This was Canning's third contribution to a long-running series "Did it happen?" by various authors which appeared in the Evening Standard and its sister papers. Readers were asked to guess if a story was truth or fiction. Canning's story describes an incident in post-war Italy (December 1945). In this case the answer was "truth".
Two soldiers of the unit of which Canning was the adjutant have beaten up a black-marketeer and taken his ill-gotten gains. The Italian police receive a complaint and the soldiers agree to return the money. The trouble is that, having been rather drunk, they cannot remember where they have hidden the bulk of it …
Canning's other contributions to this series were "Honorary Godfathers", "Wall of death" and "You are a spy" and "Hole in One".
Evening Standard, Monday 4 November 1957, p. 13.
Included in the collection Italy and the Balkans, ed. John Higgins.