by Ewan, Chris
‘Nuh uh.’ I pretended to zip my lips closed. ‘I won’t say a word.’ And besides, I thought, the explosion that had ripped through his home had probably given him an inkling that he’d ticked somebody off just a smidgen.
‘But I cannot take this risk.’ Her face was pinched. Determined. ‘You must understand this, yes?’
Actually – much as I didn’t want to – I could see what she was driving at. True, she appeared to be quite unhinged, but she made a sound point. If I agreed to shoot the guy, I’d be more than a little reluctant to come clean to anyone. But my hapless involvement in a bombing was a much less powerful motivating factor. There was no way she could rely on me keeping my mouth shut – unless she forcibly shut it for good.
‘Wait a minute,’ I told her. ‘Let me think about what you’re asking.’
I didn’t need time to think. I needed time to pack, time to get myself and Victoria as far away from Venice as possible, to a place where my beauty sleep wouldn’t be interrupted by attractive sociopaths in the dead of night and where demands for me to kill rich, titled Italians were but a distant memory. A couple of hours, nothing more. There would be flights leaving Marco Polo airport from six o’clock or so, and trains departing Santa Lucia station to destinations right across Europe. I could be on any one of them, to any place I cared. Anywhere other than here would do.
‘Well.’ She gazed hard at me, with an impatient heft of her gun. ‘What is your decision?’
‘I’ll do it,’ I said, hastily now. ‘I’ll kill him.’
‘Grande,’ she said, her face brightening and her finger slipping free of the trigger. ‘This makes me very happy. I did not want to shoot you.’
She lowered her weapon and nodded at me, almost as if we were comrades-in-arms and I’d just distinguished myself on the battlefield. Hard to believe I’d indulged myself with fantasies about this woman. Unstable was an understatement. She was more volatile than the plastic explosives inside the attaché case she’d given me.
‘You must kill him today,’ she told me.
‘Not a problem. I’m your man.’
‘He must be dead by nine o’clock this evening. No later.’
‘Terrific. I’m great at meeting deadlines. Just ask my agent.’
‘I will leave you the gun.’
‘Wonderful. You want to pass it over now?’
The astounding thing is, she nearly did exactly that. I saw her visibly relax and even take a step towards me before thinking better of it.
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head, the wig swaying so much that some of the hairs caught in her mouth. ‘I will leave it for you. You have a post box, yes? I saw this.’ She was right about that. There were three letterboxes built into the wall beside the front door. One for each apartment. ‘I will put the gun inside as I go. This too,’ she added, patting her trouser pocket with the stun gun in it.
‘What if I decide not to shoot him?’ She looked at me blankly. Obviously the eventuality hadn’t occurred to her. ‘I don’t know where the gun came from,’ I explained. ‘Other people may have been shot with it.’
‘It is not so.’
‘So you say. But what if I use my hands?’ I asked, miming strangling someone. ‘Or a knife.’ This time, I mimed a stabbing action.
She considered the matter, poking her tongue into the side of her cheek. ‘As long as he is dead, I do not care.’
‘What if he suffers?’
‘This does not concern me.’
Wow. She really was something. Either the Count was every bit as evil as she’d claimed, or she was colder than I’d imagined.
She moved for the door, but I wasn’t done just yet.
‘One last thing. If I do this, are you going to return my book?’
‘Si,’ she told me, her voice clipped. ‘It will be my pleasure.’
TWENTY-ONE
Pleasure or not, I wasn’t sure that I believed her, and I was quite certain that I didn’t trust her. Tossing aside my bedcovers, I threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, yanked on my baseball trainers and hopped through to the hallway. Victoria was sleeping soundly, her duvet rising and falling with her breaths. She didn’t appear to be hurt in any way. In fact, she seemed entirely at ease.
Graziella had left the door to my apartment ajar and I could hear footfall on the steps outside. While I waited for her to leave, I glanced up at the alarm sensor in the corner of the ceiling. No sign of it. Turned out the contraption was on the ground, its plastic casing crushed, wires spewed out. Not the most sophisticated way of disarming a sensor, I grant you, but surprisingly effective all the same.
I heard the clang of something heavy being dropped inside one of the metal post boxes downstairs. Reaching for my nylon sports coat, I took the stairs two at a time, feeding my arms through my sleeves as I went.
She was hurrying along the pavement in the direction of the Grand Canal by the time I lurched outside. No boat this time around. It was cold and dark, but visibility was good, the result of a cloudless night and a full moon. Her red wig was impossible to miss, shining like a beacon in the black, and the rapid beat of her footsteps echoed off the stone walls and still waters of the Fondamenta Venier.
I was going to have to take a chance and follow her. Until now, she’d been the one in control, not just anticipating my moves, but planning them for me. Contrary to what you may be thinking, I’m not a complete idiot, and I had one or two moves of my own. By tracking her, I hoped to get some kind of leverage. Perhaps she’d lead me to the people she’d claimed wanted Count Borelli dead. If I could identify them, or gather some kind of evidence on them, it might give me enough ammunition to excuse myself from the role of assassin, or even go to the authorities or the press. Then again, she might be heading home, and if things were really working in my favour, I could find myself with an opportunity to break in to her place and go hunting for my copy of The Maltese Falcon.
While I waited to step out from my cover, I asked myself if I should bring the gun along for protection, but then I realised that in my hurry to get out of my apartment I hadn’t collected my keys or my picks. Going back for them would take too long, and reaching a hand through the letterbox wasn’t possible without a severe mutation. Pursuing Graziella unarmed was certainly a risk, but given the position she’d put me in and the threats she’d made, I feared that losing her altogether could be worse.
I hovered beyond the cone of light from a nearby streetlamp until she turned left at Palazzo Cini, then closed the door to my building on the latch and broke into a half-skip, half-tiptoe affair that transported me to the end of the street as swiftly and as quietly as possible. Flattening myself against the grimy brickwork, I craned my neck around the corner. A flash of red rounded the end of the street and I scurried after it, bent-double, for some reason, as if I was ducking beneath covering fire.
The craft shops and art galleries, sunglass outlets and neighbourhood tabacchi that I’d passed countless times during the day were concealed behind shutters and iron bars. Up ahead, the Accademia di Belle Arti loomed before me, the lower half of its stone exterior shrouded in scaffolding and plywood boards that doubled as makeshift advertising hoardings. I used them for shelter as I crept towards the Accademia Bridge.
Graziella was striding across the middle of the span, her shoes thudding rhythmically against the wooden treads, her hands buried deep inside the pockets of her leather jacket. The view of the moonlit canal waters didn’t appear to interest her – she wasn’t even tempted to glance towards the ghostly dome of the church of Santa Maria della Salute – and her self-absorption was something I was thankful for.
The arched bridge would expose me. It offered no nooks or crannies to crouch behind, and the wooden planking would amplify the sound of my movements. Much as it pained me, I was forced to wait until Graziella’s red wig bobbed down the steps on the opposite side before tackling the stairs.
The night breeze whipped up from the tremulous waters of the canal and I turned my collar
against the chill, tucking my chin down into my chest. It didn’t help that I wasn’t wearing any socks. The icy wind swirled around my bare ankles, whistling up my trouser legs.
I saw no sign of Graziella when I reached the far side. There was a chance that she’d taken one of the turnings to the left, following the curve of the Grand Canal and perhaps even passing the bacàro that Victoria and I had visited the previous night, but I put my faith in the channel that continued directly ahead.
Smart decision. I caught sight of her red wig approaching the middle of Campo Santo Stefano, the square a wash of darkness around her, aside from the sullen light of some period streetlamps. She moved at speed, not pausing to consider the pensive marble gentleman on the white plinth she was nearing. I hung back, grateful for the construction work at the opening to the square, where an area had been partitioned off with plastic netting.
I couldn’t afford to linger for long. Once she reached the far side, there’d be a considerable distance between us, enough for her to lose me in the warren of alleys and zigzagging lanes that lay ahead. I waited until I judged that she was beyond earshot, then moved quickly along the edge of the square, making use of the stacked café tables and chairs for camouflage. My plan was to be level with the statue by the time she exited, but she was faster than I’d anticipated, and I was forced to run.
I reached the corner of the cathedral with blood pulsing in my ears. The red of her hair flared in the dim up ahead, bobbing from side to side with her movements like a lantern swaying in a draught. The flare jolted upwards as she traversed a humped bridge.
I’d been along this route often enough to have a rough notion of where she was heading. Campo Manin was her most likely destination, and from there she could turn right for Piazza San Marco or left for the Rialto. She continued straight on, just as I’d anticipated, but I swung left, then right, jogging along a parallel alleyway in the hope of gaining ground. At one point, the alleys reached a cross-street, and I paused to be sure my way was clear before sprinting ahead and skidding to a halt before the graceful bridge at the outlet of the passageway.
Lurking there, covering my mouth with my hand to stop my breathing from giving me away, I watched her enter the square. Graziella was pacing towards a glass and concrete office block, but instead of veering towards one of the far corners of the campo, she surprised me by turning right just beyond the winged lion at the foot of the statue of Daniele Manin, disappearing along a hidden path I hadn’t noticed before.
The unknown calle had the appearance of the entrance to an army trench. Dingy and chill, it tapered into a clotted blackness without any hint as to where it might lead. Cursing myself for not bringing my penlight, I edged along with my arms crossed in front of my face, passing the barred windows of a gentleman’s outfitters and a neighbouring café. Letterboxes, doorbells and utility pipes emerged from the gloom, telling of residential properties hidden behind the walls that towered above me.
I couldn’t see her red wig, or hear her footsteps. There was a chance that she’d ducked inside one of the properties, but I felt sure I would have heard the noise of a door closing. There was also the possibility that she was lurking in wait for me, ready to pounce and knock me from my feet. It wouldn’t take much. The strange lane and the impenetrable darkness were so unnerving that a child shouting ‘boo’ would have done the trick.
Inching on, sliding one foot in front of the next, I found myself at a pair of imposing iron gates. The gates were locked and reached as high as the overhang of the building above, offering no way through.
I squinted hard, only just glimpsing the lane swinging away to my left, into a darkness that was blacker and more menacing than anything I’d had to deal with so far. I was sorely tempted to turn back and retrace my steps – it would have been easy enough to convince myself that I’d made a mistake and that Graziella hadn’t really come this way. Then I heard a clang of metal, muted but unmistakable, like the ding of a church bell swathed in cloth. I blundered onwards, nearly tripping on a fire hydrant and passing an old doorway covered in layers of fraying posters. To my right was the entrance to another passage, thinner even than the one I was on, the entrance marked by a stone archway above my head. I could just make out the lettering on a small yellow sign. Scala Contarini del Bòvolo.
I sneaked forwards, my hands pressed flat against the pulverised masonry on either side of me, my body tensed and ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Then, quite unexpectedly, the lane opened up into a hidden courtyard, where the moonlight took the edge off the darkness. To my right, a small lawned area was cordoned off by tall metal railings topped with pointed barbs. The lawn was filled with a collection of well-heads of varying sizes and designs, their white stone shining in the light from the moon with a spectral luminescence. Beyond the well-heads was the façade of an imposing palazzo.
The main building was around six storeys in height, made up of a series of stilted balconies, but it was dominated by a cylindrical tower, which appeared to contain a spiral staircase. The face of the tower was open to the elements, ringed by a concentric series of stone banisters and colonnaded arches, so that anyone who happened to be climbing the stairs could be seen quite easily. The only person climbing them was Graziella. Her red wig and bleached face were ascending the second spiral.
Apparently, the effect worked both ways, and she raised a gloved hand and beckoned to me, smiling ghoulishly. She seemed to find my gormless reaction quite amusing. So much for my skills as a tracker. So much for turning my situation around. I got the distinct impression that she’d led me here deliberately – that she’d been one move ahead of me yet again.
If I’d had the luxury of sulking about it, I dare say I’d have bolted for home. But I felt the need to see this through, to discover exactly how doomed I really was.
A gate was fitted into the barbed railings, but when I pushed on it I found that it was locked near my hip. If I’d had my tools with me, I could have opened it without any trouble, and it occurred to me that Graziella must have done just that and locked it again – the noise of the gate closing against the metal bracket would explain the clanging that I’d heard.
Removing my sports coat, I slung it over the metal prongs, then shimmied up the railings and did my best to climb over without causing myself a mischief. After dropping onto an uneven flagstone path, I reached up for my coat and heard it tear as I snatched it down. Damn. One of my sleeves had almost detached itself, exposing the lining. No matter. I fed my arms through what was left of the material and sprinted to the bottom of the stone steps.
The stairs were kite-shaped and evenly spaced, twisting me around on myself as I climbed. I passed from darkness to sketchy light and back again, moving from the inner recesses of the tower to the moonlit openings until I became so dizzy that I paused and leaned out over the stone balustrade to peer upwards. Graziella was leering down from above, the red hairs of her wig suspended from her face like exotic tendrils. She giggled and covered her mouth, the noise ballooning in the cramped square below us.
‘Where are you going?’ I called. ‘Where are you taking us?’
She giggled some more by way of response, coming dangerously close to a cackle, then snatched her head back inside. Moments later, the patter of her footsteps told me that she was climbing higher still.
I followed, the thin night air slicing into the back of my throat and making my nostrils sting as I inhaled. My thigh muscles burned, itching beneath the material of my trousers, and my bare feet rubbed sorely against the insides of my shoes.
After two more revolutions, I reached the spot where Graziella had been standing, but there was no sign of her. Bowing my head, I gripped my knees and sucked in a couple of painful breaths before bracing my hand against the curved inner wall and staggering on. By the time I reached the top, I was a gasping, sweating, trembling mess.
‘Buono, Charlie. You make it at last.’ She clapped her hands with the boundless energy of a gym instructor.
I l
et my coat fall from my shoulders with a groan and staggered into the middle of the circular floor. My T-shirt was plastered to my back and my scalp was prickling as if I might pass out. The top of the tower featured a series of arched openings. Graziella was crouching in the middle of one of them, balanced athletically on top of a stone ledge with her hands gripping onto the outside of the arch above her head, like an inwards-looking gargoyle.
‘Where are we?’ I asked, leaning my head right back to open my lungs and planting my hands on my hips.
‘A private place. It is a beautiful view, yes?’
She swayed one arm in an arc behind her and I squinted out through half-closed eyes. Despite the sting of sweat rolling down my brow, I couldn’t deny that the scene was breathtaking – something that at least gave me an excuse for wheezing so heavily. Laid out before me was a softly gloaming dreamscape of ramshackle terracotta roofs, concealed garden terraces, wonky television aerials, crooked bell towers and domed cathedrals. In the distance, the black waters of the lagoon were visible only from the dim twinkle of the navigation lamps attached to wooden posts that stretched into the distance.
‘And why are we here?’ I panted.
‘Because you follow me. Not so many people know of this tower. I think, maybe you would like to see it?’
‘You knew I was behind you?’
‘Of course. I expect it. You wish to know more about me. Where I live, perhaps?’ She smiled, full of compassion, and tipped her head onto her shoulder. ‘But I am sorry, Charlie, I cannot tell you this. At least, not until you kill Borelli, capito?’
Her eyes were smoky with fatigue. With some kind of warped affection, maybe. I tried not to fall into them. Tried very hard.
She reached up with one hand and slapped the brickwork above her, as if testing its integrity. ‘You know, Charlie, since I am a young girl, I am always climbing. First a tree. Then a wall. My parents, they see this, and they send me on adventures far into the Dolomites. To learn how to really climb. On rocks. Up mountains. With ropes.’ She grinned. ‘Also without them. This is when I learn to abseil. You have seen me do it, yes?’