The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (22 page)

Later, once I’d made it home and had struggled with Victoria to heave the trunk upstairs to the unoccupied top-floor apartment in my building, then bound and cuffed the dozing Count to a ladder-back chair in the middle of the empty living room, I finally had an opportunity to collapse in a heap and ask myself just what we’d done.

When Victoria had suggested the kidnapping scheme, it had seemed to make sense. The Count might not have known it – drugged and gagged and trussed-up in an unfamiliar location – but the idea had been to protect him. If he couldn’t be found, he couldn’t be killed, or so our reasoning went. What’s more, assuming the gun shots I’d fired off had been reported, there was a chance I could convince Graziella and her mysterious backers that I’d carried out the assassination I’d been tasked with and had disposed of the body.

That was the theory, and when we were at the planning stage, it had struck me as pretty neat. So it was a real shame that the reality now seemed a tad more complicated.

First, the abduction had been arduous – I’m used to vacating the scene of a burglary with a valuable trinket or two in my pocket, not a twelve-stone Italian on my back. Second, it all seemed rather sordid and, well, criminal, right now. The Count didn’t appear to be in the rudest of health. Two hours in, and the sedative showed no sign of wearing off. He was still breathing, thank God, but his head was hanging slackly against his chest, pitching the weight of his torso against the ropes that held him. His knuckles were bloodied, his cheeks had swollen quite alarmingly around the makeshift gag we’d tied off at the back of his head, and his tux was crumpled and stained. Then there was the track of dried blood running down his neck from where the pen nib had punctured his skin. He looked like the victim of a vampire bite – only without any of the upsides.

Victoria’s main selling point for the plot had been time. Time to keep the Count alive until we worked out exactly what was going on and if there was anything we could do about it. Time to put ourselves in a position where the police might be safely contacted and the real crooks captured. Time, if we were really lucky, to get my book back, and failing that, to flee Venice if it became necessary. Problem was, sitting in the unheated apartment with my balaclava on my head, a bruised and bloodied kidnap victim in front of me and a whole bunch of questions occupying my mind, time felt like the last thing I needed.

I had doubts. Plenty of them. When I’d been in the middle of the action, caught up in the caper, I hadn’t had the luxury of contemplating my fears. Now, I couldn’t avoid them. We had a stolen boat moored in the canal outside my building that could be found at any moment. We had a prominent citizen tied up and imprisoned against his will less than forty-eight hours after an attempt had been made on his life. It was an attack I’d inadvertently been responsible for, but that given the right evidence, might be proved against me. Not exactly a comfortable position to be in. Hell, far from dodging trouble, I seemed to be actively courting it.

My every instinct was telling me that I’d made a terrible mistake. It was an error I was beginning to think I should correct, but I couldn’t see how. I’d set a course of events in action that would be almost impossible to reverse. The Count could wake up at any moment – should, in fact, have already woken up, assuming nothing had gone horribly wrong with the sedative – and although Victoria had another two cartridges of knock-out juice in her weapons case, I didn’t rate the idea of giving the guy a booster dose just yet.

And when he did eventually wake up –
please, God, let him wake up
– what then? How long did we plan to hold him for? How could we release him without somehow implicating ourselves? Would he be capable of providing us with useful information, or would he be too terrified to speak? The shock might even give him a heart attack.
A heart attack
. Christ, why hadn’t I thought of that before? The man was in fear of his life and here we were abducting the poor sod. What was he meant to think when he came round other than the absolute worst? We were idiots. Utter fools. I really had no idea how we could have been so stupid.

‘Good, isn’t it?’ Victoria said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Well, I think we’ve been rather successful, considering.’

‘Considering what? That we’re nuts? I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. Look at what we’ve done!’

‘Oh hush, and stop being such a baby. Everything’s under control.’

‘
Nothing’s
under control.’

‘He’s alive, isn’t he?’

I gawped at her, then gestured at the comatose Count. ‘He’s meant to have snapped out of it by now. Christ, Vic, are you absolutely sure it was only a sedative in that pen?’

‘Stop bellyaching. He’s still breathing, isn’t he?’

Victoria wafted a hand towards the Count. The room around us was in darkness, but we’d rigged up my desk lamp so that the light was pointing into his eyes. His closed eyes. Now that she mentioned it, I wasn’t all that sure he
was
breathing.

‘Vic, wasn’t his chest moving before?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, it isn’t moving now.’

Victoria scowled at me, then scowled at the Count. She bit down on her bottom lip.

‘Mmm,’ she said.

‘
Mmm?
That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?’

‘Well, now that you mention it, his breathing does appear to have slowed a touch.’

‘Slowed? It’s bloody stopped. Look. Listen.’ I held up my palm to quieten her. ‘There. Nothing. Not a whisper.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Please tell me we haven’t bloody killed him. Who sold you this weapons kit?’ I kicked the pigskin case with my toe. ‘The bloody KGB?’

‘Check for a pulse.’

‘
You
check for a pulse.’

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘I like that idea. But how about, just for a change,
you
check for a pulse.’

‘Oh, give me strength.’

Sucking a deep, trembling breath way down into my lungs, I raised my hands above my face in a brief prayer and took a cautious step towards the Count. His head was hanging awkwardly to the left, his tanned skin a sickly greenish colour in the glare of the lamp. It looked unnatural.
Dead
unnatural.

I circled my shoulders, flexed my fingers. Then I sniffed, bent down and pressed firmly against the pulse point on his neck.

Funny thing – the instant I touched his clammy skin, his face snapped upright, his nostrils flared and his eyes opened as wide as they could possibly go. Then he issued a muffled, choked cry from behind his gag, jerked sharply away from me and toppled over the hind legs of his chair.

I clutched my hand to my chest, the way people do when they’ve had a fright and they’re trying to work out exactly where their heart has ended up. There was a tight ball of adrenaline just above my solar plexus and my guts had knitted themselves into a painful knot. I felt dizzy, low on air, and my temples were pounding. And that was just me. Who knew how the Count was faring?

He didn’t strike me as altogether relaxed. He was fighting against his constraints, knocking his chair against the floor as he bucked fitfully around. He happened to be screaming too. At least, I
think
he was screaming – it was difficult to tell on account of the gag. Mind you, it would have been a strange moment for him to start singing, and when I factored in the flush of his cheeks and the way his bloodshot eyes were almost crawling out of their sockets, I thought it safe to assume that he’d completely freaked out.

I could understand that. I was freaked out myself, and I wasn’t the one being stared at by a guy in a balaclava who happened to have drugged me and whisked me away from the comforts of my home.

I placed a hand on his arm to calm him. It didn’t work. He flinched as if an electric charge had passed between us.

‘It’s okay,’ Victoria told him, from over my shoulder. ‘We’re not going to hurt you.’

Nice try. Her voice had a soothing tone but I had a suspicion that the Venetian plague doctor’s mask she was wearing might have compromised the effect somewhat. The mask was blood-red, with a hooked nose and recessed eyeholes, and it covered everything except her mouth and her jaw. It had been the best we could come up with at short notice. We’d taken it down from the wall of my lounge, where it had been hanging since before I’d moved in. I only had one balaclava and we didn’t want the Count to see our faces. Even so, I couldn’t help thinking that we might have been better off cutting some holes in a pillow case. The poor sod probably thought he’d woken in some kind of Halloween nightmare.

He recoiled from us. True, it wasn’t easy for him to recoil, but he managed it all the same, turning his head away and straining to follow his nose across the floor to a blackened corner of the room. His neck muscles had pulled tight and he wriggled against the ropes we’d wrapped around his chest and thighs. No doubt he was also fighting the handcuffs, thumbcuffs and anklecuffs we’d treated him to, courtesy of Victoria’s espionage gear.

‘Easy’ I said, which, as it goes, was easy for me to say.

It had no effect. The guy still wasn’t happy. I turned to Victoria.

‘Help me to lift him a moment, will you?’

We did just that, and then I cradled the Count’s sweaty face between my hands and looked him straight in the eye. His pupils contracted to pin-pricks of black against the fierce lamplight and his grey hair was slick beneath my fingertips. He was scared, I could see that, but he was angry, too. Enraged might be a better word for it. It was almost as if he couldn’t believe anyone could have the nerve to place a man of his stature in this position.

‘Do you speak English?’ I asked.

Thoughts darted around behind his lighted eyes. Maybe the thoughts connected back to the masked figure who’d planted a bomb in his home. He sucked air through his nostrils at an irregular pace, as if he was hyperventilating, and snatched his head away from my grip. He tried to yell. I watched the sound build from his chest, funnel up towards his raised mouth and become trapped by the gag. There was no danger of him being heard but it didn’t stop him. He summoned more energy and went for a repeat performance. It looked bad for his health. His face had taken on a purplish tinge.

‘Calm down.’ I reached for his scalp again. ‘Just answer the question. Do you speak English?’

He let go of another strangled shout. This one went on longer than the first. I was becoming afraid he might fit if he carried on with it. And I didn’t exactly appreciate the way he was ignoring my instructions. Wasn’t I meant to be in charge here?

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Hey!’

Then I slapped him. Hard. I can’t say I’ve ever understood the logic of the move, but it seemed to have the desired effect. He stared dumbly at me for a short moment, eyes watering. Then his beady pupils tippy-toed over and snuck a pensive look at my open palm. He needn’t have worried. I wasn’t about to repeat myself. It had hurt too much – the impact had jarred my bad fingers in a way I didn’t appreciate.

‘Now, do you speak English?’

At last, the Count nodded, though he managed to do it with disdain. I hadn’t really doubted that the answer would be yes. What had concerned me was whether he’d be sensible enough to deliver it.

I backed off, nudged the lamp with my foot so that the light was pointing just away from his eyes and pulled my cigarettes from my pocket. I took my time over lighting one. Partly it was to calm my nerves, give myself time to think. But it also seemed like the appropriate thing to do. I wasn’t a thug, and I didn’t plan on beating my man into submission. But I did want to appear in control, as if this was something I’d done many times before. The cigarette struck me as a useful prop, a way of making myself appear more at ease than I felt. More in command, too.

‘First thing you should know,’ I told him, rolling up the bottom of the balaclava and taking a quick puff, ‘is that we don’t intend to hurt you.’ I exhaled the smoke from the corner of my mouth. ‘Truth is, we’ve brought you here for your own protection. It might not seem that way to you, but it’s true, okay?’

He nodded slowly. Contemptuously. I don’t suppose it meant a great deal. I dare say I could have got him to agree to just about anything right then.

‘Second thing you should know is that this room is in a very discreet location. Nobody is going to find you here, and that includes the people who are a threat to you. It also means you won’t be heard if you try to scream or shout. The reason I’m telling you this is that I’d like to remove your gag. I need to ask you some questions. Understand?’

He scowled at me, then at Victoria, and back again. I had a feeling the masks weren’t helping, but I wasn’t about to suggest that we remove them. Instead, I crouched down in front of him and held his gaze, smoking my cigarette in a leisurely fashion. After a minute or so, I tried again, rolling my hand and tracing figure of eights in the air with the lit embers.

‘Understand?’

There was fire in his eyes. A tangible loathing. But he nodded.

‘Excellent,’ I said, and moved around behind him, balancing my cigarette on my tongue as I tried to loosen his gag. It wasn’t easy. The knot we’d used had tightened with his exertions and my dud fingers made the job difficult. I gave up and beckoned at Victoria to put her nails to good use.

Once she’d freed the rag, the Count moved his jaw around cautiously, like a man coming round from a deep and leisurely nap. He licked his lips. They were gummy and dry.

‘Would you like some water?’ Victoria asked.

‘
Si
,’ he said, in a gruff voice that sounded as if it needed it.

We waited in silence until Victoria had returned with a mug of tapwater from the unlit kitchen along the hall. She lifted it to his mouth and he swallowed greedily. The water ran down from the corners of his lips over his chin, but he didn’t appear to care.

‘More,’ he panted.

Victoria complied, disappearing into darkness and then re-emerging with a dripping mug. Once he’d polished off a second helping, she used a tea towel to wipe his chin and mop his face. Maybe the plague doctor’s mask wasn’t so out of place, after all. She was becoming a regular Florence Nightingale.