The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries

by Carrie Bedford

  I looped my bag over my shoulder and climbed out, gripping tightly and moving as fast as I could slide my hands along the fabric. When the rope suddenly dropped a few inches I looked up to see it ripping where it stretched over the rough stone ledge. I went faster, feeling small jolts as the material yielded to the power of friction. Halfway down, I lost my grasp on the sheet and swung above the void for a second, with one hand clutching the flimsy cloth and the other flailing for a hold. My mouth was dry, my legs shaking. Sure the sheet was ready to tear apart, I started sliding fast, my hands burning as they ran down the fabric.

  I was more than halfway down when I heard the roar of an engine. It sounded like a vehicle coming up the main driveway. It must be Santini, I thought. My limbs trembled with the effort of holding on to the rope and fear of the cardinal. If he’d come back at three in the morning, it couldn’t mean anything good. I jumped. The hard landing on the gravel path jarred every bone in my body, and small stones dug into the palm of my hand.

  “There’s a car coming,” Claire said, grabbing at my hand to help me to my feet. “What do we do now? If it’s Santini, they’re going to check our room.”

  “We’ll go that way,” I said, pointing to a thickly wooded area at the edge of the garden. “And hope we can find our way to the road.”

  We dashed towards the trees but came straight up against a three meter high wire fence, which had been impossible to see from a distance in the dark. “Damn,” I muttered. “We’ll have to follow it and hope it goes all the way to the gates at the end of the driveway.”

  The engine noise died at the front of the house. A door slammed, followed by a metallic rattling noise, like a tailgate being rolled up.

  “That doesn’t sound like Santini’s Mercedes,” Claire said. “It sounded more like a van or something.”

  I heard voices, carrying easily on the still night air. There were at least two men talking. And then I heard Renata’s dulcet tones.

  “What if Santini has had Ethan brought here?” Claire asked. “We should go see.”

  It was possible. The van certainly wasn’t making a UPS delivery at this time of night.

  “Ok.” I pointed. “If we go to that corner of the house, we’ll be able to see the front door. But if it’s not Ethan, we get back to the fence fast and make our way to the gates, agreed?”

  Claire nodded. Staying off the gravel paths, we crept silently back towards the house and along the side wall. At the front corner, I stopped, pressed myself against the flaking stucco, and peeked around. All the entry lights were on, illuminating a white van with its back door open. A man was taking a box from the back. He handed it to Aldo, who carried it into the house. The next box went to Renata. As the man turned sideways to hand it to her, I could see the inside of the van. There were another dozen boxes in there, but no sign of Ethan.

  “It’s time to go,” I said to Claire. “While they’re still busy.”

  Claire nodded and retraced her steps to the back garden. There was no way to tackle that wire fence, so we scrambled through the undergrowth in the direction of the gate, staying hidden behind the shrubs that lined the driveway. We were making good progress when we heard the van coming back. Without speaking, we both veered further into the trees. It was dark, but I noticed a small opening, a narrow path, barely wide enough for a human. I wondered what sort of animal had made it. Claire put her hand on my arm and I realized the van had stopped. Seconds later, I heard twigs snapping behind us. We dashed along the path, weaving between branches that snatched at our clothes and hair, until the trees stopped at the edge of a field. We paused to catch our breath, looking across the open space towards a river that gleamed under the half moon. Beyond it was a main road, sprinkled with the lights of trucks that rolled through the night. I wondered where we were. Close to a river about an hour from Florence, but where was the nearest civilization? Somewhere we could find a phone?

  Claire tapped my arm. “Look!” She pointed upriver to a stone bridge. “That’s the Ponte Buriano, I’m sure of it.”

  I looked at her, confused. “Count the arches,” she said. “There are seven. The bridge is ancient, thirteenth century. It appears in the lower right quadrant of the Mona Lisa. So we are close to Arezzo, about fifteen minutes to the northwest, I think.”

  Amazed that she could think that clearly under our present circumstances, I grabbed her hand and we sprinted across the field. Twice I turned an ankle on the uneven ground, but we made it to the other side and pushed through a thin hedge onto a narrow country road that ran alongside the river. We turned towards the bridge, towards a cluster of streetlights on the other side, walking fast, with the soft lap of water beside us and a dog barking in the distance. My heart rate slowed and my breathing improved. We’d find a house and ask to use the phone to call for help. The police would protect us.

  But my hopes were crushed when the chainsaw buzz of a motorbike cleaved the tranquil night. Someone was coming. Fearing the worst, I grabbed Claire and threw us both into the hedge, pressing ourselves into the tangled branches. When the bike slowed, there was no mistaking Renata’s bulky figure, with her grey dress billowing out like a sail behind her. She must have seen us though, because she pulled the bike to a stop, raised her hand and pointed a gun in our direction. A single shot echoed through the valley. Claire screamed, and we dropped to the ground, scrambling on all fours through the hedge, back across the field, towards the shelter of the dense woods on the other side. We pushed our way through a thicket of thin saplings that clung together for shelter under the oaks, stumbling between the skeletal white trunks. The moonlight barely penetrated here, making it difficult to see where we were going.

  A twig snapped somewhere behind us. I pulled at Claire’s arm, dragged her into the shelter of a large bush and thrust us back into its spiky embrace. We crouched, watching the leaves settle into stillness around us.

  Another crack, a whirr of wings as a bird flew startled from its resting place, and a muttered curse. From my place on the ground, I saw feet in black leather shoes. It was Aldo. I froze, trying not to breathe, sure that the sound would reverberate in the heavy silence of the night.

  The feet moved away, and we waited. Then I heard something else, a snort and heavy breathing. Aldo shouted as the ground trembled underneath us. As the vibrations intensified, I jumped to my feet, pulling Claire too, pressing us both against the trunk of a tree. Seconds later, a wild boar crashed through the bush in front of us, barely slowed by thick branches that splintered under the onslaught. It disappeared into the darkness, and I let out a breath. The boar had been huge, the height of my hip, with massive shoulders. A lingering gamey smell of wild animal filled my nostrils.

  “Renata’s coming back,” Claire said. “On the bike.” The engine roared, accompanied by the crack of snapping branches.

  “That’ll keep the boar away, at least,” I said.

  “What do we do?” Claire raised her voice over the din of the engine as the rider gunned the bike close by. I caught a glimpse of metal shining in the moonlight. The tires spun as the bike left the path, bumping over tree roots.

  We threw ourselves to the ground, where we lay still and silent on a bed of decomposing leaves, waiting until the bike jolted past, its engine racing as the tires sought a grip on the wet soil. The bike noise faded, but Aldo was back. He was making a lot of noise, scared, I guessed, of running into another wild boar. Less than a minute later, our escape attempt was over. He came around a tree trunk, pointing a gun. “Stand up and don’t try anything. I’d be happy to use this thing.”

  He pushed and pulled us through the woods to the house, to find Renata already there. She’d parked the bike by the front door, where she stood like a sentinel at hell’s gate. Without a word, she marched us up the stairs and shoved us back into our cell. I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t do it in front of her.

  She watched while we dragged the bed away from the window. Aldo placed his chair next to the door, but on the inside this time
. I sat on the bed and examined several deep scratches in my arm and the rope burns on my hands. Claire looked worse. Her green shirt was torn, and she had a nasty abrasion on her forearm.

  Renata went away and reappeared with a box of bandages and a bottle of something that smelled foul. “Clean yourselves up,” she ordered.

  It was ironic that she seemed worried our cuts and scratches might get infected, but presumably didn’t give a damn about putting bullets in our heads in the morning. She murmured something to Aldo before closing the door, locking Aldo in with us.

  The malodorous lotion stung even worse than it smelled, but applying it and sticking plasters on gave us something to do other than brood on our situation. Aldo watched us. He looked like a museum guard, sitting there at the door, except that he was better dressed. He seemed to like admiring his shiny black shoes.

  When I’d finished self-administering first aid, I put the thin pillow between me and the wall and leaned back. Claire came to sit next to me, bringing her own pillow.

  “What happens now?”

  “Wait a minute.” I looked over at Aldo. “Hey, Aldo, I need to go to the loo,” I said in English.

  He shook his head. “Non parlo Inglese.”

  Good, then at least Claire and I could talk without him listening in, not that it mattered really.

  “We failed,” Claire said. “We didn’t escape. We can’t save Ethan. He’s already dead, isn’t he?”

  “Probably,” I said, lost for any words of solace, or any words at all.

  “And it’s too late for Dante to find us. I wish I’d called him back, had him meet us at the train station in Florence. We might have got away before Santini’s men picked us up.” She glanced up me. “You’re looking skeptical. You don’t believe Dante’s innocent in all this, do you? In spite of what Santini said?”

  I’d been thinking about it. If Dante wasn’t working with his brother, then there were some coincidences I was finding it hard to reconcile. “It seems unlikely that he just happens to be in a relationship with you, the woman whose father uncovered the story of the Custodians.”

  “Exactly.” Claire rolled the top of the blanket into a tight tube, unrolled it and did it again. “Although I don’t understand why Santini would lie about it. There’s really no point in hiding Dante’s involvement from us since we’re about to be dead.”

  “I don’t get it either,” I said. “Maybe there’s some other rational explanation as to how Dante ended up with you.”

  “But it’s not likely,” she said. “I wish I could see him one more time to tell him what I think of him, il bastardo.”

  Aldo’s head jerked up. Maybe he thought we were talking about him.

  “I can’t believe I slept with him. I’m such an idiot.” She sniffed once or twice, but didn’t cry. “You have a serious boyfriend, don’t you?” she asked. “Josh?”

  I nodded. I’d do almost anything to be with Josh right now. The prospect of never seeing him again made me want to bawl my eyes out. He’d be devastated, I knew.

  “And you trust him completely?”

  “I do.” I remembered back to the previous year when I’d thought he was considering returning to his old college girlfriend. I’d misread the situation, of course, but I remembered how I felt at the time— betrayed and furious with myself for getting so deep into a relationship that I could be hurt that badly.

  I understood how Claire must be feeling. I tucked my arm through hers and patted her hand like my grandma used to do when I was upset. Claire leaned into me. We sat for a long time. There was no point in discussing another escape plan. Aldo wasn’t going to take his eyes off us.

  “What do you make of the van?” Claire asked. “What were all those packages and why would they arrive in the middle of the night?”

  “Probably Santini continuing the noble tradition of acquiring artworks that don’t belong to him,” I said. “This would be a good place to hide things.”

  Claire nodded. Any residual energy she’d had left seemed to drain away. “I have to sleep,” she said, sliding down to lie flat on the bed. I checked my watch. It was nearly three in the morning. We only had a matter of hours until Santini was safely in the company of his unassailable alibi. I thought I should stay awake for my last night on earth, but my eyelids felt as though they had weights attached to them. The blanket was itchy and musty but I pulled it up around my neck and fell asleep.

  An unseen pursuer chased me through a vast house, where the walls were hung with empty gilt frames and there were no windows. A young girl with a pink sash flitted back and forth, whispering hints on how to escape, but the doors melted when I touched them and the corridors stretched longer in every direction. And then I came to a hole in the floor, where a rabbit told me to jump through before it closed. I leapt in and the rabbit was laughing.

  I woke up, groggy and disoriented. Claire was lying in a fetal position with her back to me. Aldo snoozed in his chair, but I had no doubt he’d wake up the minute I moved. I checked my watch just as the clock chimed six. It was still dark outside, but morning was coming. And morning, for us, meant only one thing. The rabbit hole was getting smaller by the minute and soon we wouldn’t be able to get out at all.

  22

  When Aldo’s mobile rang, Claire bolted upright. I sat up too. This had to be the call from Santini. The one where he told Aldo and Renata to kill us. I tried to imagine how this would play out. Would they shoot us in the house? Too messy, probably. They’d do it outside. Would we be buried somewhere in the grounds, or dumped somewhere far away? I had no doubt these people had killed before. They were sure to have a good plan in place, but I hoped the police would discover our bodies quickly. It would be easier on my dad if he could bury me in the local church cemetery.

  I don’t cry much. Usually, I keep my emotions under wraps, but now tears burned my eyes and blurred the room around me. I blinked until my vision cleared. All I could see was Claire’s aura, which churned like a whirlpool in a river. Heartsick, I slumped back against the lumpy pillow.

  Aldo finished the call and told us to stand up. As I clambered to my feet, my legs cramped up from lying on the cement-like mattress. My back felt like an ironing board. Claire stood up beside me. She grabbed hold of my hand.

  “Come with me,” Aldo ordered.

  “I have to use the loo,” I said, in Italian this time. He frowned, but led us along the corridor and pushed the door open to a tiny, windowless room. The toilet was the old-fashioned kind with the water tank high up on the wall and a pull chain. I thought of using the chain as a weapon but after fumbling with it for a minute, I realized I couldn’t detach it. Aldo banged on the door and told me to hurry.

  Defeated, I joined Claire in the hallway and we trailed Aldo down the stone staircase and into the warm kitchen, which smelled of coffee. Renata plunked a mug down in front of each of us, together with a plate holding a pastry wrapped in plastic. So much for the prisoner’s last meal, I thought. Still, I was hungry and I ripped away the wrapping. The croissant inside was stale but it tasted better when I dipped it in the coffee. Claire pushed her mug and plate away untouched.

  Just as I finished the last drop of coffee, I heard the crunch of tires on the drive. Claire and I looked at each other. Apparently Aldo now had reinforcements to help him in his work.

  A minute later, another man in a dark suit came into the kitchen and exchanged greetings with Renata. He accepted a cup of coffee, which he carried with him out into the hallway. Aldo followed him. A murmur of voices followed, but it was impossible to make out what they were saying over the noise of Renata slamming dishes around in the old stone sink.

  No one seemed to be in a hurry, which made me want to scream with frustration. Maybe another few minutes should matter to me, but being stuck here with the grim nun and a posse of Italian hit men wasn’t an experience I wanted to extend.

  Finally, Aldo returned. “Let’s go,” he said.

  My legs turned to rubber when I stood up, bu
t somehow I managed to stay on my feet. Renata threw evil looks at us as Aldo and the newbie led us out of the kitchen and towards the front door. I glanced at the urn as we passed, but there was no time to retrieve the diagram I’d dropped in there last night. There was no point anyway.

  Outside, the world had shrunk. We moved through thick grey fog, seeing only a few meters ahead of us. Sounds were muffled and indistinct apart from a steady drip of water from the trees. An amorphous shape that loomed on the driveway gradually materialized as a large black car. I thought it was the same Alfa Romeo that had tailed us from Valeria’s place on Sunday afternoon. Aldo told us to get in the back seat and made sure we put on our seat belts, which I found amusing under the circumstances. Then he tied blindfolds around our eyes. I couldn’t understand why. It wasn’t as though we were going to be alive long enough to tell anyone anything. I heard him rustling into the passenger seat.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, as the driver turned on the engine and put the car in gear.

  “You’ll find out,” Aldo said.

  We left the gravel drive and zigzagged down the hill. At the bottom, we turned, and the car continued to drive slowly on a road with lots of bends. My stomach did flips. Were we heading to a remote place in the country? A place where they could shoot us and bury us with no one in earshot and no witnesses? My dad would never know what happened to me. Claire grabbed my hand and squeezed so hard the blood stopped flowing to it.

  After a while, the driver went faster, speeding through bends and accelerating on straight stretches. Not being able to see anything was horrible. Was it still foggy? Ridiculous as it was to worry about being killed in a car crash on the way to being shot, I sat rigidly in my seat. Josh always told me I was an impossible passenger, pressing imaginary brakes with my foot, flinching when we went over the speed limit. I tried not to think about Josh. It was too painful to imagine that I’d never see him again.