Free The Memory Trap by Anthony Price

… and then his mother died. So then he retired here, in Italy!’
    But Cuccaro was watching him. ‘You knew him well, though, Professore?’
    ‘I worked with him only once or twice.’ He felt a vague irritation swelling up in his throat. ‘I have not set eyes on him for fifteen years, Captain. And you have not yet answered my question: why is the Mafia interested in him?’
    Cuccaro looked away for a second, then back at him. ‘He has a boat like this one. And an organization to go with it. Only … his is an even better boat. And his organization, it would seem, is as good as his boat.’ The stare became frankly disbelieving. ‘And this … you did not know?’
    For a moment Audley could only stare back at him. ‘Peter Richardson—?’ He couldn’t quite keep the incredulity out of his voice. ‘You’re saying—?’
    ‘”Wrong profile”?’ Mitchell raised an innocent eyebrow.
    The trouble was, it wasn’t so utterly unthinkable, the next moment, as he thought about it—not, anyway, when he added premature retirement (and in comfort) to Richardson’s restless spirit. It had been plain corrosive boredom more than anything else which had in the end parted him from R and D all those years ago, in spite of that wild special aptitude of his which had so captivated Fred Clinton. And boredom, as he well knew himself, was the father of mischief.
    But he still wanted more time to think. ‘Is smuggling your business then, Captain?’ He pretended to study the boat as he spoke, as though that was expected of him.
    Smuggling — ?
    ‘No.’
    If smuggling wasn’t the connection with Kulik, it was nothing, really—or, it needn’t be, need it? Half the world’s travellers, who filled the duty-free shops in every airport and chanced their arms with that extra bottle, were petty smugglers at heart—
    Brandy for the parson, ‘Baccy for the clerk—and if Richardson had merely been supplying that ancient demand—?
    ‘Neither is the Mafia my business.’ Having waited in vain for him to come back, Cuccaro spoke more sharply. ‘But Major Richardson interests them now. That is what the word in Naples is, the Guardia informants say. And that, perhaps, is why he has become … unavailable?’
    The cosy picture in Audley’s mind dissolved. Brandy and ‘baccy … or, up-dated, Lucky Strikes in exchange for the odd Greek vase or Etruscan funeral pot … that was one thing. But the Mafia —
    ‘What’s he in to?’ Mitchell could contain himself no longer. ‘Drugs are where the money is, aren’t they?’ And, once uncontained, he was irrepressible. ‘And now what’s it? “Crack”—? Isn’t that raising the stakes?’
    Money ! That was what was wrong, damn it! That damn-well was the “wrong profile”—wasn’t it? Except … that fifteen years made a nonsense of that cosy picture, too—did they?
    ‘He’s run out of money, has he?’ He snapped himself back between them.
    Cuccaro frowned at him once more. ‘He never had any money.’
    Now they were really at odds. ‘He had plenty of money, Captain.’ The gleaming Richardson-cars and the West Central flat were there in memory to support him. ‘He had money from his mother.’ Money had always been a huge plus in Fred Clinton’s preferences, even before the aptitude tests: if you were heterosexual and well-heeled (and, for choice, not Cambridge!), then with Fred you were over the first fences, they always said. ‘And she was rich.’
    ‘And then dead, too.’ This time Mitchell was with him. Because, in his time, Paul Mitchell had been over those same fences, and knew them. And despised what he knew, too. ‘With a palazzo all of his very own—right, David?’
    Cuccaro shook his head. ‘There was no money.’
    ‘No money?’ Mitchell accepted the turnabout more readily. ‘No palazzo — ?’
    Cuccaro’s lip curled. “There is a … “palazzo”, as you call it. But it was … how do you say? Mortgaged, is it?’ He nodded. ‘And the Principessa