were fairly well oiled, but Woodbine had been steering clear of the sauce for the last couple of hours. We were at the back of Worcester College, down by the canal, and he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, declaring that he’d cooked up a splendid notion for a race through town.

Woodbine had recently purchased a new automobile that he’d driven down from whatever hole could currently claim the privilege of having him on its electoral roll. He’d parked it a country mile away from the centre of town to avoid what were fast becoming exorbitant parking charges. The oaf had left it down by Port Meadow—he’d be lucky if he saw his tyres again.

We were a good ten minute walk from there, and right beside the back gates of Worcester. Woodbine’s warped sense of adventure had prompted him to suggest a race through the deserted early morning streets of Oxford’s centre to Magdalen Bridge at the eastern, opposite end of town.

In itself not that exciting a manifesto. But what Woodbine proposed was for him and Shocking Watson to run back to his automobile—and bear in mind, Watson was as tight as a tick and probably couldn’t do much more than stumble a few hundred yards before collapsing in a befuddled heap—and then drive through town. I was to shin up over the college gates (not an impossible feat, but one that might prove troublesome in my inebriated state) and head through to the front of the college. Once there I was to commandeer a push bike (they were ten a penny leaning up against the college gates, all left unlocked by the trusting little academic tykes) and, once appropriated, make my own way across town. Both parties would be aiming for a common goal, a wooden bench on the north side of Magdalen Bridge.

To negotiate said course on foot would have taken a brisk walker a good twenty or twenty-five minutes. Our little trio had the benefit of twentieth century modes of transportation at its disposal, but for the most part was drunk as a brewer’s fart and beginning to show signs of fatigue. Only a fool would have accepted the challenge.

Of course, it sounded a capital notion and was immediately seconded by Watson and me. Matters were made particularly interesting by Woodbine’s suggestion that we have a little flutter on the outcome. Shocking Watson was all ears—he’d studied hard at Dutch’s school of gambling—and I too feigned eagerness at sticking some cash in the pot.

On mention of the words ‘five thousand pounds’ I probably swallowed hard, but knew I couldn’t back down. I wasn’t about to lose face in front of these prize chumps, but I also had a rather more pressing need for the half myriad.

You see, I’d recently found myself in the soup after I’d lost a substantial wad just shy of that sum at one of Soho Winterburn’s poker evenings. I’d only managed to extricate myself from the club with kneecaps intact after pledging to have five grand with him in cash before the end of the month. That had been three weeks ago, and I’d been planning on leaving the country for a spell if this bit of good fortune hadn’t fallen into my lap.

Now you may say I was playing with fire here, and that’d be a fairly accurate description of my soon-to-be misfortunes if I didn’t get that cash to Winterburn punctually. The evil swine had already sent some heavies around to the Registry by way of reminder and it had been a stroke of luck that I’d been spending the afternoon galloping Penelope Lemon. Before they could fully break in the front door, I’d sent her out to forestall them in her Sunday best—consisting of stockings, suspenders, an especially uplifting brassiere and those four-inch, black patent stilettos for which I’ve always had a soft spot—and she’d sweetened their mood by waving her udders and generally playing up like the perfect Holborn harlot while I slipped out the back. I’ve always maintained she’s an uncommonly sporting gal. The riding whip probably put the wind up them too.

So you see I was attracted to even the faintest sniff of that money like a bluebottle to a buffalo’s backside. There wasn’t a hope in the world that Shocking Watson and Woodbine Harris could outrun me, ‘Hammersley the Hurricane’ on two wheels (good God, I’d won prizes for cycling at Sunday School sports days), even if they were in Woodbine’s new motor. All that was required of me was to trot less than a quarter of a mile, then cycle only twice that again to hit home, with five grand in the bag and a chorus of Rule, Britannia to boot.

The chips seemed well stacked in my favour. I happily shook on the matter, confident that I would soon be resting on my laurels and besmirching the delightful Ms Lemon’s good character myself without having to send her out of the room for it to be achieved by proxy.

Let me tell you now, good reader, it was close to being as first rate a cock-up as you ever saw occur. As soon as Woodbine cried the off I leapt into action and promptly fell flat on my arse: the conniving little chiseller had somehow managed to tie my bootlaces together without my noticing. I must have been plastered—I’d seen him rummaging about on the floor in front of me while propounding his farcical notions for this debacle but thought nothing of it other than that he was seeing to his own shoes. Cunning as Jacob he was, and quicker than Ben bloody Hur.

By the time I’d picked myself up and sorted out my footwear they’d rounded the first corner and were well on their way. It took me six attempts before I got a firm enough foothold to get up the college wall. Scaling the bugger involved getting my ankle caught on a vine and swinging headfirst over the top, dangling as gracefully as a pendulous tit before dropping like a sack of coal into a patch of brambles thicker than a Macedonian merkin.

Sod this for a game of soldiers, thinks I, disengaging myself, brushing off the drapery and getting a palmful of thistles for my trouble. I was fairly ready to give up the store, damning Woodbine for the horse’s hangdown he was, and swearing elaborately as I hobbled through undergrowth trying to find a path that had barely been visible fifteen years before when I’d last been about the place.

Thoughts of Soho Winterburn rubbing his hands whilst I writhed in front of him nursing an assortment of injuries brought me to my senses quickly enough, and I stumbled blindly on towards my goal, lamenting that twelfth shot of Haig I’d downed in the Three Goats’ Heads shortly before this damned escapade had got under way.

***

One of the truly charming things about Worcester College is its grounds and gardens, which comprise a good few acres of verdant lushness and botanical enchantment despite its location just spitting distance from the centre of town. The crowning glory of this horticultural wonder is a picturesque lake, and I consider myself an expert—I was in the thing twice, floundering hysterically before dragging myself ashore. Would you believe that the feckless lout who designed the pathways had actually stuck one in that led from the orchard directly into the drink? No wonder the country’s on its back.

The double dousing did me good, though—it brought me back to what little senses I could lay claim to, and I can now assuredly recommend the stench of putrescent ditchwater as effective smelling salts following a committed night on the sauce.

I fell through the front gates of college looking like Charon’s in-bred half brother and smelling worse than a Stygian cesspit. Grabbing the nearest boneshaker from the assortment leaning against the railings I took off down Beaumont Street with the wind of West End card sharks well and truly up my arse.

I had to stop three times and sing a graphical song into the gutter (it’s amazing how exercise exorcises, no?) but eventually found my rhythm and was soon hurtling down Broad Street quicker than the Red Queen with a dose of the trots. I rattled through town, swerving and cursing enthusiastically every few yards.

It was at the end of Holywell Street that the situation went truly awry. I’d picked up some impressive speed down the lengthy straight and was just turning the corner onto Long Wall Street, just a few hundred yards from my goal, when out of nowhere sprang a uniformed cliff face blocking my progress. I crashed down onto the asphalt with an orchestral accompaniment of collapsing and poorly constructed metalwork.

“Sincerest apologies,” mutters I, still drunker than David’s sow, picking up the bicycle and about to hobble onwards with the task in hand.

“Not so fast,” says the cliff face, lifting an arm like a tree trunk and grabbing hold of my jacket as I was leaping aboard my ride. I spun gracelessly about the imposed pivot and came to rest with our faces square on.

Here was I, drunk as a duke and breath fit to pickle body parts, soaked to the skin, stinking to heaven and handling a stolen conveyance, just having driven pell-mell and rather cack-handedly into one of Her Majesty’s constabulary. The collision had seen me worse off, though little thanks I was to get for that—the copper had barely flinched as I bounced off him and crashed aground. He was six and a half feet tall, built like a prison door, and now held me tightly by the lapels in a fist the size of a millstone.

I cursed Woodbine under my breath, my heart clattering against my ribs. Even in my befuddled state I recognized the severe predicament that now faced me. If I didn’t tread carefully I’d be properly in the sauce. My mind raced for something appropriate to say. The situation required tact, diplomacy and a canny sense of savoir faire.

“Do you mind? This jacket is Turnbull and Asser.”

There are some things that simply aren’t done, do you see?

As soon as I’d opened my mouth, of course, I wished I’d kept mum. The peeler looked me dead in the eye. Then he glanced slowly up and down my tweeds (no doubt admiring the cut, and rightly so) and flung me backwards with a force that near enough knocked me to the tarmac for a second time.

I stumbled back onto the bike and made to pick it up while PC Plod reached inside his jacket pocket. He shot me a look as if I had just asked to relieve myself into his hat, and I took this as my cue to linger awhile at his convenience. He investigated the bike, taking careful note of anything that might support the nagging thought in his mind that something wasn’t quite right and may indeed be afoot. As for your correspondent, I swayed elegantly in the breeze until the urgency of my situation suddenly hit me. Events of the past forty minutes came flooding back in merry tandem: the fence, the lake, the stench of damp tweed, the race, the five grand, the whole shooting match in fact.

I glanced around to get my bearings and saw the familiar twin headlights of Woodbine’s rattletrap rounding the corner at the end of the road, making steady progress towards us. My mind went into overdrive.

I took everything in at once: to my left, the end of Long Wall Street and the junction of the High, where lay my goal and as easy an access to five thousand notes as I was likely to get this side of plundering Lombard Street; to my right, Woodbine and Shocking Watson loomed ever nearer in their wretched runabout; and in front of me Dick Barton, no doubt about to make a forensic discovery to rival Lord Lucan’s alibi, examining the bicycle and scribbling notes furiously in his pocket book.

A quandary fit to test a saint, indeed. Was I to remain standing there, waiting for our loyal civil servant to throw at me whatever criminal retribution he could lay his hands on (and let’s face it, God knows how many laws I’d broken taking part in this farce so far: trespass, theft and smelling like a Frenchman were only the first to leap to mind)?

Bear in mind the unhappy consequences that would follow: first of all, I’d lose the race, an ignominy in itself, but a far cry from losing yet another five thousand pounds to Woodbine and Shocking Watson. Then of course, worse than that, I’d still be up to my backside in debt to Soho Winterburn, or ‘Mad Frank’ as he was affectionately known by those who’d experienced owing the scoundrel anything more than a tot of whisky.

A glance over in the direction of Woodbine’s car, now upon us and sure to make off with the loot if I didn’t act quickly, underlined and emphasized all my fears. I was panicked into evasive action.

Well, they say that necessity knows no law. It would appear that neither does my right foot, for almost (I say almost) without willing it I’d hefted a well-aimed kick between the open legs of my captor, bent down and examining the college emblem on the bike. My hoof came up against a fleshy resistance with a force that made even me grimace, and down dropped the peeler like a portcullis, clutching his trinkets and screaming blue murder.

I grabbed the bicycle and leapt aboard, pedalling for all I was worth. I didn’t look back again, but plied my pins as fast as anatomically possible, took the corner onto the High Street with my arse barely on the saddle and had reached Magdalen Bridge just as Woodbine and Shocking Watson came into view behind.

We took off rapidly from the scene, having heaved the bike over the bridge into the river, and were shot of Oxford before the sun had come up. Chopper later filled me in on the story of our mischief as it was reported in the local papers. The police had issued descriptions of a well-to-do gentleman whom they wanted to question in relation to an assault on an officer in the vicinity of Magdalen College the previous evening. Sergeant Furnell, the unfortunate uniform in question, had been released from hospital within a fortnight and was off crutches before Christmas. The doctors had managed to save both testicles after a painful and pioneering operation to remove one that had lodged itself between his bladder and pubic bone, and the police were appealing for any witnesses to come forward in strictest confidence.

They can whistle for that, thinks I.

***

It was a good three or four years before I was back in the city again, and the events of Davenport’s D.Phil Debacle, as it had come to be fondly remembered, were a dark and distant memory. I’d paid off Soho Winterburn and was in his debt again, this time to the tune of eight grand. What can I say? Dutch was a rotten gambling tutor, and if you ever want to learn I’d recommend taking pimping lessons from the Pope sooner than getting that Welsh half-wit to teach you anything.

Only Chopper, Dutch, Woodbine and I were present for this particular evening’s antics. We’d agreed in advance that there’d be no similar mischief this time. In fact it was the common consensus that we should have a quiet and civilized evening without any cause for either roguery or misdemeanour.

Suffice to say that another extravagant and profligate night was had by all, and by midnight the four of us were in a churchyard just outside the centre of town looking for somewhere to relieve ourselves. Chopper had led us into the churchyard because he swore, the imbecile, that Lord Nelson was buried somewhere in the locale. We’d found nothing, Chopper had collapsed in another bibulous heap, and the rest of us were stumbling about trying to find respective surfaces against which to tap our kegs.

Of course there’s never a tree to be found when you want one, and I was almost forced to pump ship up against the church wall. Even I felt that this would be somewhat sacrilegious, whipping out the old chap with the Virgin Mary smiling down from a stained glass relief, so I looked around for other options. Then I found a section of drainpipe coming down from the roof that had broken away from its fixings, and lay open about two feet from the ground. It looked innocuous enough and in my stupefied state I took aim and relieved myself into this handy receptacle.

I could hear Woodbine larking about on the far side of the church, and presumed that the footsteps crunching through the leaves behind me were those of Dutch, having spent his own penny in the bushes and heading back to join Chopper.

I was about to enquire as to the extent of his sobriety and suggest a jaunt into the Lady Chapel to see if we could find any sacramental wine, when a fearsome-looking hand thundered down onto my shoulder and yanked me around as easily as if I’d been a sackful of wool. I froze as I looked upon my accoster and grim reality tightened its hold on me.

I was staring up at a police officer of formidable size who held me in front of him like a stunned mullet. I let out a yelp of horror and damn near swallowed my tongue as his facial features gradually came into focus and an almighty grin spread over a jaw the size of a sideboard.

My world slowly caved in about me. It was Sergeant Furnell.

And I was pissing on his shoes.

II

Shakespeare wasn’t wrong when he had Cassius bang on about how friends should bear each others’ infirmities. As you know, Caesar’s chum Brutus turned out to be a bit of a bad egg in that respect and had an uncanny knack of exacerbating those afflictions. There’s a reason why the poor sod called him a brute with his dying words, you see.

When they heard me squawk, Dutch and Woodbine came running round the church, to their credit. On seeing the tangle I’d got myself into, though, they were falling over each other to get away. Before you could even say ‘infirmity’, they’d changed direction in mid-air, shinned back over the churchyard wall and high-tailed it off home far quicker than two drunken asses should rightly be able to.

So here was I again, caught in the act of further urban mischief. Furnell, officious bastard that he was, later reeled off the offences like a shopping list, amongst which were my old friends criminal damage and being drunk and disorderly, together with a new one even for my personal scrapbook, public lewdness. Infinitely worse, though, I was now in the hands of the one chap who had every reason to inflict as much pain on my person as any other soul on the planet. And I’m even including the delightful Ms Penelope Lemon’s husband in that bracket, and that bastard Soho Winterburn. The way I felt just then, I’d sooner have turned myself over to the latter’s mob for an evening of fun and games than be taking part in the farce that was currently unfolding before my eyes.

I noted that I could be engaged in a more useful enterprise than urinating on my captor’s boots, so with an abrupt start corked the vintage and whipped Mickey back into his mouse hole. Some remote part of my pea brain believed that if I managed to do this quickly enough the indiscretion would pass unnoticed.

In fact, my evasive action achieved nothing but bring it to Furnell’s attention that he was standing in a puddle of piss with his clogs soaked through the soles. No doubt he’d been so taken aback by the luck of coming upon the scoundrel who had so shamelessly impeded him in his duty and almost emasculated him all those years ago, that he had at first failed to notice my lavatorial faux pas.

But now he looked down, prompted by my frenzied movements, and for a moment the grin faded from his face. Then it returned with ill-concealed hatred. He drew me closer to his face, his fists twisting my jacket lapels for better grip and lifting me once again ever so slightly higher off the ground than I care, usually, to find myself.

And then he spoke, emphasising his words as if each were an individual sentence: “You are mine, you ’orrible… conniving… thieving little bastard.”

He may not have looked the sharpest tool in the box, but he was certainly a vindictive swine.

I was about to point out that during the course of my antics that evening I had neither connived nor thieved, but thought better of it. I bit my lip trying to think of something intelligent, helpful or at the very least un-incriminating and non-provoking to say. And the basic sum of those sagacious thoughts, ladies and gentlemen, expressed itself thus. I flashed my most charming Hammersley smile and spoke.

“My dear PC Funeral, what a delight it is to see you again.”

Having managed to demote the scoundrel and get his name wrong in the same breath, I settled for a more conventional means of dealing with an intricately wearisome situation, and the minute he’d relaxed his grip I made a break for the church gate. But he was upon me like a kestrel, on went the cuffs and I found myself in the city lock-up quicker than I could say ‘miscarriage of justice’.

***

PC Fungicide, or whatever the hell his bloody name was, stuck me in a cell after booking me into custody under various arrestable offences spanning a good number of years. The duty sergeant had looked me up and down as if I were Al Capone’s evil twin, and I was left to slumber drunkenly on the floor for an hour or so before being hauled out and dragged into an interrogation room, still cuffed if you please.

There were a couple of vagabond drunkards (no dignitas, though, unlike the writer) lying about the entrance hall and presumably muttering about the deplorable state of the Commonwealth, not to mention a small variety of tarts, dolled up to the nines and pouting coquettishly. I managed to flash a courteous grin and bid them good evening as I was hoist past by the scruff of the neck, before disappearing into a dingy room lit by a single, unshaded light bulb.

In the midst of the cell was a wooden table and chair that had seen better days. The rest of the room was unfurnished, and before I’d had the chance to place an order for tea and sandwiches Funeral had shoved me towards the chair. I collapsed onto it with an uncomfortable scrape of wood against concrete. Straight out of the Gulag Archipelago is this, thinks I, and I looked around me with a critical eye, sizing up the décor and taking in the ambience.

“I always like to pop in now and again, see what they’ve done to the place,” says I. “See where the taxes are going, you know? They let you do this room, did they?”

Funeral reached inside his back pocket and pulled out a small cosh, just the right size to keep hidden in your fist, and nicked and scratched from obvious use. He tapped it purposefully against his empty palm and set it down on the table between us. Then he went inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of pristine-looking paper that had been neatly folded lengthways. This too he set carefully down onto the table and slid it towards me.

“No need for the menu,” says I. “I’ll have the full English breakfast, eggs poached solid and the cheapest sausages you can lay your hands on. None of that Cumberland, speckled herb nonsense, there’s a good chap.”

I smiled amicably, and to his credit Funeral sat down on the table and folded his arms, smirking. Then out shot his fist like a piston and he knocked me so hard out of my seat that I believe I left a part of my body sitting there momentarily, pondering my last remark and considering whether I should have gone for the grapefruit instead.

He dragged me up by the cuffs, and a helpful kick settled me back onto the chair. With an evil look he grabbed the document from the tabletop and shoved it, along with his own snarling features, to within an inch of my now throbbing face.

The long and short of it was this. Funeral had concocted a deadly little manuscript that went far beyond anything I had actually done, involving rape, pillage, treason and an assortment of offences under the Official Secrets Act. Of course, it was set out as a confession and all told would have put me away for about thirty years, had I signed the thing.

He gleefully informed me that if I failed to play ball on this particular occasion, he would turn me over to a certain West End card shark who had been looking for one H. Hammersley Esq. throughout the Greater London area over the past couple of weeks.

“The famed Hugo Hammersley,” says he, spitting out the words. “How did such a…”—he looked me up and down with a curled lip—“… fool get such a reputation?”

I had to agree that it was a load of old cobblers.

And now this confession whatsit. This was news to me: I hadn’t pictured Furnell for a bent copper. He seemed too much of a jobsworth, not savvy enough to play at both ends of the field. And yes, despite enjoying (I use the term with hesitation, naturally) a more acclaimed reputation than most of my fellow men—about which more will reveal itself in due course, I’m sure—it seemed strange that a knuckle-headed lout such as Furnell should have paid much heed to knowing who I was. I could only assume, since he appeared to be a bosom buddy of Winterburn, that the criminal swine had informed Furnell of his favourite debtor and presented a glowing report of my credentials together with an accurate pictorial description. No wonder the scoundrel had been so pleased to come upon me when I’d been pissing by the church: not merely the chap who’d all but castrated him those years before, but one who’d provide a handsome reward if turned over to his best law-breaking chum. No doubt after the sergeant himself had furnished me with a hefty kicking.

Either way, another quandary. As my dear old mother used to say, I had two choices: bite the bullet, swallow hard and sign this fabricated certificate of liability that would see me carry the can for the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Train Robbery, to name but a couple of the misdemeanours; or let Sergeant Screwloose hand me over to Soho Winterburn, at whose hands a colonic irrigation involving battery acid and an innovative plunger device would seem like a stroll through Bushy Park.

I’d been trying to avoid Winterburn for a while now. I’d holed myself up in the Registry as long as I could, but was beginning to get jittery every time I set foot outside. He’d sent his idiots around again in the past week. Despite looking as cruel as Caliban they’d somehow managed to gain admittance, what with it being the middle of the week and during normal business hours (there’s some ill blood between myself and the other inhabitants of my building, who don’t appear to employ any discretion when allowing ill-bred, murderous-looking thugs up to my rooms without warning) and I’d had to clamber down the drainpipe at the back of the north-west tower to avoid detection. Winterburn had killed for a sight less than eight grand before now, and if his flunkies got their hands on me it’d be a sorry day for womankind and no mistake.

By a stroke of luck Furnell was in a charitable mood. He yanked me up from the chair, muttering something about sleeping it over, and dragooned me back to the cell with nothing more than a kick in the backside to settle me once again on the floor. You can imagine the shock I was in. I didn’t even manage a wink at the tarts in the hallway.

Despite the odds stacked against me I must have managed to drop off at some point, because I awoke to find Sergeant Furnell pouring a mug of lukewarm tea over my head.

“We like to look after our prisoners here. Tea first thing in the morning and all that. It’s the little touches, we find, that make the place feel more like home for them. Did you find the time to contemplate the proposition which was advanced to yourself yesterday evening?”

A classic example, I think you’ll agree, of the sad state of today’s police force. Always ‘proceeding in a northerly direction’ when ‘heading north’ would serve just as well, over-inflating the confines of their banausic vocabulary and misusing the reflexive pronoun to the point of scandal. I’m all for refined language and a polished and opulent lexicon, but when one has to endure the lower middle classes talking above their station, and incorrectly to boot, it makes one long for a return to the days of compulsory Latin and cross-country in all seasons. No wonder the country’s on its back.

I felt like telling Furnell where to stick his proposition, but to tell truth I didn’t have the mettle. I’d not been able to think of a way out of the mess, and it looked for the first time as though the authorities had the better of me. It was either jail or a date with certain death at Winterburn’s sordid hands.

“Well, let’s see if we can knock some sense into you, you bastard.”

My head was still reeling with what the merry hell I was going to do as Funeral pulled me up yet again and dragged me back through the station to the interrogation room. I was just about ready to give up the ghost and bow to whatever fate befell me, but the gods decided that it was about damned time they smiled upon your loyal correspondent rather than pissing on his bonfire from a height.

“Good Lord, what an extraordinary piece of luck!”

I hadn’t even been paying attention to my own feet, let alone to who else was walking down the corridor. But then a well-dressed gent and his companion pulled up short in front of us and the former stopped Furnell’s progress with a hand on my shoulder. I glanced up to see a congenial old face, the majority of it overrun with a moustache the size of Somerset, looking at me with the kind of excited stare that tends to accompany a serendipitous discovery.

Gradually I recognized the features of my father’s old friend Major Benedict Carrington Arbuthnot, a sound chap and handy bridge player and, more importantly for my present circumstance, currently Assistant Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police.

Play your cards right here, my boy, and you’re laughing, thinks I.

“What on earth are you doing here, Hammersley?”

He looked me up and down, no doubt wondering about the cuffs and the fact that I was being manhandled by an ape masquerading as a policeman. In fact, when Arbuthnot grabbed hold of my shoulder, Furnell dropped me as if I had the plague and now looked as uncomfortable as a Rabbi at a hog roast.

“Damn it, Sergeant, what on earth have you been doing to the man?”

This last was directed at Furnell, who was so taken aback he didn’t know what to say. I of course stood by, innocent as a pianist in a brothel, pondering when would be the best moment for me to pipe up and enter the conversation.

“Sir, this man is wanted for questioning in relation to a number of serious offences, including assaulting a police officer…”

“What absolute nonsense! I won’t hear a word against the chap. I was at Oxford with his father, you know. This gentleman read Greats at Balliol College. That’s right, Literae Humaniores. He used to be in Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, for God’s sake. And you’re claiming he’s wanted for a common criminal? Good God, Sergeant, I hope you know what you’re saying. ‘I never heard of a criminal who came out of music school’—d’you know who said that?”

The old goat paused, gazing off into the distance, clicking his fingers and trying to pluck a name from the vaults of his memory.

“I don’t know, Mendelssohn or someone.”

Wrong, of course.[1]

“And you’ll never find a classicist who’d turn against the law either. Why, it’s not within their capabilities—they’re the embodiment of dignitas, gravitas and virtus. You’ll be lucky if this man doesn’t slap a law suit upon you for this outrageous piece of slander. It’s clearly a case of mistaken identity. Now uncuff him this instant!”

I’ve always said the modern police force is an outstanding example to the rest of the nation. He may have been as mad as a weaver and slightly to the right of the Visigoths in the political spectrum, but Arbuthnot would have my backing for a peerage any day of the week.

Furnell of course didn’t know where to look—he was spitting with rage and indignation, but could hardly speak out of turn to his superior any more than a Corporal would have had the audacity to tell Monty that El Alamein wasn’t perhaps the most sensible place to engage the enemy, what with it being the desert and all.

“I’ve never heard such rot in my life—assaulting a police officer if you will! This man is one of the finest minds in the country,” (God bless you, Major, because He sure as hell can’t help you, thinks I) “and his country needs him.”

I may have bristled slightly at this last, but I don’t think it was noticeable. Instead I maintained a martyr’s air as Sergeant Furnell uncuffed me, and smiled warmly at him while he glared back like Poseidon.

“Quod feliciter vortat[2],” says I, rubbing my wrists to get the claret running again.

He stared me straight in the eye, and if looks could kill I’d be six feet under with all bets off. Instead he breathed in as nobly as a Neanderthal can, while Arbuthnot put his arm around my shoulder and led me off somewhere far more salubrious. As we turned a corner I caught a brief glimpse of Furnell still rooted to the spot, fists clenched and teeth grinding. I had a niggling feeling that this wouldn’t be the last time that our paths crossed.

***

For now it was out of the frying pan and into a nice comfy armchair with my pipe and The Times, or the next best thing that central Oxford police station could muster. This admittedly wasn’t much, but the chair had arms, the tea was served as hot as it should be and in a cup (rather than over my head), and Arbuthnot kept an outrageously good brandy in his hip flask with which to spice it up. I relaxed into the chair and took in my surroundings, a staff room adorned with notice boards and tidy desks. Aside from Arbuthnot and myself, a stiff-looking officer sat opposite my chair, eyeing me suspiciously while Arbuthnot paced back and forth, praising his good luck in finding me and all the while cursing the ‘radioactive turd’ of a problem that had been placed in his lap. A sensible and refined use of words has the Major. Read Jurisprudence at Keble. Says it all.

I hadn’t had time to question the almighty luck that had saved me from Furnell, let alone given any thought to what had prompted this military marvel to wrench me from Satan’s clutches without even a nod in the direction of correct police procedure. I gripped my mug with both hands, taking long draughts of the tea at appropriate intervals and tried to look austere and interested in what the old fool was banging on about. The tea was delicious. The brandy really did give it one hell of a fruity kick. All I needed now was my pipe and I’d be happier than a nun weeding the asparagus.

“The country’s safety is on a knife edge, Hammersley. Downing Street is hovering over my shoulder and that blasted pillock Fotherington has got me firmly by the balls.”

Even when the tea began to cool, the booze gave it a fire that could happily tickle your insides until the cows came home.

“There’s no satisfying them this time, and we must act quickly. Our relations with Italy hang in the balance as we speak. One wrong move and we’ll have a diplomatic situation that’ll make the Battle of the Somme look like a barn dance.”

Soldiers—always talking in battleground similes and hyperbole. Not that I’d really noticed, mind. The brandy was starting to give me the horn, and I was ready to jump up, march back to the main entrance and see about warming up the totty I’d spied in reception. A direct question from Arbuthnot grabbed my attention and put paid to that little plan. Probably for the better. My attire wasn’t looking its best.

“How’s your Italian?”

I looked up from my distant trance. Arbuthnot was waiting expectantly, eyebrows raised, for my answer.

“I can get by, sir.”

The truth is I pick up languages fairly easily. One of the many benefits of a classical education, and my Italian was next best after my German.

“Good, well you’d better be able to. I need you to go to Rome.”

This seemed to me as good a time as any to find out what the old fool was rambling on about.

“I don’t mean to be obtuse, Major, but what is this all about?”

Well, that was like asking a Welshman to sing you a song. He started up again, droning on like Scheherazade on stimulants, but took a deep breath before he began, as if what he was about to reveal to me was highly privileged and confidential information.

Had I realized then how events would turn out as a result of what he said, I’d have paid more attention from the start and not let my mind wander so. My first thought was that having snatched me from Furnell’s hands, the good Major was now apparently offering me a free ride out of the country. This was precisely what I needed—with Winterburn stepping up the pressure over that eight grand, a spell overseas was just what the doctor ordered.

“There’s been an incident in Venice—a murder, as it appears, on the Orient Express. Sounds like the barmy sort of far-fetched nonsense that awful crime writer would dream up, if you ask me. Some jumped up wop aristocrat who managed to get his greasy hands on a British passport seems to have pissed off another of the bloody Italians—they’re a twitchy lot, ain’t they?—and got what was coming to him. That’s the short version.”

He paced up and down the room as he spoke, arms behind his back, frowning and grinding his jaw like some ruminating walrus, staring hard at the floor for inspiration. You could tell he was flustered, and that the story he was telling wasn’t exactly the whole picture, whether he knew it or not.

“Got on the train at Victoria, best compartment available, spent a fortune on room service, including a 1961 Château Pétrus—goes to show the man had no breeding at all, if you ask me, irrespective of his claims to Her Majesty’s citizenship; appears to have ignored the Cheval Blanc altogether—and before you know it some enterprising bastard’s cashed in his chips for him. That’s the bloody Catholics for you.”

Arbuthnot’s great strength and what many saw as his saving grace was a total intolerance of foreign cultures and people. But I wasn’t listening to every word he said. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that he was offering me a way out of all my predicaments in one senile pop. Not that I was questioning, mind you, but one thing wasn’t at all clear. It was time to sound helpful and austere.

“This sounds terrible, Major. But how on earth have we become involved? Who was this chap?”

“Armando Corteggiani was some local bigwig up in the north of Italy. Mayor of Padova or something. He’d been shuttling back and forth between London and Rome on some kind of special envoy mission for the past few months. Corteggiani is on the Board of Trustees for the British Museum. His English roots helped him get the position, not to mention the fact that he’s an expert in classical Roman artefacts and richer than a bloody Arab. Or was.”

I tried to look serious, chewing my lip and feigning concentration. What I could really do with was some more of that brandy. I noted that Arbuthnot’s hip flask was the other side of the table, next to the stiff-looking officer who’d been with the Major since he’d plucked me from Furnell’s clutches, but who still hadn’t said a word.

“Mr Hammersley, have you ever heard of the aureus Hadrianus?”

The silent one’s suddenly piping up made me effect a double-take.

“Can’t say I have, old chap. What’s to do with it?”

“The aureus Hadrianus is a numismatic anomaly, the kind of archaeological find that may turn up once every few generations if one is lucky, but whose significance far outstrips anything we can imagine. Hadrian ordered a rare selection of gold coins to be produced, the aurei, when he became Roman Emperor after Trajan’s death. Only five hundred are known to have been minted, and these were presented as gifts to his closest friends and advisers around the Empire. What is unique about the coins is that they depict the Emperor sans barbe—without his trade mark beard. There are no other instances of coins or other artefacts that can claim to reveal this unique appearance of one of the most popular and collectable coin emperors. Over the ages it has been said that to have owned one of these coins is to have owned a little piece of Italian and Roman history more precious than,” he paused, evidently stuck for a suitable comparison, “the Rosetta Stone is to the understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics and culture.”

So this fellow was a museum chump, was he? On reflection he didn’t exactly look the part of Dixon of Dock Green—he appeared to be an educated chap, for one thing. I couldn’t understand the hullabaloo over some damned coin, however, nor quite what it had to do with Corteggiani’s unfortunate demise. I looked the museum character up and down. His dress was as nauseating as his voice—a grey, button-down collared shirt, a hideous oak green jacket (with leather elbow patches, unbelievably; no doubt synthetic too), combined in an instance of sartorial sacrilege that was little short of abusive with beige corduroy trousers. Good God, he was a state. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed his dismal appearance beforehand.

“I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure,” says I, extending an unenthusiastic hand in his direction.

“Basil Benham,” says the scarecrow, taking my fin. Christ, it was like shaking off wet lettuce.

“Professor Benham is head of numismatics at the Ashmolean Museum,” interjected Arbuthnot. “I had intended to send him out to Italy to investigate matters, but now that fortune has landed you in our laps, it would be crass foolishness for him to leave his busy position. Why send Watson when Holmes himself offers his services, what?”

Benham looked miffed at the Major’s analogy—as well he might. I didn’t think it right to point out to Arbuthnot that I was far from offering my services. I’d been cajoled by him into this situation and whatever he was on the verge of proposing. Although he’d barely given me an inkling of what that was, I could have a bloody good guess.

A few years previously, you see, I had been unfortunate enough to enjoy some success in assuaging another delicate crisis that was threatening to kick off in Japan. I was still in the diplomatic service back then and had won some spurs in putting that fool Yakimoto to rights when he concocted his conceited plan to invade China and declare himself head of the opium trade on the black market. Since things had got a little hairy what with one thing and another, I had become a bit of a local hero in the eyes of various government agencies, the police force and other gung-ho bodies that seem to proliferate on our tiny island. ‘Who dares, wins’ and all that noble nonsense.

Arbuthnot clearly had it in his head that I was willing to put myself out, my neck on the line, not to mention (no doubt) the cat amongst the pigeons by whatever crackbrained scheme he was plotting. He inflated his fat chest in preparation for another verbal foray.

“Of the five hundred aurei that were minted by Hadrian, only one has survived the centuries. Hitler, the thieving German swine, is thought to have pinched the last few, a bare handful, from Mussolini’s private collection of antiquities when he persuaded him to cosy up to the Nazis at the beginning of the war. These found their way to Berlin to coincide with a heavy night of bombing by the Allies. Well, our boys did a fantastic job of putting the wind up Hitler’s arse, as I’m sure you’ll recall, Hammersley. Sadly, in obliterating his headquarters at the Reich Chancellery they succeeded in demolishing what was left of these blasted coins. If it wasn’t for the damned RAF I’d have been spared this farce—mind you, if we’re being candid, it was probably the bloody French. Couldn’t hit the long side of a battleship at twenty paces.”

Arbuthnot harrumphed off to the table and took a swig from his flask. Luckily for us all, Professor Benham decided to exercise his right of free speech.

“The aurei were lost beneath the rubble, melted down amongst the charred and smoking detritus to nothing of value. However, one survived;”—Jesus, this was beginning to sound like Treasure Island—“one of Mussolini’s personal guards had kept a single coin from Hitler’s prying hands and given it to il Duce for luck when the war took a turn against him. Mussolini carried it with him always from then on, touched by the sentiment and believing in the charmed nature of so rare and beautiful an artefact. One of the British soldiers who cut down Mussolini’s body from the meat hook where he had been hanged” (here Benham managed a wry smile to himself, acknowledging the irony) “pocketed the coin and took it to an antiques dealer to be valued on his return to England. Fortunately the dealer recognized the coin and contacted the British Museum. They purchased the aureus Hadrianus and it has been on loan to the Ashmolean since the end of the war.”

“Now you may well be wondering what this ridiculous coin business has to do with some pseudo-Brit pasta-pummelling wop getting croaked on a train?”

I was grateful Arbuthnot had piped up with this probing point when he did, for I was close to posing the same (well, perhaps not quite the same) exasperated question myself.

“Well, I’ll tell you. As I said, Corteggiani was on the Board of Trustees of the British Museum. A few months back the Italians approached the British government with a request for the aureus Hadrianus to be returned to its rightful country of origin in time for the Olympic Games which look likely to be held in Rome in the next few years. The bloody Italians have come up with some witless notion of casting the winners’ medals with the image of the unbearded Hadrian as he appears on the coin. Quaint thought, you may say, and you’d get a slap from me. Romantic, idealist nonsense.”

I nodded curtly, to show Arbuthnot I was on his side. God only knew what he was going on about.

“I’m not sure whether this is common knowledge yet, but that imbecile Fotherington is putting in a bid for the Games to be held in London after the bloody Italians have had a go at murdering them.”

Geoffrey Fotherington was the Home Secretary. Putting in a bid for the Olympic Games was hardly in his government remit, but he was an avid sportsman and you could be sure that he’d railroad his ideas persistently until he got his way.

“Fotherington’s managed to persuade the whole bloody cabinet to get behind him on this, so much so that even the Prime Minister sees it as a key element of the upcoming election manifesto, if you’ll credit it.”

That was typical of the simpletons we had running the place. Forget inflation, unemployment and the diminishing status of the OBE; these fools were more interested in having a bunch of half-naked Kenyans running in circles around the capital’s streets.

“As a result of all this, the British Museum graciously agreed to give up the aureus Hadrianus, in some ill-conceived hope that the Italians will help support our imminent bid for a future set of the Games.”

“Corteggiani was chosen to deliver the coin to the Italians.”

Benham was having another go.

“His close connections to both countries, not to mention his position on the Board of Trustees and his own love and knowledge of ancient antiquities made him a most fitting choice.”

You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist, or even wide awake for that matter, to see where this was heading—though quite what anyone would want with this damned coin, however rare it was, and why they would deem it worth killing for, was beyond me.

“The aureus Hadrianus is worth approximately half a million pounds.”

I have not yet encountered a person who ever fell off a chair, and God knows I’ve met some incompetent asses. I must admit, though, that the old ears did jump to attention at this point.

“Given the coin’s famed heritage and history, not to mention its rare and unique depiction, its value is in fact incalculable. The half million price tag is what the piece would attract if it were ever to become available to a bidder on the black market, God forbid.”

“You’re probably wondering what the blasted buggery this has got to with you, Hammersley, and I’ll tell you. It may be that Corteggiani had enemies. Certainly, from what we’re hearing from the Italian end, the swine led a colourful life. He may well have gnarled someone sufficiently for them to croak the bugger. What’s more likely is that someone heard of Corteggiani’s prized package and did away with him. When his body was found, there was no trace of the coin.”

Well, paint my arse pink if that came as a surprise to anyone.

“Needless to say, this came as a complete surprise to us.”

The tailor’s torment once again. I raised a querying eyebrow at Benham.

“The coin was being carried in the utmost confidence, I assure you. No one could have known of Corteggiani’s mission.”

“That’s what comes of pandering to these bloody Europeans and their mincing requests. We’ll be giving the damned Greeks the Elgin Marbles next.”

Arbuthnot and I clearly agreed on this point. Old Tom Bruce may have been nothing more than an upper-class crook, but good luck to the chap, I say. If someone offered me legal ownership of the Eiffel Tower for a fiver and provided legitimate-looking documentation, I’d be happy to hand over the cash and have the thing dismantled. What I’d do with it, I can’t be sure, but Blackpool Tower’s looking a bit shabby nowadays—that ought to rub the Frenchies up the wrong way. But I digress.

“As I say, Downing Street’s giving me hell on this one, and if I have to put up with Fotherington breathing down my neck every five minutes he’ll end up with my foot up his arse, and then we really will have a diplomatic crisis. Even the damned Prime Minister wants to show that we’re treating the murder of a notable British citizen with the respect it warrants and that we’re aiding the Italians in their investigations to bring the perpetrators to justice. So, I need you to get out there and give the Eyeties what for. Show ’em how a proper investigation’s undertaken before they royally balls it up. And for Christ’s sake tread carefully. We don’t want this nonsense blowing up more than it needs to. And keep your eye out for that damned coin. I wouldn’t put it past them to pocket the thing and close the file without any progress made or convictions forthcoming.”

“I needn’t remind you, Mr Hammersley,” says Benham, “that it would be unacceptable for us to fail in locating the aureus Hadrianus and delivering it safely to its intended destination. With Signor Corteggiani’s unfortunate removal from the equation, I feel sure from what I’ve heard of your esteemed reputation and prowess in matters of such a delicate nature”—another damned pillock, thinks I—“that the remaining Trustees of the British Museum would join me in commending the coin to your safekeeping for delivery to the Italian government.”

So as far as I could see, it boiled down to this: Corteggiani had been chosen by the British Museum to deliver a gold coin of some considerable value to the Italians in readiness for their punt at the Olympics. He’d been on his way to meet whomsoever it was representing the Italians in this little charade, and had been bumped off en route. He’d been travelling in some style, but that was probably par for the course if what Arbuthnot had been saying about his lifestyle was true.

Benham had sworn that Corteggiani’s little mission was top secret, which would make the disappearance of the coin in addition to his murder a little odd. Presumably Corteggiani knew its value and would have kept the blasted thing well hidden under lock and key, so unless someone knew what they were looking for, and where to find it, it was unlikely that they would have come upon it by chance and made off with it—unless of course Corteggiani had kept it somewhere blindingly obvious or been mouthing off to someone about his entrusted task. I would have to speak with the authorities that found the body to see what clues the crime scene could provide. No doubt the Italians had gone in pell-mell, walked all over any useful evidence and generally buggered up the situation. We would have to see about that.

Already I found myself considering options and possible motives behind the murder and the theft. How irritating. It would appear that I had been roped into yet another diplomatic hiccup, however ridiculous this one sounded, and my interest had already been piqued. This was perhaps not surprising. Here was Arbuthnot offering me free passage to Italy just when the summer was getting underway, and those wonderful Italian women start to walk about the place in barely any clothing at all. I’d no doubt be able to talk the Major into organising another ‘no questions asked’ expenses account, such as our insightful leaders had bestowed upon me during that Japanese fiasco. More to the point, it would get me out of London—and England, for that matter—when Soho Winterburn would be scouring the land and baying for my blood. Well, we’d see if I could earn myself some more spurs living the dolce vita in Rome for a while, and serendipitously fall upon a fortune while doing it.

Unless I was very much mistaken, this wretched coin was the perfect size for disappearing without trace.

How convenient.

III

It all sounded rather too good to be true. I grabbed what few things I had about me and hotfooted it out of the cop-shop before Sergeant Furnell could raise his fat head and piss over my chips once again. A quick stop by Chopper Davenport’s parents’ house to collect my remaining belongings and it was off back to London and the little place I call home in Lincoln’s Inn Fields to prepare for Italy.

The Fields is a delightful part of town to keep a place if you ever get the chance. The trouble is, most of the property there nowadays is tied up for commercial use, which is a damned shame. My own suite of rooms is on the top floor of the Land Registry in the south-eastern corner of the Fields, just over the road from Lincoln’s Inn.

The Land Registry is a classy old edifice, built around the beginning of the twentieth century in red brickwork with four small towers at its northern and southern corners. Located at number 34 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, it’s an imposing establishment that wouldn’t look out of place as a country mansion down in Hampshire or Surrey, and while there’s no private garden, the ceilings are high, the security (mostly) excellent, and there are generally no neighbours to speak of. Unsurprisingly, the Land Registry chaps aren’t too happy with my having my own place above them. It’s a funny story, going back a generation or so, how I came to have possession of the small collection of rooms around the north-western tower, and one that I never tire of telling.

My great-uncle Jabez had been some big cheese at the Land Registry back in the thirties. It was his entrepreneurial nous and foresight (both Hammersley family traits, as you are undoubtedly able to tell from our short time together thus far) that secured the choice piece of real estate in the middle of the city as an investment for him and his descendants.

Apparently, once, in a moment of passion (another Hammersley trait) Uncle Jabez took his secretary at the Registry upstairs for a bit of light relief. After a couple of turns of dancing the miller’s reel, the old skirt-chaser fell asleep in one of the rooms used to house ancient deeds packets that had started to become obsolete after changes to the law in the mid-twenties. He awoke at around six o’clock to find himself alone in the building after everyone else had left for home at five, and had to let himself out with the master keys that, fortunately for him, were kept in his office.

That he’d been able to get away with such a disgraceful shirking of his duties without any of the staff coming upon his snoring sack of bones came as a huge surprise, and he was outraged that he’d worked at the Registry for some twenty years without realising how easy it was to sneak off for a nap in the middle of the afternoon.

He tested the situation again the next day, and sure enough was able to pass the greater part of his post-prandial hours snoozing amongst the mortgage papers and contracts of days of yore without anyone so much as enquiring after his absence.

Good old Uncle Jabez decided to take it a step further. There’s some extraordinary law that allows a person to lay claim to a particular piece of land or property once they can show that they have used it in the manner for which it was intended, and to the exclusion of all others, for an uninterrupted period of about twelve years or so. My great-uncle was never one to do things by halves. If the law required the exclusion of all others, then that’s what he’d do. He put padlocks on every room in the western half of the top floor, kept the keys to himself and told not a soul about his little plans.

I’m not sure if the best lawyer in the country could have found any precedent for using rooms intended for the storage of official legal documents as an impromptu notch-house and sleeping parlour whenever the fancy arose, but luckily for Uncle Jabez this little question was never raised twelve years later when he presented to HM Government his personal claim to what thereafter came to be known as 34a Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Of course, the Land Registry bods could do nothing. Uncle Jabez had dotted every ‘i’, crossed every ‘t’ and generally covered all areas of possible complaint against him. Naturally he was ‘asked to leave’ his official position as Chief Registrar, but as he passed on his way upstairs to his new abode (like a recalcitrant child sent to its room) he noted aloud the delicious irony of the fact that the Land Registry couldn’t keep track of its own conveyancing affairs. Mind you, if the Chief Registrar could sod off for such pioneering lengths of time without notice to sleep the afternoon away, I’m not surprised.

Having full legal possession of the place meant that Uncle Jabez could bequeath it to his family once he passed on, which is how it eventually came to fall into my worthy hands.

There’s no love lost between the Land Registry and me. They ask me to turn down my Elgar records from time to time—apparently they’re not fans of Pomp and Circumstance, having neither soul nor imagination—and employees glare at me when we pass on the stairs or they see me sunbathing on the roof in summer. That reminds me, I must tell them of my plans to install my plunge pool: it’ll mean considerable upheaval for them when the workmen lug the marble up the stairs and I have the plumbing connected.

For now I was keen to nip into the place as quickly as possible to grab enough bits to keep me in Italy for the indefinite period I was to spend there looking into this shambolic coin and murder business. I was also keen to avoid any nasty little ruffians of the sort employed by Soho Winterburn. If I stayed in London any longer than I needed he’d hear about it quickly enough and I’d get a boot (or worse) up my backside for my trouble and as many bodily parts and organs removed as he would need to recover that eight grand on the black market. He was a reasonable chap underneath it all.

As soon as I got into central London I told the cabbie to make for Chancery Lane, thinking I’d scurry down Carey Street past the Royal Courts and approach the Registry from the back. That would give me the chance to see if there were any unwelcome oiks lurking about the place and keeping an eye out for me. It was more likely that they’d be watching the main entrance, so I planned on jumping over the back railings and crawling through one of the basement windows that I keep slightly open for emergency ingress and egress of a covert nature.

When the cab had pulled in, I hopped out and headed down Carey Street to the back entrance of the Courts. It was here that I began paying real attention to my surroundings and where I was walking. Fortunately it had started to get dark, it being around nine in the evening by the time Arbuthnot and Benham had finished with me and I’d made my way back to London, and when the Registry came into view about a hundred yards away adrenalin started pumping about the place and the old ticker rattled away apace against my ribs.

I began that idiotic part-trot, part-walk, part-skip that people engage in when they’re either demented or which they believe makes them invisible to the naked eye: body arched backward and hugging walls, legs half a yard in front of shoulders, arms spread outward like a clown and lips pulled backward into a pained expression like someone trying to pass a bowling ball through his anus.

I paused every few steps and cast an eye ahead of and behind me, jumping at every unexpected noise and examining even the most innocent objects in the shadows. Suddenly I was at the street corner right opposite the Registry, but a few steps away from the iron fence railing at the back of the building. Through the darkness I could just see the tiny window in the basement that I left opened especially for instances in my life such as this. Certainly it looked shut to anyone casing the joint. It was opened barely an inch, but you’d have to clamber over the railings and get up close before you stood a chance of realising it.

I stood deathly still, trying not to breathe, huddling into the foliage of a bush whose branches overhung the pavement. All looked peaceful and normal. Somewhere a dog barked. A couple of hundred yards away down towards the Kingsway a handful of revellers fell out of a pub and started singing a chorus of ‘She was poor but she was honest’.

I contemplated the short stretch of tarmac that lay between me and my goal. A frantic look each way down the street, and then I shot out across the road and leapt over the railings quicker than you could say ‘parsnips’.

I landed at the bottom of the basement steps in a kerfuffle of shoe leather on stonework and immediately threw myself under the ledge of the little window. Pressing myself up against the wall I crouched quietly and looked back up to the level of the road, all the while listening attentively. The troupe of drunken singers had faded off into the night, and all I could hear was my own breathing, heightened from the sudden burst of activity.

I reached a hand up to the window, worked my fingers around the frame and pulled. The pane creaked open awkwardly as the arm attaching it to the wall scraped through its bracket fastener. I started at the unexpected noise and grimaced as I willed it to move more quietly.

As soon as the opening was wide enough I hauled myself up through it and into the darkness of the basement. Pulling the window shut behind me I hoped to Christ the Registry oafs hadn’t rearranged the downstairs filing cabinets again. They’d caught me out like that once before and it was a tidy mess I’d left when I swung through the window and upended one of the blessed things. It brought down its neighbours in a domino effect that must have looked rather impressive if it did even an ounce of justice to the noise it created, and left me standing in an acre of paperwork heaped up around my ankles. If you live in the central London area—the postal districts SW1 to SW4, to be more accurate—and are wondering why it takes so damned long to sell your property, it may have something to do with the fact that some drunken fool spent the small hours of that particular morning haphazardly stuffing title deeds into whatever filing pockets he could find in the chaos around him, whether correct or not, so as to avoid an incident with the chaps upstairs.

Fortunately filing cabinets and other pieces of furniture were as I remembered them and I was able to pick my way through the basement with little effort, locking the door again behind me with my own keys. I knew I would have to be careful what lights I put on, just in case anybody was watching the place from out in the street, and with this in mind I began to feel my way in darkness up the stairs into the main lobby and beyond.

As I went, feeling the reassuring presence of the banister beneath my fingers, I contemplated that Soho Winterburn and his heavies would have to get up far earlier in the morning if they stood a chance of catching out Hugo Hammersley. Things had been simple enough so far, and I’d be shot of London and on my way to Italy before long. If I could just get out of the country and be rid of Winterburn for a while, a weight would be lifted from my shoulders without one being attached to my balls and my being launched headlong into the Thames. More importantly, if I could get my hands on that blasted coin and hotfoot it back to Blighty before anyone was any the wiser, I’d be able to pay back Winterburn the eight grand with considerable shrapnel to spare and a house or two in the country to boot.

I got to the main door that served my suite of rooms and fumbled about for my keys. I listened silently before opening and barging in—better to err on the side of caution than get caught with one’s trousers down, especially when dealing with the likes of Winterburn. There was no sound from within, so with a deep breath I turned the key, twisted it back and out of the lock, and having slipped through closed it shut quietly behind me.

Immediately I set to work. Lighting a small candelabra I began to flit about the place and grab necessities as they occurred to me. I emptied my pockets and found the card that Arbuthnot had given me with some contact details for when I arrived in Italy. I’d been told to make my way to a hotel in Rome, which was easier than buggering about getting somewhere up in the north. Corteggiani may well have bought it in Venice, but once it emerged that he’d been carrying the aureus and lost it the matter had been passed to the authorities in the capital. The officers who had investigated the murder scene had been summoned to Rome (they’d have loved that, I imagined) and would be awaiting my arrival with all the information needed to begin investigations.

I set the card down on the sideboard while I arranged a large gin and tonic to help the evening along. Rome suited me fine. A wondrous city whose women looked after and presented themselves magnificently, where I could find the most exquisite baroque lodgings and drink and dine myself stupid all on the State tab. I could also look up my good friend Tomaso Alighieri, or ‘Dante’ as he was affectionately known by those whom he trusted enough to share his inner circle. He kept a fine property up on the Janiculum with spectacular views over the city, not to mention an eminently desirable cellar. Built sturdier than the Aswan Dam and harder to catch hold of in a scuffle than a bull elephant’s scrotum, he moved like lightning and had a pair of fists that could lay out even the most formidable opponent with a couple of jabs. He knew his way around the city, had some useful contacts and more importantly was acquainted with some of the most cracking-looking crumpet this side of a Hamadan harem. He was a useful chap to have on one’s side if things got dicey. I had a nagging feeling that they would.

Pulling open drawers and casting an eye over their contents I soon came across my old Browning .38. The Browning had previously accompanied me when travelling abroad on what Arbuthnot would call ‘official’ business. What I call it doesn’t matter, but the reassuring weight of the gun and the smooth, cool feel of the walnut grip in my palm brought back vivid memories of previous bullet-ridden encounters. I was damned if I was investigating a murder fuelled by greed and lusting after a half million pound coin in an apparently fraught political atmosphere without a nine millimetre of some variety in my back pocket. I grabbed a box of the Parabellum cartridges and two spare magazines and put the little arsenal into my case.

I was pretty much packed with everything I envisaged needing. Clothing was a priority, of course. I’d selected some of my finest suits, tailor-made shirts, leather-soled boots (two pairs) and the umbrella cane that James Smith & Sons had put together for me. Then of course the Browning and various other bits of miscellany to keep me entertained throughout my sojourn. I set my two bags by the door and decided that another dose of juniper would be in order.

It was when I crossed the room to recharge my glass that I heard the stairs creak in the hallway outside.

Now I’ve learned from many years of experience and avoiding the attentions of unwelcome and oft unsavoury visitors that the offending board is precisely sixteen steps away from the apartment. This meant that someone coming up the stairs, having stepped on said board, would thereafter arrive chez Hammersley within a range of times: an energetic chap, leaping industriously, would take approximately five seconds; a slothfully trudging oaf around fifteen; an old lady with gout and a walking stick, ensuring both feet were set firmly on each step before moving onward, perhaps twenty-five or thirty.

What made me pause at the sideboard, hand outstretched reaching for the gin, head half-turned towards the door and holding my breath to listen more keenly, was the fact that the person currently making his way up my stairs took exactly eighteen seconds before attempting to turn my door handle. This was either a particularly slothful oaf, an overly-confident granny or someone trying to walk exceptionally quietly.

I leapt across the living room, just as the handle reached its lowest point and the door began to inch open. Pressing myself up against the wall beyond the arc of the advancing oak, I cursed myself under my breath for not sliding the bolt across. This had been partly an oversight in my haste to be in and out of the place as quickly as possible, and partly a conscious omission—from past experience Winterburn’s heavies tended to be fairly overt and raucous in announcing their arrival, which was usually highlighted by the kicking in of doors, bolted or not, and the hurling of impeding furniture against walls.

I grabbed the nearest weapon that came to hand, which happened to be a debating award (Second Prize) carved out of ebony in the shape of a clenched fist that I’d managed to wheedle from the Union judges at Oxford (I’d been rogering one of them earlier in the afternoon, and had separately promised the other two that I would procure said strumpet’s telephone number for their personal records), and raised it above my head, ready to let fly, noting the engraving on the base (‘This House believes that the pen is truly mightier than the sword’) as it passed by my eyes.

And then, just when I believed that all life had left to offer me was a brief and energetic scuffle with a shaven-headed caveman, followed by excruciating pain, possibly some detached limb or other and a battered debating trophy, the most alluring scent carried into my nostrils and in swayed the potent silhouette of a body built for such licence and debauchery as I have had the pleasure of encountering only once in my life.

Had this been a ball with a footman announcing arriving dignitaries, he would have earned a medal for remembering his job, retaining his composure and carrying out his duties in relation to the newcomer. For, dear reader, he would have been confronted by the wondrous sight of Penelope Lemon wearing the most elegant and figure-hugging of fur coats, the highest of stiletto heels and very little else besides.

***

“Ha-mmy….?”

She sounded wanton. Her voice had that deliciously feminine quality to it, soft and smoky, coming from the depths of the tenderest throat. One could tell so much from that voice: that she had the softest lips, the sweetest face and a confidence in her body and associated abilities that would make even a priest weak at the knees.

She tiptoed quietly into the room—not that she had much choice in that. The heels she was wearing were so slender and high, emphasising the taut, tanned skin over her astounding legs, that she was bound to move like an exotic ballerina. I imagined her walking provocatively up the stairs on the balls of her perfect feet, the heels hanging over the edge of each step as temptingly as Tantalus’ berries. I forgave her the eighteen seconds she’d taken to reach my door with every ounce of graciousness in my heart.

As she stepped through the door more fully she let the fur coat slip from her shoulders to the floor, revealing a particularly louche and close-fitting little corset that emphasized her curves to the point of exhaustion.

Christ, it was all there.

I realized I was looking her up and down like a cattle farmer viewing a prospective purchase at the Norfolk auctions and, moreover, that I was still poised to bash her about the head with the debating trophy. That would never do. I lowered the item, letting out a shallow breath and relaxing the tension from my muscles.

“Jesus, Lemon—what the bloody hell are you doing here?” I hissed.

This more from shock and irritation at preparing to meet my maker than any real pique at her attendance, especially in her immediate accoutrements. Damnation if her legs weren’t the finest ever to have graced Axminster.

She stepped carefully over her coat as she turned to face me, a smile spreading over her face.

“Hammy, don’t you like my little outfit?”

She did a twirl, and everything moved where it should. I blinked hard and turned my head slightly to snap myself out of my libidinous lusting. Thankfully I was able to bring myself to my senses momentarily.

“How the bloody hell did you get in here?”

I was whispering for some reason, albeit loudly.

“Hammy, you gave me a key,” she pouted teasingly, jingling the thing in one hand and running her fingers up my lapel, “don’t you remember?”

Honestly, give ’em an inch and they’ll take a hectare. Not that I minded sultry, goddess-like creatures turning up at my abode uninvited, but frankly there’s a time and a place. And at that precise moment hanging about my known lodgings waiting for one of Winterburn’s thugs to turn up unannounced and bump me off wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, even though I would be passing my final hours galloping this wondrous filly. Good God, but she did look extraordinarily fine.

I didn’t have time for this. I cursed Winterburn for the umpteenth time and grabbed hold of Lemon about the waist. Her flesh felt firm under the lace of the suspender belt and her lips were just as soft as the voice had promised.

I breathed in her aroma and ran my hand up her back, untying her corset on the way, and caressed her thick, silky hair between my fingers. It was about time to get the other paw involved, and just as I moved it up her front to grab a handful of her bust, I began to hear a faint, nagging noise somewhere in the background. It grew steadily more insistent, though always muffled, and I had to do some interesting things to Lemon to make her moan a little louder and drown it out.

Things were beginning to warm up rather well, and I’d managed to put Winterburn to the back of my mind sufficiently to start enjoying the status quo. That nagging noise was getting more incessant, though, and all of a sudden I heard the stair creak outside.

I stopped dead, snapped my head up from nibbling Lemon’s neck and stared helplessly at the door, but six feet from where we were standing. My quarry continued to writhe in my arms, unaware of my attention being elsewhere.

Abruptly, I became in need of a new front door. I remember thinking, “Where does one go to buy such an item?” precisely as the existing one exploded open and then snapped off its hinges in front of my eyes.

The useless tart had left the main entrance unlocked.

Several things happened at once. At the startling noise Lemon’s head flicked round parallel to mine as I dropped her from my arms and she fell to the floor in an inelegant manner wholly incongruous with her attire. Two of the largest, ugliest looking louts whose faces looked as though they’d been used for shoeing horses lumbered into the room rather more animatedly than I’d have liked and stared about the place (presumably admiring the décor), eyes finally falling on me. I of course staggered backwards and fell over Lemon, struggling on the floor to get up with those wondrous heels impeding her every movement.

I fumbled about for something to grab hold of—for the first time in the last ten minutes not looking for Lemon’s shapely chest—and I lunged for the debating trophy, deposited on a nearby table when I’d leapt upon my paramour. I grabbed it and hurled it at the nearest oncoming ruffian.

It bounced off his dented skull as if it had been a ball of cotton wool, and did nothing to impede his progress. He stepped over Lemon (didn’t even cast her a second look, which impressed me, especially since her breasts had fallen out of her corset in the drop to the floor) and fell headlong at my feet, claret running steadily from the gash in his loaf where the trophy had struck home.

I hurriedly pulled Lemon up as she stuffed herself back into her garb. The second hoodlum pulled an iron bar out of nowhere and brandished it menacingly at us, circling the room like a wrestler and choosing his moment to pounce. Behind him another thug appeared in the doorway, obviously not as fit as the others in his ascent up the stairs, panting like a hound but nonetheless primed for a fight.

I glanced about the room and my eyes fell upon the dumb waiter, a relic from when the place had been used for storage back before Uncle Jabez had purloined it for his own sordid purposes. It led all the way down to the basement and had been used for sending deeds back and forth when work needed doing on them by the toads downstairs. It was a fair old size, big enough for a large boxful of files, and I raced over to the wall and pulled up the hatch, dragging behind me the ill-attired slattern who’d as good as invited these troublemakers into my dwelling place to raise Cain.

Fortunately for Lemon the dumb waiter was on our floor, because before she could utter a yelp I had bundled her in (one of her heels got in the way when I slammed down the hatch, so I had to yank the shoe from her foot) and sent her flying down. The pulley mechanism was designed to slow the carriage before it hit the bottom, so she’d land safely enough—although good luck to her if she could find her way around in the darkness down there. She’d be out of harm’s way at least: none of Winterburn’s gorillas would be able to fit in the dumb waiter, and I’d locked the basement when I’d made my way upstairs. Lemon would be stuck there overnight, admittedly, but she’d be perfectly secure. And it’d give the Registry toffs something to liven ’em up when they found her the next day, particularly in her devilish finery.

I spun round and ducked simultaneously to feel the iron bar whistle through the air above me. I hurled a clenched fist at the offensively carved block of masonry that apparently served as my assailant’s head, an action about as much use as blowing peas at a rutting rhino. He hardly flinched, but did blink a couple of times. This gave me a valuable second to wriggle out from beneath him and kick him back over his fallen comrade, the latter already shaking his injured head and preparing himself for the delights of full consciousness.

There was nothing for it but to hightail it out of the Registry as quickly as I could. Bugger me if I could take on this trio of primitive nasties single-handedly without the assistance of some sort of high-calibre firearm. Typically the damned Browning was out of reach, packed safely in my bag by the door. Here was a situation that would be far more enjoyable without my being present.

My attention was caught by movement near the door. The third brute had managed to put off his coronary long enough to join in the action and now stepped in front of me, swinging a gargantuan fist at my head. I jerked my body back and rolled forward towards what remained of the door.

Without looking back I grabbed the two bags and was attacking the stairs before any of them could follow suit. Halfway down I saw the iron bar fly past my ear and clatter against the wall, reinforcing my intention not to pause for thought until safely out in the street with the imminent prospect of a taxi making itself available.

I flagged down the first empty hackney I could find—damn me if I didn’t have to scramble as far as the Strand before coming upon one—and having jumped inside instructed the driver to make for the airport as expeditiously as a fifty-pound note could inspire. I didn’t mind paying well over the odds; this one was on Arbuthnot.

Once I’d found my breath again I took stock of the situation and a brief inventory. It was only after going through my pockets that I realized I’d left an important item back at the Registry in my haste to be shot of the place.

Its absence alone wasn’t really an issue. I have an exceptional memory and knew exactly where I was going once in Rome, when I needed to be there and with whom I was to meet. But the little card giving intricate details of my destination and intended accommodation was still sitting on the sideboard at home next to the gin, almost certainly now in the hands of the three monkeys I’d just left behind.

My head fell back onto the seat in despair and exhaustion.

Soho Winterburn knew where I was heading.

IV

I managed to get to Rome in time for dinner the next day. Dante greeted me with as much homoerotic extravagance as is customary with the damned Eyeties, kissing me on both cheeks and wrapping his bear-like arms around me as if I were a long-lost brother just returned home with a cheque for a large sum made out in the family name.

I extricated myself as graciously as I could. In these days of social acceptance, and I suppose more so now that stringing the buggers up or throwing them into jail appear no longer to be legal, I’m minded to try to accept those of God’s happy creatures who have chosen the Wilde Way. Dante doesn’t subscribe fully to the regime, only to the extent that his Italian nature demands, which is a little too far for my liking if we’re talking candidly. Of course, I have nothing against such folk, qua shirt-lifters. Each to his own, if you ask me, but I’ll thank ’em for keeping it to themselves and not flaunting it about the place like next season’s spats. I cannot abide people wilfully parading their sexuality in public for all and sundry to see. There’s no grace in it.

On entering the main reception room I made a beeline for a delightful young thing with a bust like a dead heat in a Zeppelin race, and took a seat next to her while Dante prepared me a drink.

Fortunately my host was happy to offer me lodgings for the duration of my stay in the city. It wasn’t as if he was short of rooms—his palatial residence sprawled over a considerable area of the Janiculum, one of the largest hills not to have been included in the famed seven of Rome. The Americans grumbled that the abode was beginning to put their neighbouring Academy to shame. Both had a grand, colonial air about them, but whereas the Yanks had imported a load of faux trappings to achieve the effect on the cheap, Dante’s were the real deal. His connections and vast personal fortune meant that he could lay his hands on authentic artefacts with relative ease, as long as he could hoodwink the authorities into believing otherwise, which he usually could.

The Venus de Milo which holds pride of place in his entrance hall is without doubt the original. One of Dante’s great-grandfathers had managed to get his hands on the thing from the farmer who first discovered it while ploughing his fields. It’s amazing how quickly a convincing forgery can be knocked up, covered in mud and stuck back in the hole whence the original had come. Dante’s great-grandfather had had the genuine article cleaned off, packaged up and shipped back to Italy before anyone could bat an eyelid. The farmer was paid off with a sum that was peanuts to Dante Snr but made his own eyes water, and the official who authenticated the replacement also received a package that pretty much trebled his salary for the year in one envelope.

Whilst Dante’s hospitality would mean I could avoid Winterburn’s attentions at the hotel that Arbuthnot had arranged, it didn’t overcome the problem that the little card I’d left at home gave details of the police detective I would be meeting the following day. I couldn’t quite believe that Winterburn would follow me out to Italy for the sake of eight grand, nor that he’d be too hasty about coming into contact with any civic officials if he did, but I’ve learnt from past experience what second-guessing the actions of the heads of criminal organisations can bring. As it turned out, my fears were to prove spot on yet again. For the time being, however, I was content to recline at Dante’s pad and figure out a plan of action for my meeting with the authorities the next day.

Dinner was excellent, as I’d come to expect from my host. The seating plan had me opposite the delicious little bundle I’d been attempting to inveigle at the pre-dinner drinks, and throughout the meal I’d been plying her with alcohol to see what of her ample charms I could coax out. It seemed to be doing the trick, although I have to say I may not have needed as much of the booze as I’d thought—she seemed the hell of a randy package.

Giuseppina Parelli was probably in her early twenties, but already appeared more than well versed in the art of dalliance judging from her banter. She had the sort of figure that could confuse a mathematician, and—something which is always a guaranteed home run—oozed confidence through every pore.

She was tripped out in her finest evening wear too, her long, black hair trussed up above her head into an elegant twirl, ends arcing out from the centre of the knot in finger-length sprigs that hung in the air with an alluring impertinence and bounced lithely whenever she tossed her head back and laughed. It may have been effective scaffolding, but her bust was certainly at the high port within the paltry confines of her blouse, and the silky fabric of her skirt hugged her hips so tightly that when she’d moved to the table following the apéritifs you could judge the exquisite shape of her backside as it swayed under the wafer-thin material.

Signorina Parelli had perfected the art of flirtatious eye contact to a tee, and consistently fixed me with her gaze and a dipped chin that was as obvious a precursor to debauchery as the carefully-timed and playful touches on my forearm. To cap it all, I believe I actually saw her raise a forefinger to her mouth and roll her tongue along its tip before caressing the rim of her wine glass with the lucky digit.

Sometimes these things do happen in real life, you know.

This alone would have been enough to convince me that my Italian tour was soon to be off to a flying start. So when I felt her generously-heeled shoe slide up my inside leg, and she rubbed the ball of her foot against my crotch, grinding it firmly but with a tenderness for which I almost complimented her, I nearly jumped up and cried “Full House!” there and then over the summer fruit pudding.

“Bless your sole,” says I, knowing the quip would lose much for not being in correspondence, but nonetheless trusting that the good little Catholic girl opposite me (albeit well hidden beneath the brazen harlot holding court) would take it as quaintly as I had intended. I moved my hand to her foot, admiring the craftsmanship of her heels, and worked upstairs towards her thigh, caressing the warm, firm calf along the way. Aware, however, that Debrett’s might have something to say about enjoying petits fours before the dessert plates had been tidied away, I exercised restraint and stopped short of anything too untoward.

All in all, things were looking rosy. I’d had just enough giggle-juice to keep me boisterous, and Signorina Parelli hadn’t pulled her leg away from my attentions. Then she suddenly withdrew her pin and rose from the table, smoothing down her skirt. She looked me dead in the eye, nodded to the rest of the table and excused herself, striding off toward the facilities.

Now, in my much younger, less practised days I’d have taken her literally and dutifully awaited her return. There comes a stage in a man’s life, however (if he’s got an iota of nous), when he learns how to read a woman’s mannerisms, her theatrics and her posturings. Certainly there’ll be some who mean it when they excuse themselves to powder their noses and rearrange their hemlines. But over time and with experience you can pick out those who use the line as an unmistakable pretext and invitation for something quite different.

Truth to tell, it’s usually when they’ve hit the wrong side of thirty that women start to revel in such façades. It’s not much before that age that a woman herself becomes properly aware of the power she wields over most men, even if she has a face like a welder’s bench, and it’s so indelibly part of accepted biological knowledge that a woman in her thirties is randier than a squirrel that I’m sure I’ve read it countless times in the BMJ. It’s rare to find such awareness and confidence in one as young as Giuseppina Parelli, which of course made her even more desirable. Her self-assured manner promised for an experienced little tryst, yet her body would still have the firmness of an under-ripe fruit and all the best bits would still be pointing north.

It was clear by the way we’d been sparring all evening that there was hope for a more private encounter, and I was eager to oblige. I waited an appropriate time, so my departure wouldn’t be too simultaneous, then excused myself similarly in hot but subtle pursuit.

I found her languishing beside a little concierge stand in the foyer, haranguing one of Dante’s attendants. She was waving a telephone receiver in the air towards him as she leant on the marble counter and continued to abuse him in some of the more colourful Italian vernacular I have encountered until she noticed me strolling past. She flung the receiver down with a final flourish of invective and flicked her hand into the air, whilst the flunkie blinked compliantly, acknowledging his worthlessness and bowing as she turned on her heel toward me.

“You took your time, Mr Hammersley—I have been trying for the porter to connect me to a non-existent number in Naples for the past five minutes.”

“Perhaps you should send a telegram instead,” I replied.

She smiled, gracious and coquettish.

Giuseppina Parelli fanned herself with a menu that she’d brought from the dinner table.

“It is a hot evening tonight.”

Her not quite perfect English unashamedly created such tautologies. I barely noticed—with the accent she had I’d have forgiven her even the odd split infinitive.

“I feel like I want to jump naked into a pool.”

I glanced out into the grounds, trying for the life of me to remember the way to Dante’s damned ornamental lake.

“I fear I would be doing the most unkindly disservice to mankind if I were to insist that you stay fully clothed,” I teased.

She raised an eyebrow, making me fall unequivocally in love with her.

“Now about that telegram—if you like, I’d be more than happy to take something down for you.”

I gestured towards a deserted corridor leading off the hallway, where I knew there were small and otherwise inconsequential trunk rooms just screaming for scandal. She let me lead the way, and as soon as we’d turned a corner and I’d found a room with a lock, we bundled ourselves inside and threw the bolt. My companion was all over me like a cheap suit, and it wasn’t long before I’d unbuttoned her blouse and she’d whipped off her brassiere to reveal the shapeliest pair of breasts I’d seen in a long while.

It’s a special moment when a chap’s getting familiar with a lass for the first time and she lets him cap an eyeful of the guns she’s sporting without the support of their holsters. The shot of excitement that surges through one’s loins cannot accurately be described when one realizes that the promising brows beneath her clothing aren’t all down to effective upholstery, and that even in the absence of support they point to the moon as surely as Ptolemy’s telescope.

“Et in Arcadia ego,” says I, as I grabbed her round the waist and clamped a paw on those wondrous mounds (which, incidentally, had also been omitted from the famed seven of Rome—presumably on a technicality).

After a few minutes in a similar vein, I was about to spin her around and get better acquainted when she threw me down into a chair, hitched up her skirt and straddled me without even asking permission to come aboard. With voracious aplomb she’d figured out on which side I dressed, pulled aside her smalls and was going hammer and tongs as if her life depended upon it.

Well I’ve always been a fan of Women’s Lib. When we’d each played our hands, she kissed me and extricated herself gracefully from my lap. A quick rearrangement of her finery and she was fit for polite company once again, unlike your inestimable correspondent. A bottle of wine is likely to get my eyelids drooping on a summer’s eve, but taken alongside a quick turn on Shooter’s Hill and I’m liable to become comatose well before the carriages roll up. Nevertheless, I managed to pull myself together and we found our way back to the dining room without narcolepsy kicking in.

The night was still young, but Giuseppina Parelli made her excuses to Dante with a graciousness that belied her age. She was on a promise to her father, apparently, which didn’t surprise me one bit. If I were her old man I’d have locked the little minx in a tower, well before she turned sixteen, and ensured that every man who called to the house was either a raging homosexual or anatomically incapacitated from the waist down.

It’s often the way with these wanton young frippets: they’re daddies’ girls to the core, all lollipops and pigtails about the house, making the old man glow with paternal pride, which of course makes the fool more trusting than a Trojan. It’s damned clever of the little trollops, because it’s not long before they’re let out alone for the odd evening with a respectable young man, or to attend a dinner at a reputable household such as Dante’s. No sooner are they out of the door than they’re whoring about the place like the licentious Lolitas they really are. As long as they’re back in time to kiss him goodnight in front of his guests, Pa’s happier than a flea at a dog show. But I digress.

As I gave her a knowing smile, I reckoned I stood a good chance of a couple more furlongs with la signorina Parelli before my time in Rome was done.

***

I restored my senses with a well-deserved thirst-quencher and sat away from the attentions of Dante’s remaining guests in order to reflect upon what tomorrow would hold. The quicker I made it look as though I had at least tried to investigate Corteggiani’s unfortunate demise, the quicker I could kick the whole thing into touch and let the damned Italians get on with it. But now I was beginning to sound like Arbuthnot. I frowned at the thought (I can never quite bring myself to wince).

More importantly than anything else, I needed to get my hands on that blasted coin. I would have to ascertain what Dante knew about it, to see if he’d picked up any word amongst his cronies who, like he, persisted in scouring the land for artefacts and novelties from centuries ago, and revelled in owning anything that Cicero may conceivably have trodden upon or the like.

I wasn’t wholly successful in avoiding the other guests. As I lounged in a sofa the size of a small country, they persisted in joining me to chatter about inanities and express polite interest in my personage. I tried to smile and avoid grimacing as I conversed with women who looked like Mussolini and men who had enough oil on their thinning pates to bankrupt OPEC.

When I felt a vast hand clamp down on my shoulder, I’m not shy to say that after recent events back home I nearly slammed my gin and tonic, with glass, into the face of my accoster on instinct. Fortunately the hand was accompanied by Dante’s familiar gruff tones, revealing simultaneously to the uninitiated a man who smoked too much, exercised infrequently and rarely found life to be a disappointment.

“I see you have discovered the delights of Britannia in my esteemed guest,” says he. “Mr Hammersley is unique for many reasons, but perhaps most of all because he is the only man I know to have had the misfortune of being both married and divorced on the same day.”

I fidgeted uncomfortably, wondering why the hell Dante was going down this road in polite company. The story he was telling was over a decade old and not necessarily how I’d care to be introduced at a formal soirée.

“To and from the same woman, of course,” he continued after an extravagant pause for effect.

He moved around the gargantuan couch and planted himself alongside me, adopting the pose of the effete and care-free man of wealth, arms outstretched along the back of the sofa and legs neatly crossed.

“I believe we were in France, attending some overweight” (he meant ‘over-blown’; fluent and seamless as Dante’s English was, he occasionally adopted the odd inapposite expression just to remind everyone of his roots. I’m sure he did it intentionally. It made English women fall over themselves in adoration for the foreign old fool) “Embassy dinner—possibly at the Palace of Versailles?”

Dante looked at me paternally, craning his neck forward to catch my eye for confirmation. I smirked ever so slightly, recalling the evening, but for Dante’s benefit shrugged with down-turned mouth and raised eyebrow, at the same time raising my glass with the indifference of imperfect recollection.

“My good friend,” here he actually cupped his hand around my neck, the damned Italian bastard, “had spent the evening wooing Mlle Frédèrique Saçerdot, the daughter of an esteemed government official from Marseilles. Certainly it was love at first sight for Mlle Saçerdot. It would appear that Signor Hammersley reciprocated the sentiment. For a little after two o’clock in the morning, as he walked her to her carriage, and within only six hours of having met the girl, he dropped to his knee and asked her to marry him.”

Now you’d expect any sane bunch of folk to look into their drinks and pout embarrassingly at the floor at this point, imagining the extraordinary farce of asking a woman to marry you within hours of meeting her. And I’d be leading the fray, I can tell you. But not the blasted Eyeties—the women nearly passed out at the sheer romance of the thing, and even the chaps raised their glasses in forthright approval, God help us all. I felt unclean, as though I had been caught spying on an old lady in the bath, and shifted awkwardly to cross my legs away from an audience whose interest had now of course well and truly been piqued. Dante grinned, revelling in the attention his tale had brought him, and pressed on.

“Ahhh, Mr Hammersley, the incurable romantic. What would Mlle Saçerdot have said if she had known that her new fiancé was as drunk as a rat when he had made his impassioned proposal; that it would be strongly arguable in a court of law that he was not possessed of his senses at the time? What would she have said had she known that Mr Hammersley was so under the influence of his beloved gin and tonics that he had stumbled in his haste to escort the fair maiden to her conveyance and was in the process of picking himself up—indeed he was, as they say, on bended knee—when, in his charming English manner, he made jest with the girl and asked: ‘will you carry me?’”

The audience gaped in amused astonishment as the logical implications of Dante’s words hit home, and a couple of the more hysterical women slapped their hands to their mouths and giggled in a display of histrionics that would have out-Neroed the emperor himself.

“Mr Hammersley soon realized that his quaint British humour had not quite been understood as intended when Mlle Saçerdot threw herself upon him, tears in her eyes, and declared that she had never been as happy as at that moment and yes, yes, yes she would marry him with all her heart!”

Dante wheezed with laughter as he recalled the scene, recounted the following evening when I had met up with him to drown my sorrows and forget the awfulness of a day that had seen me personally cited in legal proceedings, thrashed soundly by a disgruntled troupe of amorous Gauls and lambasted across a significant portion of mainland France.

“One can almost see Mr Hammersley’s face, his eyes wide with shock, surprise and—let us not pretend—genuine fear at the effect of his miscommunication, while Mlle Saçerdot presses her lips to his, lost in the moment of ecstasy. Of course, what can an English gentleman do when his offer of marriage has been accepted and a young lady’s happiness hangs in the balance? It is a matter of honour for him to see this contract through. His integrity, his very good name, will not permit otherwise.”

A few gruff nods from the chaps in the vicinity. The women too pretended to understand this princely nonsense.

“Of course, Mr Hammersley’s honourable behaviour in this matter was not at all influenced by the fact,” Dante’s shoulders shook as he tried to control his voice, his face red with laughter, the invidious Italian ass, “by the fact that Mlle Saçerdot’s father—through his impressive society connections—was able to organize a minister and make preparations sufficient to have the happy couple standing before an exultant gathering of well-wishers ahead of dawn, witnesses primed and a wedding ring with a diamond the size of the Koh-i-noor at his disposal.”

He was right—the abominable M. Saçerdot had been able to pull strings the size of anchor cables, and as dawn crept over the horizon I found myself exchanging vows with the (admittedly delectable) young French lass. They were all mad as a box of birds, but I was still well oiled from the booze I’d consumed and barely able to confirm my name, let alone say “I do”. Say it I did, though, and by ten in the morning my body could take no more, and I’d passed out in some remote bedroom that had been set aside for those of the attending dignitaries who had stayed overnight.

“There followed a brief but welcome period of respite from the excesses of the previous evening’s swiftly executed marriage ceremony. I believe your new wife dutifully put you to bed, then returned to her guests to dance, sing and bask in the warm glow of adulation that is the expected privilege and entitlement of any bride on her wedding day.”

Saçerdot had indeed had all the energy of a six-year old child, bounding about like a terrier at the Berkshire Hunt and generally making a shrieking, giggling nuisance of herself. If I hadn’t passed out when I did, I may have found myself a widower somewhat sooner than her father would have preferred, and cited in Court proceedings of a more nefarious nature.

“I recall that you slept like un bambino caro, awakened only a few hours later by a rather, how do you say… nubile” (I suspect you can guess the English translation, gracious reader) “young lady, who roused you with kisses, caresses and much more beyond. In fact, I believe you were quite engaged in, ah, flagrante delicto when your wife came back into the room.”

I feel I should put all this into context, naturally.

Yes, a rather curvaceous young thing had come upon me in my drunken slumber. Yes, I must confess, she did set to work on the Hammersley carcass, doing the most wonderful things with her oral equipment. However, in my defence, this particular maiden and I were well acquainted as a result of a series of previous encounters. Ms Joanna Pullinger was the personal assistant of Colonel Fenwick, a senior member of Her Majesty’s diplomatic core, the kind of old school gent who claimed to know everyone’s father, insisted on wearing a waistcoat even in the most Indian of summers and surrounded himself with only the prettiest girls to organize his diary, type his correspondence and generally flit about his office. Ms Pullinger was particularly good at flitting. We’d knocked about together for a couple of months, and every now and then would happen upon each other in some seedy part of London, imbibe a few glassfuls of something fruity and invariably find ourselves putting four quarters on the spit somewhere inappropriate. She wasn’t an oil painting to look at, nor did she have much upstairs, but she was well put together otherwise. Slim and well-proportioned, with no bust to speak of but legs that went places of which very few dared dream, and a behind like a perfectly inverted heart-shape, as of course all the best are.

I hadn’t spotted Pullinger during the course of dinner, but she must have been hanging about the place as part of Fenwick’s crew. She must have clocked me sniffing about Saçerdot, and the green-eyed monster was upon her in a flash. She’d witnessed my sloping into my present lodgings with the new Mrs Hammersley, but then seen my delightful wife return to the festivities unaccompanied. I don’t suppose she was prepared for my comatose state, but she knew me well, you see. A couple of well-placed lips later, and she had me quite—presumably—where she wanted: giving her what-for over a rather fetching blood-red ottoman that complemented the room’s drapery quite magnificently.

Of course, I knew not what—or more accurately, whom—I was doing. Get Hammersley within anywhere less than half an hour of rising from any sort of slumber (and if it’s drink-induced, best leave it until the afternoon and have some hot buttered toast and a strong, steaming mug of Assam at the ready), and you’re liable to get more sense from a Byzantine barfly than successfully introduce me to lucid or rational thought.

You mustn’t forget that it had been barely sixteen hours since I had first ever clapped eyes on Saçerdot, and I’d been cock-eyed from the sauce for the majority of those. My memory for faces is not the most efficient, and names simply pass in one ear and out t’other. If we’re being candid, I probably couldn’t have picked out my wife from a line-up of ladies. So when Pullinger offered herself up for the cause I simply leapt aboard and plied the piston like any willing suitor, assuming that this particular fine lass was none other than my blushing bride and that since I was finally able to perform my husbandly duties I had better jump to it before she spread the word that the Hammersley amenities were not perhaps as far up to scratch as they might be.

Needless to say, it was quite a shock to glance over and see the filly I was supposedly rattling standing on the other side of the room, hands on hips, one of the latter dropped in a most seductive fashion, and a look on her face that could have persuaded even Jesus to give the arse to the meek and start looking out for Himself.

I’m fairly sure I executed a double take and jumped a considerable way across the room in shock. This made Pullinger pull herself up from over the ottoman, down her dress, together her cleavage (I don’t believe she had enough up front to warrant a full-time brassiere) and scamper daintily for the door still wearing her heels. She well knew how to judge a situation—most agreeable girl.

I shan’t bore you with the details of the subsequent conversation with my wife. Despite my best efforts, the unreasonable baggage refused to believe that an entirely innocent mistake had occurred. Apparently, that this was not my first time with Ms Pullinger was not a constructive thing to have revealed. A charming lamp crashed off the wall behind my head, doing untold damage to the frescoes thereupon, and I decided to betake myself elsewhither in a snappy fashion.

Saçerdot threw the wedding ring at me, making me feel not unlike the Titanic as the considerable lump of ice came hurtling towards me with unswerving accuracy. This turned out to be something of a score, however, (since I hadn’t yet paid her father for it) keeping me in pipe tobacco and brandy for several months.

Fear not, though, worthy reader, for I paid for it indirectly. Saçerdot had a mouth on her the size of a whale’s anus, and before I could extricate myself from the Palace grounds I found myself in the thick of a crowd of angry ruffians, presumably failed admirers of the French fool, who managed to rain several well-aimed kicks at me before I could dive into the back of a passing grocery truck that had just made its first delivery of the morning.

It came as no surprise, therefore, to receive by telegram later in the morning confirmation from M. Saçerdot that the marriage had been annulled, cancelled, obliterated, struck off the Register or whatever it is the damned Frogs have done to such institutions. This accompanied a none too carefully veiled threat that if my erstwhile father-in-law ever saw me again it would be approximately a millennium too soon, resulting in various unpleasantries including, I recall, having my genitals nailed to a large piece of burning wood. I took a moment to commit this to memory.

“Mr Hammersley has not since, to my knowledge, engaged in such matrimonial high jinks…?”

Dante directed his concluding statement towards me in an interrogative manner.

“Although you will note that his tendency towards favouritism of the juniper berry remains as strong as ever.”

He whisked up my empty glass with an enormous fin and rose from the sofa, his guests incapacitated through either laughter or commiseration.

“Please forgive us, bambini, whilst I re-invest my friend’s glass.”

You see what I mean? Not quite apposite, but it works.

***

Dante waited, arm outstretched, for me to excuse myself, then led us to a more secluded spot, still chuckling. I cursed him roundly and allowed him to furnish me with a large thimbleful of Tanqueray.

“My dear friend, you must excuse my impertinence, although you can surely understand my delight in telling that story at every opportunity. So rare that you are here in person to provide a living exhibit.”

I looked at him askance as I took a swig from my glass.

“How the hell have you been then, Dante? Still managing to keep the Commissario from your door?” I grinned.

“You may laugh, my friend, as do my fellow city dwellers, but it is the laughter of fools, and their confidence is poorly feigned. Life in Rome is not what it was.”

I helped myself to a handful of Macadamia nuts from a nearby platter. They tasted exquisite, as though they had been slow-roasted over Queensland brushwood—it is the only civilized way to treat the things—and threatened with just enough salt to give them some poke.

“Why are times so hard for you and your most abstemious friends?” I asked, stuffing a fistful of the Macadamias into my mouth.

Dante inhaled deeply and knitted his brow, his good mood suddenly diminished. He clapped a hand onto my shoulder. I tried not to drop my nuts.

“I suppose it is as good a time as any to talk business. I had hoped to delay such matters, but I realize that the evening is quickly passing, and that you meet with Capitano Varsalona tomorrow.”

Dante looked around, as if he weren’t in his own home. He spoke in lowered tones.

“As much as I dislike speaking of shop matters with you, my friend, I realize that they are likely to be connected with the affairs that have brought you here. Rome is on the brink of political Armageddon, I foresee it as clearly as day shall dawn tomorrow. Something is very much underfoot, as they say.”

I’d never heard them say it quite like that, but I allowed the phrase.

“Those who move in more, ah, elevated circles, where one may find, perhaps, on occasion, the more colourful characters from life’s tapestry…”

“Such as yourself,” I assisted.

Dante effected a grimace that masqueraded poorly as a smile. He looked profoundly uncomfortable. This was unusual in a man such as Dante, who bore both the exuberant joie de vivre that only an Oxford education bestows and the controlled temperament and confidence that the physique of a prize-winning boxer alone can inspire. He craned his neck and narrowed the focus of his eyes at an invisible point, conceding some private argument to himself, albeit with little conviction.

“I am probably beyond the scope of their designs, thank God. They will care little about an insignificant birbante[3] such as I.”

“Who the devil are you talking about, old fellow? Are the boys in blue really giving you that much gyp?”

“Good God, Hammersley, not the police. This is far more serious than that. La Cosa Nostra has been making its presence publicly felt on the mainland for the first time in many years. It is getting increasingly bolder, and its arrogance grows daily.”

“La Cosa Nostra—,” I repeated, “aren’t those the chaps who get together in a tree house when things don’t go their way and throw their toys about? Always got a flea in their ear about something or other, no?”

“As you say—although the ‘toys’ do more damage nowadays, and take the form of heavy explosives or high calibre bullets. La Cosa Nostra is an Americanism, but it well sums up the introverted nature of the organisation. They shan’t thank you for using the term here. Nevertheless, it is the influences of their American cousins that seem recently to be driving Italy’s own Mafiosi to such extremes.”

Dante paused and we allowed our glasses to be filled by a passing attendant.

“What have the rascals gone and done now?” I asked.

“I am not best versed to give you an accurate description of the affairs of the Mafia, my friend, nor of their grand designs. Of their current schemes I know very little, but they are up to something. Be sure of that.”

A couple of Dante’s guests sauntered past where we stood. My host smiled at them and bowed, then led me to a sofa nearby.

“There is currently a power struggle between two of the Mafia’s leading families, headed by Antonino Castelnuovo and Francesco Papareschi. They used to be childhood friends, growing up together on Sicily—Taormina, I believe. Their families were very close. Their fathers—even their grandfathers and great-grandfathers—were in business together on the island. The people were down-trodden by the many governments which held sway, and the Sicilians looked to families such as those of Castelnuovo and Papareschi to protect them from such tyranny. The two households earned much loyalty through their protection of the working classes. Such blind devotion led to a considerable amount of authority for both families. My friend, I need not tell you what power can do to a man. When combined with wealth—why, dear Abraham Lincoln would turn in his grave.”

“Our American cousin,” says I, pointlessly.

“You must understand the mentality of the Sicilians. They have lived under the oppression of the ruling classes for many years; they have come to despise faceless authority; they do not believe in laws being superior to the needs and desires of the individual. The collective interests of society come a distant second to looking out for oneself and one’s own.”

“They haven’t got any Scottish blood in them by any chance, have they?” asks I, taking another indulgent draught of gin.

“Castelnuovo and Papareschi saw the opportunity and like any good businessmen took advantage of it. They hid their crimes behind a veil of benefaction, claiming to represent the interests of individuals who, without their protection, would fall victim to the government’s dishonesty. Under the guise of looking out for the poor and destitute, Castelnuovo and Papareschi extorted, bribed and killed their way to supremacy on the island, growing richer and more powerful and earning the adulation of those beneath them and effectively under their control. They soon became the very ruling class, wealthy and corrupt, inaccessible and untouchable, that their followers despised—yet they loved them for it. The partnership between Castelnuovo and Papareschi was hugely successful. The two families realized that by giving the underprivileged classes an opportunity to fight against the ostensible causes of their plight, the government and its representatives, they would feel feared and respected—perhaps the only opportunity a simple farmhand or manual worker would ever have of experiencing such power.”

I nodded, encouraging Dante to continue and making a mental note always to keep one eye on the working classes.

“Recently the Castelnuovo family has settled on the mainland, attracted by the unlimited criminal potential offered by cities such as Rome, Naples and Milan. The Papareschi family has not been so drawn. In Castelnuovo’s absence a Papareschi monopoly has spread over Sicily—and until now this has appeared more than sufficient for its purposes. Francesco Papareschi grows rich in the hills around Ficcuza as a result of his operations across the island: kidnapping, tobacco smuggling, prostitution and extortion—all administered by his loyal and trusted agents.”

I narrowed my eyes—some nasty pies in which to have one’s thumb, to be sure. My Italian sojourn was starting to look less palatable.

“The families have grown apart, each satisfied with its particular domain: the city-loving Castelnuovo now holds sway over both Rome and Naples, and Papareschi is happy with his control over Sicily. A happy medium has been found. Despite the powerful partnership the families once enjoyed together, they now exist and operate entirely independently, content with their respective lots.

“A combination of factors has recently threatened to overthrow this balance. The sort of money to be made in Rome has opened Papareschi’s eyes. The influx of drugs into Italy is driving the criminal economy through its already lofty roof. Money can be made on an unprecedented scale, and there is talk that Papareschi wants—how do you say?—a cut. He stood for the position of Mayor of Padova last year. Many say that this was to establish himself in a key location to exploit the drugs coming into Italy from the north and the west. We shall see. He lost the election, though it is said that the eventual winner was no more than his puppet—your Signor Corteggiani, I believe. It seems likely that Papareschi was involved in his demise somehow.”

I pursed my lips, considering the implications of this.

“But there are potentially more political motives for Papareschi’s sudden interest in the mainland. What these are I am not sure, but it may be that he suspects Castelnuovo of getting closer to the authorities in Rome than any Mafioso has achieved previously. Having someone of Castelnuovo’s influence breathing down the government’s neck and manipulating their decision-making could have repercussions throughout Italy. You will have to talk with others about his political designs. These I do not know.”

I decided that it was an appropriate moment for a pipe. This was all getting a bit heavy for my liking. I pulled out my favourite Butz-Choquin—the one with the double silver band and emerald green mouthpiece—and filled it with the tobacco that Shervington’s had cut for me. I prefer a Balkan blend of Latakia and Turkish, but have the Virginia leaf replaced with a touch of Perique. This gives the natural woodiness of the Latakia a bit of a bourbon edge that only the damned Yanks really know how to infuse properly. I lit the bowl while Dante continued.

“Of course, the people blame the government for the existence of the Mafia. If it is not turning a blind eye to its exploits for fear of a bloody reprisal, its Ministers stand alongside men like Castelnuovo and take bribes to secure lucrative building contracts for apparently legitimate construction companies in their names. Perhaps Capitano Varsalona will be able to enlighten you tomorrow. Be wary of him, though. If not directly on Castelnuovo’s payroll, his actions will be dictated by the man’s desires. I have not known a senior police officer escape his influence. Castelnuovo made a severe example of the last who ignored his authority.”

“Presumably he wasn’t called to the front of class and given extra prep?” I asked.

Dante looked at me as if I were a child.

“Castelnuovo had him cut to pieces and stored in three fifty-gallon drums at a glue factory on the outskirts of the city, his head in one and assorted limbs in the others. His genitals had been cut off and thrust into his mouth.”

I stared at him and quietly crossed my legs.

“Castelnuovo is an evil man—there is only one thing he cares more about than wealth and power: his family. You would be well-advised to steer clear of both.”

Aside from speaking with the authorities and looking in a few cupboards for that gold coin, I assured Dante that I would be keeping a very low profile and not sticking my head above the parapet without damned good cause. I decided to change the subject to something unconnected with the summary removal of much-valued body parts.

“As to more important and pressing matters, old stick,” says I, clapping him on the back. “Tell me all you know of Giuseppina Parelli. What a delightful young gal she is, and certainly one with whom I feel I ought to become better acquainted.”

Dante brought his head up sharply to look at me, grabbing my wrist and halting the pipe’s progress towards my mouth.

“Why, my friend, you must stay well away from her—that is Castelnuovo’s daughter.”

V

It is an established fact that all Italians are absolutely and unequivocally insane. I suspect this has much to do with the fact that the country has been led by a succession of lunatics, each of whom has taken it upon himself to exacerbate an usually fragile political situation, alienate the voters and generally stick two fingers up at sensible government techniques in favour of lining his own pockets. As long as the Pope is happy and gets a nice cup of milky tea in the morning with his copy of The Beano, all is apparently well with the world.

Considering the rich history of the peninsula, Italy itself is still a relatively young country. Full unity was achieved only in 1870 and since then it’s been a catalogue of disasters in terms of foreign policy, to say nothing of home affairs which appear to have been run along the lines of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. A spate of coalition governments for the first forty-five years of unification couldn’t agree on the price of a kipper, and a lot can be read into any country forming an alliance with Germany and Austria, as Italy did towards the end of the century (I’ve done my homework, you see).

If association with the damned Huns wasn’t enough to have the entire population sectioned, there followed a sublimely incongruous and inexplicable invasion of Ethiopia in the 1890s (if anyone can rationalize this for me, please do drop me a postcard at the Registry—address above), followed by an equally bizarre declaration of war on Turkey but twenty years later.

In the early part of the twentieth century the Socialist and new Popular (i.e., in a quaint instance of misnomer, Catholic) parties won a majority in Parliament. This was not the shrewdest move by the electorate. With the red-raggers and the left-footers in charge, nationalists urged for territorial expansion amidst social turmoil, strikes and threats of revolution at home. The middle classes realized the country was going to the dogs, what with the faltering economy and the proliferation of unwashed ne’er-do-wells marching about the place hammering on about how they were entitled to the earth, &c. &c. Having previously ruled the majority of the known world for a millennium and a half, the Eyeties must have viewed their dismal situation in the early twentieth century with something less than fulsome pride.

Enter Signor Mussolini, stage far-right. You may have heard of him. Furiously nationalistic and something of an extremist, he is roundly perceived after the event as being a bit of a loony—but at least he got things done. Having organized a jaunt down to Rome with a handful of dark-shirted chums, Mussolini was invited by King Vittorio Emanuele III to form a new government in 1922, prompting other Italian men to speculate that if only they’d organized their own stag-dos for that particular weekend, perhaps it would have been they being royally received and set up for life with some high governmental position.

Fascism was eventually discovered to have been a Bad Thing after all, but you have to admire BM for avoiding detection for so long: he managed to survive another twenty-three years following his assumption of power. Whilst holding the reins he took the rather sensible measures of outlawing all other political parties, passing laws to ensure that all journalists were registered Fascists and summarily executing anyone who could so much as spell ‘civil liberties’.

Just when the rest of Europe was starting to get a trifle concerned by the actions of a certain A. Hitler Esq during the mid ’30s, Italy was off invading Ethiopia again (seriously, chaps, why?) and further ruffled Brit/Frog feathers by sending over a load of troops to help out Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The coup de grâce came (and, indeed, final confirmation that the country was well and truly off its onion) when a second alliance with Germany was effected in 1940. And we all know how that turned out.

According to that arbiter of all that is good and righteous in the world, the CIA, persistent problems in Italy include illegal immigration, organized crime, corruption, high unemployment and economic growth that is sluggish to say the least. Despite sharing such a strong affinity with Bradford, life is otherwise fairly rosy, thank you very much for asking.

As I am sure you are aware, the true mental derangement of the majority of Italians can be most fully appreciated when you place one of the buggers in an automobile and allow him unfettered access to the ignition key. This is equivalent to introducing a pair of town bulls in the midst of the rutting season to the local suppliers of finest porcelain and requesting that they conduct a full audit of the stockroom whilst the only cow in the village lingers at the far end of the shop awaiting their attentions.

Despite indicators of one sort or another being provided as standard on most cars nowadays (and, indeed, the majority of human beings do have the benefit of two working arms—wonderful foresight He has upstairs, you know), Italian drivers seem incapable of actually using them, preferring to drift across carriageways in a sometimes fascinating display of synchronized lunacy. I believe it was Jawaharlal Nehru who said (I paraphrase, or quite possibly may be making this up—I cannot recall), that he had never seen a more manifest example of human free will than when observing the wilful and wanton meanderings of the heathen Italian mob driving around the Colosseum of a Friday afternoon.

Of course it isn’t just Italian drivers who have not been formally introduced to their mental faculties. As usual, the governing bodies overseeing the quagmire that is the Italian road system (particularly in Rome) seem to be striving after some award for administrative incompetence. In order to obtain a driving licence in Italy, no rigorous practical examination is apparently involved—a written examination alone is generally permitted. Does this taxing educational trial probe into the finer points of road safety or ‘how to avoid ploughing one’s car into pedestrians at all costs’? It does not. Rather, if one can memorize a series of regional codes used on car number plates, one is given a licence to drive (or rather, carte blanche to wreak as much havoc on the roads as possible before the authorities step in with a request that the offending party train to become a police driver).

The finest example of road transport management in Rome remains the fact that traffic lights may actually be switched off after midnight in a commendable attempt at saving the taxpayers’ money. Ignoring those cynics who may well ask, ‘does anybody notice?’, it is well to remember that in Milan traffic lights are instructions, in Naples suggestions and in Rome nothing more than Christmas decorations.

The cab that took me into central Rome from Dante’s palatial abode was possibly the first automobile ever to have been introduced to the Italian mainland. It seemed to be older than my father, who’d probably be in better shape even now, after twelve years under the sod at Henfield cemetery.

The vehicle appeared to have been constructed by an ill-apprenticed crew of disaffected manual workers (the worst kind, I’m sure you’ll agree) with an axe to grind and a cross to bear to boot. The conveyance—I use the word advisedly, and in its most charitable sense—clattered across the cobbles accompanied by an impressive fanfare of rusted metalwork. This had irrevocably fallen out with its spouse of some forty years, an ineptly wrought chassis, and the marriage threatened to fall apart at any moment just as soon as arrangements could be made for the children of this unhappy union, the poorly-effected welding and joint work that had single-handedly held the contraption together for the past two decades.

My driver was incapable of closing his mouth, whether engaged in incessant talking, eating, or the simple task (one would have thought) of breathing—an impressive trilogy of activity, often performed simultaneously. He chewed loudly upon his sandwiches, spraying bits of food over the windscreen and dashboard as he attempted conversation and the negotiation of our passage through the busy streets of Rome. As I shielded my nose from the fumes, and my clothes from the driver’s lunch, I vowed not to entrust my well-being to any of Italy’s working class for the remainder of my stay.

***

It was certainly nice to be in a police station knowing that, for once, not a single charge could be levelled against me. I had kept my nose clean thus far, and didn’t intend doing anything to attract the attention of any members of a police force that issues fire arms as standard to even its most junior officers. There’s something deeply threatening about a foreign police officer, don’t you agree? As if having large, swarthy brutes in uniform parading about the place brandishing pistols isn’t intimidating enough, one would have thought they could at least smile now and again. Presumably lessons on how to scowl and look thoroughly cheesed off are dished out on day one along with the shooters.

Capitano Varsalona was not immediately available on my arrival at the nick, so I was left in the company of his bagman, Nicandro Pugliese. Clearly new to the job, he seemed helpful enough and, most obviously betraying his novice status, willing to speak openly of the Corteggiani case.

“It was not a pleasant sight, Signor Hammersley,” says he.

“First time with a corpse?” asks I, not intending any necrophilic reference.

He looked up at me abruptly, then allowed a wry smile.

“Perhaps my lack of experience shows more than I would wish.”

“Not to worry, old chap—we were all beginners once. A couple more stiffs and you’ll be fit to qualify for medical school.”

Pugliese smiled, grateful for the empathy. I took up his offer of a seat and some coffee. I was assured that it would be freshly ground.

“I understand there was talk of a suicide when the body was first discovered?”

“That was until the Capitano found the dagger. It was assumed that with all Corteggiani’s recent problems he had decided to end his own life.”

“What sort of problems?”

“The usual—money, women. His relationship with Contessa Piranesi was always in the papers. They tracked every aspect of their time together, particularly when they fell out. That made the most interesting reading.”

“We’ve all been there, I’m sure,” says I. “Has anyone spoken with this Contessa since the incident?”

“Not as far as I am aware,” says Pugliese. “She leads a sheltered existence. A very wealthy woman.”

“It will not be necessary to talk with la signorina Piranesi.”

We both turned to the newcomer, taking off his jacket and placing it hurriedly over the back of a nearby chair before striding towards me, hand outstretched.

“Capitano Roberto Varsalona,” says he.

He looked a little, well, perturbed by my presence. He was expecting me, after all. Or was it my conversing with his junior officer that had put his nose out of joint?

“You must be Signor Hammersley,” says il Capitano. “We have been expecting you. It is an honour finally to meet you at last.”

More Continental tautology. His handshake was rough and coarse: a man who got things done, quickly, as efficiently as he saw fit and without regard for those not sharp enough to keep up.

“I had guessed that you would be sent by your Government even before I received official word. Your reputation precedes you most impressively.”

One day I shall manage to put an end to this fatuous notion that I am some sort of diplomatic genius who flits about the globe putting the place to rights. It is most inconvenient and quite possibly nothing more than pure luck, I assure you. Until people twig this fact, however, I am minded to maintain the façade. It has its merits, after all. I glanced out at the glorious sunshine beating down upon the tabularium on the far side of the forum. The gentle buzz of the city rose up to the open window of Varsalona’s room. A most attractive brunette—one of a rare handful whom red lipstick actually suits—entered and presented me with a tall glass of coffee (one day we in England will learn that it is the only way to serve such a barbaric drink). I tried not to stare too obviously at the tautness of her buttocks under her skirt as she stooped to collect some discarded crockery by the door on her way out, but confess that I failed. If one cannot enjoy the merits of one’s reputation, or whither they have led one, what indeed is the point?

I smiled and waited to see if the good Captain would divulge any further information.

“Forgive my late arrival and abruptness. We have just now received a confession for the Corteggiani murder. I have come directly from the cells.”

“Are you serious? Where on earth from?”

Pugliese’s incredulity was notable—much to Varsalona’s chagrin, it appeared.

“Tomaso Paolucci—we picked him up early this morning trying to board an aeroplane to Naples. It seems you have had a wasted journey, Signor Hammersley. I hope nevertheless that you will stay awhile so that we may show you some of the sights of our wondrous city.”

“Paolucci?”

You could cut the tension with a spoon.

“Why did you not call me to attend?”

Varsalona looked a little awkward. “We received the tip from one of our more sensitive connections, Nicandro. I will give you the full picture once I have completed my report to the questore. We must not detain Signor Hammersley with the petty details of our investigations.”

I looked sidelong at Pugliese.

“It would appear that we have our man, and we must work quickly to bring him before the Court. This afternoon if we are lucky.”

“Any news of the aureus Hadrianus?” asks I.

The question fell like a boatswain after a heavy Friday night’s shore-leave. Clearly the Captain had not expected me to be clued up in this respect. Even Dante had not been able to provide me with much information about the coin. He had certainly heard of it—good God, the man would have donated a number of bodily organs to come by it himself—and knew that Papareschi and Castelnuovo both wanted it. But he hadn’t known that Corteggiani had been carrying it.

I wondered what Capitano Varsalona knew.

“Paolucci did not have the coin upon him when he was searched, but we must investigate further. He has denied all knowledge so far. There is a fear that he may already have sold it. We are in the process of speaking with our contacts to learn more—rest assured we shall find the coin, though it may take some time.”

Varsalona gathered some papers from his desk.

“Now please forgive me. I must turn my attention to this paperwork for the questore. If we are to see Paolucci in Court today, we must act quickly. Nicandro, please see Signor Hammersley out. Perhaps you would be kind enough to introduce him to Belinda—she will be able to tell him some of the things he must see and do in the city before his departure. I hope we will run into each other again some time, Signor. I am sorry for the speed of our meeting. I wish you a safe trip back to England.”

Another gruff handshake. I stood up and reciprocated.

“I will need you in reception in two minutes, Nicandro, when you are finished with Signor Hammersley. Goodbye, Signor.”

And off he toddled.

I seated myself again, and turned my attentions to the last third of my coffee.

“Your Capitano is a busy man. Still, I suppose you must both be pleased to have the case solved.”

Pugliese looked pensive, as I had hoped.

“Yes, although… agh”—he shrugged his shoulders, aware of his inexperience and allowing his unanswered questions to remain so.

“You’re troubled by something?” I asked.

“It’s just… Tomaso Paolucci. He was top of a list of well-known local crooks the Venice police gave us when we were first called to the murder scene. I have looked into him extensively since then, as well as the other key suspects. But this type of crime just doesn’t happen in Venice. Rome, certainly; Naples, yes; even in Milan amongst the wealthy businessmen it is not uncommon. But not Venice. The list the Venice police gave us was filled with small-time criminals, primarily fraudsters who prey upon tourists, at worst perhaps a robber who has gone a little too far in extracting somebody’s wallet. Nothing like the cold-blooded and vicious murder that happened on that train.”

“So you don’t think this Paolucci chap had it in him?” says I. “What about that coin, though? You don’t think he could have been prompted to kill for something of that value?”

“From what I have seen of his records, it just does not seem like something he would do. He was more of a classic opportunista—how do you say?”

I showed Pugliese with a nod that I understood him.

“He stole when something presented itself worth stealing. And always things he could easily get away with. A good thief, but I do not think anything more than that.”

He drummed his fingers on the desk.

“I do not know. Perhaps there is something in his confession that will explain it all.”

I rose from my chair, anticipating his desire to follow Varsalona.

“Am I able to see Corteggiani’s body? I understand it may still be in the morgue here?”

“Of course—I will arrange for you to be taken down. I am sorry things have become so busy and that we are unable to look after you ourselves. From what Capitano Varsalona says, there really may be no need of your services after all. I hope you have a pleasant stay in Rome. Come, I will introduce you to Belinda. She will show you to the morgue and give you some ideas of how to spend your time whilst in the city.”

Naturally I was delighted that Belinda turned out to be the magnificent supplier of coffee from earlier on. I followed her about the station quite happily as she led me down to the morgue, ensuring that I opened every door for her so that she would go through first, all the while staring at her backside as she swayed through passageways in a most entrancing manner. One of the only areas where chivalry remains in this sorry age is in the simple courtesy of men opening doors for women. I can assure you, noble reader, that the true reason for this is to facilitate a good look at their backsides as they pass through. You will note that men are far quicker to open a door to an attractive woman than they are to one of mediocre looks. Goodness knows I am.

The morgue attendant was both helpful (grudgingly) and utterly awful (without effort). I suppose that when all of one’s office companions are—quite literally—dead, this does much to put a dampener on the working day, and consequently on one’s approach to one’s career. The charming Belinda waited outside scrutinising her nails whilst I accompanied the chap inside.

The attendant counted his way through the wall of casket drawers, and after a mighty roar of sliding metal and flourish of white sheet I was presented with the turgid and hideous body of Armando Corteggiani.

He had a face that resembled a badly weathered battlefield, an undulating terrain with outbursts of undergrowth from a pair of muddled eyebrows. Wrinkles adorned this topographical impropriety like contour lines scrawled onto an already confused mess of cartography. The hair seemed embroiled even now in the warfare that had ravaged his features—it clung to his pate like some parasite surveying the battleground below, beneath a leathery brow that had been enthusiastically furrowed over many decades.

If the hairs had once been eager soldiers in the battles that had raged upon this wizened visage, many had departed in retreat—a tactical manoeuvre south to lend support to a moustache that spilled from two cavernous black holes serving as nostrils. In a further instance of irony, other members of this follicular regiment had deployed themselves elsewhere, most notably sprouting from the fellow’s ears, clustered together within these flayed pieces of potato skin like tufts of mildew.

He certainly was a sorry-looking bastard—although I don’t suppose it helped his cause that he’d been dead for three days.

The knife wound at the base of his skull had been cleaned and tastefully sewn together, a rather neat job considering that it had probably been effected by the clodhopper now leaning on the edge of the casket, smoking if you please.

“Dov’è il coltello?”[4] I asked.

The attendant looked at me as he lolled over the side of the casket drawer, fag hanging out of his mouth, his eyes half closed against the smoke as it glided past.

When he moved, the cigarette remained firmly clasped between his lips, scattering ash over the floor as he shuffled over towards a table in the corner of the room.

“Questo non ha ancora visto il Capitano”[5], says he, eyeing me suspiciously as if unsure whether to let me see the murder weapon ahead of his superior. I assured him with a careful look and a few myriads of lire stuffed into the pocket of his overalls that showing me would be a most shrewd decision. (Italian money—have you ever heard of a more preposterous institution? The only currency in the developed world where you can divide any amount by a thousand and still be left with a sensible and practical figure.)

The attendant looked down at the bag in his hands and proffered it with no apparent hint of contrition.

I inspected the knife carefully. It was certainly an exquisite item—a khanjar dagger from the Mughal Empire if memory serves, probably early nineteenth century. It looked genuine enough, but nowadays one can never be sure. The blade was approximately eight inches long, with a slight and elegant curve. The central rib of this was pierced by six elongated slots containing what appeared to be very small metal bearings (known as “the tears of the wounded,” as I was later informed by an acquaintance who enjoys more than a nodding familiarity with such artefacts).

The dagger had two small quillons, tastefully wrought and decorated in the form of reclining birds of paradise. The handle itself, however, was the crowning triumph of this piece. With the feel of heavy iron, it was embellished with two shades of gold overlay in a floral and leaf design all along the grip, culminating in a larger and more intricately fashioned bird’s head that served as a pommel. The skill and care with which it had been crafted was obvious, despite being covered now in the unmistakable maroon smears of dried blood. There were, of course, no fingerprints, but you could see where gloved and nefarious fingers had left their mark on the handle. Despite its current appearance it was clearly both a rare and beautiful work of art, highly prized by those who know about such things, and coveted even by those who do not. Its value would be obvious to even the most untrained eye.

I weighed the dagger pensively in my hand as I reflected upon the conclusion that presented itself as conspicuously as a cow in a cockfight.

A thought occurred to me, and I had Belinda lead me back upstairs at double-quick time. As we passed through the main station I grabbed an apple from an unattended desk, walking swiftly to keep up with Belinda, my eyes still fixed on her backside as she skipped daintily between rows of desks and filing cabinets.

Several things didn’t add up in my mind. First, why had the chief investigating officer not been down to examine the murder weapon as soon as it was available for inspection? More importantly, a knife such as this would easily have a price tag of a couple of grand merrily swinging from its handle in any shop in which you were lucky enough to find it (and a specialist—and probably illegal—type of shop it would be). I’d wager a sizeable portion of Wales that the man whom Capitano Varsalona was intent on putting behind bars for Corteggiani’s murder was nothing more than a petty thief, a streetwise ne’er-do-well damn near incapable of murder of any kind, and particularly not the gruesome piece of handiwork I had witnessed upon Corteggiani’s miserable carcass. From what Pugliese had said, the good Signor Paolucci was as likely ever to have had his hands on a dagger as superlative as the one used on Corteggiani as you or I would be to find a bishop in a Bangkok brothel. And if he ever did get his grubby little mitts on something quite that valuable, you can bet your balls he wouldn’t be so remiss as to leave it sticking in a chap’s head.

In short, ladies and gentlemen, this Paolucci chap appeared to be as likely an assassin as the Dalai Lama, which left Capitano Varsalona looking as bent as they come.

We emerged into brilliant sunshine just as Varsalona was bundling Paolucci into a police van at the back of the station.

“Signor Paolucci,” I called.

Both he and Varsalona stopped, Paolucci half-way up into the van. He dropped his rear leg and turned to face me. As he did so, I threw him the apple, quick enough to make him react instinctively, but not so as to prevent a catch.

True, when one is cuffed one tends to grab at things with cupped hands, as movement is necessarily restricted (I speak, regrettably, with some experience). To take this into account, I had to angle the throw to make a cupped catch a little awkward. Sure enough, up went his wrists together, and he angled his arms away from his body to receive the fruit in what must surely be his favoured right hand.

“In case you get hungry during the trip,” says I.

Varsalona looked quizzically at me for a moment, as though I had been out in the sun a little too long, and then turned to push Paolucci into the van, closing the doors behind him and walking around to the passenger door at the front.

As the van pulled away, I turned and strolled back to the main building. I suppose also that I ought to explain my actions to you, benign reader. I had noted, you see, that the smears on the dagger’s handle were such that they could have only been made by a person’s left hand. The position of the fingers and thumb demanded such. Someone plunging a knife into a person’s skull with one stroke, as the neatness of Corteggiani’s wound demanded, would necessarily have used his stronger arm—which meant that our murderer was left-handed. This lent support to the fact that Corteggiani had been attacked from behind (and there had been no evidence of a struggle in the train compartment), since he had been stabbed below the ear on the left side of his head.

Go through the motions yourself. Unless Corteggiani was attacked from the front and simply allowed his assailant to effect his macabre intentions without resistance; unless a particularly adroit and accurate (and indeed, highly unlikely) back-handed motion was employed; or unless the attacker boasted some unusual genetic disorder such as to gift him with a left hand at the end of each arm and/or was born and bred somewhere in Norfolk, there remained the unavoidable conclusion that it was, as Arlott would have said, left arm around the wicket.

Even a detective of mediocre abilities and limited experience would have figured this out by now. So why had a long-serving and accomplished officer such as Varsalona missed it—or chosen to do so? I would have to watch my step. It looked as though Dante was spot on yet again: Varsalona was covering for somebody. And that somebody was likely to be Castelnuovo.

***

I spent the latter part of the morning meandering down the streets to the west of the Quirinal (I believe I even twirled my umbrella cane between steps) and had lunch in a splendid little trattoria in the centre of the city. By mid-afternoon I found myself entering the Piazza Navona and lingered awhile with the offspring of two good friends of mine, Messrs. Alexander Gordon and Jacob Schweppe.

The weather was beyond reproach, and I sat and watched the world pass by while I contemplated my next move. If Varsalona’s loyalties were as questionable as they appeared, my progress would undoubtedly be hampered. There was a danger of stagnation. Needless to say, before I could proceed much further down the path of such musing, fortune intervened (as it has an uncanny knack of doing).

There strode down the Piazza a tall and elegant woman, kitted out in a knee-length summer dress that hugged her figure in all the right places. She moved steadily and surely on some fine mid-length heels, her toes peeking out flirtatiously from the ends. (There’s something unashamedly appealing about a woman who can walk on heels without her ankles buckling at each step, however slightly. It effects a most unattractive wobble of the heel and an angle with the ground that is far from perpendicular. A strong calf is required to carry it off with perfection, not to mention a self-assurance that the owner knows is indisputable. But I digress.)

Giuseppina Parelli turned many heads as she breezed down the Piazza towards the bar where I sat, bags containing over-priced wares from illustrious shops swinging from her hands.

The information regarding her heritage provided by Dante was not to be taken lightly—I would presumably be taking my life into my own hands if I were to pursue this acquaintance as doggedly as my subscription to the male division of the species demanded. I drained my glass and collected the cane from alongside my chair. Common sense would have to take a back seat for the time being.

I approached her laterally. As I did so I noted a dark coloured car swerving around the corner at the far end of the street. It screeched to a halt but ten yards from Giuseppina as I drew close.

Three doors opened simultaneously and there was exuded a trilogy of dark-skinned, oily-haired ruffians. They moved with grim intent etched upon their faces and (more disconcertingly, if you’re used to this sort of caper) the driver remained where he was, looking about him efficiently, his engine running, three doors still wide open.

The stench of foul play hung obscenely in the air as the men headed towards Giuseppina at a swift and muscular pace. I was barely a few footsteps from her, but she had still not noticed my approach. Upon the arrival of the car and the pair and a half of brutes, however, she started like a deer with the realisation of a trap successfully set against it. She looked about her, panicked. Her eyes met mine momentarily, but she did not hold my gaze—so dumbstruck she was by whatever predicament had suddenly befallen her.

Some forty yards away across the street there sounded a clatter and crash of glass and crockery, a table being overturned. I was unsure where to focus my attentions.

As the first man reached Giuseppina and lunged to grab at her with both arms—she shrieked and cringed away from him, but did not go quite so far as to drop her shopping—I noted another pair of Corinthian-looking gentlemen moving agitatedly out of the corner of my eye in the direction whence the sound of smashing glass had emanated. They were still a fair distance off, and were struggling to force their way through the crowded restaurant terrace where they had been sitting. The more immediate threat to Giuseppina, and arguably myself, as I was now alongside her and looked for all purposes to be her companion, was from the three oafs almost fully upon us.

I flicked and spun the umbrella cane, catching it so that my grip was on the pointed end, the heavy handle away from me like a club. I swung the item in a liberal arc, bringing the full weight of the handle (it was crafted from the sturdiest bamboo, and the ribs were viciously gnarled and protrusive) into the face of the nearest attacker. It caught him entirely off-guard. Only his head and neck were prevented from further advancement. The rest of his body continued apace, resulting in an impressively acrobatic somersault that would have been the envy of the very finest practitioners contracted to Mr William Smart.

Giuseppina continued to struggle with her assailant. You could tell the attackers were under strict instructions not to harm her; a man of that size could have knocked her out with a flick of his thumb. I adjusted my grip on the cane as if it were a billiard cue and jabbed the bamboo handle forcefully into the chap’s nose. He staggered backwards, blood pouring from his snout. Giuseppina jumped at the chance. She brought her knee up into her assailant’s groin with considerable force (all the while still clutching her damned bags) and—if you’ll credit it—spat into his face as he doubled over in agony.

I spun around to face the third and final man. He looked a little uncertain in the face of his fallen comrades, but brought an arm from behind his back and flicked open a small blade. We circled each other and he took a few harmless swipes through the air at me. I drew the umbrella from its cane scabbard and quickly opened it in the same movement, pointing it towards the greasy little urchin in front of me.

As he feinted a jab to my left I thrust the umbrella at him, anticipating his actual lunge towards my midriff. I pushed the umbrella onto his hand, deliberately allowing the blade to pierce the canvas, and shoved the apparatus halfway up his wrist. When his arm was well and truly tangled in the metal framework I gave a vicious twist with both hands on the shaft. His arm contorted with my movement, giving the antagonist no option but to follow the motion through with his body and onto the ground. The blade clattered onto the pavement and I swung my foot up into the oik’s chest as he landed awkwardly in front of me.

I turned back towards Giuseppina who was screaming some of the more vibrant elements of the Italian language at the chap writhing on the ground. To my far right I was aware of the two gentlemen from the restaurant sprinting to where we stood, leaping over a chained barrier on the other side of the road. The driver had noticed them too—he sounded his horn with two sharp blasts, and immediately our three attackers picked themselves up from the floor and limped the few steps back to their vehicle. The car sped off with a screech of tyres, the doors swinging shut of their own accord barely before the men were inside.

I grabbed hold of Giuseppina’s wrist and motioned as if to remove her from the threat of the new arrivals. She seemed reluctant to follow me, and I faltered at her resistance. As I turned back to her, another car skidded to an abrupt halt alongside us (Christ, it was like a damned taxi rank). I yanked harder at her arm and very near pulled her off balance towards me. The two men had reached us. One of them grabbed Giuseppina and tried to wrench her wrist from my hand. I remember feeling distinctly put out by this, not to mention a little overwhelmed by recent events in general.

I was just about to launch myself at the newcomer when I caught a glimpse of his companion coming at me from my left. I gritted my teeth and raised my arm just too late to prevent a fairly weighty pistol butt from crashing down onto my temple.

I collapsed into a heap at Giuseppina Parelli’s feet. I recall thinking what perfect ankles she had as I drifted off into oblivion.

VI

I awoke to find myself staring down the business end of a short-barrelled shotgun. A vague whiff of cordite filled my nostrils as I pulled myself up onto my elbows. The barrels of the gun followed my ascent.

I was lying on a low bed in a partially subterranean room. A window in the wall opposite me—barred, if you please—revealed a horizon between land and sky three quarters of the way up. Lilac-tinted clouds heralded the arrival of early evening. The room was small and otherwise unfurnished, and had a stone floor which was patchy in colour. Various sections of scrubbed and unnatural whiteness demonstrated that a bleaching substance had been used upon it not infrequently.

This did not bode well.

I felt as if I had been beaten about the head with the leg of a grand piano. A shooting pain above my right ear accompanied even the slightest movement, and an almost inconceivable thirst held my throat in a relentless grip. I swallowed painfully and looked up at my keeper.

For the first time in what seemed like many weeks I was confronted with an adversary who did not appear to have narrowly missed out on an Olympic weight-lifting medal. Indeed, he was overweight and seemed not a little unfit. A subscription to Mensa in his name was also unlikely, for he did not look the sharpest tool in the box. In fact, if you will allow me to be candid, his outward appearance and expression suggested a man about as sharp as an E-flat arpeggio.

Nevertheless, an ability to point straight a shotgun, pull the trigger and hit an object within such close quarters that it might as well be a barn door at two paces does not, sadly, require an IQ higher than that of your average Giuseppe. I felt sure that bleaching a floor to mask any trace of such malfeasance was also well within the range of my room-mate’s capabilities. I was glad to have taken a moment to assess the situation.

I began to make preparations for leaping up and into action (I have to say that for posterity’s sake, you see; the only thing I was ready for upping and leaping into was a coffin embossed with my initials), when a door at the far end of this unhappy room swung open. There entered a more athletic-looking chap carrying a tray adorned with—may God bless the Italians—a pot of steaming tea, a jug of iced water and suitable receptacles to hold both commodities ad bibendum.

In the newcomer’s spare hand was a small table that he set alongside the bed and placed the tray on top. The wielder of the shotgun had backed away to allow easier access for his colleague, but the gun stayed trained upon my person. As the erstwhile tray bearer took his leave, I poured myself a generous glass of water and downed it in parched agony. Condensation did not even have time to tease the glass. I repeated the motion twice more, until there remained but a couple of ice cubes in the bottom of the jug. I checked the brewed status of the tea, left the pot to stand awhile and lay back upon my pillow, placing an ice cube precisely in the centre of my forehead where it nestled comfortably against my fringe and eased a delicious and steady trickle of cold water over my block in the usual fashion.

Two and a half minutes later the ice cube was no more, and some degree of humanity had returned to my battered frame. I helped myself to a healthy draught of tea (still hot; Italian crockery may yet be the finest in the world) and turned to sit on the edge of the bed.

I looked over to the hired help and raised my cup to toast his health. Not a flicker of emotion on the large, pockmarked face. Before I had the chance to engage him in less frantic communication, the door opened afresh and a well-dressed gentleman entered, accompanied by a less sartorially inspired character. I believe that the latter was sporting a hideous pair of brown shoes.

Now, if chosen correctly and in accordance with necessary protocol, there is nothing wrong with brown shoes. Anyone who tells you otherwise is ill-educated and, indeed, lacks a little something of his soul. The grating whimper, however, that these particular shoes made as the owner walked into the room, squeaking and squelching on the floor in horror at the realisation that they had been violated with the addition of rubber soles, spoke volumes. If this man was a native Italian, I was a Dagenham dustman.

The more stylishly accoutred customer motioned towards the open door with an inclination of his head and a raised hand. I pulled myself to my feet and stretched, picking up my Dunhill jacket and shaking it out, and for the first time thinking to pat my pockets by way of taking an inventory. I was surprised to find my wallet, tobacco tin and matches in their rightful places. My Butz-Choquin pipe, however, was not. This did not put me in the best of moods. I was irked by its absence, and moved frowning towards the door. The brown-shoed buffoon went ahead of me, the other picking up the rear. I recked not of the shotgun carrier since he did not appear inclined to follow us—an omission from our little party that did not cause me undue anguish.

We walked through a narrow corridor that smelt ancient and musty, and up a steep flight of wooden stairs. These culminated in a sturdy-looking oak door decorated with various bolts and locks. Several of these were thrown and/or turned as appropriate and we entered the hallway of a large town house. A huge Persian rug covered most of the stone floor, stopping just short of a fireplace that must have been at least ten feet wide. In the far corner of this sizeable vestibule a marble staircase spiralled lazily up a lofty wall on which hung acre-sized oil paintings and deftly shaded lamps.

My companions squelched and scuffed their way respectively fore and aft of me, and presently we found ourselves in a well-proportioned dining room. If I were a property broker I would note here the generous bay windows and the many original features such as cornices and stuccowork which had been tastefully retained and renovated, before moving on to describe the ceilings as deceivingly [sic] high. Damned estate agents—they’ll be the death of the English language, mark my words. But I digress.

At the far end of a dining table that could cater for twelve sat a distinguished-looking gentleman in his mid- to late forties. His hair was neatly combed and waxed and had retained its dark colouring without influence from the subtle hoariness that often accompanies middle age. His features were elegantly set and regular, an aquiline nose partly breaking this symmetry beneath a pair of dark and brooding eyes that were utterly alive, darting this way and that as he shovelled what appeared to be linguini alle vongole into his mouth. At our approach the eyes flicked up and fixed upon us whilst another mouthful of pasta disappeared from view. He chewed energetically for a few seconds before indicating with a thrust of his down-turned fork the chair at the far end of the table facing him. I seated myself. As I did so I noticed my pipe on the tabletop beside my host.

My escorts were dismissed with an almost imperceptible movement of those piercing eyes. I took the opportunity of their departure to survey the other diners at the table, of whom there were two, seated either side of the gentleman opposite me: both male, black-suited and of course with the necessary amount of hair pomade to qualify them as Proper Italians.

Within a few seconds I had placed the man on the right as one of the two who had arrived on the scene in the Piazza Navona when I had tried to extricate Giuseppina Parelli from further tedious intrusions to her day. They were the ones who had clattered over to us from the restaurant at the far end of the square upon the arrival of the first carload of ne’er-do-wells and presumably, therefore, there was a 50 per cent. chance that this was the chap who had seen fit to batter me about the Costard with his pistol butt. I raised my hand to my temple, which was beginning to throb again.

I did not recognize the other diner, but he looked efficient. As a general rule I do not tend to get along with such people.

Giuseppina herself was nowhere to be seen.

A place was set in front of me whilst my eyes took in the room, and within seconds a large bowlful of soup had been presented. It smelled delicious and was exactly what my doctor would have ordered had he not recently refused to treat or indeed speak to me unless I assured him that I was off the pipe and the moonshine or at the very least had stopped imbibing the sort of cocktails that Woodbine Harris has a habit of knocking together whenever he’s in town. Apparently I shouldn’t be drinking them without a prescription—something about wilful blindness and professional negligence on my doctor’s part if he were to acquiesce in the continuance of such a lifestyle, or even simply turn Nelson’s eye.

I looked up at my host for permission to tuck in, but he merely stared at me, continuing to shovel his food into his mouth and chewing ferociously. I picked up my spoon and joined the party. The soup was excellent—a well-seasoned potato and leek, thick as an Irish doorman and richer than a Sultan’s stockbroker. A full-bodied Brunello de Montalcino was just about enough to make me forget my ills and relish my luxuriant surroundings. Once I had finished the soup I believe that I even sat back in my chair and crossed my legs.

My host finished excavating his bowl of pasta and sat back similarly, mopping his lips with a napkin, still chewing and munching away. I smiled graciously at him, raising my wine glass and thanking him for his hospitality thus far. The other two diners finished their food. The one I recognized from earlier looked at me in a self-satisfied manner (yes, just the type of miscreant who’d zonk one on the bonce with a pistol—I’ll deal with you later, thinks I), the other without expression.

What I really fancied after my repast, of course, was my pipe. I viewed it surreptitiously. The man at the end of the table caught my eye and picked up the item, handling it carefully with both hands and turning it over before his eyes.

“I have never known an Italian man who smoked a pipe, Signor Hammersley,” says he, with a voice that sounded like coals being delivered. “In this country the cigarette is king.”

“Well, I’ve never been one to waste paper,” says I, caressing the stem of my wine glass.

“It is a fine thing—may I ask if it is difficult to smoke?”

I shrugged nonchalantly, turning over in my mind the classic trilogy of questions that occur to all who wake to find themselves in alien circumstances, not to mention being addressed by a stranger who appears to be fairly clued up on their personage, i.e. where, who and what—namely, was I, this chap and the score, in that order.

“Like playing the fiddle, old chap—practice makes perfect and all that.”

He continued to peruse the pipe in all its detail, bringing it close to his eyes and holding it up to the light.

“Do you know who I am, Signor Hammersley?” asks he, not altering his affable tone, and without taking his eyes off the pipe.

The very nature of the question, the charming manner in which it had been posed and the benign context within which both it and my dinner had been delivered were a little disconcerting. I suppose, venerable reader, that you will have a fair idea as to who my dinner companion was, as indeed did I. The other two men at the table busied themselves with pouring coffee that had arrived during our brief conversation.

“I understand that you were with my daughter earlier today when she was, ah, inconvenienced by three thugs in the centre of the city.”

He placed the pipe carefully on the table in front of him.

If you’ve been paying attention thus far, and have the sort of brain that can cope with rudimentary logic and the basics of heredity, you will now be in a position to trace at least one strand of my host’s family tree and safely put money on his identity. I helped myself to a half cup of coffee (I find it gives me the most terrible wind after dinner), adding just a threat of cream and enough sugar to keep it on its toes. I swallowed a little more dryly than I would have liked.

“My name is Antonino Castelnuovo, Signor Hammersley.”

I swallowed again, more awkwardly this time (a gentleman makes it a habit never to gulp).

Presumably the man was aware that I had been attempting to save his daughter, rather than manhandle her against her will. Presumably the gentleman on his left would confirm my actions and we’d all enjoy a smoke after dinner, laughing at the amusing scrapes women have a habit of getting themselves into and agreeing what adorable little creatures they are. It’s a hopeful word, ‘presumably’.

“Federico has been most helpful in his account of what happened.”

I looked at Federico. The more I considered him, the more convinced I became that it was he who had effected the revolver-tactically-deployed-around-the-head manoeuvre.

“Federico is employed to protect my daughter. I find that a man in my position, with my sensitive business interests, is open to attack from every angle. People know that they cannot harm me directly, so they go for what they know to be dearest to my heart. Federico shadows la mia Seppi from afar, so she does not feel—how do you say?—oppressed. She is able to live her life relatively carefree, safe in the knowledge that my men are always near, always prepared to thwart any attempt at harming her.”

Federico tried to look noble and austere, but it wasn’t a look that he could carry off. In fact, he was staggering under the burden, looking as uncomfortable as a scout master at a Hitler Youth jamboree. He knew he’d been slow off the mark when Giuseppina had been set upon in town. If I hadn’t been passing and intervened, Christ only knows what would have happened to her.

“When Federico and his partner first saw you, they assumed you were one of Giuseppina’s attackers.”

One can see here the subtle difference between ‘assuming’ and ‘presumably’, I trust. ‘Presumably’ fares much better—or at least it ought to.

“They have specific and unforgiving orders: anyone who so much as attempts to harm a hair on my Seppi’s head is to be eliminated.”

The coffee tasted bitter in my mouth, despite the sugar. I swallowed it indiscernibly.

“I understand that you put on quite a show for the passers-by in the Piazza Navona, Signor Hammersley. Three men were intent on causing unimaginable harm to my daughter, and you defended her with more bravery than I could ask of my most trusted ally, let alone a perfect stranger—an English lion indeed.”

One tries not to blush in the face of flattery. I looked at my coffee cup, not knowing what to expect next. Mindful of what Dante had said about the unpredictable ruthlessness of the man in front of me, whether singing my praises or not, I should be prepared for anything.

“Loyalty, bravery and efficiency are the most valuable assets I could ask for in my employees,” (it’s a damned good job you don’t live in England, thinks I, you’d be buggered for recruitment), “and you have displayed all these characteristics in my first encounter with you.”

Yet another misguided fool—when shall I be rid of them?

“Signor Hammersley, I desire that you come to work for me. I have need for a man of your capabilities, particularly given Federico’s imminent retirement.”

Federico looked up sharply at this, a look of horror in his eyes. As nonchalantly as if he were dabbing his mouth with a handkerchief, Castelnuovo brought up his arm from beneath the table, his hand containing a nasty-looking little firearm. In the same movement, indeed without any sign of faltering whatsoever, he had pulled back the hammer and released the trigger within six inches from the unhappy Federico’s face.

***

A deafening crack reverberated around the room.

The bullet entered the skull precisely in the middle of Federico’s forehead. His neck snapped back with hideous force and the back of his cranium opened almost gracefully in an eruption of scarlet. His body was hurled from the table and the chair crashed onto the floor. The lifeless form sprawled awkwardly, the neck having been broken from the impetus of the shot, and a dark sanguineous pool spread out languorously to form a halo around the shattered bone.

The remaining diner had been watching with disinterest, raising his coffee cup to his mouth and taking delicate sips as Castelnuovo spoke. Castelnuovo himself turned from where Federico had been sitting (even now a pair of flunkies had entered and were busying themselves clearing up the tragic mess) and addressed me in a perfunctory tone.

“I find it is better to be direct and to the point in business matters, Signor Hammersley. Federico has…” he glanced down at the body and corrected himself, “…‘had’ betrayed both me and my family. Were it not for your timely intervention earlier today, who knows what would have happened to my precious Giuseppina? My enemies would have succeeded in their battle against me, and word would have spread of my vulnerability.”

It was unclear what Castelnuovo cared more about, the well-being of his daughter or his own reputation amongst the Mafia elite.

I felt as though I were in the middle of a strange pantomime. I tried to take in everything that had just occurred, but it seemed a tall order. In the space of five minutes I had had a delicious dinner (the soup alone was just enough to sate my appetite), enjoyed some pleasant banter regarding current smoking habits in Europe, learnt something of the preferred social values of my host and witnessed a speedy and rather efficient execution.

“Normally, Signor Hammersley, I would have entrusted a man such as Federico to Alessandro here.”

For the first time, he indicated the man to his right.

“Alessandro has a particular talent for inflicting pain where it is most required and appropriate. His methods of dispatch are, in my opinion, nothing short of genius. I recall when one of my former associates had tried to deal me a, ah, ‘bum hand’, as our American friends say. He stole from me, Signor Hammersley, and then tried to lie his way out of why his payments were up to forty per cent short in a time of great prosperity. Alessandro had him tied from the roof of a Tuscan barn and cut into two perfect halves with a chainsaw.”

Castelnuovo picked at his teeth with a long finger.

“I believe you started from the bottom of his torso, Alessandro, no? The last thing our friend Macari would have seen, if he had not already passed out from the experience, would have been the blade passing through his breastplate. I am told the noise was horrendous, both from the machine and Macari.”

I tried to maintain an austere air as I took all this in. I like to think that I have a fairly robust constitution, but that soup was beginning to bounce around in my gut and there was a genuine risk that it might leap up and hit the eject button at any moment. I grabbed my wine glass and took a sip to wet my lips. In my experience there are very few of life’s more challenging episodes to which alcohol is not an effective answer.

“I chose to make an immediate example of Federico to show you the type of man that I am, Signor Hammersley.”

I think I had a fair idea of what he was talking about. He was clearly a first class headcase.

“It is important that you appreciate my position, particularly if you are to come to work for me. I have need of your services.”

Several questions came to me at once. First, exactly what planet was this Castelnuovo chap on? Second, what the blind buggery was he about, offering me employment? He didn’t know me from a bar of soap, and here he was claiming that I would be an admirable addition to his brutish little team. Thirdly, what kind of employment exactly was he intending? I’m no stranger to a bit of rough and tumble, but I draw the line at chainsaws and point-blank pistol shots, within reason.

I glanced over to where Federico’s body had fallen. The two flunkies had manhandled him into a tarpaulin and were quietly shuffling out of the room with their burden. A third had arrived with yet another Persian rug, and once the affected area had been wiped and scrubbed over (a combination of dark oak floorboards and a lavish coating of varnish, applied long ago, would ensure that no trace of Federico could ever materialize) this was rolled out and positioned with care, a memento of some unspoken and tragic event.

I turned my attention back to the table and looked at Castelnuovo. He was staring straight at me, his eyes piercing mine with their intense glare as he awaited my response.

Truth be told, I wanted to beat as hasty a retreat thence as etiquette would permit. Dante had been right in his account—Castelnuovo was exactly the type of person for whom the Lunacy Act had been conceived. He was dangerously out of control, and my insurers would not sleep easily if I tarried any longer at his pleasure.

On the other hand, perhaps I should hear the man out. It was, after all, the Christian thing to do. I put together a hasty list of pros and cons regarding this latter course of action.

***

Pros.

1. Castelnuovo might know where that blasted coin was, and, indeed, may be able to shed some light on what had happened to Corteggiani. From what I’d seen tonight, there was every chance that Castelnuovo had a fairly large marshmallow on that particular bonfire. If I could get my hands on the coin—I’d figure out precisely how later—and fire off some suitably vague but accurate information to Arbuthnot about the Corteggiani case, I may yet come out of this farce smelling of roses.

2. At this particular point, Castelnuovo seemed to have me down as a Good Bloke. If I maintained the status quo I stood a fair chance of acquiring further unfettered access to Giuseppina whilst in Rome. This point alone should probably count for two or three.

3. Castelnuovo kept a tidy place here (wherever it may be). The kitchen was well-staffed, the cellar exemplary and the company interesting, to say the least. There were worse, albeit admittedly less unpredictable, places in the world to be.

4. Castelnuovo still had my pipe.

5. I was once told by a Greek orthodox priest that one should never judge a man before walking a mile in his shoes. That way at least, if you’re wrong, you’re a mile away. And you have his shoes.

Cons.

1. Castelnuovo might know where that blasted gold coin was. This would necessitate my exploring an already fraught set of circumstances still further. A hornets’ nest was almost certainly lying in wait, just asking to be poked.

2. As things stood, I’d lay odds that my path would cross with the delectable Giuseppina once again. Whilst Castelnuovo may think me a Good Bloke now, there was every chance, if he discovered I’d been shtupping his daughter, that he’d seek inspiration from the more barbaric of our medieval forefathers in his dealings with me thenceforth.

3. As a direct result of either or both 1. and 2. above (or indeed any number of intricate permutations of unknown eventualities that would undoubtedly materialize), I could die.

4. Horribly.

***

I would commend such a system of debit / credit column analysis to anyone in situations such as the one in which I found myself. As even the most pedestrian of my esteemed readers will have noted, there didn’t seem to be much of a toss up here.

At times such as these, I also find it useful to have a recap of the dramatis personae. I had had the pleasure of meeting Signor Antonino Castelnuovo, head of one of the most powerful Mafia families operating on the Italian mainland; the man on his right appeared to be, appropriately, a right-hand man, the efficient-looking and thoroughly unpleasant Alessandro; recently departed (in more ways than one) was Federico, an unfortunate and extreme example of how a bad day at the office can really give one what I have heard members of the East London fraternity refer to as ‘the arsehole’.

This was a fairly accurate representation of the foodchain in place in my general environs. Quite where I fitted into this ecological matrix I could not be sure. What was certain, however, was that Castelnuovo knew who I was. It was time to find out how.

“It’s a while since I’ve been offered a job without a formal interview or at the very least subject to the most sycophantic of references. I’m flattered indeed, and not a little tempted,” I lied with elegant litotes.

“Might I first enquire, though, how you came by my name? I do try to keep track of these things as far as I am able.”

Castelnuovo continued to stare at me. It was certainly a challenge trying to figure out what the bugger was thinking—harder to read than Taiwanese tax law.

“You are a careful and cautious man, Signor Hammersley,” says he, “a mark of intelligence, to be sure.” He played coyly with the Butz-Choquin where it lay on the table before him.

“I have what you might call a business relationship with certain members of the police in the city. Capitano Varsalona is a useful man to have at one’s disposal in my line of work”—he waved his hand with a dismissive and generalising flourish—“I’m sure you understand what I mean.”

I nodded sagely.

“Capitano Varsalona notified me of your impending arrival as soon as he learned of it. We have spoken of your interest in this unfortunate Corteggiani murder. I understand that you have been charged with recovering the aureus Hadrianus that Corteggiani had in his possession when he died?”

I believe that I may have raised an involuntary eyebrow at this last query (I am not the sort of chap to have cocked it). Castelnuovo continued.

“Indeed, Signor Hammersley, the Capitano was most impressed by your knowledge of the little coin’s existence—and of Corteggiani’s mission, which was officially undisclosed. I must admit that it is a matter of great personal interest to me; I have been trying to get my hands upon just such an aureus for many years. I would welcome any information you may have on its, ah, whereabouts. I suspect that it is safely in the hands of Corteggiani’s murderer, and that we shall not see or hear of it again for some time.”

“You mean that you had no hand in the murder, Signor?” says I, taken entirely off guard.

The question had departed from my lips unbidden. I had not time to check its progress from my brain. I suppose that there are worse things to say to cold-blooded murderers in order to provoke their more vitriolic temperaments than all but to accuse them openly of such crimes, but not one of these occurred to me at the time.

Castelnuovo snorted with laughter, emitting a noise that sounded like somebody shovelling gravel.

“Good God no—I would not waste valuable manpower on such trivialities. When the coin reached its destination I would have stolen it and had a copy left in its place. I am a charitable enough man not to allow my own desires to deprive the vulgar mob of the opportunity of displaying their crass attempts at patriotism. You have no doubt heard of their plans regarding the Olympic medals?”

Dante would have been proud indeed. I wondered whether they used the same forger.

“I do know who killed Corteggiani,” he continued, looking down his nose and staring at his fingernails.

“Presumably, as I, you do not believe it was the man they have charged with the crime?” says I.

Castelnuovo smiled at me benignly, paternally. Knowingly.

“Tomaso Paolucci could no more kill a man than you or I could abstain from our wine.”

He raised his glass to me and drained it. I felt it prudent to follow suit.

“Paolucci is nothing more than a scapegoat. I have made it worth his while to be inconvenienced for a few weeks or months in custody. Varsalona will see that the case is spun out until I can catch up with the true murderer. By then it will be too late for the police to charge him. I will have effected justice on behalf of the State.”

The final threat sounded ominous, but I pressed on nonetheless.

“Forgive my ignorance, Signor, but who then killed Corteggiani?”

Castelnuovo looked at me inquisitively from beneath his brow. He reached for the coffee pot and poured himself a half cup. Perhaps it gave him wind too, I cannot say.

“I see that Varsalona has kept his mouth shut—commendably so. What do you know of Corteggiani, Signor Hammersley?”

I racked my brain to recall what Dante had told me. Something about being elected mayor in a northern Italian town. Padua?

“Precisely, Signor—” Castelnuovo eyed me with something close to suspicion; he narrowed his eyes and tapped his temple, “— you have done your homework, no?”

“He appears to have been a colourful character, from what I have heard,” says I.

“Not half as ‘colourful’ as his killer,” says Castelnuovo with a laugh. He pronounced the inverted commas exquisitely.

“When Corteggiani stood for election, another famous name appeared alongside his on the ballot papers. The rest of those standing were of no importance; they were merely to fill numbers. Have you heard of a man called Francesco Papareschi, Signor Hammersley?”

I lied that the name rung a bell, but no more.

“He is an evil bastard, Signor, and not to be trusted.”

Somewhere a telegram was winging its way to Kettle, subject: ‘your off-white complexion’, signed by Pot.

“Papareschi is a Sicilian pig. For several months he has been trying to force his way into my territory on the mainland. How would you feel, Signor, if your home was besieged persistently by an animal intent on taking your very livelihood away from you and establishing himself in your place?”

It wasn’t a problem I had encountered, to be frank. I stifled a threat of borborygmus as the coffee started to hit home. I shifted in my seat to get comfortable, as Castelnuovo got into his flow. I was now treated to a second version of the story that Dante had recounted to me previously. Most of the salient facts seemed consistent, and I did not let on that I had heard it elsewhere. I was keen to protect Dante as far as possible; discrepancies were also more likely to be revealed if Castelnuovo thought he was dealing with a blank canvas. Aliquando et stultum agere sapientissimum est[6] and all that.

Papareschi’s standing against Corteggiani had been a mere ruse. The whole election had been rigged so that Corteggiani would win, with Papareschi safe in the knowledge that the new mayor was, essentially, at his disposal in every respect. I wondered out loud why the people had allowed Corteggiani victory—were they not afraid of Papareschi taking vengeance upon them?

“Signor Hammersley, the votes naturally fell in Papareschi’s favour, the people indeed voting through fear of his reputation. But he cleverly masked this fact. His wealth is renowned, and he uses it to good effect. Sure enough the returning officer and other election officials announced Corteggiani as the rightful winner after due consideration and counting. Papareschi could then play the part of the gracious loser—a simple man of commerce who wants nothing more than to conduct his business affairs fairly and with honour. I believe that he even hugged Corteggiani on the podium before stepping down to join the crowds in their applause and adulation of the new mayor.”

Castelnuovo spat dryly, but with venomous force, to his left. “He makes me sick—I will be glad to see him die.”

“And yet Papareschi killed Corteggiani?” says I. “Why would he do that?”

“Corteggiani was a foolish man—he did not play his role with cleverness. His lavish lifestyle attracted too much attention, and it is beyond question that he was himself enjoying extravagant amounts of the narcotics whose distribution he was meant to be controlling. He got… untidy. Papareschi seized the chance to have him removed from his organisation. The mission with the aureus provided a coincidental and welcome motive. The coin will be seen as an obvious inducement to Corteggiani’s murder.”

Castelnuovo lifted his coffee cup to his lips.

“And I shall be glad to fuel such rumours.”

This did not seem to make much sense. From what I was hearing Castelnuovo had the opportunity of legitimately putting Papareschi out of business for quite some time, if not for good. Admittedly, for a man of Castelnuovo’s reputation, his own testimony may be questionable—but I felt sure he could have engineered a suitably convincing case against Papareschi without getting too involved himself. I said as much.

“Signor Hammersley—you have a sharp mind, but you must start to think like a Mafioso if you are to come to work for me.”

He grinned iniquitously, touching his temple with his index finger as he spoke.

“If I give Papareschi to the police for the Corteggiani murder, he is likely to be put away for a while. But that is not enough. I want him dead. I want him to suffer for what he has tried to do to me, my business and my family. I have no doubt that it was his men who tried to kidnap Giuseppina today in the city. I will make him pay, and I will put the bullet into his head that finally kills him with my own hands.”

Castelnuovo was getting rather worked up by all this talk. I felt uncomfortable just sitting there listening to him, as if his anger and hatred were directed at me personally. It didn’t help that Alessandro merely sat and stared at me throughout the conversation. I could feel his gaze even when I was speaking to Castelnuovo, and whenever I chanced to look over at him he did not break away, nor even blink.

“I do not want the police to get their hands on Papareschi. I have given them Tomaso Paolucci for the time being. Before anyone can prove the truth of what happened, Papareschi will be but a bad taste left in the mouths of the few who care to remember him.”

I do not know why, but I seem to have a habit of encountering vindictive swine in my innocent journeying through life. I suspect that people like Castelnuovo, Soho Winterburn and Sergeant Furnell were all bullied at school. As for someone like Alessandro—well, he must have gone to Eton.

Before I could pursue my line of questioning any further, a door opened at the far end of the room, and in walked an alluring woman, probably in her early to mid-forties. She wore a flattering knee-length skirt suit which, whilst revealing no flesh apart from a pair of tanned calves above some rather fine burgundy heels, was nipped and fitted in a most complimentary manner. Palpably expensive jewellery hung off every visible body part above her waist, including a particularly solid-looking diamond bracelet that dangled from her wrist like an ice cube wind chime.

Her hair had been well and recently coiffured (perhaps a little too excessively, as is often the way with women when they approach middle age), and she moved with an effortless confidence that only comes with true life experience. While her face was not classically beautiful, she had well-defined features and the merest hint of fine age-lines beneath some subtly-applied make-up. She was not tall, but this merely added to her elusive charm. There was something entrancing about her, and I felt a familiar stirring down below as she entered the room. There was only one word for her: pert. She swayed a few paces towards the table and addressed Castelnuovo in a low, husky Italian voice. I noted that she came only halfway across the floor, and did not acknowledge either Alessandro or me. She seemed a little put out, which made her all the more attractive.

Castelnuovo did not look around—he turned his head partly towards the woman but it remained still facing forwards, his eyes fixed straight ahead, not doing her the courtesy of fully recognising her arrival. She spoke quickly and animatedly, so that I could not hear her exact words, but one got the feeling that she was rebuking Castelnuovo for something. He looked peeved, and answered her in a stern and passionate voice, also in Italian that I could not quite pick up. The tone they were adopting with each other was both familiar and forceful—the tone of an old married couple.

Castelnuovo brought the brief conversation to an end with what sounded like a booming command. He continued to stare at the skirting board on the other side of the room, his head still turned away from the table but even now not turning to address the woman directly. When he had finished fulminating, he continued his stare, sure in himself that his words would have the desired effect. The woman stood motionless, her hands on her hips; I’ll swear one of her feet was tapping. And before I knew it, she had left the room in a flourish of expensive clothing, her heels knocking upon the wooden floor as she marched away, her backside twitching like a fiddler’s elbow beneath her skirt.

As I brought my gaze back to the table, I caught Alessandro’s eyes, still fixed irrevocably upon me. I have developed, these last few years, and on occasion, an unfortunate and involuntary habit of subtly raising Eyebrow 1 to half-mast when I pass an attractive woman in the street whom I do not know. I hoped that I had not effected the gesture unawares just now—but I could not be sure.

“You must forgive my wife, Signor Hammersley—she has been shaken by the news of Giuseppina’s ordeal, and she believes that she heard a gunshot from this room. I have, of course, convinced her otherwise. The cook does, after all, have a habit of producing some impressive noise from his kitchens.”

He looked at me disarmingly. So the lady was Giuseppina’s mother? Ye Gods, a forbidden fruit on so many levels. I would have to keep my unfathomable libido in check. It had got me into trouble in the past, and it would bring about a certain and grisly end if not controlled now. I needed something else to occupy my mind and sink my teeth into. I hoped Alessandro had not twigged my reaction to Castelnuovo’s wife. No good could come of that.

Castelnuovo placed both his hands on the tabletop.

“Tomorrow, Signor Hammersley, we will discuss the role you are to play for me over the coming days, for which you will be amply rewarded. But for now, we must retire for the evening—I have a busy day ahead. Alessandro will take you to your rooms; I will see you tomorrow. Good night.”

Clearly, Mrs C. had laid down the law, although Castelnuovo had dissembled well. It would not have been appropriate to question him further about my ‘role’ to which he kept referring—he was the sort of man whose words one simply accepted as given.

My head was beginning to spin—a combination of the wine, the coffee, Federico’s demise, the conversation and of course, most recently, Castelnuovo’s fetching wife.

“Thank you indeed,” says I, “for a most pleasant evening. I wonder if I might be permitted one final question?”

Castelnuovo and Alessandro both stopped in their tracks and turned to look at me. Clearly it was unheard of to revisit a conversation that had been ended, as ours had been, by the paterfamilias himself.

“Could I possibly have my pipe?”

VII

It’s been said by that great pioneer of theatrical nonsense, Mr George Bernard Shaw, that the English do everything on principle: they’ll fight you on patriotic principles; rob you on business principles; enslave you on imperial principles.

Well in rejoinder, generous reader, I would say that at least the English have some damned principles. It’s more than can be said for the blasted Italians (and the less said about the Irish, the better, to be Shaw).

There’s an old proverb—Christ knows whence it originates, but it’s probably Cornish; they usually are—“three things are not to be trusted: a cow’s horn, a dog’s tooth, and a horse’s hoof”. You can take it on sound authority that there may be added to that list, ladies and gentlemen, an unsavoury, greasy, shifty-looking wop. It’s no coincidence that the rule book for the Italian card game scopa begins: “Rule 1: always try to see your opponent’s cards”—a maxim that had landed me in serious drama some years previously. But that is another story for another day.

I had decided to keep a respectable distance from the gruesome Alessandro. This seemed a reasonable reaction in light of what I had heard of his credentials, and I certainly trusted him about as far as I could spit Winchester Cathedral. When Castelnuovo had said that Alessandro would take me to my rooms (the plural was no mistake—I had several chambers at my disposal, fit to rival the finest suites at the Savoy), I had not expected it to be to my very door. He hovered so closely over my shoulder along the way that not only could he have seen my cards, he could have played the damned hand for me had he felt so inclined.

When we reached the door I stopped sharply, hoping he would walk into me and catch a shoulder in the chin or similar. To my surprise he was alert to such trickery and deftly sidestepped the danger, shifting around to come to a halt between the door and me. He stretched out his arm and placed his hand roughly over the handle. I was ready for his tomfoolery.

“If it’s a nightcap you’re after, you’re out of luck—sorry, I forget your name––I’m afraid I’m not that way inclined.”

Alessandro did not react. He looked directly into my eyes and spoke with a steady, assured voice.

“My name, Signor Hammersley, is Alessandro—Alessandro Giovanni Jacopo Jacobacci.”

I bit back a compulsive urge to offer my commiserations.

“You may have deceived Antonino Castelnuovo for now, but not me. I shall be watching you. I have no doubts, my friend, that he will soon be asking me to pay you a visit you will not forget.”

He paused, one can only assume, for dramatic effect.

“I trust you will sleep… pleasantly.”

He flicked his fingers from the door handle with a resonance of metal and went off down the corridor. He even walked efficiently, the swine.

Needless to say I slept fitfully, dreaming of young Italian temptresses and wanton mothers, all the while fleeing from a pomaded gang of ruffians, each smoking from an exotic and endless range of Butz-Choquins, running over an ocean of the most exquisite Persian rugs. It’s a funny thing, sleep.

***

The next morning did not offer up any more propitious omens. Breakfast was brought to my room with the message that I was to be left to my own devices in Castelnuovo’s absence from the city on business. There was, however, to be something of a soirée, tautologously, that evening to which I was invited. I got the distinct impression that my attendance would be wise—although since it was a celebration for Giuseppina’s birthday and her presence was therefore guaranteed, I did not need coercing. With any luck I would also learn more of Castelnuovo’s grand designs for world domination &c. &c.

A fresh shirt hung in the wardrobe, along with other garments. A small, neatly handwritten card notified me that my luggage would be transferred from Dante’s during the course of the day. Clearly, I was dealing with professionals here.

There wasn’t much else to do but entertain myself after my own fashion. I wandered into town in search of a London Times. As usual, this proved to be an exertion nothing short of Herculean. We can put a man into space and, indeed, even civilize the French (or as near as damn it), but am I able to purchase in a foreign country an English newspaper whose contents refer to anything but the day before yesterday’s news? I am not.

Yet more irksome was my inability to solve more than six or seven clues of the crossword at first reading. I have learned through several years’ experience, however, that a degree of perseverance in the face of such louche impertinence from my mental faculties generally bears fruit. Sure enough, after an hour or so of pondering assisted by a legion of espressos, I had the thing licked, a shadow of its former self. I inked in the final word (‘dodecasyllabic’; like this parenthesis) with a smug flourish.

I was not needed back at Castelnuovo’s mansion (it was the only word for the place—incidentally, in case you were wondering, it was situated on the slopes of the Quirinal, near the damned palaces) until six o’clock that evening, so I decided to have a leisurely lunch by the Pantheon, a grand place to sit and watch the world go by. I needed to pace my alcohol consumption over the course of the day, in readiness for the evening’s merrymaking (I use the word with trepidation). I had therefore drunk only a single glass of wine over lunch. Although it does tend to make me somewhat drowsy, I cannot legitimately blame the sauce for what happened next. It would be to detract from the brilliance and peerlessness of the artistry that was about to befall me.

It was a joyous summer day in one of the most charismatic capital cities of Europe. The world and his wife, or at the very least a distant but much-loved cousin, were out in force. I made my way through the bustling crowds in the piazza to the fore of the Pantheon and resolved in my mind to head for the quieter back streets as soon as I was able.

I was aware of being jostled as I turned down one of the narrower alleyways—but it was sheer coincidence that I raised my hand to my inside jacket pocket within a split second of this to return my pen following completion of the crossword. In the same movement I glanced at my wristwatch to ascertain whether I should be heading back to my host’s. Simultaneously I noted that both my watch and my wallet were missing. A hot flush of warm, prickling panic engulfed me as I realised that I had been the victim of an expert pickpocketing.

I looked about me with frenzied proficiency. It had been barely three seconds since I had turned the corner, and it was surely then that the nefarious felony had been perpetrated. Some ten yards from me I spotted a grubby-looking little tyke making his way swiftly from the scene of the crime. He had pickpocket written all over him, although I struggled to see it under the dirt. Already he had doubled the space between us, and I jolted myself into action. I wove my way between fat American tourists and ancient, head-scarfed women, all the while keeping one eye on the diminutive toerag ahead of me.

I had not attracted attention to the theft by exclaiming and pointing my finger impotently in the direction of my quarry. I reflected that I stood more chance of catching the bugger this way, but—more accurately—I was filled with both shock and admiration at his feat. Aside from the mild jostling, which I’d naturally ignored given the number of people milling about the place, I had not felt even the slightest contact on my person, and yet here was I devoid of both expensive chronometer and distended wallet. The enterprising little chiseller could have extracted the crown from my back tooth without my noticing and I would have been less impressed. It was nothing short of pure luck that I’d spotted the theft when I had, otherwise I’d be in Queer Street and no mistake.

I was almost within reach of the child when he must have sensed my bearing down upon his person, looked round and quickened his nimble pace down into a side road without any discernible effort. I pulled up short and followed him, almost breathless from the exertion. He increased his ill-washed speed and every couple of yards blew sharp whistles up towards the sky. As we advanced I became aware of a growing band of vagabond waifs falling into a group behind me, following our progress and clambering over various obstacles from the side alleys to join our little drama.

Soon enough, and without my being aware, the hunter became the hunted in this unjust pantomime. I was being tailed by a small but ruthless group of prepubescent ne’er-do-wells, not one of whom appeared to be out of breath, let alone breaking into a sweat. I dodged past the occasional wealthy shopper (we were in a salubrious part of town) and was just able to alter my direction to follow the Giacomo Dawkins in front of me as he hopped into an alleyway off the main shopping street. We found ourselves—premeditated by the little toad, unquestion-ably—down a dead end.

I was bent over double and gasping for breath, surrounded by seven or eight of this mudlark mob. They had an average age of about fourteen, but looked more than mean enough. Both factions stood motionless, weighing up the other like two gangs of street cats about to pounce.

I decided that in such circumstances humour was the better part of valour. Well, humour combined with the unfailing enticement of filthy lucre. One must know one’s audience, you see. I recognised a little of myself in the gang leader when I was his age, that sort of entrepreneurial precociousness that would undoubtedly serve him well in life if he could simply avoid the rapacious allure of the fairer sex along the way. Good luck to him, thinks I.

I raised myself, still wheezing hoarsely, and addressed the leader with my hands on my hips in an effort to forestall the stitch that was even now weaving its insidious way between my ribs. We spoke in Italian, but I will of course translate. I shall find a publisher more readily that way, so I’m told.

“Why the bloody hell aren’t you in school?” says I, breathing through my teeth.

“It’s Sunday, Signor,” he replies.

I loved that—just thieved my valuables and still addressing me with the utmost respect and decency. He could have been plucked straight from the streets of Bow.

“Then why the hell aren’t you in church?”

I continued to pant. We grinned at each other. A mutual acceptance having been established, the tension visibly relaxed in our little circle. Indeed, at a nod from their leader the others sauntered off to find distraction elsewhere, although I wasn’t so daft to assume that they would be slow in returning if need be.

“I’m going to need those back,” says I, indicating his waistband whence my wallet poked, and the grubby hand clutching my Vacheron Constantin.

“But I shall make it worth your while—may I?” I extended my hand and raised my eyebrows.

He took the hint and handed back the wallet with something approaching diffidence. Like a true professional he kept hold of the Vacheron. He knew which side his bread was buttered. My resources of hard cash were still plentiful. I grabbed a fistful of notes, did hasty calculations as to my own daily requirements and handed the wad over.

“I trust this will be sufficient for the release of my watch?”

The urchin—he later avowed that among his intimate friends he was better known by the sobriquet of il Furbo[7]—accepted the bills. And then counted the damned things. I busied myself flicking through my wallet to ensure that all other contents were present and accounted for.

“Yes, Signor—but you have not paid for the wallet,” says he.

I looked up and inclined my head admiringly. There is some bluster that one simply cannot teach. I passed over another couple of notes, enough to show the child that he’d earned my respect, but not enough to make him cocky.

As he reached out to take them I did not loosen my grip immediately, making him falter as he tried to extract the bills from my hand. Our eyes met and I held his gaze momentarily. He knew not to exceed the bounds of his impudence thenceforth.

I pocketed my wallet and reattached my watch while we walked back down towards the main shopping street. As we did so, there walked past the entrance to the alleyway a well- and tautly-dressed woman in her forties, exuding pertness in every backside-twitching step. I stopped just short of the street, putting my hand on my new friend’s shoulder. I recognised her immediately as the wife of my egregious host—she oscillated her way down the street past the alley entrance where we stood, an expensive-looking boutique bag draped over her forearm, a Chanel handbag on her opposite shoulder. As before, her frame was decorated liberally with various bejewelled regalia. Yet again I noted that remarkable diamond bracelet on her wrist, dangling impudently in the breeze without a care in the world, twinkling with every twitch of her body. My brain kicked into action—I can be a conniving schemer when the occasion requires.

“I wonder whether I may retain your services awhile longer?” says I, reaching again for my wallet as we stepped out into the sunlight a few yards behind Signora Castelnuovo.

***

Within minutes I was able to see for myself the true extent of the little tyke’s virtuosity. He remained as calm as you please, strolled up aft of his target and then sidled past her as smoothly as if he were on a rail. No fumbling, nor any sign of hesitation, and he had passed by her before I could blink. He hadn’t even broken his stride.

I looked around the street to see if I could discern anyone resembling a bodyguard or similar. One or two characters fitted the bill, skulking a few yards away from the lady in question. They seemed a little more alert than those who had been with Giuseppina the day before, although they had not taken account of the unkempt presence of il Furbo and his exceptional skills. He was a mere child, after all—a mistake that many others had undoubtedly made to their detriment.

I approached Signora Castelnuovo and touched her lightly on the arm. The two heavies were upon us in a shot. I acknowledged them with a glance and smiled ruefully at her.

“Signora, I have not yet had the pleasure of making your proper acquaintance, but I recognised you just now from when I dined with your husband yesterday evening.”

I offered her my hand, which she took hesitantly, and half-bowed to show my deference. Ignorant men who make attempts at being charming think it appropriate to kiss a lady’s hand in similar circumstances. Such fools should be publicly flogged.

“I am sure we will have ample opportunity for further talk tonight, at your daughter’s party. You must forgive my curt manner, but I note that you have just now fallen victim to a pickpocket’s evil designs.”

I held up her left wrist.

“Your exquisite bracelet has been taken.”

She looked at her wrist and gasped in horror. The two bodyguards glanced sharply about them, suddenly appearing alert and efficient—effective as an ashtray on a motorbike they were, all gong and no dinner.

I assured Mrs C. that all would be well; that I had taken note of the urchin in question and even now could distinguish his retreating form in the distance; that I would make every effort to bring the odious little wretch to justice, and to return the bracelet in one piece. I gave the chaperones instructions to escort her safely home whilst I excused myself with all good grace, grinning manfully and assuring her that we would share a pleasant drink that evening and laugh off such trite tribulations. And off I trotted. Nothing excessive—it looks frightfully undignified, after all, a gentleman running at full pelt, not to mention wreaking havoc on a fine pair of leather soles—just enough for Mrs C. to realise that I was making an effort but had more in reserve, if required.

I felt genuine relief that Giacomo (notwithstanding his nickname I had christened him myself in honour of Dickens’s own creation, mutatis mutandis taking into account our geographical location) was actually waiting at our pre-arranged meeting point at the relevant time. You will generally have as much luck locating an Amish arms dealer as finding honour amongst thieves, mark my words.

Sure enough he had the bracelet and was standing on a street corner twirling the thing without a care in the world when I arrived. Having advised him to be on the look-out for pickpockets and their ilk, I relieved him of the bijouterie and made haste back to Castelnuovo’s. It was, by now, four o’clock and I had my toilet to attend to in readiness for what would undoubtedly be a very interesting evening.

***

I shall not dwell at length on my accoutrements for the night’s festivities. Needless to say that I looked suitably splendid, given my surroundings—‘when in Rome’, and all that nonsense. My agenda for the evening were simple enough: to reacquaint myself with Giuseppina; to acquaint myself better with her mother; and to unacquaint myself as far as possible from any plans that Castelnuovo might have involving H. Hammersley Esq.

The first part of the evening was certainly the most fruitful in these respects. I drifted amongst various high profile figures including politicians, film stars and other lamentable glitterati of Roman society. Quite how many were involved in Castelnuovo’s corrupt ways I cannot say for sure. All were instantly forgettable, and I was not a little disappointed by the outward appearance of the ladies in attendance.

Certainly Giuseppina Parelli was by far the most attractive woman in the house. She looked radiant in a Chinese-style black dress whose collar hugged her slender neck like a gently tensed garrotte. I saw her glide through the many rooms, always at a distance, bewitching all and sundry with her natural charm and effortless charisma, a quality that I have rarely encountered in a woman. Presence and allure, yes, even magnetism; but not charisma.

Our eyes finally met across a drawing room of sorts. She extricated herself from a dismal-looking beanpole of a man with what I can only describe as flamboyance and sashayed over to me while I tried to look unperturbed beside an aspidistra. I pretended to finish my drink (I had, in truth, exhausted it a good five minutes previously) as she approached.

“Are you trying to suck the bottom out of that glass?” says she. “You must have finished your drink at least five minutes ago.”

I lowered my glass and smiled as if I had a moustache, toothlessly, emphasising my upper lip and acknowledging her superiority on this occasion. I liked this girl. Perhaps a little too much for my own good.

“Then I shall allow you to recharge my glass,” says I, handing her the item. I followed her over to a nearby drinks tray.

“I have not thanked you for your assistance in town yesterday.” She turned around and handed me my drink. “I’m sure you understand why I reacted as I did—I believe that my father has explained things?”

“Indeed,” says I, taking the glass and raising it to her health. “I must confess to being somewhat alarmed at your pedigree.”

“Does it put off you?” says she, immediately, and looking me dead in the eye.

I couldn’t quite discern whether her avoidance of ending the sentence with a preposition was intentional, serendipitous or just plain foreign. What was more important was the question itself, though, not the syntactical awareness with which it had been crafted—Giuseppina sounded as though she did not want my attentions to be dissuaded through knowledge of her parentage.

“Should it?” says I.

She smiled at me, radiantly.

“Clearly, you are a highly prized possession in the eyes of many people. Papareschi is no fool.”

“That Sicilian pig.”

Giuseppina virtually spat out the words. I recalled that her father had employed the same description of the man the previous evening. Papareschi certainly wasn’t winning any friends within the Castelnuovo household. I wondered whether we’d get on.

“Has papa told you what he has done?”

I indicated that he had not.

“He deserves everything that happens to him”—I didn’t like to ask whether she was referring to Papareschi or dear old papa—“and I hope that he suffers for it.”

“I think I will be speaking with your father later,” says I, looking about the room. “I believe that he wants me to help him with a little something.”

She smiled again, with confidence. “I know that you will succeed for him,” says she. A horrifying thought suddenly occurred to me.

“Does your father know about…” I struggled to find appropriate words, “…our little dalliance the other night?”

Giuseppina Parelli raised that imperious eyebrow once again. “He does not,” she smirked.

“Do you think it would be better if it were to stay that way?”

She leaned close into me, brushing her cheek against mine in a very caressing manner and whispering into my shell-like.

“Yes, I think that would be best.”

She looked about her and kissed my ear. By Christ, she smelled fine. The subtle warm scent of jasmine and sandalwood of Lanvin’s Arpège lingered after she had pulled away.

“I believe that you are staying in my old bedroom—I will come to you later tonight. Expect me at one o’clock.”

She knew that I would not refuse her, and I watched as she drifted off towards a group of middle-aged ladies on the far side of the room. She glided with a sultry gait and a salacious movement in her hips. I was certainly glad to find us ad idem on the question of whether we should inform her father of our previous encounter, not to mention somewhat brighter-eyed at the thought of further high jinks with Giuseppina in a few hours.

I took a sip of my drink and scanned the room. Throughout the evening I had tried to avoid the abhorrent Alessandro, but every so often had felt his icy gaze upon me. More intriguingly I had also spotted another of Castelnuovo’s cronies at assorted moments—you will remember him, percipient reader, as the wearer of brown shoes who had escorted me to Castelnuovo’s dining table the previous evening from the underground cell.

I’d noted him onomatopoeticizing himself about the room on his barbaric rubber soles, relieved that he had at least bothered to elect black uppers this evening, matching them no doubt more through luck than judgement with a dinner suit that was (may God help the man) double-breasted. I stood by my conviction that he was about as Italian as Churchill’s chipolatas. We exchanged the odd glance during the course of the festivities, which for my part had merely been instigated from a desire to see if the man was looking at me—the usual means by which bar room brawls tend to evolve, I’m sure.

At one point I was aware of his presence to my left as I stood awaiting a Singapore Sling by a plush mahogany counter. I suspect the pickpocketing experience earlier in the day had left me with a heightened sense of perception, for as he moved past me I felt the slightest touch in the environs of one of my jacket pockets. I did not react (nor am I the sort of man ever to flinch), knowing that I had nothing of value where I had felt the light pressure applied. But after he had squelched on his way I reached into the pocket to find a small piece of paper. I looked about the room before I unfolded it and read the short message:

“We need to talk.”

Brilliant.

I wasn’t quite sure how we would effect such garrulous conversation as was evidently his preferred style, and my mind raced as to what he wished to discuss. I looked around to see if I could catch sight of this Nestor of Naples, but he had long gone. I would simply have to await his next attack of verbal diarrhoea when he was good and ready. I took out my book of matches and struck one; the paper burned brightly, and I dropped it into an ashtray as I turned away from the bar, chewing my lip, Sling in hand, wondering what the merry hell it was all about.

***

I had not seen Castelnuovo yet that evening—presumably the chap was still engaged in dastardly activities elsewhere—but as I ruminated thus there came strutting towards me Mrs C. herself, this time without the brace of hired guns that comprised her entourage earlier that day.

She looked business-like and prim in a full-length black skirt and jacket, under which was revealed a tight-fitting magnolia cotton bodice whose neckline disclosed just an inch of cleavage—needless to say this drew my eyes’ attention as surely as only a pair of ripe casabas can. She certainly wasn’t as well-endowed as her daughter in that department (funny how these things go, isn’t it?), but it would all do. As for the rest of her fuselage, I couldn’t be sure—some women are expert at dressing so as to disguise any of their physical attributes that are anything short of flawless.

I don’t know what is about women of la signora Castelnuovo’s age that makes ’em so damned attractive. I did not need reminding that I was playing with fire here, skating on thin ice and engaged in various other forms of sporting and gaming metaphors involving extreme elements. Not only was this lady married, she was married to a Mafia godfather of considerable clout—I had witnessed the effects of his vindictive nature first-hand; not only was I on foreign soil, I was in said capo’s very house, enjoying his hospitality no less. I dislike Paris as a dirty and unimaginative city, and my parents certainly knew better than to bestow the name upon me. Yet here was I (and without the resources of the damned Trojan army behind me, I might add) ready to play the perfumed prince to perfection.

It gets better, of course. Not only had I enjoyed her daughter’s comely charms in a very intimate fashion just days before, I had an appointment with her for a second helping in a matter of hours. I would not be the slightest surprised if fearing Castelnuovo’s vengeful wrath proved to be but small change compared with avoiding the ungodly repercussions of aggravating either his wife or his daughter—each of whom seemed capable of leading the family orchestra single-handedly in considerable, virtuoso style. ‘Hell hath no fury’, do you see?

And if all the above were not enough to dissuade me from any foolish course of action, I should remember what my dear old mother used to say: “’tis best to be off with the old love before you are on with the new”.

Well, best ain’t always possible. I smiled disarmingly at Castelnuovo’s wife as she approached, keeping a subtle eye on her cleavage.

“Signor Hammersley, at last we meet properly—I hope that you are not too exhausted from your recent efforts with Giuseppina and of course this afternoon’s heroics?”

I felt, and no doubt looked, a little confused: it had been a good couple of days since I’d rattled her daughter. Then the penny dropped—she was referring to my rescuing Giuseppina from Papareschi’s men, and the missing jewellery.

“But of course,” says I, fishing into my jacket and extracting the bracelet.

“I am honoured finally to make your acquaintance, Signora Castelnuovo, and to be able to return to you this delightful piece. May I?”

I held the bracelet out as if to fit it upon her wrist. She looked at the bracelet; then at me; then to both sides of her—clearly she was unused to this sort of flirtatious attention. Or perhaps she was out of practice. She extended her forearm and I draped the diamonds over it, pretending to be attending to the clasp while I stared down her top and tried to imagine what her bust looked like au naturel.

“Perfection,” says I, leaning back to admire my handiwork but casting my gaze over her entire body and finishing up to look her dead in the eye. I ensured that she picked up on my carnal scrunity.

She seemed deeply abashed, not knowing where to look. I felt quite certain that this was not her natural reaction to such complimentary advances. Of course, it was entirely natural for her not to reciprocate or play along whilst we were in the marital home—but there was something else, something far more important than that.

When one is the head honcho’s wife I suspect one gets used to the lack of male attention from other quarters; presumably most men are fearful of what hideousness will befall them if they are caught with their mitts in the boss’s biscuit tin. Worse still for Signora Castelnuovo, I believe that it is written into the Italian Constitution that every married man should have at least one mistress on the go to qualify for full citizenship, and must forfeit his first-born son (and various tax breaks) if he does not comply with the stipulation. A man in Castelnuovo’s position would see it as nothing short of his civic duty to be cheating on his wife whenever opportunity presented itself. He was certain to have a bar snack tucked away somewhere for him to dip into when his appetite required, a kept woman in the best possible sense: a well-furnished apartment in central Rome, perhaps even a car and as much pocket money as she could eat. Nice work, if you can get it.

This would, of course, leave Mrs C. somewhat in the lurch, yearning for romantic gallantry and feeling justifiably miffed at being traded in for a (no doubt) younger model. It simply would not do—it’s a damned shame when a woman in her prime’s left on the shelf in such dire circumstances. Women such as that invariably go one of two ways: either they take it upon themselves to whore about the place, sometimes quite brazenly, as if it were going out of fashion; or they transcend gradually deeper into how’s-your-father hibernation, clam up in any male company without exception, and become life-long members of the Twin Set and Pearls Club. It seemed that I had caught Signora Castelnuovo just in time—being the wife of the capo di tutti capi she could hardly start playing the part of a Mafioso Messalina and hope to avoid detection; but you could tell from her eyes that she still knew she was kitted out for sinfulness. An inch of cleavage can tell the hell of a story.

I have omitted a further obvious element of proof in support of my thesis: Signora Castelnuovo was her daughter’s mother. A trite and pointless platitude to utter, granted, but if you’ve bothered to read thus far, indulgent reader, and are minded to continue, you will, I am sure, come to see what I mean.

Mrs C. was the first to break our gaze and looked down at the bracelet. You could tell that she was unsure what to say. I thought it best to pre-empt her.

“Would you believe that it was a mere child who stole it? I had my work cut out trying to catch him. Needless to say he has seen the error of his ways and has promised to attend confession. I dare say he may even manage a few Hail Marys—but he’ll have to use somebody else’s bracelet for that.”

I caught her eye once again—the connection was 240V—and then she laughed bewitchingly, her eyes half-closed, lips elongated but not parting and her nose wrinkling in a most come-hither fashion that damn near made my toes curl. She even looked away for a moment, then straight back at me, the saucy little Cyprian.

“Thank you for making such efforts on my behalf—this bracelet is very special to me. I understand from my husband that you are to stay with us for a short time—you must let us know if we can do anything to repay your many kindnesses.”

People actually do say these things in real life, you see—they really do happen.

An idea popped into my head.

“There is one thing, Signora,” says I, dropping my eyes sheepishly. “I see that Don Giovanni is playing at the Terme di Caracalla later this week. I wonder whether you might be gracious enough to accompany me. I fear that a gentleman in black tie should never be seen alone at any public spectacle that stretches past twilight.”

Signora Castelnuovo regarded me with her big, brown eyes.

“I am sure that something could be arranged,” says she. “My husband loves Mozart, but I know he is very busy at the moment. I am sure he would be happy for you to escort me in his place. Are you a fan of the opera, Signor Hammersley?”

“Life would not be complete without it,” says I, lying through my back teeth. What a silly invention is opera, after all: fat women, pointless lyrics and actors with an overly inflated opinion of their own importance; the only genre of entertainment (or, indeed, life in general) where a person can be shot, stabbed, beaten to within an inch of his life or otherwise treated really very badly indeed, and without fail will burst into song to pontificate upon said affliction in the most gloriously inane detail.

“And it will be all the more magnificent if I may have you on my arm, Signora. Shall we say Friday evening?”

I reached for her hand, and bowed slightly by way of farewell.

“Although I shall speak to you before then, I hope,” says I, looking up into her eyes and arching an inviting eyebrow.

To my surprise she raised her hand, I can only assume so that I might kiss it. Her skin felt warm and smooth, and had a soothing scent of hand lotion to it. Signora Castelnuovo smirked invitingly with the corner of her mouth. Despite my better judgment in such matters of etiquette, I duly bowed further to comply.

A movement caught my eye as I leaned forward, and at the end of the room I saw a door open. The contemptible Alessandro hovered there as Antonino Castelnuovo entered the party, followed by a trio of immoderately-clad individuals. He shared a private joke with the men and, laughing, turned to survey the room. I had only a couple of seconds before he would spot me. I quickly kissed Signora Castelnuovo’s hand and winked at her as I drew myself up.

Alea iacta est, thinks I.

VIII

I am pleased to say that there are few situations life has been able to throw at me when I have been wholly at a loss for words. I was once caught directly on the job with that delightful slattern Rosie Alcazar—with a name like that, would you believe that the girl spoke with the most irritating Swansea drawl?—by her very father, but I still managed to shake his hand and make polite enquiry as to his wellbeing.

Since you ask, he’d interrupted us just as we’d embarked on Hobbes’s voyage and were going hell for leather down Cupid’s Alley. There was a knock at the door, it opened in the same second (why don’t people ever damned well wait?), and in he strode, proud as a peacock to see his dearest daughter. Fortunately Ms Alcazar had been alert enough to bounce me off her, pull down her dress and jump towards the door as it swung open. I had time only to hitch up my trousers to waist level, but not to button them or even fasten the belt. So when Mr Alcazar stepped into the room I remained kneeling on the floor, shirt pulled over my still-opened slacks, Percy not quite fully back in his box as I extended a hand that had just seconds before been clamped about his daughter’s bust. He must have thought me uncommonly ill-mannered for not getting up. But I digress.

When a cold-blooded murderer marches towards one wearing a dinner jacket and a cummerbund that really doesn’t match his tie, arms outstretched in greeting and a smile slapped on his phiz, it’s damned hard to think of anything to say. Particularly so when one strongly suspects, as I did, that one was going to be dragooned into an enterprise that would without doubt involve transgressing various fundamental principles of international law and likely result in a good fewer people on the planet—one of them quite possibly me.

My host’s ignorance of the advanced status of my relationship with his daughter provided little comfort given that I was within a hair’s breadth of crossing a questionable line with his damned wife. My face must have looked fairly interesting as Castelnuovo approached.

“Signor Hammersley, how good to see you again. I hope that you have enjoyed a pleasant day. I am sorry that I could not entertain you myself—I had urgent business to attend to. Good evening, Vittoria.”

He acknowledged his wife’s presence as a matter of fact, like a child half-heartedly apologizing for some transgression in a prepubescent attempt at defiance. Signora Castelnuovo looked most forlorn—the ebbing spirit of a proud and capable woman. It was pitiable to watch her react to her husband’s arrival and I smiled warmly as she turned away from us. There was an awareness etched onto her face that it was now time for men to talk business and that her presence as a woman was no longer acceptable.

“We must join my associates in conference, Signor,” says Castelnuovo. He placed his hand gently on my shoulder blade and ushered me into a large room separated from the main party by a thick set of oak double doors. He reached behind him and pulled them to, like an immense butler. He was a tall man, sturdily wrought—another ounce of flesh and one might have called him overweight. Not to his face, you understand. The hand on my back had felt firm and authoritative. I wondered miserably what lay in store.

There were six of us in total, seated around a mid-length table that was positioned exactly in the centre of the room. I took my place where Castelnuovo indicated and looked around at what were to become, quite literally, my partners in crime over the coming days.

Opposite me, to Castelnuovo’s right, was a man who looked as though he had fallen headfirst into a large piece of industrial machinery, but had not realised nor bothered to extract himself until he was in as far as his shoulders. His features were a jumbled and hideous mess of contorted and barely recognisable appendages, and he had some of the most gruesome scarring I have ever seen on a human being. The full length of his neck on the right side was a jagged landscape of labyrinthine cicatrices, undoubtedly the best result that the most advanced surgeons could effect but which would always have the outward appearance of a maniacal Frankenstein’s work. Unexpectedly his hair was still a coiffeur’s pride, combed and neatly set to almost mathematical precision in grotesque and incongruous contrast to the rest of his face. You could tell he had been a not unattractive man before the encounter with the combine harvester. His name was Carlo, and he was a tactician. Castelnuovo used him to plan nefarious exploits, presumably in an effort to ensure that no unforeseen accidents, mishaps or their ilk occurred. Comment is, of course, superfluous.

To my left sat Vincente Spagnoletti, one of the jolliest men I have ever encountered in my life. Add a red suit and a white beard and the man was nothing short of Santa Claus. He was a huge, Falstaffian figure whose entire range of facial expressions consisted merely of subtle permutations of the same portly grin. When he laughed he emitted a sound like someone sawing through a piano. His outlook on life accorded fairly accurately with mine, and he could be concisely summed up: sybaritic by nature, jocular always, incorruptible whenever circumstance permitted. In my mind I re-Christened him Vince Spaghetti.

At the far head of the table, directly opposite Castelnuovo, was my old friend Alessandro. His usual scowl was present, like a bulldog chewing a wasp, directed for the most part at me. I paid him as little heed as I could.

The final member of this merry little conclave was known to me only through his note-writing and persistent wearing of brown, rubber-soled shoes. He was introduced as Carmine Gaetani and sat to Alessandro’s left. I was surprised to see him at this table of apparent heavyweights, having presumed, clearly wrongly, that he was one of the less important cogs in the Castelnuovo machine, that perhaps he was here to represent the underclass. (Inexplicably it reminded me of a chap I once knew who would buy The Times and The Sun together of a morning. When questioned as to the apparently irreconcilable nature of the transaction, he replied that he needed to know “what the common man is thinking—and I buy The Sun for the racing results.”) Clearly I had underestimated Carmine Gaetani—a mistake I would not make again, despite his footwear. I would also have to find an appropriate time to quiz him about his note and get to the bottom of his confused nationality.

The table having been thus introduced, I nodded a gracious acknowledgement to each man in turn. Then, with a flourish of his arm, Castelnuovo announced the arrival of his new senior man-at-arms, a most loyal recruit who, he felt certain, would ensure the success of the inspired wheeze that was currently on the drawing board. I turned slightly to the main doors, expecting there to enter some heroic-looking figure, and was alarmed to see that Castelnuovo was gesturing towards me. I might have known.

“Signor Hugo Hammersley has come to us from England where he is well-known for his diplomatic genius and ability to, ah, solve problems.”

I closed my eyes and sighed quietly to myself. When will people learn?

“Signor Hammersley has already proved his natural sense of justice and the kind of loyalty that has made this country and this organisation great. I am sure you will each find his contribution to our enterprise most valuable, particularly on the mission shortly to be upon us.”

Each of the men around the table twitched the corners of their mouths and protruded their chins in gruff approval; one or two of them nodded appreciatively; Alessandro continued to work his way through the wasps’ nest. Castelnuovo slid his chair backwards and stood up. He placed a hand on my shoulder and spoke in a solemn voice.

“Signor, we are honoured to have you among us—but before you can become a true man of honour you must be initiated into our brotherhood through an oath of blood, in accordance with ancient custom.”

I’m fairly sure that my heart missed a beat at the sound of this ominous news. An oath of blood doesn’t sound the most appetizing of ways to spend an evening, even with one’s closest and most trusted friends. I looked around the table at my would-be ‘brothers’—it was like some strange carnival show, a circus of freaks in black tie.

“Which two of you will stand as sponsor to this man in addition to myself?”

Alessandro and Signor Gaetani both stood up—the former a little too readily for my liking. Castelnuovo moved over to a large and antique-looking sideboard, took a key from his pocket and unlocked a drawer. He took out four small items and placed them neatly in a row on the table before me: a small knife whose blade looked crudely sharpened; a piece of dirty thread, about the same length as a shoelace; a box of matches; and a small piece of paper bearing an image of the Virgin Mary. I wondered if we were going to play some sort of parlour game, but suspected that this was not a wise time for flippant remarks.

Alessandro picked up the piece of thread and took hold of my right hand. His grip was strong and he looked me dead in the eye as he wrapped the thread tightly around my index finger. The tip of my digit swelled slightly and turned an interesting colour, rather like a raspberry ripple ice cream. Gaetani picked up the knife and passed it to Alessandro. I’ll swear the man grinned at me with his eyes. I cursed him with my own. With a lightning movement, like a gardener pruning a rose, he nicked the end of my finger and held my hand over the image of the Blessed Mother. He gripped my fin and wrung it like a father meeting his daughter’s boyfriend for the first time, and two drops of bright crimson blood, my damned blood, fell onto the crumpled piece of paper.

I knitted my brow in concentration, partly to combat the discomfort of having my fingers hacked and mangled about before my eyes. As experiences go, I can recommend better.

Castelnuovo meanwhile had taken a small sheet of manuscript from elsewhere within the sideboard and came back to the table. Gaetani struck a match and touched it to the holy image. He took my left hand, opened the palm and placed the ignited picture upon it. It burned quickly and curled up in the heat, the small drops of blood bubbling briefly before disappearing within the paper folds. It danced across my hand and shrivelled into a ball of wafery carbon.

Castelnuovo proffered the sheet of manuscript. It was small, grey from the dust of many years, and its edges were blunt and split. A short paragraph in Italian had been neatly written out in ink that had turned blue-black over time.

“The thread around your finger is the bond that unites us. Never shall it be broken.”

Ah. Here it was—more constitutionally ingrained lunacy.

“Just as these ashes cannot ever be returned to their original paper state, so too is it impossible for you ever to leave this society. Nor shall you fail in your obligations to its members. They are your brothers. You must read the words on the sheet and blow the ashes from your hand.”

He raised his own hand to his mouth, palm upturned, and exhaled over it, as if blowing a kiss.

“This is your oath to the brotherhood.”

I looked at the others in the room. Alessandro had dropped my hand and was wiping the knife blade with a handkerchief. I took the sheet from Castelnuovo and turned my attention to the words thereupon. They translated thus, and I recited them with trepidation:

“I swear to be faithful to the brotherhood, just as the brotherhood is faithful to me. As this Saint and this blood burn, thus will I give my life for the brotherhood. And as these ashes cannot return to their original state, nor this my blood—thus may I never leave the brotherhood.”

I blew the ashes from my hand and they fluttered down onto the tabletop. I stood in silence, not quite sure what to say. I appeared to have just committed my soul to some hellish country club for all eternity. Castelnuovo broke the silence. His words merely filled me with further consternation as he began to bellow in a loud voice, the others responding in unison after each demand.

“What do you hold to be greater?”

“Equality, the brotherhood!”

“What do you hold to be more sacred?”

“Liberty, death before dishonour!”

“What is your law?”

“Death to all tyrants and those who follow them!”

The man was so entirely divorced from reality, I wondered how he managed to operate in the real world at all. Just as disturbing were my new ‘brothers’, each of them clearly brainwashed by this cultish nonsense to the point of dementia. I did not know how to react to such a ridiculous spectacle, particularly when it was so passionately believed by this motley horde of murderous hoodlums. All eyes were upon me, and I needed to come up with something good.

Well, the only other time I’ve been in a club or society of such blistering foolishness, I was nine years old. So I breathed in, dropped my shoulders, brought my feet together with a click of the heels and threw a perfect cub scout salute. My Akela had taught me well.

Castelnuovo and the others looked at me with what can most charitably be described as curiosity. Then, one by one, led by the man himself, they slowly, uncertainly, saluted back. It was a beautiful thing. Baden-Powell would have turned in his damned grave.

Having shared the moment we returned to our seats, and cigars and port were dished out. I forsook my pipe in favour of a Hoyo de Monterrey—still one of the finest Churchills that money can buy—but my mind wasn’t really in the room. My stomach was dancing what felt like the start of a Tijuana two-step.

Castelnuovo sat back in his chair as he luxuriated in his cigar, his whole face disappearing in a shroud of lustrous smoke. He blew large smoke rings (a quite pointless pursuit, but one that never fails to entertain me) and watched them dissipate as they drifted placidly upwards.

“You see, Signor Hammersley? How can one find a smoother smoke? I shall never understand how cigarettes came to be the people’s delight.”

The fact that one of his beloved cigars cost approximately a hundred times your average packet of Bensons clearly escaped Castelnuovo.

“Ahh, the remarkable soil of Vuelta Abajo—have you been to Cuba, Signor?”

Following many years of trying to banish the memories, I remember very little of my sojourn in Havana, and wish I remembered less.

“I have passed through the country once before,” says I.

Castelnuovo picked up on my reaction to the question and grinned.

“One day you will teach me how to smoke a pipe, Signor. I would like to know for sure that there is truly nothing that can surpass the precious time spent with a Monterrey. Don José Gener y Batet was a master of his craft.”

I blinked and nodded my assent, wondering where this was going. The other gentlemen continued to smoke and drink, all alert and paying attention to Castelnuovo. Carlo poured himself some more port; Alessandro flicked the ash from his cigar with an idle thumb, exhaling smoke and looking from his boss to me with a blank expression.

“Signor Hammersley, a man of your intelligence will surely be wondering about the mission to which I referred a moment ago.”

Castelnuovo stuck his tongue between his teeth and removed a loose speck of tobacco from its tip. He had a pianist’s fingers, long and slender, carefully manicured.

“I must confess to being somewhat intrigued by the project,” I lied, narrowing my eyes as I took another draw on the Monterrey. It had a wonderful aftertaste, both salty and sweet, and I allowed the smoke to dance around my mouth before exhaling. A glowing warmth remained in its place. I was starting to feel more human.

“It is a simple enough exercise, Signor,” says he, “— or may I call you Hugo?”

He pronounced it as a Frenchman would, without the aitch and turning the ‘u’ into a double-oh. Despite the crass oversight, he was charitable enough not to make it sound like a breed of monkey or a glottal stop in one of the lesser-used Ghanaian dialects. It’s beyond the damned French, you know.

It’s not that I dislike my Christian name, nor that I object to its use when people address me. It just feels a little unnatural having attended both preparatory and public schools and then worked in the civil service—in such environs the only time you’ll hear a Christian name is when some poor sod has carked it in usually suspicious circumstances. Indeed, the only people ever to have used my given moniker were an ex-girlfriend who liked to think it differentiated her in my mind from anyone else I encountered (poor, deluded fool), and of course my dear old mother when she was angry with me.

I had not answered Castelnuovo’s question, but he left it hanging and continued nonetheless. I noted that whatever his intentions had been, still he rarely addressed me otherwise than as ‘Signor Hammersley’.

“Along with the others in this room—your brothers—you are going to collect a package for me.”

I looked around the table at the four men, then back to Castelnuovo.

“Just how big is this package?” says I, quite reasonably I thought, in the circumstances. Castelnuovo grinned without smiling, a trick I have never been able to master myself.

“It will not be easy, despite your number,” says he.

I had visions of the five of us clad in removal coats and struggling under the weight of a triple wardrobe.

“The item in question is currently in Francesco Papareschi’s possession.”

The plot thickened. Suddenly the five of us seemed a crassly considered underestimate.

“So you require us to steal it?”

A bit of old-fashioned theft didn’t sound so bad. It had been a good few years since I’d turned my hand to burglary (by mistake, naturally), but I felt sure it would all come back to me soon enough.

“Not as such—the item is rightfully mine.”

“So how does Papareschi come to have it?”

“He has recently appropriated it from me.”

“Ah—he has stolen it from you.”

“I think the proper term is ‘kidnapped’.”

Castelnuovo reached for the port decanter and held it over my glass, eyebrows raised. I allowed him to refill it. The first glassful had disappeared without my even realising.

“How much do you know of the history of this country, Signor?”

I refrained from recounting one of my earlier chapters on the subject.

“A little,” says I. “It depends how far back you want to go.”

“Not far,” says he, “only to the last war.”

I picked up the port glass and took a delicate sip. I had a feeling that Castelnuovo was going to treat me to a history lesson.

“The Italian army was woefully unprepared for the outbreak of fighting, when it finally happened. Mussolini—I think your historical knowledge will stretch that far, at least—was a contemptible fool. He vastly overestimated the capability of the Italian troops. He was also an incompetent general—you need only look at his efforts in Greece or North Africa to see that.”

I rested my chin on my left hand, curling my index finger along my upper lip. I was in for a long night. I looked at the clock behind Castelnuovo’s shoulder: it was a quarter past eleven. I had less than two hours before Giuseppina was due in my room, with any luck in thoroughly inappropriate attire. I hoped that her father would quickly wrap up whatever nonsense he was preaching so that I could get to unwrapping her.

“In 1941, Signor Hammersley, having already allied himself to the German cause, Mussolini declared war on Russia, a country more than sixty times the size of Italy, home to nearly six times as many people. He proclaimed that he soon expected to be fighting the United States. The king of Italy was merely notified of this, as if he were a common foot soldier. It is unbelievable the crimes that Mussolini committed against his country, and the disrespect he showed to his king.”

Castelnuovo got rather animated whenever he mentioned the monarch. He impatiently tapped his cigar on the edge of the ashtray in front of him, working himself into quite a frenzy.

“Vittorio Emanuele was a great man. Had it not been for the persistent stupidity of ‘il duce’”—he pronounced the word with venom—“the king would have rescued Italy from its plight, withdrawn from the war and helped to maintain some of our country’s long-standing dignity. Even your own great statesman, Churchill, could see that one man alone was to be held responsible for Italy’s participation in the war. That man was not our king—it was Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini.”

With a name like that one can hardly blame the man for having issues. I wondered whether I should jump into the conversation or simply let Castelnuovo have free rein for a while. I opted for the latter; the more preposterous side of my brain wanted to see where this was leading. One thing disturbed me, though. What Castelnuovo was saying didn’t ring true with my own hazy recollections. I recalled from my school days that the king of Italy was far from being the object of the people’s affection that my host was making out. For this reason, and countless others, I shan’t bore you with a full transcript of Castelnuovo’s panegyric on the modern history of Italy, although Christ knows he went to town on the subject. Here’s what actually happened, insofar as the authorities agree with one another.

King Vittorio Emanuele’s feebleness in the face of Mussolini’s authority was shocking, criminal in the eyes of some. Worse still, in the midst of war he was more intent on saving his own skin, and particularly his throne if he could get away with it, than on looking out for his country’s well-being.

Mussolini himself had always viewed the monarchy as an anachronism that would soon be removed, presumably intending to supplant himself as ‘dictator for life’ in a manner most reminiscent of one J. Caesar Esq, a king in all but name. Emanuele was too much under Mussolini’s spell to realise that the people were actually more pro-monarchy than they were pro-fascist.

Seeing that the king was obviously a clown short of the full circus in terms of leadership acumen, his daughter-in-law, Prince Umberto’s wife, Princess Marie José of Belgium, approached the US and the British on her own initiative through the Vatican with a view to achieving some sort of peace. When the king learned of this, he vetoed the move. He was a staunch anti-feminist who believed that women should be completely excluded from matters of state. Some may say that this is a notion that has a lot to commend it. I am happy to chair such a debate but will not be taking sides.

The Vatican communicated with the US and brought news to Emanuele that the allies would support his dynasty if he made peace, but not if the war continued. The king had sense enough to dismiss Mussolini but even then still did not withdraw from the war.

There followed a hideous, not to say awkward, time where Italy was holding simultaneous talks with both Germany and the allies to see who posed the greater immediate danger and to ascertain who was most likely to emerge as victor at the close of hostilities. Following the sensible policy of trying to save his own hide, the king kept trying to play both sides, tailoring his outward sensibilities to suit whoever happened to be winning at the time.

Well, you know what the Brits can be like in a war—like a dog with a blasted bone. Assisted by the damned Yanks (yes, naturally, we’re much obliged, and don’t they let us know it) Vittorio Emanuele was persuaded to sign an armistice—but then kept asking if it was a binding agreement and whether he could get out of it.

In the early hours of the following morning, the ninth of September 1943, Emanuele fled in secret from Rome, leaving the entire Italian army without orders. Pandemonium ensued. Some soldiers simply disbanded, no doubt grateful for the chance of a few days off; some turned on the Nazis and started fighting their own partisan little war; others joined the Allies or simply moved over to the Germans proper. And the king himself, supreme ruler of the army, king of Italy, Sardinia, Cyprus, Jerusalem and Armenia, erstwhile king of Albania and Ethiopia, Marquis of the Holy Roman Empire &c. &c. was nowhere to be seen.

This did not go down too well. A few enterprising Germans liberated Mussolini who was soon up to his old tricks, and before you could say ‘narcissism’ he’d set up a fascist Republican government in Northern Italy which led to civil war for the next eighteen months.

Unsurprisingly, given all the above, Mussolini despised the king whom he called a ‘diminutive delinquent’. Other critics called him ‘cowardly and degenerate’, and even Harold MacM. found him to be a sad, plaintive, obstinate old man who put the interests of his dynasty before those of Italy. Physically infirm, and full of nerves, he was incapable of initiating any policy except under extreme pressure. Other than that, a deeply popular chap, with much going for him.

The way Castelnuovo was banging on, you’d have thought he was a majority shareholder in Vittorio Emanuele plc. He was as staunchly nationalistic as Mussolini, but for some reason his loyalties were firmly behind the old king. He would not hear a word against the man. I felt it wise not to remind him of his idol’s reputation in the history books.

Certainly, the Italians back in the 40s were not of Castelnuovo’s mindset. Newly emerging anti-fascist parties joined the Communists in denouncing the monarchy and treating it as a convenient scapegoat for all that had gone wrong with the country. Nevertheless, many saw that a monarchy was still the right form of government for Italy—it was just that Castelnuovo’s beloved Vittorio Emanuele was condemned as a weakling, and his son Umberto wasn’t considered to be much of an improvement.

“You see, Signor Hammersley, a country of Italy’s grand stature and pedigree needs a king—the trick is to find the right one.”

I wasn’t quite sure where this was leading. As ever, here was I before some expatiating loon, keen to get away or at the very least to ascertain exactly what it was he wanted from me so that I could excuse myself from his presence, jump aboard his daughter, have a quick cast about for that gold coin and get back to England in time for tea. I glanced at the others around the table. Each was sitting staring at Castelnuovo, engrossed by his words as he banged on about how Italy had been buggered over a barrel by Mussolini and how it was the people’s fault that the king had deserted them and hotfooted it to safety at the height of the crisis.

Yes, well, back to the facts.

At the time, the only intelligent solution to maintaining the monarchy was for Vittorio Emanuele to abdicate and for both him and Prince Umberto to give way to Umberto’s son (then six years old), with some senior government figure standing in as regent. The king, highly indignant, refused this suggestion outright—and fair play to the chap. Having a six year-old child preferred to one in a job application is unlikely to do much for the old royal ego.

In amongst all this introverted administrative debate, a fairly serious world war was still raging. In 1944 the Congress of Bari—some drunken shindig masquerading as a constitutional brainstorming session—demanded the abdication of the king. His son and successor, Umberto, would then delegate all royal power to a Lieutenancy of the Realm who in turn would appoint a cabinet comprising representatives of all parties in the Comitati di Liberazione Nazionale—a melting pot of myriad political crackheads apparently devoted to restoring peace to Italy, but in reality whose equivalent would be locking Karl Marx, Oswald Mosley, Hitler and Rabbi Scheinberg into a small room and telling them they’re not getting any dinner until they’ve thrashed out their differences and come up with a viable and practical means of governing the country together.

Then, of course, the damned Russians decided that they wanted a fork in the fondue and, nonchalant as you like, officially recognised the makeshift government that the king had managed to cobble together over the past few months.

After much arsing about in a similar vein, Vittorio Emanuele finally surrendered effective power and his son Umberto became Head of State, first as ‘Lieutenant’ (presumably in an effort to make everyone feel a bit better about the situation), and then—for only thirty-four days—as king. Emanuele’s government was officially dissolved, and then, in a quaint u-turn, charged with the formation of a new government. Newly formed political parties all started vying for power, each trying to offer something different from either the maniacal tyranny of fascism or the hapless dynasty of a senile and uninspiring king.

An inevitable public referendum was called for Italy to decide whether it wanted to be a monarchy or a republic—or, to put it another way, whether it preferred being royally shafted or democratically so.

“On the second of June 1946, Signor Hammersley, the Italian people voted to have their country governed as a republic—by a margin of only two million. There were one and a half million invalid votes.”

Castelnuovo gently twirled his Monterrey in the ashtray to free the loose ash whilst these numbers sank in.

“Half the country wanted to keep the monarchy.”

“Vivere lungo il re[8],” ran like a reflexive ‘Amen’ around the table. I took a draw on my cigar, thinking of something sage to contribute to the conversation. “Well, chaps, you know on which side my bread’s buttered. We’ve got a long tradition of kings and queens where I come from—over a thousand years of ’em. Nothing like a ruling class to keep a country on its toes, that’s what I say.”

“I knew you would feel the same as we,” says Castelnuovo, again leaving me unsure whether his accurate use of the pronoun was intentional or not. “Which is why I know you will help us succeed in our mission.”

“Yes,” says I, drawing out the syllable as I exhaled a stream of rich smoke. “I was hoping you’d enlighten me in that regard. It sounds as though this Papareschi chap—of whom, as an organisation, I gather we are not a fan—has captured someone of importance to you. I assume, since I saw her but an hour ago, that Giuseppina is safe?”

“She is,” says Castelnuovo. I nodded in understanding, grateful that our imminent roll in the hay still seemed to be on the cards.

“So the person in question is a member of your—I mean our—organisation? I should consider him to be my brother?”

Castelnuovo lowered his head gravely. I had rather hoped the answer to that question was going to be a ‘no’.

“And you need him because he performs a key function within your business?”

Castelnuovo took out and lit a match to re-fire his cigar. He waved the small piece of burning wood to extinguish it.

“He will shortly be performing the most important and glorious role this brotherhood could ever hope to bestow.”

“I am intrigued,” says I, looking about at the others in the room. “I would think that you have your strongest and most capable men about you at this very table. If one of them were to be taken from you, I feel sure you would act immediately in retaliation—yet you mentioned this particular task to me a day or so ago. You are taking your time… this meeting, my initiation… What on earth can you be planning?”

Castelnuovo looked me dead in the eye, raising his Monterrey to his lips and grinning reprehensibly.

“Signor Hammersley,” says he, taking a long and extravagant draw from the cigar and exhaling thick smoke up towards the ceiling.

“We are going to reinstate the king of Italy.”

IX

I am, by all and even the most charitable accounts, something of an idle bastard. My school reports were full of hackneyed phrases such as ‘could try harder’; ‘would achieve more if we could keep him awake’; and, of course, the recurring: ‘whilst an interest in astronomy is commendable, since the observatory has been moved behind the girls’ netball courts we have been quite unable to inspire the child with further study, and will invariably find him skipping class and glued to the eyepiece’.

But I digress.

The trick of being a consummate idler is to ascertain in a given set of circumstances the exact amount of effort required to achieve a desired result and to expend precisely that amount and no more. It is quite staggering how few people in the world appreciate this most basic and fundamental of life’s principles.

My heart sank when I heard Castelnuovo’s words—but not because the proposal seemed somewhat fraught and dangerous to my liking. Restoring the king of Italy was undoubtedly an enjoyable way to pass an afternoon, but to be honest it all sounded a little too much like hard work. I had to conceal my natural reaction when he looked over to me, having dropped what he thought, I suppose, to be an impressive bombshell. You see, benevolent reader, my unchecked response to my host’s suggested agenda would have been to hang my head, sigh and respond—like an indolent child on a balmy August afternoon in the firm grip of summer holiday malaise—“must we really?”

Fortunately I managed to suppress the bloody-minded prepubescent within me: I fear I would have caused Castelnuovo displeasure had I given vent to my true feelings on his intended coup d’état.

My exact response escapes me (it’s quite possible I threw the cub scout salute again, I cannot say for sure), but it satisfied Castelnuovo that we were ad idem.

Of course, he wasn’t proposing to reinstate the actual king of Italy, nor even one of His Royal Highness’s direct descendants. He’d hand-picked some unknown character of evidently questionable moral fibre who, to be fair, had met the erstwhile king on one occasion. He’d been about six months old at the time, his father being one of the king’s advisers or otherwise tenuously involved with affairs of state. There had been a photograph of the king leaning over the child’s cradle or something equally saccharine, and in Castelnuovo’s eyes this frankly unconvincing connection qualified the chap to lead the country in a triumphant return to monarchic rule. I subtly queried this plan—how was Castelnuovo going to convince the people, let alone the government, to play along with these grand designs?

“Signor Hammersley, my influences extend only so far. With Papareschi making his presence felt on the mainland, it becomes more difficult every day. He is making his own friends within the government and his authority is slowly increasing. Before long he will succeed in persuading them to take firmer and more open action against my organisation. My bribes will prove futile against his, and he will be all too willing to assist in my downfall.”

Castelnuovo took a final, almost desperate draw on his Monterrey and crushed the end forcefully into the glass ashtray.

“He will not succeed, Signor.”

A murmur of appreciation and defiance ran around the table.

“I have gone to great expense to prepare favourable terms with the authorities of Rome and elsewhere in Italy where there is political strength. They are ready to accept Edoardo Novacco Pisacane as their king, and to take any action necessary to ensure that the Italian people also welcome him with open arms.”

He made it sound so easy. Totalitarianism may be a bugger to pronounce (particularly when drunk), but it was a popular and recurring idea amongst Italy’s ruling classes.

“Papareschi’s influence is not yet insurmountable, and he knows this. But we must act quickly—Papareschi also knows that time is precious over the coming weeks. That is why he took Pisacane when he did.”

Castelnuovo continued to fill me in. The soon-to-be king of Italy had been holed away somewhere obscure and discreet, a location ostensibly known only to Castelnuovo and his most trusted advisers. This had not prevented Papareschi from ascertaining said location and swiping Pisacane as easily as if he’d been two and a half million quid’s worth of hard currency aboard the up special. He’d extracted Castelnuovo’s puppet king with worrying ease and—one must assume—had had him whisked off to some even more obscure, discreet location known solely to Papareschi and his own most trusted advisers. Given the exasperating importance of the enterprise, Papareschi would go to every unspeakable extreme to keep that location secret. Castelnuovo could never hope to discover it.

“Pisacane is being held in a castle on the shores of Lake Geneva, forty miles across the Swiss border.”

Somehow my facial expression remained deadpan. If neither of the two most ruthless and cunning criminal minds in Italy could manage the simple task of keeping this information secret, one had to wonder exactly what were our chances of success—not only of rescuing this Pisacane chap from some impregnable fortress, but then of actually reinstating him as king in a country whose subjects wanted rid of the monarchy and had openly stated as much many years before.

“He is guarded day and night by Papareschi’s men in a room at the top of a tower”—this was beginning to sound like The Prisoner of bleeding Zenda—“I am told that there are fifty men within the castle, such is the importance of this matter to my enemy. Now is the time, whilst Papareschi is occupied with seeking to undermine my influence amongst the leaders of this country—we must act quickly to rescue Pisacane.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it would take more than four Mafia dons and a reluctant Englishman to breach a castle defended by fifty men, each intent on playing havoc with my generally healthy disposition. But I continued to listen politely.

From Castelnuovo’s description the castle in question sounded quite charming. Set in picturesque and rural surroundings, it had been built on a rocky outcrop alongside the banks of Lake Geneva. Its entire rear elevation commanded an impressive view across the lake; the main, anterior façade looked over the ancient road to Italy. Le chateau Chondille was certainly in an isolated and formidable setting, just perfect for the sort of nefarious high jinks that were afoot. It promised to be a hazardous and highly unpredictable outing, set in some of the finest Swiss landscapes available—I made a mental note not to forget my damned camera.

I shan’t bore you with the minutiae of our strategy to extract Pisacane from the clutches of the evil Papareschi horde, which Castelnuovo and my co-conspirators now laid out before me in intricate detail. Suffice to say it wouldn’t go according to plan—such things never do in my experience. I was heartened to hear that the task was not being left to the five of us alone. To spring our surprise attack on the castle, Castelnuovo intended to send only Carlo, Carmine Gaetani and me at the head of ten of his foot soldiers. On escaping from the castle, a trio of fast cars would be waiting near the castle ready to whisk us, along with the newly appropriated Pisacane, back to Rome by alternate and intricate routes.

It all sounded utterly awful. Nevertheless I followed suit when, an hour later, the whole table raised their glasses in a motley collection of toasts, most of which were entirely beyond my comprehension, although I did catch the names of Pisacane and la Cosa Nostra in there somewhere.

“So it is agreed,” says Castelnuovo to the table after a lavish pause. “Soon we shall be drinking to our success and celebrating a new Italian era on your heroic return from Switzerland. We will meet again at midnight on the twelfth, at the Domus Aurea.”

The Domus Aurea, eh? Nero’s ‘Golden House’, a sprawling palace that the emperor had constructed in the aftermath of the great fire of Rome, an ill-judged use of public funds that did little to endear him to the newly homeless and charred populace. The remains of the palace are largely underground, a meandering system of tunnels and chambers that has been closed to the public for many years. (I know this from bitter experience, having attempted to infiltrate the premises one bibulous afternoon spent chasing a group of Convent girls on a school trip that had proved ultimately more educational than my Latin teacher can ever have intended.) To this extent it was the perfect lair for the aspiring megalomaniac: large, intimidating and suitably inaccessible to Joe Public and the authorities. I wondered how long Castelnuovo had been using the place for the furtherance of his nefarious exploits.

Chairs were scraped, hands shaken and good fortune wished all around. As we left the room to return to the party, Castelnuovo put his arm around my shoulder and spoke conspiratorially, confident that what he had to say would be of interest, and to my liking.

“Signor, I know that you will not fail in this mission. Bear in mind that information on the little gold coin which you seek is likely to be found at Chondille. Who knows? Perhaps the coin itself may be there. As your reward I will see to it that, once recovered, the aureus Hadrianus will be yours, so that you may return to your country bathed in the same glory in which you will be leaving ours.”

He flashed his teeth at me again, abominably—I’d sooner have trusted a Scouse salesman. Any aureus that came as a gift from Castelnuovo would scream ‘forgery’ as conspicuously as a nun in a knocking shop.

I smiled innocently back at the Capo, thanking him for his magnanimity, expressed my eagerness for the adventure ahead and then strode off purposefully upstairs to roger his daughter.

Well, it was no less than what he was trying to do to me.

***

There have been very few occasions in my life when I’ve been with a beautiful woman and my mind has not been entirely on the job in hand.

Giuseppina Parelli cannot have been a day over twenty-five years old, but by God and all that is Holy she knew her way around a king size bed. Despite her undeniable talents in the bedroom, my mind did wander a little during our tryst. I tried to banish all thoughts of storming castles and foolhardy rescue attempts and to concentrate on enjoying this fine filly before I awoke to face grim reality once more.

There is something a little disconcerting about being with a woman of Ms Parelli’s age who is so well versed in the arts of carnal jiggery-pokery as to be quite accurately termed a virtuoso. Strictly speaking, a girl of such age should be occupying her leisure time pressing flowers or composing light verse, not studying the Kama Sutra in its most elaborate detail. So when one encounters a young lady such as Giuseppina Parelli, who could run circles around the Marquis de Sade in the realms of sexual deviance, one can’t quite get one’s mind off the fact that she’s probably had more pricks than Act Four of Julius Caesar.

Giuseppina left my room at around three-thirty—sufficiently early to avoid the watchful eye of even the most avid of early risers, but giving us ample opportunity to contribute some innovative Appendices to Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.

I had slept fitfully once again. This was becoming a regular occurrence since I had arrived in Rome. Perhaps Castelnuovo’s household did not have wholly goose down pillows. Certainly his sheets were 100% Egyptian cotton, otherwise I’d have had to have a word in his ear.

The next day was to prove uneventful. During the night, as I lay restless in between bouts of sleep, I had contrived a plan to notify Dante of Castelnuovo’s grand designs. If I could get him a message somehow he would know whom to call, what strings to pull &c. &c. and help get me out of this mess before it kicked off proper. To hell with the blasted aureus Hadrianus. It almost certainly wasn’t worth getting involved in a Mafia war over, and Papareschi was welcome to it. I’d sooner run my chances with Soho Winterburn than take on the combined might of Cosa Nostra, when—lest we forget—the two leading factions were squaring up for what promised to be the hell of a difference of opinion. No, it was wonderfully clear to me—I was better off getting out of Italy on the next available flight, and the sooner I could arrange that exodus, the healthier I would be.

This proved harder than you might imagine. Since sharing with me the innermost secrets of his intended coup, Castelnuovo seemed hell-bent on keeping a peeled eye over my every movement. I opened my bedroom door to find the same pock-marked sentinel parked outside who had been watching over me in the underground cell two days previously. I was happy to see that we were on ostensibly friendlier terms now, the shotgun not making an appearance on this occasion.

I flashed a grin and bade him good morning as I strode past, only to find that he jumped out of his seat and was like a shadow behind me as I approached the stairs. I paused at the top of the stairwell as soon as I felt his presence and turned my head to address him as he brought up the rear.

“Are you trying to wind me up?” says I, or as near as idiomatically possible in Italian—it probably lost a little something in translation.

“Signor Castelnuovo says I am to accompany you today to ensure that your every need is catered for.”

Ha. More likely to ensure I didn’t hightail it for the nearest exit as soon as opportunity presented itself. I couldn’t believe that simply because I was part of his crazed little gang (his damned brother, no less) Castelnuovo was going to start treating me like a priceless treasure—although given the bizarre nature of much that I had seen and heard over the past twenty-four hours, I wouldn’t put it past the bloke.

A thought occurred to me, and my heart leapt into my mouth as I halted mid-step, foot poised over the top stair.

“How long have you been at my door?” says I, my eyebrows knitted.

“I commenced my duties at seven o’clock, Signor.”

Thankfully, long after Giuseppina had sloped off.

“Very good,” says I, innocent as a Pope. “Perhaps you could look into rustling me up some breakfast?”

Then, as an afterthought, as my new companion strolled past me down the stairs, “—but if you think we’re getting you a ticket to the damned opera, you can think again.”

***

Owing to a spot of luck, and at no little cost I might add, I was able to procure three tickets for that evening’s performance of Don Giovanni at the Terme di Caracalla. Somehow my exact specifications were catered for, and I was able to accommodate my new-found friend in row Y, almost as far from Mrs C. and me as was possible within the realms of decency, and well out of eyeshot.

I’d felt nervous as I’d been getting ready for my night at the opera. It was a good nervousness, the sort one normally feels when one is preparing to wine and dine an attractive woman for the first time. The promise of an entire evening of whimsical flirtation and the potential for further, more illicit dalliance if both parties are prepared to show their hands is a formidable cocktail.

I’d eaten a light lunch in readiness for a lavish post-performance—I refer to the opera—evening meal with Signora Castelnuovo, fuelled by some unconscionably overpriced wine at her husband’s expense. And, our cockles thus warmed, who knew to where our banter might lead?

Over the course of the day I had decided to make the most of what time I had left in Rome (and quite possibly on earth). You see, it occurred to me that Castelnuovo had placed me smack bang in the middle of a perfect and very elegant syllogism: I was about to be sent upon a perilous enterprise from which my safe return was open to debate; I would either escape scot-free from said escapade, to be lavished with praise by my new employer and sent home amidst a fanfare of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow, or it would see my plums on a skewer and being paraded about the battlements of some glorified country house in the midst of an idyllic Swiss landscape; the unavoidable conclusion from this pair of facts was that I had nothing to lose from jumping aboard Vittoria Castelnuovo whilst said appendages were still attached to my person. And even if my philosophical thought processes were a little off kilter, that was my line and I was sticking to it—at least this way I had the opportunity of getting up Signora Castelnuovo’s taut petticoats, whatever else chance happened to vomit in my direction.

Sure enough, the evening commenced with Mrs C. and me tiptoeing around each other as if we’d never met. The sexual tension hung alluringly in the air, always the best place for it, both palpable and implicit, gently propagated by me, perceived by the pair of us and openly acknowledged by neither.

Lines were drawn from the off, as soon as we had arrived at the venue and were awaiting admission. I had learned my shadow’s name (Pino, pronounced ‘PINO’, as he was at pains to inform me) and sent him ahead with his own ticket to make polite enquiry as to the availability of ice cream during the interval—aside from my companion this was the only redeeming feature of an evening spent listening to the purposeless warblings of some rotund harridan, as far as I could see.

We paused alongside the desk of the cloakroom attendant, and I disrobed my consort from her lightweight summer coat. To say that Signora Castelnuovo appeared to have been poured into her tight-fitting evening attire would be a discredit to shoehorns. As I handed her jacket to the attendant she did not turn around to face me straight away, but ran her hands down her hips to smooth the fabric of her dress over a backside that was as shapely as a geometrician’s most explicit dreams. She certainly had the body of a woman in her early forties, but there were curves in all the right places and she knew how to make the most of them.

I scanned her up and down and sighed inwardly as I took it all in. It is quite possible that my lips pursed themselves involuntarily. Mrs C. was perfectly aware of the visual effect of her rear profile and seemed happy to play the part of the sultry fille de joie for my benefit.

When she finally turned around it would have been a saint who didn’t look anywhere but dead in her eye, for the inch of cleavage from the previous evening had blossomed and matured into a full frontal assault of pectoral wile. Her décolletage plunged to be met by a heavy, pewter-collared clasp that hovered above that lovely bust as snug as one could wish. From here the neckline continued even further down towards her midriff, finally pausing to catch its breath a couple of inches above the navel. She may have been a mature woman who had carried child, but Mrs C. had retained a firmness to her figure that she knew was second to none. It would make for an interesting study—purely from a scientific point of view, you understand—to ascertain just how firm that figure was.

When Signora Castelnuovo caught my eye I’ll swear she had a knowing smirk on her lips, and that her left eyebrow was arched ever so slightly in response to my obviously delighted reaction to her attire. I was damned if I was going to give her the upper hand so early on.

“I hope you won’t get chilly,” says I, handing our tickets to the attendant for inspection. “Though I’m sure we’ll find some means of keeping you warm.”

“Oh, do not worry about that,” says she, nodding to the cloakroom girl who produced from the inner folds of Mrs C.’s coat a large, aquamarine pashmina that she draped over her shoulders and wrapped around her.

My frustration at losing this first skirmish must have been evident, for my companion suppressed a mischievous grin, her nose wrinkling and one corner of her mouth rising into a tightened curl.

“Perhaps I will let you come under here with me if it gets too cold,” says she.

“I shall look forward to it,” says I in retort, extending my arm to her. She took hold of it and we followed the growing crowds towards the main auditorium.

The Baths of Caracalla (pedants will try to tell you that they are more properly termed the Antonine Baths—they are misguided) are some of the finest ruins to be seen in Rome today. This is of course saying nothing more than that as ramshackle piles of fragmented masonry and rubble go, they’re pretty bloody good, but I would commend such piles to you without hesitation.

A stage had been constructed in the remains of the circular caldarium on the southernmost elevation of the main bath building. Seats had been laid out in a satisfying formation, spreading out in a fan-shaped pattern from this platform into the surrounding peribolos gardens. The evening sun was bright and warm in the sky. In just minutes it would disappear behind the imposing remains of the edifice before us, but the night would be warm and filled with the gentle and rhythmic buzz of cicadas. A range of Mediterranean plants and shrubs surrounded us along the perimeter of the baths’ enclosure: bay laurels, arbutus, box and plane trees were rife, gnarled and dry in the yellowy sunlight, but with lush and verdant canopies; oleander, laurustinus and rose bushes each lent a subtle fragrance to the summer air. As we found our seats and took in this bucolic atmosphere, I felt almost detached from my own body, as if I were witnessing the scene from some remote vantage point in the middle distance of my mind’s eye.

I could just about discern where Pino was sitting, at the far end of the seating arrangements from where we were, but I had to strain my neck in a rather undignified manner. Unless he got up from his seat during the middle of the performance—which would almost certainly cause recriminations from those seated around him; he wasn’t the slimmest of men after all—he would be unable to see Signora Castelnuovo and me unless we moved from our chairs.

The way the evening was progressing, there was no danger of that. Mrs C. and I were getting to know each other rather well, and it wasn’t long before talk evolved from the innocuously flirtatious banter that it is wise to employ with the wife of one’s employer on occasion, to more adventuresome repartee. When the opportunity of such conversation arises with an attractive woman, it is best to seize upon it. Practice makes perfect, after all.

“Signor,” says she, leaning forward and giggling at the observation I’d just made that the gentleman sitting two rows in front and to our left had fallen out of the Ugly Tree, hit every branch on the way down and then climbed back up for another go—“please do not make me laugh so, my mascara will run.”

“I’ll bet all my head to a turnip,” says I, continuing the theme and setting her off again, “that he’s a Frenchman. Actually, from the looks of him he appears to have made a similar bet himself fairly recently—and lost.”

Signora Castelnuovo tried to stifle her sniggering by closing her mouth and clenching her lips tightly together.

“The sad thing is, he’s probably got more hair now.”

My companion started to shake beside me.

“You seem to be shivering,” says I. “Shall I fetch your coat?”

She playfully slapped my thigh, swiftly and sharply, to make me stop.

“Ouch! What was that for?”

“For being a figlio di puttana,” says she, extracting a small, silk handkerchief from her handbag and dabbing her eyes.

“I was merely trying to look out for your good health,” says I. “If you will insist on attending an open air evening concert dressed in such louche attire” (I ensured that she caught my eye as I looked her over, pausing subtly, momentarily on her bust)—I thought quickly and took a risk—“good God, you look deliciously like the very type of woman whose son you accuse me of being.”

It was time to see whether Signora Castelnuovo felt at home in her current garb, or whether she was secretly yearning for that twin set and pearls.

Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped in mock horror and realisation at what I had just said, a reaction immediately persuading me that I’d made the right call and that my gamble had paid off. I feigned wounded innocence, my own eyes as wide as hers—it’s amazing how far mirroring a woman’s expressions can sometimes get you, chaps—before we both broke into giggles once again, aware that our badinage was starting to draw attention.

***

Had I attended school in the Salzburg region around the year 1760 I would not have been fond of a fellow pupil going by the name of W. A. Mozart. A precocious, over-achieving little pillock, I cannot imagine his having made many friends in the classroom. At an age when the young Wolfgang was adding the final flourishes to his first impressive symphonies, I believe I was just about mastering the technique of putting on my trousers unaided, and the correct way round.

Despite being such an objectionable wretch, stories regarding the composition of Don Giovanni make me warm to W.A.M. somewhat. It was, apparently, the ultimate rush job. The man who was court composer to the Austrian Emperor clearly went to the pub for an extended Saturday afternoon binge, momentarily oblivious to the fact that he had omitted to write an entire overture for his new opus, arguably the most important element of the score.

He returned home later that evening, where his wife (an eminently obliging gal) plied him with further alcohol and he worked through the night, only resting his quill as the sun’s rays announced the arrival of dawn, the day of the premiere. His nocturnal scrawlings were swept up and raced to the printers. Some fourteen hours later the newly-copied music was set upon the stands in the Prague Estates Theatre, the ink barely dry on the crisp sheets, and the orchestra struck up the fanfare as they worked their way through a score that not one of them had seen before.

Quite whether this story is to be believed is a matter open to debate. Mozart may have propagated the rumours so that people would dislike him less. Certainly, I find it very hard to accept—in my experience I’ve not encountered a single tradesman who’s ever started a day’s work much before 11 o’clock of a morning, and to have even one of the buggers up at sunrise to print enough copies of an opera score for an entire orchestra stretches the bounds of credibility that little too far. But the Continent is a foreign country—God knows, they do things differently there.

As I sat in the grounds of Caracalla’s baths, enjoying the warm breeze, the blanket of stars spread across the gunmetal sky and the sensation of Signora Castelnuovo’s knee gently touching my own, I ruminated on the themes of the opera as it unfolded on the stage. So far as I could tell, the storyline revolved around some womanizing idiot shambling about the place trying to avoid the husbands, lovers and fiancés of various women he’d been galloping. It involved seduction, murder, chases and a whole bucketful of lewd impropriety. A list of the chap’s conquests included 640 women in Italy, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey and 1,003 in Spain. Well, if you’ve been to Turkey, you’ll know that those numbers aren’t a bad crack.

In amongst all these mischievous romps and grisly attempts at vengeance, as you will recall, Don Giovanni is twice given the opportunity to repent for his unrighteous ways in the final act, but obstinately refuses. The music swells in an almighty crescendo and our man is engulfed in a hideous fireball of flame on stage before the audience’s very eyes. Even though they all know the ending, it still affects and binds them in some deep-seated, unspoken kinship. The moral of the story is patently obvious, so I’m told: the death of a philandering sinner always reflects his life.

I shifted a little uncomfortably in my seat and slipped a hand under Signora Castelnuovo’s thigh, just above the knee. She responded by taking hold of my fin and moving it away from this intimate nook, guiding it instead onto the top of her leg. She kept her hand on mine in this innocent pose. On a couple of occasions I was able to run my fingers gently over her smooth skin, and she responded promisingly, teasing her index finger over the top of my hand. I didn’t want to push my luck too far in such public surroundings, so did not make any further, more daring advances at this stage. Those could wait a little longer—and if my nerve held out.

Despite such shenanigans, Signora Castelnuovo and I did not once make eye contact with each other during the first act. When the interval came, we took our places in the standing ovation that accompanied the departure of the cast backstage. I turned to my companion, placing my hand on her waist and leaning in to whisper in her ear that I was excusing myself to drop by the conveniences. She interrupted her clapping and leaned in to catch my words, then smiled her acknowledgement, wrinkling that pretty nose once more, and I whisked myself off to the facilities to reflect upon what damned card I should play next.

On my way I passed within throwing distance of Pino. I nodded an acknowledgement in response to his holding up two small tubs of ice cream, his fat face already swelled from a mouthful of the stuff. I looked at him disapprovingly as I flitted past the growing horde of cooing audience members pouring out from the seating area and made my way towards the little painted sign of a stick man in all its gender-neutral simplicity.

I was there ahead of most of the crowd and made sure to take my time to emphasise the point. As I sauntered back in the direction of the caldarium I lingered awhile gazing out over the ancient exercise yard, the palaestra, to the east of the stage area. I took a second to enjoy this brief moment of solitude and breathed deeply, trying to ignore nagging thoughts of what lay ahead over the coming days. I took out my pipe and filled it with tobacco, striking a match and firing the bowl as I strode around the palaestra towards what used to be the central hall of the baths.

This part of the ruins was deserted, and I walked slowly through, enjoying my pipe and contemplating my burgeoning relationship with a certain Mafia don’s wife.

I ducked under a rope and walked behind the frigidarium, gazing through into the central space whence filtered the intermittent noise of the cast as they changed costume during the interval. It was not until I reached the north-eastern corner of these quiet central chambers, standing alongside the opposing palaestra and what used to be small changing rooms at the back of the bathing complex, that I heard footsteps on the parched gravel, and a voice belonging to a crass and unsophisticated American came from the shadows behind me.

“Good evening, Mr Hammurslee.”

An East coast accent, probably New York. I cursed the atrocious misspelling of the patronymic, which bordered on the criminal. I turned to greet this halfwit, but when I saw the figure emerging from the darkness I slowly raised my hand to my mouth and extracted my pipe in something approaching genuine stupefaction.

“You seem surprised to see me,” says Carmine Gaetani, putting his hands into his pockets and kicking aside a pebble with one of his rubber-soled shoes. “I can understand that.”

He took a step closer. I still could not quite believe my eyes. I tried to recall whether I had ever heard him speak before now, but of course I had not. Aside from the note in my pocket the previous evening, Mr Gaetani (I could drop the Signor pretence now) had been a man of limited words. Listening to him now, his former reticence had been no bad thing.

“Listen, Harry, I don’t mean to be rude, but we gotta talk fast. We ain’t got much time. We got ourselves a goddam f––-off serious situation here which we need to unf–– right now.”

It was like talking to a Glasgow docker. Of course, he pronounced certain words in the ridiculous manner that only an American can truly achieve: ‘situation’ became ‘sid-oo-ay-shun’ &c. &c. I cannot bring myself to transcribe the infractions here fully, it vexes me so. I do find people for whom English is not a first language, such as the Americans, deeply trying.

“Okay, Harry.”

He moved forward, hand extended. I put my pipe back into my mouth, as much to give my jaw something to do as anything else, and accepted his paw, looking blankly at him.

“Let’s start over. My name’s Shanks. Armitage Shanks. I work for the CIA.”

An American agent. Who’d have thought?

“I have an acquaintance with a Miss Kimberly Clark—you should meet,” says I.

He shifted his features into a configuration that apparently he considered to be a smile, but did not acknowledge the reference. Almost immediately the expression dropped from his face like a guillotine blade.

“Okay, let’s quit f––ing the dog. Christ, you sure got yourself into something, huh? We’re stuck here,” he gestured to the surroundings dramatically, “in the middle of Bumf––, Egypt, about to get f––ed in the ass by a bunch of greasy-headed wops. And you went an’ signed up to the f––ing gang! Christ, Harry, what the hell were you thinking?!”

Quite why the man persisted in calling me Harry, I don’t know.

“We gotta deal with this situation as soon as f––ing possible, or we’ll be properly French-f––ed. I take it you’re here on government orders?”

I blinked and nodded my acknowledgement, trying to figure out how I should address this chap. Sometimes Debrett’s really does let one down.

“Nice of you boys to let us know. Christ. Listen,” he shuffled a foot forward by way of emphasis, looked away for inspiration, evidently found it and returned his intense gaze to mine, “we been working on this Castelnuovo guy for two years. Two f––ing years! And we’re this close to nailing the guy’s ass. The last thing we need is you Limey bastards coming in and messing things up.”

He put his hands on his hips, thought twice about that and felt inside his jacket pocket for a crumpled packet of Marlboro cigarettes. Extracting one, he fairly flung it into his mouth with impressive aptitude. He offered me the pack, but I declined politely, indicating my pipe.

“Christ, it’s good to meet you, Hammurslee—I ain’t seen a friendly face in two f––ing years.” He lit his cigarette and pocketed the lighter. “Hey, you don’t say much, do ya?”

I gestured helplessly with my hand, searching for something to contribute.

“Well, no matter. We gotta figure out what the Christ we’re gonna do about this guy’s plans for world domination. The Agency’s giving me a hell of a pain in the ass. And now we gotta fly the f––ing flag in some goddam Swiss kidnapping. Je-sus!”

I nodded austerely by way of agreement, wondering what sort of medication this chap was on, and where I could get some.

“You gotta appreciate, Harry: you come to Italy, you’re surrounded by a f––load of no-good, stinking, lousy shysters. We gotta nab this guy before he pushes the f––ing button, otherwise we’ll have a first-rate f––-up on our hands. King of Italy, my ass. I been to three county fairs and a goat-f––ing, but I ain’t never seen the likes of this before now. Who’s he think he is, Malcolm f––ing X?”

He shrugged and pulled his face into a frown. “Hey, f–– ’em all but six. They can use them for pallbearers.”

He took a prolonged drag on his cigarette and nodded up to me.

“What the hell you got planned?”

I tried to persuade Mr Shanks that my intentions were strictly honorable (sic, the bastard), and that we were singing from the same page.

“Well, f–– me, we better be. When… if we make it into that goddam castle, we better be damned sure we don’t put a foot wrong. We gotta look out for each other, Harry, or we’ll be looking down the wrong end of a dry f—.”

I wasn’t sure I quite understood the analogy. He extracted his cigarette and looked me dead in the eye, gesturing with his filter tip.

“You better be damned sure of yourself too—we’re dealing with the big boys here, Harry. I see you, f––ing around with his goddam daughter. You better watch your step, that’s all I’m saying. She may be sweet as a f––ing nut, but she sure as hell ain’t worth getting your f––ing balls trampled.”

He stopped twitching for a moment and held my gaze with an icy stare.

“Hey, Harry, in case you hadn’t noticed: you don’t challenge the Mafia; you don’t try to fool the Mafia; you generally don’t f–– with the Mafia.”

I assured him that my feelings on the matter very much mirrored his own. I looked the man up and down. He was wearing a rather nasty, check-patterned sports jacket (double-breasted again—I swear there’s a fortune to be made by whoever opens the first American tailor’s), over a pair of dismally charcoal trousers. The brown, rubber-soled shoes were back, with a vengeance, but at least they made no noise on the gravel. Either Mr Shanks was harking back to an age when such clothing items were in vogue—thank the Lord for progress, that’s all I say—or he was trying to anticipate future fashion trends in some bravely pioneering way. I suppose it is also possible that he simply got dressed in the dark that morning.

“Oh yeah, Harry, I got something here that’ll make you f––ing smile.”

His cigarette quivered in his mouth as he spoke, and he hunched a shoulder and reached into his front trouser pocket. A small plastic bag was produced, out of which, using his thumb and his index finger, he extracted a gold coin. It gleamed in a shaft of light and winked fleetingly, brilliantly, into my eyes.

The aureus Hadrianus.

“Heard you boys were after this little thing. Ain’t that just hotter than a Persian f––?”

He twirled it between his fingers and smirked impishly. I confirmed the elevated status of the artefact.

“Now where on earth did you get that?” I asked, managing to string together a sentence that wasn’t a non sequitur for the first time since our meeting.

“My boys picked up one of Papareschi’s goombahs this morning at a drugs bust in Trastevere. The f––ing fool was on his way to his boss to deliver it when we pounced. What a f––in’ moron.”

He flicked the coin into the air and caught it in the same hand.

“You f––ing guys been looking for this some time, no?”

I nodded slowly. The noise of the crowds enjoying their interval drinks, and the giggles and tomfoolery of the cast as they changed costumes drifted over to us from behind partially collapsed walls to our right.

“Well f–– me if we ain’t bailing you out again, huh?” He grinned and made as if to toss the coin to me. “Just like the f––ing old times…”

There was a momentary flash of light from the shadows to my left, and the muffled sound of a silenced pistol resonated—DJYEW!—from across the small courtyard.

My companion folded in half as if he’d been struck in the midriff by a steam piston, his sentence never to be completed and his mouth twisted into a horrifying grimace of surprise, pain and fear. The coin spilled from his hand and fell, almost in slow motion, to the ground, along with the dying frame of Armitage Shanks. His body twitched once and then relaxed into an eternal and awkward slumber. The background noise of an interval during a night at the opera continued to play out gently in the background.

When I heard the shot I had instinctively ducked into a crouch and was planning to dive headlong for more substantial cover. It was, of course, utterly pointless. A handful of dark figures emerged from the shadows of the crumbling rubble within a second of the shooting, and any number of bullets could have riddled me like an Emmental if such had been their intention. I stood up fully and brushed myself down, maintaining an outwardly confident mien while inside my guts were dancing. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the aureus glinting in the gravel by my feet. I turned slightly to get a better view of the new arrivals, moving an inch or so closer to where the coin lay.

“I’m not a fan of blue language myself,” says I, bending over to check the American’s pulse, and subtly scooping up the coin as I rose from his body, “but that was a little extreme, no?”

I didn’t recognise any of the men. There were three of them, all clad in black, a pair brandishing pistols, t’other now walking forward to address me for the first time.

“I will take the gold coin, Signor. Thank you for retrieving it for us and for being so kind as to place your fingerprints on it.”

He held out a small pouch into which I was prompted to place the coin. I looked at him reproachfully (much good that did me), and deposited the aureus as bidden.

“We wish only to talk with you, Signor. Do not be afraid.”

I glanced at him from under my brows, peered around at the pair of shooters and gave him a look intended to divulge that I wasn’t born yesterday.

“We are here on behalf of Signor Francesco Papareschi,” says the ringleader, walking towards me and looking at the body on the ground. When he was alongside he looked me in the face and smiled. A gold tooth flashed from within the corner of his mouth.

“We were about to take a short walk. Perhaps you would care to accompany us?”

He gestured with his hand, and one of the pistol carriers moved a pace closer. I chewed my lip and looked at him askance. As I stepped over the body of the man I had known as Carmine Gaetani, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret at his untimely demise. He’d been the closest thing I’d had to a friend in the circumstances, despite his damned shoes.

“F––ed by the fickle finger of fate,” says I quietly to myself as I was led away into the darkness.

X

My father was the kind of man who would always address London taxi drivers as ‘cabby’ to their faces, without any apparent hint of irony or embarrassment. He maintained that American Independence had ‘never really happened’, averred that the period between the First and Second World Wars was ‘intensely boring’, and once got into a fight with a Frenchman who had failed to rise from his seat in a public house when ‘God Save the Queen’ had come on the wireless.

He had, however, also given me an invaluable piece of advice from his wartime days: when a man with a gun asks you to do something, you will find that your life is so much more enjoyable if you comply without question.

I did so now, and the leader of the three assassins guided me ahead of his pals brandishing the shooters to a remote spot in the undergrowth at the far north-eastern corner of the outer precinct. There, beyond the sight of anyone who might be wandering the grounds, I was offered a seat on a large piece of weathered masonry that in happier times no doubt had seen many an illicit dalliance amongst the ancient shrubbery.

I felt uncomfortable, looking up at my captors like a schoolboy who’s been caught with his hands somewhere inappropriate, not to mention a little perturbed by the sudden appearance of yet more dark-clad men who would shoot a chap as readily as say ‘good evening’ to him. It seemed not unlikely that they had been lurking about the place all evening. I hoped they had not been sitting within view of Signora Castelnuovo and me during the first Act. I wondered whether I should ask them.

“Signor Hammersley, you are perhaps wondering why we felt it necessary to, ah, dispose of your friend Signor Shanks.”

Yes, that was a far safer question for the time being. The longer I could keep them off the topic of my inappropriate opera companion, the less complicated our conversation would be. Nevertheless, I wasn’t sure of the wisdom in confessing to Papareschi’s men that I’d been fraternizing with the CIA. I would have to tread softly here. Choose your words carefully, Hammersley.

“I wouldn’t describe him as a friend, old stick—only just met the man. He was looking for the gents, would you believe it? Out here with the wife and caravan, driving down to the Amalfi Coast and got lost en route.”

My inquisitor smiled and looked away, back towards the palaestra.

“Signor, please do not try to mislead me with your English ‘humour’.”

He looked back at me with a sweeping turn of his neck and held my gaze.

“You have witnessed for yourself how well the noise of the theatre masks a silenced gunshot within what is left of these walls. You would do well to remember it.”

The threat was explicit and unpleasant enough to put a dampener on the conversation and stay my creative flow. I refuse to look sheepish in even the most trying circumstances, but I must confess to having felt a little of the agneau in the face of such efficient one-upmanship.

“We are very aware that Signor Shanks was a member of the American intelligence services,” says he. “This is no news for us.”

He shrugged and slotted his right thumb inside his waistband, around the belt.

“We are also aware of your increasing intimacy with the Family of Antonino Castelnuovo.”

One of the others grunted a scornful snigger—from the corner of my eye I saw his head shift with the movement, and snapped a look at him.

I wasn’t sure whether the leader intended the capital ‘F’ on the word ‘family’, but I liked to think that he did. With it in place, the reference was anaesthetized to meaning Castelnuovo’s criminal organisation, the Family comprising Alessandro, Carlo, Vince Spaghetti et al. Without it, was there a subtle, pointed allusion to Vittoria Castelnuovo?

I tried to read the man’s face, but he betrayed not the faintest sign of emotion. Perhaps I was being overly sensitive. Perhaps irony was beyond this particular Mafioso. Perhaps he, too, was an American.

“My employer, Francesco Papareschi, has asked me to deliver a message to you. We are both adults, Signor, both men of honour, no?”

I looked about me at the two clowns carrying the shooters, then back at the speaker, frowning with sarcastic inquisitiveness.

“So I may speak plainly with you?”

He leaned forward, putting a well-heeled and leather-soled hoof upon the stone where I sat. His foot was encased in a rather nice Chelsea boot, polished to perfection and finished with an elegant wingtip toe and decorative needlepoint perforations. There was no question about it—the man had style.

“Your presence in Rome is a source of concern for Signor Papareschi. He is not happy that you have become involved in events. He is a man well in favour of free enterprise, but on this occasion he has a particularly… strong desire that you disappear from the scene.”

The pause and the carefully chosen vocabulary were enough to convince me that Papareschi’s spokesman was not misrepresenting his employer.

“Signor Papareschi is not an unreasonable man.”

“Perish the thought,” says I, beginning to like the chap.

“He is prepared to grant you forty-eight hours to leave the city without incurring his displeasure. There will be no ill feeling between you, and no dishonour on your part.”

From the main auditorium area came the sound of a bell ringing. The second Act was about to commence.

I slapped my hands on my thighs.

“Your employer sounds an eminently sensible man, and his offer is most magnanimous. I must ask, however—I have many goodbyes to make, and various errands to complete in the city before I return to England. What if my departure is delayed by an hour or so beyond the forty-eight?”

Papareschi’s agent narrowed his features and squinted his eyes in an anguished expression.

“My life will be considerably less enjoyable?”

“Esatto[9], Signor,” says he, with a chilling smile.

***

Faced with such circumstances, when the Gods are defecating on my parade from an impressive height and it looks as if my lot cannot get much worse even if I willed it, I find there is usually only one thing that can cheer me up: a long and leisurely lunch in the company of an attractive woman with a magnificent bosom.

When I’d returned to Signora Castelnuovo the previous evening, I’d managed somehow to put on a show of normality. Our flirtation had continued as innocently as before, but I found myself scanning the shadows around the peribolos gardens every so often to see if Papareschi’s men were still on the prowl.

After the opera I had escorted Mrs C. home, under the watchful gaze of the ever-present Pino, and given her an innocent kiss on the cheek at the front door of Castelnuovo’s house. She smelled divine, and I gave her backside a playful but gentle squeeze in the darkness as I leaned in to say goodnight. She smiled back at me, wide-eyed and wanton, and in such state I left her to simmer and returned to my room for a lukewarm shower. They are so much more effective than any cold equivalent.

Suitably refreshed, I drafted a quick note to Giuseppina to meet me the next day for a late morning apéritif at one of those expensive bars down the Via della Pace, followed by an extended lunch at a restaurant of her choosing. I then proposed to spend the lion’s share of the evening, my last night of freedom (or as near to the concept as I could enjoy in Castelnuovo’s pad), thoroughly besmirching Giuseppina Parelli’s character and continuing her education in the ways of righteousness and probity.

Before I went to bed, I made sure that I set my Browning .38 subtly to one side, together with the two extra magazines and the box of Parabellum cartridges, so that I would not omit packing them. We were to leave at first light for Switzerland the next day, and I wanted to ensure that important articles such as my dependable pistol were secreted about my person before Alessandro et al. came to collect me. I was to be given a choice of various spiteful-looking firearms as part of our farcical mission, but there was as little chance of my not taking the Browning as there was of my pulling a certain gold coin from my own anus.

The following morning, as I walked with him through the city to meet Giuseppina, I thought long and hard on how I could lose Pino for the remainder of the day. His presence over lunch would be as welcome as a pork pie at a bar mitzvah, and the proposed afternoon’s activities were very much a private party to which he was not invited.

My mind was drawing a blank, however. Short of arranging for the man to be knocked on the head (and the thought of engaging my friend il Furbo and his larrikin companions did enter my mind), there was no obvious answer.

I needn’t have worried. When we met Giuseppina, she was a vision of the utmost loveliness to which I had by now grown accustomed. She was dolled up like the barber’s cat, and when she entered the establishment where she had kept Pino and me waiting for almost twenty minutes, all heads turned towards her, admiring the cut of her cloth and the way that she wore it.

Pino broke into a cold sweat and started twitching in his seat as if he had a colony of ants in his tweeds. Giuseppina spotted us from across the bar and luxuriated in the walk to our table amidst the wanton gazes of folk who didn’t know her, but wished to heaven that they did (and that included the women).

As she glided towards us Pino attempted to retain his composure by reaching for his drink, but managed to fumble the glass and throw it all over himself. At least his incompetence must have cooled him down a little.

I did a double-take at these theatricals as I lifted my own glass to my lips.

“Are you perfectly all right there, old chap?”

He leaned over to pick up the glass from the floor, widening his legs so that his belly would fit in between, just as Giuseppina arrived at our table. He paused as her delicately painted toenails and shapely calves came into his view and the man visibly gulped before drawing himself up to his full height, which wasn’t very impressive. I believe his eyeline came to just about level with Giuseppina’s cleavage, which was all very well for him, but hardly painted a picture of the ruthless type of rogue that Castelnuovo must have looked for in his henchmen.

He stared fleetingly down her top, his gaze held in a mesmerizing trance, and then stammered as he offered her his seat, stumbling backwards over a chair in his haste to make way.

Giuseppina treated him with a charming demeanour, smiling with almost maternal tenderness, though never patronisingly so. When she was sure he wasn’t looking, her smile would spread more broadly across her face and she would share a wicked glance with me as we quietly laughed, ever so benignly, at a man who had clearly fallen so head-over-heels in love with Giuseppina Parelli as not to know his earhole from his arsehole.

I made an anguished face at her, knitting my brow and gesturing with my nose towards the door, indicating with a brief look that our afternoon would be more enjoyable with the hapless Pino elsewhere. Giuseppina possessed a kind of Orphean sway over the chap that was sure to bring about the desired effect if given the appropriate encouragement.

A request for Pino to collect a package on Giuseppina’s behalf was declined with, I must say, the utmost regret and tugging of forelock.

“I am sorry, Signorina Parelli—your father has given me strict instructions, to protect Signor Hammersley and watch over him until tonight. They leave for Switzerland tomorrow, as you know.”

Giuseppina looked over to me without turning her head from Pino. I opened my eyes wider and prompted her with a nod to intensify her efforts. She repositioned herself in her seat to face Pino more directly in a motion that made her breasts swing freely within her top. My favourite eyebrow hoist itself involuntarily.

“But Pino,” says she, employing all her feminine wile, “this package is especially important to me. I would not ask just anybody to collect it. I have reserved a set of fine silk underwear in a boutique on the Via del Corso, and if it is not collected by two o’clock the shopkeeper will not hold it for me. It is such a beautiful set too, with the loveliest garters and bra.”

Giuseppina sighed and looked pained, as if realising an added element to the favour she was asking that she acknowledged was unreasonable. She was a marvellous actress—which was a little disconcerting, if you get my drift.

“I would, however, unfortunately also have to ask you to confirm that the set is the correct fit. It so happens that the shopkeeper has an assistant who is exactly my size and shape and is happy to model her wares for a customer’s benefit, particularly husbands and boyfriends who struggle with such things. Goodness, Signor,” says she, turning to me, “I feel a little… exposed. For if a man wanted to see what I looked like in my undergarments, he need only ask this lady to try on some of the pieces—so much does she look like me.”

Well, Pino damned near fell off his chair in his haste to get out of the door.

“You’ll need the address of the shop, no, old boy?” asks I, mischievously.

Pino halted himself in his tracks, and Giuseppina handed a card up to him without taking her eyes away from mine.

“You are a darling, Pino—I shall be sure to tell my father of your undying loyalty.”

“Thank you, Signorina. I am obliged,” says he, breathless and fumbling.

And then he was off, in a whirlwind of cheap suit.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man move so quickly,” says I, grabbing hold of my glass and sweeping over to Giuseppina with an impertinent glissando.

“You are an awful flirt, you know,” says I, draining my G&T and looking her up and down.

“It’s one of your more endearing qualities.”

***

Giuseppina Parelli was a woman of the utmost good taste. Ample proof of this has already been furnished from her choice of bed colleague, I trust.

For lunch she had selected the only truly habitable hotel in Rome, the Excelsior, smack in the middle of the fashionable Via Veneto district of the city. Despite being within spitting distance of the American Embassy, the hotel’s interior décor manages to elevate itself to the high standards of the old Empire (British, naturally—was there really ever any other?). Gilt finishes abound at every turn; the carpets are thick, the drapes ostentatious and the staff so proper and efficient in the execution of their duties that they border on discourtesy. Elaborate chandeliers, antique clocks and vintage walnut furniture adorn every room, and bathrooms are kitted out in marble. As we breezed through the entrance lobby it felt as if we had arrived home.

We were led through to and seated in the main restaurant, where a menu heavier than the Rosetta Stone was placed in my hands by a waiter whose collar had been starched to such perfection that his neck appeared entirely shrivelled within.

We ordered our food—ravioli with pumpkin and shrimp sauce, then herb and mustard crusted loin of lamb with artichokes and parmesan cheese for me; a light insalata caprese followed by millefeuille of Catalan lobster for Giuseppina—and within minutes were enjoying an insolent Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Pauillac 1er Cru Classé.

Only then, as I sat back in my seat, admiring my surroundings and with not a thought of Swiss castles in my mind, did it occur to me that the Excelsior was the very hotel in which Arbuthnot had organised for me to be billeted during my stay. The afternoon was looking marvellous already, but now evolved into a truly splendid occasion: an opulent suite was available after the feast that we awaited. I hoped that I would not be so replete as to forestall my other, more intemperate appetite, which is perhaps by now better known to you, empathetic reader.

I grabbed my wine glass and let it dangle from my hand, leaning forward onto the table and momentarily looking down Giuseppina’s top as she reciprocated the stance opposite me.

“If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell your father?” says I, realising for the first time that I was ever so slightly, hog-whimperingly drunk.

My lunch companion smiled seductively, similarly oiled. She traced a perfectly manicured finger across her chest, twice, in the form of a cross, the little minx.

“I ran into a couple of Papareschi’s men in town yesterday. They gave me the impression that I was not a welcome guest here.”

Giuseppina curled her nose in obvious contempt and narrowed her eyes with disgust. She flung down her wine glass onto the table with such force that a drop jumped over the rim and landed on her wrist. Then she began to shake with barely controllable laughter, giggling with her white teeth bared and her eyes creased. She, too, was wrecked.

“Che bastardo,” says she, with venom, and in between sniggers. “I will kill the pig myself. Hee!”

The ridiculous notion tickled us both, and we stared at each other in fits of hysteria, both red in the face from laughing. Giuseppina glanced at her arm and scooped the droplet of wine from her skin with a swift flick of an index finger.

“What did they say to you? Snirk…!” This at a higher pitch than her usual timbre on account of the tittering.

I shrugged manfully, though I have been quite unable to master the technique as I would like, particularly when almost incapacitated from the diaphragm up by nothing less than unadulterated chortling.

“The usual nonsense,” I snorted in mockery and disdain, “‘be out of the city within forty-eight hours’ and all that piffle. This Papareschi chap—he really intends to take your father’s crown, doesn’t he, heh hee hee?!”

My shoulders shook with the efforts of our drunken mirth, and I struggled to put a forkful of the lamb into my mouth. Giuseppina’s chin dropped to her chest and she looked up at me, trying to prevent her mascara from running, mouth open as if her teeth had been glued to her lips.

It was a pleasant way to spend a luncheon, for sure, and I was able to ignore the troubled waters that lay ahead. Little did I know that my paddle was made of rock salt and disintegrating before my unwitting eyes, and that my canoe, hitherto untested by anything more furious than the gentle laps of nature’s lightest currents, was about to be struck by a tsunami straight from Satan’s cesspit.

Giuseppina and I continued to giggle and titter our way through the entrées (I attempting to maintain a gentlemanly demeanour for the sake of propriety, and damn near achieving it). She looked divine when she laughed, a look of mischievous intent in her eye, and the promise of an amorous afternoon in store.

I took the wine and reached over to fill her glass, as she sat back in her chair and chuckled quietly. But then her face lost something of its gay abandon and her eyes lifted over my shoulder, the look of genuine amusement fading from her face and being replaced by a polite inquisitiveness that is customary when greeting an unfamiliar guest.

I turned in my chair, smirking, as a hand gently gripped my shoulder. I gazed up into a face that had heralded pain, suffering and misery to countless wretched souls before now, and would be pleased to make no exception in my case.

“Good afternoon, Hammersley, my dear friend,” says Mr Francis ‘Soho’ Winterburn.

***

There is an expression one automatically makes in such situations, when one receives an almighty shock in the middle of working one’s way through a plate of herb and mustard crusted loin of lamb. I made it then, looking up at that benign, almost grandfatherly face, my lips curled back from my teeth in a very undignified and cowering manner, exposing a half-chewed mass of artichoke in the corner of my mouth.

“I trust you are enjoying your meal—I hear the lobster is excellent at this time of year.”

Winterburn helped himself to a fresh glass and filled it with wine.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

He seated himself without waiting for an answer, apparently managing to slide out a chair, settle his behind and cross his legs with an elegant sweep, all in the same movement. He turned to Giuseppina, leaning forward in his seat with a charming air, and extended his hand towards her.

“I don’t believe we’ve met, my dear—Francis Winterburn. I am an old friend of your, ah…?”

He looked to me for a prompt, raising his eyebrows and tapping the palm of his hand on his thigh. Camp as a boy scouts’ jamboree, he was, but harder than a nine-inch nail driven through a concrete post. A volatile and nasty coincidence of traits.

I repositioned the artichoke into the middle of my mouth and swallowed it, then calmly reached for my own glass, raised it in acknowledgement of our new guest and took a sip. Remembering my already drunken state and the need to keep on my toes, I replaced the glass on the table with a minimum of spillage.

“What a pleasant surprise, Mr Winterburn. And a happy coincidence—I was just telling Giuseppina Parelli here how I must drop by soonest on my return to London. I expect to be home in three or four days and you will be my very first visit, I assure you. After my bank manager, of course.”

I laughed, hoping he would follow suit and we would be united in a touching moment of shared humour. Instead he continued to regard me with eyebrows raised, the difficult swine.

I looked at Giuseppina. The laughter had evaporated from her face as if it had never been there, and she looked from Winterburn to me, smiling serenely and with an assured air of confidence about her. She was a rare gal indeed.

Winterburn held my gaze, but addressed Giuseppina.

“Is this so, my dear? And what did Mr Hammersley tell you about his visit to me?”

I felt a prickling on the back of my neck, but continued to smile. I had of course not told Giuseppina about Winterburn, nor of my debt to him, and I wondered with genuine interest, and not a little apprehension, what she would say.

“Signor Hammersley has spoken very highly of you, Signor Winterburn. He regrets being in debt, particularly to someone whom he holds in such high esteem. Do not worry, though—he is soon to become a rich man. You will not be long without your money.”

She knew me well. The fact that she could charm the pants off a priest cannot have harmed my cause.

“Can we get you some food?” asks Giuseppina, as bewitchingly as a Bedouin belly dancer.

Winterburn regarded her for a moment and then laughed heartily. I cut another slice of the lamb and tried to gather my thoughts. He must have thought it worth his while coming out to Rome in person. That didn’t strike me as being a very good thing. The bastard must have been watching the hotel for the past few days. Or have had it watched.

A large man walked past me towards Winterburn, right on cue. A jacket that looked as if it had been cut to fit a rhino enveloped his back, and his shoulders spread like a bank vault’s doors from a neck the size of a pillar box.

“Ah, Sergeant Furnell—what good timing, as ever. The charming Giuseppina Parelli was just telling me how our friend Mr Hammersley is soon to become a very rich man. Our arrival appears to have been most propitious.”

A perfectly laundered waiter appeared from nowhere and ushered Furnell into a chair beside me. The service really was abysmally efficient. The policeman sat with a soupçon of discomfort, like an elderly man, lowering himself as if with a walking stick.

Furnell looked at me. No adverb can sufficiently qualify the act. I wondered who would write my epitaph and whether they would ensure that ‘satyagrahi’[10] had been spelt correctly.

“Perhaps some of this delicious wine will help ease your pain, Sergeant,” says Winterburn.

He clicked his fingers, a fresh wine glass appeared in his hand within seconds and he poured a generous measure for his aide, who had, presumably, been staked outside the hotel for the past few days, awaiting my arrival. He must have started to give up hope, and wouldn’t have believed his luck when I’d strolled up for lunch without a care in the world and then proceeded to get sufficiently sizzled to render any likelihood of escape wholly obsolete. I cursed my stupidity in leaving the details of the hotel on my mantelpiece back in London.

“The good Sergeant still suffers from an injury inflicted in the course of his duties some years ago. Isn’t it terrible to what extremes the criminal underclass will sink in their attempts to evade justice?”

This last comment he directed at me, sitting back in his chair and folding his hands in his lap. He gently rolled his thumbs over each other.

Giuseppina sat quaffing her wine, seemingly sober. I found it difficult to look Sergeant Furnell in the eye, but nodded manfully in his direction in acknowledgement of his plight.

“Now, Mr Hammersley, you must share with us details of your impending good fortune. Tell me, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the aureus Hadrianus, would it?”

It is possible that I rolled my eyes, slumped forward onto the table and started to weep (although Giuseppina tells me that I did not). It seemed as if the world and his cousin were on the look-out for this damned coin. My knowledge of economics is scant, but if so many people were after such a rare commodity, presumably that would raise the price of the thing. My heart sank in direct proportion. To think that I had it in my hand so recently.

I composed myself and chanced my arm, subtly and with trepidation.

“I had no idea you were so interested in classical antiquities, Mr Winterburn?”

Winterburn looked at me without expression.

“There was a time, Mr Hammersley, when the only subjects one could read at a British university were classics and theology. We ruled half the world, then.”

I may have owed the man eight grand; he may have been as psychotic as a sackful of sore-headed snakes; but I found myself warming to him ever so slightly.

“Half a million pounds, eh? I’ll bet you nearly fell on the floor when Basil Benham told you that. Or were you already there, drunk on the contents of that fat fool Arbuthnot’s hip flask?”

The aureus; Benham; Arbuthnot and his damned brandy. Winterburn seemed to know the hell of a lot about the scene at Oxford police station that had seen me shanghaied into this whole debacle. I wondered how.

I looked at Winterburn. Somewhere to my left a waiter cleared a table. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came of it. I closed it again, quite impotent. Winterburn spoke through a smile that indicated genuine pleasure. Such facial expressions are rare.

“You are wondering how we know such detail of your time with Major Arbuthnot? How delicious! Do you see that, Sergeant? We have managed to befuddle Mr Hammersley. One would have thought a man such as he, so familiar with Oxford police station, would know of the many and various methods of aural surveillance employed there. Why, some of the most unexpected confessions have been overheard through ventilation shafts and hollow walls adapted for the eavesdropper’s peculiar art.”

Winterburn shrugged with his mouth and chin. The look is familiar to you, I am sure.

“I have never understood such underhand inquisitive-ness myself. If I wish to know something from a man, I ask him directly. This simple procedure has not failed me yet.”

Giuseppina looked over to me with a blank face. She had picked up on the subtle implications of Winterburn’s words. I reached out with my foot under the table and ran the top of my shoe over her calf to reassure her.

Winterburn made an exaggerated effort of looking at his watch.

“Goodness, Sergeant, it is almost four o’clock. We shall be late.”

My head hurt, trying to figure out the myriad irons I had in the fire, not to mention the number of plates spinning around me. It was only a matter of time before the whole circus came crashing down. Although Winterburn was clued up insofar as my dealings with Arbuthnot were concerned, he had not mentioned Castelnuovo, Papareschi and the Mafia war rumbling in Rome. I suspected that he was less aware of the Italian situation, particularly since he did not apparently recognise Giuseppina. Perhaps Furnell really had only been engaged with watching the hotel.

Winterburn leaned onto the table, his arms folded in front of him in the manner of one about to divulge an exceptional secret. He studied the tablecloth and addressed me calmly.

“Let me tell you what you are going to do for me, Mr Hammersley.”

His eyes flicked away, distracted by a woman sneezing on the far side of the room. Between her table and ours, up against the wall and on a series of marble plinths stood busts of the first five Roman emperors, starting at the far end with Caesar Augustus. I scanned over the other four as I returned my gaze to the table.

Tiberius, …

“You are going to find the aureus Hadrianus, and you are going to do so within the next seventy-two hours. You are then going to deliver it to me somewhere discreet, away from the prying eyes of anyone foolish enough to have an interest in your well-being.”

… Caligula, Claudius…

“Let us say the Parco di Traiano. Three days from now, the thirteenth. I shall give you until the evening to be there with the appropriate wares.”

Winterburn shrugged.

“It’s the kind of good-natured gentleman I am, after all.”

… Nero. My gaze fell upon the fifth emperor. He with the elaborate building plans. Something clicked in my mind.

“I’m a superstitious man,” says I, not taking my eyes from the marble bust, then turning to face Winterburn. “May we say the twelfth instead?”

Furnell snorted with contempt; Winterburn smirked. He spread his hands, palms up-turned, like some sermonizing priest.

“What kind of a businessman would I be not to accept the earlier delivery of desired goods? The twelfth it is. That gives you only forty-eight hours, Mr Hammersley. I must say I admire your confidence.”

“And I your magnanimity. I shall be at the Parco di Traiano just before midnight,” says I.

“Excellent,” says Winterburn, and I’ll swear his eyes damn well twinkled as he raised his chin in my direction.

“The witching hour.”

As our eyes met, I felt my stomach tighten. Somewhere in the background, though, a faint ember of hope began to glow.

The Parco di Traiano: Trajan’s Gardens, set in what used to be the outer precinct of the elaborate bathing complex built by that emperor, and still a pleasant haven of lushness in the city centre on the slopes of the Oppian.

Most importantly, they were just a minute’s walk from the Domus Aurea.

XI

Well, it never rains, it pours, do you see?

Clearly, I was a popular chap in these parts. I had been fortunate enough to have been invited by one of the most violent men in Italy to attend a jaunt in the Swiss countryside, where numerous activities awaited the excitable holidaymaker such as hiking, orienteering and, no doubt, a good deal of shooting. If I was lucky, perhaps they would throw in a damned paperchase too.

I had also been informed that Francesco Papareschi, by unhappy coincidence another of the most brutal human beings in the country, would extend to me the hand of friendship if I ensured my precipitous departure from the city. Given his suggestion that I leave town, that friendship would apparently be conducted along the lines of a long-distance, pen pal-like arrangement. I would have to enquire as to the possibility of exchange visits.

If allowed my way I would have been out of Rome well before the end of the forty-eight hour period allotted by Papareschi. It’s best to be punctual in such matters, I find. Instead, rather than obey this simple and reasonable request (which, lest we forget, mirrored my own personal preference—I’m minded to hammer this one home, so forgive me if I labour the point, permissive reader) I was about to take part in a storming of Papareschi’s Swiss castle, playing a lead role in bumping off a handful of his men and then kidnapping one of his guests.

In short, my life was teetering on the edge of becoming complicated, one might even say unbearable. I wasn’t simply ignoring a direct request from an unpleasant man with a history of violence as impressive as a Guatemalan gun runner, I was to have an active hand in pissing directly on his barbecue in the height of the holiday season.

It was also wise to bear in mind that I had only Castelnuovo’s word that someone had been kidnapped by Papareschi, was being held in castle Chondille and that it was indeed Edoardo Novacco Pisacane—for all I knew all we’d find on our arrival would be Papareschi’s dear old dad enjoying a weekend break, aged and decrepit and with a weak heart to boot. That would be the icing on the cake, no? Turn up at the chap’s house, bash in the front door, yank his old man out of bed and cause him to have a clutcher on the spot.

To cap all this I now had Soho Winterburn and the alarming figure of Sergeant Furnell on my case, both of whom admittedly had a vested interest in my well-being: the former so that I might deliver the aureus Hadrianus to him, the latter so that he could wreak his own particular brand of vengeance upon me for so shamelessly impeding him in his duties and almost caponizing him all those years before.

And now, incredibly, I was engineering some foolhardy rendez-vous between Castelnuovo’s crowd and Winterburn’s mob at the Domus Aurea, each party wholly unaware of the arrangement. I suppose some feckless part of my brain hoped that if I survived the Swiss escapade and brought Pisacane back to Rome for him, Castelnuovo might feel well-disposed towards me and allow me the benefit of his tutelage. My cause would be helped if I could show him on arrival that I had the aureus and that Winterburn & co. were keen to relieve me—and therefore, by extension, Castelnuovo himself—of it.

On the one hand I’d been quite impressed by my quick thinking in re-arranging the date suggested by Winterburn to coincide with Castelnuovo’s Domus Aurea congregation. With the other I clenched my fingers into a fist and cursed my brainlessness. It wasn’t the stupidest plan I’d ever conceived, but it was certainly in the top ten.

***

Switzerland is a funny old place for many reasons, not least of all because it doesn’t have a proper language. This leads to confusion and bewilderment amongst tourists when they arrive in certain towns. The Tower of Babel rises once more.

There are in fact four national languages of Switzerland: French, German, Italian and Romansh. Yes, yes, I know. I’ve never heard of it either. It is a silly language, and we shall say no more about it. So, there are really only three official languages of Switzerland: French, Italian and German or, more simply and memorably: ‘FIG’. That’s right, as in ‘fig, couldn’t give a’. This is the root of the country’s other well-known folly, its neutrality.

Like some uninteresting older sibling, the country steadfastly refused to become embroiled in the kerfuffles that were raging in its back garden during the early part of the century (otherwise known as the First and Second World Wars) or, for that matter, in any other form of disagreement in which it might get its trousers dirty. Indeed, the Swiss will tell you with a smugness that would put a Cockney costermonger to shame that their country has not been in a foreign war since 1815. How many internal conflicts there have been within the country is a closely-guarded national secret, the precise figure no doubt locked up in one of their Zurich bank vaults.

Castelnuovo had prepared a flight for our happy group from Rome to Bern. I noted with some dismay that we were thirteen in number. The disappearance of Carmine Gaetani, the schizophrenic and Tourette’s-ridden Armitage Shanks, had irked Castelnuovo. I felt it would be imprudent to divulge that I had been the last person to see the chap alive and, indeed, shot by Papareschi’s men before my eyes. In his absence Castelnuovo declared that Alessandro would accompany Carlo, me and the other cannon fodder on our mission. This pleased me no end, as you can imagine.

So there we were, sitting aboard Castelnuovo’s private jet and winging our way to a land renowned for chocolate, cuckoo clocks and precious little else. Sweet madness indeed. I sat in frenzied silence during the flight, smoking my pipe and listening to Carlo recount in detail the plan for our attack.

We were to be driven from Bern to the hills overlooking Chondille, arriving there by early evening. We would wait until nightfall in the forests above the castle, then pick our way down to gain entrance from near the lake. One of our team was an expert marksman and had been tasked with picking off the five watchmen who patrolled the castle’s exterior and had various sentry posts around its perimeter. Castelnuovo had positioned one of his men to watch the castle this past week, camped out in the woods above the lake. He had reported that at precisely quarter to ten each night all five watchmen were visible from a certain vantage point in the hills: three who had commenced their duties fifteen minutes previously huddled in a group, sharing a quiet cigarette; the other two at their posts approximately twenty yards away on either side of this gathering.

Our marksman was equipped with a .22 Mossberg automatic rifle. A beautiful firearm, it was fitted with a silencer and night vision lens and had a range of just under a mile. My companions to a man seemed in awe at the rifleman’s capabilities. All I could think was that he’d better be bloody good, and I was prepared to be impressed. I would need to be for him to pull off the required shots. Five kills in swift succession; three shots in a group and two additional shots twenty and forty yards away respectively, each of them to be effected before the targets could alert anyone of their plight.

I estimated that the shooter had approximately two seconds from his first shot before any of the threesome had opportunity to raise the alarm; a further two seconds before the other pair of watchmen realised what was going on and did something about it.

Five kills; five bullets; four seconds. It was a damned good job he had an automatic. The marksman was a pleasant chap, and apparently something of an intellect. He wore small, circular spectacles (God help us all, thinks I), and was extremely well-read; used to work in a book depository somewhere. This explained his scholarly demeanour—plenty of time for reading on the job, no doubt.

Once the five watchmen had been removed from the equation, three of our chaps were to take their places and wander generally about the front of the castle to present a façade of normality to anyone looking out. Let’s hope none of the buggers inside can count, says I to myself with a mildly exasperated sigh, forcing a smile at Alessandro who looked over to me and may have heard the comment.

Carlo would then effect some sort of Indian rope man feat and scale the castle walls to a window that led to a storeroom on the second floor. From here he would make his way down to a side entrance, near to the kitchens, and the rest of us would gain entry.

As much havoc and hellfire would then ensue as was necessary for us to reach Pisacane, being held in a tower at the top of the castle, extract him and hotfoot it for the exit. A few hundred yards down the road would be positioned vehicles of suitable momentum to remove us from the scene at double-quick time.

I sat, quietly puffing at my pipe as I listened to Carlo and the others, occasionally moving my eyes over the mixed bag of ne’er-do-wells and wondering whether there would be opportunity for my slinking off into the night and disappearing without receiving a bullet in the back for my trouble. Alessandro seemed to have read my thoughts, for he looked over to me and narrowed his eyes, contemplating no doubt exactly where to place the bullet for maximum effect.

I leaned forward, intending to tell Alessandro that I should miss him when I returned to Blighty, and that he should call on me if he was ever in town, when it was announced that we were beginning our descent and would be landing in Bern in approximately fifteen minutes. I transformed my lean into getting up for a trip to the facilities where I checked the Browning in my shoulder holster and made sure that the spare magazines were easily accessible.

It was going to be a long and fraught evening, which I could probably do without. I looked at myself in the mirror, wondering whether I would suit a moustache.

***

When one is at the start of a complex and important undertaking, the success of which is of paramount importance to one’s health, it is natural to feel a little apprehensive. One does not want anything to happen that shakes one’s resolve or acts as an ill omen for the whole enterprise before it has barely begun.

Quite why Carlo felt the need to climb the tree, I cannot be sure. Perhaps he was getting in practice for the Indian rope man trick; perhaps he wanted to feel like a schoolboy again, at one with nature in a way that we are all denied once Real Life gets its wretched claws into us.

Whatever the reason, we were deposited, the thirteen of us, high up in the foothills overlooking Lake Geneva alongside a deserted road. We walked westwards for twenty minutes. The early evening sun was beginning its slow descent in the sky, and we could see the lake stretching out like an ocean between the trees below us.

From where we stood we were unable to see the castle, so Carlo said he would shin up a nearby tree that had fallen from its upright position and which now lay at a forty-five degree angle against one of its neighbours. Despite his size he moved with the agility of a panther, hopping onto the trunk with ease and making swift progress upwards. One of the other clowns, inspired by these antics, followed him up. From the top of the tree Carlo announced that he could see the castle. We were to move downhill a few hundred yards and take up position as soon as the building came into view. Our marksman should then have a good vantage point of the exact spots where Castelnuovo’s watchman had indicated the sentries would linger.

As the pair worked their way gingerly down the tree, the chap in front of Carlo joked as he stepped over the broken tip of a branch jutting out from the trunk. The stubby protuberance can’t have been longer than my little finger, but inspection after the event revealed it to be cruelly pointed and rigid—a nasty little article.

“Carlo, watch out for this spike, hey? It could be painful, no?”

The man laughed and kicked the thing with his heel as he passed, and we all shared a puerile snigger at the implications of what he was suggesting.

I turned away from the group and looked out over the lake. It was a spectacular view, and an evening of such clemency such that only ever occurs on the Continent, or in England when one is very young indeed.

And then I heard the branch break.

I shall remember the sound for a long time. It will stay with me as a reminder of when my evening started to go decidedly downhill.

I spun around when I heard the crack, and saw Carlo slip and land awkwardly on the trunk, then jump up again in a flash and leap down the last few feet of the tree to the ground. There he danced around on the spot, in the manner of one who has just battered his thumb with a hammer, but clutching his backside and grimacing in obvious agony.

Naturally, Carlo—Castelnuovo’s tactician, the leader of our enterprise, the man who appeared to have endured an altercation with a combine harvester and lived to tell the tale—had slipped and landed squarely upon the disagreeable little spike such that it shot almost perfectly up his quoit.

The inclusion of the word ‘almost’ is significant. Poor Carlo was not in a good way.

Like you, no doubt, I didn’t think that this kind of thing happened in real life, that it was reserved for the sort of cheap fiction read by Americans. But there was Carlo, prancing about in front of me, his hindquarters hanging in tatters and a dark patch of blood now apparent on the back of his strides. All we could do was set him amidst the bushes, leave him with some water and send a runner off to get assistance. What with our sniper chap maintaining a respectable distance from the castle and not accompanying us into the fray, we were suddenly ten in number. Then there were the three men who would be masquerading as Papareschi’s castle guard. That meant there would be only seven of us going into Chondille—against goodness knows how many of Papareschi’s men inside.

A more immediate quandary now presented itself: Carlo’s accident meant that we were deprived of our Indian rope man. Alessandro announced that we would draw lots for the honour of taking his place. Since he knew we would otherwise be fighting amongst ourselves for the glory of such a pivotal role (yes, they were each of this utterly barmy mindset) we would draw straws, the longest rather than the shortest being the means of selection since it was seen to be a privilege rather than a curse to serve our enterprise in this way.

Well, it wouldn’t be much of an interesting story if my evening didn’t deteriorate further, would it? Alessandro prepared the straws and offered them to the troupe. Two were left when I made my choice, the last being for him. In theory, since the long straw had not yet been found, I had a 50:50 chance of avoiding the task of shinning up the castle walls. But without doubt Alessandro had engineered it such that I would select the straw of destiny. I do not know how he did this, but then I’m always in awe at even the simplest of magic tricks.

When I had made my selection and revealed the long straw, I was forced to endure a series of back-slapping and rousing epigrams that were presumably intended to inspire greatness, but in fact left me feeling violently sick. I gave Alessandro a reproachful glance. Having left Carlo shifting uncomfortably in the undergrowth, we made our way down towards the castle.

We deposited our marksman chap in the appropriate place (I very nearly issuing him instructions to stick a bullet in me if I ever did make it to the top of the rope) and before long were a mere fifty yards from the castle. Darkness had fallen quickly, another ill omen to be sure, and we sat in silence watching the shadowy figures of the five watchmen ahead of us. A mist had come in off the lake, lending a haunting aspect to the scene.

I looked at my watch: twenty-six minutes past nine. The watchmen would be replaced in four minutes. Death hung imminently in the air. Our sniper had been instructed to start the show at quarter to ten sharp, as soon as the group of three smokers had congregated. When the last of them had been felled I was to approach the castle with a rope and grappling hook. I was then to try my hand at what struck me as a demanding task that should not properly be entrusted to a man wearing leather brogues. Yes, funnily enough I had not thought I would be shinning up a stone wall that evening and therefore had not selected more athletic footwear. Ignoring momentarily the fact that the closest an Oxford-educated classicist is likely to have come to contact with a bona fide rope is a prep school tug of war, I have never met a grappling hook in the flesh, so to speak, let alone attempted to deploy one in the manner to which it has grown accustomed to being deployed. It seems to me that concepts which have but a single purpose in the world often require exceptional skill to put them into effect. Advanced calculus springs to mind, as well as military aircraft. You take the point, I’m sure.

Alessandro handed me the rope and grappling hook and immediately I knew that I would be an embarrassment to myself and all concerned. Real ropes are damnably heavy, aren’t they?

As I mused thus I became aware that our marksman had prostrated himself and was taking careful aim between the undergrowth leading down to the castle. We each became motionless, not even daring to draw breath. The silence was palpable. I closed my eyes and waited for what seemed an eternity.

Without warning, three muffled shots sounded in quick succession. Still with my eyes closed, I heard the barrel of the gun sweep twice through the air. First to the left—another shot—then a longer sweep to the right. The final shot was the most sickening. It thudded ominously, and the sound punched its way through the chilled air to my ears.

I followed the three decoy sentries down to the castle. As they dragged the five bodies into the bushes I moved to the left of the main doors and adopted what I thought was a suitably heroic stance with which to launch my rope. From over a high wall to my left I heard the whinnying of a horse inside the castle courtyard. I picked my spot—a small, pitched roof to the left of the first-floor window indicated to me by Alessandro—and swinging the hook in three full circles I released it, instantly feeling the immense satisfaction such as possesses one upon execution of a perfect tee shot.

Sure enough, the hook flew upwards and landed perfectly over the ridge of the roof. I heaved the rope taut and swelled with pride that my very first attempt at such mariners’ tasks had met with success. I moved to the wall and hoisted myself upwards. As I did, the hook appeared once more from over the ridge, having formed a close relationship with the ancient tiling on which it had originally fixed and eagerly wanting to introduce me to its new friend.

The two companions came hurtling towards me with touching alacrity, picking up a loose piece of guttering en route, and I had to dive for cover as the inseparable trio clattered to the ground where I had, moments before, been praising my rope-throwing skills.

I picked myself up, grabbed the hook and hugged the castle wall, cursing the whole business and hoping to buggery that my efforts would not have attracted unwelcome interest.

Alessandro scowled at me from the bushes and may have made threatening gestures with his gun. I fought back the urge to hurl the grappling hook at him and looked upwards to reassess my options. From my position against the wall, I was alongside a ground floor window. A dim light penetrated the murky glass, and wiping the grime away revealed some sort of workshop inside, with tools hanging from the walls. I watched and listened for a minute.

Nothing.

I looked about me, licking my lips in grudging acceptance of the course of action I had chosen.

Shifting my weight, I took the grappling hook in both hands and gently broke the pane of glass alongside the silhouette of the handle that could just be made out on the other side.

I grimaced as I did it, ready to grab my revolver and start spraying bullets into the room if anything came of the noise. As glass panes go, this one broke relatively quietly, a small tinkle of shards seasoning the floor within.

I waited again for any response, then reached for the handle and opened the window, hauling myself through into what turned out to be a large kitchen. The ‘tools’ on the wall were an assortment of ladles, spatulas and whisks. Each of them would be as effective in a brawl as a packet of biscuits.

I lowered myself into the room and took a few moments to catch my breath. I unholstered my Browning and cocked it with purpose. I swore that I would invest in a silencer if I ever made it back to London. As this particular mental horse bolted forth in my mind, I shut the stable door carefully behind it.

I made hasty calculations where I needed to go to find the side entrance through which I was to admit Alessandro and the other five men. From what Carlo had said, this was close by the kitchens, so—dare I say it?—I was perhaps in better shape than if I had managed to utilise the rope and grappling hook properly and gained access upstairs, as Carlo had intended. It may not have been pretty, but my entrance could have been far worse.

I went back to the window and indicated to Alessandro and the others that I would see them round by the side entrance as planned, then took a deep breath and made my way over to the inner door leading from the kitchens into the castle itself.

As I walked, slowly, brandishing the pistol in front of me, I noted that various pots and pans were boiling away, and a board lay on the work surface with a large chopped carrot upon it. Small pieces of potato sat diced beside. They had not yet turned brown, despite being out of water.

Several things happened as the implications of that observation hit home. I had reached the kitchen door, and as it dawned on me that the chef must have been in the room but seconds prior to my arrival, with a fairly sizeable chopping implement in his hands too, the door swung open in the manner in which kitchen doors traditionally swing when they are kicked by large Italian cooks wearing heavy boots, carrying roasting trays and wielding oversized butcher’s knives which can only be described as professional.

There is a yelp of horror that I am wont to make when circumstances get the better of me and I am taken by surprise to my disadvantage. I have grown to accept the noise and like to think that, although effeminate in its roots, it has a manly quality that identifies me as both a sensitive soul who understands why Brahms is a superior composer to Beethoven in many ways (although the common mob would never know it) and yet simultaneously indicates a ruthless and hardened character who would have no qualms about putting his fist through a chap’s face if really necessary.

The door swung, the yelp escaped and my Browning was knocked from my hand and slid across the floor to come to rest beside a flour bin. I flew backwards as the door hit me, falling onto the ground and upsetting a bowl of tocco de nuxe sauce. The chef dropped his trays, which clattered onto the ground in a fanfare of aluminium, but managed to keep hold of the knife. He wore a look of genuine surprise and dismay as he came to the realisation that there was an intruder in his kitchen who was meddling in les affaires culinaires and upsetting the fine balance of his domain.

He looked first at his trays, then at the Browning, then directly at me—still fumbling on the floor and trying to find my feet—and his face darkened in a threatening crimson crescendo. He tightened his grip on the knife and strode towards me, kicking one of the metal trays from his path.

I have come to love tocco de nuxe sauce: such a slippery texture comes from its rich oiliness which my doctor avers is not good for me, but which certainly saved my life on this occasion. The chef caught a patch of the spillage with his right foot, slipped and went impressively to ground, flailing in the unctuous mess.

I felt as though I were in a Laurel and Hardy short, although without the congenial, reassuring humour. To continue the theme, and whilst I struggled to get to my feet and reach the Browning, I grabbed an aubergine and a swede from a crate on the floor behind me and flung them with purpose at the chef.

The aubergine did little good (they rarely do), though the swede was pretty effective, causing the man to fall to the ground again when it struck him in the chest with no little force and leading me to believe that if a vegetable arsenal were all that God bestowed upon me in future times of trouble, I’d deploy the root section first without hesitation.

By this time I had scrambled to my feet, but the pistol was still beyond reach. I saw the cook lurch at me, covered in sauce and wielding his knife in a manner that suggested he had done it before. The swede had evidently got his goat.

I glanced about me in a frenzy, looking to grab the nearest non-edible fighting implement that came to hand. Unfortunately for the cook this proved to be a frying pan whose diameter was only marginally smaller than the Isle of Man. The iron positively bounced off his chin with a resounding and satisfying clang, helped by the momentum of his attack, and his body hung momentarily in mid-air before collapsing into an uncomfortable heap at my feet.

I was by now sweating like a whore in church. I picked up the Browning, scraped a threat of the tocco de nuxe from my shoe and bounded to the door. There I hovered, listening to ascertain whether my disagreement with the staff had attracted any attention. I peered through the door. All was quiet, like the night before Christmas.

I tiptoed through into the main hall and leapt the few steps to the side door that I could see along the corridor to the left of the kitchen. As I went I heard voices coming from a room at the opposite end of the hall whose door was not fully closed. The noise made me start, but I made it to my goal, threw various bolts and swept the door open.

Alessandro and the other men were inside in a flash. I indicated to them with hushed gestures the room full of men back down the corridor whence I had come. Alessandro considered the matter for a few seconds and then, indicating for three of us to wait where we were, took the other three men along with him towards the room, stopping at corners and peering around before darting further forward.

My heart was clattering against my ribs and I found myself short of breath, tapping my hand against my leg in nervous agitation. The two men alongside me were similarly perturbed. Each perspired freely, occasionally mopping his brow with the back of a gun-wielding paw and looking around the place as alert as alley cats.

I took in my surroundings. Behind us a stone stairway spiralled upwards into a dark and enticing nothingness. Otherwise we found ourselves hemmed in at the end of a long passageway that led back towards the main entrance.

Down the far end of the corridor I saw Alessandro giving silent instructions to his troupe before bracing himself for action. In an instant the foursome had disappeared into the room and we heard repeated pistol shots, each silenced, thank Christ. Suddenly two of the men re-emerged as hastily as they had entered, followed by Alessandro and, noticeably, not by the third man.

What I saw next shook me to my very soul. Perhaps it had not yet properly sunk in in exactly what game I was involved, and what were the odds on the table. Now, for the first time, it occurred to me not only that I was a mere tyro batting in the fathers versus sons cricket match without a box, but that instead of some portly old accountant who could barely roll the ball down the crease, I was facing the equivalent of the one ‘father’ under thirty-five, the recent acquisition of the divorced and ravishing Ms Saunders, viz. a virile, athletic army Sergeant who as a favoured pastime opened the bowling for Sussex.

As he fired back into the room, Alessandro reached with his free arm behind his back and took something from his belt. He brought his hand to his mouth, yanked it away again and threw something into the room. There followed confused shouts and the sound of urgency within, discernible even from the end of the corridor where we stood. Alessandro fired twice more into the room, kicked the door shut and he and the other two men turned away and crouched, their arms shielding their heads.

It was the first time I had been within earshot of a hand grenade exploding. It is a harrowing experience, even from thirty yards away. The ground shook when the detonation struck, and my companions and I ducked on reflex at the thunderous blast.

Panic gripped me with a serpent-like hold, chill and sudden. If we’d managed to keep our arrival a secret thus far, the whole damned castle knew we were there now.

XII

“Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the King.” That little gem can be found in one of my favourite reads: the Good Book. The First Epistle of Saint Peter to be precise. I set it down here because it seemed to be a fairly good lesson to preach at that particular moment inside the castle.

You may appreciate that it is hard to love one’s brother when he is doing his utmost to blow up proceedings by detonating heavy explosives but a stone’s throw from where one is standing. The availability of explosives had been a closely guarded secret. Certainly nobody had given or offered me any hand grenades or other implements of such volatile ilk. But this was no time for being precious.

Without doubt, it was a sterling time to start fearing God.

There seemed to be an unnaturally long silence after the explosion. In reality, I’m sure only a matter of seconds passed, but you know how these things are. Alessandro and the other two men slowly got up and gathered their wits, brushing themselves down. Yes, plenty of time for that, thinks I.

The two men beside me looked at each other; at me; then down the corridor to Alessandro. I followed their gaze.

Halfway down the passageway between us, four men emerged from nowhere. They did not have the outward appearance of assisting our cause, and there was an immediate and confused burst of activity.

Two of the newcomers looked towards Alessandro’s crowd and hollered something in Italian which I am diffident to record here. There was a vibrancy to the words which you will not thank me to chronicle. Needless to say, parentage was questioned and imprecatory gestures were made.

A third man dived, with quite unnecessary but athletic flamboyance, across the corridor brandishing a firearm of some description. The fourth turned towards the writer and his two companions. In what seemed to be the same movement the long barrel of a shotgun was levelled at us and a shot was fired.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion.

I flinched, ducked my head and leapt against the wall in an effort to become one with the masonry.

The man to my left was too slow in his reactions. Almost simultaneously with the gunshot he flew backwards as if yanked by an unseen force. It is best not to close one’s eyes when a plurality of guns is being fired in one’s vicinity by men who are not overly concerned about what they hit. Bearing this in mind, I opened mine now and wished that I had not.

The fallen man lay uncomfortably—well, he was dying in a horrible manner—and was barely conscious. Two fingers and the thumb had been torn from his left hand and a significant portion of his midriff was missing and could be seen dispersed liberally over the flagstones behind where he sprawled.

Any second now another shot would follow its predecessor, and stray bullets from Alessandro and his men at the far end of the corridor would wend their haphazard way also in our direction.

It seemed a capital moment to be elsewhere.

I glanced frantically about me. The other chap I was with had turned as pale as a picket fence at the sight of his fallen comrade’s entrails, as well he might. Good luck to you, thinks I, as I leapt past him towards the stairway behind us.

Yes, it is hard to love one’s brother when he has landed one in the middle of a war zone. A lack of that particular emotion was balanced by the genuine fear of God that had been instilled in me in the past thirty seconds. And now I had had enough. Remembering where Pisacane was supposed to be holed up, I bounded upstairs three at a time.

Brotherly love and divine dread were not enough to keep my attention focused. In their absence, I was going for the king.

***

The noise of gunfire receded behind me as I climbed. All I could think was that if I managed to grab Pisacane and get back outside to where Castelnuovo’s cars would be waiting (I looked at my watch—within thirty minutes they would be in position), I stood a fair chance of getting out of this hellhole alive. What would become of my ‘brothers’ I recked not.

I continued in my bounding. As I turned a corner a blurred vision of fast-moving cheap clothing collided into me from the opposite direction. I fell backwards against the wall as the ill-accoutred henchman careered into me and landed on his backside on the stairs. I fired three rounds into his chest and grimaced as I did so—the man was wearing a shirt with a pocket on the breast.

I moved more judiciously upstairs, the Browning pointed ahead of me in readiness for further nonsense. I did not have far to go before it found me.

At the top of the stairs I paused and poked my head around both available corners. Footsteps sounded and made me start, and I whipped my head back behind the banister. The sound of running faded away from where I crouched. I was short of breath, adrenalin once again coursing through my body and making my knees shake involuntarily with the impatience of danger anticipated.

Before me a vast wooden landing spread out and narrowed towards a brightly lit corridor. This led upwards to a heavy door with iron-cast stays and thick bolts driven through. It looked like the kind of door one would like to number amongst one’s friends. A good door. A strong door. The kind of door behind which one was very likely to find a king held hostage.

I felt as if I were standing in a Sir John Tenniel illustration. The optical illusion of the diminishing and rising corridor was as if I had imbibed one of Alice’s potions, or perhaps a glassful or three of Dante’s exceptional wine, home-grown from vineyards bathed in Mediterranean sunshine. It is likely that the prospect of being possibly within spitting distance of my preposterous goal filled me with the kind of giddy elation that conjures up such literary gibberish.

I ducked and looked out of a window a few steps below me. I was certainly at the top of the castle, looking down into a courtyard with a stable at one end and over the walls a staggering, moonlit view of the lake rolling away into the night.

The commotion and general uproar of the turmoil taking place on the floors below pervaded from every corner. It had increased in volume since before. Gunshots and the frantic clamour of human voices were growing wilder.

I turned my attentions back to the landing in front of me. It was time to piss or get off the pan, as I have heard it said by individuals of a profligate demeanour. Taking a deep breath, I launched myself over the top stair.

The first six yards went quickly and, if I say so myself, tremendously well. I pursued the orthodox method of running, putting one leg in front of the other and allowing my body to follow. I looked quite the professional. The seventh yard was rather more commonplace and, frankly, quite tedious. It involved my hearing those infernal footsteps once again, except this time they didn’t fade into the background. They grew rather disconcertingly incessant and then suddenly revealed their source.

From around a corner behind me, about twenty feet away, appeared a man with a shotgun. No further attributes regarding his appearance warrant additional description. In the circumstances this was all that caught my attention.

I stopped in my tracks, only two steps from the door, turning to face this new torment. The man and I looked at each other. Simultaneously we levelled our respective firearms, I diving to the floor, astutely aware that single bullets are no match for the alarming dispersal of shot that a lupara necessarily accords its bearer.

I managed to discharge the Browning first, although the shot was useless. The bullet limped across the corridor and embedded itself sullenly in the wall a good yard wide of my target.

The other chap fired his shotgun a split second after I. I was halfway to the ground when it erupted. Why must these fools pick such dangerous-sounding weapons? Fortunately the shot was also lame, though the shooter benefited from the scattering effect of his cartridge’s contents. A sharp and searing pain tore through my left calf as I fell. The bulk of the shot hit the door behind me; the wood splintered with an impressive crack but did not rupture.

I hit the floor, leg throbbing in the hot, pulsating fashion that is customary. My eyes shot upward and I thrust the Browning in the direction of the rogue with the cannon, alert to the fact that my right to life was being compellingly called into question. If I didn’t put a bullet into this chap fairly promptly, his second shot would surely settle the enquiry in a most decisive manner.

An experienced gunman never squeezes his trigger; nor does he pull it. This is a very important lesson to learn, if you are so minded. A true professional merely embraces the trigger with the first joint of his index finger. Knowing his gun, he is aware of the amount of pressure required and applies it unthinkingly to discharge a bullet.

I have never before performed so many diverse manoeuvres upon an inanimate object in the space of a split second as I did to the trigger of my Browning at that particular moment. Squeezing and pulling took a back seat to jerking, heaving and wrenching, and I dare say I even yanked at it a little. To an innocent bystander I must have looked in quite a state. Try as I might, the damned trigger was not to be moved.

For the first time in a long and happy relationship, the Browning had let me down. Well, God knows there is never a good time for a man to have a gun jam on him, but this certainly vied for the top spot.

I looked at the other man in a state of funk. For some reason he had not fired his second shot. I couldn’t believe that his gun had also jammed. That was surely far too unlikely. Perhaps it was an attack of conscience on his part. Having seen part of his shot tear into my leg—and ruin a perfectly excellent pair of tweeds, I might add—perhaps he realised that he was not yet ready to kill a man. Perhaps it was his first day on the job. Perhaps I should try talking to the chap.

Talking be damned.

I didn’t think I was the sort of person who would ever throw his pistol at somebody. It smacks of disrespect to the gun and there is something rather unrefined and vulgar about the act. I would happily have propounded this thesis to anyone who cared to listen before my evening spent in castle Chondille. But then, of course, I had never been in quite such a predicament before. The gun had jammed on me. It had rather let me down, and its raison d’être had been impugned. It had not fulfilled its part of the deal. I felt resentment towards the Browning and not a little blind panic. The gun flew from my hand in the vague direction of my nemesis, but he merely batted it away with his own weapon. He looked rather perturbed himself, I have to say, although this didn’t make me feel any better about the situation.

Having hurled the Browning across the landing, it was a simple choice that now faced me. As they say in Macclesfield: muck or nettles. Either I could stay rooted to the spot and await an imminent death whilst the other chap sorted out either a) his shooter, or b) his moral code; or I could face a more immediate end by hobbling the few yards over to him and attempting to batter him about the head with my shoe.

I scrambled to my feet, flinching as it was brought to my attention that I had just been shot in the leg. Adrenalin has a funny knack of taking over in such circumstances, and I surprised myself at the liveliness with which I was able to reach the spot where the wielder of the shotgun stood.

Still the second shot did not come. As I dived towards the man, my hands reaching for his infernal gun, I recall thinking that I had led a rich and varied life. Recently I had had my fair share of beautiful women. Although I’d had to leave her rather unceremoniously back in London, I felt sure that Penelope Lemon, the delightful little minx, would soon have let me back into her good books—and, indeed, up her skirt—with only a smidgeon of smooth talking; Giuseppina Parelli was, of course, in a class of her own, and despite the fact that I was not yet fully acquainted with her mother in the manner to which I generally like to become accustomed, I had enjoyed a flawless evening of flirtation with her, with perhaps a slim hope of further dalliance if I had made it through my present tribulations.

Well, they say that all good things must come to an end. I had had a good run.

I collided with the man with as much force as I could muster, gripping his shotgun with both hands, one around the barrels, the other on the base. The pair of us crashed into a wall and rolled onto the floor, both trying to avoid getting too near the business end of the gun and that damned second shot.

We struggled frantically, knowing we were vying for our lives. I managed to rain a few fists into the chap’s midriff, but then caught the butt of the shotgun in my face. The shock of the blow stunned me, and before I knew it I was being throttled by the gun, my companion attempting to acquaint my windpipe with the floorboards.

My leg was on fire now, and I strained with both arms to lift the gun away from my throat. It was no use. My energy was sapped, and I flailed impotently with my left arm away from my body in breathless panic, straining to reach something, anything, which might aid my salvation.

My hand came upon a hard object on the floor—miraculously, the Browning. I grabbed it, thanking God and all that is Holy for this faint glimmer of hope. For even in its useless, jammed state a pistol makes the hell of a battering ram when applied to a person’s face in appropriate measure.

I applied it so now, crashing it into the side of the man’s head as he plied his wicked way with the makeshift garrotte.

My energy must have been drained far more than I realised, for my accoster merely shook his head to clear the effects of my feeble attack and pushed even harder down onto my throat.

Grey dots appeared before my eyes, and I could sense myself losing consciousness. It is a strange, welcoming, nauseating feeling. My left hand fell back to the ground, still holding the Browning.

I recall feeling some intuitive reflex forcing my index finger onto the trigger. In the same way that I have seen men tightly clench their fists, or another man’s hand, in their dying moments, so too, I can only assume, did my finger wish to feel the reassuring resistance of the jammed mechanism pushing back against its final spasm.

With a final effort I pushed up my right arm against the shotgun, pathetically, tensing my left index finger against the trigger of the pistol.

My wrist jumped back with a sudden force, and a piercing shot rang from the Browning. It was the most wonderful sound I have ever heard.

Perhaps being hurled across the landing had knocked some sense into the gun. Personally I like to think that my battering it against my friend’s head had done the trick in unjamming whatever it was that needed attention.

Either way, my bacon had been saved in spectacular fashion. The bullet from the Browning had missed me by a matter of inches and struck my assailant in the side of his neck. I suspect that when one is shot at close range and struck somewhere vital one probably perceives that one’s chips are about to be cashed. How one reacts to such news undoubtedly varies, but I feel sure that I for one would not have the presence of mind to spend my dying seconds trying to finish off the chap who had visited such misfortune upon me.

Italians can be a spiteful bunch, can’t they though? When the bullet struck him, the man on top of me dropped the shotgun and clutched at his throat. I wriggled out from underneath him, struggling to catch my breath and to re-position my Adam’s Apple to its more traditional location. I was still coughing and wheezing, trying to regain my senses, when he came at me again, lunging with his left arm, his right hand still gripping his throat and blood pouring extravagantly down his chest.

I grabbed the shotgun and fired it at him, but the trigger moved emptily with no effect. The shot that caught me in the leg had obviously been the second shot that I had feared. The first must have been fired downstairs, before the man and I had come upon each other.

I swung the gun, holding it by the barrel end as if it were an axe, and brought the wooden butt down onto the top of the dying man’s head. He thought about the implications of this momentarily and then collapsed in front of me.

I was by now at the end of my tether. I made to throw the shotgun down by the corpse, then reconsidered, eyeing the thick wooden door once more. I bent over and went through the dead man’s pockets, not expecting to find anything of value. Surprisingly, given that he had made no attempt to reach for them or to reload his gun, I found three unspent cartridges. Evidently the fool had been trying to call my bluff, displaying some of the most ferocious cheek I think I have yet encountered. I swung a generous foot into his backside, hastily refilled the shotgun and pocketed the third cartridge.

Still the muffled sounds of gunfire and ruination pervaded from below. My hands shook as I cocked the barrels and flicked the safety button; my leg throbbed, my heart rattled and my lips felt dry. I rubbed my throat, badly bruised from its encounter with the floor, and strode over to the door, grimacing at the pain as I went.

I aimed the barrels of the gun about a foot away from the top hinge and turned my head away. It’s damnably hard firing a shotgun with only one hand, but it certainly looks the business and tends to educate spectators that you are not the type of chap with whom it is wise to mess.

I deployed the trigger and felt the gun jerk violently in my hand. I quickly uncocked the barrels and slipped in the third cartridge, turning my body away from the door and peering through the small crack that had been torn in the wood near the jamb. Nothing could be seen within the room. Perhaps the end of a four-poster bed?

I cocked the shotgun and booted the door with my good leg, which didn’t hurt the other as much as I thought it might. It took four attempts, but gradually the door budged and twisted about the surviving hinge and lock, its remaining pivots. A few more well-placed kicks later and it was a shadow of its former self. I glanced through into a large bed chamber and stepped over the remains of the door with the shotgun ready to become involved.

The room was large and well-furnished, a four-poster bed indeed taking up the centre of the larger back wall, and various plush chairs and ornately-carved tables such as one might find in a Cotswold antiques shop decorated the room.

What caught my attention was the figure of an old man sitting over the edge of the bed, gingerly placing his feet into a pair of slippers. He had the appearance of someone in the last stages of a long illness and wore the requisite blue and white striped pyjamas He looked a little put out, and in need of a bed pan. He sat leaning forwards, his hands on his knees and his shoulders slightly hunched.

When he spoke his voice was rasping, and he looked at me with two piercing, knowing, accusing eyes.

“Who are you? What is your purpose here?”

I stopped short, slightly taken aback and did a mock double-take at him.

“Forget that, old chap, and let’s not be hasty here—who the bloody hell are you?”

I raised the shotgun in what I hoped would be a suggestive manner.

He held my gaze momentarily, then laughed, looking away at the floor as his chuckling subsided into a mild attack of emphysema.

“My name,” says he, after he had coughed up a lung and replaced it carefully whence it had come, “is Edoardo Novacco Pisacane. And who, my friend, are you?”

A gunshot echoed from further down the corridor, and the sound of shouting suddenly seemed very close.

“Never mind that now, old fellow—I think it’s time for us to be elsewhere. Can you walk?”

Simultaneously he looked over to, and I noticed, a wheelchair at the foot of the bed. Could this evening possibly get any worse?

“Who sent you?” asks he.

“Your friend Castelnuovo,” says I. “There are more of us downstairs.”

“Alessandro?”

I nodded. Pisacane grinned with what appeared to be genuine delight. The man was clearly out of his mind. Mens sana in corpore sano—never was a truer word said.

“You will have to carry me.”

He raised his arms plaintively. For the first time I noticed just how small the man was. He couldn’t have been much over five feet in height. Perhaps I was misjudging him—after all, I didn’t know much about Signor Pisacane—but I feel certain there are village idiots who would inspire greater confidence in starting a political coup than a crippled midget apparently dying from lung disease.

I moved forward to the bed, trying to disguise my despondency and the fact that my mouth displayed a frown like an inverted croissant. As I did so there careered through the door two of our mob, both covered in blood and sweat. Luckily for them I recognised them as part of our band, although I couldn’t have told you their names if my life depended on it.

When they caught sight of Pisacane they fell to the ground, kissing his hands and mumbling Hail Marys &c. in a very strange way. Pisacane was obviously used to this sort of attention. He smiled down on his two devotees like a benign old grandfather (I estimated his age at approximately one hundred and forty-three years), making me feel as if I were in a scene from the Nativity. All he needed was a damned halo and he’d be away.

“Listen, chaps,” says I. “Before we get too carried away, let’s not forget we’ve got a castle of Papareschi’s men to negotiate our way through before we can kickstart the coronation. How much ammunition do we have?”

The answer was pleasing, thank Christ, although our physical state was not impressive. Of the two arrivals, one had been shot in the shoulder and the other had caught the blast from one of those damned hand grenades in his elbow and all down his upper arm. In short, despite my own wound I was the only fool in a state fit enough to carry the old man who would be king.

We hobbled out of the room like a poor man’s circus troupe that had landed awkwardly following a trapeze act: two tumblers at the front, covered in blood and brandishing their guns as if they were juggling skittles, and me shuffling along behind having caught the star of our ensemble following a particularly complex dismount from his bed.

I felt like Aeneas carrying his decrepit old father as we stumbled on our way. Credit where credit’s due, though—the two shooters in front of us plied their craft with consummate skill. We made our way back downstairs as speedily as we could, and even with their respective injuries, which must have affected their marksmanship, they provided us with sufficient cover such that we were back on ground level within minutes.

Once again I counted my blessings; obviously I had found a little-used back staircase on my fleeing the Armageddon created by Alessandro downstairs. Our downward progress had been similarly straightforward. Indeed, I had only dropped Pisacane once or twice, the latter occasion admittedly a little unfortunate since it had been on the spiral staircase, and he had bounced down a few steps before landing on his head in a window ledge. Another coughing fit had ensued, and the thought did cross my mind that if I delivered him a dead Pisacane, Castelnuovo was likely to have my gonads attached to the back of a fast train and ensure that I had no ticket.

At the bottom of the staircase we found plenty of bodies. At least three of them were ours, including the chap whom I had left to his own devices when the first hand grenade had been thrown. It seemed like hours ago that we had arrived at the castle. I glanced at my watch: eleven thirty-eight. Only forty minutes had passed. If we were lucky, Castelnuovo’s cars would be in position just up the road.

The man with the shattered elbow shot a glance around the wall at the bottom of the stairs. The gunfire was infrequent now, and seemed concentrated at the far end of the corridor and beyond.

I dropped Pisacane two steps higher up and hobbled down to hiss at Henchmen Nos. 1 and 2.

“For Christ’s sake go and see if you can find that bastard Alessandro and tell him to get his arse here quick-sharp.”

I jerked my head back.

“I’ll wait here with the cripple.”

In moments of sheer panic, teamwork can be a wonderful thing. The two men checked their guns and ammunition, and after a reassuring nod from Pisacane both made swift work of the corridor down towards the gunfire.

I sat down on the steps and waited, my knees shaking involuntarily once again.

I have often heard it said that when a man is faced with the kind of torment that had visited itself upon me tonight, the very worst moment is when he is almost out of the woods towards the adventure’s end. Yes, those innocent moments when Hope should be at its most convincing, such as when one is awaiting one’s turn to be taken into the lifeboat, are often by far the most harrowing. For that is when the sharks are most likely to bite, or when a bullet is most likely to find its abominable way into one’s back.

We waited for what seemed like hours. Occasional gunshots, punctuated by shouting—less frantic now—reached our ears, always over the background susurration of Pisacane’s wheezing. I looked over to the outer door, across the corridor, where we had entered and by which we would shortly exit if Alessandro showed his face. With any luck the bastard may have been shot.

For a split second I contemplated making a break for it alone, leaving Pisacane to fend for himself and taking my chances in the hills and forests above Chondille. Would they bother to search for me? Surely they would be far too involved with getting Pisacane to safety to worry about old Hammersley? They may not even notice I had gone. And then of course Castelnuovo and his gang would have the small task of reinstating the monarchy and running the country to keep them occupied. I couldn’t credit that they would trouble their heads over little old me.

I’d have to kiss goodbye to any chance of getting my hands on the aureus Hadrianus, of course, but this was a minor concern. I’d hardly had time to look for the thing whilst in the castle, since I’d been somewhat pre-occupied avoiding hand grenades and getting shot. There was no guarantee the coin was even there, so I dismissed the notion with a harrumph.

My heart leaped and started beating apace. That was it. I would make a run for it alone. Barely ten feet away lay my salvation. I would escape to France, send for Lemon and we would live happily in Liechtenstein, breed hens and eat home-grown asparagus. Stuff Castelnuovo; stuff Pisacane; stuff my brothers and stuff the damned Mafia. I double-checked that I wasn’t thinking aloud.

Then I looked at Pisacane. He was huddled against the stone stairs in a pitiable heap, breathing with obvious difficulty. He looked up at me and smiled weakly.

This was no time to be growing a conscience. I took one last glance down the corridor and shifted my weight back onto my ankles in order to get better purchase for launching myself at the door.

Just as I felt my heels lock into position, ready to let fly, movement down the far end of the corridor caught my attention and Alessandro and the others flew around the corner towards us.

Seven had originally gone into the castle. Two of our three sentries from out the front had joined us when it became clear that those inside were clearly trying to wake the damned dead. Of that nine, five were ready to make their escape, plus the regal handicap. Staggeringly we had lost only four men. (It transpired later that Papareschi had stationed only ten or fifteen guards in the castle. Excessively confident in his position, he was still under the quaint impression that Castelnuovo had no inkling of where Pisacane was being held. Castelnuovo’s calculation of a guard of fifty men turned out to have been a gross over-estimate, and Papareschi’s arrogance and inflated self-assurance had once again ensured that Pisacane was able to be scooped up, pocketed and passed about the place like the diminutive package he was.) We had been exceptionally lucky. But we were not yet out of the woods.

Further bullets followed my fraternal flock down the corridor. I sprang for the door and yanked it open, hoping to Christ that those damned cars were in place.

Our remaining sentry was obviously a sensible, God-fearing chap. He jumped as we spilled out of the door, stumbled over a log behind him and nearly levelled a shot at us. Having pulled himself together, he blew a whistle with two fingers—a talent that never ceases to impress me—and waved exaggeratedly down the road. Three pairs of headlights appeared in the darkness, about a hundred yards away, and accelerated towards us.

Our unsteady group ran, sprinted or limped its way towards the oncoming traffic. Alessandro and Pisacane had enjoyed an emotional reunion, and the former carried the latter now, making it look a damn sight easier than I had found the task.

The pair of them together moved more quickly than I. You may think this would cause me a degree of embarrassment, but in fact my chief concern was that I was the last in our group as we made haste for the cars. This meant that as we lurched forward, I was closer to the pursuing bullets (for—you can see where this is going—those of Papareschi’s men still alive inside the castle were an acrimonious crowd, inspired, presumably, by graphic images of what their employer would do to them when it transpired that they had let Pisacane slip through their fingers). Various bullets were discharged in our direction, and I could hear them whistle as they whipped through the air past me.

As the cars screeched and skidded their way towards us, one of the bullets punched through the windscreen of the foremost vehicle. It was a terrific shot that had even more terrific repercussions. The car swerved viciously off the road towards the castle. The driver had been hit in the temple through the glass, and the car ploughed towards the ramparts with increasing speed. It must have been doing nearly fifty miles an hour when it smashed into the wall about thirty feet from the castle door.

Well, they don’t make them like they used to, do they? Being in Switzerland it is hard to be certain of the nationality of the builders who put up the wall. I suspect it was a French foreman, convinced he was running the show, and some drunken Eyetie bricklayers or their medieval equivalent cocking it all up behind his back.

The wall crumbled over the car, which skidded sideways into the masonry on impact and tore a huge hole. The engine continued to sound with its high-pitched whirr, but the wheels no longer turned. The axle, like the driver, had seen better days.

As I ran from the castle I had remained close to the edge of the forest across the road, thinking that I would be a harder target to hit if my silhouette was set against the uneven backdrop of trees. In amongst the confusion of the crash I took the opportunity of ducking into the woods. No-one appeared to have noticed.

The two other cars screeched to a halt, their drivers skilfully turning them in a half circle so that they faced away from the castle, the engines still ticking over and revving encouragingly. I hovered near the fringe of the trees, wondering when would be the best moment to make a dash for the vehicles. They stood but twenty yards away, and Alessandro and the others were bundling themselves and Pisacane inside. Even now bullets continued to rain in our direction.

As I took a step towards the cars, the first sped off. I looked to the second, catching Alessandro’s eye as he stooped to climb inside. He paused for a moment, looked at the shooters coming at us from the castle, then back at me. He grinned, as I imagine a pirate would grin, slapped the roof of the car and leapt inside. Its tyres scratched into the gravel of the road and I watched it disappear into the darkness.

It felt as if my heart missed several beats, and I took a step back into the woods. The men from the castle, five of them, continued to fire into the shadows after the last car. Then they started to shout at each other. One of them walked up to another and shoved him forcefully, spitting invective and gesturing wildly with his hands.

A ridiculous, but potentially life-saving thought occurred to me, and I started moving slowly between the trees towards where the third car had crashed. I went quickly and noiselessly whilst Papareschi’s men continued to remonstrate with each other in the road. Checking that no other ruffians were about to emerge from the castle, I hopped through the demolished wall and into the courtyard stables, trying to remember what my uncle Kincaid had told me about picking a winning racehorse.

I dashed, incompetently owing to the wound in my leg, across the courtyard to the stable and into the nearest available outbuilding. Three horses were in the first stall, obviously perturbed by the recent commotion nearby. I approached the largest of the three, a towering black stallion that looked straight out of the pages of Zorro. He baulked a little at my movement, eyes wide and staring, but blinked and visibly relaxed when I patted his nose and slapped his neck. I have never understood why this should be the case.

Ensuring that no-one had spotted my entrance from outside, I threw a blanket over the creature’s back and untied his rope. I tiptoed to the demolished wall and out into the road, keeping the horse a safe distance behind me. Three men remained, still arguing heatedly. I made hasty calculations of my intended route: head straight for the trees and ride as fast as this glorified beast of burden could carry me, preferably as far as Rome and the next available flight back to London.

I leapt onto my mount, with surprising competence given my wounded and generally fed up state, and jabbed it with my heels, ensuring first that it was pointing in something approaching the right direction.

The next few moments were noteworthy, for a variety of reasons. The horse, in all fairness, played its part with great competence. It had one task to do and accomplished it, with no formal preparation, to at least a beta-plus-plus degree of proficiency. Marks were deducted due to the fact that rather than darting for cover as I had intended, the nag ran full pace towards the trio of men in the middle of the road.

I clung, white-knuckled, to the animal’s mane, pressing my head against its neck and trying for the life of me to remember the words to the Lord’s Prayer.

We had made good progress until the first shots were fired. Indeed, following an impressive jump over the crashed car, we’d reached the small group of men in the road before they’d actually noticed our arrival, and scattered them in a surprised panic.

I believe it was six shots that I heard fired in quick succession from the group of men we had just smashed our way through. I squeezed my eyes closed more tightly, willing the bullets not to strike home and gripping the horse’s mane with renewed vigour.

Suddenly we were both falling from what seemed the hell of a height. It seemed rather an elegant trick. I was thrown from the animal’s back at pace and rolled across the ground in a whirlwind of dust, mud and leaves. The horse breathed and whinnied heavily as we tumbled, and damn near landed on top of me. As it was my good leg became pinned beneath its haunches when we finally came to a rest, and as I spluttered muck from my mouth I hauled in vain at the thing, aware of both the bullet hole in the horse’s flank, just below its neck, blood pouring freely from the wound and—more terrifyingly—the blurred movement of the three men towards where we were sprawled.

The animal continued to wheeze and splutter, unable to rise, tossing its head weakly and kicking its hooves in obvious distress. I continued to heave against the weighty carcass with my other injured leg, completely without effect, almost delirious with panic.

The men were now upon us. From where I lay, with the sweat and dirt in my eyes, I was just able to discern the well-rounded heel of a Chelsea boot as it halted by my head, a stylish wingtip toe and decorative needlepoint perforations adorning the upper. I looked up into the eyes of the owner, uncertain whether or indeed how I should plead for my life, as he raised his gun towards my face.

And then he fired.

XIII

The horse kicked its leg sharply and its body quivered on top of me. It took another bullet, again into the animal’s skull, before its body ceased convulsing. Even then bits and pieces kept twitching and flickering in a disconcerting manner as dying spasms ran through its frame.

I had not the energy to pull my leg from under the creature. I allowed myself to be dragged by Papareschi’s men, gritting my teeth at the pain in my calf, which was by now throbbing again in a numbing, pulsating fashion.

I was frog-marched back into the castle and thrown into an underground cell. Such rooms hold a nostalgic place in my heart, you know. On our way we passed the large chef with whom I had had the altercation earlier in the evening, standing in the doorway of the kitchen and rubbing his chin. He glared at me as we passed by—another Christmas card list off of which I now found myself.

I was tempted to try engaging the Chelsea boot-wearing chap in conversation—he had come across as a notably sensible fellow when we had last spoken, at the opera—but he seemed, understandably, to be in a foul mood. All three men who dragged me back to the castle exchanged heated words, hissing at each other in a version of Italian whose dialect I could not quite understand. Perhaps it was a Swiss variant. Either way, there were lots of strange pronunciations, stressed syllables and the kind of obscure Cockney-like patter that one does not tend to find in the standard phrase books. I suspect the topics of conversation were also fairly esoteric, involving torture, maiming and otherwise unpleasant behaviour for which there is a specialist vocabulary known only to true professionals.

It was almost two hours later that I heard a collection of footsteps and the door of the cell was clanked open. Two men entered and stood as if on guard at either side of the entrance. Each brandished—you have spotted a pattern by now, I’m sure—a pistol and a look that suggested they weren’t in the job just for the money.

I had tried to elevate my leg in order to—in all honesty I’m not sure why I had elevated it. The throbbing had continued and was, by now, unbearably painful. I lowered the leg from the wall against which I had been propping it up, and almost instantly the pain subsided. An incredible thing, the human body. I shall never understand it.

In walked a short, squat man who looked like he meant it. Behind him appeared my friend with the elegant brogue boots. If anyone was going to be my ally at that moment, for some reason I had a feeling it was he.

“Is this him?” asks the short chap.

He was wearing (and not very well) the kind of dress suit that screams to the initiated that dress suits were never intended for men of his frame. He looked like a wrecking ball, only with less of its charm.

“What’s his name? Hamberslide?”

He jerked his hand to his mouth, and I noticed that he was working his way through a fistful of pistachios. It made me realise how hungry I was. I hadn’t eaten for hours.

“‘Hammersley’, Francesco. He and the other man are the only ones alive. The others are dead, or escaped.”

The squat man chewed noisily, shaking the remaining nuts loosely in his palm.

“Mmmmn,” says he, enigmatically, “along with my king—MY damned king!”

Segments of pistachio sprayed from his mouth as he spat out the words. He was one of those men whose hair was thinning to the point where people really should be using the word ‘billiard ball’, but hadn’t realised it himself. Instead of cropping it close to his head, he wore it mid-length, great tufts of the stuff round the back and sides, and the occasional lone sprig on top.

“What about the other one? Where is he?”

He spoke quickly and with ill-disguised impatience. The other man waited, hesitating in thought for a split second.

“Come on, Salvatore—where IS he?!”

Salvatore turned and swept from the room.

The squat man gestured to the men on the door.

“Bring him.”

I was brought.

***

Further down the corridor we entered another windowless room. To one side was a battered table, with two heavy chains attached to the wall behind. Against the opposite wall stood a large metal drum, battered and corroded.

In the middle of the room I recognised one of Castelnuovo’s men who had entered the castle with us previously. He writhed and struggled on the floor, in obvious distress: a rope had been tied around his throat and attached to his arms and legs, also bound, behind his back. He was slowly strangling himself to death.

The squat man raised a finger to his face and picked something from the corner of his eye.

“Your friend here, he has become an incaprettato[11]. It is a traditional form of punishment in Sicily, and one of my personal favourites. For me, I would estimate that he has another seven or eight minutes before he ends his own life.”

The man noticed our arrival and strained his neck towards us, a look of agonized desperation in his eyes. His mouth had been gagged, and he grunted and groaned in high-pitched whimpers, the sinews in his neck taut and unyielding.

“Signor… Hammersley?” The squat man looked at Salvatore for confirmation. “Ordinarily you would be tortured, like this”—he gestured to the man on the floor—“to see if you possess certain information. As it turns out, I already know that you have the information I require. I know from Salvatore that you are close with Castelnuovo and his organisation—surprisingly so. I know that you will take me to where he is holding Pisacane, and quickly. I know this because I know what I am capable of. This is fortunate for you.”

He indicated to the man on the floor. The two men with pistols moved from their positions. One holstered his gun, the other passed his weapon to Salvatore as he passed.

“It is less fortunate for your friend here.”

One of the men cut the rope binding our chap’s neck to his arms and legs. As he did so, the other moved to the metal drum against the wall. He picked up a crowbar and carefully prised off the lid.

When the man on the floor saw this, a look of utter derangement came across his face. His eyes bulged in his head, and he tried to run for the door, his wrists and ankles still bound. It took all the strength of the two others to restrain him and drag him over towards the metal bin. Still gagged, you could hear him screaming from the very pit of his stomach.

“Some of my colleagues choose to use petrol; some choose to use pigs to consume and conceal their waste. These are inefficient methods and cause such mess. But sulphuric acid, Signor Hammersley: now that is a truly inspired invention.”

The men were almost at the drum now, skilfully restraining the wild throes of their burden and moving with gritted determination.

“It is important to get the concentration of the acid exactly right, you know. If it is too strong it will simply melt the barrel. But even in its diluted state it can dissolve a man’s clothes, flesh, hair, bones and teeth in a matter of minutes. Only the buckle of his belt will remain. A truly incredible thing to behold.”

I swallowed hard. My mouth was dry, and the pain in my leg was long forgotten.

“What you are about to see will show you that I am not a man with whom it is considered wise to, ah—meddle.”

The use of such a quaint, Blyton-esque word seemed grotesquely inapposite in the circumstances. I watched in horror as the two flunkies lifted the gagged man, struggling for his life, muffled, hoarse screams piercing through the cloth forced into his mouth. They raised him above the drum and with almost methodical precision plunged him head first into the caustic substance within. Not a single drop was dispersed in the fluid movement.

I felt violently sick, and raised my hand to my face, dragging it up to my forehead and back down over my nose and mouth. The body thrashed maniacally in the drum, crashing loudly against the sides. The two men stood their ground, their legs widely set to bear the strain of the body’s movement, their shoulders leaning into the legs of the man as they kicked, utterly powerless, into the air. Even now not a splash of the acid came over the sides of the vat. The men were true professionals to a sickening degree.

I broke into a cold sweat and had to lean subtly against the wall of the cell to prevent my legs from giving way beneath me.

It was probably less than fifteen seconds before the kicking stopped. If death had not yet taken its hold, the man must have lost consciousness and the sweet release of absolute finality would not be far behind.

The two men relaxed their grip on the body and let it fold and sink to the bottom of the vast drum. Only the soles of its shoes remained visible.

The squat man turned to me and spoke with the confidence of a man who has convincingly won an argument.

“My name is Francesco Papareschi, Signor Hammersley. Henceforward you may consider yourself to be working for me.”

***

I like to think that I possess a fairly robust constitution. Goodness knows I’ve seen some rum nonsense in my life, but the image of the man’s face as the drum of acid was wrenched open and he realised what hideous fate awaited him will haunt me for the rest of my days. As arguments go, Papareschi had put his case unassailably.

I now found myself in the unfortunate position of being employed by both leading Mafia bosses within Italy. Papareschi knew his audience well. I’d told him about the midnight rendez-vous at the Domus Aurea, and he seemed to believe me. Even then I don’t think he quite knew what to make of me—whether I was merely hanging around Castelnuovo’s crowd because I had nothing better to do (other than his daughter), or whether I was genuinely into the Mafioso way of life and all its trappings.

It seems he was hoping for the latter, for he divulged to me that he intended to go to Rome and pop along to the old Domus Aurea himself, at the head of a small band of armed fools.

‘Why?’ I hear you ask. I shall tell you.

Papareschi was clearly a few pickles short of the full barrel. He had contrived the bizarre notion that Castelnuovo might consider entering some sort of joint venture with him in a bid to end the recent rumblings between the two factions that promised at any moment to explode into full scale, people-getting-their-heads-cut-off warfare.

His key bargaining chip had been Pisacane. Now that that particular gem had been extracted (indeed, lest we forget, re-extracted), his fall-back position was the aureus Hadrianus. He knew that the coin would pique Castelnuovo’s interest—having spoken to the man himself, I couldn’t say for sure that it would achieve more than that—and if it didn’t, and wasn’t sufficient enticement, well, Papareschi was simply going to start shooting people. The simplest plans are often the best, aren’t they?

Or was it a subtle double-cross on Papareschi’s part? Was it all an elaborate plan to stitch Castelnuovo up? But then, if so, why take the coin and risk losing it? And why tell me about it? Or did P. know all this and was he taking the coin in an effort to double bluff the hell out of the situation? It was all getting far too complex and my head was starting to hurt trying to figure it out.

So it turned out, in fact, that I now had almost a full house in the great poker game of life. A pair of Kings and two mad Jacks would be at the Domus Aurea at midnight: Castelnuovo and Papareschi, the heads of State of their respective clans; Winterburn, the mentally deficient London crime Lord; and of course me—equally certifiable, but for different reasons. All I needed was another deranged lunatic added to the equation and it would be Monte Carlo or bust. But there was always Alessandro.

I was driven to a deserted field a few miles from the castle and shoved onto one of Papareschi’s aeroplanes that was due to make an overnight delivery of cocaine to Rome. They didn’t even wind a crude bandage around my leg. I had images of my being dropped out of the ’plane above the city and plummeting headlong into St Peter’s lofty dome. I needn’t have worried—Papareschi had an arrangement with the overnight officials at Fiumicino, and for a couple of bags from its cargo the plane was permitted to touch down like any other commercial jet. Papareschi’s effrontery was quite extraordinary—the crates were unloaded in a solitary warehouse and the ’plane was on its way back to Switzerland within minutes.

I was given enough money for a taxi back to the hotel (I hadn’t thought it through in any detail, but something told me to keep away from Castelnuovo’s house for the time being), and assured that I would be being watched by Papareschi’s men until midnight came. It was by then around 4.30am. The sun was just beginning to wink open an eyelid in the direction of the Earth’s foolish stage, and the airport felt reassuringly familiar after the evening’s activities as I limped through it to find a cab.

As we wove our way through the city’s streets, already starting to buzz, I inspected the wound in my leg. It was small but painful, like Napoleon, and a round or two of shot seemed to be embedded in the flesh. I dropped my head back onto the headrest, exhausted.

At the hotel I requested a steak knife from the lady on reception. She looked at me exactly as I would expect a receptionist at the Excelsior to look who had just worked a long night shift and been asked for a steak knife at quarter past five in the morning by a man who bore the outward appearance of having recently escaped a gun fight with the Mafia. I must have looked quite a state, and possibly she thought that I was intending to try my hand at some sort of street crime or similar.

All the same, the Excelsior is not the sort of establishment to question the demands of its clientele. The knife was produced and presented folded within a magnificently starched white napkin. I pocketed it with a nod and limped upstairs to my room.

You may imagine my surprise when I entered and discovered Giuseppina Parelli sitting up in bed, wearing my pyjamas and reading my copy of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

To return home to find such a marvellous bit of fluff in one’s bed should be the unalienable right of every man and, damn it, every woman too. And to have her reading early twentieth century French comedy—well, you may rest assured that there is a God in Heaven, and as certain as a squirrel’s nut supply, He’s a chap.

“!” I remarked, as eloquently as I was able.

It had been a long and strange evening, and I could venture little more.

She looked up at me as I entered the room, her head still bowed over the book, a strand of hair falling silkily over her eyes and a fingertip delicately supporting the page she had been reading. The book is an early Paris edition, but for all its age seemed content with its lot, the lucky thing.

I started to feel better.

“What are you doing here?” says I, dropping my key onto a table by the door and depositing the knife alongside.

Giuseppina rose from the bed. She will certainly go to Heaven, for she closed the book—she did not discard it face down, open and exposed—and set it carefully beside the bed. As she walked over to me, I couldn’t help thinking that she was taking an almighty risk in coming to the hotel. If Castelnuovo or Papareschi had anyone watching the place it could make things considerably more lively than we may care for.

She licked the tip of her thumb and wiped away a smear of blood on my cheek. As it happened she only succeeded in smudging it more extensively over my face, the silly, sweet tart, but the movement had a gentleness about it that made me close my eyes and inhale deeply. She smelled warm, clean and inviting, a notable contrast to the hellish brutality I had endured that night.

“I overheard them speaking with my father,” says she. “Alessandro said that you had been lost in the struggle to get away, that he had tried to save you but could not leave Pisacane’s side.”

Tried to stitch me up like a prize kipper, more like, the odious Italian bastard.

I wanted to ask Giuseppina if she had caught her father’s reaction to the news of my almost certain demise. I still couldn’t quite figure Castelnuovo out, exactly how he viewed me in the grand scheme of things and whether—if given the opportunity—he would deem it worth his while trying to keep me alive. I still had much to offer him, after all. Given that for most of the evening I had been off on a frolic of my own, neither he nor Alessandro could say for sure whether I had managed to locate the aureus Hadrianus in the upheaval. Even more compellingly, I hadn’t yet taught the chap how to smoke a damned pipe.

“I feared for your life when I heard that you were in Papareschi’s hands. How did you escape? Did he hurt you?”

She ran her eyes over me, scanning for signs of the type of hideous injury that, no doubt, she knew Papareschi was capable of inflicting.

“There were some interesting moments,” says I, “but I came through it relatively unscathed. I shall need a new pair of trousers, though.”

I indicated the tear in my tweeds, a patch of semi-dried blood having spread over a small area, but large enough to cause Giuseppina consternation. She dropped to her knees with what seemed like genuine anxiety. It was very sweet of her, and one must always be grateful for such displays of concern in women of Giuseppina Parelli’s beauty. They are so rare in today’s liberated age, for pretty girls are increasingly aware that they no longer need to display the sort of domestic niceties that made great the bombshells of old.

Even with Giuseppina’s kindly attentions I was exhausted, physically and mentally, and I still needed to deal with my leg. The throbbing had now stopped, the small bits of lead inside my calf would be starting to fester and things would soon become infected in a most unpleasant fashion.

I drew Giuseppina up and kissed her in a manner that showed my intentions were strictly dishonourable, if she could just wait until my energy returned, then excused myself to the bathroom with the steak knife for a long shower. Ordinarily I do not choose to be accompanied in my ablutions by pieces of cutlery, however exquisite they may be, but in the circumstances necessity did indeed spawn the innovation.

Papareschi’s man had managed to embed two pellets of shot in my leg. Neither had done irreparable damage, but both had penetrated the muscle more than superficially. I managed to gouge out one of them with only the tip of the knife; the other took more determination and demanded the gritting of teeth as water mingled with fresh blood. The tiny ball bearing had lodged itself almost an inch under the skin. I had been fortunate that it had not struck the bone.

I stood for a while in the shower and let the water run over my face and head. I felt totally immersed in the warm glow and my body shivered as the cathartic effects took hold.

When I returned to the bedroom, I slept for four hours without waking. It is rare to experience such guiltless slumber, and it was enough to restore me to my usual roguish ways.

I awoke to find that Giuseppina had discarded the homely façade and adopted a more vulpine demeanour. My pyjamas had disappeared and been replaced by some rather saucy underwear which the little minx filled (‘wore’ would be an overstatement) as surely as the designer must have intended, the insightful chap.

I watched her walk over to the window and pull the floor-length curtains apart. Bright sunshine fell through the glass and onto her magnificent body. She stretched the sleep out of her limbs, and I suffered a minor coronary. Her brassiere was a feat of engineering genius; it must have undergone innumerable industrial tests to withstand that degree of strain in its seams. A truly wondrous piece of buttressing.

She joined her hands behind her back and brought them over her head. I rolled out from under the bedcovers and snuck up close behind her, slipping one arm around her waist and pulling her into me. She lowered her arms over mine as I kissed her neck, running my other fin up her right leg and over her midriff. I was feeling much like the old Hammersley once again, and thoughts of my midnight rendez-vous were banished from my mind.

Giuseppina turned around and our lips met in impassioned conference. Her skin felt warm and tanned, and she gently drew me back to the bed. We fell upon each other and I drew the sheets over us in a flamboyant motion.

A few minutes later, we were in the middle of our Ugandan discussions when a most inconsiderate individual had the brass balls to knock on my damned door.

I poked my head out from under the covers like an alert tortoise. Giuseppina tried to pull me back, but it was not a day to have one’s mind distracted by Italian temptresses. My fate was hanging in the balance, to be decided at approximately midnight that evening when a whole host of ne’er-do-wells was due to descend upon the Domus Aurea for the hell of a showdown. I hadn’t yet thought through my game plan for the evening—all I knew was that there was a fair number of unpleasant persons lurking about the place, any one of whom might take it upon themselves to pay me an unscheduled visit ahead of the main event and ascertain the thickness of my skull by bashing it in with a piece of lead piping.

Nevertheless, it was a damned awkward time for anyone to be making house calls, even by the standards of villainous, Mafia-type miscreants. I had to call a halt to my discussions with Giuseppina, make frustrated excuses and depart from the conversation entirely naked. There is nothing worse than having to leave Church before the Gospel—I’m sure you catch my meaning, devout reader.

I hissed to Giuseppina the overwhelming need for her to stay submerged beneath the covers whilst I attended to our visitor, and assured her that I would send the fool away with my boot up his backside so that normal service could be resumed beneath the sheets. I told her to keep her hands warm, slapped her playfully on the behind and hopped into my dressing gown.

Thankfully there was a peephole in the door, which I happened to look into just as I was pulling taut the belt on the gown. Well, I very nearly gave myself a hernia with the damned thing, for standing in the corridor outside my room, looking down the passageway in a coy and endearing manner, raising her fist to knock once more was Signora Vittoria Castelnuovo. She was decked out like a pox doctor’s clerk, all high heels and hemlines, and looked as trim and perky as I remembered.

This was an awkward situation, to be sure, and on so many levels. I list them as they occurred to me, in no especial order:

1. A gentleman should never entertain polite company merely in his dressing gown;

2. Point 1 becomes doubly important if one is entertaining the wife of a disagreeable and jealous man who may well hold said gentleman’s fate in his hands;

3. Point 1 triples in importance if said gentleman is unclad beneath said dressing gown, and still suffering from a touch of Irish toothache from an intimate encounter but seconds prior to the arrival of said wife;

4. Said wife really did have a magnificent backside;

5. Point 1 acquires meteoric gravity when the object of said intimate encounter (and the cause of said Irish toothache) happens to be the daughter of both said wife and said disagreeable man, neither manifestly aware of the delicate and illicit situation;

6. Slippers: I have never quite made up my mind on this subject, viz., is it ever appropriate for a gentleman under the age of forty-six to wear them?

7. Point 1 pales into utter insignificance and, indeed, this entire list may as well not have been crafted, if the last time said gentleman had encountered said wife he had given said backside a playful but gentle squeeze in the darkness as he had bidden her goodnight after a flirtatious night at the opera.

I made a mental note to write to Debrett’s for further guidance on the subject when time permitted. For now I would have to rely on native wit and mettle, God help me.

I opened the door with subdued extravagance, wide enough not to suggest to Vittoria C. that I had someone hidden under my bedcovers, but not so wide as to offer her an invitation inside.

“Signora Castelnuovo,” says I, sounding suitably surprised and pleased at her presence, “what a pleasant surprise.” I spoke quietly, but not unnaturally so, for fear that Giuseppina would learn the identity of my visitor.

She blushed ever so slightly as she glanced down at my scant wardrobe, and I made as if to pull the collar more tightly around my neck.

“You must forgive my inappropriate attire,” says I, flashing her a grin that could only be described as rakish. I have spent years perfecting it.

“I would invite you in, but unfortunately my tailor has just arrived. He’s in the bathroom ‘cleansing his fingertips’, if you please, before handling his fabrics.”

I laughed at the quaintness of the man. Signora Castelnuovo tried to share the joke, but looked rather uncomfortable. Clearly something was on her mind.

“Are you well, Signora?”

She had avoided my gaze so far, but glanced up at me now and I saw a most peculiar look—a cross between lust and vulnerability—in her eye.

“I wanted—I thought that—I needed to… I wanted to see you,” says she after a while, clearly in two minds as to whether she should be standing in the corridor outside my hotel room.

Without warning she stepped hurriedly forward and planted her lips on mine, cupping her hands about my face and running one up through my hair.

I kissed her back, squinting an eye open and glancing up and down the passageway to ensure that nobody would witness this particularly odd form of suicide.

Impulsively I wrapped my arm around Signora Castelnuovo’s waist and gave her backside a firm squeeze, pulling her body against mine. By now my strength had fully recovered, the pain from the gunshot wound in my leg forgotten, and what I really wanted to do was take Signora C. back into my room, introduce her to her daughter’s and my very interesting Ugandan debate and ascertain her thoughts on the question of whether Kampala or Entebbe made for a better national capital.

Despite such fantasies, I was acutely aware that these ideas never go down quite as well in practice once they have been given public voice. I was even more acutely aware that I was standing in a corridor of one of the most exclusive hotels in Europe, clad in only a dressing gown, with the daughter of a Mafia boss awaiting my urgent attentions in bed whilst I had my lips attached to her mother’s face and my hand clamped around her rather pleasing backside but ten yards away, masked only by a door that was not entirely pulled to.

More importantly, I could feel that Irish toothache stirring again. The Excelsior may be the type of classy establishment that is prepared to turn a blind eye to the minor indiscretions of its wealthier patrons, but I felt sure it would object to my pitching a tent in the middle of the corridor outside my room. I’m sure you catch my meaning.

I withdrew from Signora Castelnuovo’s embrace and made an appropriate expression of satisfaction.

“Signora, you have no idea the extent of my ill-feeling and resentment towards my damned tailor. He will be soundly beaten for being so punctual.”

Vittoria Castelnuovo smoothed her skirt down over her curves.

“When you did not return home last night, I feared the worst,” says she.

I smiled while I thought quickly for an explanation.

“So did I, nearly,” says I, indicating the bandage around my leg that I had fashioned from one of the hotel towels. “That’s one of the reasons Giuseppe”—it was the first name that came to mind, uncannily, ridiculously, foolishly close to her daughter’s—“has come around: to fix my threads and make me look presentable again. Bullets do not have much respect for haute couture, I’m afraid.”

“When will I see you?” asks she, looking me dead in the eye and damn near making me jump upon her again.

Whilst I knew the answer to this question was, tragically, not any time soon, Vittoria Castelnuovo was not aware of the situation. The outcome of the meeting at the Domus Aurea that evening would either find me in a shallow, unmarked grave; or, with any luck, hightailing it for the nearest airport with a certain gold coin secreted somewhere about my person. Either way, there was unlikely to be any time for the sort of prurient farewell I had hoped for with Signora Castelnuovo—and, happily enough, for which she also now seemed an eager participant.

As fine a rattle as Giuseppina was, I almost wished she hadn’t shown up that morning. For if I had been alone in my room when Signora Castelnuovo had knocked, I would by now be getting more closely acquainted with that firm, tanned, rich lady figure that had been the subject of so much inappropriate speculation these past few days. Although it seemed unlikely now that Vittoria Castelnuovo and I would have our turn on Cupid’s Catherine wheel, I have learned through much experience that one really must never say never in such situations.

Signora C. was well aware of the meeting at the Domus Aurea that night. Her presence had been requested there by Castelnuovo (Eyebrow One hauls itself up) for the grand occasion both of welcoming Edoardo Novacco Pisacane back to the Castelnuovo clan and of celebrating the final victory over Papareschi (Eyebrow Two joins its neighbour—little did Castelnuovo know his party was going to be impressively crashed by the ‘vanquished’ Papareschi), ahead of reinstating Pisacane to the throne in a fanfare of general brilliance and self-congratulatory back-slapping.

Conscious that Giuseppina’s suspicions were likely to be roused if I didn’t get back to her fairly sharpish, I assured Signora Castelnuovo that I would see her later that night and that we could plot then for a more private encounter. I checked the corridor once more and kissed her again, this time bringing my arm up under her jacket. Her breast felt full and heavy under her blouse and she moaned ever so slightly as I cupped my hand around it.

I spun her around before the paltry confines of my dressing gown were breached yet again and propelled her in the direction of the elevators by patting her gently on the behind.

As I shut the door behind me I had to take a few deep breaths to compose myself before hopping back into bed alongside Giuseppina.

“Who the hell was that?” asks she, not a little irked by my absence.

“Sorry—my damned tailor,” says I, drawing the covers over our heads once more.

XIV

As a general rule, it is not the bullet with my name on it that troubles me—it’s the one that says ‘To whom it may concern’. I had already survived one crazed encounter with lead flying about the place in a manner more haphazard than I care to recall. I was not particularly relishing the thought of a second.

I spent the day avoiding any further scrapes such as I had managed to chance upon with impressive aptitude within just a handful of days in Rome. You may appreciate that this was a tall order for me, for I suspect that you will have just read the past three hundred-odd pages, and consequently have some idea of my impressive abilities on the scrape-finding front.

I am happy to report, however, that the task was as straightforward as it should be, and the day passed without incident. Indeed, it was a day of planning, a pastime in which I do not claim to have any proficiency worthy of note. It had been some time since I’d last single-handedly organised the downfall of a country’s oldest and most revered institution of organised crime, and I may have been a little rusty.

I spent most of the afternoon at Dante’s, and together we contributed considerably to the annual shareholders’ dividends of Messrs. Dunhill and Courvoisier.

I was to meet Soho Winterburn, my good friend Sergeant Furnell and whatever other foul beings saw fit to tag along at the Parco di Traiano at midnight. If polite conversation did not seem a viable activity, I would engage in a touch of polite headlong flight in the direction of the Domus Aurea.

There I would seek out Castelnuovo and his crowd, to be welcomed back to the brotherhood with open arms as one gloriously returned from the dead; try to convince an out of breath Winterburn that a joint venture between London’s East End criminal underworld and the Mafia was a sound business proposition; introduce our mutual friend Papareschi into that equation, who I estimated by then would have arrived in a fanfare of artillery and ostentation; and see if we could all come to some mutual understanding entailing as one of its non-negotiable terms my safe and swift passage elsewhere. As payment for my services in engineering this historical meeting of minds—a finder’s fee, if you will—I asked only for a small gold coin to be deposited in my palm. It all seemed a thoroughly reasonable and sensible arrangement to my mind.

Dante looked at me over his glass and asked if I had given thought to whether I wished to be buried or cremated.

All right, I conceded, if all the above did not work out as seamlessly as the printed word tends to convince, there was always Old Bill. Dante averred that he would arrange for them to drop in on the Domus Aurea around 1.30am, just in case spirits ran high. The more armed individuals on my side, the merrier, I proclaimed.

“Tell them to bring their very largest guns,” says I—“and not to shoot anyone smoking a pipe.”

***

The night air was chilly as I strolled down the Viale del Monte Oppio towards the Domus Aurea, pipe firmly clamped in my mouth.

There were more people on the streets than I had expected, but not such as to dissuade such reprobates as Sergeant Furnell from perpetrating their own particular brand of violence.

I clocked a couple of Winterburn’s men on the approach to the park, standing and not talking to one another, swinging their fists (black leather gloves) into their open other hands (ditto) in front of their bodies and generally looking as low-key as a pair of rhinos on heat.

I picked out two more, fifty yards away across the grass, sitting on either end of a bench and surveying the moonlit landscape in opposite directions.

Four men already, and neither of them Winterburn or Furnell. Mad Frank had certainly come mob-handed. I had better watch my—

WHOOOMP!

A large being leapt from the depths of an equally large bush and landed close by, grabbing me by the scruff of my jacket.

I jumped and hunched my shoulders, yanking the pipe from my mouth.

“Good Christ!” I yelped, quite appropriately, and almost swallowed my tongue.

Furnell walked around me, moulding his grip into a friendly, sinister arm around my shoulders.

“You feel light, Hammersley—not the sort of weight oneself might expect of a man carrying a gold coin.”

There he went again, flaying the Mother Tongue.

Up ahead Winterburn emerged from behind the silhouette of a small but aspiring copse of acacia trees. Another dark figure accompanied him. I calmly knocked the pipe against my palm and pocketed it.

Seven of them, eh? Clearly the situation was not working out for me. It was time to stop messing around. Or, more accurately, to start.

I made a fist with my right hand and, gripping it with the left, shoved my elbow back, hard and low, into Furnell’s groin.

He produced a sound like someone trying to decline irregular Russian verbs through a hosepipe and removed his hand from my back. I shook off his arm and started to sprint through the gardens, heading north, grateful for my foresight in selecting a pair of brogues whose soles had a few teeth in them.

Ahead of me and laterally the six other figures, including Winterburn himself, jolted into action and we started to converge towards a common goal in the distance. I needed to get there first and make it up the slight incline leading to the Domus Aurea. It was a simple game of British Bulldog, at which I had excelled at school.

Cries of “Get that posturing bastard!” in Winterburn’s angered drawl echoed behind me as I flitted past them. The quick brown fox had evaded the lazy dogs.

The small pathway leading up to the Domus Aurea seemed steeper than I remembered from my schooldays. Following some random meanderings on the lawns and a brief episode during which I found it necessary to introduce the fleeter-footed of the seven men to the concept of some soil in the eyes and a boot to the head, I had gained seventy yards or so on my pursuers.

The damned entrance gates were shut, chained together by a hefty padlock and a large, official-looking sign announcing the ongoing refurbishment for the glory of Italy and the people of Rome &c. &c.

I yanked at the gates in frustration, as I believe is customary in such situations, and glanced behind at the crowd of thugs bearing down upon me.

Up the railings I leapt, hauling myself over the top and gritting my teeth as I caught my injured leg on the tip of one of the spearheads. A large pair of iron doors had been built into the ancient masonry, ostensibly barring any further progress.

“You shan’t escape, Hammersley! I will personally see to it that you are flayed alive!” They were almost now at the foot of the incline.

He may be right, considers I, cursing myself for not thinking far enough ahead as to how I would gain entrance into the ruins, and kicking out forcefully at the doors in resentment.

One of them scraped open about four inches.

My heart surged back into action and I barged into the door with my shoulder. Twice more and I had gained access, leaving the blusterings of Winterburn and his massive oafs receding into the night behind me.

The scent of mustiness and antiquity filled my nostrils, and the darkness enveloped me. Low-watt lighting glowed high up on the walls of a passageway leading down into the depths of the earth beneath Rome. Faded red and yellowy ochre images, the handiwork of ancient artists, crawled up the stucco surfaces to a lofty barrel-vaulted roof.

I blinked several times, adjusting my eyes to the murky greyness. Up ahead, around various corners and through myriad chambers I could hear the murmurs, ever so faintly, of a small gathering of people and the intermittent snippets of light music.

It would be a matter of seconds before Winterburn and his crowd came crashing in behind me.

I pressed on.

***

I ran quietly through dingy corridors and empty chambers, the whole journey sparingly illuminated by those muted wall lights. The distant noise of gentle merrymaking grew louder as I progressed, and after many labyrinthine turns I came to a large octagonal hall, more brightly lit than its cousins and vast in size by comparison. Five of its walls were pierced and receded into deep and shadowy alcoves and passages, giving the whole room an air of expanding volume. An enormous domed vault rose high above the central hall, further adding to the impression of spatial ambivalence, and magnetically drawing the rest of the interior upwards into its lofty calyx.

Despite the increased number of wall lamps, the design of the chamber meant that light spread unevenly across the interior, resulting in a grainy patchwork of illumination with rather haunting chiaroscuro effects. I felt as if I were standing in the middle of the Grand Lodge at Hallowe’en.

From my vantage point by the chamber’s entrance I could observe, unseen, the small gathering of Castelnuovo’s cronies as they celebrated the homecoming of Edoardo Novacco Pisacane and his imminent, triumphant return to power. A small string quartet played a medley of classical inanities in the background.

There were ten or twelve people in the room, all dressed in formal attire, drinking champagne from tall flutes and nibbling assorted delicacies handed out by a stiff-looking butler chap. I recognised Castelnuovo, Vincente Spagnoletti, the dreadful Alessandro, and Carlo (walking with the aid of a stick, bless him); a couple of the faces I recalled as being the drivers at Chondille the other night; a few other unknown entities also milled about the place. It seemed to be an all-male event, the only women being Giuseppina Parelli and Vittoria Castelnuovo—presumably this was a family-only (small ‘f’) affair as far as the presence of women was concerned.

And the cause of this exaggerated jamboree, Pisacane himself, sat in his wheelchair by a wall, a blanket covering his knees, an untouched glass of fizz balanced precariously on his thigh and a look on his face that suggested he would rather be aboard the Titanic. He wheezed and coughed his way in the background next to Alessandro, who looked out into the chamber at the revelry, ignoring Pisacane like some aged relative at Christmas. Occasionally the old man would jolt forward with a dynamic bark, swallow what presumably was a great, rissole-sized clod of phlegm, clutch his heart and sink back into the chair. Alessandro would make to get up, then seat himself again in response to Pisacane’s irritable gesturings. This happened at least twice during the ten seconds or so of my observing the scene.

I found myself yearning for days of yore, when men were men, and kings led their troops into battle.

When I walked into the room, right into the middle I mean, Castelnuovo did not notice me at first. He continued chatting to Carlo, grinning widely and gesturing with a hand out of which he had just devoured a smoked salmon canapé.

And, fittingly, the band played on.

Carlo spotted me first and indicated to Castelnuovo with his eyes. The latter turned and looked absurdly surprised. Alessandro rose from beside Pisacane and stood motionless, staring towards us.

“Good evening, Signor,” says I to Castelnuovo, my eyes fixed on Alessandro, then acknowledging Carlo with a nod.

“Carlo,” says I. “How’s the rump?”

Not waiting for an answer I breezed over to the waiter, smiling at Giuseppina as I passed (wondering why she had not told me earlier that she would be here tonight—perhaps she hadn’t realised herself?) and giving Vittoria Castelnuovo a very subtle wink. I swept a glass of champagne from the waiter’s tray and turned back to face the room. The string quartet had fallen silent.

The look of surprise dropped from Castelnuovo’s phiz, and an almighty grin broke across his features.

“Signor Hammersley,” says he, arms outstretched, “we thought we had lost you.”

“Well, that very nearly turned out to be the case,” says I, raising a toast in Alessandro’s direction and looking at him over the glass, then draining it in one long swig. The bubbles fizzed and danced over my tongue and I swallowed the acrid, overrated liquid with as straight a face as I could muster. Beastly stuff.

From over by the wall Pisacane coughed and spluttered into a handkerchief.

“And what of the aureus Hadrianus, Signor? Do we have occasion to make this evening a double celebration?”

All eyes in the room were upon me. Behind everyone, over at the far side of the chamber whence I had entered, a series of shadows flickered on the wall of the passageway—Winterburn and his troupe were about to make an entrance.

“Ah, Signor Castelnuovo,” says I, turning and taking a step away and raising an inquisitive finger in the direction of the vault, “that would appear to be the question of the hour.”

I wheeled around on my heel just as Sergeant Furnell and the six others bundled onto the stage, each of them brandishing a firearm and/or other instrument of violence.

Immediately there was a flurry of activity and after a handful of seconds, triggers being cocked and grips being adjusted on pistol butts, everyone in the room stood stock still and within either the sights of a shooter or swinging distance of a man with precious little education and no moral code to speak of. I was impressed by the speed at which a handful of otherwise respectable, black-tied Italian businessmen could transform into a gun-wielding posse of Mafia henchmen.

Giuseppina and Vittoria Castelnuovo huddled together, pressed up into a corner near one of the alcoves. Pisacane started to hyperventilate, prompting many pairs of eyes to dart in his direction, but the moment passed and normal service was resumed after Giuseppina slipped a hitherto concealed oxygen mask over his face and the greyness (the colour of rotting flesh, I noted) faded from his cheeks.

“A question,” says I, “that, if you will permit, my—” I looked at Winterburn and his mob “—my acquaintances here would also like to pose.”

Castelnuovo and his entire entourage turned their eyes in unison to the new arrivals. This was rather fun, I remember thinking.

Winterburn, who by now had fought his way through to the front of his men, was standing, legs set at twenty-five past seven, with both hands pointing a large pistol at my groin. Very professional.

He darted his eyes about the place as a significant proportion of Italy’s largest criminal family, plus armaments, turned its attention towards him. Even without the women and Piscacane, he was outnumbered—and I hadn’t yet declared where my own loyalties lay.

Winterburn shifted his grip on the gun and shuffled his feet. Furnell, next to him, licked his lips and did likewise. Pisacane continued to croak like a very old car being started on an icy February morning.

“I don’t know what kind of game you are playing, Hammersley,” says Winterburn, presumably also wondering how a small bunch of dinner-jacketed Italians were able to conceal an arsenal which would be the pride of most South American guerrilla camps beneath their cummerbunds, “but it won’t work—where is that damned coin?!”

“You see?” says I, craning my neck back to our host.

Castelnuovo was the only one not holding a weapon. He was the kind of person who never needed to—someone else would always be there to do it on his behalf. Carlo stood beside him like a Spartan, alert and loyal, his hideous features narrowed in concentration, his walking stick planted firmly in the ground by his side like some sturdy buttress.

“Signor,” says Castelnuovo, taking a step past Carlo and opening his arms in a conciliatory gesture. “We appear to be on the verge of a misunderstanding; let us not be hasty. Do we really have need for hostility?”

The diplomatic Italian bastard.

I glanced over at Giuseppina and her mother. The latter had moved along the wall to Piscacane and was helping to attend to his infirmities.

“Listen, friend,” says Winterburn, keeping his gun trained on me but addressing Castelnuovo, “I have no beef with you, nor with your people here. I don’t know who you are, with respect, nor how you have had the misfortune to become involved with this… fool.”

I like to think that I have a fairly tough hide, but that hurt.

“I shan’t ask you again, Hammersley—where is the coin?”

Things were starting to get a little feisty. I have an eye for these things, you see.

Castelnuovo did not respond to Winterburn, but looked to me instead. He seemed as interested in the aureus as Winterburn. Perhaps I was holding more cards than I thought.

“For the benefit of Mr Winterburn,” commences I, “I have recently returned from a short break in the Swiss mountains—lovely place. The aureus Hadrianus was apparently in the possession of a certain Francesco Papareschi, in a castle on the shores of Lake Geneva. I have had the great pleasure of spending some time with Signor Papareschi this past twenty-four hours”—I glanced casually at my wristwatch, wondering when the final members of our star-studded cast would make an appearance—“and he has told me, in confidence, where the aureus may be found.”

“So you are telling me that you do not actually have the coin with you?” Winterburn ostentatiously cocked the trigger of his gun.

“Mr Hammersley, your existence begins to be a source of great weariness to me, and my patience is wearing thin. I shall not disguise the very great pleasure I will have in doing away with you, and I know for certain that Sergeant Furnell will concur with that sentiment. Nobody saw you come in here, Hammersley, and nobody has to see you leave. Now if you will come with us, we can let these good people continue with their evening.”

Castelnuovo held up his hand as Furnell took a step forward. It was a silent and simple gesture but one with great moment. It stopped Furnell in his tracks, and he looked to Winterburn for guidance.

“You will forgive my audacity, Signor,” says Castelnuovo, “but I for one have certainly seen Signor Hammersley come in here this evening—as indeed have all my Family.”

He indicated the gun-toting clan around him. A capital ‘F’ this time; he pronounced it quite clearly, despite the fraught circumstances.

“It appears that Signor Hammersley, although possibly not in possession of the little coin at this moment, knows where it is. I am indebted to him for a variety of reasons, not least for having located the aureus Hadrianus—you, ah, harm him at your peril, Signor.”

Tensions had reached a zenith. I was surprised (and, bizarrely, faintly touched) by Castelnuovo’s leaping to my defence, but not for one minute did I think that this was prompted by any affection on his part. If I confessed to him that I had about as much chance of being elected Pope as I had of getting my hands on the aureus, I fear that he would have been less than enthusiastic in his eagerness to keep me alive.

I tried to gauge what was going through Winterburn’s mind as he weighed up his options. Presumably he had no idea who Castelnuovo was. This is not the type of information they print in The Daily Telegraph. That he was a man who meant business was clear to fathom, but when one walks into a genteel, black tie soirée to witness it turn into a scene from Little Bighorn, one does not automatically assume that one is dealing with the Mafia, even in Rome. Does one? Perhaps I am a little out of touch.

I felt quite confident though, despite the palpable aim of his pistol squarely on my balls, that if relations in the room soured any further Winterburn would be forced to refocus his attentions on Carlo or Castelnuovo himself. Carlo posed a more immediate threat to his well-being than the Hammersley equipage, although I shall not stoop so low as to make comments about the size of our respective guns.

Winterburn looked me in the eye. Confidence is a funny old thing, is it not?

I would have staked a sizeable portion of Lemon’s mortgage (I am unable to stake my own—I will not endure such vulgar usury) on the fact that the first bullet to fly in that ancient chamber would unleash Armageddon. If said bullet had been discharged by one of Winterburn’s or Castelnuovo’s chaps, that may well have been the case.

Instead, we all flinched as a shot rang from the far corner of the room, over by the entrance where none of us was actually looking. The bullet in question shattered Carlo’s walking stick a little over halfway up the shaft. It was a splendid shot.

Carlo’s body twitched dramatically as his weight slipped from under him, and he damn near fell to the floor, dropping his gun with a clatter. The lower half of the cane spun away and clattered across the chamber towards Pisacane. Carlo looked down at the stub of the handle he was left holding, then up towards the entrance passageway whence the shot had emanated. The rest of us followed his gaze.

Salvatore, the wearer of elegant brogues on Papareschi’s staff, stood by the entrance holding a smoking pistol out before him in his right hand. Behind him Francesco Papareschi and five of his men emerged into the chamber, heading to the right, away from Winterburn’s crowd. Each was appropriately armed for the occasion—huge great Bren gun-type things some of them had—except for Papareschi himself who merely carried a small black brief case. I noted that it had a red handle. For some reason, this small point of detail stuck with me. I was glad it did.

The other newcomers trained their cannons on the Castelnuovo and Winterburn factions. The upper hand had been passed; the tables neatly turned.

“Ah, Antonino,” says Papareschi, walking a little into the room and gazing up at the mighty vault. “Still using the old place for your criminal designs, I see. You cannot keep it forever, you know. The authorities will want it restored to the people eventually.”

Castelnuovo looked as if he had been chewing elephant dung, a snarl like a sine wave attached to his face. Winterburn, to his credit, did not look entirely out of his depth. I noted a bead of sweat roll down his temple, and he looked from Papareschi to Castelnuovo without moving his head. Although not outnumbered by Papareschi’s men, he was certainly outgunned. He also had the misfortune of finding himself slap bang in the middle of the chamber between the two parties—if bullets started to fly, there was a shortage of worse places to be standing.

“I must congratulate you on your efforts in recovering Edoardo Novacco Pisacane. A most daring enterprise. And what good reason for this celebration,” he raised his hands, palms up, towards the vault, like a Bishop. The little brief case dangled easily from his fingers.

“But I see, perhaps, that it is not as you expected.”

He lowered his paws and gestured with them towards Winterburn and his crew. Papareschi himself looked a little puzzled by their presence, as well he might.

Carlo took a threatening step forwards, although quite what he was hoping to achieve with a broken walking stick and a damaged arse, I was interested to see. Castelnuovo turned his head a fraction at the vague movement behind him, his eyes staring at the floor—it was enough to halt Carlo in his tracks.

He flicked his eyes over to Papareschi and spoke with a firm voice.

“It takes a brave man to walk onto my property and make the kind of statement you appear to be making, Papareschi.”

He raised the appropriate eyebrow in the direction of the Bren guns.

“Signor,” says Castelnuovo, this time addressing Winterburn, “I do not believe that we have been formally introduced—but I would suggest this as a particularly good time for you and your men to make a choice of where you wish to, ah, make your beds.”

He folded his arms behind his back.

“You can see that I am a man who means business. And I can see this in you also. We could be useful to each other, Signor.”

I wasn’t sure how things were going to pan out here. I glanced casually over towards Giuseppina and her mother. Both stood in the corner by Pisacane (who looked as if he had seen more salubrious days; he was slumped over in his chair now, either asleep or expired), and I tried to figure out how I could subtly edge my way around beside them. I am a chivalrous man at heart and have an impulsive urge to protect the female of the species. From what Dante had told me, I was banking on the fact that Castelnuovo was of the same mind-set. If triggers were tickled, it seemed likely that standing next to the head honcho’s wife and daughter was a safe place to be.

Before Winterburn had a chance to accept Castelnuovo’s offer of employment, Papareschi had interjected.

“Antonino,” says he, hoisting his shoulders into a conciliatory shrug. “Must you be always so hasty? Let us not spoil the evening with such unpleasantness.”

He walked over to a small table and seated himself, turning to face Castelnuovo and maintaining the split between the three factions in the chamber, Winterburn caught in the middle between Papareschi’s and Castelnuovo’s boys. I found myself standing unnervingly close to centre stage myself, and when Papareschi sat down I shuffled a few steps back towards the Castelnuovo side of the room. If I was able to get to the back wall I could glide down towards Giuseppina almost completely shielded by the string quartet and my various ‘brothers’. I wondered whether, when the hour of Judgement came, whichever party came out on top would consider me to be one of the fold.

“Let us speak freely and without anger,” says Papareschi. “I have come to propose peace between us—I yearn for the days of our childhood when we were inseparable in Taormina, and the happy times we shared together. Have we really grown that far apart, Antonino? Have we really changed so much as two people?”

Castelnuovo stood motionless, without expression. If he had an immediate reaction to Papareschi’s words, he kept it well hidden.

“So I am as good as King of Sicily, and you, my old friend, have grown equally strong here on the mainland. I have no interest in warring with you. Too much blood has been shed, too many loyal friends have been lost already. Let us end this conflict before we do untold damage to each other, our families and our business interests.”

There was a silence in the chamber as Papareschi’s words echoed up to the vault above us. Winterburn and his men remained as neutral observers, keenly aware that they had become involved in something far greater than they, not wanting to upset the delicate balance of the situation.

“I do not wish to fight with you, my friend. I know the influence you have over the authorities in Rome and elsewhere. This is felt even in Sicily. I want to work with you, not against you. Together we can retain our independent kingdoms and grow stronger through our shared resources.”

Papareschi’s proposal seemed insanely transparent. It could only benefit his own organisation—Castelnuovo had nothing to gain by such an alliance and everything to lose. It was no secret, from what Dante had told me, that Papareschi wanted a share of the drug trade that had exploded in Italy, and this was how he could worm his way into it. Castelnuovo controlled the drug industry on the Italian mainland and the police, the politicians, and probably the judiciary too, all paid homage to him. If Papareschi wanted to establish his own presence outside of Sicily, he stood no chance without at least Castelnuovo’s blessing.

“And as a goodwill gesture, I have brought you a gift that I know is dear to your heart.”

He opened the little brief case and spun it on the tabletop to face Castelnuovo. The aureus Hadrianus twinkled from within a bed of satin padding.

Castelnuovo’s expression changed significantly, and his chest inflated like a vast bellows as he eyed the coin.

“Yes, Antonino—the aureus of your father. The one he gave to Mussolini for luck during the war. The coin that has been lost to Italy ever since il Duce was hanged. When I discovered it in Corteggiani’s possession—you are aware, I am sure, that he had incurred my displeasure and it became necessary to, ah, terminate our business relationship—I felt obliged to take the aureus for safekeeping, hoping that I would soon have the opportunity of returning it to its rightful owner. A happy moment for me, indeed. And—I hope—a gesture that will cement our partnership and ensure a happy and favourable start for this new alliance.”

A manly smile spread across his face like a serpent, coupled with a look of sincere modesty and emotion that was about as hollow as a canoe. It was only after his offensive tactics against Castelnuovo had failed, the snatching of Pisacane and the abortive kidnapping of Giuseppina, that Papareschi had decided to adopt a more conciliatory approach. I felt sure that Castelnuovo would tell him where to stick his offer, along with the barrels of a shotgun.

But the sight of the aureus after all these years, particularly with the heritage that I now learned for the first time was attached to the item in his eyes, was having a strange effect on Castelnuovo. A misty look came into his eyes and he walked over to the table, staring at the brief case, reaching out a hand to touch the coin. All eyes were on him, and we could each sense the powerful emotion stirring in his heart as he gazed upon his father’s legacy.

Papareschi rose from his seat and took a respectful step away from the table as Castelnuovo approached. After a moment had passed, Castelnuovo turned to him and spoke.

“You cannot understand what such a gift means to me,” says he, and I swear there was a tear in his damned eye.

“Your coming here and speaking as you have; the memories you have stirred within me; our childhood together, and the memories of our fathers—they lead me to be mindful of the importance of friendship and one’s family. In this brief life, we must take nothing for granted.”

Castelnuovo turned to his men, looking to Alessandro and Carlo and each of the others who stood motionless and austere behind him.

“Francesco Papareschi has come here and spoken plainly and with honesty. We must respect this. What he speaks is good sense. We are each tired of this war, and the beloved brothers we have lost to it. We must treat his honourable offer with the dignity it deserves.”

Castelnuovo stood and walked towards Papareschi with arms outstretched. Automatically I took a large step backwards, behind the quartet, in the direction of Vittoria Castelnuovo. Papareschi reciprocated Castelnuovo’s placatory gesture and moved in to embrace his old friend.

As their bodies came close, Castelnuovo reached underneath his jacket and extracted a knife. His movement was so fluid and swift, and masked so effectively by Papareschi’s body, that no-one noticed the heinous action until it was too late. He put his left arm around Papareschi’s neck and clasped him by the hair, thrusting the blade with his right hand into the lower jaw, through the bottom of Papareschi’s mouth and up into his skull.

Castelnuovo’s frame blocked me from seeing Papareschi’s face, but his arms flailed and punched out at his tormentor in agonized desperation. Castelnuovo was a large man, and Papareschi’s feeble efforts had virtually no effect. As he struggled, Castelnuovo gripped the knife firmly in his right hand, holding Papareschi easily like a puppet on a stick, and reached with his left to his waist band, pulling out a pistol. He cocked it with one hand and lifted it to Papareschi’s temple, pulling the trigger and letting his body drop to the floor in an explosion of red.

The above all took a matter of seconds. In the same instant my eyes widened, though a gentleman is always careful to ensure that his nostrils do not flare.

As Papareschi’s body fell, Salvatore fired a shot at Castelnuovo, hitting him in his right shoulder. He spun round towards me, his mouth twisted into a grimace, and he fell heavily onto the table beside him. The brief case holding the coin flipped off the surface and bounced over the floor in my vague direction.

And so it began.

XV

I try to set myself small tasks in life to make the time pass more interestingly. Last year, for example, I decided that it would be a good idea to learn Cantonese. And now, eighteen months later, I still think it would be a good idea, and my not having taken steps towards achieving it has not in any way diminished my opinion on the matter.

My goals for the then foreseeable future were twofold: avoid getting shot; and find some way to get my paws on the aureus Hadrianus. I was aware that the two may be incompatible.

When they realised what Castelnuovo had done, people in the room reacted in various ways. Salvatore had reacted quickly and with hostile intent—he wasn’t going to stand by and see his boss massacred in front of his eyes without some form of retribution. Ironically, just the type of instinctive loyalty that Castelnuovo, the capo di tutti capi on the Italian mainland, the man he had just shot without pausing to question the wisdom of such actions, would value.

As the frenzy erupted, I saw Alessandro shout something in the direction of Giuseppina and Castelnuovo’s wife as he took aim with his pistol at one of Papareschi’s men and a step towards the centre of the room; the two women ran behind him towards one of the alcoves; the string quartet, presumably no strangers to the kind of altercation that may erupt at Mafia social functions, had each dropped their instruments and were making a break for the main entrance. A foolish move—I saw two of them cut down by an indiscriminate stream of bullets emanating from Papareschi’s Bren guns.

Winterburn and Furnell seemed incapacitated while it all sank in. It seemed as if each of the Castelnuovo and Papareschi factions was intent on butchering the other, and there was understandable confusion as to which path the London boys should tread. The pair of them dived for cover behind a table and chairs near the back wall of the chamber, accompanied by a couple of their men. The rest bravely entered the fray, firing with blind determination at anyone holding a gun.

As for me, I had been on my winged way to the opposite side of the octagonal chamber to seek similar cover when Castelnuovo had been shot, and the suitcase holding the coin had bounced onto the floor towards me. I noted two things as I glanced about the room, licking my lips and weighing up the prospects of my successfully making a dash for the aureus. First, I caught Vittoria Castelnuovo’s eye just as she reached the alcove. She looked at me despairingly, as if she genuinely feared for my life. She didn’t cast a glance over to her husband as he rolled over on the floor clutching his shoulder and trying to drag his body over behind a table as the bullets flew by.

It was rather touching, but I paid her no heed. I was more concerned that if anyone made it to that brief case it should be I: for the second thing I had noted was Winterburn’s fat head poking up from behind his table and fixing his eyes on me as I stared after the coin.

He followed my gaze and alerted Furnell to the situation. The latter reluctantly dragged himself out from behind cover and scrambled on his knees across the chamber towards the case. The former took aim at me just as I too prepared to dive for the coin. Winterburn’s movement stalled my progress and I leapt in the opposite direction to avoid his shot. At the same time I yanked the Browning from its holster and fired back.

Mayhem and carnage surrounded me, and everywhere I looked there were bodies riddled with bullets, bullets on their way to riddle bodies, or the acrid dust clouds created by bullets that had failed in the riddling of human flesh and had simply punched into Roman stucco work of almost two thousand years of age.

Castelnuovo had pulled himself away from the centre of the room and, his right arm hanging limply at his side, was attempting to fire with his left hand a pistol he had recovered from one of his fallen men. Salvatore had made it his mission to end Castelnuovo’s life and was shooting in his direction now with two handguns.

Alessandro had not forgotten his employer, however, and turned his attentions to his opposite number. One of his shots caught Salvatore at the end of his left wrist. The bone shattered, the gun spilled from the useless hand, and Salvatore’s face contorted into a ferocious snarl of pain and fury. He nearly fell to the floor, but turned and fired at Alessandro (I knew there was a reason I took to the chap so readily) without breaking his stride.

It was not a good shot judging from the point of view of a reasonable bystander, for the simple fact that it missed Alessandro. It was an even worse shot from the point of view of Pisacane, still slumped in his wheelchair by the wall behind Alessandro, for the bullet pierced his chest, waking him for his appointment with death with the sharpest intake of breath he had probably ever experienced. He wheezed his last and slumped for the final time in his chair, a steady stream of blood flowing from the hole in his torso.

Furnell meanwhile had reached the brief case. He was on his hands and knees, reaching around an overturned chair behind which he was taking cover. I looked back towards Winterburn. His attentions were elsewhere, struggling under the weight of one of his men who had been shot and fallen on top of him.

Once again I leapt into evasive action to the detriment of Sergeant Furnell’s wedding tackle. I bounded the few yards between us, ducking like a fool from the flying bullets and every so often firing a shot towards Winterburn. Just as he bent over in front of me and his hand fell upon the coin, I swung my right foot up into Furnell’s groin and dived onto the brief case myself.

Furnell dropped to the floor, rolling over in agony and clutching his curios once again, the poor bastard. I grabbed the case, closed the lid and leapt back to more generous cover.

Bullets still rang throughout the chamber, but the atmosphere was less intense. Those of Papareschi’s men who hadn’t been shot to pieces had taken themselves elsewhere. Most had taken the Bren guns with them, but one or two had discarded them in an effort to make a swifter getaway. I suppose when one’s boss has been butchered before one’s eyes, it doesn’t do much for one’s job motivation.

Alessandro and Salvatore continued to trade shots from behind various bits of furniture and pillars; Winterburn had taken a bullet in his side and yelled across the room to where Furnell was writhing on the ground. Clearly he had had enough of the shooting gallery and was keen to escape with some semblance of his life still on the table. Sensible chap. I fired a shot at Furnell to inspire his departure in a more speedy fashion, and he hobbled towards Winterburn and the exit. The pair of them stumbled off together with the two remaining men from their brigade.

At the entrance Winterburn turned and glared in my direction. He emitted some gut-wrenching primal scream and jerked his gun in my direction. Four bullets came my way before his gun clicked emptily. I ducked and shielded my head with the brief case, firing back with the Browning and throwing myself to the floor for the seventeenth time. To my great surprise and relief, I saw Furnell grab Winterburn’s arm and haul him away. The game had taken a deadly turn, and the stakes had climbed too high. As they disappeared around the corner, Furnell caught my eye once more. He shot me a black look and bared his teeth, gritted in pain, as he limped away.

I turned my attentions back to the main chamber. I had fallen awkwardly onto my leg, and the wound in my calf had re-opened. The pain was extraordinary, as if I had been shot again, and I had to stagger towards one of the recesses for cover whilst I surveyed the scene and considered what the hell I should be doing next.

Castelnuovo still lay on the far side of the chamber, firing shots from behind the table at the remnants of Papareschi’s men: only two of them remained, plus Salvatore. They continued to display a devotion to their fallen head that I shall never understand, and seemed intent on finishing the fight.

I hobbled over the bodies of Vince Spaghetti and Carlo, each having succumbed to the kind of bad luck that had plagued the latter for most of his days. A stray bullet crashed into the stonework just ahead of me, and I reacted sharply to the fragments and dust that flew into my face by throwing my arms over my head. A second bullet followed, this one catching me just above the hip on my left side. I actually felt the thing pass across the surface of my flesh and heard it smash into the wall.

I leapt into the opening of the recess and ducked down within it, peering back into the room down the barrel of the Browning and cursing at the gash above my hip. Although the bullet had not lingered, the wound burned horrendously.

No obvious repercussions followed. Perhaps the bullets had been stray after all. I checked the brief case and the little coin inside. Ensuring that no-one was looking, I secreted the coin in my jacket pocket and closed the case, looking back into the chamber and feeling not a little on edge.

A footfall close behind made me freeze, and I turned sharply to find Giuseppina crouching over me, looking concerned.

“Darling, you are hurt,” says she, gazing down at my hip and the patch of blood that had re-appeared over my calf.

“You shouldn’t be here,” says I, trying to sound chivalrous and taking her by the hand. “Take your mother and get the hell away!”

“But my father,” says she, looking up into the chamber to where he lay, and tears welling in her eyes. “I cannot leave him.”

“Listen,” says I, turning her head to mine. “I will get him. Take this—” I took the coin from my pocket and pressed it into her palm “—and meet me at seven tonight, in my hotel. I will ensure your father gets to safety.”

She looked at the coin; then at me; then back into the chamber at her father, cracking off his pistol and looking increasingly fraught.

“Christ, Giuseppina—now!”

She looked at me once again, kissed her hand and pressed it against my cheek, then stood up and ran into the darkness of a passageway I had not noted previously. Her backside looked magnificent as she trotted away.

I looked at my watch: ten past one. The police would be here shortly. I had to survive another twenty minutes. I stuck my head around the wall and saw that Castelnuovo had finished off one of his attackers. The other continued peppering his table with an unending supply of ammunition.

Salvatore suddenly re-appeared, stumbling into the main chamber and rolling onto the floor, grunting from the pain in his fractured wrist. His gun dropped, bounced and landed a foot away from his good hand. Before he could reach it, Alessandro stepped from the shadows behind him, pointedly cocking the trigger of his pistol.

Now, I am a fan of Italian couture and in particular elegant brogue boots. Salvatore had treated me with subtle respect ever since that night at the opera, and I had warmed to the chap somewhat. I’m not suggesting that I’d like to spend a weekend in the country with him, but of all the fools I had met on this trip the cut of his cloth seemed to tally most closely with that of mine. More importantly, I was not a fan of Alessandro Giovanni Jacopo Jacobacci, nor of ridiculous names in general. It took me the slenderest of moments to make this calculation, then I stepped from the recess into the chamber, raised the Browning and fired a shot at my nemesis.

I must be getting lackadaisical in my old age, for Alessandro barely flinched as the bullet whistled under his nose and shattered one of the glass lamp holders on the wall behind him.

Salvatore made the most of the precious seconds and scrambled off towards the entrance passage. Alessandro shot his head around from glowering at me and with a jolt was after him.

I stood redundantly holding forth my gun, suddenly aware that silence had fallen in the chamber for the first time since Castelnuovo had whistled for kick-off.

“Signor Hammersley,” says a voice to my left.

I turned my head slowly to where Castelnuovo lay, my hand still pointing the Browning where Alessandro had been. His shoulder was bleeding heavily, a dark wet patch visible even through his dinner jacket. He had managed to finish off the last of Papareschi’s men and was even now reloading his gun with a magazine he had recovered from a body nearby. He slotted in the magazine and cocked the pistol with difficulty and a pained grunt. He then did something inexplicable, and not a little disconcerting.

He pointed the gun at me.

***

“You will please hand to me the aureus, Signor Hammersley.”

I tried to imagine how the Hammersley whom Castelnuovo thought he knew would react to such a scenario. I lowered my gun (first mistake—it is always quicker to shift the aim of a raised pistol than to hoist one afresh from the hip) and pulled what was intended to be a surprised, wounded look. I proffered the case, as if trying to figure out what was going on in Castelnuovo’s mind. At his motion, I put the thing on the ground and slid it over towards him with a rasping sound.

Castelnuovo reached out and picked it up, his gun still trained on me. He set the case gently on a chair beside him.

“You have just turned your gun upon one of my most loyal men, Signor, one of your very brothers.”

He inclined his head slightly.

“I find myself asking why.”

I shifted uncomfortably and looked away to the far wall.

“Could it be that Alessandro was right? Were you not to be trusted from the start? Perhaps if I had not gained the upper hand now you would have turned your gun on me too, no?”

He moved his weight and pulled himself up using the table as a support.

“Perhaps with me and Alessandro out of the way there would be an opportunity for you to take control of my organisation”—that would go down a treat with Arbuthnot, wouldn’t it just—“and perhaps even my family.”

The man was delirious, his eyes wide in a frenzied glare. It had obviously been a trying night, and the wound in his shoulder had apparently jarred his brain. He was being suddenly paranoid, a look of abject, desperate anger on his face as he levelled the bizarre accusations at me.

“Signor Castelnuovo,” says I, but this merely added fuel to his fire.

“Tell me, Hyoo-goh Hammersley,” says he, shifting his grip on the gun and lifting his arm from the side of his body as if playing the bagpipes, “how was your night at the opera with my wife?”

My eyes widened and my stomach performed a short but extravagant Irish jig. Had Pino been more alert than I had credited? Had one of his chaps picked up on his wife’s visit to my hotel room? What exactly did Castelnuovo know?

“It was a lovely evening.”

We both jolted and yanked our heads in the direction of Vittoria Castelnuovo. She stood about fifteen yards away from us, having materialized from one of the alcoves like some phantom apparition. There must have been a whole nest of tunnels and secret passages back there.

She looked as enjoyable as ever, and I fell in love with her even more unequivocally than previously, for she held in her hand a rather sturdy-looking pistol and was pointing it at her husband in the charming, two-handed fashion which the fairer sex is accustomed to adopt. Ordinarily I would never liken Signora Castelnuovo to a creeping or burrowing invertebrate, but at that moment this particular worm, it seemed, had well and truly turned.

As the three of us stood there, alone in the chamber, my mind set to work. Years of being overlooked, downtrodden and generally not treated very well in the eyes of today’s enlightened society had clearly taken their toll on Mrs C., to the extent that she was actually contemplating killing her husband. I wondered (arrogantly but with gratitude) what with developments between us in the last twenty-four hours, whether the fact that I was about to be shot by said spouse was influencing her decision at all. Could it be that Signora Castelnuovo had feelings for me that went beyond pure lust?

Not the best time to be worrying about things like that, thinks I.

An odd, unpleasant expression came across Castelnuovo’s face, and he laughed mockingly at his wife.

“Please do not embarrass yourself in front of Signor Hammersley, Vittoria. Put down the gun and leave. This matter does not concern you.”

I thought quickly and took the hell of a chance, gambling with both our lives.

“On the contrary, Signor. Your wife is very much concerned in this affair. Her arrival is, as ever, perfectly timed.”

My heart was pounding like a Botswanan bongo, but I managed to turn to Vittoria C. and give her a very familiar-looking wink. Castelnuovo couldn’t believe his eyes. He gazed from his wife to me with a stunned look of fulmination, and I could see his hand tensing around his gun, still pointed in my direction.

“Look inside the case, Signor. Go ahead. You will soon see our intentions.”

Castelnuovo held my gaze momentarily, then fumbled with the case with his injured right arm and threw the lid open. His features shifted once again into a most unsavoury face, and he hurled the empty case away from him with as much force as his arm could manage.

I was conscious that Castelnuovo’s gun was still pointing at the Hammersley personage, and it seemed the height of stupidity to vex him any more than he was at present. Unfortunately the plan I had concocted required me to do just that. I subtly took a deep breath and spoke with all the bottle I could fathom, before a bullet could weave its merry way in my direction.

“So, Signor Castelnuovo, if you please you will not inflict harm on a single inch of your wife’s body. A body,” says I, looking Signora C. up and down in a manner that suggested it was not uncharted territory to me, “that I am rather looking forward to enjoying more of.”

As foolhardy statements go, it was certainly in the top three. You can see how anxious I was, stooping so inexcusably low as to end a sentence with a preposition.

Vittoria Castelnuovo may have fluttered her eyelashes involuntarily at this, but more important was her husband’s reaction. I cannot over-emphasize the value of knowing one’s audience. You see, for an Italian to learn that his wife has been playing away from home is one of the most fundamentally offensive and degrading things he could ever hear. It matters not that said husband may have fifteen mistresses on the go behind her back—‘hypocrisy’ is a difficult word to spell, after all.

Yes, a wife’s betrayal is the most humiliating and terrifying experience an Italian male can ever hope to avoid. It is not uncommon for them to kill in fits of passion—it happens damn near every day in Italy. But the objects of their murderous intent are rarely the other fellows, with whom the husbands may find they have much in common (clearly they have the same taste in women—beauty is not simply in the eye of the cuckolder, you know). More often than not it is the wife who bears the brunt of her husband’s wrath and, indeed, the contents of any firearm he may be holding.

Now, you must hear me out on this one, scrupulous reader. I know that it is frightfully inexcusable that I should use Signora Castelnuovo as bait in this fraught game of chance. I was well aware of the risks involved, but it was the only course of action I could think of that might just conceivably save us both. It was abundantly clear that if Castelnuovo killed me, his wife would be next for the chop. If I could engineer it so that his first shot was away from yours truly (even if aimed at Signora C.), then there was at least a fleeting possibility that I could take a pop at Castelnuovo and put an end to this whole charade. And a fleeting possibility it was at best.

It was with bizarre relief, therefore, that I saw Castelnuovo yank his gun-wielding arm in the direction of his wife and pull the trigger with ill-disguised venom. As he did so I yanked up the Browning from where it languished by my side and fired three shots at Castelnuovo, as quickly as my trigger finger would allow.

Vittoria Castelnuovo let out a pained shriek as the shot struck home just above her waist and she fell to ground. Her husband toppled backwards, dropping his gun and collapsing in a heavy, slaughtered heap. I waited a split second, gun still aimed at Castelnuovo in case his too was the sort of vindictive spirit that could not tell when its bucket had been properly kicked, before running to Signora Castelnuovo’s side.

She was bleeding heavily. A desperate panic gripped me as I looked hopelessly over her dying frame, my body paralysed by desperation and indecision as to what I should do. I dropped the Browning as I slid down beside her.

I have heard it said by experienced soldiers, old warmongers and seasoned campaigners each of them, who have witnessed every horror known to man on a battlefield, hardened to the sight of death and gruesome injury to the point of being considered inhumane—I have heard them describe how they have carried limbless torsos, still living, from the fray; how they have held a comrade’s head as his blood, his very life, flowed over them in a remorseless, unceasing current. And they have borne all this with fortitude and constancy.

But on the rare occasion when such men have seen a woman injured in a similarly horrific manner, these lion-hearted heroes go to pieces. They cannot cope seeing the female of our species, the mothers of our race, the future hope of mankind in pain or suffering.

And it was all true.

Vittoria Castelnuovo swallowed dryly and clenched her fingers into my jacket as I cradled her head in my lap. I have never felt so helpless in my life. All I could do was look over to Castelnuovo, across the carnage and destruction in the chamber, wondering what the hell was going to come of all this. Where would it end?

The question may have been answered more promptly than I wished. As I scanned the scene, my eyes passed by the main entrance once more. In the doorway stood Alessandro, also looking into the chamber and surveying the havoc.

He looked over at Castelnuovo, then at Vittoria Castelnuovo’s body, now lifeless in my arms. Then he raised his damned gun and pointed it at me, a look of determination in his face.

“She shall never be yours, you know,” says he.

Alessandro pulled the trigger and the wonderful sound of an empty gun echoed with metallic hollowness across the chamber. He pulled the trigger a second, a third time, gritting his teeth in frustration.

I wondered what the hell he meant. Of course Vittoria Castelnuovo could never be mine. The poor woman had just been shot by her psychopathic husband. I stared at Alessandro, exhausted and weak. I had had enough. I did not even have the energy to scramble for the Browning and fire back.

Just as Alessandro and I were both wondering what would be his next move, the sound of thundering footsteps sounded heavily behind him, and raucous, energetic cries of “tutti, non muoverti—polizia![12]” reverberated through to the octagonal chamber.

Alessandro snapped his head back in the direction of the passageway. Shadows flickered on the walls behind him, and the footsteps grew louder and more pronounced. He shot another look at me, holstered his pistol and sprinted off in the opposite direction towards the labyrinth of secret corridors behind the main hall.

I carefully laid Vittoria Castelnuovo’s head on the ground and dropped back onto the floor, my arms spreadeagled behind me.

The cavalry had arrived.

XVI

“Good Christ and all that is holy!”

This from Arbuthnot as he paused mid-sentence and stared incredulously into a patch of undergrowth in his back garden. I could just see him doing it, even though I couldn’t, if you get my meaning.

I was reclining on another vast sofa at Dante’s majestic lodgings, my leg raised on one of its arms, the bullet wound in my hip bandaged and a large gin and tonic in my hand. Things had returned so close to being normal again that I had even fired up my pipe. I clamped it between my teeth as I cradled an ornate, ivory-coloured telephone receiver against my ear and listened to the philosophical ramblings of Major Benedict Carrington Arbuthnot, punctuated every so often by an aggressive blast of wholly unconnected diatribe, directed so far as I could tell against his gardener.

“What the hell has the man done to the eucalyptus? I’m telling you, darling, it was a mistake ever letting him near that damned chainsaw. He’ll have his bloody arm off next, you see if he doesn’t, and then he shall well and truly have my boot up his arse. Now Hammersley—where the hell were we?”

“I was just telling you, Major, how I managed to survive a gun battle between two of the most ruthless Mafia families in mainland Italy, and then narrowly avoided having my head shot off by the Carabinieri.”

To give them their due, the police had arrived at the Domus Aurea in the nick of time. They shouted much, brandished weaponry and generally made a lot of noise. More disconcertingly, there appeared to be some confusion as regards their recognising the one person they had been expressly instructed by Dante not to harm. I was glad I had chosen to wear my three-piece Prince of Wales check suit, for it has been said that I look so offensively English in the garment that not even a squadron of trigger-happy Eyeties could be in any doubt as to my heritage. In the absence of the pipe it was—quite literally—my saving grace.

There was a muffled noise on the other end of the line, and the faint sound of fumbling and scrabbling. Then, in a muffled tone, “Margaret, the damned dog’s chewing on the telephone wire again! I shall be forced to—what on earth has happened to the hydrangea? Good God.”

I sighed, extracted the pipe and took a long sip of gin.

“And what of the aureus Hadrianus, Hammersley? I wish you’d get to the damned point—what’s happened to the blasted coin?”

I took a deep breath, picked up the sheet of notes I had prepared over lunch and started to tell Arbuthnot the ridiculous, fantastic and utterly plausible tale I had contrived in order to put him off the scent, and questions about the aureus to bed once and for all. The story took about six minutes to tell, all in, and to my dismay Arbuthnot seemed to be listening intently throughout.

There was a moment of suspicious silence when I had finished, and I could hear a bird singing in the garden at the other end of the line.

“At the bottom of Lake Geneva, you say?”

I muttered something earnest and apologetic.

“Sweet buggery, that’s going to stir things up in Whitehall. I’ll need a full written report of course, and that idiot Fotherington will probably want a word with you. My God, look at the bloody bougainvillea—it looks like he’s taken the damned chainsaw to it!”

I glanced up at the approach of one of Dante’s footmen (he is far too wealthy to have a butler) and took the note he proffered on a small silver platter. I read its contents and raised an eyebrow.

“Hacked to damned pieces! What is the man thinking? Ye Gods!”

There was a pause.

“Lake Geneva, eh, Hammersley? Deep there, is it?”

“Over a thousand feet in places I believe, Major.”

***

The note was a message from Giuseppina. She had been detained for a couple of days sorting affairs following the demise of both her parents, and would contact me at the Excelsior in due course. The poor, delightfully proportioned little creature. Suddenly an orphan, albeit an extremely wealthy one. Now she was the only survivor of the once almighty Castelnuovo clan.

With one exception.

I tapped the piece of paper against my chin and stroked the bowl of the pipe as I contemplated this last thought.

Dropping the note on the table beside the sofa, I pulled my leg from over its arm, grabbed the gin and tonic and wandered off in search of Dante.

An hour or so later, one of Dante’s men had returned from down in the city and the errand he had been set. Sure enough, he had seen Giuseppina milling around some of the more lavish emporia in the centre of town. Her entourage had comprised merely one bodyguard; crucially, along with a couple of shopping bags, his load included a travel valise and a small black brief case with a red handle.

Further digging around had revealed that a certain Ms G. Parelli was booked on the 18:30 flight from Rome to Sicily that very evening.

The duplicitous, delightfully proportioned little trollop. That was my damned pension fund she was making off with. And what a troublesome destination to have chosen—not the most agreeable place for me to head in pursuit, having been directly involved in the unfortunate demise of Francesco Papareschi, the island’s de facto head of crime. I wondered how Castelnuovo’s daughter, the child of the man who had pulled the trigger, so to speak, would be received in such a climate. And amongst such musings I wondered also how Giuseppina had come across the briefcase with the red handle. The last I had seen of that had been when Castelnuovo had hurled it across the chamber the night before. Clearly, there was more to this than met the eye.

“Clearly, there is more to this than meets the eye,” says I to my host.

“What are your intentions?” asks Dante.

“Like you, my old friend, I have come to grow fond of classical antiquities. I think the aureus Hadrianus would be a splendid way to start my collection, don’t you? It looks very much as if I am in the market for a ticket to Sicily.”

“I will arrange for a driver to take you to the airport,” says Dante.

“Perhaps you could arrange for me to be dropped off by around five o’clock? I have an inkling that something is afoot, and the matter may be resolved without the need to venture directly into the lion’s den.”

Pennies had started to plummet in my brain, you see.

It was with a frown on my face and a mouthful of mixed nuts that I sat cross-legged in an airport bar, spinning a large glass of brandy on the arm of my chair and drumming the fingers of my right hand on my leg.

I had a good view of the main entrance and sat intently people-watching, my eyes scanning over every woman who entered the airport.

Sure enough, a little before six o’clock in swayed Giuseppina Parelli in a white skirt, tight pink top, a ridiculously over-sized hat and sunglasses. She looked magnificent, like a film star. She held in her hand the little brief case with the red handle, but what caused me to stop both the spinning of the glass and the drumming of my fingers was the man who followed her into the concourse.

He was tall, carrying two large suitcases and wearing a panama hat. The latter he swept from his bonce, revealing a thick head of dark hair—his back was facing me, but already I recognised the loathsome gait. Giuseppina spoke to him familiarly, then rose on tiptoes and kissed him in a manner that suggested they did not share a bloodline.

He did not have to turn around for me to identify him; but when he did I need not tell you, enlightened reader, that it was the abhorrently efficient face of Alessandro Giovanni Jacopo Jacobacci.

I was thirty or forty yards from where they stood, but instantly whipped up the newspaper I had purchased and masked my face, surreptitiously peering around its edge as all good secret agents have been taught.

Then I realised what Alessandro had meant when he had averred that ‘she’ would never be mine. He was not referring to Vittoria Castelnuovo, but to Giuseppina. No wonder the chap had taken such a dislike to me—I presumed he’d been aware that Giuseppina and I had been jumping into the sack whenever opportunity afforded over the past few days. It was delightfully unclear whether this was to assist her in gaining my trust and ensure ultimately that she got her hands on the aureus, or simply because she had taken a shine to the Hammersley bandwagon. Either way suited me fine, just so long as I got that damned coin back before Giuseppina jumped ship. There is nothing to stop a girl from enjoying her work, after all.

I watched the happy couple move across the concourse to a long row of lockers against the far wall. Fortunately for me, and probably for all the innocent bystanders preparing for their family holidays, the question of what I was to do next pre-empted itself. I cannot say that I was disappointed, for I did not relish yet another round of dodging Alessandro’s bullets.

At the wall, Giuseppina counted along, then deposited the brief case inside an otherwise non-descript locker. Alessandro looked around them as she did so. Straight out of the textbooks is this, thinks I.

Then off they toddled, suitcases in tow, to make their flight. I lowered the paper as they walked away, chewing my lip. I had no inclination to follow, of course. I was only there for the coin, and that appeared to be staying put for now, albeit locked away. Naturally, I had no means of knowing if the aureus was actually in the brief case, but I banished the thought as unhelpful. If the coin wasn’t in the locker I wasn’t about to run after Giuseppina and Alessandro, tap them on the shoulder and see if we could all forget our differences in return for my leaving with the thing in my back pocket. It looked very much as if they were leaving it behind for a purpose.

For now I had bigger fish to fry.

From over the top of the paper I darted my eyes across to a diminutive-looking toerag loitering alongside a news kiosk. Il Furbo nodded his understanding and took off in pursuit.

He was a good lad, under the grime. His task was simple, and I watched him carry it out with aplomb.

A marksman must always ensure that his gun is thoroughly cleaned after a battle in which it has been lavishly employed. In all honesty, I had not undertaken the job as efficiently as normally I would. What I did do, however, was to wipe the Browning meticulously to obliterate all traces of any Hammersley paw prints upon it. I had passed the gun to my unwashed friend wrapped in a pristine white handkerchief. As he slid past Alessandro now he dropped the pistol into a side pocket of one of his suitcases, tucking it down snugly in one fluid, seamless movement. Alessandro did not even bat an eyelid, the poor fool.

As il Furbo melted into the background, I wondered who would respond to the anonymous telephone call that the police would receive in the next few minutes. Perhaps it would be Capitano Varsalona himself, or his bagman Pugliese.

Either way, Giuseppina and her newly revealed lover would probably miss their flight, and the police would expect a convincing answer to the question of why the gun that had killed Antonino Castelnuovo was to be found in amongst Alessandro’s luggage. More deliciously, the honeymoon period for the couple was likely to be brought to an abrupt and uncomfortable end as Giuseppina started to question whether she believed Alessandro when he swore blind that he had never seen the Browning before in his life and certainly hadn’t done anything as monumentally awful as kill her father. One of the downsides of having an intimate relationship with a cold-blooded murderer is that when their integrity is called into question, one is never quite sure whether one can trust them.

I can be a spiteful wretch, you know.

This small, happy task completed, I now spent some minutes considering how one breaks into an airport locker and extracts its contents in broad daylight without being noticed.

As I mused thus, a woman entered the airport who altered my plans for the immediate future considerably, for a number of reasons.

First, she was one of the most stunning bundles of loveliness I had ever seen: approximately five feet four in height, and of middle Eastern extraction; her hair was glossy and black and fell just past her shoulders, her eyes such a deep, dark, rich brown that even the most skilled artist would struggle to replicate the colour. She wore a very business-like white blouse and silk neckerchief above a close-fitting pencil skirt in which she walked from the knees down, as any woman above amateur status is well able. She could have been an air stewardess for some exotic airline, but she was simply too beautiful (yes, I know). Also, her make-up did not seem to have been applied with a trowel.

As she walked past, I dropped the paper into my lap and followed her hips with my eyes. Like so many middle Eastern women she had generous curves and things moved exactly as they should in a most mesmerizing fashion.

Secondly—and rarely does life introduce a beautiful woman into one’s world in this manner—she made a beeline for the locker containing the aureus Hadrianus. She delved into her handbag, produced a key and extracted the brief case from inside the compartment.

With Pavlovian spontaneity I had left my chair, deposited the newspaper on a table nearby and was following this striking Scheherazade down the concourse, one eye on the aureus, the other on the seductively twitching skirt as she glided along.

She clutched an airline ticket in her right hand, and when she stopped to gaze up at the flight information boards, I sidled up close behind to ascertain her destination.

Gate twenty-nine.

I scanned the boards frantically as she started to move off, the scent of patchouli and other exotic oils mingling in the air behind her as she drifted on her way.

I paused for a second when I had found it, questioning the wisdom of my next move. I was tired and fed up. I’d had enough of Mafia machinations, double-dealing, villainy and general funny business. I wanted to go home.

And yet here was a coin worth half a million quid that I had had within my grasp less than twenty-four hours previously, and which was now about to disappear quite possibly for good.

After all, a long weekend couldn’t do any harm. Could it?

I strolled over to the ticket desk a few feet away and took out my wallet.

“A first-class ticket on the seven o’clock flight to Moscow, if you please,” says I.

I turned and leaned on the counter with my elbow, raising an eyebrow as I watched the Persian princess tiptoeing on her heels towards the ’plane, her backside gently swaying with the movement of her hips.

I proffered my card and flicked my eyes towards the desk clerk.

“Better make it one-way.”

1 Yehudi Menuhin, apparently.

2 “May it turn out happily” (inscription from the Bodleian Library)

3 “rogue”

4 “Where is the knife?”

5 “The Captain has not yet seen this”

6 “Sometimes it is the height of wisdom to feign stupidity.”

7 “The Artful One”—perhaps a dodger of sorts

8 “Long live the king”

9 “Exactly”

10 One who follows a policy of passive political resistance; a pacifist

11 “a bound goat”

12 “Police—nobody move!”