He arrived early in the afternoon, thirsty and unshaven, with the sun spreading layer upon layer of heat over the city from a cloudless sky. He’d hired a private carriage from Aosta because nobody seemed to know when the public conveyance would be going, or perhaps by then he was too tired to care. Urgency had driven him on until the point where time itself hardly seemed to exist any more, just a succession of light and dark on his long journey southwards. Calais to Paris, over the hills to Dijon, more hills then down to Geneva. He hadn’t slept at an inn or hotel at any stage of the journey, flinging himself straight into the next vehicle or waiting at the tables of public houses while servants cleared plates and glasses around him, or hunched in his greatcoat on benches in stable yards, listening for the trumpet of the vehicle that would carry him onwards. The long climb from Geneva over the Alps, once the highlight of his journeys south, was now just another obstacle. He’d wake from a half-doze to feel the wheels spinning, hear the driver shouting and cracking his whip, and urge the coach on with every fibre of his body. Now, with the journey over, all the tiredness from it caught up with him at once. The river, the buildings, the people hurrying by all seemed unreal, and himself no more substantial than the rest of them.
He walked slowly up the Via Po, past the Café Fiorio. Some years ago, he’d spent a lot of time there, talking politics. The ideal of a united Italy and the various heroes, scholars and downright bandits who were fighting for it had fascinated him. They still would, if the brain in his head had been as it was before that letter arrived, but since then there was only one thing in the world. If he’d gone into the café he’d almost certainly have met an old friend or acquaintance, but this time there were only a very few people he wanted to meet. In between the politics, he’d taken an interest in science and known that some interesting work was going on at Turin University. Now and then, by letter, he’d kept in touch, and still knew some names. The one that concerned him was known to him, though he’d never met the man. He went on up to the Piazza Castello, not far from the university, and turned into an alleyway off the square. A letter waiting for him in the inn at Aosta had given him directions. He couldn’t remember the alleyway from previous visits, which wasn’t surprising because it did not look very inviting – buildings leaning in from both sides and a mangy dog scratching itself in the gutter. Halfway down it, as described, a tarnished copper cooking pot hung out on a bracket, indicating a café. He went in, stooping at the doorway. A plump, middle-aged woman was sewing something long and grey behind the counter.
‘Is Marco in?’
His Italian was good, but the accent marked him as a foreigner. The woman raised an eyebrow and went on sewing.
‘He’s out. Don’t know when he’ll be back.’
He said he’d wait and asked for water and a coffee. She took her time but both were good. He felt some life coming back into him as he drank, ordered another cup of coffee and accepted her offer of cheese. As he sorted out coins to pay her, she glanced at his bag.
‘You need a room?’
He shook his head, instinctively wary of the place. It was an hour or more before a figure appeared in the doorway. The woman nodded her head towards him.
‘Marco.’
He looked to be in his early thirties, shorter than average and very thin. His face was pale, skin tightly stretched over a high forehead and a chin that projected like Mr Punch’s. He sat down across the table without being invited. His expression flickered from what seemed to be a habitual resentful look to a welcoming grin, then back to resentment. The woman put two cups of coffee on the table and Marco emptied his cup in a few gulps, as if afraid it would be taken away from him.
‘You said in your note it was urgent.’
‘You still work for the professor, Ascanio Sobrero?’ Robert asked.
Marco nodded. ‘Still his laboratory assistant. I could be a professor myself. I know as much as any of them, but …’ A twist of the wrist and a hand turned flat indicated his lack of money, a familiar theme with Marco.
‘I could put you in the way of earning money. I need your help.’
Marco’s eyebrows rose in a question and stayed arched as Robert leaned across the table and talked quickly in Italian, in low tones. At the end of it, Marco whistled.
‘Some risk.’
‘Could you do it?’
‘How much?’
Robert told him and Marco considered, turning his coffee cup round and back, round and back. After six or seven revolutions, he nodded without looking at Robert.
‘Probably. I’d need half upfront now.’
‘A quarter now. Another quarter when you tell me you can definitely do it.’
Robert passed over a folded pile of notes. Marco counted them, turning his back to the woman who was trying to see how much, then put them in his pocket.
‘When will you let me know?’ Robert said.
‘Here, same time tomorrow. Have the money ready.’ Another turn of the coffee cup, then, ‘It’s hard to handle.’
Robert finished his coffee, walked out into the sunshine and took a room in a boarding house near the university. He was brutally tired and slept insensibly for a few hours on the narrow bed, but after that the dreams came and he saw her reaching out to him, being pulled away over some edge into darkness, shouting words he couldn’t hear. After that, he lay awake, knowing that nothing on the journey had been as bad as this waiting.
In Paris, Miles Brinkburn sat wearily down in the writing room of his hotel and wrote to his brother.
Dear Stephen,
I’m sorry to tell you that the trail, if there ever was a trail, has gone cold. As I told you in my note from Calais, I had some hope. We know from Amos Legge that he crossed the Channel and I had a report of a tall, dark-haired gentleman with no more than a travelling bag taking the coach for Paris. But if the man was Robert – and I’m beginning to doubt even that – I’ve lost him. I’ve been here for five days now, asking round the hotels, and it’s hopeless. The place seems to be plagued with tall, dark-haired English gentlemen, and I’ve had some embarrassing times encountering several dozen of them, with no luck. If he registered at any of the hotels, it wasn’t under his own name. I even wasted a day at the medical school in case he had some associates there, but nobody seemed to know anything about him apart from a professor who had some memory of the name from years ago, but nothing now. Of course, I’ve inquired at some of the main coaching stations that take passengers on from Paris, but on to where? He might have travelled south, east or west, and there are so many coach companies. He might still be here in Paris – assuming that he ever reached here – but in that case, surely I’d have had some trace of him in five days. In the circumstances, I think it best that I travel home in the hope that you may have better news.
Your distracted brother, Miles.
Miles sent one of the hotel servants to the post with the letter and enquired dispiritedly about coaches back to Calais. After the shock of Robert’s disappearance, he’d travelled out with high hopes of catching up with him and finding out about his new information. Both he and Stephen had agreed that whatever it was, they could surely work on it together. But following a person’s trail was more difficult than he’d expected. Several times, it had occurred to him that his sister-in-law’s strange occupation had more skills to it than he’d realized. In a city full of foreigners, with French that was no more than politely adequate, Miles felt totally out of his depth. He clung to the hope that he’d return to find Liberty restored and Robert’s behaviour explained, but had seldom in his life felt more completely at a loss.