I took a chance and climbed quickly on, hoping the music would conceal the noise I was making. First one flight, then a small landing, followed by a second flight. And then, at last, the floor I was interested in.
The contrast with the fancy interior downstairs was striking. The layout was the same – a long, central space with side rooms leading off from it – but nearly everything else was different. This was somewhere you could actually live. The huge main room was filled with sagging fabric sofas and aged leather armchairs, and the floor was covered with a patchwork of rugs in various shades of red – like a giant test card for the walls of a bordello. There were standing lamps and table lamps, two portable fan heaters whirring asthmatically away, a boxy television in an imposing cabinet, and a large, dated-looking stereo with multiple green lights twinkling on the front of it. Lines of cabling snaked beneath the rugs from the back of the stereo to connect with a series of black-ash speakers. There were no Renaissance artworks – the walls were papered an inoffensive beige colour, and the ceiling featured darkly stained beams. In most other places, the room would have been terribly imposing, but in the context of the statement piece below, it was really quite modest.
Still, I wasn’t in the business of appraising interior décor. Ordinarily, I was in the business of clearing it – at least when it was worth my while – but I wouldn’t be doing that tonight, either. I have to say, it was more than a shade frustrating. Two clean break-ins to the same richly furnished home, and I hadn’t taken a single item on either occasion. Not a record to boast about.
One thing I could be proud of, however, was that my sense of hearing was back on song, as was a gentleman two rooms down on my left. He was singing along in Italian with the rousing tune on the stereo, and though I’m no expert, I thought he had a very fine voice.
Flattening myself against the wall and realigning the eyeslits in my balaclava, I stalked as far as the appropriate doorway and peered inside. Turned out the soaring vocals were just one more gift that Count Frederico Borelli had been blessed with.
He was dressed in black tuxedo trousers and a white dress shirt that had obviously been tailored to his exact proportions. A velvet jacket with silk lapels rested on the corner of the large bed beside him, above a pair of pointed black shoes that had been polished to an oily sheen. The man himself was standing in his socks before a full-height mirror, fiddling with his bow tie and entertaining himself with his singing, rising up on his toes and gesticulating with his hand when the tune on the stereo prompted him to give an extra flourish. He grinned at himself, clearly relishing his performance. Good grief. The dope was practically drooling.
His position wasn’t ideal. I didn’t think he could spot me in the mirror – he only had eyes for himself, after all – but once I began to move from my hiding place there was a good chance he’d notice. I supposed I could wait and see if the set-up improved, but I didn’t rate the idea. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse. He appeared to be alone – even men with fine voices and bloated egos don’t tend to sing with quite so much gusto in company – and if I could tackle him inside his room, there was less risk of being disturbed by a member of his staff. Speaking of which, I wasn’t all that keen to hang around in the open. Better to take my chances and fail, than never to seize my opportunity. Or so I told myself.
Delving inside the bumbag, my fingers touched upon the hard steel of the gun. With the silencer screwed to the barrel, it had only just fit inside the blue plastic pouch. I’d been very conscious of its weight hanging from my waist as I moved around, but it was still unnerving to look at, especially as I’d discovered that it was most definitely loaded. Twelve bullets, packed inside a magazine that slotted into the butt. I couldn’t tell you the calibre, or whether they happened to be hollow-pointed, but I had no doubt that they were quite deadly, particularly if they were fired at close range.
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.
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.