Good Thief's Guide to Venice

by Ewan, Chris

  I worked the gun free and felt the heft of it in my palm. I was naturally right-handed but I curled the fingers of my left hand around the dimpled grip, then used my thumb to slide the safety off. If push came to shove – or finger came to trigger – I didn’t want my arthritis to get in the way of a clean shot.

  My right hand eased back inside my bumbag for one last piece of equipment and then I held the gun before me, swallowed my nerves, and checked his position. He’d slipped on his jacket and was straightening his cuffs and blowing himself a kiss when I made my move.

  It was over very fast. The distance from the doorway to my target was no more than ten feet and I couldn’t afford to be slow. In three paces I was upon him. One step more and I had an arm wrapped around his neck, yanking him backwards off his feet. His arms circled in the air and he drew a choked breath as if to scream, but before the sound escaped his throat I stabbed him hard in the neck with Victoria’s special pen.

  I hadn’t been prepared for how rapidly the sedative would work. He went limp almost instantly, head lolling to one side, and it was all I could do to stop myself from dropping him and accidentally firing the gun as his weight crumpled my hand. There was a trickle of blood from where the nib had pierced his neck, and I watched it soak into the fine cotton of his shirt. His sleek hair smelled of pomade with a citrus note, and I remember thinking just what a dumb thing that was to focus on as I sank to my knees with the Count in my lap and the booming opera tune neared a climax that seemed, to my ears at least, to foretell of desperate fates set in motion by hasty actions.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Count was not a large man. Shorter than me, with a trim, athletic build, he was in no need of a diet. Even so, scrambling out from beneath his body and hauling him up by the arm before ducking down and lifting him onto my shoulder took a good deal of strength. There was no way I could stand straight with his weight bearing down on me, and I found myself staggering from side to side in an impromptu jig as I struggled not to collapse in a heap, all while gathering the pistol and stashing it together with the sedative pen inside my bumbag.

  After standing still long enough to register the quiver in my thighs and the dull, painful ache that was blooming in my lower back, I swivelled with a grunt and made for the door. I didn’t bang the Count’s love-struck head on my way out of his bedroom, and I was careful not to tangle his feet in any furniture as I quick-stepped through the living space, but by the time I’d trudged down the first flight of stairs, any scruples I’d had about his welfare had started to desert me. One flight more, and I entered the piano nobile as if I was carrying a mannequin on my back. Forget care – I needed speed, and if that meant the Count grazed his knuckles as I skimmed along the wall for balance, or took a few swift ones to the back of the head as I lurched drunkenly down the stone staircase leading to the basement area, then I’m afraid that was a consequence I was prepared to tolerate.

  When I reached the basement, my body was in flat-out rebellion, shaking as if I had a peculiar nerve condition, and I would have gladly dumped him onto the mossy flagstones for some respite. The only thing that stopped me was the fear that I’d be unable to lift him a second time around. Better to keep going, I told myself. I told my screaming back and quaking legs the same thing, and then I heaved the Count a touch higher and swore in the darkness as his weight crushed down onto my shoulder. Stuttering on across the cobblestone courtyard, my stance getting steadily lower and my steps coming faster and more desperate, I finally made it as far as the garden and tripped forwards into the black.

  The impact was unforgiving, but the Count didn’t make a sound. I rolled over onto my side and wheezed and sighed for a time, whining for good measure. I felt so light all of a sudden that I could almost have believed that I was weightless, capable of floating up into the starless sky above. Then I stretched my legs and straightened my back and something twanged painfully near the base of my spine. Christ, I wouldn’t be doing that again in a hurry. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that I’d never be capable of doing it again. Still, no bother, it wasn’t as if I had more heavy lifting to do.

  Hmm.

  The Count’s shoeless foot was beside my head, and I felt my way up his leg and along his body. Gripping him below the armpits and lifting his torso and backside clear of the ground, I squatted and heaved. The Count slid towards me, his heels cutting two furrows into the soggy grass. Truth be told, he didn’t move all that far, but I didn’t have the strength or the will to raise him onto my shoulder, and the heaving-sliding approach seemed like my best option. Not a great option, true, but better than walking with a stoop for the rest of my life.

  I dragged him as far as the gate. Ask me to do it again sometime, and I dare say my response would make you blush. It took far longer than I would have liked, it hurt a damn sight more than I would have cared for, and it did an excellent job of ploughing the lawn. No matter. At last I could dispense with the muscle work and go back to something I was good at – coaxing a lock into submission.

  Less than a minute later, I was done, and it was one of the few times in my life when I was sorry it hadn’t taken me longer. To get us both through the gate, I had to roll the Count out of the way with my shin, and then drag him back to wedge the gate open with his body. The moment I stepped over him and into the alleyway beyond, I triggered the sensor attached to the security light and damn-near blinded myself.

  I left the Count where he lay and felt my way beyond the cone of light to the steamer trunk. I released the bungee cords securing the trunk to the cart, flipped the lid open and tipped the whole thing backwards until the trunk was flat on the floor.

  Now that I had the trunk right in front of me and the Count close by, I began to have serious doubts about whether he would fit. If I’d been looking to bury the guy, I could have severed his legs from his torso and packaged him up, no problem. But I wanted him alive and intact and that was a whole different story.

  So was hauling him as far as the trunk, not to mention hoisting him and pitching him head-first into the chest. Getting his torso over the lip was the hard part, but I’m pleased to say that his legs followed quite willingly, and I was even able to arrange his arms so that I could bind his wrists together with a pair of Victoria’s handcuffs. The problem was his feet. Even by pushing his chin down towards his chest, slamming his shoulders against one end of the trunk and pulling his knees up into a foetal position, they still protruded from the end. One of his mud-caked socks was rolled down as far as his heel, exposing his soft, plump ankle. I stood back and considered the practicalities for a short while, but I figured his feet were kind of important, and he wouldn’t be likely to appreciate it if I lopped them off. In the end, I settled for closing the lid as best I could and securing it with the bungee cords before removing my overcoat and draping it over his soggy toes. Then, with an almighty effort and some colourful talk, I managed to lever the handcart up onto its hind wheels and push off along the alley, hastily removing my balaclava and flattening my hair before I emerged onto the busy street beyond.

  My journey back to the boat might have been short, but it wasn’t easy. While it’s true that the tourists I passed seemed mercifully uninterested in my cargo and the way it sported size-eight feet, wheeling the Count along was one of the most physically demanding things I’ve ever done, surpassed only by the nightmare of lifting the trunk down onto the motor boat without scuttling our craft or pitching a comatose Italian into the murky depths below. Perhaps it’s enough to say that somehow we did it, though by the time we were finished, I barely had enough energy left to speak with Victoria.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Why are his feet sticking out?’

  ‘Didn’t fit,’ I wheezed.

  Victoria squinted at me in a way that suggested I’d done a shoddy job. I would have liked to offer her the chance to improve on it, but somehow I suspected that throwing back the lid and allowing her to get to grips with a human jigsaw puzzle in the middle of
Venice wasn’t the smartest response.

  ‘Did he see you?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t think so,’ I panted. ‘I’m not even sure he knew what was happening. That sedative worked really fast.’

  She beamed, obviously pleased with her purchase.

  ‘The chap in the shop said it’s good for at least ninety minutes,’ she told me.

  I checked my watch. ‘Better hope he’s right. Are you still okay to take him by yourself?’

  ‘Did you cuff him?’

  ‘Like we discussed.’

  ‘Then it should be fine.’

  I held her gaze. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘Be sure that you are.’

  And so I did. Pitching myself upright again, I clambered onto the canal bank and kicked the boat away from the edge. Victoria fired the engine and puttered around in a semi-circle, and I watched until she’d navigated safely back onto the Grand Canal before retracing my steps as far as the alley alongside the palazzo.

  It was perhaps as long as fifteen minutes since I’d left, but I didn’t think the delay would matter a great deal. Plunging a hand into my bumbag, I removed the pistol and fitted my numbing fingers around the butt before checking over my shoulder to make sure there was nobody close. When I was certain I wasn’t being watched, I gingerly reached for the silencer and began to unscrew it from the gun muzzle. It was easier than I’d anticipated, which made me think that perhaps guns weren’t as complicated as I’d always imagined. Thumbing the safety off, I pointed the thing high above my head, ducked away as best I could, stuck a finger in my ear, and squeezed off a round.

  Damn. It was loud, the noise amplified by the high walls that crowded me on either side. The muzzle flash was brighter than I’d anticipated, as dazzling as sheet lightning. My arm danced with the recoil and I rocked backwards onto my heels, spraying the second bullet up and behind me. The ejected casing glanced off my wrist, singeing my flesh. I swore and clutched my hand to where it stung, then stuffed the hot gun inside my bumbag and ran hard and fast in the direction of Dorsoduro, half-blinded and half-deafened, and very possibly half-deranged, too.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Later, once I’d made it home and had struggled with Victoria to heave the trunk upstairs to the unoccupied top-floor apartment in my building, then bound and cuffed the dozing Count to a ladder-back chair in the middle of the empty living room, I finally had an opportunity to collapse in a heap and ask myself just what we’d done.

  When Victoria had suggested the kidnapping scheme, it had seemed to make sense. The Count might not have known it – drugged and gagged and trussed-up in an unfamiliar location – but the idea had been to protect him. If he couldn’t be found, he couldn’t be killed, or so our reasoning went. What’s more, assuming the gun shots I’d fired off had been reported, there was a chance I could convince Graziella and her mysterious backers that I’d carried out the assassination I’d been tasked with and had disposed of the body.

  That was the theory, and when we were at the planning stage, it had struck me as pretty neat. So it was a real shame that the reality now seemed a tad more complicated.

  First, the abduction had been arduous – I’m used to vacating the scene of a burglary with a valuable trinket or two in my pocket, not a twelve-stone Italian on my back. Second, it all seemed rather sordid and, well, criminal, right now. The Count didn’t appear to be in the rudest of health. Two hours in, and the sedative showed no sign of wearing off. He was still breathing, thank God, but his head was hanging slackly against his chest, pitching the weight of his torso against the ropes that held him. His knuckles were bloodied, his cheeks had swollen quite alarmingly around the makeshift gag we’d tied off at the back of his head, and his tux was crumpled and stained. Then there was the track of dried blood running down his neck from where the pen nib had punctured his skin. He looked like the victim of a vampire bite – only without any of the upsides.

  Victoria’s main selling point for the plot had been time. Time to keep the Count alive until we worked out exactly what was going on and if there was anything we could do about it. Time to put ourselves in a position where the police might be safely contacted and the real crooks captured. Time, if we were really lucky, to get my book back, and failing that, to flee Venice if it became necessary. Problem was, sitting in the unheated apartment with my balaclava on my head, a bruised and bloodied kidnap victim in front of me and a whole bunch of questions occupying my mind, time felt like the last thing I needed.

  I had doubts. Plenty of them. When I’d been in the middle of the action, caught up in the caper, I hadn’t had the luxury of contemplating my fears. Now, I couldn’t avoid them. We had a stolen boat moored in the canal outside my building that could be found at any moment. We had a prominent citizen tied up and imprisoned against his will less than forty-eight hours after an attempt had been made on his life. It was an attack I’d inadvertently been responsible for, but that given the right evidence, might be proved against me. Not exactly a comfortable position to be in. Hell, far from dodging trouble, I seemed to be actively courting it.

  My every instinct was telling me that I’d made a terrible mistake. It was an error I was beginning to think I should correct, but I couldn’t see how. I’d set a course of events in action that would be almost impossible to reverse. The Count could wake up at any moment – should, in fact, have already woken up, assuming nothing had gone horribly wrong with the sedative – and although Victoria had another two cartridges of knock-out juice in her weapons case, I didn’t rate the idea of giving the guy a booster dose just yet.

  And when he did eventually wake up – please, God, let him wake up – what then? How long did we plan to hold him for? How could we release him without somehow implicating ourselves? Would he be capable of providing us with useful information, or would he be too terrified to speak? The shock might even give him a heart attack. A heart attack. Christ, why hadn’t I thought of that before? The man was in fear of his life and here we were abducting the poor sod. What was he meant to think when he came round other than the absolute worst? We were idiots. Utter fools. I really had no idea how we could have been so stupid.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ Victoria said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Well, I think we’ve been rather successful, considering.’

  ‘Considering what? That we’re nuts? I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. Look at what we’ve done!’

  ‘Oh hush, and stop being such a baby. Everything’s under control.’

  ‘Nothing’s under control.’

  ‘He’s alive, isn’t he?’

  I gawped at her, then gestured at the comatose Count. ‘He’s meant to have snapped out of it by now. Christ, Vic, are you absolutely sure it was only a sedative in that pen?’

  ‘Stop bellyaching. He’s still breathing, isn’t he?’

  Victoria wafted a hand towards the Count. The room around us was in darkness, but we’d rigged up my desk lamp so that the light was pointing into his eyes. His closed eyes. Now that she mentioned it, I wasn’t all that sure he was breathing.

  ‘Vic, wasn’t his chest moving before?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t moving now.’

  Victoria scowled at me, then scowled at the Count. She bit down on her bottom lip.

  ‘Mmm,’ she said.

  ‘Mmm? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?’

  ‘Well, now that you mention it, his breathing does appear to have slowed a touch.’

  ‘Slowed? It’s bloody stopped. Look. Listen.’ I held up my palm to quieten her. ‘There. Nothing. Not a whisper.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Please tell me we haven’t bloody killed him. Who sold you this weapons kit?’ I kicked the pigskin case with my toe. ‘The bloody KGB?’

  ‘Check for a pulse.’

  ‘You check for a pulse.’

  ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘I like that idea. But how about, just for a change, you
check for a pulse.’

  ‘Oh, give me strength.’

  Sucking a deep, trembling breath way down into my lungs, I raised my hands above my face in a brief prayer and took a cautious step towards the Count. His head was hanging awkwardly to the left, his tanned skin a sickly greenish colour in the glare of the lamp. It looked unnatural. Dead unnatural.

  I circled my shoulders, flexed my fingers. Then I sniffed, bent down and pressed firmly against the pulse point on his neck.

  Funny thing – the instant I touched his clammy skin, his face snapped upright, his nostrils flared and his eyes opened as wide as they could possibly go. Then he issued a muffled, choked cry from behind his gag, jerked sharply away from me and toppled over the hind legs of his chair.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I clutched my hand to my chest, the way people do when they’ve had a fright and they’re trying to work out exactly where their heart has ended up. There was a tight ball of adrenaline just above my solar plexus and my guts had knitted themselves into a painful knot. I felt dizzy, low on air, and my temples were pounding. And that was just me. Who knew how the Count was faring?

  He didn’t strike me as altogether relaxed. He was fighting against his constraints, knocking his chair against the floor as he bucked fitfully around. He happened to be screaming too. At least, I think he was screaming – it was difficult to tell on account of the gag. Mind you, it would have been a strange moment for him to start singing, and when I factored in the flush of his cheeks and the way his bloodshot eyes were almost crawling out of their sockets, I thought it safe to assume that he’d completely freaked out.

  I could understand that. I was freaked out myself, and I wasn’t the one being stared at by a guy in a balaclava who happened to have drugged me and whisked me away from the comforts of my home.