The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (4 page)

Just to make things more awkward, I’d given Victoria the same pledge, and I could well remember how pleased she’d been when I’d told her the news. Yes, she enjoyed hearing about the stunts I’d pulled over the years, and I’d long suspected that she found the roguish side of my personality somewhat endearing, but the thing that had originally brought us together had been my writing. She was the first person to truly believe in my work, and she had absolute faith that one day my stories would reach a wider audience. It was because of her that I’d decided to attempt the kind of ambitious thriller I might never have tried otherwise – and it was for her, as much as for me, that I’d been prepared to knuckle down to my career in writing and draw a line under my career in theft.

So it was for this reason, above all others, that I found myself not long after midnight, in the somewhat curious position of having to sneak around my own home (very much like a burglar in the night) with the intention of letting myself
out
undetected.

Fortunately, Victoria was snoring, and being a keen student of human behaviour, I took this to mean that she was asleep. I nudged her door open a fraction to peer inside. Sure enough, she was out cold, eyes shut and jaw slackened, with the duvet pulled up to her chin. I suppose I should have been relieved to see it, because it made leaving my apartment a good deal simpler, but the truth is I felt stung.

Why? Well, it was only a few hours since I’d passed her a copy of my new manuscript. And granted, I’d been nervous because I’d invested time and energy into the novel, and there was a lot riding on her verdict. But one thing I’d felt confident about was the opening third. I thought it was gripping.
Unputdownable
, in fact. And yet Victoria had happily abandoned the script on her bedside cabinet before plunging into a deep and tranquil sleep.

I backed away and returned to my bedroom, trying not to let it get to me. Too late. It already had. What could I have overlooked, I wondered? More to the point, what had
she
missed? And just how far had she got before tossing my work aside?

Now, if I were a normal person, I imagine that I would have been able to give the matter some sensible consideration, and that I might have concluded that I was being unreasonable. It was only the previous night that her sleep had been interrupted by the break-in. On top of that, she was due to stay with me for at least another week, so perhaps she was hoping to read my novel at a leisurely pace, to enjoy it all the more.

But alas, I’m not normal – I’m a paranoid writer – and by the time I’d dressed in dark clothes, freed my trusty burglary tools from inside the lining of my suitcase and stuffed my faithful map into my pocket, I’d convinced myself that there was only one thing to do.

Sneaking back across the hallway, I crawled on my hands and knees over the thin carpet towards her bed. Her snoring had become fainter, and there appeared to be a longer pause between breaths. I cautiously raised my head, freed the top page of the manuscript from the pile and lowered it to the floor. I checked on Victoria, and once I was certain that she hadn’t stirred, I flashed the beam of my penlight.

Now, speaking as a thief, I can tell you that there are some things you simply don’t lose, no matter how rusty you might be, and it’s a testament to my composure that I didn’t gasp loudly or swear and give myself away. Because the sad discovery I’d made, and the troubling fact that stuck with me as I slipped out of my apartment and trudged through the sombre alleys and abandoned
campi
to Calle Fiubera, was that Victoria had stopped reading my book midway through chapter four.

Even when I’m on my game, this burglary lark is a risky business, and it had been a long time since I’d last applied my skills. Talk about barriers. I could have sworn I had enough to be going on with, and that was before I clocked the metal grilles that had been pulled down in front of the darkened exterior of the bookbinding business.

I paused and pretended to tie my shoe. I couldn’t see anyone in the darkness surrounding me. Further up the alley was an
osteria
that had long since been closed for the night, as well as a number of shops protected by metal shutters and several layers of graffiti. The only nearby light came from the safety lamps that had been fixed to scaffolding poles outside a boarded-up building undergoing renovation. In short, the coast appeared to be clear, and so I gave the grille a good shake. It creaked and rattled, but it was securely fastened to the ground with three industrial padlocks.

I considered the other obstacles in my way. There didn’t appear to be an alarm, thank goodness, because although I knew how to bypass all but the most complex of systems, I wouldn’t have relished the prospect of poking around in any of the dodgy Italian wiring snaking across the exterior of the shop. Aside from the padlocks, I could spy a modest collection of locks and bolts on the front door itself. And that, so far as I could tell, appeared to be it.

Satisfied with my assessment, I took a stroll to the end of the alley and stuck my head out into Calledei Fabbri, just to make sure that nobody was likely to interrupt me. It was just as well I did. The tunnel-like space had appeared empty at first glance, but as I turned, I glimpsed a hunched figure leaning against the doorway of an unlit restaurant.

I couldn’t remember seeing the man when I’d approached the shop, and I doubted very much that I would have forgotten him if I had. He was very large, almost bear-shaped, and he was dressed in a scruffy camel-hair coat that must have made quite a dent in some unfortunate herd, and that fitted him the way a mess tent fits an army unit. A pair of black suit trousers extended below the hem of his coat to hover disconcertingly above his polished black brogues, revealing a slither of white ankle sock. A tatty black fedora was plonked on top of his sizeable head, among a mass of knotted black curls, shading his eyes. What I could see of the face was mostly beard – a thick, tangled number that obscured his jawline and ringed his open mouth. Coiled about his feet was a mangy-looking cat.

For a moment, I was too stunned to say anything, and then I remembered that my Italian wasn’t up to the task in any event. I wasn’t sure what I planned to do next, so it was kind of him to save me the trouble. With a nasal grunt and a sudden swing of his foot, he sent the cat yowling across the alley, then lowered the brim of his hat, turned on his heel and limped awkwardly away in the direction of the Rialto.

I suppose if I was a lesser thief, the encounter might have unsettled me, but the truth is that it takes more than a shambling, overweight chap with a disregard for animal welfare to put me off my stride. Evidently, the same was true of the stray cat, because it stalked along behind its bashful companion until I was all on my lonesome once more.

Never one to be shy about seizing the moment, I returned to the shop, reached inside my jacket for the spectacles case that contained my torch and my picks, removed my mittens and exposed my hands to the cold. Yes, I had on a pair of plastic disposable gloves, but they provided my arthritic joints with barely any protection. It didn’t help that I’d had to snip away two of the fingers on my right-hand glove to accommodate my gnarled fingers. They were wrapped in surgical tape to prevent my leaving any prints, but my knuckles still had a tendency to seize up all too fast, and that was something I couldn’t readily afford. Speed was of the essence, so I crouched and addressed the first padlock.

Even though I do say so myself, I was mighty pleased with the way things turned out. Yes, in my pomp I might have been a touch quicker, and perhaps my approach might have been a shade more elegant, but there was no denying that I still had the knack. And heck, when I pulled a can of lubricant from my pocket and squirted it into the shutter mechanism, then hauled up the weighty grille and ducked beneath it with barely a sound, I couldn’t ignore the wave of satisfaction that washed over me.

Easing the grille back down, I cupped my hands around my eyes and pressed my face against the blackened glass until I was certain that I couldn’t see the infrared blink of any sensors. Then I went down on one knee and offered a heartfelt proposal to the pin and tumbler lock in the middle of the door. At first it played coy, but after a spell of prodding and tickling, it came around to my advances. The bolt down by my feet was of a more stubborn disposition, and for a while it had me debating whether I should break the glass. I’ve never favoured that approach – there’s the risk of cutting oneself, as well as making too much noise – and it has always struck me as the last resort of any self-respecting thief. Eventually, it turned out that a little breathless fumbling was all that was needed before the bolt was putty in my hands, and as soon as I’d withdrawn the thing, the door swung open on its hinges.

I surprised myself by hesitating. Yes, I might have just picked some locks, but the moment I entered the shop, I really would have reverted to my bad old ways. And granted, I could console myself with the thought that all I was doing was trying to reclaim my own property, rather than stealing someone else’s, but if I were to get caught, I doubted the owner of the shop, or more to the point, the Italian police, would see it that way.

But despite what I’d said to Victoria, I didn’t trust the shopkeeper. Anyone with a genuine knowledge of books would know the value of a first edition of
The Maltese Falcon
. If he’d had a copy available to him, he would have been aware of it without needing to consult any records. That made me think that the routine with the ledger had been a way of stalling me while he tried to figure out what my angle might be. And that, in turn, led me to suspect that he knew about my copy of the book.

I headed for the safe. Now admittedly, there was no reason to think that my book would be inside. He could be keeping it anywhere he pleased. It might be that he lived in a nearby apartment stuffed with priceless volumes, or it might be that he had a safe storage box in a local bank where my book was temporarily hidden, awaiting shipment to a collector somewhere else in the world. But my only lead was the shop, and the only secure place I’d spied inside the shop was the safe.

Well, I say secure, but really it was vulnerable. In the light from my torch, I could see that it was a squat, heavy-looking brute, dating from the 1940s or ’50s. It had been finished in a dark-blue enamel, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the paint was thicker than the metal it covered. If I’d had a decent drill with me, I dare say I could have attacked it quite productively from the side. But, as it happened, I was content to focus my attentions on the very basic locking mechanism.

There was no combination dial, and certainly no electronic keypad. A brass keyhole and a multi-pin lock was all that stood between me and the interior of the thing, and after sorting through my burglary equipment for a likely looking pick and a sturdy torsion wrench, I gripped my torch between my teeth and got down to business. Moments later, the weighty tumblers turned with a deathly echo, the brass handle rotated and a gust of stale air wafted out.

I covered my mouth with my hand and flashed my torch inside. There was a shelf in the middle and the space beneath it contained four cloth bags. The bags were heavy, and when I lifted them from the safe I discovered that they contained euro coins in various denominations. I put the petty cash back inside. I was after my book, not a profit.

On top of the shelf were two books with blue cloth covers, frayed around the edges. The pages were yellowed and the text was in a language I didn’t recognise – Russian, perhaps. Disappointed, I reached for a set of keys that had been hidden beneath the books. They were attached to a Fiat key fob. The car they fitted was most likely parked at the Piazzale Roma – unlikely to be used on a daily basis but ready to be driven across the bridge to mainland Italy whenever convenient. I returned them to the safe and removed the final item.

A mobile telephone.

The handset looked cheap, with large rubber buttons and a dim-lit monochrome screen upon which a telephone number had been entered. If I was ever to buy a mobile myself, it was just the kind of thing I’d go for – the base model in a manufacturer’s range, with the ability to make and receive calls and, on a good day with a following breeze, perhaps even send a text message or two. Ordinarily, I might have said that there was nothing the least bit remarkable about it. But that would be to ignore the yellow Post-it note that had been stuck to the keypad, and the arrow on the note that pointed upwards to the button with the little green handset on it. And it would also require me to overlook the writing beneath the arrow, where someone had scrawled the words:
Ring Me, Englishman
.

Funny, I really didn’t want to. And not just because I can be a stubborn fellow who doesn’t take kindly to being told what to do, but also because I can recognise danger when I see it. Like any self-respecting burglar who’d prefer not to be caught, I have a well-developed instinct for self-preservation. And if ever there was a time to walk away from something, my every faculty told me that this was it.

Two things struck me as highly likely.

One
: The phone had been placed in the safe for my attention. After all, the flyer that had been left in my apartment had led me here, and the note on the phone had been written in English and addressed to one of my countrymen.

Two
: If I made the call, I almost certainly wouldn’t like what I heard.

Problem was, if I
didn’t
place the call, I felt sure that I’d never again see my copy of
The Maltese Falcon
. And while it was hardly comforting to think that whoever had planted the phone had already decided that my need for the book would outweigh any reservations I might have, I couldn’t escape the feeling that if this
was
a trap, it was one I had to at least dip my toe into.

Pressing the little green button with my gloved thumb, I raised the handset to my ear and listened to the tinny bleat of the Italian ringtone. I heard it only once before my call was answered.