by Ewan, Chris
‘Perhaps not. But what about the people she’s connected to?’
‘Eh?’
‘The bomb, Vic. Someone gave it to her.’
As I finished speaking, a smattering of applause rippled through the crowd. Things had changed on the tournament table. Our sizeable friend had enjoyed an equally sizeable win. A huge bet had paid off for him and he’d vaulted way ahead. He knew it, too. Stroking his ragged beard, a look of smug satisfaction on his face, he nodded at his own good fortune, like a gypsy king acknowledging that the fates had finally bent to his will. People slapped him on his wide back, where the fabric of his suit was stretched and shiny.
‘Your dad looks kind of bemused,’ I said.
‘He looks plain angry.’
‘Yeah, well, he just lost the lead.’ I checked the time on the tournament clock behind us. ‘Only ten minutes left.’
‘No, it’s more than that.’ Victoria shook her head. ‘See the way he’s looking at her?’
The her was Graziella. And Vic was right. Alfred was clearly livid. Jaw rotating, as if he was chewing over all manner of indecent thoughts, eyes bulging out of his wrinkled face.
By contrast, our overweight snooper was basking in glee. Reclined comfortably in his chair, he folded his stubby hands across his swollen belly and beamed with delight as Graziella slid a cascade of markers across the table-felt towards him. He reminded me of a glutton who’d just polished off two giant desserts and was being offered a complimentary third. He seemed completely relaxed, as if things were working entirely to plan.
‘You reckon it was luck?’ I asked Victoria.
‘From the way Dad’s boiling over, I’d say no.’ She went up on her toes for a clearer view. ‘A bum card is something he can deal with. This looks much more serious.’
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘I suspect I’m already there. But why don’t you go ahead and fill me in?’
And so I did just that. I explained how I thought there was a good chance that Graziella and the new tournament leader were in cahoots. It struck me that if Graziella was moderately skilled and sufficiently motivated (by a share of half a million euros, say), she had the potential to fix the game any way she pleased. Card counting was all well and good, and I could understand why Vic’s dad had placed his faith in the technique, but it was useless if she manipulated the odds. It wouldn’t take much, just one or two duds palmed to Alfred, or a sweet card offered to her scruffy partner, and the entire sequence would be out of whack. Not easy, granted, but possible. I’d already seen how talented she was at burglary. What was to say she hadn’t mastered another skill?
And there was more. She’d wanted Borelli dead. It seemed obvious now that her motivation had been keeping him away from the tournament table. Just another way of rigging the contest, or something even more sinister? I didn’t know, and neither did Victoria. But for once, she didn’t take issue with the plot I’d outlined.
‘I think Dad’s about to blow a gasket,’ she told me.
He was about to blow something. As we watched, he pushed all his chips into the betting circle in front of him. A murmur passed through the room. It became chatter. Everyone knew this was a key moment, especially his competitors. The young Asian man pushed his sunglasses up on his nose, then clapped Alfred on the shoulder, clinching him for good measure. He went all-in too. The elegant lady smiled meekly and waved her hand at Graziella, sitting out the round. Our man with the weight issue considered the move with an appreciative nod of his head, then casually pushed roughly a quarter of his markers into play. He sniffed, wiped his nose with the sleeve of his tuxedo, and ran a hand through his long, greasy locks.
I heard the flip and flutter of fresh cards. It was impossible to see what Alfred had scored, and even more difficult to read his reaction. The Asian kid was clearer. He slapped his forehead with his free hand and gestured for a hit. The card was a bust. He threw his arms into the air and smiled glumly as he turned in his chair and acknowledged the sympathetic applause.
Alfred was next. He called on a card. Then another. He opted to stick. The crowd seemed uncertain. Alfred did too.
The bearded lump was content with what he had. He motioned for Graziella to reveal what she was holding with a leisurely twirl of his finger, almost as if he was so sure of winning that the prospect of completing the hand was a tiresome chore.
If Graziella felt emotion, she didn’t show it. She simply arranged her cards face up on the felt, then reached for the shoe. One card. Another. One more.
The audience gasped, then groaned, as if the impossible had just happened.
From Alfred’s perspective, it had. Lips pursed, he watched stoically as Graziella bent forwards and gathered his chips into her lean arms. Tapping a finger on the felt, he raised his eyebrows in mild surprise, then levered himself up from the table and offered his hand to each of his fellow players. He shook with Beardy last of all, and his hand seemed to be swallowed by the man’s bear-like paw. Their eyes locked for just a fraction of a second, long enough for Alfred to try to inject some venom and for the big man to absorb it with a bovine gaze and a drowsy grin, and then Alfred walked stiffly out of the room.
We caught up to him on the stairs sweeping down from the roulette lounge.
‘Dad?’
He turned at the sound of Victoria’s voice, glancing casually up the stairwell towards us.
‘Ah, there you are, darling.’ He opened his palms. ‘I was wondering when you might come and say hello.’
‘You knew we were here?’
‘I’ve trained myself to notice most things, darling, you know that.’ He grinned up at me, revealing a set of yellowing dentures amid his snowy beard. ‘Charlie Howard, I presume.’
‘Yes, Sir.’ I moved down the steps and offered him my hand. ‘Commiserations on the game.’
‘Yes, well. No matter.’ His palm was dry and crinkled like tissue paper, but his grip was surprisingly firm. ‘I rather got the impression I wasn’t destined to win.’
‘You mean they rigged it. That last croupier and her cuddly beau.’
‘My, my.’ He straightened his cuffs, then patted my arm. ‘I see my beautiful daughter has taught you a thing or two.’
He glanced at Victoria. She was hovering on the stairs above us, keeping her distance. Her father’s flattery wasn’t doing a great deal to improve her mood. Her face was stony and her knuckles had whitened where she gripped the brass banister rail. The glamorous green frock she had on was entirely out of keeping with her attitude.
‘Dad, why didn’t you tell me you’d be in Venice?’ she said, her voice tight.
‘I intended to, darling. Tomorrow, in fact.’
‘She’s a touch miffed,’ I explained. I’m nothing if not helpful.
‘Darling, come here.’ Alfred spread his arms and beckoned to Victoria. She tried her best to stay mad, but her resistance was crumbling. ‘Don’t make a disappointing night any worse, hmm, Sugar Plum?’
Sugar Plum. My, that was going to come in handy.
Victoria shot a look at me, as if she could read my thoughts, then released the banister with a defeated sigh and stomped down the stairs to peck her father on the cheek.
‘There now,’ he said, and patted her head. ‘Friends again?’
‘Almost,’ she muttered.
‘Then where shall I take you? We could all do with a drink, I’d say. My hotel is quite close.’
‘Er, actually.’ I pulled back my shirt sleeve and drew Victoria’s attention to my watch face. ‘Time’s moving on, Vic. And there was that thing we wanted to check back at my apartment.’
‘Oh, crumbs. I’d forgotten about that.’ She hesitated for a moment, looking between us. ‘Listen, Dad, why don’t you come along? Charlie has a boat outside. We can chat at his place and drop you back to your hotel later.’
‘Splendid,’ he said, and grinned famously.
Except it wasn’t splendid. Not even close.
THIRTY-TWO
There’s a school of thought that says Venice is best experienced from the water. Charting a course away from the casino jetty and puttering along the Grand Canal in the moist, hazy darkness, I couldn’t have agreed more. From my position beside the clamorous engine, it was impossible to join in with Alfred and Victoria’s conversation, but I was perfectly content all the same. Fog-laced waters, tumbledown buildings, the eerie calm of a drowned city at sleep – it was all so magical that I was almost tempted to turn into one of the crooked side canals and explore for an hour or two. Of course, that would have required me to ignore the small matter of the kidnap victim back at my apartment, which was something I couldn’t quite bring myself to do.
Borelli would be awake by now. Alone. Gagged and bound. Dazed by the after-effects of the sedative. Fearing for his life. Sweating into the bare mattress . . .
Hmm. Thinking of the Count like that did detract just a smidgen from my enjoyment of the moment.
Still, it was nothing compared to the ice-cold horror I experienced as I steered into the mouth of the canal I lived on. Flashing blue lights. Shadowy, uniformed figures moving about in the dewy air. The ghostly form of a motor launch with a dark-blue hull. Another vessel in luminous yellow and orange, branded with the words Venezia Emergenza.
Powerful fog lights mounted on the boats were pointing towards my apartment building, bleaching the colour from the ramshackle exterior. A blur of police officers and medics had gathered outside the front door, the strobing blue lights giving their movements a jerky, mechanical effect, as if I was watching the scene on the pages of a giant flick-book – a giant scary flick-book.
Hell. This hadn’t been part of the plan.
Slamming the engine into reverse, I heard a deep churning in the still waters beneath. It wasn’t as quiet as I might have liked. A policeman in a heavy blue jacket with luminous patches raised his head to watch me. So did Victoria. She looked stricken – her face bone-white and slack around the jaw, her eyes red-ringed and swimmy.
The boat lurched to the right. I’d turned at too sharp an angle and we were in danger of taking on water. I switched rudder positions, aiming to correct my mistake, and the boat pitched hard to the left. I lost my grip and slammed into the gunwale, jolting my ribs. Momentum carried me on. Saltwater splashed up and wet my face. I felt myself pitching over, but just as I drew a breath and closed my eyes for the impact, I was heaved back. Glancing around, I found Alfred clinging on to the leg of my trousers, a determined glint in his eyes.
I steadied myself, balancing my elbows on the gunwale, then risked a peek at the policeman who’d taken an interest in us. He was still watching, one hand shading his eyes from the swirling vapour, but he hadn’t moved any closer or signalled to any of his colleagues. If I was lucky, he might take me for a crabby local – one who knew it was pointless attempting to access a canal in the middle of an emergency response. The last thing I needed was to look like a crook fleeing the scene of a crime. My trusty launch wasn’t built for speed, and so far as I knew, it hadn’t been fitted with an invisibility cloak.
Wiping the sea spray from my face, I fumbled for the rudder and pointed us back in the direction we’d hailed from.
‘Change of plan.’ I patted Alfred on the back and guided him down into his seat. ‘We’ll visit your hotel, after all.’
‘Now, would either of you care to tell me what the devil is going on?’
It was a reasonable enough question, I suppose, and no doubt Alfred felt entitled to pose it. Strangely, though, I wasn’t all that keen to offer him a response. So far as I could see, there was no good way to explain what had happened.
Ah, well, the truth, Mr Newbury, is that earlier this evening your daughter helped me to abduct a wealthy Venetian resident from his home. We drugged him and we tied him up, and then we left him to doze in his underwear in a strange apartment while we spent time at the casino. What’s that? You want to know why we kidnapped him? Oh, that’s really quite simple – it was because I’d accidentally been responsible for nearly assassinating the man, and I was eager to make amends.
Somehow, I couldn’t see it being terribly well received. In fact, I had more than a vague suspicion that Victoria’s father might begin to view me as a bad influence on his Sugar Plum.
‘It’s a little complicated, Dad,’ Victoria told him.
No kidding it was complicated. My past few days had been filled with nothing but complications. Never mind barriers. I’d had enough hurdles thrown in my way to run a damn steeplechase.
‘Am I to assume the police were outside your home?’ he asked me.
And inside it, by the look of things.
‘They may have been,’ I replied, doing my best to sound carefree.
‘And an ambulance too, I think.’
‘Was there an ambulance? I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Listen, Dad,’ Victoria said, ‘can I get you a whisky?’
She was crouched before the minibar in Alfred’s hotel room, wearing her padded winter coat over her evening dress. I didn’t know how much booze the minibar contained, but I had a suspicion it wouldn’t be enough. Smart thinking, though. Perhaps we could get him sozzled and he’d begin to forget the entire episode.
The hotel was classy and well appointed. Alfred’s room featured a wine-red carpet and pink floral wallpaper, plus a good deal of pink fabric around the window. I was resting my backside on a queen-size bed with a doughy mattress. Opposite me were two wing-back chairs. Alfred was sitting in the chair to my left, with his elbows on his knees and his bony fingers pressed together in a steeple. He had the appearance of an elderly professor readying himself to consider a complex theorem. Good luck, old boy.
‘Charlie, would you like a vodka?’ Victoria asked me.
‘Anything, so long as it has alcohol in it.’
‘There are some nuts here too.’
‘Not for me, thanks.’
‘How about you, Dad?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, darling,’ he said, in a tone that would have struggled to be any sharper. ‘Will you please sit down and talk to me like an adult. I want to know what was happening at Charlie’s apartment.’
Victoria passed me a vodka miniature, along with a glum smile. She delayed for a short while longer, fixing herself and Alfred a finger of whisky while I paid careful attention to the corner of the ceiling. Then she armed Alfred with the good stuff and dropped into the chair beside him.
‘All right, Dad.’ She placed a hand on his knee. ‘We’re going to tell you what that was about. But you have to remember, we were only trying to do the right thing.’
The right thing. Christ. Next she’d be telling him about my induction into the local monastery. I cracked the seal on my vodka, unscrewed the cap and glugged the foul liquid down. The cheap booze numbed the inside of my mouth and made my sinuses tingle.
Victoria cringed at me, then knocked back a slug of her whisky, pulled an unflattering face, and began.
‘The truth is, Dad, we were keeping somebody above Charlie’s apartment. And it looks as if the police might have found him . . .’
Casting the vodka bottle aside, I pressed my palms against my eyes and zoned out of her explanation. I felt impossibly tired, completely wiped out. It was tempting to lay back on the soft bed and crash out for a time, just to enjoy a little respite. My brain seemed jammed with too much information, too many fears, and I was struggling to think clearly. Some of it was fatigue, but much of it was anxiety. The police were involved now. They’d found the Count in my building. Yes, we’d concealed our faces when we’d spoken to him, but he knew we were English and it wouldn’t take long for the authorities to find out about us. They’d speak with Martin and Antea. Perhaps they’d be told about the books that I wrote – the crime angle – and then they’d head to my door and find that we weren’t at home. That we were missing. That we could be on the run.
Christ. How on earth had we been so stupid? And how had the Count been found?
&nb
sp; My mind drifted back to the way we’d left him. He would have come round some time before we’d left the casino, and quite stupidly, I’d assumed he’d stay put, paralysed with terror. But now that I thought about it, there’d been nothing to stop him from shifting across the bed and dropping down onto the floor. He’d had plenty of motivation, so perhaps he’d shuffled like an earthworm as far as the communal landing, then struggled down the stairs and into my apartment. I couldn’t recall locking up in our hurry to leave, and perhaps I hadn’t. Finding the place empty, he could have crawled on his knees as far as my living room and knocked the phone from my desk.
All right, his hands and feet were bound, but he could have dialled the police with his nose or his tongue. He could have told them his plight. He didn’t know his location, but it would have been a simple matter for them to trace my number and find my address . . .
Wait a minute. My mind had snagged on something in the explanation I’d been crafting. A shred of information that jarred, a piece out of place. What was it now?
And then I got it.
Oh crap.
Dialling the police with his tongue. Telling them his plight.
We were morons. Class A idiots. In our rush to get to the casino, there was one trifling detail we’d managed to overlook. Yup, that’s right, we’d forgotten to gag him. We’d tied him up. We’d bound him securely. But we hadn’t prevented him from yelling for help from the bottom of his lungs. Screw the damn earthworm theory. All he’d needed to do was to scream loudly and there was every chance Martin and Antea would have investigated. They’d heard me stumble home after the bomb blast, for goodness’ sake, and Borelli would have been prepared to make a lot more noise.
I lowered my palms from my eyes and looked pitifully at Victoria. She had her father’s hands clasped in her own, and she was talking to him in an earnest tone, doing her best to make him understand the incomprehensible.
‘But darling,’ he said, looking between us with undisguised concern, ‘this is simply terrible. What you’ve been involved in is incredibly dangerous.’