Scott had been keeping the packet of cocaine he’d bought from Luigi on the dressing table in the room where he lodged, hoping to try it next time he got lucky and had a girl back to stay. However, he was startled one day when he returned home to find that the padrona had come in and tidied up and his paperfold was stacked neatly in a pile with some matchbooks. Had she been at all streetwise she would have recognised what it was and called the carabinieri. Perhaps he should throw it away rather than risk a criminal conviction in a foreign country? But it seemed like evidence of a sort, so he decided to take it to his office and hide it somewhere. That way, if anyone found it, he could blame it on his predecessor.
When his secretary went out for lunch, he searched the office for a secure hiding place. First he checked for loose floorboards that he could slide the packet underneath. That was what they did in the movies, wasn’t it? He couldn’t find any, though. He checked behind the filing cabinets for an odd surface that might form a little shelf but there was nothing. The walls were covered in wood panelling and he ran his fingers along it. He noticed that there was an odd piece of panelling by the window shutters that protruded a few inches, as if some part of the shutter mechanism folded into it. He closed then opened them but could see no reason for the panelling to be deeper there. He slipped his fingers underneath and pulled outwards, but it wouldn’t move. Then he tried pulling sideways, towards the window, and still it didn’t move. It was only when he pushed upwards that the panel slid, stiffly, and behind it he saw a cubbyhole about a foot tall and six inches wide. Inside there were several sheaves of paper, stacked neatly and separated by paper clips.
Scott pulled out the papers and glanced at the scrawled writing that covered them. Straight away he recognised Gregg’s shorthand, the system he had learned, which wasn’t used in Europe. That implied the writer of these papers was American. He sat on the edge of his desk and slowly read the top page, making out the name of a prominent government minister. The author said that on the 12th of January 1960 he had accepted a bribe of four million lire to draft a bill concerning some technicality to do with ships that collect cargo from Italian ports without coming into port themselves. Scott scanned the page but couldn’t make out who was alleged to have made the bribe in question. Behind it there was a customs document covered in tiny print. He flicked through more pages and on top of one sheaf of papers he made out the name Ghianciamina. It was something to do with a meeting with a government official.
Suddenly he became concerned that his secretary could return at any time. He thrust the sheaf of paper with the name Ghianciamina into his inside jacket pocket and stacked the rest back in the cubbyhole, along with the cocaine, before sliding the wood panel into place. It moved smoothly and Scott wondered who was responsible for the clever piece of carpentry. There was only one explanation he could think of: the dates on the papers were around 1960, so they must have been left by the previous Rome correspondent, Bradley Wyndham.
All afternoon, Scott sat at his desk, listening to the click-click-ping of his secretary’s typing across the room, and worrying about the documents in his pocket. He didn’t dare take them out to read them but imagined they must be incriminating; otherwise, why the special hiding place? What if he fell off his Vespa or got mugged and they were found in his pocket? He could be in serious trouble.
Suddenly it seemed imperative that he track down Bradley Wyndham and ask about his research. As soon as it was morning in the Midwest, he called his editor and asked if he could have a forwarding address for Bradley, saying he had found something of his in the office and would like to return it.
‘He never gave a forwarding address,’ the editor told him. ‘I was furious. He called on a Friday to say he was leaving, asked me to pay his last month’s salary into a Swiss bank account, and when I rang on the Monday he’d gone. We’ve never heard from him since. It was pretty unprofessional and if he’d asked for a reference I’d have given him his head on a platter.’
Scott’s stomach clenched. It sounded as though Bradley had upset someone in Rome and been forced to leave in a hurry. What other explanation could there be?
He looked at his secretary, a grey-haired spinster in her fifties who had also worked for Bradley. Might she know anything, he wondered.
She shook her head. ‘He didn’t even say goodbye. I came in to work on the Monday as usual and he didn’t appear. I never saw him again.’
Scott tapped his finger on the desk. ‘Can you think of any way I could get in touch with him?’
She thought for a moment, then flicked through a Rolodex card file on her desk until she came to ‘W’. ‘I’m sure I used to have his brother’s address. Bradley asked me to ship some Christmas presents to him and he wrote the address on a piece of paper so I filed it afterwards. Here it is. He’s in Ohio.’
Scott walked over to have a look. ‘You’ve got the phone number as well,’ he said, pleased.
‘Yes, they needed it for customs.’
‘I think I’ll give him a call later.’
He waited until his secretary had left for the evening, then he rang the operator and asked to be connected. When a man answered, Scott said, ‘I’m calling from Rome, trying to get in touch with Bradley Wyndham. I took over his job here.’
‘I don’t know anyone called Bradley Wyndham,’ the voice said. ‘You must have the wrong number.’ The line went dead abruptly.
Scott thought about this for a moment. Why the abrupt hang-up? If the person on the end of the line genuinely didn’t know anything, wouldn’t they have asked more questions to make sure it wasn’t a case of a misheard name? He rang back and as soon as the call connected, he said quickly: ‘Tell Bradley I’ve found his papers and I want to meet.’
The line went dead.