Escape Read Online Free PDF Page A

face.
That was stupid, going to the barber’s. How come no one’s recognised me yet?
An insane urge to run away.
Resist it. Keep a low profile. Must put the newspapers back
. Breaking out into an anxious sweat, his hands clammy, his back rigid, he walks over and puts the newspapers back on the shelves, checks that they arein precisely the right order, and makes his way to the exit. Nothing happens. He leaves. No one tries to stop him.
    He wanders aimlessly through the streets, sits down on a bench and tries to muster his thoughts.
Two dead. They’re going to pin two deaths on me. Two deaths including a
carabiniere.
Not me, not two deaths, it makes no sense. I’ll never last out. I’m not made of that stuff. Only one solution, run, vanish. ‘If things get too tough here in Italy, go over to France. Here, on this envelope, Lisa Biaggi, in Paris. Say I sent you and tell her what happened. She’ll help you
.’ He’d forgotten all about her. He thrusts his hand in the bag and rummages around feverishly. The envelope with Lisa’s address is there, right at the bottom. Salvation.

CHAPTER TWO

MARCH 1987, PARIS

5 March
    Since learning of Carlo’s death from the papers, Lisa has shut herself up in her studio apartment. It is on the fourth floor of an ancient building in Rue de Belleville, at the far end of an overgrown courtyard garden. She sits there for hours in a state of shock, huddled in an armchair in front of the tall window of her living area, looking out over the trees. Overcome by grief she nibbles, drinks coffee, thinks, sleeps and gets up from the chair as little as possible.
    It all began in the autumn of ’69 when she was a young rookie journalist at
L’Unità,
daily newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, then at the height of its powers. She was sent to Milan to report live from the Siemens factory where ‘something was happening’. She still feels emotional when she remembers her awe (the word is no exaggeration) on discovering the factory in ferment. At that time, people called it ‘in a state of revolution’, and for her and a few thousand people, that word meant something. She fell out with
L’Unità
, which rejected her articles and cut off her source of income, and met one of the workers, Carlo, a good-looker and a smooth talker. It was love, naturally. Had she fallen in love with him, or with that moment when young workers believed they were making history? The question made no sense, it was simply their life. She had followed Carlo into the Red Brigades. Years later Lisa was in France, sent by the organisation to meet a delegation of Palestinians. That was in 1980, and by then, hope had alreadydied, and she was carrying on out of loyalty (to what? to whom? pointless questions? Loyalty to herself, to her past). While she was away, the police had surrounded their apartment in Milan, arrested Carlo and two other comrades and confiscated all their files. Carlo got a message to her via their lawyers that the police were actively looking for her, and that she should stay in France, at least for a while. At least for a while – and that had been seven years ago. Without seeing Carlo again, and without admitting to herself that the separation was permanent. Well now it is. Now he has been assassinated.
    If I were a journalist, in Italy, in my real life … I’d investigate. The security guards change their route and their schedule every day. Who informed Carlo, who decided on the date and the place of the assassination? I’d want to know about the two
carabinieri
, that has to be the easiest starting point. Talk to the bank staff, they go for coffee in a nearby café in their lunch break, and they like to talk. Especially about sensational events of this kind, in which they have been directly involved. Yes, they would well remember the two
carabinieri
on that day; no, the men would not have paid in a cheque, and actually no, they would not recall ever seeing them before the day of the