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apartment stuffed with priceless volumes, or it might be that he had a safe storage box in a local bank where my book was temporarily hidden, awaiting shipment to a collector somewhere else in the world. But my only lead was the shop, and the only secure place I’d spied inside the shop was the safe.
    Well, I say secure, but really it was vulnerable. In the light from my torch, I could see that it was a squat, heavy-looking brute, dating from the 1940s or ’50s. It had been finished in a dark-blue enamel, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the paint was thicker than the metal it covered. If I’d had a decent drill with me, I dare say I could have attacked it quite productively from the side. But, as it happened, I was content to focus my attentions on the very basic locking mechanism.
    There was no combination dial, and certainly no electronic keypad. A brass keyhole and a multi-pin lock was all that stood between me and the interior of the thing, and after sorting through my burglary equipment for a likely looking pick and a sturdy torsion wrench, I gripped my torch between my teeth and got down to business. Moments later, the weighty tumblers turned with a deathly echo, the brass handle rotated and a gust of stale air wafted out.
    I covered my mouth with my hand and flashed my torch inside. There was a shelf in the middle and the space beneath it contained four cloth bags. The bags were heavy, and when I lifted them from the safe I discovered that they contained euro coins in various denominations. I put the petty cash back inside. I was after my book, not a profit.
    On top of the shelf were two books with blue cloth covers, frayed around the edges. The pages were yellowed and the text was in a language I didn’t recognise – Russian, perhaps. Disappointed, I reached for a set of keys that had been hidden beneath the books. They were attached to a Fiat key fob. The car they fitted was most likely parked at the Piazzale Roma – unlikely to be used on a daily basis but ready to be driven across the bridge to mainland Italy whenever convenient. I returned them to the safe and removed the final item.
    A mobile telephone.
    The handset looked cheap, with large rubber buttons and a dim-lit monochrome screen upon which a telephone number had been entered. If I was ever to buy a mobile myself, it was just the kind of thing I’d go for – the base model in a manufacturer’s range, with the ability to make and receive calls and, on a good day with a following breeze, perhaps even send a text message or two. Ordinarily, I might have said that there was nothing the least bit remarkable about it. But that would be to ignore the yellow Post-it note that had been stuck to the keypad, and the arrow on the note that pointed upwards to the button with the little green handset on it. And it would also require me to overlook the writing beneath the arrow, where someone had scrawled the words: Ring Me, Englishman .

 
FIVE
    Funny, I really didn’t want to. And not just because I can be a stubborn fellow who doesn’t take kindly to being told what to do, but also because I can recognise danger when I see it. Like any self-respecting burglar who’d prefer not to be caught, I have a well-developed instinct for self-preservation. And if ever there was a time to walk away from something, my every faculty told me that this was it.
    Two things struck me as highly likely.
    One : The phone had been placed in the safe for my attention. After all, the flyer that had been left in my apartment had led me here, and the note on the phone had been written in English and addressed to one of my countrymen.
    Two : If I made the call, I almost certainly wouldn’t like what I heard.
    Problem was, if I didn’t place the call, I felt sure that I’d never again see my copy of The Maltese Falcon . And while it was hardly comforting to think that whoever had planted the phone had already decided that my need for the book would outweigh any