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“Ciao, bella,” he murmured.

“You’re Italian?” she asked in her mother’s language.

“I was,” he said in a trembling voice. “Now I’m English.”

“Help is coming,” she told him. “An ambulance is on the way.”

“What of my beautiful pieces? Did he take my beautiful pieces?”

“He didn’t take anything from the front. I don’t know what he managed to get back here,” she said.

“A thief, he is. A thief.” His eyes fluttered shut again.

“He’s Italian?” James must have heard the last few exchanges between them.

“He says he was. That he’s English now, but maybe the blow to his head has reverted him back to his mother tongue.”

“I can hear the cavalry,” James said, cocking his head, and as he said it, Gabriella heard it, too. The wail of sirens she’d just thought a few days ago was the backdrop music of London since the summer.

James walked out into the front of the shop and she heard him telling Hartridge to carefully collect all the jewelry into the velvet pouches he’d found beneath the front counter and to write down every piece so they could hold them for safekeeping.

There was certainly no way anything of value could be left in here until all the doors and the window were repaired.

Two medics arrived to take the man away, and he struggled and shouted a bit until she explained in Italian that they were taking him to the hospital.

“What’s that you’re speaking to him?” one of them asked.

“Italian,” she told them. “I think he can speak English but he seems to have forgotten how.”

The paramedic shrugged. “Head wounds do funny things. What’s his name?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said.

“You work here, and you don’t know who this is? Is he one of the robbers, then?” The other paramedic’s body language changed.

“No, he’s the manager or owner. I don’t work here.” Sticky situation, she thought. How to explain her presence, because it wouldn’t do for James to get in trouble for having her here.

“Right.” The paramedic looked like he wanted to ask her how she was involved, but they were ready to take the man away.

She looked through the door into the front room, trying to see where James was. “Has someone had a look at DS Archer? He had glass cuts to his back.”

“A copper is injured?” The paramedic hefted his side of the stretcher.

“From flying glass when the intruder shot at him through the front window,” Gabriella confirmed.

“I’ll check, and if no one’s seen to him, I’ll call in another ambulance,” he told her. They lifted the jeweler up on a stretcher and took him out the back way into the alley.

DC Hartridge appeared just then in the doorway from the front room.

“All right, Miss Farnsworth?”

“Oh, yes.” She decided to beat a hasty retreat, and get out of everyone’s hair. “Could you let DS Archer know I’ve gone home? If anyone needs my statement, you all know where to find me.”

“Oh.” DC Hartridge looked taken aback, and then gave a nod. “That’s probably for the best. We’ll be here for hours.”

She gave a wave and left via the back. The ambulance was still parked near the entrance to the alleyway and she could hear the jewelry shop manager shouting in Italian.

She stepped around the side of the vehicle and looked in. “Need any help with a translation?” she asked.