by Ewan, Chris
‘This is weird,’ Victoria told me, her hands wrapped around a steaming mug of English tea.
‘You’re telling me. I’ve heard of burglars leaving calling cards, but never anything like this.’
‘Perhaps it’s a guerrilla marketing campaign.’
‘For a Venetian bookbinder?’
‘Hmm, I suppose it is a touch aggressive.’
‘You think?’
I slapped the language dictionary onto the wooden steamer trunk that functioned as my coffee table and placed the card on top. I was perched on the rickety dining chair I used when I was writing. Victoria was sitting on the leather chesterfield across from me, her legs and feet folded beneath her and hidden by the pink dressing gown she’d put on.
There wasn’t a lot of furniture in my apartment, and much of what there was hailed from England. The building I lived in was owned by the retired couple in the maisonette below – a former GP from Cambridge and his Italian wife – who’d furnished each floor with the belongings they’d brought with them to Venice more than a decade before. The apartment above me was currently unoccupied, as it was likely to remain for another few weeks until the tourist season picked up for Carnevale in February.
Victoria had been in my apartment for three days so far. She’d come to visit me for a fortnight with the intention of reading my new novel. I suppose I should have felt relieved that she could still do that, given that my laptop hadn’t been swiped. But for the moment, I was struggling to focus on the bright side of my situation.
‘And you say the burglar was female?’ Victoria asked me.
‘Very.’
She scowled. ‘Attractive?’
‘It was dark, Vic. And she was in something of a hurry to leave. And to be honest, I had other things on my mind.’
Victoria rolled her eyes and slurped her tea. She clenched her dressing gown across her chest, then reached for the flyer and subjected it to another assessment. ‘Any theories about this card?’
‘Maybe she’s goading me – telling me where I might buy a replacement for my book.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘If she’s a complete bitch.’
‘No, you idiot, I meant about there being a replacement. How many first editions of The Maltese Falcon are there?’
I gave her question some thought. ‘Few enough for them to be worth an awful lot of money. And let’s not forget that my copy was signed.’
‘It’s funny.’ Victoria swallowed more tea. ‘You never did tell me how you came to own it. Where did you find the money?’
I treated her to a level gaze.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘You stole it.’
I threw up my hands, as if that much should have been obvious.
‘Who from?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘It might. If they decided to steal it back.’
‘Oh. I hadn’t considered that.’
‘Is it possible?’
I drummed my fingers on my chin. On balance, it struck me as highly unlikely. It was more than eight years since I’d acquired the book and I hadn’t been back to England since. So far as I was aware, the person I’d liberated it from had no idea who I was, and I’d never felt the need to contact a dealer to establish its worth because I had no intention of selling. To me, the book was priceless.
I’d first read The Maltese Falcon when I was at boarding school. It hadn’t been on the curriculum. Nothing that was on the curriculum could possibly have swept me away with the same force. I fell hard for the wise-cracking private eye, the overblown villains, the tawdry San Francisco backdrop and the switchback plot (the cross, the double-cross, the triple-cross – I could go on). Anything I ever learned about writing I learned from Hammett. So perhaps you can imagine how much it had meant to me when, years later, I found myself in a position to pinch a first edition, signed by my own personal hero.
‘I don’t think it’s possible at all,’ I told Victoria, in what I hoped was a conclusive tone. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it.’
‘Well, somebody must have known it was here.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Have you entertained many guests since you’ve been in Venice?’
I did my best to navigate a safe response. ‘One or two, perhaps. Though I wouldn’t have drawn their attention to the book.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do.’
Victoria plonked the flyer down on the steamer trunk and peered into the depths of her cup. The dregs of her tea seemed to fascinate her. ‘How about your landlords?’
‘Martin and Antea? They’re scrupulously honest. The rent I pay them is evidence of that. Antea’s a real sweetheart. She’s always fussing over me – bringing me a treat from the market, or forcing jars of home-made pasta sauce onto me. Besides which, they have a key. If they wanted to steal my things, they’d have no need to hire a cat burglar.’
‘Could anyone else have been in here?’
I scratched my head. ‘I have a cleaner who comes on Tuesdays.’
‘Well, there you go.’
‘She’s not the type.’
‘But what does that even mean, Charlie? It’s not as if you look like a thief.’
‘Maybe that’s because I haven’t been for the past nine months.’
It was perfectly true. In fact, it was 279 days (and counting) since I’d stolen anything at all. Now, that may not sound like a big deal to you, but to me it was mighty significant. I’d always made a fairly decent – if not entirely respectable – living as a burglar, and changing my habits had been a genuine challenge.
It didn’t help that I enjoyed it. Reprehensible, I know, but I get an undeniable buzz from snooping through a person’s belongings. There’s satisfaction, too, in setting about a theft in the right way. It takes brains, as well as guts, to exploit a property’s weaknesses and get out without leaving any evidence behind. Oh, and of course, there’s always the chance, however remote, of finding something, someday, that might just turn my entire world on its axis.
In short, it had been tough to go straight, and if I’m honest, I’d only succeeded in abstaining because I’d focussed all my energies on my new book. Mind you, I couldn’t have done it without cigarettes. Speaking of which, now seemed a good time to reach for the packet on the steamer trunk and fire one up.
‘You know,’ Victoria told me, ‘I really think your cleaner could be a suspect.’
‘Forget it.’ I exhaled smoke into the room, shielding myself from the tight expression that had gripped Victoria’s features. ‘She looks nothing like the woman who was here tonight.’
‘Not what I’m suggesting.’ She wafted my smoke aside in a deliberate fashion. ‘Very few people hang books on their walls, agreed? And an Englishman in Venice, doing something like that – she might have found it curious enough to mention to someone.’
‘Maybe.’
‘So will you speak to her?’
‘Maybe.’
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms, the smoke from my cigarette wreathing my forehead. It was closing in on three in the morning according to the grandfather clock in the corner of the room and I was beginning to feel it. I’d been up making notes far later than I’d intended, and now that the adrenaline of the break-in was leaving my system, I was struggling to stay alert. Perhaps I’d been fortunate. If I’d gone to sleep at my usual hour, I might never have heard my intruder blundering around in the first place.
I frowned and gave my last thought a little more air. Wasn’t that a bit odd? On reflection, she was clearly experienced, because her getaway had been seamless. Audacious, some might say. Speaking personally, I’d never abseiled away from a building, or used a climbing rope to access a property. And all right, my window hadn’t been locked – largely because there wasn’t a lock on the thing – but it would have been tricky to open the catch from the outside. All of which suggested she was something of an expert. So why the heavy footsteps and the bumping into furniture? Had she wanted to wake me? Had she wanted
me to see her?
It seemed like a crazy notion at first, but the more I thought about it the more I began to believe there could be something to it. Your average thief would be ecstatic if you failed to notice that anything had been stolen from your home until long after they’d gone. But she’d drawn my attention to what she’d taken by leaving the flyer behind.
I reached for the card and read the text once more, coaxing another jolt of nicotine from my cigarette.
‘What are you thinking?’ Victoria asked.
‘I’m thinking that we should get some sleep,’ I told her. ‘Because I have the strangest feeling we’ll be visiting this bookshop in the morning.’
THREE
My apartment was located on the Fondamenta Venier, about halfway between the Accademia di Belle Arti and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, in the district of Dorsoduro. Traditionally, the area had been popular with artists and writers, and considering how expensive Venice could be, I knew that I was fortunate to live anywhere close. The downside, at least this morning, was that I was on the opposite side of the Grand Canal from where I needed to be, and there was only one nearby crossing point – the wooden Accademia Bridge.
The mid-morning air was brittle with a lingering frost that had coated the railings and plank treads in a glitter of crystal slush. I had on a knitted hat, scarf, and mittens, as well as a thick woollen coat. The mittens were a necessity – it was freezing outside, and I couldn’t wear conventional gloves because the middle and fourth fingers of my right hand are slightly crooked and bent over one another. I suffer from localised arthritis in my finger joints and the damp Venetian weather hadn’t done anything to improve my condition. Neither had the constant typing I engaged in when I was writing. But hey, I get by, and Victoria had even commented on how fetching my mittens happened to look – although she had been disappointed that they weren’t stitched to my coat sleeves.
Speaking of Victoria, she was pacing across the wooden bridge struts beside me in suede boots, dark jeans and a red padded jacket, the lower half of her face hidden behind the zipped collar of her coat.
‘Do you know where we’re going?’ she asked me.
‘Of course. I know Venice pretty well by now.’
‘You don’t want to borrow my map then?’
‘Please, Vic. I’m hardly a tourist.’
Below us a water bus, loaded down with an army of passengers, churned the grey-green waters into froth at the Accademia vaporetto station, while a pristine water taxi cruised by a grocery barge carrying boxed vegetables to market. Further along the canal, beyond a scattering of timber mooring posts, a string of gondolas had been roped together and covered in blue tarpaulin, their curved black bows nodding ponderously in the tides like a line of oil derricks.
‘I need coffee,’ I told Victoria, fighting to stifle a yawn.
‘Good idea. Where’s your nearest Starbucks?’
‘Philistine. Don’t let the locals hear you say that.’
The locals, every last one of them, were crammed inside a warm and steamy bar just beyond Campo San Maurizio. Leaving Victoria by the door, I pushed my way to the counter and ordered two espressos, then slipped my map out of my pocket and snuck a look at it under cover of the people around me.
My map had all but disintegrated from heavy use. The wax paper was torn and gaping where once it had been neatly folded, the corners were curled and badly frayed, and I was missing an entire quadrant of the Giudecca. Even so, I had a curious affection for the thing and I was reluctant to replace it. I’d learned to my cost during my first weeks in Venice how easy it was to become hopelessly lost among the mazelike alleys and waterways of the city, and it had come to my rescue more times than I could count.
Happily enough, it worked the same trick again, and I plotted a route through a series of backstreets that I felt confident I could remember. Then I necked my coffee and delivered Victoria’s. Once she’d sipped it down, and wafted her hand in front of her mouth as if she’d just swallowed a shot of firewater, I led her on as far as the gloomy fissure of Calle Fiubera without a single wrong turn.
The bookbinding business was double-fronted, with two large windows on either side of a recessed glass door. The left-hand window featured a display of leather-bound volumes embellished with contrasting leather patches in the shape of stars, moons, cats and witches’ hats. A small cardboard sign beside each book, in English only, noted which volume in the Harry Potter series was for sale as a bound and signed edition, along with a price in euros that was frankly insane. The right-hand window was devoted to quality pens, paper supplies and stationery. We entered the shop and discovered that the interior was laid out in the same fashion.
The place smelled strongly of tobacco smoke. A ragged-looking chap with unruly grey hair and wire-rim glasses was sitting behind a leather-inlaid desk among the book shelves, a scratched and dented pipe resting in the corner of his mouth. He was peering through an illuminated, table-fixed magnifying glass at a supple piece of tan leather. On the corner of his desk was a stack of red flyers just like the one that had been left in my apartment.
He glanced up when we entered, eyes rheumy and networked with fine red lines, then returned his attention to his stitching and smoking.
I approached the shelved books and scanned the titles that had been hand-embroidered on their spines. They were arranged in alphabetical order and I crouched down until I was facing the shelf given over to authors with a surname beginning with the letter H. I read from left to right, then raised a mitten in the air and repeated myself to be sure I hadn’t missed anything. I hadn’t. There were no books by Dashiell Hammett.
I straightened, knees cracking, and led Victoria towards the stationery supplies on the opposite side of the shop. I pretended to give some consideration to a notebook with a black leather cover that was affordable enough to have been manufactured in the Far East. Victoria smoothed her fingers over a sheet of wrapping paper with a marbled effect that had probably originated from the same factory.
‘Well?’ she whispered.
‘Nothing,’ I told her.
She inclined her head towards the owner of the shop. ‘Are you going to say something?’
I set the notebook down and reached for a gift set containing a strip of red wax and a letter seal. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to get us very far.’
‘Even so.’
‘Even so?’
She nodded and freed the gift box from my grip. ‘No time like the present.’
The shopkeeper appeared to disagree. I shuffled across and hovered before his desk, but it wasn’t until I’d removed my mittens, clapped my hands, cleared my throat and conjured up a hesitant, ‘Scusi?’ that he finally muttered a dubious, ‘Si.’
‘I’m looking for a book.’
‘Si.’ His beaten-down eyes didn’t seem the least bit interested in anything I might have to say. A sprig of silvery hair was growing out of a mole on his right cheek, and the collarless brown shirt and green cardigan he had on looked sorely in need of a wash.
‘A particular book,’ I went on. ‘The Maltese Falcon. I was led to believe you might have a first edition. Signed.’
The shopkeeper looked me up and down very carefully, without the least embarrassment, and then he set aside the piece of leather he’d been stitching and cupped the bowl of his pipe. He wore a pitted rubber thimble on his thumb, and he knocked it against the pipe as he watched me some more.
‘I’ve already checked your shelf,’ I told him. ‘I couldn’t find a copy.’
He grunted, as if that much was obvious, then leaned backwards in his chair and tugged at a drawer in the middle of his desk, showering tobacco from his pipe along the sleeve of his cardigan. He removed a green ledger that he parted before him. The handwritten entries were slanted and compressed – and impossible for me to read upside down.
‘No,’ he said, and shut the ledger with a definitive, and quite dusty, thud.
‘No?’
He shook his head
and cupped the pipe.
‘You’re quite sure?’ I pressed.
This time, he remained silent. If I hadn’t heard myself speak with my own ears, I could have believed that I hadn’t actually said anything.
‘Okay then,’ I said. ‘Grazie mille.’
‘Prego.’
I turned to Victoria. ‘Let’s go.’
‘That’s it?’
‘He doesn’t have a copy.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know what more we can do.’
I followed Victoria out of the shop, determined not to look back as we walked away, even though I had the distinct feeling that we were being watched. Victoria waited until we were crossing a humped bridge over a brackish canal before delivering her verdict.
‘Well, he was grumpy. And not exactly helpful.’
‘Welcome to Venice.’
She glanced up at me, a pensiveness in her eyes. ‘Do you think he was hiding something?’
I gave the matter some thought. ‘No,’ I said, eventually.
‘Really?’
I wrapped my arm around her and gave her a friendly squeeze. ‘I know we weren’t in there very long, but I didn’t spot any really unique editions. It’s just not that kind of place.’
‘I don’t know, Charlie.’
‘Always so suspicious.’ I bumped her with my hip. ‘You ever wonder if perhaps it’s time you stopped searching for the plot twist behind everyone you meet?’
Victoria made a noise that suggested she wasn’t entirely amused by my observation, and meanwhile I raised my head to discover that we were entering Piazza San Marco, through the archway that ran beneath the ornate clock tower. The brick Campanile loomed ahead of us, and to our left a group of children clambered over a pair of lion statues that appeared resigned to their fate. The greasy flagstones were clotted with pigeons and tourists. I craned my neck up towards the mosaics on the front of the domed Basilica. The golds and yellows seemed to lack something in the dreary grey light. I knew just how they felt.