Clean Break

by Val McDermid

  I raced the car round the bends as fast as I could, tires screaming on every one, wrists starting to feel it in spite of the power steering. I was concentrating so hard on not ending up as a sheet of scrap metal on the valley floor that I nearly missed Turner.

  Heaving a huge sigh of relief, I drove to the far end of the car park and tried to ring Richard and let him know everything was OK. No joy. I supposed the mountain was in the way again. I got out of the car, took a black beret and a pair of granny glasses with clear lenses out of my stakeout-disguises holdall and walked into the inn. Inside, it was the traditional Swiss chalet, wood everywhere, walls decorated with huge posters of Alpine scenery, a blazing fire in a central stone fireplace. The room was crammed with tables, most of them occupied. A quick scan showed me Turner sitting alone at a table for two, studying the menu. A waitress dressed in traditional costume bustled up to me and said something in German. I shrugged and tried out my school French, saying I wanted to eat, one alone, and did they have a telephone?

  She smiled and showed me to a table near the fire and pointed out the phone. I got change from the cashier and gave Richard a quick call. For some reason, he was less than thrilled that I was sitting down to some Tyrolean specialty while he was stuck on the verge of the road with nothing in sight but the motorway and a field of the inevitable cows. “Go and get some sandwiches or something,” I instructed him. “I’ll let you know when we set off.”

  I went back to my table. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Turner tucking into a steaming bowl of soup, a stein of beer beside him, so I figured I’d have time to eat something. I ordered Tiroler gröstl, a mixture of potatoes, onions and ham with a fried egg on top. It looked like the nearest thing to fast food on the menu. I was right. My meal was in front of me in under five minutes. I was halfway through it before Turner’s main course arrived. Judging by the pile of chips that was all I could identify, he was eating for two. Frankly, I could see why he’d made the detour. The food was more than worth it, if my plateful was anything to go by. Definitely

  By the time I’d finished and lingered over a cup of coffee, Turner had also demolished a huge wedge of lemon meringue pie. If I’d scoffed that much in the middle of the day, I’d have been asleep at the wheel ten miles down the road. I hoped he had a more lively metabolism. When he called for the bill, I took mine to the cashier, rang Richard to warn him we were on the move, and headed back to the car. Minutes later, Turner was heading back down the road, with me a couple of bends behind him.

  As we hit the motorway, I had another panic. Where I’d expected to see Richard in his Mercedes, there was a black BMW. As I sailed past, I glanced across and saw the familiar grin behind the thumbs-up sign. Moments later, as he swung in behind me, the phone rang. “Sierra 49 to Sierra Oscar,” he said. “Surprise, surprise. I nipped back to Zürich and swapped the cars. I thought it was about time for a change.”

  “Nice one,” I conceded. Maybe he wasn’t the liability I’d feared he’d be after all. And there was me thinking that he was as subtle as Jean Paul Gaultier. This wasn’t the time to reassess the capabilities of the man in my life, but I filed the thought away for future scrutiny.

  I figured we must be heading for Liechtenstein, haven for tax dodgers, fraudsters and stamp-collecting anoraks. No such luck. We carried on south, deep into the Alps. Richard was in front of me again, keeping tabs on Turner. The bug kept cutting out because of the mountains, and I was determined that we weren’t going to lose him after coming this far. Now Richard was in another car, I felt happy about him staying in fairly close touch.

  A few miles down the road, my bottle started twitching. There was no getting away from it. We were heading for the San Bernardino tunnel. Ten kilometers in that dark tube, aware of the millions of tons of rock just sitting above my head, waiting to crush me thin as a postage stamp. Just the thought of it forced a groan from my lips. I’m terrified of tunnels. Not a lot of people know that. It doesn’t sit well with the fearless, feisty image. I’ve even been known to drive thirty miles out of my way to avoid going through the tunnels under the Mersey.

  With every minute that passed, that gaping hole in the hillside was getting closer and my heart was pounding faster. Desperately, I rattled through the handful of cassettes I’d grabbed when I’d picked up Bill’s car. Not a soothing one among them. No Enya, no Mary Coughlan, not even Everything But The Girl. Plenty of Pet Shop Boys, Eurythmics and REM. I settled for Crowded House turned up loud to keep the eerie boom of the tunnel traffic at bay and tried to concentrate on their harmonies.

  Two minutes into the tunnel and the sweat was clammy on my back. Three minutes in and my upper lip was damp. Four minutes in and my forehead was slimy as a sewer wall. Six minutes in and my knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The walls looked as if they were closing in. I tried telling myself it was only imagination, and Crowded House promised they could ease my pain. They were lying. Ten minutes and I could feel a scream bubbling in my throat. I was on the point of tears when a doughnut of light appeared around the cars in front of me.

  As soon as I burst out again into daylight, my phone started ringing. “Yeah?” I gasped.

  “You OK?” Richard asked. He knows all about me and tunnels.

  “I’ll live.” I swallowed hard. “Thanks for asking.”

  “You’re a hero, Brannigan,” he said.

  “Never mind that,” I said gruffly. “You still with Turner?”

  “Tight as Jagger’s jeans. He’s got his foot down. Looks like we’re heading for la bella Italia.”

  At least I’d be somewhere I could speak the language, I thought with relief. I’d been worried all the way down Germany and Switzerland that Turner was going to end up in a close encounter that I couldn’t understand a word of. But my Italian was fluent, a hangover from the summer before university, when I’d worked in the kitchens of Oxford’s most select trattoria. It was learn the language or take a vow of silence. I’d prevented it from getting too rusty by holidaying in Italy whenever I could.

  I drove cheerfully down the mountain, glad to be out in the open air again, relieved that we were gradually leaving the mountains behind us. We worked our way round Milan just after five, Richard back behind me, and by seven we were skirting Genoa. This was

  At Genoa we turned east again on the A12, another one of those autostradas carved out of the side of a mountain. I kept telling myself the little tunnels were just like driving under big bridges, but it didn’t help a lot, especially since the receiver kept cutting out, giving me panic attacks every time.

  Three quarters of an hour past Genoa, the screen told me Turner was moving off to one side. First, he went right, then crossed back left. I nearly missed the exit, I was concentrating so hard on the screen, but I managed to get off with Richard on my tail. We were on the outskirts of some town called Sestri Levante, but according to my screen, Turner was heading away from it. Praying I was going the right way, I swung left and found myself driving along a river valley, the road lined with shops and houses. Sestri Levante shaded into Casarza Ligure, then we were out into open country, wooded hills on either side of the valley. We hit a small village called Bargonasco just as the direction changed on the receiver. A couple of kilometers further up, there was a turning on the left. It was a narrow, asphalt road, with a sign saying Villa San Pietro. The blip on the screen stayed steady. A kilometer away, straight up the Villa San Pietro’s drive.

  Journey’s end.

  Chapter 17

  “What now, Sam Spade?” Richard asked as we both bent and stretched in vain attempts to restore our bodies to something like their normal configuration.

  “You go back to the village and find us somewhere to stay for the night, then you sit outside in the car in case Turner comes back down the valley,” I told him.

  “And what are you doing while I’m doing that?” Richard asked.

  “I’m going to take a look at the Villa San Pietro,” I told him.

  He looked a
t me as if I’d gone stark staring mad. “You can’t just drive up there like the milkman,” he said.

  “Correct. I’m going to walk up, like a tourist. And you’re going to take the receiver with you, just in case the buckle’s going anywhere Turner isn’t.”

  “You’re not going up there on your own,” Richard said firmly.

  “Of course I am,” I stated even more firmly. “You are waiting down here with a car, a phone and a bug receiver. If we both go and Turner comes driving back down with the buckle while we’re ten minutes away from the cars, he could be outside the range of the receiver in any direction before we get mobile. I’m not trekking all the way across Europe only to lose the guy because you want to play macho man.”

  Richard shook his head in exasperation. “I hate it when you find a logical explanation for what you intend to do regardless,” he muttered, throwing himself back into the driver’s seat of the BMW. “See you later.”

  I waved him off, then moved the Merc up the road a few hundred yards. I scuffed some dust over my trainers, put on a pair of sunglasses even though dusk was already gathering,

  There was a three-foot ditch on one side of the twisting road, which appeared to have been carved out of the rough scrub and stunted trees of the hillside. Ten minutes’ brisk climbing brought me to the edge of a clearing. I hung back in the shelter of a couple of gnarled olive trees and took a good look. The ground had been cleared for about a hundred meters up to a wall. Painted pinkish brown, it was a good six feet high and extended for about thirty meters either side of a wrought-iron gate. Above the wall, I could see an extensive roof in the traditional terracotta pantiles. Through the gates, I could just about make out the villa itself, a two-story white stucco building with shutters over the upper-story windows. It looked like serious money to me.

  I would have been tempted to go in for a closer look, except that a closed-circuit video camera was mounted by the gate, doing a continuous 180-degree sweep of the road and the clearing. Not just serious money, but serious paranoia too.

  Staying inside the cover of the trees and the scrub, I circled the villa. By the time I got back to the drive, I had more scratches than Richard’s record collection, and the certainty that Nicholas Turner was playing with the big boys. There were video cameras mounted on each corner of the compound, all programmed to carry out regular sweeps. If I’d had enough time and a computer, I could probably have worked out where and when the blind spots would occur, but anyone who’s that serious about their perimeter security probably hasn’t left the back door on the latch. This was one burglary that was well out of my league.

  I found Richard sitting on the bonnet of his car on the forecourt of a building with all the grace and charm of a Sixties tower block. Green neon script along the front of the three-story rectangle proclaimed Casa Nico. Below that, red neon told us this was a Ristorante-Bar-Pensione. The only other vehicles on the parking area were a couple of battered pickups and a clutch of elderly motor scooters. So much for Italian style.

  “This is it?” I asked, my heart sinking.

  “This is it,” Richard confirmed gloomily. “Wait till you see the room.”

  I gathered my overnight bag, the video camera bag and my camera gear and followed Richard indoors. To get to the rooms, we had to go through the bar. In spite of the floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, it somehow managed to be dark and gloomy. As soon as we walked through the bead curtain that separated the bar from the forecourt, the rumble of male voices stopped dead. In a silence cut only by the slushy Italian Muzak from the jukebox, we crossed the room. I smiled inanely round me at the half-dozen men sprawled around a couple of tables. I got as cheerful a welcome as a Trot at a Tory party conference. Not even the human bear leaning on the Gaggia coffee machine behind the bar acknowledged our existence. The minute we left by a door in the rear, the conversation started up again. So much for the friendly hospitality of the Italian people. Somehow, I didn’t see myself managing to engage mine host in a bit of friendly gossip about the Villa San Pietro.

  The third-floor room was big, with a spectacular view up the wooded river valley. That was all you could say for it. Painted a shade of yellow that I haven’t seen since the last time I had food poisoning, it contained the sort of vast, heavy wooden furniture that could only have been built in situ, unless it was moved into the room before the walls went up. Above the double bed was a crucifix, and the view from the bed was a massive, sentimental print of Jesus displaying the Sacred Heart with all the dedication of an offal butcher.

  “Bit of a turn-off, eh?” Richard said.

  “I expect Jeffrey Dahmer would love it.” I sat down on the bed, testing the mattress. Another mistake. I thought I was going to be swallowed whole. “How much is this costing us?” I asked.

  “About the same as a night in the Gritti Palace. Mind you, that also includes dinner. Not that it’ll be edible,” he added pessimistically.

  After we’d had a quick shower, I set the bug receiver to auto-alert, so that it would give a series of audible bleeps if the buckle moved more than half a kilometer from its current relative position. Then we went in search of food. Richard had been right about that too. We were the only two people in the cheerless dining room, which al dente enough to be a threat to dentistry. The sauce was so sparing that the only way we could identify it as pesto was by the color.

  Richard and I ate in virtual silence. “What was that you said about it being time we had a bit of a jaunt?” I said at one point.

  He prodded one of the overcooked lamb chops that looked small enough to have come from a rabbit and scowled. “Next time, I won’t be so bloody helpful,” he muttered. “This is hell. I haven’t had proper food for two days and I’d kill for a joint.”

  “Not many Chinese restaurants in Italy,” I remarked. “It’s on account of them inventing one of the world’s great cuisines.” Richard took one look at my deadpan face and we both burst out laughing. “One day,” I gasped, “we’ll look back at this and laugh.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” he said darkly.

  We passed on pudding. We both have too much respect for our digestive tracts. At least the coffee was good. So good we ordered a second cup and took it upstairs with us. The one good thing about the bed was the trough in the middle that forced us into each other’s arms. After the day we’d had, it was more than time to remind each other that the world isn’t all grief.

  My eyelids unstuck themselves ten hours later. The bleeding heart on the wall wasn’t a great sight to wake up to, so I rolled over and checked the receiver sitting on the bedside table. No movement. By nine, we were both showered, dressed and back in the dining room. Breakfast was a pleasant surprise. Freshly baked focaccia, three different cheeses and a choice of jam. “What’s the game plan for today?” Richard asked through a mouthful of Gorgonzola and bread.

  “We stick with the buckle,” I said. “If it moves, we follow. If it stays put and Turner moves, we stay put too and follow Plan B.”

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  After breakfast, Richard took his BMW up the valley past the drive. I’d told him to park facing up the valley and to follow anything that came down the drive, unless I called him and told him different. I sat on a bench on the forecourt of Casa Nico, reading Bill’s thriller, the receiver in my open bag next to me. I hoped that anyone passing would take me for a tourist making the most of the watery autumn sunshine. I only had thirty pages to go when the receiver bleeped so loudly I nearly fell off my seat.

  I picked it up and stared at the read-out. The buckle was moving steadily towards me. I leapt to my feet and jumped into the car, gunning the engine into life. Still the buckle was drawing nearer. There was a sudden change of direction, which I guessed was the turn from the drive on to the main road. I edged forward, ready to pull out after the target vehicle had passed, one eye on the screen. Seconds later, a stretch Mercedes limo cruised past me, followed in short order by Richar
d in the BMW.

  I slotted into place behind him, and our little cavalcade made its way back down the valley and into Sestri Levante. The outskirts of the town were typical of northern Italy—dusty, slightly shabby, somehow old-fashioned. The center was much smarter, a trim holiday resort all stucco in assorted pastel shades, green shuttered windows on big hotels and small pensiones, expensive shops, grass and palm trees. We skirted the wide crescent of the main beach and headed along the isthmus to the harbor. As the limo turned on to a quay, I dumped the car in an illegal parking space and watched Richard do the same. I ran up to join him, linked arms and together we strolled up the quay, our faces pointing towards the sea and the floating gin palaces lined up at the pontoons. The great thing about wrap-round sunglasses is the way you can look in one direction while your head is pointing in the other.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the stretch limo glide to a halt at the foot of a gangway. The boat at the end of it was bigger than my house, and probably worth as much as Henry’s Monet. The driver’s door opened and a gorilla in uniform got out. Even from that distance, I could see muscles so developed they

  Satisfied that there was no one on the quay more dangerous than a couple of goggling tourists, he opened the back door. By now, we were close enough for me to get a good look at the presumed owner of the Villa San Pietro. He wasn’t much more than my own five feet and three inches, but he looked a hell of a lot harder than me. He was handsome in the way that birds of prey are handsome, all hooked nose and hooded eyes. His perfectly groomed black hair had a wing of silver over each temple. He was wearing immaculately pressed cream yachting ducks, a full-cut, canary yellow silk shirt with a navy guernsey thrown over his shoulders. He carried a slim briefcase. He stood for a moment on the quayside, shaking the crease straight on his trouser legs, then headed up the gangplank without waiting for Turner, who scrambled out of the car behind him.