October Men by Anthony Price Page B

far beyond the town’s perimeter.
    Not just above ground—he flicked quickly through the illustrations in the back of the little book—but high above ground. There was an absolute labyrinth of buildings standing to the first and even to the second storey here. The problem of tracking down anyone, and of doing so in this emptiness without making themselves obvious, would be formidable.
    Clearly, this must have been the shrewd Englishman’s idea in coming to such a place. The streets of Rome provided cover for enemies as well as friends; here it would be possible to accept or decline a contact with far greater certainty of having done the wiser thing.
    It was not the Englishman’s cunning that disturbed him—the man was enough of a professional to be wary and amateur enough to be I unconventional at the same time in his choice of a rendezvous. It was just pure bad luck that he had fixed a place which aroused the deepest feeling of unease in Boselli’s soul.
    Ordinarily he was not subject to such odd notions. He was a city-dweller born and bred, with a natural contempt and suspicion for the peasant countryside—he knew those gut reactions of old, and allowed for them. But this place was neither city nor country; nor, without the colourful crowds of tourists and the surrounding noise and bustle of a busy city, was it like the antiquities he was used to back in Rome. It was much more like a bombed and plague-emptied town, something which had been alive yesterday and was newly-dead—a corpse unburied, rather than an old skeleton disinterred … an obscenity. No sooner had he formulated that thought than he was overtaken by embarrassment with it: it was the sort of mental absurdity he would never have dared admit to his colleagues and for which his wife invariably prescribed a laxative. Even the unshockable Father Patrick, his favourite Dominican, had warned him against it: too much imagination, Pietro—a good measure of it is a great blessing, but too much is a weakness …
    “Give me the guide, then—wake up!”
    Villari whipped the book out of his hand, flipped it open, ripped out the folded map from it and thumped it back into his possession before he knew what was happening.
    “Hmm…” Villari scanned the map, frowning at its complexity. Then he turned to the second policeman, who had accompanied him through the entrance, running a slender finger over the paper. “You go ahead along the main street—the Decumano Massimo here—until you spot Depretis. Then you wipe your face with your handkerchief— I assume you’ve got a handkerchief?”
    A muscle twitched in the detective’s cheek, high up and very briefly, as he nodded. He was careful not to look at Boselli, who knew nevertheless with certainty that the Clotheshorse, running true to form, had made another lifelong enemy in the last five minutes. It might not be wholly deliberate now—it might have started as a defence designed to keep inferiors in their place and become second nature over the last few years—but without doubt Villari had perfected the art of being offensive.
    “Very well. You will go on past the theatre—there—“ the finger stabbed the map “—and wait for me to catch up if the theatre is a high building and there is a stairway on it. If there is then I shall climb it and you will wait until I have seen what there is to see—is that understood?”
    Again the detective nodded.
    “Then you will continue down the Decumano Massimo—that is, unless I wipe my face—as far as the Porta Marina.”
    “And if I do not see him by then, signore?” the detective inquired neutrally.
    Villari stared at him for a moment, as though slightly surprised by the question. “Then you will come back, and I will tell you what to do,” he said coolly. “But the important thing for you to remember now is that you are no longer interested in the Englishman—you and Depretis. It is his contact you are interested in: who he is and where he goes—do