Mel knew how difficult it was to change culture and the way you worked. But she’d been special forces, so used to operating in unorthodox and flexible ways, albeit in a structured framework. She laid her fingers on Joanna’s forearm.

  ‘Just take it as it comes. I know you and I’m perfectly confident you’ll handle everything efficiently. Call me or Jeff if you get a problem and I’ll set the local Guardia di Finanza captain on them. He’s an absolute terror!’

  * * *

  ‘They like their coloured plaster, don’t they?’ McCracken said, squinting out of the taxi window up at the ochre and peach blocks along the wide boulevards.

  ‘It’s called stucco,’ Mel said. She glanced at her watch again. Eight forty-five already. Damn this traffic. The taxi smelled of grease and spicy food; and it wasn’t air-conditioned. Even this early in the day the air was very warm again. Her jeans clung tightly in the heat and her feet felt over-warm despite her lightweight trainers.

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to get you to relax.’

  ‘By provoking me?’ She glared at him.

  ‘Best way I know.’ He grinned at her.

  She snorted, then slumped back in her seat.

  ‘Sorry, Jeff. I hate being late and I’ve just had a short night in the cells.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean?’

  Mel gave him a succinct version of the past twelve hours.

  ‘What a stupid prick. Going to be a problem, is he?’

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

  ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then.’

  She tapped him on his chest with the back of her hand.

  ‘You’re impossible. I’ve missed you so much.’

  He caught her hand and pressed it.

  At the entrance to the carabinieri station, they signed in and were escorted down the corridor to the security arch where Mel showed McCracken how to use his EIRS card to pass through. A door opened and a frowning Giordano ushered them into the same meeting room Mel had visited before. The stylish chairs still looked uncomfortable.

  ‘This is my colleague from the EIRS, Investigator Jeff McCracken,’ Mel said. ‘He arrived early this morning to assist me.’

  ‘I see.’ He looked McCracken up and down. ‘Another soldier?’

  ‘No, ex-inspector from the Metropolitan Police,’ McCracken replied. His eyes were like dead grey stones. ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s good to see another professional like Kriminalkommissar Holzmann taking on the enquiry,’ Giordano said and smiled at McCracken. But McCracken frowned back.

  ‘I don’t think you see at all, Captain,’ McCracken replied. ‘You know your unprofessional behaviour towards Investigator des Pittones has been reported to our director. For my part, you’re lucky there’s a desk between us. To be clear, she’s leading on this case. She is the supervising officer. I’m merely here to assist her. Now, can we see the prisoner?’

  McCracken left his case in Giordano’s office but as they followed him back through the arch and along a bleaker corridor, McCracken leant over towards Mel.

  ‘He’s a bundle of fun, isn’t he?’ he whispered. ‘I’m going to enjoy winding him up.’

  ‘Try not to overdo it, Jeff. We need his cooperation for a little while longer.’

  ‘Fair enough, but I’m really pissed off about his treatment of you. Let’s get this can of beans to spill then we can get out of here.’

  Giordano paused at a door where a carabiniere stood on guard. He nodded to the officer who opened the door outwards for them. Inside the small room, sitting on a plastic chair was last night’s tough young black man. Dressed in a plain tracksuit, he slumped forward, his wrists constrained by handcuffs and his elbows leaning on a grey-topped plastic table. His mouth was turned down. As they walked in, he looked up and blinked. He sat up quickly, leant back in his chair and brought one ankle up to the other knee. He stuck his chin out as if to challenge, and half closed his eyes.

  McCracken snorted and threw him a look of contempt. Mel saw the man’s fingers on his left hand drumming on his thigh, so he wasn’t anywhere near as relaxed as he was trying to make out.

  Mel walked over to the side wall just out of the man’s view and slipped her phone out. She tapped to start the voice recorder. McCracken sat down on the orange plastic chair on the opposite side of the table to the young man and stared at him. After a couple of minutes, the man shrugged and sat up.

  ‘Better,’ McCracken said and took out a notebook. ‘Now let’s start it nice and easy. Name?’

  The man raised his eyebrows for an instant but said nothing.

  Giordano snapped at him in Italian. The man glanced up at him and grunted.

  ‘I see,’ McCracken said. ‘We’re going to pretend to be a hard nut. Fine by me. We’ve got all the time in the world.’

  Mel opened the spare folding chair leaning against her wall and laid her phone down so the microphone pointed into the room. She came up noiselessly behind the young man’s chair. She looked at McCracken and put her finger to her lips. His expression didn’t change, but he watched as she bent down so her mouth was just by the man’s ear.

  ‘Eh bien, espèce de petit connard,’ she began, and then broke into a fast stream of French. The man turned his head, but she shouted ‘Yeux vers l’avant!’ and his head snapped back to the front. He blinked hard then a sheen of moisture appeared on his top lip and forehead. He brought his hands up to cover his face and cried out ‘Non!’ and followed it with a short sentence in a sing-song accent. Mel fired more questions at him. The man looked sullen. Then she growled something at him and pointed at her elbow. After a few seconds’ pause, he started talking in a truculent tone, but he talked.

  After a minute of listening, Mel came round to stand near McCracken, pointed at him and said something else to the man, but in a more conciliatory tone. He scowled but gave a tiny nod in reply.

  ‘I think, Inspector,’ Mel said, ‘you will find that this man, Octave Ananou, a citizen of the Togolese Republic, is ready to talk to you now. You may be surprised, but he’s just remembered he can understand English.’ She took up a standing position to the side of McCracken, arms crossed and legs braced, and looked steadily at the young man. Giordano glanced at Mel, then left the room. She wondered where he was going, but didn’t want to break her concentration on their prisoner.

  ‘Well, Octave,’ McCracken said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you want to meet my colleague here?’

  ‘We were ordered to scare her off,’ he replied in English with a heavy accent.

  ‘I see. How were you going to do that?’

  ‘Go for a little ride.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘No, I don’t. You tell me.’

  ‘La baiser.’ He made an obscene hand gesture.

  ‘I really hope that doesn’t mean what I think it does.’ McCracken’s face was still, fixed. His eyes flashed.

  ‘It does, Inspector.’ Mel’s voice grated. ‘These types of trash use it to brutalise their female victims.’ She stepped forward and smacked Octave on the side of his head. ‘He probably does little boys as well.’ She wiped her hand on the side of her jeans.

  ‘I was starting to think you’d been a little hard on him,’ McCracken said, looking at Mel, ‘but now I think you’ve been very restrained.’

  The door opened and Giordano entered. Without saying a word he slid a sheet of paper onto the table in front of McCracken. Mel peeped over his shoulder. McCracken looked up at Ananou.

  ‘Proper little toerag, aren’t you?’

  ‘Comment?’ Ananou replied. Mel leapt forward and kicked his chair.

  ‘Speak in English,’ she shouted at him. He grunted.

  ‘Our Italian friends are very interested in you, it seems,’ McCracken said after a minute. He tilted his head towards Giordano. ‘For instance, my colleague here really, really doesn’t like people traffickers and it seems you’ve been identified as helping to run boats across the Med. Looks like you are so deep in the shit you aren’t even going to get a straw to suck air on.’

  Ananou shrugged.

  McCracken stood and pushed the chair towards the table. He picked up his notepad and pencil, glanced at Mel who nodded and retrieved her phone.

  ‘I’ll leave you with the Italians, then,’ he said, now looking at Ananou. ‘I hear their prisons aren’t exactly a rest home. You’ll be out in about forty years if you’re really lucky.’

  6

  ‘Don’t you want to interrogate Octave Ananou further?’ Giordano asked back in his office. ‘I thought you made a promising start.’ He poured them coffee from the machine in an alcove behind his desk.

  ‘Yeah, of course, but I’m letting him stew a bit.’ McCracken screwed his nose up at the strong coffee and put the delicate china cup, still hot, back on Giordano’s shiny table. ‘All due respect, he won’t want to face all that time inside one of your luxury state hotels.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Giordano frowned.

  ‘My colleague means that Ananou will want to avoid being shut up in prison for several decades,’ Mel said.

  McCracken gave a little half-smile at her interpretation.

  ‘Right, Giordano,’ he said. ‘Investigator des Pittones and I are going for a walk. Let’s give it a couple of hours. No food, no water for the prisoner. You okay with that?’

  * * *

  Mel slipped her hand through the crook of McCracken’s arm and led him through a quiet side street. The apartment buildings at least five storeys high gave them relief from the intense light of the sun.

  ‘Okay,’ said McCracken, ‘walk me round some of the famous rubble and tell me what the hell you said to that kid that frightened him. And how did you know he understood Frog?’

  ‘First of all, he’s no kid. I estimate him to be in his early twenties.’

  ‘God, I must be getting old to have thought that,’ he replied.

  ‘How old are you then, Jeff?’

  ‘Old enough.’ He tapped the tip of her nose with his index finger and grinned at her.

  ‘Ha! That old?’ Mel smiled to herself. Of course, she’d looked up all his background information when she’d first worked with him. The EIRS system wouldn’t let her into the personnel files, but she still had access to the restricted French intelligence network that she’d used in her GAOS special forces days. She knew he was thirty-eight but didn’t want to admit how she’d found out.

  ‘Back to Octave Ananou…’ Mel continued. ‘Last night when he and the other one went to grab me, I elbowed him in the stomach, just below the breastbone.’

  McCracken winced.

  ‘Did he throw up on you?’

  ‘No, the pavement got that.’

  He laughed.

  The narrow street gave way to a wide flight of steps down. Geraniums, glowing scarlet in the sunlight and clashing wonderfully with the orange stucco facades, flowed out of iron fretwork window boxes up the walls on each side. Mel was entranced.

  ‘And?’ McCracken’s voice prompted her.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Well, he was a little upset and shouted “putain” at me.’

  ‘And that means?’

  ‘It’s a very rude French word.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘All kinds of things in different contexts,’ she prevaricated.

  ‘Something along the lines of “fuck you”?’ He stopped and gave her a sardonic look. ‘Something you obviously never used in your military life, of course.’

  She said nothing. Her military life seemed a long time ago, even though she’d put on combat fatigues again only six weeks ago, if only for a few days. Half a dozen steps further on they turned left, then down another shorter flight of steps and into a wide open cobbled square.

  ‘And what exactly did you say to terrify him into talking?’

  ‘Just pointing out a few facts of life.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, look, Trajan’s Column,’ she said. ‘Let me show you. It’s nearly two thousand years old and—’

  ‘Oh, give over with the tourist guide stuff. What did you tell him?’

  She stopped, but didn’t face him.

  ‘Something along the lines of how would he like to be deported back by the French military to the remote north of his country with an Internet page going up detailing how he was an informer for the French armed forces operating in the Sahel on Opération Barkhane,’ she rattled out almost tonelessly.

  ‘In English, please.’

  ‘Barkhane’s an ongoing anti-insurgency operation in the Sahel, in Africa. We have nearly five thousand troops there at present, headquartered in N’Djamena, in Chad. It’s a cooperative thing with Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger which used to be colonies. There are some Brits in Mali with Chinooks as well and about a hundred of your ground forces doing all kinds of things.’

  ‘What are they doing there?’

  Mel just smiled.

  ‘Oh. Chasing the ungodly?’

  ‘They call it training local forces. The Sahel’s a strange place – bleak, but sometimes beautiful especially after the rains when the acacias flower and their scent is carried on the wind. Mostly, it’s bloody hot, full sun, dry to destroy every cell inside your throat and windy all year.’ She pulled down hard on her shoulder bag.

  ‘Sounds charming,’ he said and pressed her hand. After a moment, he said, ‘You do a tour there?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Blimey.’

  ‘There are a lot of poor, desperate people there and a disproportionate number of extremists who prey on them. I’ve been on missions to bust two of their training camps. Yes, the misguided come from Europe and, strangely, America to join them but a lot of them are recruited locally. The excitement of going on a bombing spree to Europe with a bit of trafficking in people, drugs, weapons and wildlife for cash on the side seems an overwhelming attraction. We aim to stop them.’ A snap and her bag fell from her shoulder.

  He bent down and picked it up from the grey cobbles. She’d pulled it so hard, it had broken the strap. Tears were streaming down her face, reflecting the harsh sunlight. He pulled her to him.

  ‘Let it out. All of it.’ She felt comforted by the warmth and the strength of his arms through her linen shirt. They stood there in the cobbled street oblivious to anybody else. After a few seconds, she sniffed. He handed her a tissue.

  ‘Right. Stiff drink.’ He guided her to a nearby bar, gaudy with striped awning and transfer-covered windows. ‘Looks a bit touristy, but it’ll do.’

  ‘No, I’ll be fine.’

  He ignored her protest and led her to a table inside and waved peremptorily at a waiter.

  He didn’t say a word or touch his Peroni until she had taken two sips of the brandy. As she placed the glass back on the table, he glanced at it and then at her.

  ‘One more for luck,’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine now.’

  He didn’t say a word, but now looked steadily at her.

  ‘Dieu, you are so unbelievably old-fashioned.’ But she took another sip.

  ‘Probably, but sometimes other people do know what’s better for you than you do yourself.’

  ‘Thin ice, Jeff.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m getting used to it.’ He grinned.

  A crowd of noisy male twenty-somethings in shorts and T-shirts clattered in demanding ‘Birra, por favor’ using their Ibiza vocabulary, forgetting they were in civilised Italy. They dropped backpacks and themselves onto chairs, scraping two tables together, and started exchanging semi-obscene banter and insults, peppered with hearty laughter, in loud English voices.

  ‘Bloody hell, Saturday night arrives in downtown Rome,’ McCracken muttered.

  Mel laughed.

  ‘They’re just young men on a boys’ holiday, Jeff.’ She glanced at the group. ‘They’ll all have headaches, sleep it off in the sun and turn pink as lobsters. Something to chat about in the pub when they get home. Reminds me of new troops on their first weekend leave.’

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘I have a strong suspicion you may have done the same when you were twenty.’

  ‘Rounding them up and phoning their mums when I was a beat copper more like.’ But he smiled. ‘Come on, then. Better get back to the charmless Octave, or Giordano will think we’ve buggered off back to Brussels.’

  * * *

  ‘Right, Octave, hopefully you’ve had a little think about your situation,’ McCracken started.

  ‘I want some water before I talk.’

  ‘I want some information before I can give you the water. How about we swap?’

  ‘You are ignoring my human rights,’ Ananou sneered.

  ‘And you’re ignoring the fact you’re going down for most of your life,’ McCracken shot back. He pointed to Mel. ‘My colleague wants to put you on that plane south this afternoon. I’ve never visited your neck of the woods, but it doesn’t sound like a very nice place. I’m the only one holding her back from doing that.’ He threw his pen on the table and folded his arms. ‘Who gave you your orders?’

  Ananou shrugged.

  McCracken waited. Mel counted a full two minutes by her heartbeat. She bent down and spoke in a low voice in Ananou’s ear.

  ‘Va te faire enculer,’ he spat back at her.

  She jerked up straight, brought her hand up and swung it towards his face. She only stopped one centimetre from his skin. Ananou flinched, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He glanced up at her, his eyes blinking rapidly. She looked back with all the contempt she could muster. McCracken coughed, but she ignored it.

  ‘Réponds-lui!’ she shouted at Ananou.

  ‘We just get them by mail,’ he muttered after a pause.

  ‘Email? You’re kidding. In this day and age?’ McCracken said.

  Ananou nodded.

  ‘Sender name?’

  ‘Pigéon.’

  ‘Now you’re taking the piss.’ McCracken struck the table hard with the flat of his hand. Ananou flinched. ‘Tell me the real way you communicate,’ McCracken growled. ‘Now.’