October Men (8 page)

She was staring at the table edge as if it fascinated her.

“And there was Germans in it. One of them shot at Charlie on the stairway, and Charlie killed him. And then he went up and there was another, and he killed him too. And then he heard this door open, and he went at it with his bayonet, sir—it was dark, and everyone was shouting and shootin’—“

She raised her eyes to his at last. “It was the farmer’s wife, sir. But he couldn’t
see
, that was the trouble—it was so dark. And when she screamed out, then the fanner came for him, tryin’ to stop him I suppose, and he—he—he didn’t know—“

She was pleading with him now.

“It’s all right, Clarkie. Of course he couldn’t know. No one could have known—it could have happened to anyone. He shouldn’t blame himself.”

“That’s just it, sir. He doesn’t even remember it, or he doesn’t seem to remember it clearly, like it was mixed up with the nightmares in his mind.”

“But he’s told you about it.”

“No, sir. That was what the army doctor told me in the hospital when he came back, when he wasn’t himself like. He’d got it all written down, the doctor had. That’s why—“ She stopped, staring at him.

That
’
s why.

Richardson stared back, seeing at last, fully and clearly, right through the pathetic tangle.

He could see her fear now, the reason that had shut her mouth: taken by itself, what Charlie had done was no more than pure self-defence, a reflex action. But if this old horror had been resurrected— the big, simple soldier, more likely wilder with fright than with anger, slaughtering a couple of innocent civilians in the dark and by accident, and then cracking up when he’d found out what he’d done—!

He ought to have realised that Clarkie’s fear was a practical one, not an emotional response: she might guess what it would do to old Charlie to have that night raked up in court, that memory he’d locked away self-defensively in his subconscious mind. But what she feared was the doctor’s record, the dusty proof not only of Charlie’s mental instability but also that once before he had killed first and questioned afterwards.

“And it was my fault, Mr. Richardson, sir—I forgot clean about it when I saw the light up here. I made him come, he didn’t want to.”

So it wasn’t for David’s sake, to cover his disappearance, that she had kept quiet, that at least was certain; David had simply become the victim of her concern for Charlie.

But David was no defector, that was certain too: the traitor who came to the end of his tether and was forced to abandon his home and his fortune and his country would never have made his getaway happy as a sandboy, excited as a boy with a new bicycle!

He nodded reassuringly at her. “Don’t you fret, Clarkie—it’s going to be all right, I promise you. I’ll see that Charlie’s in the clear, don’t you worry.”

But equally David would not have swanned off so happily without any by-your-leave—not when he’d been acting the way he had—unless he’d been up to something, that too had to be faced.

David was no defector, certainly. But unlike old Charlie, David was still in trouble.

“But first I’d like to know a bit more about that dinner of yours, Clarkie,” said Richardson.

BOSELLI WAS
a long way out of line and he knew it; it was this knowledge rather than the first heat of the day which now raised the prickle of perspiration on his back.

He had never stepped out of line like this before, at least not so dangerously. But this, he admitted candidly to himself, was partly because his work rarely exposed him to such temptations. Indeed, it had been one of his little tasks to watch for signs of such curiosity in others—what the General described as the itch to know a little too much for their own good—and he had become adept at spotting them. Only now he was beginning for the first time to sympathise with the deviationists.

He looked up and down the narrow street suspiciously. The prospect of the General’s discovery that he was being surreptitiously investigated by one of his own staff didn’t really bear thinking about; it made him shiver at the same time as he perspired, which in turn made him remember inconsequentially that his wife had said only yesterday that she had gone “all hot and cold” after nearly being run over by some foreign driver who’d tried to change his mind in the Via Labicana. He’d been on the point of telling her that such a contradictory physical condition was unlikely, and here he was experiencing it himself.

He paused at a street fountain and drank greedily from it. It seemed to have a bitter flavour, but he knew that it was not the water, only the taste already in his mouth.

He splashed his face and wiped it with his silk handkerchief, glancing again up and down the street. It was the General’s fault, anyway, even if that was one excuse he would never dare to advance openly. The Ruelle File started—or appeared to start—with impossible abruptness in 1944, as though George Ruelle had sprung from the ground full-grown into the middle management ranks of the newly-respectable Italian Communist Party. From nowhere usually meant from Moscow, but that clearly didn’t apply in Ruelle’s case; he had been fighting in the south in ‘43, if not earlier, and his first Moscow trip had not been until ‘46—there was no mystery about those dates. Indeed, there wasn’t even any mystery as to just where that missing pre-1944 section of the dossier was: it was reposing safely in the General’s own safe—no betting man, Boselli would happily have bet his last
lire
on that, at hundred to one odds.

Under cover of folding the handkerchief Boselli took a final look at the street. Nothing, as far as he could see, had changed and no one was watching him. Which left him with the reassuring but galling probability that there was no one on his tail and that the General had given him this task because he was the least likely of all men to scratch that dangerous itch.

Half a dozen hurried steps carried him across the pavement and into the alleyway—well, for once the great General hadn’t been as clever as he thought he’d been.

Frugoni’s apartment—it was a ridiculous exaggeration to call two crummy little rooms an apartment—was predictably jammed under the eaves, without any access to the roof, a rathole fit for a rat.

And that was good, thought Boselli as he knocked sharply on the scarred door: the worse off Frugoni was (and with any luck he would have gone considerably farther downhill since he had last come round bumming for a handout), the cheaper his tongue would be to loosen. There ought to be some juicy expenses in this work, but Frugoni’s name could never be listed in the accounting so there was no question of generosity, real or fabricated, in his case.

“Who is it?”

That was the voice, the hoarse whine rather.

“Boselli—Pietro Boselli.”

“Who? Pietro who?” The whine was suspicious, as though its owner was accustomed to bad news knocking at his door. “I don’t know any Pietro.”

“Pietro Boselli—General Montuori’s personal assistant.” Boselli paused to let the names sink into the man’s befuddled mind. “I’ve got something for you, Signor Frugoni.”

“Something for me?”

“That’s right. Open up.”

There was a rattle as Frugoni feverishly attempted to open his own door, only to discover that he had bolted it top and bottom as well as securing it with what sounded like an old-fashioned padlock. It took him a full two minutes of clumsy grappling with the lock and alcoholic puffing and blowing with the bolts to relax its defences. And even then it caught on the uneven floor and shuddered so violently that it was a tossup whether it wouldn’t fall to pieces before it was finally opened.

Frugoni peered at him uneasily in the greenish light from the unwashed landing window.

“You remember me, Signor Frugoni,” said Boselli patiently. “We last met when you—ah—consulted the General two or three years ago. About your pension.”

“My pension?” Frugoni looked at him stupidly.

“Your war wound, I believe—or a war disability of some sort,” Boselli prompted him with helpful vagueness. “The General didn’t tell me the exact details, but I gathered that you and he were old comrades. Once comrades, always comrades—that’s what he said.”

Frugoni blinked and screwed up his face with the unexpected mental effort needed to resolve the enormous gap between what he must remember had actually happened when he tried to touch the General for a sucker’s handout, and the rose-tinted pack of lies he had just heard.

In fact no one knew the extent of that gap better than Boselli himself. It had devolved on him to check up on the man’s tear-jerking tale of a veteran fallen on unmerited hard times, and he had very soon found the General’s suspicions to be well-founded. Frugoni had fallen not so much on hard times as through the skylight of the restaurant he had been robbing—his “war wound” had been the compound fracture of the leg and the mild concussion which had resulted from this descent.

Central criminal records had also revealed that in addition to being an inveterate and unsuccessful petty thief, Frugoni was a quarrelsome boozer who had abandoned his wife and children—it had been that last detail, rather than the man’s actual misdemeanours, which had finally directed the General’s charity—

“Put the woman on my list then, Boselli—she’s probably better off without him anyway.”

“What about the man, sir?”

“Leave him to me. It’ll be a pleasure to kick his backside again after all these years…”

“My wound—of course!” Frugoni twitched into full consciousness. “You must pardon me, Signor Boselli—naturally I remember you— but my health, you understand…” He heaved a gallant sigh “… at my age things are hard.”

Boselli nodded sympathetically.

“Not that I am grumbling, you understand,” Fragoni added hastily, uncertain of the most profitable role open to him until he could establish just how much Boselli knew. “But let us not speak of such things. You said—I believe you said—?”

“That I have something for you. That is correct. But something in turn for something, Signor Frugoni. Perhaps I might step inside for a moment, yes?”

Frugoni regarded him in complete bewilderment; the possibility that he possessed something—anything—which was likely to be saleable, but of which he was totally unaware, seemed to have knocked away what little balance he could muster so early in the day.

“I—but of course, Signor Boselli—“

The moment he entered the attic room it was Boselli in his turn who was knocked off balance, however. The smell on the dingy landing had been unpleasant enough, combined as it was of all the different aromas of cooking and concentrated humanity which had risen up the stairway from the warrens below. But in Frugoni’s room this smell graduated to the rank of stench, in which stale wine and the sweet-sour mustiness of old unwashed linen united into a miasma.

Boselli dragged out his damp silk handkerchief and held it across the lower part of his face, fighting his sickness.

“Signor Boselli—?” Frugoni was looking at him solicitously, oblivious of the foulness.

“A moment’s giddiness—no, please do not bother—“ Frugoni was removing some unmentionable garments from a rickety-looking chair “—I’d prefer to stand, if you don’t mind. It will pass.”

“A cup of—“ Frugoni looked uneasily towards what must be his kitchen “—coffee?”

“No… thank you.” The thought of consuming anything—of even touching anything—coming from these rooms made his stomach turn.

“How can I serve you, then?”

Boselli took a firm grip of his senses. It was always better to offer types like this something in exchange for something if one was not relying on good old-fashioned blackmail. He would have preferred the latter method, and he had no doubt that with very little digging he could have uncovered the right lever. But digging took time, which he didn’t have—and digging would also involve exposing his actions to others, which multiplied the danger of the General coming to hear of it.

But if unsolicited charity would have roused Frugoni’s suspicions, or at least his curiosity, the chance of doing some sort of deal would arouse his trading instinct, and that must be squashed quickly.

“It is nothing of great importance—nothing you will find in the least taxing, my dear Frugoni,” he began heartily. “You are simply one among a number of veterans I am consulting for your wartime recollections, you see—for a work of history a colleague of mine is undertaking.”

Frugoni’s expression sagged with disappointment.

“It will be a scholarly work—a work of reference primarily, so I fear there will be little profit in it for anyone—“ Boselli nodded regretfully “—but remembering that you had served with the General in the mountains I knew I could rely on your strong sense of patriotism—“ Frugoni looked as if he was about to burst into tears; it was time to dust the pill with a trace of sugar “—and naturally your name would be mentioned in the acknowledgements in addition to the modest honorarium we are making to some contributors.”

“Honorari—?” Frugoni abandoned the attempt.

“Payment,” said Boselli briskly. “Small, of course. More a gesture than a payment. But in deserving cases like yourself we do the best we can … if the information supplied is of use, of course.”

“Of use?”

“Of interest. I’m sure you saw a great deal of action when you were in the mountains immediately after the Armistice of 1943.”

“When we threw in the sponge, you mean?” Frugoni gave a short, bitter laugh. “Jesus Christ! You can say that again—more than I wanted to, that’s how much action I saw. But I wasn’t in the mountains, Signor Boselli, not at first, anyway.”

“Indeed?” Boselli wasn’t interested in anything Frugoni had done before he reached the mountains, but it wouldn’t do to seem too eager to reveal that fact.

“No—we were in billets just outside Salerno—good billets, too. Then the bloody Germans turfed us out—turfed us all out, and disarmed us too. Shot two of the officers right in front of our billet when they wouldn’t play ball, they did—they knew what was in the wind right enough, the Germans did. What they called
Panzer grenadiers—
trigger-happy sods, they were. We reckoned afterwards that someone had told ‘em the Yanks and the English were going to land there— which they did, of course…”