The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (36 page)

‘Uh-oh. Major rewrite alert.’

I glanced across at Alfred. He flashed his dentures at me as he helped himself to a triangle of soft cheese. ‘Victoria told me her idea last night,’ he said, popping the cheese into his mouth. ‘I think it’s rather good.’

‘It would have to be,’ I told him, ‘seeing as I don’t have my copy of
The Maltese Falcon
to rely on any more.’

‘It’s really quite simple,’ Victoria said, ignoring my woe-is-me routine. ‘It just took me a little while to work out. The fact is, you haven’t written a Michael Faulks novel. You may
think
you have, but it’s far too different – the change from the rest of the series would be too marked. But I think you can keep the core of your book, with the odd tweak here and there, provided you make one major change.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Alter your lead character.’ She reached up and patted my cheek. ‘Ditch Faulks and replace him with a glamorous female cat burglar.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Not remotely.’ She shook her head, as if to prove it to me. ‘The book becomes a stand-alone, maybe even the start of a new series. Obviously you’ll need to come up with a better name for her than Graziella, but otherwise, I’d say you have a pretty good model to base your character on, wouldn’t you?’

I pursed my lips, then raised my wine glass to them, tasting around the idea. ‘You think it could work?’

‘I already made some notes with Dad last night.’ She bundled up her napkin and placed it on the tabletop. ‘Want me to fetch them?’

‘Hell,’ I said, ‘might as well, I suppose.’

Victoria squirmed out of our seating booth and moved away down the carriage towards the sliding automatic door. I signalled our waiter and ordered three espressos. There was a judder and hiss as the brakes engaged, slowing us for our arrival into Verona. Outside our window, a lighted Agip petrol station eased by, followed by a concrete water tower and a frothing river.

‘You know,’ Alfred said, ‘my daughter is very selective with her affections.’

I’d turned to face him before I’d quite heard what he’d said. I was beginning to think that may have been a mistake.

‘Oh don’t look so horrified,’ he told me. ‘I’m not about to give you some heavy-handed warning, Charlie. I like you. My point is, so does Victoria. She might not say anything directly, but I could tell from how agitated she became last night.’ He paused, and studied me wolfishly. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’

I made like a goldfish, opening and closing my mouth.

‘Not one to discuss affairs of the heart with an old-timer like me, eh? Well, fair enough. Just thought you should be aware of what you’re dealing with.’ He cleared his throat, then spoke in a hasty whisper. ‘Be awfully decent if you could do your best not to break her heart.’ He glanced up and fixed a blazing smile onto his face. ‘Sugar Plum, you’re back.’

He was right.
Sugar Plum
was approaching our table, and from her tight expression, I was afraid she’d overheard her father. She looked every bit as panicked as I felt. I searched her eyes for some indication of whether there was any truth to what Alfred had said. But there was nothing there for me. At least, nothing I could decipher. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

‘Something’s happened,’ she said, then stumbled and gripped the table as the train came to a screeching halt. ‘Someone’s been in our compartment. Look, I found this.’ She lifted a brown paper package for me to see. My name had been printed on the package with a magic marker. As she spoke, I could hear a series of train doors being thrown back with a thud. ‘And the briefcase is gone,’ she added.

‘
What?
’

I heaved myself out from beneath the table, shoving Victoria aside and racing to the end of the dining car. The corridor ahead of me was blocked by passengers struggling aboard with heavy luggage.

‘
Scusi!
’ I waded in, forcing my way through. ‘
Scusi, per favore!
’ My bad Italian and bad manners weren’t endearing me to anyone. I didn’t care. I muscled my way past a series of couchette compartments, then tackled a gaggle of passengers at the other end. But when I reached our compartment, I discovered that Victoria was right.

The briefcase was no longer on the metal rack above the door beside my holdall, and it hadn’t been moved to the rack above the window. The bench seats had been converted into bunks, but there were only blankets and pillows on top of them, and no sign of the briefcase underneath.

‘Charlie, look.’ Victoria was standing in the doorway. She’d ripped open the brown paper of the package and I could glimpse bright yellow beneath. She plucked the object from its wrapping and passed it to me, and the moment I saw it, I had an undeniable urge to kiss her again. It might have been charred and discoloured, half the jacket burned away and the bottom edge of the pages reduced to little more than ash, but it was unquestionably mine.
The Maltese Falcon
, a first edition, signed by one Dashiell Hammett. No longer in mint condition – far from it, in fact – but very possibly still capable of weaving its particular magic from above my writing desk.

I heard the slamming of doors, the squeal of a conductor’s whistle and the clunk of released brakes. I was nudged sideways by the lurch of sudden movement. The carriage shunted forwards and I rushed to the window, flattening my palms against the glass.

We slid by a lighted waiting room, an Armani advertising hoarding, a soft-drink vending machine. We glided past a station clock and a yellow departure timetable.

Then I finally saw them. Graziella was standing beneath the blue platform number in her platinum blonde wig, clutching the attaché briefcase in front of her waist. Remi was loitering beside her, leaning his weight on his good leg, hands deep inside the pockets of his camel-hair coat, the brim of his fedora slashing his eyes.

I didn’t watch him for long. Graziella was the one who had my attention. I thought perhaps she’d chosen the blonde wig for some kind of symmetry. Then she did something that made me feel sure of it. Lifting one hand, she raised a gloved finger to her pursed lips and winked. Unwittingly, my palm against the glass became a wordless farewell as the train drifted on, leaving Graziella to slide smoothly out of my life along the vanishing platform.

I banged my forehead against the window and marvelled at the book in my hand, telling myself it really wasn’t such a shabby deal. And perhaps, on balance, it wasn’t such a terrible ending, either. Any worthwhile mystery novel needs a twist in the tale, and no doubt, if it were up to me, I’d say this just about cut it.

Victoria, though, likes to finesse things, as you know. And if I was to allow her to contribute a final paragraph, I dare say she’d let you into a little secret about the briefcase Graziella was holding so primly. She might, for instance, tell you that I have a tendency to prepare for certain eventualities. She could just speculate that during my time in that grubby backstreet hotel, I’d had a sneaking suspicion that I hadn’t seen the last of my Venetian
bella donna
. She might even go so far as to say that before leaving for the station, I took the liberty of transferring all but a single bundle of notes from the briefcase to my holdall, replacing the bulk of the cash with a ruined tuxedo, an unwanted pistol and the sorry bedding from my room. But then, what do I know? I’m just the author.

Grateful thanks to Lucy Hanington, Tom Jackson, Patrizia Apollonio and covert operative Katrina Hands; to Mum, Dad, and my sister, Allison; to Maxine Hitchcock, Emma Lowth, Hope Dellon, Laura Bourgeois and all at Simon and Schuster and St Martin’s Press; and to Vivien Green, Gaia Banks and the team at Sheil Land Associates. Special thanks, as always, to my wife, Jo.