Picture of Defeat Read online

  Anything was worth stealing – even from friends. Food, if it was there. If it wasn’t, then anything that could be sold for money to buy food. One of the great jokes going about the city was that, unseen by sentries, thieves climbed the fortifications of Castellemare Castle and removed the wheels of Allied vehicles before escaping back over the towering walls with their loot. All that could be said in the way of consolation was that the Germans had suffered equally, and when they had opened an army boot repair shop, half the footwear deposited there had mysteriously disappeared into the Irish Consulate next door and out at the other side for the poor of the city.

  But that was nothing. Lorries left for only an hour were found to be minus their wheels, because the Neapolitan gangs had developed a technique of removing wheels, spare parts, hoods, even engines, at an amazing speed. A tank had been stripped down day by day until nothing was left, and buses were driven to the hills, where they could be reduced at leisure to a skeletal framework; trams, left standing when the departing Germans had smashed the power supply, disappeared overnight. Railway engines vanished and fishing vessels were found miles inland. Even manhole covers had been found to have some value and the streets became full of lethal hazards. Nothing that wasn’t screwed down was safe. Tombstones and marble statuary vanished from the cemeteries. The Americans were perfect dupes for the cunning Neapolitans, and many a marble angel taken from a graveyard had been reconstituted and sold as a Madonna sculpted by Orcagna, Bellini or one of the Pisanos. Even the heads from bomb-wrecked statues had been passed off as fragments of Michelangelo’s work and sold for incredible sums of money.

  The looting was not confined to the Italians either. Colonel da Sangalla, a Roman art expert in the uniform of the Italian army, had made it very plain that even British officers had sticky fingers. In fact, Pugh suspected that Da Sangalla himself, despite being attached to the Ministero di Monumenti e Belli Arti – the new government organisation for the protection of monuments and fine arts – had, like every other Italian, been forced beyond honesty by the prevailing circumstances and the need to stay alive, and had not been against helping himself.

  It was difficult, in fact, to know where to look for an honest man. Hunger was a powerful goad, and the only truly honest policeman Pugh had ever come across among the lower ranks was an old hungry-looking bachelor. And with the miserably paid police inevitably open to bribes, the rackets taken over by experts, and not only Allied soldiers but officials of the Allied Military Government assisting, it was hard to see how Naples could ever be anything else but a hotbed of corruption. Even Vesuvius registered its protest by erupting in March; a black motionless cloud of smoke hung over the city and made the air foggy with falling ash for days.

  Yet there was still something about the place. Built round its beautiful bay, Naples demanded affection. Superstitiously religious, teeming, noisy and vital, it had a strange appealing warmth that always won Pugh’s heart. He had done a lot of painting there and at Posillipo, Sorrento, on the slopes of Vesuvius, or on Capri or Ischia, and he found it hard to condemn the southern Italians, abandoned as they always had been by Rome and the industrial north.

  Most of his work consisted of winkling out Fascists and collaborators, screening line-crossers and Italians wishing to be employed by the Allies, investigating the people accused by informers of being German spies signalling to the enemy, and checking up on the eager virgins who were wanting to marry British soldiers. Most of the spies turned out to be harmless eccentrics, their signals the flashing of torches as they headed down the garden for the lavatory. Of the thirty-odd would-be brides he had checked, at least three-quarters were on the game. It was reckoned that thousands of desperate women, their men dead, disappeared or trapped in the north, were at it. Sometimes it made him heartsick at the tragedy.

  Most of the people were unemployed, their faces pale with hunger, their bodies swollen, their eyes and faces puffy with starvation, or so thin their clothes hung from them like sacks. Those who could stayed in bed all day, and parents offered their daughters in return for a good meal for them. There were no cars – only carts and carriages drawn by skeletal horses. It was impossible to put anything down for a moment without having it stolen, and the scugnizzi – the urchins of Naples, both male and female – had developed a technique of scrambling over the tailgates of moving army lorries and off-loading anything they could to their friends running behind. It brought a few lost fingers as hidden guards chopped with bayonets at the hands that appeared over the tailgate, and a few deaths as children slipped and fell under passing wheels.

  As the weeks went by, things grew no better and the growing impudence of the black market operators took the breath away. The Americans were the power in the Allied Military Government and many of them, handpicked for the invasion, were of Italian descent. Some of them were suspected of working hand in glove with the people who ran the black market, which was known to be headed by Vito Genovese, second-in-command of a New York Mafia family until he’d fled to Italy before the war to dodge a murder charge. He had become a friend of Mussolini and, on Duce’s downfall, had transferred his allegiance to AMGOT. Without any doubt, he was now the power behind the scenes, appointing his friends to important positions, leasing out rackets, demanding pay for favours done – and exacting punishment for anyone who crossed him. Liberation had become confused by corruption.

  After six months of freedom, the black market operation was becoming organised, the stolen military stores – apart from guns and ammunition, which were sold under the counter – were being offered openly. But no matter how many small-timers were arrested, the big ones always escaped because the petty thieves they employed found it safer to go to prison for perjury than to incriminate their masters. Even the air raid sirens were said to go at pre-arranged times so that, under cover of the smoke screens put up to hide the city from the approaching raiders, the black marketeers could move in to do their work. Joints of meat disappeared from army stores, with coal, carpets intended for officers’ quarters, instruments for hospital operating theatres – all slipped out of camp in army lorries driven by men, both civilian and military, in the pay of the gangs. Tailors all over Naples were turning looted uniforms into civilian clothes. Dyed bright colours, army long johns became fashionable garments. Even a car from the Papal Legate’s office was found to have stolen tyres. Nothing was safe. People in cafés drank out of cut-down bottles because all the glasses had been stolen. The orchestra at the opera house, returning from a break between the acts of Tosca, found half their instruments stolen, and mediaeval costumes taken from the theatre had reappeared, re-fashioned as sportswear. A few raids were put on here and there, but there were always too many people wearing overcoats made from Canadian blankets who could claim the patronage of this or that senior officer for anything ever to come of them.

  Because Field Security had pulled off a few small successes but never anything very big, they suspected there was a leak somewhere in their organisation. People they had their eye on had a habit of disappearing. Black market goods they knew existed vanished before they arrived. Somewhere in the organisation someone was passing on information. Jones had all the sergeants in his office, lectured them, questioned them, threatened them. It was Pugh’s belief, however, that the leak wasn’t among their own personnel but someone outside who knew what was going on. So they watched the civilian personnel they employed, the clerks, the typists and the cleaners, but they were able to pin nothing on any of them.

  It was quite by chance that Pugh was the one who fell for investigating the penicillin racket. He’d been working with Sergeant O’Mara to pull in an Italian who had made 25,000 dollars from stolen tyres. They had put a surveillance on a garage in the Via Villari where they knew the stolen tyres were being kept, watching from the loft above the stable of an old man called Mori, who ran a threadbare carter’s business. He had an ancient sway-backed grey horse called Urbino that reminded Pugh of the pictures he’d seen in Devon pubs of the stor
y of Widdicombe Fair with the ghost of Tom Pierce’s grey mare ‘all gashly white.’ It pulled a ramshackle cart with which old Mori earned his living moving things about the city. At the moment, after the bombings and with the repeated air raids, he was making a better living than he ever had hauling rubble away for the Allies and dumping it beyond the city boundary.

  Now, with the tyre deal behind them, Pugh found himself involved in something more important. By this time the theft of military stores had become so acute that items which could be bought freely on the black market were found to be in short supply for the army. While the army needed technical equipment, that which had been shipped out to them was being sold openly in the Via Roma, and while sick civilians could go to a pharmacist for a course of penicillin injections, supplies were becoming non-existent in army hospitals. The black market was beginning to affect the war effort, and it happened to fall to Pugh to investigate it.

  In fact, it wasn’t as difficult as he’d expected. Everybody knew about it and there was a surprising openness about acknowledging it existed. Feeling it was going to be easy and already seeing himself promoted and given a medal, Pugh called on a hospital dispenser he knew who had always been willing to talk. This time, though, he wasn’t. In the end he offered the name of a man called Tirandolo who lived near the Vomero district, but he warned Pugh that nobody would be prepared to give evidence against him.

  ‘Why not?’ Pugh demanded sharply.

  The dispenser shrugged, waggled his eyebrows and moved his hand backward and forward. ‘He belongs,’ he said.

  ‘Belongs to what?’

  ‘To the organisation.’

  ‘What organisation?’

  ‘I don’t know its name, only that it will look after him.’

  ‘The Mafia?’

  The dispenser merely shrugged again.

  Checking the name, Pugh found that Ugo Tirandolo was indeed known to deal in penicillin but, as he had been warned, he also learned that he was known to be under the protection not only of Vito Genovese but also of someone in AMGOT who contrived to remain unknown.

  The next move was to contact an old drinking companion, Agent Walter Szogoscz, of American Counter Intelligence. Szogoscz and Pugh had often worked together and celebrated their successes together, and CI were well in with AMGOT. They had a magnificent filing system but unfortunately none of them could speak Italian, so that they had to rely on British Field Security. Like all Americans, Szogoscz was generous and always willing to lend a Jeep in exchange for a bottle of whisky. He knew about Vito Genovese but preferred to steer clear of him because other American officers who had enquired too deeply had found themselves passed over for promotion. In the end, it was decided that Pugh should try.

  Tirandolo had a splendid house like a small palace on the slopes to the north of the city. There was an Alfa Romeo outside and Pugh was shown in by a liveried footman. The place was full of paintings, magnificent drapings and old furniture. Tirandolo was an overweight elderly man wearing a smart blue suit, a pink tie and an ingratiating smile. He offered Pugh a drink and merely shrugged when Pugh told him why he was there. He remained bland and unperturbed when Pugh started to search his house and showed no alarm whatsoever when he finally found an empty carton that had contained penicillin in the car. He was still magnificently unmoved when Pugh announced he was going to arrest him.

  ‘I would recommend great care, Sergente,’ he said, a glint in his eye that boded ill for Pugh. ‘I happen to be related to an Allied officer of great power. I think you would do your work better in North Africa and I can easily see that you are removed.’

  Feeling it was a sign he was winning, Pugh returned to headquarters, where Captain Jones listened to him with a certain amount of anxiety.

  ‘Have you informed Colonel Tasker?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you’d better. You know he always insists on knowing what’s going on.’

  ‘I can never see the bloody point,’ Pugh growled. ‘He’s not part of our organisation.’

  ‘He’s the boss, all the same. The superior officer. We’re attached to his department for pay, rations, discipline, hiring and firing, and, for that matter, everything appertaining to life and death. That’s the way it is in the army. Somebody has to be boss, and in our case it’s Tasker. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, that means that what he says goes. Besides’ – Jones frowned – ‘I don’t like this involvement with stolen drugs. I think you’re asking for trouble.’

  ‘I want to know who’s supplying the bastard. Somebody is, and he must be Army.’

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘Too late,’ Pugh said. ‘It’s already fixed.’

  ‘I think you should give it to the Americans. It’s their baby.’

  ‘It was the Americans who suggested I have a go. Agent Szogoscz.’

  Jones’ eyebrows rose. ‘Why? Is he scared to have a go himself?’

  ‘It’ll be all right.’

  Jones sighed and pushed across a newspaper. ‘Column four,’ he said. ‘Your buddy, Bocco Detto Banti.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Boccaccio Detto Banti.’

  The name rang a bell. Boccaccio Detto Banti was an Anglo-Italian painter like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and lived at Vicinamontane to the north. He had lived in England for much of his life, but when his Fascist sympathies had begun to show before the war in indiscreet comments, his popularity had dropped and he had returned to Italy, claiming to be an Italian. Such was his fame, he had been accepted without question because he was able to add a few laurels to Mussolini’s shabby crown.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’ Pugh asked.

  ‘He’s on his last legs. Didn’t you know him before the war? Drop on one knee at the foot of the master sort of thing?’

  Pugh nodded. ‘I once visited him,’ he admitted. ‘Thought I might learn something. I needed to learn something somewhere. Nobody wanted to buy my paintings and I was genteelly starving.’

  ‘Did he help?’

  Pugh shook his head. ‘He was already too old. He just rambled.’

  ‘Wonder what’ll happen to his paintings.’

  ‘There aren’t any.’ Pugh said. ‘He suffered from arthritis, I heard, and all he had were sold to keep the wolf from the door. There hasn’t been a new one for years.’

  ‘Perhaps you ought to go and make sure.’

  ‘I’ll stick with Tirandolo.’

  Jones sighed. He was a tall, elegant man of some wit and, unlike many elegant men, was of a kind and gentle disposition. He had often found Pugh, who was shorter and thick in the body – thick in the head too, Jones often thought – difficult because, like many people of a similar stature, he was inclined to be aggressive and too quick to act.

  He ran a hand over his face. It was pale, because he was fair-haired and the Italian sun made him go fiery scarlet and peel until he looked like a snake shedding its skin. ‘Well, try to look like a soldier,’ he suggested.

  ‘I look like a soldier,’ Pugh said indignantly.

  ‘With a red handkerchief round your neck instead of a collar and tie? You look like Augustus John in an off moment.’

  ‘I wish I did. I shouldn’t have to shave. John wore a beard.’

  ‘You make the British army look as if it’s staffed by a lot of Montmartre daubers. Artists don’t go about like that these days.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I’m talking about good artists.’

  Two days later, wearing a collar and tie as instructed, Pugh saw Tirandolo in prison at Poggio Reale. He had the best cell in the place – more like a private room – and it was obvious it was being cleaned by someone else, and he was having his meals sent in from outside. A squarely built man with heavy black eyebrows and a wide mouth like the slit of a letterbox was just leaving.

  ‘A friend,’ Tirandolo explained. ‘Come to bring his greetings.’

  Pugh found himself wondering if he had also tried to slip Tirandolo a file.

  Tirand
olo was still unperturbed, and claimed to know no details about the racket in penicillin or the names of the people in AMGOT who were involved. He was quite certain he would be found not guilty when he was brought before the magistrates, and Pugh had a suspicion he was right because, although they had filled the prison with people who had been guilty of small crimes, so far not one of the big fish had been caught. Witnesses vanished or the prosecution was found to have bungled its cases, and the finest criminal lawyers in Italy, with whom acquittal was a certainty, could be obtained at a price.

  It soon became clear that it was going to be impossible to find anyone who would give evidence against Tirandolo, and after a fortnight had elapsed the case was beginning to look hopeless. A week later it was announced that Tirandolo was suffering from a stone in his kidney and, as there were complications and the facilities in the prison hospital were not adequate, he would have to be removed to a civilian establishment. Pugh had no doubt that, if necessary, Tirandolo would submit to a shallow incision in his side to provide proof of an operation, but his recovery would be long and slow.

  As he gave Pugh the news, the prison governor shrugged and waved his hand from side to side. Pugh knew what he meant. ‘This is Naples and that’s how things are done.’

  For a long time Pugh brooded angrily on it, wondering if he ought to persevere. In the end he decided he should and he told Tirandolo that he intended to. Tirandolo smiled and said nothing, and it was the next day that the hand-grenade – doubtless, like everything else, acquired on the black market – was thrown at the jeep. It hit the rear end, bounced off and burst in the road to kill a mule and an old man. Pugh was unharmed but it was enough to make him realise he was batting on a very sticky wicket.