The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (7 page)

She bit her lip and rolled it between her teeth, watching me closely. There was a tension in her. Something hidden. I guessed she had a lot riding on this, that she badly needed my help. But at the same time she was loath to trust me – perhaps scared by what the consequences would be if I screwed up. ‘Will you do it?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know just yet.’

And I really didn’t. It seemed plain odd to me. All the effort she’d gone to, all the planning and the preparation, just to have me return a briefcase on her behalf. Was she really so concerned about offending this Count, or was I right to suspect that there was more to it? More risk, more danger. Less chance of me getting away unscathed with
The Maltese Falcon
hanging neatly on my wall again and just a pleasing anecdote for my troubles.

The situation needed a good deal more thought, and the most natural way for me to think was to smoke. Fetching my cigarettes from the back pocket of my jeans, I jabbed one into my mouth and sparked my lighter. To my surprise, when I raised my eyes with my first dizzying inhalation, I found Graziella beckoning at me with curled fingers, a look of calculated innocence on her face.

‘You want one?’ I asked.

‘It would be nice.’

Huh. No doubt it would be. My petty streak told me to refuse, but that would have meant turning my back on a fellow member of the Smoker’s Union. Our numbers are low enough already, and it wasn’t a step I was prepared to take. So, after slipping my lighter inside the carton, I tossed the package across the canal to her and watched as she pushed a cigarette between her plump lips and coaxed the most wondrous fumes out of the little fellow.

‘Good?’ I asked.

‘Mmm,’ she replied, exhaling in an appreciative fashion, then appearing to shiver.

I took a long hit, closing one eye in thought. ‘So, how did you find me?’

She smiled, as if embarrassed. Inhaled some more. ‘Your novels, yes? About the amazing Michael Faulks.’ She looked puzzled for a moment. Blew smoke from the corner of her mouth. ‘They are, I suppose, quite good.’
Terrific
, another critic. ‘But the details are too much. It is
so
obvious you have done these things.’

‘It’s fiction,’ I told her.

‘Some of it, perhaps. But I decide I will test you. To see if I am right.’ She shrugged. ‘I was.’

‘It still doesn’t explain how you found out about
that
.’ I pointed with my cigarette at Hammett’s book, nestled in the crook of her left arm.

She screwed up her nose and tapped some ash into the sluggish waters below, watching after it, the black strands of her wig tickling her cheeks.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, mostly to myself. ‘I get the impression you’re not being entirely straight with me. And I’m out of practice. If this palazzo is well secured, I’m really not sure if I could do it.’

She glanced up, a pleading in her eyes. ‘The security is not so good. And I have the code for the strongroom.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘Please. It is simple.’

Simple? I squished my face with my gloved palm. Flicked my cigarette away into the dark. Was I really about to do this, I wondered? And at what cost?

‘You’d better tell me what’s in the case,’ I said to Graziella, and kicked it with my foot.

She stiffened, then ground her cigarette into the stone plinth. ‘This does not concern you.’

‘Wrong answer. You could have drugs in there. Or counterfeit notes.’
Or even a severed hand
, I thought, recalling the troublesome plot of a Michael Faulks novel I’d had difficulties with in Amsterdam some years ago.

‘No, it is nothing like this. You may trust me.’

‘Ha! Right now, you’re about the last person I’d trust.’

Her fulsome lips pressed into a thin line and she gave me a haughty, uncompromising look. I got the impression she wasn’t used to people saying no to her, and I don’t think she liked it when they did. There was something of the princess about Graziella. A fairy tale gone awry.

I lifted the briefcase from the ground. It was surprisingly heavy and I experienced a stabbing pain in my bad fingers as I heaved it up, then dropped it with a
clang
on the iron handrail. Two brass combination locks were on the front of the case – the kind that can be tough to open, assuming you don’t happen to have the knack, or better still the code.

‘How about this for an idea?’ I said. ‘I’ll pop the case open, see what’s inside it, and if I’m comfortable with the contents, I might return it for you.’

‘No.’ She stamped her foot. ‘The case must stay closed.’

‘It’s really important to you that I don’t see what’s inside?’

‘Nobody must look.’

‘Huh.’ I tipped my head onto my shoulder. ‘Quite the predicament. And it absolutely must be returned?’

‘
Merda!
I already told you so.’

‘Wonderful.’ And with that I grabbed hold of the sculpted rubber handle, straightened my arm and held the case out over the edge of the balcony. The damn thing was so weighty that I tottered forward on my toes. ‘Now, give me my book back,’ I grunted.

Anger flared in her eyes, but panic attacked her features. Her jaw dropped and her throat pulsed. For just a moment, her lips moved soundlessly, as if she couldn’t decide whether to shout another curse or issue a command, then she settled for an odd kind of distressed mewling.

‘Be very careful,’ she said, in a strained voice.

‘Return my book and I will be.’

She glanced down at the novel in her hands, and I swear I could almost see the thought process her brain was running through. It didn’t take long for her to settle on a response, and to my dismay, she matched my gesture with the case by holding the book out above the darkly brooding canal water. She seemed pleased with the move. It showed in the way she threw back her shoulders and nodded to herself, as if confirming that it had been the right thing to do.

‘If you drop the briefcase, I will drop your book. This is not what I want. But if you make me, I will do it.’

Kind of stupid that I hadn’t thought of that.

‘Well, this is interesting,’ I told her, doing my best to sound composed.

‘Do not drop the case.’

‘Then don’t drop my book.’

She transferred her gaze from the novel in her hand, to the case at the end of my wobbling arm, to the grimace I was wearing. My fingers were beginning to numb in the chill, in spite of my plastic gloves and the surgical tape, and I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to maintain my grip.

‘I make you a promise,’ she said. ‘If you return the case, you will have your book back. I swear it. But if you drop it now, you will never see your book again.’

‘Then at least tell me what you have in here. It’s damn heavy. My arm’s getting tired.’

‘But I cannot tell you.’

‘Not sure … how much longer … I can hold on.’

She gauged me for a crucial few seconds and then, to my considerable relief, she returned my book to safety. Or rather, she returned my book to what I’d mistakenly imagined to be safety. Because mere seconds after having it in both hands again, she opened the thing up and gripped the top corner of a single page between her finger and thumb. She tugged at the paper, testing its hold. She held my eye, seemed to wince slightly, and then to my everlasting horror, I heard the faintest tear.

‘All right,’ I yelled, hauling the case back onto the balcony and holding up a hand. The impasse had left me at a real disadvantage. We both knew how important the book was to me, but I had no idea how significant the contents of the case really were to her. ‘I give in.’

Her shoulders sagged. ‘You will do as I say?’

‘I’ll return the case.’

‘And you will not look inside?’ Her voice was small now. Pining.

‘If you insist. But just so there’s no misunderstanding, how will you know if I do look? Granted, I might not have the combination, but with a little time I think I could crack this sucker. You must realise that.’

‘I will know if you try,’ she said, steeling herself.

Hmm. Was that really possible? It could be she’d done something simple, like pasted a hair to the lip of the case, or something more complicated, involving a sensor of some sort. Either that, or she was bluffing. All of which was something I could turn my mind to when I had a little more time (and a little less weight) on my hands.

‘When is it you want me to do this thing?’ I asked, not bothering to conceal my resentment.

‘Tomorrow night. I will call you when it is time. You still have the phone, yes?’

I felt for the device in my coat pocket, then nodded at her. ‘You’d better give me some details. Tell me what to expect.’

She assessed me warily, as if my sudden compliance was more troublesome than the resistance I’d previously offered. While she looked me over, I plonked the case down by my feet and consulted my watch. Way past my bedtime.

‘Details?’ I pressed.

Turning her back on me, she reached for her satchel, slipping Hammett’s book inside and removing a small white envelope. The envelope bulged in the middle, the paper crinkled, as if overstuffed. She lifted the flap to her mouth, ran her pink and very appealing tongue across the gum, and stuck it down. Then she crossed to the side of her balcony and stood on her toes to peg the envelope to one of the washing lines that stretched between us. I tried not to ogle her bottom, failing miserably.

The line was wrapped around a pulley wheel at both ends, and after checking on me for a final time, as though afraid I was planning an elaborate trick, she tugged hard, sending the envelope over to me with a few determined jerks on the squeaking mechanism.

I waited until the envelope was quivering beside my head, then plucked it out of the frigid air and turned it in my hands. Prising open the soggy flap, I removed a folded bundle of paper. The sheets had been torn from a spiral-bound pad and they were covered in detailed notes and haphazard sketches. The package would take some studying, but at first glance, it looked like a comprehensive breakdown of everything I was likely to come up against.

Stuffing the pages back inside the envelope, I bent down for the briefcase, then stood in my winter coat, the case in one hand and the envelope in the other, looking, I imagine, a lot like a businessman about to set out for a day at the office. ‘Be sure and look after my book,’ I told her, turning to open the doors to the empty apartment.

‘Then do not look inside the case.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ I called over my shoulder.

But not for the first time that night, I turned out to be wrong.

I slept like a man in a coma – assuming, that is, that men in comas don’t just find themselves in the very deepest of slumbers, but that they also experience the most vivid and disturbing dreams imaginable. The terrors that visited me were all connected to the briefcase. In some, I mislaid it or had it stolen from me. In others, I returned the case, just as I was supposed to, only to find myself arrested and locked up in some dismal Italian prison. But mostly, I opened the briefcase inside my dreams, and each time I flipped back the lid the contents became ever more sickening: snakes and spiders; eyeballs and body parts; photographs of Victoria being subjected to the most appalling torture imaginable. You name it, I saw it, and when at last I woke with a pitiful groan, drenched in cold sweat, I stumbled to the bathroom wishing that I could rinse clean my brain in the same way that I was able to swill the gummy muck from my teeth with mouthwash.

Peeling off my pyjamas and stepping into my shower, I didn’t just feel drained and groggy – I also felt ashamed, and not a little embarrassed. Truth was, mixed in with the looped nightmares, I’d had one or two dreams of an altogether different nature – torrid, erotic numbers, if you really must know. And since I’m nothing if not predictable, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the star of these segments was none other than the curvy Venetian who’d taken to meeting me on strange balconies. I suppose, if we’re to indulge in a spot of pop psychology for a moment, that my attraction might have had something to do with the way Graziella was ordering me around. I’ve heard it said that men with female bosses often find the scenario quite intoxicating, and apparently I was susceptible to the same weakness. Mind you, I also didn’t think it hurt that she had a figure capable of leading a magazine artist to lay down his airbrush for good, or a way of looking out from beneath half-lidded eyes, lips parted just so, that made me feel like a man standing on a very high ledge who was oddly tempted to jump off.

The spit of water coming from my shower was enough to wash by, but it achieved little else. So I still felt uncomfortable in my own skin, let alone my own mind, as I wrapped a towel about my waist and ambled into the kitchen, where I found a note stuck to the kettle.

Morning Sleepyhead. I’m off to explore. Speak later.

Now, since I’m a crime writer by profession, I was able to deduce that far from having two mysterious individuals leaving clues about my apartment, the note in question had been written by Victoria. On any other morning, I suppose I might have been content to bask in the warmth of my mental faculties and steaming kettle for a pleasant few minutes, but rather than make things simple for myself, I hurried along the hallway to Victoria’s room and invaded her privacy.

It didn’t take long to find my manuscript. In fact, it didn’t take any time at all. To my not-inconsiderable disappointment, the printed bundle hadn’t moved in the slightest – the middle page of chapter four was still on top.

From what I could see, she hadn’t felt the need to read any further during the morning, or even to take the script with her to some friendly café. She’d simply preferred to go outside in the biting cold to wander aimlessly around, leaving my book as far behind her as she possibly could.

No doubt that was unfair, but I was feeling grumpy and irritable, and it helped to blame someone other than me for my foul mood. In fact, it helped so much that I blamed Victoria for the rest of the afternoon, nurturing my huff with care and attention by turning my focus to the notes Graziella had passed me about the security at Palazzo Borelli. There were pages and pages of information, ranging from detailed reports on the type of locks fitted throughout the property, to haphazard schematics of the electricity circuits and rushed sketches of the different floors, to a list of potential entry and exit points (including the benefits and risks associated with each one), and a run-down of the palazzo staff and their hours of employment. She’d flagged wonky floorboards and creaking door hinges, inserted approximate timings for moving between rooms, and even included a short essay on how she wanted me to exploit the surveillance cameras. In short, Graziella had gone far beyond casing the joint – she’d practically autopsied the place – and I suppose I should have been grateful for the heads-up. But I wasn’t thankful. Not in the least.