The Cold, Cold Ground

he asked.
    “I was thinking about next week but the Chief says I can take until the end of October if I want to.”
    Evans put on his hat and waved to a man in a black Daimler who turned the engine on and threw his cigarette out the window.
    “It’s been my experience, Sergeant Duffy, that after a traumatic event the best thing to do is to leap back into the saddle as soon as you can. Although you have been through so much that perhaps it would be best if you take a little holiday abroad first.”
    “You think so?”
    “Oh yes. Yes indeed.”
    “Then perhaps I’ll go.”

23: THE ITALIAN JOB
    I landed at Linate Airport just before dusk. I changed two hundred quid into lira and at the airport gift shop I bought a hunting knife and a map of the Como area. I had an espresso and some kind of meat filled pastry which made me feel that this was the first time I had tasted food in my life.
    A taxi took me to the Central Bus Station in Milan without too much trouble. It was off season, too late for summer travel, too early for the skiers.
    The bus to Como left at 6. A Red Brigade bomb scare delayed it until 7.30 and made me feel at home.
    At Como I caught a local bus up the Via Regina.
    We arrived at Mezzagra in the middle of a street party. It was a harvest festival and kids were dressed as grapes and ears of wheat.
    It was cold and braziers had been set up to warm the crowd. More good food. Beautiful women. People enjoying themselves.
    Italy with its chaotic politics and twenty-plus prime ministers since World War Two was still the inverse of Ireland – bomb threats notwithstanding. This, I thought, is what normality looked like.
    I found a stand selling home-made toys and, changing my mind about the knife, I bought a realistic-looking cap gun in the shape of an ACP. In Ireland all toy guns had to be orange so weans didn’t get shot by cops or soldiers on foot patrol. But thisone, from a distance, looked like the real thing.
    I laughed.
    It would be funny if this worked and funny if it didn’t.
    I watched a puppet show about the capture of Mussolini by the Resistance which, if I understood it correctly, happened on this very spot.
    At 9 o’clock I caught the last local bus to Campo.
    Lake Como was the black empty mass to my right as we hugged the shore and drove past the homes of the very rich. Beautiful villas from the baroque and rococo right up to the present day. Father Faul told us that the Younger Pliny had owned two villas on Lake Como. One on a hill and one on the lake. The upper home he called Tragedy, the lower Comedy.
    The bus stopped at every village and went slowly along the shore road. It finally left me off at the hamlet of Campo at around 11.30.
    A quiet, attractive, unearthly little place in the foothills of the Alps.
    There were no people.
    No cars.
    Occasionally a truck roared by under the vast yellow arc lights of the SS36. The rest was silence.
    Snow had been falling since the day before and the bus station car park was a frozen world.
    An ice mirror reflecting the winter constellations. A landing strip for migrating birds.
    I unfolded my map, strapped the rucksack across my shoulders and headed east.
    The house was at the end of a long track off Vicolo Spluga.
    The incline was steep and I had to catch my breath a couple of times.
    Wind was whistling down from the Swiss border, eight miles to the north.
    These were not the high Alps but it was still freezing.According to the map we were up at 1400 metres which I reckoned was over 5500 feet. I was wearing a leather jacket, jeans and Adidas trainers. I was underdressed. I hadn’t expected it to be this frigid in early October.
    I took another breather to steady my nerves.
    From up here I could see the lights of planes landing at Milan and boats putting across the black waters of the Lago di Mezzola.
    I walked on. I passed a ruined mill, a couple of small cottages and a barn that had been destroyed by fire.
    Freddie’s house was built in a typical Tyrol style: wood beams, a deck facing south, a steep timbered roof. It wasn’t particularly large but I knew that he owned much of the surrounding forest too. He told everyone that he had inherited the place from his grandfather but that wasn’t true. The whole shebang was bought and paid for by MI5.
    Since June and Freddie’s ascension to the Army Council things had really begun to happen for him.
    Gerry Adams had been out here. All the top guys in Sinn Fein and the IRA.
    Even a couple of US