Days Without Number

by Robert Goddard

  ‘We’ve got to get you to a hospital.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Emily—’

  ‘Listen to me. While you still can. Demetrius sent the launch to pick up Basil. He’ll be free by now. I waited until I was sure of that before I made my move. Demetrius never saw the double-cross coming. He thought I really had sold out to him.’ She laughed, inducing a grimace of pain.‘He underestimated me. But I underestimated him too. He had a knife. And I simply wasn’t quick enough. Nearly. But not quite. Clever. But not clever enough. Story of my life.’ She smiled through gritted teeth.‘And my death.’

  ‘You’re not going to die.’

  ‘Clean away or nothing: that’s the deal. I’m not prepared to spend the next couple of decades in prison. Let me go, Nick.’ She tried to smile again.‘You’re better off without me. Everyone is.’

  ‘Where’s your phone?’

  ‘Didn’t bring one.’

  Nick stretched across her to reach the case. Her rapid breaths fanned his cheek as he prised at the catches. They would not budge.

  ‘It’s combination-locked.’

  He looked round at her. She shook her head. She would not tell.

  ‘Better this way. Believe me.’

  ‘I’ll phone from the house.’ He ducked as he moved back out of the car. Her grip on his arm tightened.

  ‘It was some secret, Nick. Quite some secret.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You told me. There was no tape. Except the one I pre-recorded to bring you out of the trance after I’d gone. So, with Demetrius dead, I’m the only one who knows. I’m the only one who can tell you what it is.’ She winced.‘Don’t you want to stay and find out?’

  ‘We can talk later.’

  ‘There won’t be a later.’

  ‘Yes, there will.’ He lifted her hand off his arm as gently as he could and laid it in her lap. She had no strength left. Except where it mattered.‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

  ‘OK.’ She closed her eyes.‘Have it your way.’

  He ran towards the villa, his feet crunching on the gravel. Two strides carried him to the top of the steps. He flung the door open and rushed into the hall.

  And then he heard the shot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The vaporetto was halfway across the lagoon on its run from the Lido to the Grand Canal when Nick saw the police launch heading fast in the opposite direction. He had dialled the emergency number on the first payphone he had come to after leaving the villa and repeated the same message through a jabber of questions. ‘Tre morti. Villa Margherita. Via Cornaro, il Lido.’ It was all he could say and all he could risk saying, however good his Italian. Emily was dead. Nothing could alter that. And nothing could wipe from his mind’s eye the sight of how she had died.‘Tre morti. Villa Margherita. Via Cornaro, il Lido.’

  Nick swallowed hard and gripped the rail tightly as he watched the bouncing shape of the launch diminish as it sped on towards the Lido. The police would make their own sense of what had happened. It would be a long way from the truth. Emily had shot Demetrius and Mario and then herself. Those were facts. But they were facts that explained nothing. Only Nick understood the cause and effect of them, dearly though he wished he did not. Tears filled his eyes as he stared after the launch. The vaporetto was rolling in its wake now. The discovery was not far off. Three deaths at the Villa Margherita were about to become public property.

  Emily had said Basil was safe. But Nick needed to see him to believe it. Until he did, he could not afford to let himself be overwhelmed by the images flashing up in his mind: Mario’s blood on the marble tiles of the hall; Demetrius’s dead, frozen scowl; and the splatter of brain and bone across the gravel, where Emily had half-fallen from the car.

  Nick closed his eyes and rewound the sequence of events that had led to the moment of Emily’s death. He could have acted differently at every stage. But still, he suspected, she would have engineered her own destruction.‘Have it your way,’ her last words to him, sounded now like an ironical farewell. He could not have chosen to save her. She had already chosen not to be saved. He could only have chosen to stay and to listen and to learn at last the secret locked in his memory. Instead, he had turned away.

  Part of him was glad of that. What did the secret matter, after all? What secret could matter in the face of so much death? He no longer cared what it might be, nor whether he would ever find out. Curiosity had been burned out of him. All he cared about now was Basil.

  By the time the vaporetto reached Ca’ d’Oro, more than an hour had passed since Nick’s phone call to the emergency services. The police would have started their investigation by now. But it would take them several more hours at least to question the workmen at the Palazzo Falcetto and start looking for the Englishman who had visited Demetrius the day before. They might not even look at all, once they had established Emily’s identity and probable motive. For the moment, Nick was in the clear, though he felt anything but.

  From the Ca’d’Oro stop, he hurried north by a route he now knew quite well to the Zampogna, hoping and praying he would find Basil waiting for him there.

  Carlotta greeted him from her cubby-hole with a leer that might have been intended as a smile and an incomprehensible announcement that Nick desperately wanted to believe meant Basil had turned up.

  ‘Signer Paleologus? My brother? Is he here?’

  ‘C’qualcuno qui per lei.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Con Luigi.’

  ‘The last word he understood. He rushed straight out and into the bar next door.

  ‘Signor Paleologus,’ boomed Luigi.‘You have more relatives in Venice than me. Here is another.’

  But the bulky figure propped at the counter was not technically any kind of relative. Nor did he seem pleased to see Nick. Satisfaction of a sort crossed Terry Mawson’s face as he swivelled his neck, but of pleasure there was no sign.

  ‘Terry?’

  ‘Surprised to see me?’

  ‘Yes. I mean—what—’

  ‘We need to talk.’ Terry’s tone suggested that the talk he had in mind was in no sense optional.

  ‘Have you seen Basil?’ No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Nick regretted them.

  ‘No. Should I have?’ Terry stood upright and glared at Nick.‘I want to know what the bloody hell you’re up to.’ Luigi rolled his eyes and stated polishing a glass.‘You can start with telling me where I can find Harriet Elsmore.’ The glare hardened.‘Well?’

  With some difficulty, Nick persuaded Terry to put his questions on hold until they had reached the spartan privacy of Basil’s old room in the Zampogna. Half of Nick’s mind was focused on the need to find his brother. Most of the other half dwelt on memories of Emily—the bitter and the sweet. There was little left over for Terry.

  ‘Is this dump the best you can do?’ Terry asked as he recovered his breath from the short climb up Carlotta’s steepling stairs.

  ‘It’s where Basil was staying.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Never mind. Why are you here, Terry?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Irene said you’d come here to find Basil. That creep at the Consulate gave me the same story. But I don’t buy it. You’re here because Harriet Elsmore’s here. That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. That isn’t it.’

  ‘Tell Kate the truth. That was your brilliant idea, wasn’t it? That was your considered advice.’

  ‘She has to know.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, she does now. I told her. Like you suggested. And now she blames me for Tom’s death. She won’t speak to me. She won’t listen to me. There’s no communication. She’s cut me off.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not as sorry as I am. I figure the only way I can repair the damage I’ve done—yeah, I admit it, the damage I’ve done—is to get the people who pushed Tom over the top. I caught
up with Farnsworth, no thanks to you. I applied some pressure. It didn’t take much. Mentally, he can go the distance and then some. Physically, it’s a different story.’

  ‘You beat up an old man?’

  ‘I threatened to. That’s all it took. He told me everything.’

  ‘I doubt that.’ Nick was understating the case. He was in fact certain that Farnsworth had played a more central role in events than he was likely to have admitted. But Nick was also certain that he no longer cared.

  ‘Your father and grandfather uncovered some secret at Tintagel in the Thirties. Digby Braybourne knew what it was, but Farnsworth only ever heard hints and whispers. It’s to do with Trennor. Something valuable’s hidden there. Farnsworth reckoned your father’s death gave him the chance to find out what, so he started digging. He claims Harriet Elsmore is Braybourne’s daughter, out for revenge and the secret. She sucked Tom into her plans and, as far as I’m concerned, she’s responsible for what happened to him.’

  ‘She probably is.’

  ‘Right. So, where is she? You know, don’t you, Nick? You know where she’s hiding.’

  ‘She isn’t hiding.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘It’s too late, Terry. For her, for you, for me. For everyone.’

  ‘I’m not leaving until I find out where she is.’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose you are.’ Nick stepped across to the basin, ran some cold water on to his hands and wiped his face.‘Well, OK, then. Here’s how it is. Earlier this morning, Harriet Elsmore, real name Emily Braybourne, murdered Demetrius Constantine Paleologus, the man she blamed correctly—for her brother’s death. She murdered one of his bodyguards too. Then she killed herself. With a bullet through the head. These stains on my sleeve are her blood. I saw her die. The police are cleaning up the mess even as we speak. Picking up the pieces. Searching for clues. Go looking for her now and all you’ll do is implicate yourself—and me. Things are bad. But you can only make them worse by pressing on with this. Go home, Terry. Make your peace with Kate. You’ll find a way. A lot sooner than you’ll find anything here, except a heap of trouble. I’m sorry, I really am. But there’s no revenge to be had. It’s all been used up. There’s nothing left.’

  After Nick had said his piece, Terry’s bluster was suddenly spent. He had been sustained by the belief that he could bludgeon his way to justice and a reconciliation with Kate. Now he knew better. He was out of his depth and far from home. He had been foolish to come. But he was not so foolish as to remain.

  ‘If she’s dead, that finishes it,’ he mumbled, his eyes downcast. I’d better get back to Kate.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘There’s a flight at five fifteen.’ Terry glanced at his watch.‘I could be on it.’

  ‘I think it’d be best if you were.’

  ‘I can’t afford to get mixed up with the police.’

  ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘I’ve been through the wringer these past few days, Nick. I probably haven’t been thinking straight. Maybe Kate hasn’t been either. I won’t get her back by staying away, will I?’

  ‘No.’

  “That settles it, then.’

  ‘Yeah. I reckon it does.’

  But Terry’s hangdog departure settled nothing for Nick. He could only wait for Basil to show up at the Zampogna, telling himself all the while that he would show up. Soon. Or later. Or eventually.

  An hour passed. Then two. Fears and fantasies began to swarm in Nick’s head. Perhaps Demetrius had never meant to release Basil. Perhaps the CCTV pictures had been faked. Perhaps Basil was dead, his body lying undiscovered in a disused warehouse, like Nardini’s, or somewhere else—or anywhere else.

  Then the memories crowded in. The last moments of Emily Braybourne’s life jostled with Nick’s recollections of the night they had spent together in the hotel at Heathrow. The closeness and the distance; the longing and the losing: they became one in the end.

  He had waited long enough. There was nothing else for it. He was done with evasion. All he could do for Basil was go to the police and tell them as much as he knew in the hope that it would be enough. And all he could do had to be done now, while he was still capable of it. He threw on some clean clothes and set out.

  It was a half-hour ride on the vaporetto from Ca’ d’Oro to San Zaccaria, the nearest stop to the Questura. The boat was crowded with the usual assortment of tourists, students and shoppers, though as far as Nick was concerned it might as well have been empty. He stood in the stern, alone with more fears and regrets than he could hold in his mind. He was numb now, his thoughts amounting to nothing beyond an incoherent dread. What was to follow could no more be altered by him than what had already happened. He was a prisoner as much of the future as of the past.

  The vaporetto chugged past the Palazzo Falcetto, where ricostruzione was still in progress, and on round the curve of the Grand Canal, while a grey shroud stretched itself slowly across the sky and a moist breeze began to blow. The afternoon grew rapidly cold and dank.

  As Nick gazed blankly ashore, the march past of mouldering palazzi gave way to the greenery of the Giardinetti Reali and the stately flank of the Doge’s Palace. Between them, a view of the Piazzetta and the Basilica was briefly framed by the two columns of San Marco and San Teodoro. Glancing up at the winged lion atop the right-hand column, Nick suddenly remembered his attempt to warn Basil against coming to Venice in the first place.‘You’ll be stepping into the lion’s den.’ But Basil had brushed the warning aside.‘There are a lot of lions in Venice. Bronze or marble for the most part.’ Nick smiled, despite himself.

  And then he saw, standing near the foot of the lion’s column, a figure he took at first for a hallucination—a figment of his own wishful thinking. It could not be Basil, he told himself. It simply could not be. He blinked. But the figure did not vanish. He blinked again. And still it was there. And this time he knew for sure. It was Basil.

  The next four or five minutes were an agony for Nick. The vaporetto slowed as it approached San Zaccaria, and slowed again. Basil was out of sight now and Nick could only hope he had not strayed far. He leapt off on to the landing-stage while the boatman was still pushing back the rail, ran down the ramp, then sprinted along the riva towards the bridge leading to the Piazzetta.

  As he crested the hump of the bridge, the area around the columns came into view. There was no sign of Basil. His heart jolted. But he kept running.

  Then, as he rounded the corner of the Doge’s Palace and glanced to his right, he saw him. Basil was sitting on one of the flood platforms stowed in front of the Basilica, staring into space. He was wearing the cagoule Nick had last seen him in, though it looked even scruffier, and his walking boots, rather than the espadrilles Nick had glimpsed on Demetrius’s television. He had surely lost some weight, which, combined with the white stubble round his head and chin, made him appear old and haggard, almost pitiful.

  Nick slowed to a walk, daring himself to believe what he saw. The distance shrank between them. Then he called his brother’s name. Basil looked round. And the smile that lit his face was anything but pitiful.

  ‘Nick! Thank God.’ Basil jumped up and threw a hug round Nick.‘I’d nearly given up waiting.’

  Two surprises were thus compressed into one. Basil had apparently been waiting for Nick, just as Nick had been waiting for him, though they had been doing it in different places. The other surprise was that Nick had never been hugged by his brother before in his life.

  It was a fleeting innovation. Nick unwrapped himself and gazed into Basil’s smiling face, slowly realizing that he too was smiling, just as broadly.

  ‘I’ve been at the Zampogna. Expecting you at any moment. For about three hours.’

  ‘They said they’d bring you here, Nick. Some time this afternoon. They said I was to stay here until you arrived and that it would be the worse for you if I didn’t.’

  ‘When did they let you go?’

  ‘It must have been around n
oon. They’ve been holding me in a derelict house on some abandoned island out in the lagoon. I was brought here by launch and told very clearly that I’d only see you again if I obeyed their instructions to the letter. Our cousin Demetrius Constantine is not a fellow to be trifled with, as I’m sure you’re aware, nor yet to be trusted. In this case, however, I had no choice but to trust him, or at any rate his messengers. I’m more delighted than I can say that my trust has been vindicated.’

  ‘I’m not sure it has.’ Nick was actually sure of the reverse. Dropping Basil off at San Marco and telling him to stay put had to be part of some devious ploy. But the ploy was now irrelevant.‘One thing’s certain. We don’t have to worry about Demetrius any more.’

  ‘We don’t?’

  ‘Listen, Basil. We need to get out of Venice. In a hurry.’

  ‘I wouldn’t argue with that. My visit’s hardly been a happy one.’

  ‘Have you got your passport? I couldn’t find it in your room.’

  ‘It’s in my pocket.’

  ‘Same here. So, what’s stopping us?’

  ‘I ought to settle my bill at the Zampogna.’

  ‘Already done. All we need to do is grab our things from the room and scoot.’

  ‘I have the impression there’s something you’re not telling me, Nick.’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything once we’re on our way. That’s a promise.’ Not quite, Nick reflected. He would tell Basil almost everything. And leave him to guess the rest.

  ‘You’re not going to try to force me on to an aeroplane, are you?’

  ‘Not if you can find us a train to catch p.d.q.’

  ‘How about the overnight express to Paris? It leaves at seven forty-five. That’s how I’d planned to depart, after all. Though not necessarily tonight.’

  ‘But tonight it is. Let’s go.’

  They took a water taxi up to the Fondamenta dell’Abbazia, as close to the Zampogna as it could get. Installed in the cabin with the door firmly closed, Basil related how he had been set upon while walking back towards the Zampogna after his visit to San Mich le on Monday morning. Heavies had shoved him, bound and gagged, into the covered hold of a builder’s boat and taken him out into the lagoon, where he had been transferred to a launch, blindfolded and borne away to a bare, plastered room in a crumbling old house on a deserted island. Demetrius had shown up later, demanding to be told the secret that his father and Basil’s father had apparently shared. But Basil could not tell him.