When Hell Freezes Over

by Rick Blechta

  “Oi! You there!” one of them said in a thick Glaswegian accent, but I didn’t slacken my pace. “Hey, mate! Hold up!”

  Ahead of me, someone big came out of another building. Christ! Now I was in for it.

  I stopped, not sure what to do. Looking up and down the road, there was no one else around, no one I could call to for help. My cell phone wouldn’t do any good. By the time the coppers showed up, I’d have been hauled off to who-knows-where, and it would be goodbye Michael. Damn and blast! How could I have been so bloody stupid

  The two men were rapidly closing the gap between us. Stepping through the light of a street lamp, they suddenly became tall, skinny youths, maybe eighteen or nineteen with long, unkempt hair and pimply faces. They may have been up to no good, but vicious thugs they were not. Glancing quickly up the road, I could see the burly form up there helping what looked to be his old mum into the car. My pulse began to ratchet down.

  “Sorry if we startled you, mate,” one of them said. “Just wanted to know if you had a light.”

  I felt in my coat pocket and found a book of matches. “Here. Keep ’em,” I said and began walking again.

  Once in Trongate, I got a cab quite quickly, and all the way back to the hotel, I chided myself for the jumpy state of my nerves. It had been a wake-up call, though, and I would be a fool not to heed the warning.

  ***

  Shannon faced yet another airplane seat back.

  I loathe flying, she thought.

  It was all part of her current stop-the-carousel-I-want-to-get-off mental state which had only been exacerbated by what she’d done the previous evening.

  That in itself had been rather nice. As a matter of fact, it had been rather nice, far better than she’d had any right to expect. Basking in the afterglow of their lovemaking, she’d felt calm, very relaxed and at peace. Her key concern was that Michael had lied to her. Regardless of whether they remained just friends or became something more, she could never accept anything less than complete truthfulness, not after what had happened with Rob.

  The whole thing went round and round in her tired brain all through the flight south, until she felt ready to scream. Why did life always have to be so goddamned complicated?

  As the pilot informed his passengers of their imminent arrival in Birmingham, Shannon tried to force her thoughts into more profitable channels.

  It never made good tactical sense to get personally involved in any investigation, but something about this case made it seem inevitable.she had never believed in fate—until now.

  It seemed reasonable to seek a breakthrough in the same place where the whole affair had started. Find where that girl had been running from when she jumped into Michael’s car, and she’d have the key to finding the girl, the Chameleon, as Shannon had taken to calling her.

  If the British police hadn’t been able to trace her, why should she, a total outsider, expect to have more success?

  “Fate. That’s why,” Shannon said as she stood waiting to get off the plane, and only realized it had been out loud when several people turned to look at her.

  I’ll have to watch that, she told herself as the line started moving.

  ***

  The drive into Birmingham’s downtown had been a harrowing experience. Michael had been so right, there was no way she should have tried it by herself. The signs fairly whizzed past before she had a chance to read them and digest their meaning. Having to divide her attention away from the main task at hand (avoiding hitting anyone while she figured out how to drive on the wrong side of a car), she had soon been hopelessly off course. Several times over the next hour, she’d gotten back on and off the web of expressways that wound through the city, growing more frustrated by her lack of success.

  It was nearly three when she finally made it off the A38 near the hotel Michael had booked for her. His directions proved accurate, when she had a chance to look at the map, but even if she were to try it again from the beginning, she felt sure she wouldn’t be able to get there in one go.

  The Macdonald Burlington Hotel proved to be a good choice, near the Ring Road and not too far from the big red “X” Michael had placed on her map of Birmingham.

  Even though she felt like sleeping for a week, Shannon forced herself to make a start. With the help of the hotel staff, she planned a straightforward route that would take her to the beginning of her search: City Hospital on Dudley Road, where Michael had been stopped at a light when the girl had jumped into his car and turned alot of people’s lives upside down.

  As she got into the car, Shannon crossed herself and wished she had a St. Christopher medal. Her route would take her through several roundabouts, and the ones she’d navigated so far were all black memories.

  Perhaps the patron saint of travellers had blessed her, because she actually made it to the hospital parking lot with only one small misstep on the Sand Pits Parade roundabout.

  Standing on the sidewalk near the light where Michael’s life had taken such a dramatic turn, she looked around.

  The Chameleon had come running up from behind, out of Aberdeen Street. Having been through the listings of all the bed and breakfasts in this part of the city, Shannon felt sure that this part of the girl’s story had been bogus. It just didn’t fit.

  Walking down Aberdeen Street didn’t provide anything startling, so she walked up and down Dudley Road a few times, clearing her mind and hoping for enlightenment. She found a bench and sat down.

  The hoods in New York hadn’t been able to tell her anything about how the drugs were shipped, but she presumed it had been by plane, since they’d said it had been quick. That left out ships. For that reason, she’d immediately thought of London as the point of departure.

  But what if it had been Birmingham?

  That would explain why the girl had been in the city, but why had she been here, in this place? Shannon looked up at the hospital. Could the girl have been in there? If so, why? She hadn’t been sick or injured. No, if she’d been in the hospital, the Chameleon must have been visiting someone.

  Walking to the entrance to begin her inquiries, she felt oddly confident. Maybe it would be the hospital, the outside possibility being the nearby prison, but she had a good feeling about her chances of discovering something useful.

  Presumably, the police had already covered this angle, but Shannon had something in her purse that they hadn’t possessed at the time: a photo of the girl.

  It could make all the difference.

  Twenty-Three

  Picking up the phone, I sat down wearily on the edge of the bed. If this were Shannon, I had no idea how the call would go, considering her mood when we’d parted at the airport.

  “Hello?” I said neutrally.

  “Great, Michael, you’re there.” Shannon sounded almost breathless, her excitement obvious.

  “Had a successful day?”

  “You could say that,” she laughed.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve found Regina.”

  “No, but I think I’ve found the beginning of the story.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I know where she came from. And we’ve got yet another name for her, and I believe it’s her real one: Giovanna, last name Vennuti. And believe it or not, she’s a Brum, as you call them, born and bred.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Uh-huh. And I’ve spent a profitable hour talking to her cousin. I also know what she was doing in Birmingham the day she jumped into your car.”

  I whistled. “You have had a successful day.”

  “Do you have time to talk now?”

  Moving a couple of pillows, I leaned back against the headboard. “I have all night.”

  Shannon had been very lucky with her hunch, and we both knew it. The difference, of course, between her success and that of the police was the security photo from the hotel elevator in Toronto. When the police had called round at the City Hospital, they hadn’t received it yet, and from what he’d told us the day befor
e, Campbell hadn’t sent them back after Shannon had provided it to him.

  “I don’t think they were as thorough as they could have been, either,” she told me. “I spoke to the head nurse in the Accident and Emergency Department, and she’d been on duty at the time the girljumped into your car. The police had already talked to her about it, and she was quite sure the girl had not been in A and E at any time. The police seem to have dropped it at that point.”

  “That’s pretty sloppy,” I said.

  “It is, but to be truthful, I don’t think their hearts were in it. You have to remember, when they were asked to do the search, Campbell hadn’t even seen fit to send one of his own people down, and I can tell you from personal experience, when that sort of thing happens, the effort put in just isn’t the same. You’ve told me you got the feeling Campbell was after you at the time. Small wonder he didn’t have the proper interest in finding the girl.”

  Since City Hospital was a large place, and Shannon couldn’t throw her weight around like a police representative could, it had taken her two hours to visit the various hospital departments, showing Regina/Giovanna’s photo to any staff member willing to look at it.

  Her doggedness had finally paid off in one of the large general wards. The person identifying the girl had been a male nurse, which made sense. Shannon had already mentioned to me she didn’t think the girl was all that beautiful. Yes, she was not what would be termed “a ten”, but she exuded something powerful which perhaps only males responded to.

  “I remember her well,” the nurse had said to Shannon. “Visited only once and stayed for several hours with a dying relative, I believe.” The man looked off into the distance for a long moment, then added, “Yes, I’m sure that was it.”

  “Do you remember the patient’s name?”

  “No, but I can find out for you.”

  Shannon had been left standing in the corridor for several minutes watching the bustle of a busy hospital: the comings and goings of nurses, shuffling patients and anxious visitors. When the nurse had finally returned, Shannon had experienced enough of the smell of antiseptic and ill patients, most of them elderly.

  “Fanny’s on today. Bit of luck that,” the nurse told her. “I take it she’s the person on this floor who remembers everything,” Shannon replied with a relieved smile.

  “Got it in one. You’re good.”

  He had begun eyeing her with something a little more than professional interest.

  She decided to put a stop to that right away. “I was a cop for over ten years before I went into private practice. Once learned, the skills stay with you.” She’d taken out her cop-issue notebook to reinforce her words. “Now, what you were able to find out for me?”

  “Fanny says the girl came to see Mamma Vennuti. That’s what everyone called her, see? She was this little old Italian lady, very proper, like the kind you see in movies, dressed all in black. Lived in Britain over fifty years but could barely speak English. Stayed with her own kind the whole time. But everybody on the floor liked the old bird.

  “Anyway, she’d been in and out of hospital several times the past year, only now it seemed her time was up. Didn’t have a lot of family left. Just one daughter and a few younger ones came to see her. So this particular day, it’s after visiting hours, and this piece of fluff comes in and she wants to see her grandmother.”

  “And this was the person whose photo I showed you?”

  The nurse had nodded. “Yeah. Fanny doesn’t usually cut people a lot of slack, but she did this time. You see, the girl had only just found out her grandmother was dying and rushed here to see her. The girl was weeping and wailing to beat the band, she was. Real broke up. It wasn’t until well after midnight that she left. Said she’d be back the next day, but it wouldn’t have done much good anyway. The old lady died before morning.”

  “You said the girl had rushed here to see her grandmother. Do you know where she came from? Maybe the States or Canada?”

  “From Germany,” the nurse had said with surprise. “This girl you’re looking for is German. Leastwise, she had the accent. Kind of strange...”

  ***

  I whistled again when Shannon told me that. “You’re right when you call Regina, Giovanna, whatever her name is, the Chameleon. Is there any language this girl doesn’t speak?”

  Shannon clucked her tongue. “There is certainly a lot more to your little chickie than it first appeared. She is something special.”

  “You sound grudgingly impressed.”

  “I am.”

  With a little eyelash-batting, Shannon had convinced Mr. Nurse to provide her with the name of the late Mamma Vennuti’s daughter, though she’d cut him off cold when he asked if she wanted to get together later that evening.

  Shannon left the hospital at shop-closing time and found a phone booth. One call had led her right to the family. The woman’s daughter had just arrived home from work when Shannon knocked on the door. At first, she was reluctant to talk, but Shannon had exuded all her charm and skill and eventually got in the door. Once tapped, the story flowed right out.

  “The cousin, Maria Rota, is the same age as Gia—that’s what the family calls her,” Shannon told me. “The girls were brought up together because—and get this—Gia’s mother committed suicide when the girl was eleven. That’s another truth buried among the lies she told you.”

  “Creepy...”

  “Both Gia and Maria had been born late in their mothers’ lives. Gia’s mum had never married, which, as you can imagine, the parents weren’t happy about, but she had a ‘career’, meaning she worked. Her pregnancy was a major family scandal. It had happened on a vacation to the old country, and the mother never revealed anything about who the father was. I saw a photo of her, and there’s an amazing resemblance—except for the eyes.”

  ***

  Shannon gazed at the photograph Maria had handed her.

  “The photo was taken when my aunt first got to Italy on her hols that year,” Maria had told her. “She met a man who was also on holidays. That’s all we know.”

  When Shannon laid the photo down on the coffee table, her copy of the security photo of the Chameleon was right next to it, and the similarity between mother and daughter was quite striking. Shannon felt Rosa, the mother, had been prettier, but couldn’t say why until she concentrated on the eyes. Gia’s had a remote quality to them, as if her mind were on something else, something far away. The mother’s were clear and open, and she looked very happy. That was soon to change.

  Two weeks after she’d come home, she knew the worst. Her family, understandably, had taken it badly. When the pregnancy had moved into its later stages, they’d packed Rosa off to Italy for her confinement.

  “I didn’t think anyone used words like that any more,” Shannon told me, “but Maria was very matter of fact about it.”

  The mum had stayed in Italy for a year, then had come home. The family had hoped the father would find out and do the right thing.

  “They don’t even know if she tried to contact him,” Shannon said. “She was a teacher, and even though it was hard, she brought her daughter up as best she could. Mamma Vennuti babysat during the day, and when Gia got older, she spent a lot of time at her cousin’s house.”

  Eventually, the attitude of the family had gotten to her, and during the summer of Gia’s eleventh year, the mum had taken her back to Italy to find the father and speak to him about his daughter.

  Shannon sighed. “I guess the meeting didn’t go well, because the next day, Rosa dropped Gia with a second cousin, said she was going shopping and jumped off a bridge.”

  The family had brought the little girl back, and Mamma Vennuti had taken charge. Maria and Gia had grown up like sisters. They looked quite a lot alike, although Maria was plainer and probably less shrewd, too, according to what Shannon had observed. From an early age, Gia was apparently precocious with languages and accents. Naturally, with the girls speaking English at school and Italian in the ho
me, they were bilingual, but Gia could flawlessly imitate any of the British accents she heard on the telly. In school, she’d quickly mastered French, then German, Spanish, any language she tried her hand at.

  “There’s jealousy in Maria towards her cousin,” Shannon said.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Gia must have completely overshadowed her. She was clever, funny and quite a good actress. Everyone in the family thought she’d do well on the stage, or maybe even the movies. Maria’s a nice enough young lady, but like I said, she’s pretty ordinary: mousey hair, glasses, clothes that don’t do a thing for her, but there’s a strong family resemblance. I could see how people would think they were sisters. All through the interview, it kept going through my mind, though: why she was telling me all this? I let Maria know right off the bat that I was an investigator from Canada. I got the feeling she was trying to get her cousin in trouble.”

  “Sounds logical.”

  “Maybe. Mamma Vennuti, because of what had happened to her daughter, kept a very tight rein on her granddaughter. Gia and Maria were both sent for a good Catholic education, but Gia wasn’t allowed to do anything outside of school, unless it involved the church and there was adequate supervision. She wasn’t allowed to work when she got old enough. And as for boys, that was a total non-starter. Mamma V. took her to Mass every day, twice on Sundays, and often talked about Gia taking her vows as soon as she became old enough. I guess the idea being she might atone for the sins of her mother.”

  Gia had soon begun to chafe under her Gran’s constant control. She’d started sneaking out at night. Maria went along sometimes too, and covered up for her cousin on numerous occasions.

  It was mostly harmless fun: meeting with kids their own age, going to the cinema, occasionally out dancing as the girls got older. There were no drugs and little drinking—at first. As the girls got away with more, Gia began taking chances, and Maria had got cold feet.

  “I think that’s where the split occurred,” Shannon said. “As you can imagine, eventually the grandmother got wind of what was going on, and I got the distinct impression Maria ratted Gia out.”