by Ewan, Chris
An electronic departure board was suspended high above the station concourse and I craned my neck to scan it. I could smell diesel fumes and brake dust, mingled with the aromas of a fast-food buffet. My train was the next to depart, in less than five minutes, and I swerved around a young couple with Canadian flags embroidered on their rucksacks and broke into a lurching shuffle.
The Stendhal – destination Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia and Paris – was made up of a long chain of white-on-blue carriages, some of them laid out with sleeping compartments and others with rows of reclining seats. I was nearing the last of the sleepers and beginning to fear the worst when I finally spied Alfred and Victoria watching for me from a half-open window.
Checking over my shoulder, it looked as if I was in the clear. A man in a green jumpsuit was emptying bags of rubbish into a litter cart and a woman with a cashmere shawl and sunglasses was carrying a Chihuahua towards the next carriage along. Up ahead, a stringy guard in a blue Trenitalia uniform waved me aboard and I clambered up the steps and bundled inside our three-bed compartment to be greeted by a crushing hug.
‘Steady, Vic.’ I eased her away, choosing to ignore the way her eyes had misted over. It seemed she’d invested in a new outfit. Gone was the green evening dress, replaced by a pair of tan cotton trousers and a pink sweater over a lemon blouse.
‘Were you followed?’ she asked.
‘Of course not,’ I told her. ‘There’s nothing to worry about.’
I threw my luggage onto the bench beside Alfred, then lifted the briefcase for them both to see.
‘My goodness,’ Alfred said. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ He found his feet in a hurry and slapped me hard on the back, the brass buttons rattling on his navy-blue blazer. ‘How on earth did you get it?’
‘Long story,’ I told him. ‘But take a seat. It’d be a relief to share it.’
We were rolling out of Padua a half-hour later, passing grimy freight carriages, a double-decker commuter train and an unlit football stadium, when I completed my account. An attendant had interrupted us shortly after we’d left Venice to claim our passports and find out which dinner sitting we wished to attend. Other than that, we’d enjoyed complete privacy by keeping the door to our compartment closed and trusting the rumble of wheels on track to mask anything an eavesdropper might hear.
Part-way through my story, Victoria had donned a pair of my plastic disposable gloves and had taken to kneeling on the bench seat beside me while she tended to the gash on the back of my head. She’d used cotton pads from her make-up bag to apply the antiseptic solution Martin had given me, then done her best to stick me back together with the butterfly plasters. She didn’t seem entirely satisfied with her work, but I’d already had close to my fill of being prodded and jabbed when the carriage rocked unexpectedly and she damn near tickled my frontal lobe.
‘Bloody hell, Vic.’ I ducked away and pressed my palm to where it hurt. ‘That’s it, you’re finished.’
‘But I think you may need a few more stitches.’
‘I’d rather bleed. Now, sit.’
She made a huffing noise and arranged her lips into a sulky pout, then collapsed next to me and peeled off her gloves.‘It’s not easy, you know.’
I did know. Believe me. But after carefully slipping my baseball cap back onto my head, I reached across and gave her hand a squeeze.
‘You’re an angel.’
‘And you’re a moron.’ She snatched her hand free, stuffing the used gloves into the metal litterbin fitted beneath our compartment window. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t get the hell away from that bookshop when you found Graziella’s uncle had been shot.’
‘I thought he’d done it to himself, Vic.’
‘Well, you should have checked for the gun.’
I was about to respond when a high-speed train flew by in the opposite direction, sucking us towards it and then blowing us aside. A two-tone horn blared out, too late to offer any kind of warning, and I waited for the noise and the juddering to subside before continuing.
‘Point taken,’ I said. ‘But hindsight is a wonderful thing.’
‘And you definitely should have left when you saw the bomb-making equipment.’
I glanced across at Alfred for help. He seemed delighted to provide it.
‘Darling, why don’t we just focus on the positives, hmm? I’d say it’s all worked out rather well, wouldn’t you?’
‘Charlie could have been killed, Dad.’
‘Yes, but he wasn’t. That rat Borelli was. And I can’t think of a more fitting way for him to go. Shot by a fellow who only tracked him down because of what he did to poor John and Eunice in Monte Carlo.’
‘I’m not sure Remi’s motives were quite that noble, Dad. And anyway, wouldn’t you have preferred to see Borelli stand trial for what he did?’
Alfred smoothed his fingers across the plush fabric of his seat. ‘Darling, I think the likelihood of that happening was rather slim, don’t you? And if you canvassed the members of my team, your mother included, I’d wager they’d be quite satisfied with his fate.’
‘And we’ll share the money,’ I put in. ‘A three-way split. Not so bad, considering.’
‘Considering what?’ Victoria snapped. ‘Has it occurred to you that the police might still link you to the Count’s death?’
‘I don’t see how. Martin and Antea won’t say anything. And Graziella and Remi are hardly going to want to advertise their involvement in all this.’
‘You’re assuming Remi is still alive. Didn’t you say that Graziella was planning to kill him?’
There was a sudden clatter and whoosh as we plunged into a tunnel. The vacuum was fierce, popping my ears, and it wasn’t until we emerged from the other side that I was able to continue.
‘It did seem to be on the cards at the time,’ I admitted. ‘Though it’s possible I jumped to the wrong conclusion.’
‘Doesn’t that bother you?’
‘Not unduly. And I’m not sure why it should concern you, either. He had evidence linking Borelli and Graziella to the murder of your father’s friends, but he chose to use it for his own profit. Hardly the behaviour of a saint.’ I paused, and absorbed the look of horror on Victoria’s face. ‘But, if you care for my opinion, I don’t think Graziella was in a fit state to kill anyone when I left. Your trick cigarettes made sure of that, not to mention that I’d swiped her gun. And besides, Remi has already proved himself adept at tracking people down. I imagine she could find that appealing.’
‘You mean they might come after you?’
‘They might.’ I nodded, studiously avoiding my own reflection in the darkened glass of our carriage window. ‘But they’d have to find me first. And I’m really not sure they’ll bother. For all they know, I might have spent the money by the time they catch up with me. And what’s to prevent me from going to the police? True, none of this paints me in an appealing light, but it’d be an awful lot worse for them.’
‘You really believe they’ll just let it go?’
‘I didn’t see them at the train station, did you?’
She thumped a fist into her thigh. ‘But I’m worried, Charlie.’
‘Don’t be. It’s not good for your blood pressure. Although, if it makes you feel any brighter, I do have one more trick up my sleeve.’
Actually, it wasn’t up my sleeve – it was inside the rear pocket of my jeans. I plucked the item free and held it between my forefinger and thumb for Victoria to see.
‘Holy cow! That’s my data recorder.’
‘It is indeed.’ I clicked the rewind button, followed by pause and play. Graziella’s voice could be heard. It was a little tinny, I confess, but her words were audible all the same. I thumbed the stop button. ‘I had it with me when I returned to the bookbinding shop,’ I explained. ‘The transmitter in the lid of your pepper spray was powerful enough to record everything Graziella said. Every incriminating word.’
Victoria reached out for the recorder and I pres
sed it into her hands before inclining my head towards Alfred and patting him on the knee. ‘Hungry?’ I asked.
‘Ravenous,’ he replied.
The meal was surprisingly good. The dining car was a light, airy space, cocooned against the shimmering blackness outside our window. We indulged ourselves with a three-course meal, followed by a selection of cheeses, all of it accompanied by a passable white wine from the Veneto region. True, it wasn’t quite the Orient Express, but I could feel the tension and stresses of the past few days begin to fade away as the train rattled onwards through the low-lying countryside beyond Vicenza, passing the occasional glow of a minor station and tracking the odd stretch of motorway.
It was while I was letting some of the cheese settle in my belly and watching the hypnotic rise and dip of the electricity cables running alongside us that Alfred reclined in the chair opposite me, laced his hands behind his head and asked, through an indulgent yawn, where I planned to go next.
‘I’m not altogether sure,’ I told him, and to be honest, I wasn’t very comforted by my answer. Yes, I’m a wandering soul, but I usually like to have some idea of where I intend to wander to. ‘I won’t stay in Paris for long – the consequence of a promise I made some years ago – but I’d like to see Pierre and ask his advice on what to do with my share of the money. You’ll know yourself how difficult it can be to open a bank account with cash these days, but he’s likely to have some suggestions. And after that, who knows?’
‘Well, have you considered Asia? My team could use a man like you.’
I smiled. ‘I’m flattered, Alfred, but I suspect my destination lies elsewhere.’
Victoria was sitting next to me with an earphone in her ear, connected by a wire to the data recorder. I plucked the earbud free, keen to have her complete attention.
‘I hope you’ll forgive me for this, Vic, but I also want to see if Pierre has any work for me. I gave clean living a shot, but I don’t think I’m cut out to be just a writer. I miss my other life too much. This past week has been hellish, no question, but I can’t pretend there weren’t times when it felt good to be out on the scam again. It’s reprehensible, I know, but it’s who I am.’
‘Oh, relax,’ she said, winding her earphones around the recorder and then reaching for her wine. ‘I was telling Dad the same thing last night.’
‘You were?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘I know you better than you think, Charlie. And to be perfectly honest, I happen to believe it’s a good idea.’
‘You do?’ I placed my palm against her forehead. ‘Are you feeling okay? Got a temperature at all?’
‘I’m no idiot, Charlie.’ She batted my hand away. ‘Any fool could see how twitchy you’ve been. And it was quite obvious from your manuscript how much you’ve missed it. If you ask me, that’s why your book was so over the top.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well, don’t give me that hang-dog look. You already had some idea how I felt about the script.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Depends.’ She rested her wine glass on the table and twisted it by the stem. ‘I have a plan that might work.’
‘Uh-oh. Major rewrite alert.’
I glanced across at Alfred. He flashed his dentures at me as he helped himself to a triangle of soft cheese. ‘Victoria told me her idea last night,’ he said, popping the cheese into his mouth. ‘I think it’s rather good.’
‘It would have to be,’ I told him, ‘seeing as I don’t have my copy of The Maltese Falcon to rely on any more.’
‘It’s really quite simple,’ Victoria said, ignoring my woe-is-me routine. ‘It just took me a little while to work out. The fact is, you haven’t written a Michael Faulks novel. You may think you have, but it’s far too different – the change from the rest of the series would be too marked. But I think you can keep the core of your book, with the odd tweak here and there, provided you make one major change.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Alter your lead character.’ She reached up and patted my cheek. ‘Ditch Faulks and replace him with a glamorous female cat burglar.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Not remotely.’ She shook her head, as if to prove it to me. ‘The book becomes a stand-alone, maybe even the start of a new series. Obviously you’ll need to come up with a better name for her than Graziella, but otherwise, I’d say you have a pretty good model to base your character on, wouldn’t you?’
I pursed my lips, then raised my wine glass to them, tasting around the idea. ‘You think it could work?’
‘I already made some notes with Dad last night.’ She bundled up her napkin and placed it on the tabletop. ‘Want me to fetch them?’
‘Hell,’ I said, ‘might as well, I suppose.’
Victoria squirmed out of our seating booth and moved away down the carriage towards the sliding automatic door. I signalled our waiter and ordered three espressos. There was a judder and hiss as the brakes engaged, slowing us for our arrival into Verona. Outside our window, a lighted Agip petrol station eased by, followed by a concrete water tower and a frothing river.
‘You know,’ Alfred said, ‘my daughter is very selective with her affections.’
I’d turned to face him before I’d quite heard what he’d said. I was beginning to think that may have been a mistake.
‘Oh don’t look so horrified,’ he told me. ‘I’m not about to give you some heavy-handed warning, Charlie. I like you. My point is, so does Victoria. She might not say anything directly, but I could tell from how agitated she became last night.’ He paused, and studied me wolfishly. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’
I made like a goldfish, opening and closing my mouth.
‘Not one to discuss affairs of the heart with an old-timer like me, eh? Well, fair enough. Just thought you should be aware of what you’re dealing with.’ He cleared his throat, then spoke in a hasty whisper. ‘Be awfully decent if you could do your best not to break her heart.’ He glanced up and fixed a blazing smile onto his face. ‘Sugar Plum, you’re back.’
He was right. Sugar Plum was approaching our table, and from her tight expression, I was afraid she’d overheard her father. She looked every bit as panicked as I felt. I searched her eyes for some indication of whether there was any truth to what Alfred had said. But there was nothing there for me. At least, nothing I could decipher. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
‘Something’s happened,’ she said, then stumbled and gripped the table as the train came to a screeching halt. ‘Someone’s been in our compartment. Look, I found this.’ She lifted a brown paper package for me to see. My name had been printed on the package with a magic marker. As she spoke, I could hear a series of train doors being thrown back with a thud. ‘And the briefcase is gone,’ she added.
‘What?’
I heaved myself out from beneath the table, shoving Victoria aside and racing to the end of the dining car. The corridor ahead of me was blocked by passengers struggling aboard with heavy luggage.
‘Scusi!’ I waded in, forcing my way through. ‘Scusi, per favore!’ My bad Italian and bad manners weren’t endearing me to anyone. I didn’t care. I muscled my way past a series of couchette compartments, then tackled a gaggle of passengers at the other end. But when I reached our compartment, I discovered that Victoria was right.
The briefcase was no longer on the metal rack above the door beside my holdall, and it hadn’t been moved to the rack above the window. The bench seats had been converted into bunks, but there were only blankets and pillows on top of them, and no sign of the briefcase underneath.
‘Charlie, look.’ Victoria was standing in the doorway. She’d ripped open the brown paper of the package and I could glimpse bright yellow beneath. She plucked the object from its wrapping and passed it to me, and the moment I saw it, I had an undeniable urge to kiss her again. It might have been charred and discoloured, half the jacket burned away and the bottom edge of the pages reduced to little more than ash, but
it was unquestionably mine. The Maltese Falcon, a first edition, signed by one Dashiell Hammett. No longer in mint condition – far from it, in fact – but very possibly still capable of weaving its particular magic from above my writing desk.
I heard the slamming of doors, the squeal of a conductor’s whistle and the clunk of released brakes. I was nudged sideways by the lurch of sudden movement. The carriage shunted forwards and I rushed to the window, flattening my palms against the glass.
We slid by a lighted waiting room, an Armani advertising hoarding, a soft-drink vending machine. We glided past a station clock and a yellow departure timetable.
Then I finally saw them. Graziella was standing beneath the blue platform number in her platinum blonde wig, clutching the attaché briefcase in front of her waist. Remi was loitering beside her, leaning his weight on his good leg, hands deep inside the pockets of his camel-hair coat, the brim of his fedora slashing his eyes.
I didn’t watch him for long. Graziella was the one who had my attention. I thought perhaps she’d chosen the blonde wig for some kind of symmetry. Then she did something that made me feel sure of it. Lifting one hand, she raised a gloved finger to her pursed lips and winked. Unwittingly, my palm against the glass became a wordless farewell as the train drifted on, leaving Graziella to slide smoothly out of my life along the vanishing platform.
I banged my forehead against the window and marvelled at the book in my hand, telling myself it really wasn’t such a shabby deal. And perhaps, on balance, it wasn’t such a terrible ending, either. Any worthwhile mystery novel needs a twist in the tale, and no doubt, if it were up to me, I’d say this just about cut it.
Victoria, though, likes to finesse things, as you know. And if I was to allow her to contribute a final paragraph, I dare say she’d let you into a little secret about the briefcase Graziella was holding so primly. She might, for instance, tell you that I have a tendency to prepare for certain eventualities. She could just speculate that during my time in that grubby backstreet hotel, I’d had a sneaking suspicion that I hadn’t seen the last of my Venetian bella donna. She might even go so far as to say that before leaving for the station, I took the liberty of transferring all but a single bundle of notes from the briefcase to my holdall, replacing the bulk of the cash with a ruined tuxedo, an unwanted pistol and the sorry bedding from my room. But then, what do I know? I’m just the author.