f the brannigans were posh enough to have a family motto, it would go something like, "What do you mean, I can't*!" Just because I've never learned how to crack a safe didn't mean I was going to close the panel and walk away. I sat on the floor opposite the safe and studied it. There was a six-digit electronic display above a keypad with the letters of the alphabet and the numbers zero to nine. Beside the keypad were buttons that I translated as "enter code," "open," "random reset," "master." That didn't take me a whole lot further forward.

I checked my watch. Ten o'clock. Not too late to make a call. I took the mobile out of my bag and rang Dennis. It would have been cheaper to use the fax phone, but I'd already noticed that Gruppo Leopardi had itemized billing on their phone ac­count and I didn't want to leave a trail straight back to Den­nis, especially given that he already had connections with these people via Turner. Dennis answered his phone on the sec­ond ring. "Hi, Dennis," I said. "I'm looking at the outside of a safe and I want to be looking at the inside. Any ideas?"

"Kate, you're more of a villain than I am. You know I haven't touched a safe since Billy the Whip dropped one on my foot in 1983."

"This isn't the time for reminiscing. This call's costing me a week's wages."

He chuckled. "Then somebody else must be paying for it. What does this safe look like?"

I described it to him. "You're wasting your time, Kate. Beast like that, you've got no chance unless you know the combo," he said sorrowfully.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. He might be a sloppy git though, this guy you're having over. He might have gone for something really stupid like the last six digits of the phone number. Or the first six. Or his date of birth. Or his girlfriend's name. Or some set of let­ters and numbers he sees in his office every day."

I groaned. "Enough, already. You sure there's no other way?"

"That's why they call them safes," Dennis said. "Where are you, anyway?"

"You don't want to know. Believe me, you don't want to know. I'll be in touch. Thanks for your help."

I went back to the domestic files and tried various combi­nations of the phone number and any other number I could find, including the vehicle registrations. No joy. I sat in the boss's chair and looked round me. What would he see from here that would be a constant aide-memoire? I got up and tried the model numbers of the fax machine, the modem and the photocopier. Nothing. I didn't know the boss's birthday, but I had a feeling that a man as security conscious as him wouldn't have gone for anything that obvious.

It was last-resort time. What would / do if I wanted a code that was random enough for no one to guess, but accessible to me whenever I forgot it? Acting on pure instinct, I hit the power button on the computer again and watched the screen, looking for any six-digit combinations that came up during the boot process. I ended up with two. MB-4D33 was part of the operating system ident. And the CD-ROM drive's device model number was CEr563-X. The first string did nothing. But when I entered the second set of digits, the display changed from red to green. I couldn't believe it.

Holding my breath, I hit the open button. There was a soft click and the door catch released. "There is a god, and she likes me," I said softly. I opened the safe and stared in at the con­tents. There was a stack of papers about half an inch thick. On top of them sat a loose-leaf folder, slightly bigger than a Filo-fax. I took everything out of the safe and moved back to the desk. I went through the folder first. First there was a list of names, with dates and figures next to it. Following that were half a dozen pages listing numbered locations. Some of them had ticks beside them, and a couple were crossed out. Castle Dumdivie was on the list, with a tick. So were a few other names I recognized. Next came a list of dates and places fol­lowed by a number and letter code-20CC, 34H, 50,OOOE, that sort of thing. The fourth column was a number. A little bit of cross-checking, and I realized that the numbers corre­sponded to ticked locations on the list, and, in the cases I knew about, the dates were all two to four weeks after the burglar­ies. Finally, there were several pages of names, addresses and phone numbers. Halfway down the third page, I spotted Turner. I wasn't sure what all of this meant, but I was begin­ning to have the glimmerings of an idea.

I opened the clasps of the folder and put the pages through the photocopier. While they were feeding through, I looked at the other papers. Some of them were legal contracts, and I couldn't make head nor tail of them. Others were handwritten notes which seemed to refer to meetings, but although I un­derstood most of the words, I couldn't get a lot of sense out of them. There were a few business letters, mostly of the "thank you for your letter of the fifteenth, we can confirm the safe ar­rival of your consignment" type. The final bundle of papers were draft accounts of Gruppo Leopardi. I copied the lot. Once I'd finished, I replaced everything in the safe, exactly as I'd found it. I had the papers, but I wanted a little bit of in­surance, just in case anything happened on the way home to deprive me of my photocopies. The fax machine was the best source of that insurance, but I didn't want to send the stuff to my office number for the same reason I'd used the mobile to phone Dennis. It needed to go somewhere secure, but some­where large enough for it not to be obvious who specifically it had gone to. Ideally, it also had to go somewhere that even the Mafia would think twice about storming mob-handed.

There was only one place and one person I could think of that fit the bill. Detective Chief Inspector Delia Prentice, top dog on the Regional Crime Squad's fraud task force. This wasn't her bailiwick, but Delia's still the only copper I'd trust with anything that might put me at risk. I'd worked with Delia a couple of times now since we'd first been introduced by Josh Gilbert. They'd been at Cambridge together, and although their fascination with finance high and low had taken them in radically different directions, they'd stayed close enough for Josh to recognize that Delia and I are kindred spirits. Since our first encounter, we'd become close friends, and Delia had taken a key position in the network of female friends that helps and sustains me in my work as well as my leisure time. I knew if I faxed this wodge of incomprehensible paperwork to Delia, she'd tuck it away safely in her drawer till I turned up to ex­plain its significance.

I took a sheet of paper out of the stationery drawer and scribbled a cover sheet. "Fax for the urgent and confidential attention of DCI Prentice, Regional Crime Squad. Dear Delia: Vital evidence. Please keep safe until I can fill you in on the deep background. I'll call you as soon as I get back. Thanks. KB." That should do it, I thought, dialing her departmental fax machine. God knows what the duty CID would make of a hundred-page fax from Italy in the middle of the night.

By the time I'd finished, it was after two. I bundled up my photocopies, stuffed them in an envelope and tucked the lot

into my bulging bag. Time to get the hell out of here, as far away as possible. I had a horrible feeling that I knew what had happened to Nicholas Turner, probably because of my bug, and I didn't want to end up the same way. There wasn't a trace of the guy in any of the spare bedrooms, which put paid to any comforting ideas about him having nipped into Sestri in a taxi for dinner.

I switched everything off and locked the desk drawers again. Satisfied that everything looked just as it had when I'd walked into the office, I got out, locking the door behind me. I replaced the keys in the dummy can, hoping that my memory of how the contents of the cabinet had been arranged was ac­curate. I trotted down the stairs and back to the kitchen. I put my ear to the cellar door. Silence. I had a momentary pang of conscience, wondering what would happen to the big man when he came round and found himself tied up in the dark for an indefinite period of time. Then I reminded myself that he was probably directly responsible for whatever had happened to Turner, and I stopped feeling guilty. Besides, judging by the pristine condition of the villa, I reckoned there must be a maid who came in every day to polish the floors, the furniture and the kitchen equipment. By the time she arrived, Gianni would probably be bellowing like a bull.

I let myself out of the french windows and stood on the pa­tio, weighing up what to do next. I had the black box that would open the gates for me, but I didn't know where the se­curity system was controlled from, and the cameras would still be rolling. I wasn't keen on finding myself the star of the Mafia equivalent of Crimewatch, so I decided to help myself to one of the vehicles, just to keep myself hidden from the all-seeing eyes by the gate. You can only do so much with computer en­hancement, and I reckoned the combination of the darkness and the obscurity of being inside a car would make sure I couldn't be identified.

A quick sortie in the garage revealed that the keys for all the vehicles were hanging on the board where Gianni had de­posited his set earlier. I settled on the van, on the basis that it was the least memorable of the three. I opened the door, threw my bag on the passenger seat and climbed behind the wheel. I was just about to stick the key in the ignition when something stopped me.

I don't believe in sixth sense or second sight or seventh sons of seventh sons. But something was making the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and it wasn't love at first sight. I took a deep breath and looked over my shoulder into the back of the van.

At once, I wished I hadn't. There's only one thing comes in a six-foot-long heavy-duty black bag with a zipper up the front. It didn't take many of my detective skills to decide that I'd probably solved the mystery of Nicholas Turner's disappear­ance.

I was out of the van in seconds. I stood in the garage, lean­ing against the wall for support, my breath coming fast, clammy sweat in my armpits. The combination of shock and exhaustion was making my limbs tremble. I don't know how long I stood there like that, frozen in horror, incapable of movement, never mind decisive action. It's one thing to think somebody might be dead. It's another thing entirely to find yourself sitting in a van with their mortal remains. Especially when you're the one who's responsible for their present state.

It was only fear that got me moving again. Hanging round the Villa San Pietro was about as clever a move as a mouse go­ing walkabout in a cattery. My first instinct was to dive into the Alfa and put as much distance between me and the villa as fast as I could. I was halfway across the garage when I realized that wasn't an answer I could live with. It was my bug and my fake that had got Nicholas Turner murdered. I couldn't just walk away and let the people who'd had him killed dispose of the body and wash their hands of the whole business. If I left him here, that's exactly what would happen. I couldn't just

drive to the nearest police station and tell them what I knew. They might be on the villa's payroll, for a kick off. And even if they weren't and I did get them to believe me, I couldn't think of a cover story that wouldn't leave me facing charges of false imprisonment, assault, deception, breaking and entering and probably the murder of Aldo Moro.

I thought about waking Delia and bringing her up to speed so we could do it through official channels, but by the time we'd got the wheels of justice rolling, there would be no evi­dence of murder at the villa, the body would be miles away, and even if it did eventually turn up, there would be nothing to con­nect it to Gianni and his boss.

Taking a deep breath, I opened the back of the van. Before I did anything else, I needed to be sure it really was Turner in the bag. Gingerly, I reached out for the tab of the zip and pushed it away from me. It wouldn't budge. I could feel my stomach begin to turn over as I gripped the slick rubberized bag with one hand and forced the zip down. A few inches was all I needed. Nicholas Turner's eyes stared up at me out of a face gray in the stark fluorescent light of the garage. I gagged and whipped round just in time for the contents of my stom­ach to miss the van and hit the floor. I stood there, hands on my knees, throwing up till my stomach and throat were raw. Shaking and sweating, my fingers slippery on the body bag, I managed to pull up the zip. Turner's face showed no signs of how he had met his end, but I'd have been willing to bet it hadn't been a brain tumor.

I don't remember how I managed it, but somehow I got back behind the wheel and drove out of the garage. All I could think of was getting out of there and putting some distance between me and the Villa San Pietro. I hurtled down the drive, punch­ing the steering wheel in frustration as the gates took their time opening. I shot down the track so fast I nearly lost it on one of the bends. The shock of that sobered me enough to slow me down to a more reasonable speed. As I hit the main road, I realized I'd have to move the Mercedes away from Casa Nico, since Gianni knew that was where I was staying, and I couldn't guarantee I'd get back to the car before he was released from his prison.

I left the van parked on the verge by the villa turnoff and jogged the couple of kilometers back to the pensione. There was no sign of the BMW So much for expecting Richard to see sense and come back. I drove the Merc back up the valley, past the van, looking for somewhere to stash it. About a kilometer farther on, there was a cluster of houses and a minimarket. I left the car just off the main road and half jogged, half stag­gered back to the van. I didn't pass another car the whole hour.

I turned the van round and headed back toward Sestri Levante. I reckoned I needed to leave the van somewhere no one would notice if it was parked for a few days. I thought about finding some remote forest track in the mountains, but I ve­toed that. It would be difficult to find the right place in the dark, it would be impossible for me to remember where it was with pinpoint accuracy, and it wouldn't be easy for me to make my way back to the Merc. I didn't want to leave it parked on a street, because I didn't know how long it was going to take to get anyone to listen to my tale, and after a day or two in Ital­ian sunshine, the van wasn't going to smell too appetizing. What I needed, ideally, was an underground car park where no one would pay attention.

Either I needed a big city, or a swanky resort where people left their car in the hotel car park for a few days. The solution popped out of my memory just as the autostrada junction hove into sight. The picture-postcard village of Portofino, star of a thousand jigsaw puzzles, its harbor lined with picturesque houses painted every color of the ice-cream spectrum. I'd been there a couple of years before with Richard, and remembered the big car park, half underground, where tourists left their cars to avoid completely choking the center of the former fish­ing village.

I drove into Portofino just after five A.M. It's probably the only time of day that there isn't a queue to get into the village. I drove straight into the car park, taking a ticket at the auto­matic barrier. I left the van on the lowest level and walked up the stairs to the street. The pale light of dawn was just begin­ning to brighten the eastern sky as I strolled down to the har­bor. There were a few boatmen round in the harbor, but I didn't want to draw too much attention to myself by asking any of them how soon I could get out of the place. I tried to look like an insomniac tourist enjoying the peace and quiet, and strolled down the quayside to where the pleasure boats ran from. I was in luck. At nine, there was a boat that went to Ses­tri Levante and on to the Cinque Terre beyond.

I walked on round the harbor and found a bench that over­looked the bay. Using my bag as a pillow, I put my head down and managed to doze off. Strange dreams featuring Gianni's chef's knife and bodies that climbed out of bags and into pas­senger seats prevented it from being a restful sleep, but I was so exhausted that even the nightmares couldn't wake me up. The sound of a pleasure steamer's hooter jerked me into wakefulness just after eight, and I staggered back into the village, bought myself a couple of sandwiches and a cappuccino from a cafe and headed for the pleasure boat.

I don't remember much about the sail. I was too jittery from lack of sleep and the horrors of the night. I kept nodding off and starting awake, nerves jangling and eyes staring in para­noia. I couldn't stop thinking about Turner's wife and those two daughters. Not only had they lost a husband and father, but they were going to find out about it in a blitz of police and media activity.

In spite of the fact that arriving on dry land brought me nearer to the enemy, I was glad to be off the boat. Somehow, I felt more in control. In Sestri, I found the tourist office and discovered where I could catch a bus up the valley. The next one left in twenty minutes, and I was first on it, complete with brand-new sun hat. I sat at the back, slouched down in my seat. As Casa Nico approached, I put my sunglasses on and pulled the hat down. The bus was so much higher off the road than a car would have been that I was able to look right down on Casa Nico. As the bus rounded the bend beyond the pen-sione, I looked back. Parked behind the building, where I wouldn't have been able to spot it in a car, was Gianni's Alfa. I got off at the next stop and walked cautiously past the al­ley where I'd left the Merc. It was still there, and no one seemed to be watching it. I doubled back behind the houses and came up the alley from the far end. I crept into the car, not even slamming the door shut until I had the engine running. Then I shot out onto the main road and headed up the valley, away from Casa Nico and the Villa San Pietro, my foot hard on the accelerator, my eyes on the rearview mirror. As I joined the autostrada, I wondered how long Giani would stake out the pensione. It was worth the loss of my overnight bag not to have him on my tail.

Nigel Mansell couldn't have got to Milan airport faster than I did that day. I dumped the car with the local Hertz agent and headed for the terminal. I'd just missed a flight to Brussels, but there was one to Amsterdam an hour later. If I could only stay awake, I could pick up Bill's Saab in Antwerp, catch the night ferry from Zeebrugge and be home the following morn­ing sometime. Frankly, I couldn't wait to feel British soil un­der my feet.

I had half an hour to kill in the international departure lounge. I thought I'd better give Shelley a ring before she de­cided tracking me down was a job for Interpol. She answered on the first ring, and I could hear relief in her voice. I knew then it must be bad, since Shelley never lets on that anything's beyond her competence.

"Thank God it's you," she said. "Where are you? You've got to get back here. There's been another death."