The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (27 page)

Hell. This hadn’t been part of the plan.

Slamming the engine into reverse, I heard a deep churning in the still waters beneath. It wasn’t as quiet as I might have liked. A policeman in a heavy blue jacket with luminous patches raised his head to watch me. So did Victoria. She looked stricken – her face bone-white and slack around the jaw, her eyes red-ringed and swimmy.

The boat lurched to the right. I’d turned at too sharp an angle and we were in danger of taking on water. I switched rudder positions, aiming to correct my mistake, and the boat pitched hard to the left. I lost my grip and slammed into the gunwale, jolting my ribs. Momentum carried me on. Saltwater splashed up and wet my face. I felt myself pitching over, but just as I drew a breath and closed my eyes for the impact, I was heaved back. Glancing around, I found Alfred clinging on to the leg of my trousers, a determined glint in his eyes.

I steadied myself, balancing my elbows on the gunwale, then risked a peek at the policeman who’d taken an interest in us. He was still watching, one hand shading his eyes from the swirling vapour, but he hadn’t moved any closer or signalled to any of his colleagues. If I was lucky, he might take me for a crabby local – one who knew it was pointless attempting to access a canal in the middle of an emergency response. The last thing I needed was to look like a crook fleeing the scene of a crime. My trusty launch wasn’t built for speed, and so far as I knew, it hadn’t been fitted with an invisibility cloak.

Wiping the sea spray from my face, I fumbled for the rudder and pointed us back in the direction we’d hailed from.

‘Change of plan.’ I patted Alfred on the back and guided him down into his seat. ‘We’ll visit your hotel, after all.’

‘Now, would either of you care to tell me what the devil is going on?’

It was a reasonable enough question, I suppose, and no doubt Alfred felt entitled to pose it. Strangely, though, I wasn’t all that keen to offer him a response. So far as I could see, there was no good way to explain what had happened.

Ah, well, the truth, Mr Newbury, is that earlier this evening
your daughter helped me to abduct a wealthy Venetian resident from his home. We drugged him and we tied him up, and then we left him to doze in his underwear in a strange apartment while we spent time at the casino. What’s that? You want to know why we kidnapped him? Oh, that’s really quite simple – it was because I’d accidentally been responsible for nearly assassinating the man, and I was eager to make amends
.

Somehow, I couldn’t see it being terribly well received. In fact, I had more than a vague suspicion that Victoria’s father might begin to view me as a bad influence on his
Sugar Plum
.

‘It’s a little complicated, Dad,’ Victoria told him.

No kidding it was complicated. My past few days had been filled with nothing but complications. Never mind
barriers
. I’d had enough hurdles thrown in my way to run a damn steeplechase.

‘Am I to assume the police were outside your home?’ he asked me.

And inside it, by the look of things.

‘They may have been,’ I replied, doing my best to sound carefree.

‘And an ambulance too, I think.’

‘Was there an ambulance? I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Listen, Dad,’ Victoria said, ‘can I get you a whisky?’

She was crouched before the minibar in Alfred’s hotel room, wearing her padded winter coat over her evening dress. I didn’t know how much booze the minibar contained, but I had a suspicion it wouldn’t be enough. Smart thinking, though. Perhaps we could get him sozzled and he’d begin to forget the entire episode.

The hotel was classy and well appointed. Alfred’s room featured a wine-red carpet and pink floral wallpaper, plus a good deal of pink fabric around the window. I was resting my backside on a queen-size bed with a doughy mattress. Opposite me were two wing-back chairs. Alfred was sitting in the chair to my left, with his elbows on his knees and his bony fingers pressed together in a steeple. He had the appearance of an elderly professor readying himself to consider a complex theorem.
Good luck, old boy
.

‘Charlie, would you like a vodka?’ Victoria asked me.

‘Anything, so long as it has alcohol in it.’

‘There are some nuts here too.’

‘Not for me, thanks.’

‘How about you, Dad?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, darling,’ he said, in a tone that would have struggled to be any sharper. ‘Will you please sit down and talk to me like an adult. I want to know what was happening at Charlie’s apartment.’

Victoria passed me a vodka miniature, along with a glum smile. She delayed for a short while longer, fixing herself and Alfred a finger of whisky while I paid careful attention to the corner of the ceiling. Then she armed Alfred with the good stuff and dropped into the chair beside him.

‘All right, Dad.’ She placed a hand on his knee. ‘We’re going to tell you what that was about. But you have to remember, we were only trying to do the right thing.’

The right thing
. Christ. Next she’d be telling him about my induction into the local monastery. I cracked the seal on my vodka, unscrewed the cap and glugged the foul liquid down. The cheap booze numbed the inside of my mouth and made my sinuses tingle.

Victoria cringed at me, then knocked back a slug of her whisky, pulled an unflattering face, and began.

‘The truth is, Dad, we were keeping somebody above Charlie’s apartment. And it looks as if the police might have found him …’

Casting the vodka bottle aside, I pressed my palms against my eyes and zoned out of her explanation. I felt impossibly tired, completely wiped out. It was tempting to lay back on the soft bed and crash out for a time, just to enjoy a little respite. My brain seemed jammed with too much information, too many fears, and I was struggling to think clearly. Some of it was fatigue, but much of it was anxiety. The police were involved now. They’d found the Count in my building. Yes, we’d concealed our faces when we’d spoken to him, but he knew we were English and it wouldn’t take long for the authorities to find out about us. They’d speak with Martin and Antea. Perhaps they’d be told about the books that I wrote – the crime angle – and then they’d head to my door and find that we weren’t at home. That we were missing. That we could be on the run.

Christ. How on earth had we been so stupid? And how had the Count been found?

My mind drifted back to the way we’d left him. He would have come round some time before we’d left the casino, and quite stupidly, I’d assumed he’d stay put, paralysed with terror. But now that I thought about it, there’d been nothing to stop him from shifting across the bed and dropping down onto the floor. He’d had plenty of motivation, so perhaps he’d shuffled like an earthworm as far as the communal landing, then struggled down the stairs and into my apartment. I couldn’t recall locking up in our hurry to leave, and perhaps I hadn’t. Finding the place empty, he could have crawled on his knees as far as my living room and knocked the phone from my desk.

All right, his hands and feet were bound, but he could have dialled the police with his nose or his tongue. He could have told them his plight. He didn’t know his location, but it would have been a simple matter for them to trace my number and find my address …

Wait a minute
. My mind had snagged on something in the explanation I’d been crafting. A shred of information that jarred, a piece out of place. What was it now?

And then I got it.

Oh crap.

Dialling the police with his tongue. Telling them his plight.

We were morons. Class A idiots. In our rush to get to the casino, there was one trifling detail we’d managed to overlook. Yup, that’s right, we’d forgotten to gag him. We’d tied him up. We’d bound him securely. But we hadn’t prevented him from yelling for help from the bottom of his lungs. Screw the damn earthworm theory. All he’d needed to do was to scream loudly and there was every chance Martin and Antea would have investigated. They’d heard me stumble home after the bomb blast, for goodness’ sake, and Borelli would have been prepared to make a lot more noise.

I lowered my palms from my eyes and looked pitifully at Victoria. She had her father’s hands clasped in her own, and she was talking to him in an earnest tone, doing her best to make him understand the incomprehensible.

‘But darling,’ he said, looking between us with undisguised concern, ‘this is simply terrible. What you’ve been involved in is incredibly dangerous.’

‘You’re absolutely right, Sir,’ I said. ‘And it’s all my fault. I take complete responsibility.’ I placed my hand on my heart. ‘No doubt the best thing I can do right now is go straight to the police and confess everything.’

He stared at me, then stared harder. I got the impression he couldn’t quite believe that I had the nerve to speak.

‘You can forget the ruddy police, Charlie. Goodness, don’t you know who this Borelli character is? He’s a snake. A viper. One of the nastiest thugs I’ve ever had the misfortune to cross swords with.’ He glanced sideways at Victoria. ‘Darling, he’s the very reason I came to Venice in the first place.’

I got the impression that Alfred enjoyed surprising people. You might say that he’d built his life around the sensation. It was there in the improbable triumph of his casino scams – the turn of an unexpected card, the stunning outcome of a risky wager – and I didn’t doubt that it had contributed to his success over the years. Educated and well spoken, with a ready smile and an easy charm, not to mention a bus pass, he was hardly your typical crook. I felt sure that any casino that didn’t know his reputation would be inclined to underestimate him, along with the crew of pensioners he headed up. That would be a mistake. He was shrewd and enterprising, and from what Victoria had told me, he’d won and lost several fortunes in his lifetime. So he relished a surprise, and judging by the twinkle in his eye, he’d delighted in shocking me, too.

‘You didn’t know?’ he asked.

‘About the Count?’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t know much about him at all, to be honest. Other than that somebody wanted him dead, of course, and that I nearly obliged them in killing him.’

‘That would have been no bad thing.’

‘
Dad
.’

‘Sorry, darling, but it’s true.’ He patted Victoria’s hand. ‘He’s the very devil of a man.’

Alfred loosened his bow tie and popped the top button on his dress shirt. Standing from his chair, he removed his jacket and hung it in his wardrobe, then unfastened his gold cufflinks.

Watching Alfred get comfortable made me realise how much I would have liked to change my own clothes. Wearing another man’s duds has never been a favourite hobby of mine – especially when the man in question has sweated under duress. Still, now wasn’t an ideal time to ask to borrow one of Alfred’s vests. Better just to try and ignore the fusty scent I was experiencing and focus on what he was saying.

Alfred rolled his shirtsleeves up his spindly forearms and gripped the back of a chair. ‘Darling, do you remember me telling you about John and Eunice White?’

Victoria nodded. ‘Of course. They work with you.’

He grimaced, glancing down at his knuckles. ‘A month ago they came to Monte Carlo. We’d enjoyed a rewarding spell in South Korea, you see, and it was time for a break. Never pays to push things too far. John was always a terrific card man, of course. Brain like a computer. Matter of fact,’ he said, pointing his chin at me, ‘he was quite the crime fiction fan. Enjoyed your work very much.’

There wasn’t a lot I could do with the information. Alfred’s tone told me this might not be the happiest tale I’d ever heard, so I offered him a neutral smile and waited for him to continue.

‘Eunice was a capable player, but where she really scored was awareness. Eyes like a hawk. Can’t underestimate that at our age.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ I said.

‘Fantastic couple. Lovely people.’ He shot a sideways look at Victoria. ‘Your mother and I were very fond of them.’

‘I remember Mum talking about them.’

‘Even so,’ he said, with a tilt of his head, ‘John could be a stubborn old mule. Had this blasted obsession with Monte Carlo. I tried to shake him from it, of course – warned him how tight the security can be. But he was always talking with the group about how marvellous it would be to get one over on such a famous casino.’ Alfred sighed. ‘Your mother and I wouldn’t hear of it, naturally, but he was starting to turn heads. Caused a bit of a rumpus, I must say.’

‘You fell out?’ Victoria asked.

‘Hardly. But things were … difficult for a time. At one stage, it looked like the group might even split. Your mother patched things up, as you might imagine, and it seemed as if the entire issue was forgotten. Then John heard that a blackjack tournament had been scheduled in Monte Carlo during our break. He insisted on participating.’

‘Did any of the others go too?’

The fabric of the chair had become pinched around Alfred’s bony fingertips. His wrists were shaking. ‘The truth is I forbade them. Said it wouldn’t do. Had to protect the integrity of the team.’

‘Well, that makes sense,’ I told him.

‘I thought so too – at least at the time. And Eunice could see things from my perspective. That’s the only reason I know anything of what happened.’

‘Dad, sit down,’ Victoria said. ‘You’re beginning to worry me.’

Alfred did as he was asked, dropping into the chair like he’d been punctured. He took a swig of whisky. The alcohol seemed to help. It didn’t calm him, exactly, but when he spoke again, there was a renewed conviction in his voice.

‘The tournament went well to begin with. John progressed through the rounds as one might have expected. But Eunice was vigilant, as I say, and something was troubling her. She’d become aware of another player. He was watching John’s play whenever he could, and he had a companion with him – a glamorous young woman who monitored John whenever this chap was engaged in a tournament game himself. Eunice became very worried about it. Eventually, she called me.’

Victoria knitted her brow. ‘I can see why she might have been concerned, Dad, but it doesn’t sound all that sinister.’