Major Sweet, from the rear, looked quite unlike himself: there was something about his back and the forward tilt of his head that suggested extreme alertness. A slight movement and his cheek, the end of his moustache and his right eye came into view. The eye was cocked backwards: the eye of a watchful man. Giovanni leant towards the Major and talked. No Italian can talk without hands and Giovanni’s were active but, as it were, within a restricted field. The Major folded his arms and seemed to wait.

Could he, Alleyn wondered, be arranging with Giovanni for a further instalment of the other night’s excesses? Somehow the two of them didn’t look quite like that. They looked, he thought, as if they drove some other kind of bargain and he hoped he wasn’t being too fanciful about them.

He saw that by delicate manoeuvring he could cross the yard, edge up to a bin with a polyglot collection of papers under a tall cupboard and thus bring himself much nearer to the caffè. He did so, slid a disreputable but large map out of the bin and held it in front of him in case they suddenly came his way. Lucky, he thought, that he’d changed his shoes and trousers.

They spoke in English. Their voices dropped and rose and he caught only fragments of what they said, as if a volume control were being turned up and down by some irresponsible hand.

‘…waste of time talking…you better understand, Vecchi…danger. Ziegfeldt…’

‘…are you mad? How many times I tell you…instructions…’

‘…search…police…’

‘…OK, Signore. So they search and find nothing…I have made…“arrangements”…’

‘…arrangements. Try that on Alleyn and see what…Different…Take it from me…I can do it. And I will. Unless…’

‘…drunk…’

‘…nothing to do with it. Not so drunk I didn’t know…It’s a fair offer. Make it right for me or…’

‘You dare not.’

‘Don’t you believe it. Look here…if I report…Ziegfeldt…’

‘Taci!’

‘Shut up.’

A savage-sounding but muted exchange followed. Finally Giovanni gave a sharp ejaculation. Chair legs grated on the pavement. A palm was slapped down on the table. Alleyn, greatly stimulated, squatted behind the ruin of a velvet chair and heard them go past. Their footsteps died away and he came out of cover. Somewhere behind a shuttered window a man yawned vocally and prodigiously. Farther along the street a door opened. A youth in singlet and trousers lounged out, scratching his armpits. A woman inside the trattoria called with an operatic flourish, ‘Mar-cel-lo.’

The siesta was over.

It was a long time since Alleyn had ‘kept observation’ on anybody and like Il Questore Valdarno, he didn’t altogether object to an unexpected return to fieldwork.