The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (13 page)

‘Nothing to it,’ he said. And he was right – when you compared the sensation to being in the middle of an explosive inferno. ‘You’ll begin to feel drowsy. But it may help with the hearing.’

‘I appreciate it.’

‘Poor
bambino
,’ Antea said. ‘We are sorry, but his is not normal. It’s not
Venezia
.’

‘Crime wave,’ Martin said, removing his gloves and tossing them into his medical bag. He closed the bag with a snap of the clasps and smoothed back his fringe. ‘You’ll have heard about the explosion at Palazzo Borelli last night?’

He subjected me to a hawkish assessment and I watched his pupils shift left and right as he gauged my response.

‘I’m afraid not,’ I told him, doing my best to keep my face as blank as possible. ‘What happened?’

‘Nobody knows for sure. There’s talk of a bomb.’

Antea clucked her tongue. ‘No Martin. It will be gas. Or electricity. Something like this.’

‘The radio said that a masked man was seen falling from the balcony at the front of the palazzo just after the blast,’ Martin told her.

‘But this is too much,’ Antea said. ‘It is like something out of one of your books, Charlie, yes?’

I didn’t know what to say to that, but fortunately Victoria had a contribution. ‘My word,’ she put in. ‘Makes you wonder sometimes, doesn’t it?’

‘Mmm,’ Martin replied, looking no less suspicious of me, or my supposed mugging.

‘I will make you soup!’ Antea announced, and patted my toes through my bed covers. ‘A family recipe. It make you better, no problem.’

Martin shook his head with pained indulgence, as if he was listening to the ravings of a tribal shaman. ‘Well, come along Antea.’ He lifted his medical bag from my bed. ‘Time that we were going.’

Yes, I thought. Time indeed.

I regained consciousness more than six hours later. Whether the dosage Martin had administered was responsible for my slumber, I couldn’t say, but one thing I could tell you was that until Victoria informed me that it was almost 3 p.m., I could have quite happily believed that I’d had my eyes shut for half an hour at the very most. Mind you, as I indulged myself with a spot of stretching and yawning, I was at least able to recall that I hadn’t passed the time in a state of complete nothingness. No, true to form, my pesky subconscious had bombarded me with yet more striking and undeniably kinky images of Graziella. Forget oysters – if you want to expose yourself to a powerful aphrodisiac, just arrange to have someone break into your home and dupe you into making an assassination attempt.

‘Your soup arrived,’ Victoria told me. She was dressed in jeans and a lengthy knitted cardigan. ‘Plus some fruit from the market. And some fish. And bread. And two jars of fresh pasta sauce, along with some homemade ravioli. Antea spoils you, you know.’

‘Told you she was a saint.’

‘That, or a sweet old lady whose good nature you’re only too happy to exploit.’

‘I’ll thank her,’ I told Victoria. ‘Profusely. But right now, I’m going to get up. Could you have a look in my wardrobe and pass me my jogging trousers and a shirt?’

She glanced sceptically at the wardrobe, then back at me. ‘Need any help?’

‘How about you wait outside the door? If you hear me fall over, you have my permission to come in and pick me up.’

‘My, that sounds tempting.’

Victoria fetched the items I’d requested, then moved outside into the hall. I carefully fed my arms through the sleeves of the shirt, wary of my cuts snagging on the material, then squirmed into the elasticised trousers before attempting to stand. To my relief, the room didn’t lurch violently to one side. Or the other.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I’ve just realised something. My hearing’s better.’

It was true. A small amount of buzzing still lingered – the kind one might get when one’s heart rate is up – but compared to before, it was like being gifted a whole new set of ears.

‘Say something,’ I called.

‘Like what?’

‘That’s perfect,’ I told her. ‘It’s bloody perfect.’

I snatched the door open and clapped her on the shoulders. And if only this was a musical, I would have leapt into the air, snapped my heels together and burst into a rousing song.

‘Martin’s some kind of medical genius,’ I told her. ‘Let’s go out. I mean, obviously, first let me pee and wash – but then let’s go for a walk.’

‘A walk? Where on earth do you want to walk to?’

‘Oh come now,’ I said, nudging her with my elbow, ‘don’t tell me you’re not just a tad intrigued to see how the palazzo is looking?’

The palazzo wasn’t looking good, and Victoria was more than a bit intrigued – she was positively full of questions. We’d already been through a number of them, but apparently there were plenty more still to come.

‘And that hole,’ she said, ‘that huge, gaping, charred hole, is where the strongroom is?’

‘Was, I’d guess you’d say.’

‘And that’s the balcony you fell from?’

‘Hush,’ I said, ‘keep your voice down.’

We weren’t alone. Half of Venice seemed to be gathered around us, standing on the opposite bank of the canal from the devastation I’d been responsible for, on the square of land in front of the restaurant where we’d eaten the previous night. Most of the onlookers were a grey-haired bunch talking in the local Venetian dialect, and there was a lot of arm-waving and head-shaking and proclamations of despair – at least, that’s what I took them for. There was also a gaggle of tourists – their camera flashes illuminating the gathering dusk, throwing the tarnished exterior of the palazzo into bright relief. Private boats dawdled on the greying, rippled waters of the canal, their passengers marvelling at the destruction that had been visited on a building that had endured hundreds of years without sinking or collapsing and now, it appeared, would survive this too.

The windows of the
piano nobile
that remained intact were brightly lit by a collection of temporary arc lights that had been set up inside, and I could see figures moving around behind the glass. Some were dressed in tan raincoats – standard issue for police detectives, even in Italy. Others were clad entirely in white disposable jumpsuits. Forensics officers. If anything remained of the attaché briefcase, at least I could console myself with the knowledge that I’d worn gloves whenever I’d touched it. And while it was reasonable to suppose that I might have left hairs behind, not to mention the odd layer of skin, it wasn’t too outlandish to think the explosion and the fire might have done a good job of destroying any biological evidence. That just left the surveillance footage, and even assuming it hadn’t been consumed by the inferno, all it could really reveal was the masked figure that eye-witnesses had already described.

Perhaps that should have been a reassuring thought, but the truth was it didn’t make me especially proud to see the devastation I’d been responsible for, or the distress it had caused the locals surrounding us.

Victoria whistled, then spoke in a low voice from the corner of her mouth. ‘Charlie, that balcony has to be at least fifteen feet high. You were lucky.’

‘Falling from the balcony was the easy part,’ I whispered. ‘The bomb blast was the tricky bit.’

‘Was it very loud?’

‘Enough to deafen me.’

Victoria bumped me with her hip and gave me a lopsided smile. ‘Point taken.’ She turned back to consider the palazzo once more, her face tangled in thought. ‘Could anyone else have been hurt?’

I frowned. It was something I’d been trying to avoid thinking about too hard. ‘I don’t believe so,’ I said, letting my words linger. ‘The vault was reinforced with steel, and it contained most of the explosion, or else I wouldn’t be here. I suppose there might have been some structural damage behind the strongroom – and if so, there’s a chance one of the staff could have been caught up in it. But I imagine Martin and Antea would have said if that was the case, because it would have been on the news.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘You’re not the only one.’

While we’d been speaking, my eyes had started to water. It was partly because of the breeze whipping off the choppy canal water, but it didn’t help that bits of debris from the explosion seemed to have worked themselves into the backs of my eyes, and were only now beginning to work themselves out again. I could feel tiny chunks of who-knows-what floating around in there, which wasn’t a very appealing sensation.

‘Oh, Charlie, this has really shaken you up, hasn’t it?’

I peered through my blurred sight to see Victoria offering me a sympathetic smile. She wrapped an arm around my waist and clinched me to her, resting her head on my chest. And all right, I was a fraud, as well as a thief, but being hugged was sort of nice. I
had
been through a nasty experience. And since my winter coat was still drying out after my impromptu dip the night before, I was feeling the cold despite the roll-neck jumper and sports jacket I’d slipped on.

Victoria helped. She was warm and comforting, and she smelled perfectly fragrant too. More pleasant, in any case, than the sweaty odours emanating from the chef who was standing behind us in a tight white T-shirt and chequered trousers, his fatty torso steaming in the chill.

Shuffling to one side, I wrapped my arm around Victoria and hugged her back. We stood there for a few moments, holding one another, my sham tears running down my face. Then I had a thought that really should have occurred to me a good deal sooner.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘when you, er, helped to undress me last night – you didn’t happen to find a mobile phone, did you?’

‘As a matter of fact, I did.’

‘Well that’s a stroke of luck,’ I told her. ‘That’s the phone Graziella has been contacting me on.’

‘Not any more.’ Victoria grimaced. ‘I tried switching it on and nothing happened. Then I took it apart, dried everything with a towel and left it on your radiator. No joy, I’m afraid.’

‘Balls.’

‘Quite.’

I felt my shoulders sag. ‘She might have been trying to contact me.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘And I can’t call her, because my only record of her number was in the phone.’ Almost as I said it, a fresh idea struck me. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said, ‘can’t you put the SIM card in your mobile?’

‘Tried it already. Thing’s completely dead.’

‘Balls.’

‘Quite.’

Victoria gave me a final squeeze and pulled away, shuddering. It seemed our hug was officially over.

‘Do you really think Graziella planned for this Count Borelli character to be killed when he opened the case?’ she asked me.

I returned my attention to the ragged tear in the fascia of the building, the avalanche of rubble and the decimated balcony. ‘Has to be what she had in mind,’ I muttered.

‘Not necessarily. It could be she just wanted to destroy the items in the vault.’

I stroked my chin for a moment, considering the notion. ‘But the bomb was triggered by my opening the case. If she’d just wanted to torch his valuables, she would have used a remote detonator. Or better still, she could have tasked me with opening the vault and lighting a fire.’

‘Maybe she was afraid you’d help yourself to one or two of the goodies before burning them.’

‘If I’d had my way, I’d have helped myself to the whole lot. But she must have assumed the risk of not getting my book back would stop me. Unless …’ I raised a finger to my lips and let my thoughts stretch their legs for a moment.

‘Yes?’

‘Well, maybe she thought the Count would open the case elsewhere. And
Boom!
– once he was out of the way, she could empty the vault in her own sweet time.’

‘So what does that make Graziella? She has to be more than just a burglar, right? Are we dealing with an assassin here?’

‘Possibly.’ I made a humming noise in my throat. ‘Though it doesn’t really fit. I’d have thought a professional killer would want to carry out a hit by themselves. They wouldn’t entrust the job to a random thief who might screw it up. And she seemed … I don’t know, put upon when we met. As if she was caught up in something that was bigger than her.’

‘But she had the bomb, Charlie. If we assume she was the one who made it …’

‘Hell of an assumption.’

She rolled out her bottom lip. ‘Even so, there has to be much more to her than we first thought, right?’

‘Maybe.’

‘No maybe about it. Listen Charlie, I really think we should—’

‘
Hush
,’ I said.

‘Excuse me?’

I leaned close to her ear. ‘Don’t look round, but there’s a man behind you who seems to be very interested in our conversation.’

There was, too. I’d been watching him for some minutes from the corner of my eye, shuffling gradually towards us. Perhaps his behaviour alone would have been enough to make me suspicious, but what really raised my hackles was the fact we’d met before. And all right, we hadn’t shared a long and amorous conversation over a bottle of grappa, but he wasn’t the type of chap I could easily overlook.

The heavy camel-hair coat hung loosely from his ample shoulders, spreading like a tepee above his shiny black shoes and fluffy white sport socks, and his fedora was balanced precariously among his curling black locks; the ratty feather poking out from his hat band looking like something he’d swiped from a diseased San Marco pigeon. His knotty beard and wonky gait gave him the appearance of a rabbi on the skids, and although there was no feral cat entwined around his ankles, in every other respect he looked just the same as when I’d spotted him lurking in a restaurant doorway on Calledei Fabbri shortly before I’d broken into the bookshop.

Victoria’s eyes had widened with alarm, and I could tell it was all she could do to stop herself from turning to stare. ‘An eavesdropper?’ she said, stiff-jawed.

‘Something like that,’ I told her. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

I led Victoria through the crowds by her hand, dragging her behind me until we emerged from the group of onlookers to find ourselves beside the entrance to a restaurant. A waiter dressed in smart black trousers and a red jacket was leaning against the wall, a cigarette glowing from behind his cupped hand. He dropped and extinguished it with a twist of his shoe.