The Prosecco Fortune

by Stella Whitelaw

  He went down on the waterfront by the Doge’s Palace. It was well lit in the fading darkness. A group of water taxi drivers were talking angrily, their voices raised.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Marco asked.

  ‘Pedro. It is Pedro. He has had his motorboat stolen. The polizia say it is just kids. But still it is a crime, signor.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday, yesterday morning. Very early. Pedro came late because his wife is sick but his boat had gone. The mooring rope sawn through. It was more than local kids. They only take small boats. The motorboat is a powerful launch.’

  Marco swallowed hard. Maria had said that Emma got into a water taxi, a water taxi that she had not ordered. ‘Tell Pedro to get in touch with me, Marco dell’Orto. I will help him and his sick wife. But now I wish to hire a motorboat for the whole night. I will pay well. I want a driver who knows the safe canals and the small islands.’

  ‘That will be Giovanni. Giovanni knows the Lagoon like the back of his hand. When he is not drinking.’

  ‘I am Giovanni. I have lived here all my life. The small islets were my playground as a boy. I fished, I swam, I had a rowing boat. Now I have the best motorboat on the lagoon.’

  The other drivers laughed at his boasting but they knew he spoke the truth about his knowledge. Giovanni was old, grizzled, his beard grey but trimly cut. His motorboat looked powerful, dark and polished. It had a big headlamp.

  He did not look as if he had been drinking recently.

  ‘I want to tour all the thousand small islets, the unnamed, the unknown. Where no one goes,’ said Marco. ‘I want you to go slowly, with your headlamp on. Can you do this in the dark?’

  ‘Naturalmente,’ said Giovanni. ‘I can see in the dark. I am like my cat.’

  Marco climbed onto the motorboat. It was spick and span. And Giovanni had a cat. The deeply striped tabby had sealegs. He walked steadily across the deck to greet their new passenger.

  ‘That is Capotto, called because of his beautiful coat.’

  ‘Hello, Capotto,’ said Marco.

  Giovanni headed out to sea. ‘There are many islands. This will take a long time. I will sweep around each island with the headlamp. Then we may see what we are looking for.’ He had no idea what they were looking for. The signor was an eccentric. He had not said. Perhaps he could not sleep, liked travelling in the dark.

  The polizia launch was better equipped. It had two sweeping headlamps, a loudspeaker, a stretcher, first-aid equipment, fire- fighting equipment, thermal bedding, instant radio connections, men trained in sea rescue.

  Commissario Morelli was not trained in sea rescue but he felt that these were the first real clues. It could not all be coincidence. A woman screaming, the stolen water taxi, the flashes. Emma would do flashes. It was all she would have. A mirror from her handbag perhaps, the winter sun. So it meant she was alive and well, somewhere. What was that English phrase? Needle in a haystack? This was an island among hundreds, almost the same as a needle.

  Claudio was not a religious person. Few polizia were. He prayed now to some saint. Simple words. ‘Please help me find her.’

  Emma thought she heard her name but she must have been dream-ing. She was very cold. Her fingers and toes were like ice. She tried to remember what she knew about frostbite but it was very little. She was remembering her childhood. She had a little grey cat called Tiger that she loved dearly. But they had put her cat to sleep without telling her, without giving her a chance to say goodbye.

  It was raining now, a steady drizzle that was good for the wind-beaten bushes and saplings but not good for her.

  She saw a beam of light across the sky but thought it was a meteor or a plane coming in to land at the Marco Polo Airport. The flight path must be across the sea. London seemed very far away. Yet she had once lived there. That also seemed a long time ago.

  ‘Emma …’ Again she thought she heard her name. It sounded strangely foreign, a different language. It meant nothing. She closed her eyes, trying to sleep. It was important to sleep, to keep up her strength.

  ‘It’s no good. There is no answer,’ said the new young policeman, tired and wet. ‘We have been everywhere.’

  ‘One more try, per favore,’ said Claudio. ‘These outer islets. I have a feeling she is somewhere here.’

  ‘But she must have heard us. The loudspeaker.’

  ‘Perhaps she is injured. Perhaps she can’t walk or call out. We must circle them again, slowly. Give her time to respond. This is a young woman’s life we are talking about, not some kids, drinking beer at an all-night party.’

  ‘And if not?’

  ‘I shall search each island myself. You will put me ashore and wait for me. This I command.’

  The new recruit knew now that Commissario Claudio Morelli was very different. No ordinary poliziotto would do anything so mad or so dangerous. But he still admired the man.

  ‘Perhaps Signorina Chandler is still in Venice.’

  ‘No, I have a feeling. She is here somewhere.’

  Giovanni was sweeping the dark water with his powerful headlamp. Capotto, the cat, had taken shelter in the cabin, curled on a cushion. The rain was becoming a downpour, drops pelting the sea like hailstones. Marco was cold. How could Emma survive such a night if she was on an island? Unprotected and alone?

  It was the first time that he even thought that she might not survive. What would he do without her? He could only work, care for his workforce. Make thousands of litres of Prosecco for other people to drink. But there would be no dell’Orto children. He would not marry. He could not exist without her.

  twenty-two

  Emma felt some insect crawling over her face. She didn’t brush it off. She might have to eat it tomorrow. It was not an encouraging thought but she had seen survival programmes that said insects were full of protein. She did not want raw protein. She wanted hot, creamy pasta sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

  She was so cold she could barely move her limbs. At this rate she would get arthritis. That is, if she lived long enough to get arthritis. She rather hoped she would live long enough to get arthritis or rheumatism. The faintest of smiles crossed her face as the pointlessness of this argument struck her as amusing.

  Her thoughts went back to the day she joined Irving Stone Partners. Harry Irving, the son, had made a beeline for her, her fresh face and tawny hair a strong attraction. A luscious new conquest, he thought. He had reeled off a parade of jokes during her first coffee break. She could not remember any of them now. Laughter might keep her warm. It was supposed to be a tonic.

  Harry had been a nuisance those first few months but her inborn good manners prevented her from being rude to him. He followed her everywhere, pounced on her unexpectedly, bombarded her with invitations for drinks after work. She only accepted if she knew that other colleagues were going along, too. The thought of being trapped in a corner of a bar with him gave her the creeps.

  He only gave up when a long-legged blonde joined the secretarial staff. She thought the boss’s only son was a catch. But Harry had no intention of being caught. He was more than footloose, although he always tied his laces.

  She stumbled to her feet, dragging her wet coat round her. She couldn’t try to sleep any more. Keeping warm was more important. There was a small stretch of sand some twenty metres from the ruin. It was not flat but strewn with bits of rocks. She must be careful not to stumble and fall. A broken ankle would be a disaster.

  The saplings gave her the answer. She searched among the branches in the dark, feeling for something straight and ready to break. A convenient branch broke off. She removed the bits sticking out and a few dead leaves. It was the nearest she could get to a walking stick, crooked, more like a shepherd’s staff.

  ‘My trusty stick,’ she said out loud. Her voice sounded weird in the darkness, against the lashing of the sea on the shore. ‘My trusty stick,’ she said again, more firmly. ‘Time for us to go for a walk.’

  Her boots were w
recked by now but they held together. There was some leakage in the stitching on the left sole and she could feel the dampness oozing in as she walked over the sand. Her brain seemed to be working more slowly than usual. Even the most elementary things were escaping her. She could not remember her Brixton postcode. She could not remember any poetry or songs, but she could remember some nursery rhymes of her childhood. Her foster parents had no time to read to her, but they gave her a book on her birthday. It had vivid illustrations.

  ‘And when the pie was opened,

  The birds began to sing …’

  She stopped, thought she heard something, some sort of call, but it was only the wind or a bird calling to its mate. There had been a few birds on the island but they did not stay long, flying off to some bigger and more interesting larder.

  ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.’

  She heard it again. It was definitely a sound of some sort, very distant. The stick knocked against a rock and she came to a halt, tensed, listening intently. There was only the sound of waves breaking on the rocks and stones, washing back.

  ‘Is there anybody there?’ she shouted. It was useless. Of course, there was no one there in the middle of the night. A wet night in January in the middle of the Venetian Lagoon. The rain was dripping down her face. At least her water crevasse would be filling up with fresh drinking water.

  It was the faintest sound carried on the wind. It sounded like ‘Emma …’

  Was someone out there? Was someone looking for her? She did not think for a moment that it was the two thugs returning to finish her off. They had left that to the weather and the total isolation of the island. If they had meant to kill her they would have crushed her head with a handy rock before leaving her.

  Emma went down on her knees and found a piece of rock she could hold easily in her hand. She then stumbled across the sand to a large outcrop of rock and started banging on it with the rock she was holding. Being an accountant, it had to be a mathematical pattern. Nothing random. She hit the rock ten times, then called out ten times.

  Ten hits, ten calls. Then she paused, listening for any answer. There was nothing. She tried again. Ten hits, ten calls, then a pause. She caught back a sob. What else could she do to make a noise, a noise that would be heard over the crashing waves? Her voice was hoarse. She couldn’t scream. She had never been able to whistle.

  The rock concert was her only chance. She heard distant bells chiming some hour in Venice. Perhaps as it grew lighter someone would come. She took off the scarf which Marco had bought for her, wrung it out and tied it to the end of her trusty stick. It was already wet and the hem was fraying. She made the knots really tight so that she would not lose it to the brisk wind.

  She started waving the scarf like some revolutionary from Les Miserables. It was the right colours. She stood well away from the bushes and saplings. There was nothing she could climb onto, no assailable rock or wall.

  A beam of light flashed over the water but it was too far away. It didn’t catch her makeshift flag. But it gave her hope. Someone was out there in a boat. Maybe they were fishermen, putting down lobster pots. Perhaps they needed a lamp to guide them between the dangerous sandbanks.

  Emma was tiring. She wondered how long she could keep going. Her arms were aching from both waving and hitting the rock.

  ‘Please, please,’ she sobbed. ‘Somebody see me.’

  Claudio had already waded ashore on six or seven deserted islands. He was wearing borrowed rubber boots but his trousers were wet through. He had taken a loudspeaker and shouted for Emma but there was no response, only a lot of startled birds rising into the air, wings flapping and squawking.

  The recruit, whose name was Barto, had keen hearing. He said he thought he heard something but he wasn’t sure what it was. The wind and the rain were noisy enough. And the engine of the police launch drowned any other sounds.

  ‘Turn off the engine,’ said Claudio. ‘We’ll drift for a few minutes. Keep an eye open for the sandbanks. We don’t want to have to be rescued ourselves. That would be too humiliating.’

  ‘Si,’ said the driver.

  The driver switched off the engine and the sound died away into the night. Barto and Claudio stood in the bows of the rocking launch, listening intently. The waves slapped hard against the launch.

  ‘I can hear something,’ said Barto. ‘A sort of knocking. But it could just be the sea against the rocks. Now it’s stopped. Maybe it was my imagination. No, it’s started again.’

  Claudio could hear it now and a tremor of excitement ran through him. The knocking was not random. It had a definite rhythmical pattern. Emma would give it a pattern, a mathematical pattern. He began counting the knocks. Eight, nine, ten. Then it stopped, paused. Then it started again. One, two three …’

  ‘That’s Emma Chandler. It must be. Oddio. She is still alive. But she is here somewhere, near enough for us to hear. She’s found some sound that carries in the air. Start sweeping the sea with the beam, slowly and methodically. We must find her. Sweep slowly.’

  The launch was down to its lowest speed, the engine just ticking over. The powerful beam swept over the waves, seeing nothing but water. They could still hear the knocking but it seemed to be faltering.

  Claudio phoned Marco on his mobile. ‘We think we have heard someone knocking. This is the location.’ He gave the nautical location.

  ‘I’m coming,’ Marco said. ‘I’m not far away.’

  ‘I think I can see something,’ Barto shouted, squinting hard. ‘Look over there, westward, Commissario. It’s moving sideways, not much, but definitely a sort of flag waving.’

  Claudio grabbed some binoculars but he couldn’t see a thing. Barto turned the beam of the lamp in the direction of the movement he had seen.

  ‘Over there,’ he said. ‘Can you see anything?’

  ‘Keep moving towards it,’ Claudio urged the driver. ‘We’ve caught something in the beam.’

  ‘It’s coming from that far scrap of land, barely an island at all. It would be covered by a very high tide. Yes, something is moving, Commissario. It’s waving a wet rag.’

  ‘Si. It must be Emma,’ said Claudio, faint with relief. ‘Move in closer, slowly, we don’t want to run aground.’ He hoped they were not mistaken, that it was not a lost sweater dropped from a tourist trip, caught on a branch.

  The knocking had almost stopped. Even the waving seemed barely to be moving now. Once it disappeared altogether. Then they heard another sound, very weak. Barely a voice.

  ‘Help. Help me.’

  Claudio grabbed the loudspeaker. ‘Emma! Emma! We’re coming, Emma,’ he said loudly. ‘We are coming. Hold on. Show us where you are. Can you stand in the light? Stand up, Emma. So we can see you.’

  Then they caught a glimpse of Emma’s white face in the beam of light. She was crouched on the sand, struggling to stand on her feet, using a sort of stick to lever herself up. She barely had the strength to stand.

  Claudio was over the side of the police launch the moment it reached shallow water. He waded through the waves, up onto the sand, straight to the slight figure struggling to stand.

  He caught her in his arms. ‘Oddio. I’ve got you, Emma. You’re safe now. It is Commissario Claudio Morelli. Hold on. I’m taking you home.’

  He couldn’t carry her. Her coat was sodden and she was a dead weight. Barto jumped in the water and came over to help. The driver kept the powerful beam on the couple as they carried Emma back to the launch. She had no strength to walk but she could speak.

  ‘Grazie, grazie,’ she murmured. It was like a miracle.

  They lifted her over the side, trying to be gentle, into the rocking launch. They took off the wet coat and wrapped her in blankets, guided her to the cabin, then held a cup of coffee to her lips. It tasted heavenly. Had she gone to heaven? But no, she recognized the Commissario, though he looked different from his usual spruce self. He was soaking wet, hair tousled, face stream
ing.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said again.

  ‘Marco is coming,’ Claudio said. ‘I have told him where we are. He is also searching the Lagoon.’

  ‘It was two men,’ said Emma, still hoarse. ‘In a water taxi. They tied me up and left me on the island to die.’

  Claudio took Barto aside. ‘Go back onto the island and search for items. They tied her up. There must be rope, some clues. Take a lamp. See what you can find. Bring everything.’

  ‘Si, Commissario.’ Barto looked dismayed at having to go back into the cold water. Young and fit as he was, he was shivering.

  ‘This will look good on your personnel report,’ Claudio reminded him. ‘A good start to your career. You will end up as Vice-Questore.’

  Claudio was rubbing life back into Emma’s cold hands and feet. Her hands were torn and bleeding. Her boots were full of water. He towelled her face and hair. She did not seem to be injured in any way. There was not much more they could do on the launch. She needed a hot bath and Maria’s good soup and a night’s sleep in the safety of the palazzo.

  But he needed a statement from her before she forgot vital details. A fresh memory was always more reliable.

  ‘We have some rolls but they are from the polizia canteen, so very ordinary.’

  Emma nodded. ‘Per favore … I will eat ordinary, anything.’

  She did not know what she was eating. A bread roll with a cheese filling of sorts. But it was food and not an insect. Claudio refilled the coffee cup and she sipped it gratefully, the heat, the taste, the milkiness was nectar. She could feel its warmth trickling down inside her.

  ‘Marco?’

  ‘Marco is coming. He is not far away now.’

  The new recruit returned with his loot from the island. He had found Emma’s bag, the sacking, the rope, her torn scarf tied to a branch and a linen cap. ‘There’s nothing more. Only a small ruin for a hermit or plague victim.’

  ‘My trusty stick,’ said Emma. She was beginning to feel very sleepy, despite the caffeine. ‘My ruined scarf.’