A buzzer sounded sharply inside the van and Pucinelli lifted the handset which was connected with the flat's telephone. The bass-voiced kidnapper, edgy with waiting, demanded action; demanded specifically a safe passage to the airport and a light aircraft to fly him, and his colleage and the ransom, out.

Pucinelli told him to wait again, as only his superiors could arrange that. Tell them to bloody hurry, said the bass. Otherwise they'd find Alessia Cenci's dead body in the morning.

Pucinelli replaced the handset, tight-lipped.

'There will be no aeroplane,' he said to me flatly. 'It's impossible.'

'Do what they want,' I urged. 'You can catch them again later, when the girl is free.'

He shook his head. 'I cannot make that decision. Only the highest authority…'

'Get it, then.'

The engineer looked up curiously at the fierceness in my voice. Pucinelli, however, with calculation was seeing that shuffling off the decision had seductive advantages, so that if the girl did die it couldn't be held to be his fault. The thoughts ticked visibly behind his eyes, coming to clarity, growing to a nod.

I didn't know whether or not his superiors would let the kidnappers out; I only knew that Enrico couldn't. It was indeed a matter for the top brass.

'I think I'll go back to the Villa Francese,' I said.

'But why?'

'I'm not needed here, but there… I might be.' I paused fractionally. 'But I came from there in this van. How, at this time of night, can I get a car to take me back there quietly?'

He looked vaguely at the official cars outside, and I shook my head. 'Not one of those.'

'Still the anonymity…?'

'Yes,' I said.

He wrote a card for me and gave me directions.

'All-night taxi, mostly for late drunks and unfaithful husbands. If he is not there, just wait.'