The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (8 page)

Frankly, I found her notes insulting. As a fellow pro, it would have been nice if she could have trusted me a bit more. And yes, maybe to her mind I’d been winging it all these years, or perhaps her exhaustive planning was just a sign of how serious the situation was for her, but it seemed to me that a little spontaneity was key to a truly satisfying theft. A good burglary takes skill and ability. But a great burglary involves flair. The best thieves are known as break-in
artists
for a reason. And Graziella’s more scientific approach left me cold.

I tucked the notes away and fed my bad temper with uncharitable thoughts while I rocked backwards on the hind legs of my writing chair, waiting for my new mobile phone to ring. I spent the long minutes balancing an unlit cigarette on my bottom lip, staring mawkishly at the space on the wall where Hammett’s novel used to hang. And I gave my sulk a useful shot in the arm every time I sneaked into my bedroom to slide the heavy aluminium briefcase out from under my bed and asked myself if I should tease the locks open. I was pretty good at being peeved, I must say, and truth be told, I’d got myself in quite the fug by the time I heard Victoria climb the stairs to my apartment, fit her key in the lock and call out a singsong, ‘Hello!’ as she stepped through my door.

I was on the floor of my bedroom at the time, subjecting the briefcase to a gruelling examination. I still hadn’t found anything to indicate that Graziella really could tell if I tricked my way through the combination dials, and it was beginning to kill me not to do just that. As a natural-born burglar, a sense of curiosity is a given, and I’m proud to say that my snooping gene is very highly developed. If I’d stumbled upon the case by pure chance, my first instinct would have been to flip back the lid and see if it contained anything I desired, and being forbidden from doing exactly that simply made me want to do it even more. The only thing stopping me was the enormous value I placed on my copy of
The Maltese Falcon
and my reluctance to take any kind or risk – no matter how small – that might wreck my chances of having it returned to me. Oh, and Victoria’s inconvenient return.

Sliding the case beneath my bed and peeling off my plastic gloves, I moved into the hall to find her wiping her feet. Of course, by the time she’d treated me to a blazing grin and gushed about what a fabulous day she’d had, all while climbing out of her coat and insisting that I simply
must
touch her cheeks to see how
freezing
it was outside, my healthy dose of righteous indignation had rather begun to escape me. And once she’d announced that she was taking me out for an evening meal in a charming little restaurant she’d found down by the Rialto markets, I’d almost reached the stage where I could have forgotten what I’d been upset with her for in the first place.

Almost
.

We’d cleaned our plates and were waiting for dessert before it all got too much for me. The restaurant was located on a mezzanine level above a popular bar, and it featured rustic furniture, vaulted brick ceilings, a good deal of candlelight, and three arched windows that looked out onto the Grand Canal. It was a small place, filled to the gills with Venetians, and mostly serving gills, as it happens – on account of it being a fish restaurant. Not far from our table was an ice tray stocked with a colourful selection of molluscs and crustaceans, eels and octopuses, dead-eyed red mullet, gawping skate, cod-sized sharks, and an ugly-looking fellow I couldn’t readily identify. Across the room, beside the door to the bustling kitchen, a gang of brownish lobsters stalked a murky fish tank, their pincers secured with yellow elastic bands.

‘Isn’t this fabulous?’ Victoria said, leaning back in her chair and spreading her fingers on her belly.

‘It’s certainly something.’

‘You could go to a hundred restaurants in London and you’d never find fish this fresh.’

‘Uh huh.’

‘And I absolutely love prosecco.’ She took a swig from her tall wine glass as if to confirm the revelation.

‘Why wouldn’t you?’

Victoria hesitated, then did something clever with her face, so that one eyebrow dropped much lower than the other, taking on a diagonal slant. ‘Charlie, is there something you want to say to me?’

‘Say? I don’t think so.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Believe me, if there was something I wanted to say, I’d say it.’

‘Okay.’ She leaned across the table and grabbed the empty bottle of prosecco by the neck, tilting it by way of invitation. ‘Shall we order more bubbly?’

I gritted my teeth. ‘If you like.’

‘Super.’ She lifted a finger in the air, signalling our waiter.

‘After all,’ I told her, ‘if it fits in with
your
plans, why shouldn’t we order another bottle?’

‘O-
kay
.’ She showed the label to the waiter, together with a hopeful thumbs up.

‘I mean,
your
schedule is important. If
you
want to get blotto and go back to my flat and pass out on your bed,
I
shouldn’t have a problem with that, should I?’

Victoria dabbed her lips with her napkin and backed away from me with a palms-up gesture, like I was a stack of playing cards she’d carefully balanced and was loath to upset.

I scowled at the table and snatched up my wine glass. I could have done without the bubbles. Sparkling wine isn’t the best accompaniment to a bad temper. Then again, neither is it the most suitable preparation for a night of pilfering. I could feel the weight of the mobile phone in my trouser pocket, and I had no idea when it might begin to vibrate.

Perhaps I’d have felt less grouchy if I hadn’t been facing the windows. Somewhere out there, beyond the reflections of twinkling candles and our fellow diners, was Palazzo Borelli. I wasn’t sure I needed the reminder. I was even less sure that I wanted it.

‘Is this about your manuscript?’ Victoria asked me.

I glanced down, straightening my dessert spoon on the tablecloth. ‘What if it is?’

‘Then I think we should talk about it, don’t you? I am your agent, after all.’

‘Oh, so you’ve remembered, then.’

‘Charlie.’

‘Forgive me.’ I kept my eyes down. It seemed my pastry fork needed rearranging too. ‘It’s just with all the sightseeing you’ve been doing, one might be forgiven for thinking you’d forgotten about my novel altogether.’

Victoria drew an audible breath. I got the impression she was counting numbers in her head. I wondered how far she might get before letting me have it with both barrels.

‘Charlie, I’m going to be honest with you.’

Oh boy. Nothing that starts out with those words is ever destined to be good. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t pushed things – maybe it would have been better to let Victoria leave Venice with both of us pretending I’d never handed her a new script at all.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ve only read the beginning. Barely got into it. But it’s very …’ she raised her eyes to the ceiling, searching for the right word, ‘different.’

Christ, stab me in the gut, why didn’t she?
Different
. That was just wonderful. Next thing she’d be delivering the old ‘taste is subjective’ line.

‘Listen, everything is subjective, you know that.’
Told you
. ‘What one person likes, another might not. Agreed?’

‘Ah, I see,’ I said. ‘And what you’re saying is – you don’t like it.’

Victoria winced, as if I’d kicked her under the table. I was pretty sure I
hadn’t
kicked her under the table. Although, now I thought of it, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.

‘It’s not that I don’t
like
it per se. It’s just that it’s …’

‘Different?’

‘Exactly.’

We reached for our wine, monitoring each other closely, as if neither one of us was entirely sure which glass contained the deadly poison. We swallowed dryly and set our drinks to one side. Victoria circled the rim of her glass with her fingertip and I switched the salt and pepper pots around.

‘It seems very commercial,’ Victoria told me, in an apologetic tone. ‘Almost overtly so.’

‘That’s what I was aiming for,’ I mumbled, moving the pepper behind the salt pot, like a magician working the three-cups routine. ‘You do want to sell it, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but as a Faulks book, I’m just not sure how it sits alongside the rest of the titles in the series.’

‘Maybe it won’t sit beside them. Maybe it’ll sit on one of those shelves where the books that actually sell end up.’

Victoria reached across and stilled the salt and pepper pots. She was about to say more when our waiter reappeared. He popped the cork on our new bottle and poured the frothing alcohol into our glasses.

I met Victoria’s eyes. She smirked and covered her mouth with her hand. I couldn’t help smiling too.

‘Listen, if you hate it, just tell me,’ I said. ‘It’s not the end of the world, right?’

‘I don’t hate it … yet. The truth is I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve only read the opening chapters, so I’m really not in a position to comment.’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose the truth is I’m scared.’

‘Scared? I’m the one who just spent months planning and writing the damn thing.’

‘But that’s exactly it. I know how significant this book is to you, Charlie. I know what you hope might come from it.’ She lowered her voice and leaned across the table to cover my hand with her own. ‘I know the things you gave up to write it, okay?’

Ah, hell. ‘And?’

‘And I’m afraid I won’t like it. And I’m afraid of having to be the one to tell you that.’

Hmm. Would it make her feel any better if I told her I hadn’t given up my larcenous lifestyle, after all? That I was, in fact, destined to break into a luxurious home at a moment’s notice?

‘That’s my problem,’ I told her, freeing my hand. ‘The important thing is that you’re straight with me – that you tell me if it’s no good.’

‘Okay.’ She swallowed, eyeing her wine glass.

‘Go ahead,’ I told her. ‘Drink.’

‘I will. In a minute. But there’s something I want you to promise me first.’

I looked at her blankly. She hesitated, then seemed to resolve herself to pressing on.

‘If I don’t like the book – this one particular story you’ve given me – I don’t want you to give up on this new lifestyle of yours. You’re good, Charlie – really good – and one day the world is going to wake up to that fact. But if it takes a little longer to get there than you were hoping for, will you promise me that you won’t fall back into your bad old ways?’

‘Eh?’

‘The stealing,’ she whispered. ‘I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you getting yourself into trouble again.’

‘Oh
that
,’ I told her, and took a healthy pull on my wine. ‘Christ, the very idea couldn’t be further from my mind.’

One of the things I’d tried to do in my new novel was to create a compelling villain for Michael Faulks to go up against. To this end, I’d spent many hours at the planning stage, breaking down Faulks’ strengths and then using those components to build an adversary who was more powerful in every department. I ended up with the character of Don Giovanni, a seven-foot-tall, six-teen-stone Mafia godfather with a network of enforcers and crooks throughout Italy and beyond. Don Giovanni lived in a heavily guarded villa on the shores of the Lido, from where he oversaw his extensive criminal enterprises. A chess grand master, a dab hand at Shaolin Kung Fu and a champion breeder of Argentine Dogo fighting dogs, he was the most complete enemy Faulks had ever had the misfortune to come up against.

In short, I knew everything I could care to know about The Godfather of the Veneto, and the threat he represented. So, on reflection, it was hard for me to ignore the fact that I knew next to nothing about my own aggressor. Most importantly, I had no idea what was in the attaché briefcase Graziella had given me, or whether anything she’d told me about returning it happened to be true. I was aware that she had a talent for burglary, I got the impression she was in some kind of bind, and I could hazard an educated guess at her cup size, but beyond that, I was clueless.

And yet, somehow, I still found myself trudging through a sleety drizzle and the musty, sinuous alleys of San Marco, heading for the district of Cannaregio at a quarter past eleven that night.

Graziella’s call had reached me less than an hour before, shortly after I’d escorted Victoria back to my apartment and watched her climb into bed with my manuscript for company. I’d been in the kitchen making Victoria a cup of tea at the time, and the noise of the kettle had masked my half of the conversation.

‘It is time,’ Graziella had announced, in a breathless voice. ‘We will be at the casino in thirty minutes. You have the briefcase?’

‘Yes, I have it,’ I told her. ‘And I’m assuming you still have my book.’

‘Then you have read my instructions? You are ready?’

That was hardly answering my question, but I decided to let it go. ‘As ready as I can be. Are you sure there’ll be staff on the property?’

‘
Si
. But just two, I think.’

‘Anything else you want to tell me?’

‘Be very careful. Do not make a mistake. And when you put the case in the strongroom, make sure it is somewhere he will see it.’

‘Would you like me to open it for him too?’

‘Do not joke about this. Please. The case must stay closed.’

Touchy, touchy. ‘Or?’

‘Or you will be killed.’

She cut the connection just as the kettle came to the boil. Talk about raising the stakes. I’d gone from having my favourite book confiscated to having my life threatened in one short phone call. I suppose it was the sort of thing that a mind more reasoned than my own might have spent a good deal of time considering. In fact, it was exactly the kind of plot development I’d normally have discussed with Victoria.

Hmm. Was now the time to bring her on board, I wondered? Somehow, I didn’t think so. If I told her what I’d become involved in, there was no way she’d see things from my point of view. There’d be a lot of talk about calling the police, for starters, and even if I got her past that, she’d never be comfortable with the prospect of my breaking into the palazzo. Too many risks, she’d say. Too much unknown. And you know what? She’d be right.