Mission To Siena Part 6

Crantor took the slip of paper, folded it carefully and put it in his wallet.

"The police have a description of Shapiro," Lorelli went on. "He can't get away. When he is caught, he will tell them about you."

"Yes," Crantor said.

"I don't think Shapiro is much use to us," Lorelli went on, looking at Crantor. "Do you?"

"Not now," Crantor said and picked up his overcoat. He put it on. "You'd better get some sleep. Your room is across the way."

"I'll wait here until you come back," Lorelli said. "We shall have to do something about Gina Pasero too. It won't take the police long to connect her with Shapiro. Do you know where she lives?"

"No, but I will find out," Crantor said, moving to the door. He paused with his hand on the door k.n.o.b. "What shall I do with the money?"

Lorelli shrugged her shoulders.

"It belongs to Shapiro," she said.

Crantor's mutilated face lit up with a wolfish smile.

"Perhaps I'll persuade him to leave it to me in his will," he said and went out, closing the door behind him.

Four: Gina.

A little after twelve o'clock the following morning, Marian came into Don's study to announce that Chief Superintendent d.i.c.ks of the Special Branch was waiting to see him.

"d.i.c.ks? What's he want?" Don asked, signing the last letter of a number that lay before him.

"He didn't confide in me, but he did say it was urgent."

"I have half a mind not to see him," Don said, pus.h.i.+ng back his chair. "I'm fed up with the police. They had those two just where they wanted them and they calmly let them get away." He reached for a cigarette. "Any news of Julia? Have you phoned the Clinic yet?"

"Yes, just now. She is doing as well as can be expected, but she is still very ill. I'll go down after lunch and see if I can't get something less vague."

"I wish you would. I can't get her out of my mind."

"The Superintendent is waiting," Marian reminded him.

"All right, I'll see him now."

Chief Superintendent d.i.c.ks, a red-faced, jovial-looking man, was sitting comfortably in an armchair before the fire in the lounge. He was puffing placidly at his pipe; his shrewd eyes were half-closed as Don walked in. He and Don had known each other over a number of years and were old friends.

"There you are," d.i.c.ks said, looking up. "I bet you're hating the entire police force this morning."

"You're right, I am," Don said, sitting on the arm of a chair that faced the fire. "I have every reason to. The way your people let those two slip through their hands sticks in my gullet."

d.i.c.ks lifted his broad shoulders.

"We'll find them," he said. "At the moment they are lying low, but sooner or later they'll have to make a move into the open. They can't get away."

"I don't believe it," Don said irritably. "It wouldn't surprise me if they weren't already in France or Italy, laughing at you. What's the good of watching the ports and airports? You don't imagine they will go that way, do you? They've probably gone by fast motorboat. It's easy enough and you know it."

"Fortunately for me," d.i.c.ks said, "catching them isn't my pigeon."

Don wasn't in a patient mood. He stared hard at d.i.c.ks. "Well, I can't imagine you're here to chit-chat about the weather, Super," he said. "I suppose something is your pigeon. What is it you wanted to see me about? I'm a little pressed for time."

d.i.c.ks lifted his heavy eyebrows.

"Sounds as if you're a little testy this morning, Mr Micklem," he said. "Can't say I blame you. This has been a foul-up. We should have had them by now. The Commissioner is raising all kinds of h.e.l.l. Yes, I have a reason for seeing you. I thought you would like some information about the Tortoise."

Don looked at him, his angry expression fading. "What do you know about the Tortoise? What's he to do with your department?"

"I don't know much about him, and I'm afraid he is going to have a lot to do with my department," d.i.c.ks returned, settling himself more comfortably in his chair.

Don got up and as a gesture of peace went to the liquor cabinet, fixed two big whiskies and water and gave d.i.c.ks one of them. d.i.c.ks took it dubiously, sniffed at it and sighed with approval. "It's a bit early for me, but perhaps it won't do any harm. Thanks, Mr Micklem."

"Tell me about the Tortoise," Don said, sitting down. "I'd give a lot to get my hands on him."

"So would we, so would the French, Italian and American police. I know our people didn't come out of this business too well," d.i.c.ks said, "but you have to shoulder some of the blame. You see, Horrocks had never heard of the Tortoise while I had. If you had told me we might have had a very different story to tell."

"I did try to tell you," Don said shortly. "You happened to be out. I know it was careless of me not to try again, but I just couldn't take it seriously."

"I'm not saying we could have saved Mr Ferenci if we had known what was happening, but at least we would have had a good try. You aren't the only one who has looked on the Tortoise as a joke. The Paris police thought he was a harmless lunatic and Renaldo Busoni lost his life."

"Busoni? Wasn't he the Italian attache?"

"That's right. He was fished out of the Seine after receiving threatening letters from the Tortoise. I got the report with a hint that Italian officials over here might be threatened in the same way."

"Who is the Tortoise?" Don demanded.

"He is a very dangerous and ruthless extortioner: a man who will stop at nothing."

"So Ferenci isn't his first victim?"

"Oh no; there have been nine others over a period of fourteen months," d.i.c.ks said. "Two of them were murdered in the States, three in France and four in Italy. Mr Ferenci is the first to be murdered in this country. The trouble is we have no idea who paid the Tortoise's demands. We feel pretty sure there must be a great number of men and women in Europe and in the States who are paying up and saying nothing. If you had told me Ferenci had been threatened by the Tortoise I would have advised him to pay up."

"You're not serious, are you? That's odd advice from a police officer."

"It happens to be good advice," d.i.c.ks said quietly. "His wife wouldn't be in the London Clinic now if he had paid up and he would be alive."

"But that's not the point. You are admitting the police would have been helpless to protect him."

"That's what I am admitting. Let's face it. We haven't enough policemen to shadow any but the V.I.P.s day in and day out. The Tortoise is patient. Sooner or later he gets his man. Mr Ferenci wouldn't have rated a day and night bodyguard. We would have to do something about the Italian amba.s.sador's staff if one of them was threatened, but Mr Ferenci was an ordinary individual. We couldn't have looked after him for weeks on end. You've seen how the Tortoise works. You, Mason and Dixon were guarding Ferenci. That didn't save him, did it?" d.i.c.ks tapped out his pipe, blew noisily down it and began to fill it again. "The Tortoise knows that if he fails to make good his threat a crack will start in the racket he has built up. Pay up or die is his slogan. People are paying up because they believe they haven't a chance to survive if they don't."

"But Ferenci didn't know that," Don said sharply. "The Tortoise meant nothing to him."

"That's true. The Tortoise is starting his racket over here. No one knew about him before Ferenci died, but they know about him now. After the way the newspapers handled the murder, no one can fail to know about him. The next rich man who gets a threatening note from the Tortoise will know it isn't a joke. I think Ferenci was deliberately killed to advertise the arrival in this country of the Tortoise."

"It's up to your people to catch him," Don said grimly. "That's what you are here for."

"It's not going to be easy. We have no lead on him. If we do catch up with the killer, he isn't the Tortoise. If we catch this redheaded woman, she isn't the Tortoise either. The French police did manage to catch one of the Tortoise's dagger-men and persuaded him to talk, but he didn't tell them anything of any use. He said he was hired by a man who made an appointment with him on a dark road. This man - he may or may not have been the Tortoise - arrived by car and stayed in the car. The dagger-man didn't see his face. He took his orders and did the job. So you see the Tortoise is quite a headache. The American, French and Italian police have been wrestling with the problem for the past fourteen months. Now it's our turn."

"You don't sound very confident that you'll catch him," Don said.

"I know how you feel, Mr Micklem," d.i.c.ks returned. "You have just lost a good friend, but we can't work miracles. You can be sure everything will be done that can be done. It is an international job, of course. It's my guess he operates from Italy."

"Why Italy?"

"Two reasons: every one of the Tortoise's victims have been Italians and this..."

He took from his pocket a flat box, opened it and produced a broad-bladed knife with an ornate wooden handle. "Take a look at this. It is the knife that killed Mr Ferenci. Make anything of it?"

Don took the knife and examined it.

"I don't pretend to be an expert," he said after he had turned the knife over, "but I'd say this is a copy of an Italian throwing knife of the medieval period: say about the thirteenth century. If I remember rightly I've seen something like it in the Bargello in Florence."

"That's correct," d.i.c.ks said, nodding. "Between them, the police in the States, France and Italy have nine such knives. They have all been taken from the bodies of the Tortoise's victims. Every effort has been made to trace the knives without success."

"The redheaded girl, Lorelli, is an Italian," Don said. "Her accent was unmistakable."

"That's another pointer."

"Well, surely we are getting somewhere," Don said. "Why does he only attack Italians? Is it possible there's a political hookup? I know Ferenci was a rabid anti-Fascist. Know anything about the other victims' politics?"

"They are a mixed bag: nothing to go on. Some were anti-Fascists, some Christian-Democrats, some Fascists. I've worked along that line but it gets me nowhere."

"Have you asked yourself why he calls himself the Tortoise?" Don asked. "It's not a name to strike fear into anyone - a most unimaginative name for an extortioner. Why the Tortoise? There must be a reason. A tortoise is slow and harmless: the exact opposite to this killer. There must be a reason."

"I wondered about that myself, but I haven't any bright ideas. It might be a deliberate smoke screen."

"I don't think so. And another thing - why go to the trouble of manufacturing a copy of a medieval knife? Why not use a knife without the elaborately carved handle? I have a hunch that the tortoise and the knife are something this killer has adopted as a trademark for a very positive reason. We might get somewhere if we found out that reason."

"It's possible, but I don't see how we do it."

Don tossed his cigarette into the fire.

"It's a thinking point. I don't want to hurry you. Super, but I have a lot of work to do. I take it you didn't come here just to give me information?"

d.i.c.ks rubbed the side of his nose with his pipe.

"Well, I did and I didn't," he said. "I have a lot of respect for your talents. You did a fine job on that Tregarth business last year. Ferenci's a friend of yours. thought I'd put you in the picture in case you wanted to take a hand in finding the Tortoise. If we are going to catch him we will only do so by underground information. I know you have a number of contacts in Italy and over here. Every sc.r.a.p of information we can get will be useful."

"All right," Don said. "I'll see what I can do, but I'm not very hopeful. I know a couple of birds in Rome who might have some ideas. I'll have a talk with Uccelli. I don't know if you've run into him. He owns the Torcolotti restaurant in Soho. He is a smart old scoundrel. I've known him for years. What he doesn't know about the Italian colony here isn't worth knowing."

"We nearly nabbed him on a big black market deal during the war," d.i.c.ks said, "but he was just too smart for us."

"I'm surprised you got as far as nearly nabbing him. I'll have a talk with him. He may know something."

d.i.c.ks put the throwing knife into the box and the box into his pocket.

"You wouldn't feel inclined to go to Italy and see what you can pick up there? I have a feeling that's where the real information is if we could only tap it."

"My dear Super, I can't plod over the whole of Italy in the hope of running into the Tortoise. Can't we pin it down to a district or better still a town? If we could do that I'd go."

"The five men who were murdered in Italy died in Rome, Florence, Padua, Naples and Milan. That's a pretty wide territory. I can't do better than that."

"Let's see if either of us can narrow it down first," Don said as d.i.c.ks got to his feet. "Let me have any information you get and I'll pa.s.s on any I get."

When the Superintendent had gone, Don remained before the fire, thinking. He was still there when Cherry came in to announce lunch was ready.

Taller than the average Italian, Giorgio Uccelli was still erect in spite of his seventy-five years and his shrewd deep-set eyes were alert.

Don's father had known him some twenty years ago in Venice where Uccelli had owned a small, but first-cla.s.s restaurant in Calle de Fabori. As a boy of sixteen, Don had had his first Venetian meal at Uccelli's restaurant and had immediately taken a liking for him. When Mussolini had come to power, Uccelli had left Italy and had settled in Soho.

Don had renewed their friends.h.i.+p and he often dined at Uccelli's now famous restaurant.

Having finished an excellent dinner, he had gone through to Uccelli's private room and was now sitting before a fire, a fine brandy in his hand and his face half-screened by the smoke of one of his cigars.

He and Uccelli had been chatting together for twenty minutes and Don decided it was time to get around to the reason for his visit.

"You heard about Mr Ferenci's death?" he said suddenly.

Uccelli's lined, swarthy face clouded.

"Yes. It was a great shock to me. Is Mrs Ferenci better?"

"She's still pretty bad. I guess you know the police aren't getting anywhere with the case?"

Uccelli lifted his shoulders.

"Police business doesn't interest me."

Don knew he was on touchy ground mentioning the police to Uccelli. He had heard rumours that Uccelli had been a big black market dealer and now dealt in foreign currency on an extensive scale.

"Guido was one of my best friends," Don said. "I want to find the man who killed him. It's a personal thing."

Uccelli nodded. That was something he could understand.

There was a pause, then Don said, "I'm after information. Tell me what you know about the Tortoise?"

Uccelli shook his head.

"Very little. I know he exists and that he is dangerous. No Italian who owns more than five thousand pounds is safe from him," he said gravely. "He has a deadly reputation in Italy. Hundreds of people in Italy and France are paying him vast sums to keep alive."