I had heard them shouting from the open window, and had hardly needed the repetition.

'In a short time the listening bug will be in position,' Pucinelli said, glancing uneasily at my rigid face. 'And soon we will have a tap on the telephone. We have men on the staircase outside. They are fixing them.'

I said nothing.

'My men say you would have let the kidnappers get away… taking the money with them.'

'Of course.'

We looked at each other unsmilingly, almost foes where recently we'd been allies. He was thin and about forty, give or take. Dark and intense and energetic. A communist in a communist city, disapproving of the capitalist whose daughter was at risk.

'They had shot the boy who drove the car,' he said. 'We could not possibly let them escape.'

'The boy took his chances. The girl must still be saved.'

'You English,' he said. 'So cold.'

The anger inside me would have scorched asbestos. If his men hadn't tried their abortive ambush, the boy would not have been shot. He would have walked away unharmed and left the ransom in the car, as he'd been instructed.

Pucinelli turned his attention to the benchful of bolted-down radio receivers, turning a few knobs and pressing switches. 'I am sending a man in here to receive messages,' he said. 'I will be here also. You can stay, if you wish.'

I nodded. It was too late to do anything else.

It had been absolutely against my instincts and my training to be anywhere near the dropping point of the ransom, yet Pucinelli had demanded my presence there in return for a promise of his force's absence.

'You can go in our van,' he said. 'Our radio van. Like an ambulance. Very discreet. You go. I'll send you a driver. When the kidnappers take the suitcase, you follow it. You can tell us where they're hiding. Then, when the girl is free, we'll arrest them. OK?'