by Susan Moody
‘They’ve been in touch,’ I said.
‘The kidnappers?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
I repeated what the Marchese had told me. Outlined my idea that at drop-off time, Joey should be hanging about in a hired vessel of some kind, messing about at the entrance to the particular canal they’d chosen.
‘Good idea. Except if you look at a map of Burano that would be just about impossible. They could come in one way and exit into the lagoon somewhere else.’
‘Bugger it.’
‘Yes, but even if I was at the drop-off point, they’d get a bit leery if my engine suddenly sprang into life when they appeared and I started following them at speed.’
‘Understood.’ I considered it for a moment. ‘Aren’t people with boats supposed to spend most of their time messing about? Fiddling with the crank shaft and readjusting the speed dial sort of thing? Couldn’t you be doing a spot of messing?’
‘That’s probably what I’ll end up doing … unless I position myself at the Venice side of the lagoon and keep an eye out for fast-moving vessels.’
‘Joey,’ I said, ‘would it be a good idea to inform them that the second half of the money would only be handed over as a direct exchange for Sandro?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘It could be done,’ he said eventually. ‘But there’d be a risk. They might decide that ten million is better than nothing, dispose of the victim and exit stage left.’
‘We’d have played fair with them up to that point,’ I said. ‘And all we want is Sandro. We can show them there’s no police involved, only the Marchese himself.’
‘I’ll talk to him. My feeling is there are risks whatever we do. Once they’ve got the money, they don’t really give a toss about their vic, do they?’
‘But the big guy is a local, or at least he works locally. And he’s got a family here.’
‘Maybe he’s made plans to decamp immediately once he’s been paid off, with or without the rest of the family. With twenty million euros in his pocket – minus the cut he’s giving to his accomplices – he can go where he pleases.’
‘This is difficult,’ I said. ‘Look, are you quite sure he’s the brains behind this abduction?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Oh, that’s just peachy,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it though?’
When we’d ended our somewhat frustrating conversation, I sat in a café over a cup of coffee and mused. What were the links between Sandro, the thefts from his uncle’s palazzo, the murder of Katy and the Major’s Tiepolo drawings? If any. As I saw it, Sandro was the key. He sat like a spider at the centre of a web of radiating lines. But did any of them connect up? And there was the tantalizing mention from Renzo about the thefts of some Tiepolos. I had found the so-called Florence Forbes’ claim to them completely spurious, but even by a gigantic stretch of the imagination, it was hard to see her as a master criminal, involved not just with the drawings but also with the killing of Katy Pasqualin, the abduction of Sandro, the theft of the doge’s ring, the bald guy – Jens Hansen, right? Or possibly Hans Jensen – and the corpse in the house with the red door.
But however much I tried to knit the separate threads together, I couldn’t. My head began to pound like a bass pan in a steel band. I ordered more coffee. It didn’t help. Eventually, deciding that walking might clear my brain, I got up and began to stroll along the canals. There was so much to see and appreciate that it was hard to remember that I was here for a serious and possibly lethal reason. The taste of marsala rose in my throat. Every now and then, crossing a narrow street, I would catch a glimpse of the Chiesa San Martino. Cooking smells floated from windows – cheese, garlic, sausage, tomato – making me feel even more nauseous. Maybe the best thing to do would be to return to my little bed-and-breakfast and try to catch an hour’s kip. I could be pretty certain life would still be heaving in the squares and cafés. I strolled past a blue house, a rose house, a glorious ochre one with green shutters and trailing petunias. I turned the corner. And that was it. They jumped me. Three guys, briefly melting out of the shadows, clapping something over my face, grabbing my arms as I tottered, then swiftly lifting me off my feet and in through a doorway. Before I passed out completely, a voice said, ‘So, Miss Alexandra Quick, we have you. We shan’t—’ And that was it. I was gone.
I woke some hours later. I’d been trussed like a piece of rolled English sirloin. Sirloin was one of the few things Mary, my mother, was able to cook. I felt tears in my eyes at the thought of Mary and Edred, their safe familiarity, their increasing eccentricities. For God’s sake … I blinked them away. More important than tears was to find out where I was and why I’d been brought here.
My arms were tight against my sides. My legs had been tied together. My stomach was roiling. My head felt as though it had been opened and half the contents removed with a rusty spoon. Like anyone else who finds themselves tied up, I tested the knots which bound me, using my fingers, which were mercifully free. Not that I could reach very far. The trussing was pretty good work, but not quite good enough. I found that one knot was less tight than the others, and began to work it as best I could. While I did so, I used my other senses. The room was dark but not completely light-deprived, illumination easing between ill-fitting shutters closed over the window. As so often in this watery location, there was the smell of damp. Outside, sounds of feet, voices, splashing water. I guessed I was in a disused ground-floor room somewhere along one of the canals. I could just make out the rectangle of a door in the wall opposite the window.
Reluctantly, I rolled myself across the filthy floor towards it and awkwardly got my ear jammed up against the lower part of it. Nothing. Not a sound. With great discomfort, I levered myself upright. Was there a handle and, if so, could I reach hold of it? There was, but it was too high up the door and I couldn’t reach. Not even with my mouth. The best I could do was rattle it with my chin, which achieved precisely zilch. Suddenly water flooded my mouth and I threw up as neatly as possible. I didn’t want to get vomit all over my clothes.
The door was one step above the floor so I sat down on it. There was one small crumb of comfort in that my bindings were coming looser, but at such a tediously slow rate that I reckoned I’d be celebrating my sixtieth birthday before I got free.
Two people stopped outside the window, chatting. A couple of English teenagers, I guessed. Sniggering about some girls they knew, the way male adolescents the world over always do.
I moaned loudly, all I could manage with a disgusting gag in my mouth.
‘What was that?’ one of them said.
‘Dunno,’ said his friend. ‘Anyway, she’s standing there …’
A party of Japanese came by, squealing and barking with excitement, drowning out any sound I might be able to make. And by the time they’d gone by, the lads had also moved on. My captors must have known I’d be unlikely to attract attention from my prison. They’d also known my name. Were they aware of my connection to Cesare? For Sandro’s sake, I prayed that they weren’t. Yet would I have been abducted if they hadn’t? ‘So. Miss Alexandra Quick, we have you. We shan’t—’ Shan’t what? Gouge my eyes out? Gang rape me? Cut off my boobs? I threw up again.
My stomach began to settle. My head was slowly clearing. They had left my watch on my wrist and I twisted my arm round within its bonds in order to squint at the time. Quarter past nine. How long had I been out? From the light on the other side of the shutters, I assumed this was still the same day I had been taken, since I couldn’t possibly have been out for more than twenty-four hours. I wondered whether Joey Preston or the Marchese had tried to phone me. And if so, when I didn’t answer, suspect something was wrong. And if so, what they would do about it, if anything? Looked at rationally, what could they do?
All this time I had been working on the loose bit of rope which bound me. When I say ‘loose’, I mean that it was merely a fraction less tight than the rest of the fastenings. But now, abruptly,
it pulled away from the piece to which it was supposedly attached. I bent my head and tugged at it with my teeth, pulling as hard as I could, difficult as it was with my mouth full of rag. It wasn’t hugely helpful. I tried to tongue the gag out, but again, it was almost impossible. I was still caged in rope, and beginning to feel pretty pissed off about it. The backs of my hands were swollen. The flesh of my arms bulged between the restraints. I was trying not to think of gangrene and blackened tissue. Fingers dropping off. Suppurating sores. Limbs falling. I shivered. Not just because of the gruesome images in my head, but also because I’d come out with nothing more than a light top and the damp of the room was getting to me.
I carried on working on the knots. They were gradually opening up. Eventually I got a hand free, which meant I was able to pull at the ropes round my legs until they were loose enough for me to walk. Which I did. Fast. Over to the door. Tearing out the gag as I moved, trying to get some moisture into my mouth. I listened again at the door, ear flat against the wood. Nothing. I found the handle and carefully turned it. Tugged. Couldn’t shift it. I was trapped. And frankly, I could see little prospect of getting out until the bad guys chose to release me. If release was what they had in mind.
Don’t think about the alternatives, I told myself. And keep your wits about you. Given the opportunity, I reckoned I could take on any of the stocky fellows who’d grabbed me. The bald man was a different prospect. One blow to the head from his massive paws and I’d be out of the equation.
I shuffled over to the shuttered window again. Could I somehow shatter the glass? Apart from my own head, I had no weapon and I knew from sad experience during my days on the force how hard it was to break windows without one. Outside, the daylight was fading and been replaced by gleams from the faux-quaint lamps along the pavement. I drew back my head, already wincing, and banged it hard against one of the glass panes of the window, which achieved nothing except a large lump in the middle of my forehead. And for my next trick, I thought …
Voices were fading off into the distance and being replaced by new ones, but fewer now and further away. Were those bastards going to feed me, give me toilet facilities, leave me in this damp cellar all night? And then, back sitting on the damp concrete step over by the door, I finally heard the sounds that I’d been waiting for: movement on the other side. Voices. Steps. A key being jingled. I had a plan. I readied myself.
A weak light flowed into my dank quarters as the door opened. A man stood there, above me, although I could only see his outline. Not the Danish baker, thank God, but one of the stocky guys on his team. As he lifted his arm to chuck a bag containing, by the sound of it, a plastic bottle of water and, with any luck, a loaf of bread or some sausage into the darkness, I grabbed his calf, at the same time jerking him forward and into the room. He fell heavily, hitting his head hard with a satisfactory clunk as skull met floor. It winded him although it didn’t knock him out. But I was on him like a hungry tiger, stuffing my already removed T-shirt into his mouth then grabbing his arms and tying them tightly behind his back with some of the rope which had previously bound me. Same thing with his legs. I wasn’t skilled at knotting up a rolled sirloin roast but I did a pretty good job. And call me vindictive, but in the weak light coming through the open door, I was delighted to see that the guy’s cheek was pillowed in one of my chloroform-induced pools of vomit. I pulled off his shoes, tore off a smelly sock, retrieved my T-shirt and replaced it with the sock, and was gone. I did some rattling of the key as I locked the door, in case anyone was listening. No raucous male voices, no mobiles beeping. I was now in a narrow passage, with the front door of the house no more than a tantalizing dozen steps or so from where I stood. Walls that had once been green but were now leprous. Rubbish blown in from the street: leaves, a paper bag, half a ticket. Trapped behind the front door was some more: a torn tissue, a bit of red plastic. As I headed quietly towards it, a door on the floor above opened and two men came out, talking in rapid Italian and heading for the stairs.
I ran.
I was terrified that the door would be locked, but as I wrenched at the handle it flew open and I half-stepped, half-tumbled out into the street.
There were still lights on in some of the houses and I ran for the nearest one, several down from where I’d been held. I banged on the door, screaming for help at the top of my voice as I did so. Looking back along the street the way I’d come, I saw two men emerge from the house I had just escaped from and then start towards me, but at the same time the door of the house in front of me opened and a burly man looked out.
‘What? What?’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Let me in!’ I shrieked. The more noise I made, the better. ‘Those men have just kidnapped me. Let me in. Please!’
By now, people were leaning out of windows and pulling back hatches on one or two of the houseboats, with heads materializing. That had been my hope all along. Seeing that they had been spotted, my captors retreated rapidly into their own house and slammed the door behind them while my rescuer pulled me into his hallway, a mirror image of the one I’d just raced out of.
He must have realized from my dishevelled appearance that I was telling the truth. ‘I don’t know exactly who they are,’ he said, speaking English. ‘But I do know that is not their house. The owners – Enrico and Maria – are away in the States, visiting their son in Texas.’ He nodded and smiled slightly. ‘Bet you anything that their no-good worthless cousin Beppo is behind this.’ He then uttered a string of Italian words, of which figlio di puttana was the least offensive.
I wanted to tell them to call the police, but once again I didn’t dare risk Sandro’s life. At least I had a possible name: Beppo. By now I’d been ushered into the kitchen at the back of the house and been joined by the man’s wife, plump in a dressing gown and nightdress, and various of the neighbours, who were letting themselves in through the front door. Glasses were being placed on the table, grappa was being poured, and I was being urged to tell my story, which I did, with considerable embellishment and a kind of dramatic flair. The members of the drama group in Canterbury to which I used to belong would have been astounded to witness it.
I knew that both Joey Preston and the Marchese would be worried stiff at not being able to contact me, but there was nothing I could do about it, with my phone gone and neither of their numbers in my head. And abruptly came the reaction. I shook as though I was standing naked in a snowstorm. My teeth chattered. My hands were shivering so badly that I had to put my glass down on the table, under which my feet and legs were dancing a fandango to music I couldn’t hear. I needed to get back to my hotel, though the thought of leaving the safety provided by these people was terrifying. I smelled of vomit and sweat and damp plaster, And, I’m not ashamed to say, of fear. For myself, as well as for Sandro. I honestly had not thought I would leave that shuttered room alive. The thought of a long, hot shower was far more intoxicating than the alcohol which was being pressed on me by my hosts and their friends.
There were clucks of concern and compassion. Someone brought a blanket and put it round my shoulders. Someone else held my hand and squeezed it sympathetically. I could feel the grappa burning down through my oesophageal tube, soothing my stomach and cheering my brain. I simply couldn’t help playing to the gallery, which was increasing with every minute. More bottles were being plonked on the table. Plates of sliced sausage and prosciutto had appeared, along with sticks of bread, dishes of olives and cornichons. Beer was being served. It had turned into a party, despite it being in the early hours of the morning. I’d have enjoyed it a whole lot more if I hadn’t looked or smelled the way I did.
There was talk of a vigilante group going down to Rico and Maria’s place and confronting Beppo, if indeed it was he who’d been responsible for my imprisonment in the house, but thank God that petered out into another refill of glasses and a discussion of Venezia’s chances in Lega Pro in the coming season and the desperate need for a new stadium. Every now and then someone
would turn to me, check that my glass wasn’t empty and say ‘Arsenal’ or ‘Chelsea’ in encouraging tones, at which I would nod and smile. I even managed to say ‘Juventus’ which had some of them cheering, and ‘Lombardi’, really establishing my credentials, though I know nothing at all about football. I desperately wanted to get back to my little hotel and have a shower, but didn’t want to break things up when everyone was having so much fun.
FOURTEEN
It was almost four thirty in the morning by the time I was back in my rented bed, showered and clean, my filthy clothes dumped in a corner for washing when daylight came. I’d had to do a bit of elaborately stifled yawning and eyelid-blinking, but eventually a couple of obliging young men at last night’s impromptu party had walked me through the streets of Burano to my hotel. They greeted the sleepy night porter with friendly cries of recognition and blow me if another bottle of grappa didn’t emerge from under his desk. With profuse thanks, I left them to it.
At eight forty-five, there was a tapping at my bedroom door.
‘Yeah?’ Sleepily, I raised myself up on one elbow. ‘Who is it?’
‘Joey.’
I stumbled out of bed and walked stiffly across the room. Every muscle in my body seemed to ache and my bones were doing a good job of joining in. I got to the door. Unbolted it. Said, ‘Count to ten before you enter,’ then staggered back to bed.
Once in my room, with the door closed behind him, Joey stared at me, buried under the bedclothes.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.
‘What are you doing over here?’ I mumbled.
‘Nobody could raise you yesterday, so the Marchese decided I’d better hop over here and find out why.’
I started to explain what had happened, but my voice began to shake. To my horror, weak tears sat in my eyes. I definitely don’t do tears, let alone weak ones. But I honestly hadn’t believed one hundred per cent that I would survive the cold and damp in the room where I’d been imprisoned. I don’t suppose I was there for more than an hour or two, but it had seemed an eternity. It was the not knowing that was so deadly, so terrifying. Wondering if they were just going to leave me there to rot, or starve to death.