The Venetian Affair (43 page)

“Who was he?”

“He never told me his name. He came and sat at my table.
He was trying to blackmail me.” Ballard smiled. “I told him to go to hell.”

Lenoir’s surprise was real.

“After that, the police arrived. They asked me some questions about him, naturally enough. But I knew nothing.”

“Why was he arrested?”

“Blackmailers often get arrested,” Ballard said cheerfully. “Good night, Fernand. See you later?”

“Not tonight. Tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here early. Around nine?”

Lenoir nodded. He was preoccupied. He didn’t even pay attention to the scream of pain, distant and faint, that froze Ballard as the heavy door closed behind him and shut him out into the dark, narrow street. A light mist was condensing; the pavement was damp in patches, and the chill from the canal at one end of the short
calle
sent a shiver up his spine. Or maybe it was the memory of that pitiful scream. He set out quickly, walking away from the canal, choosing to plunge back into the labyrinth of Venice by way of the little square. He wasn’t being followed; there were no footsteps except the echoes of his. Yet he still had that odd feeling of being watched.

Even as he crossed the sagging pavement of the small square, with its leaning church tower, its closely shuttered houses, its dimly lit café filled with men, the feeling persisted. He resisted breaking into a run but his pace quickened, and—as the bright shop windows of the next
calle
helped light his way into more crowded streets—he took his first real breath of relief. His brain began to function again.

He chose the lighted doorway of a shoe shop, and stepped out of the stream of people flowing toward the Piazza San Marco.
He pulled the map out of his pocket as if to study his direction. There was a letter inside—so she hadn’t been lying about that, either—addressed to a Major Christopher Holland from someone called P. Trouin. He read on, quickly, then folded the letter away in his map and put it carefully back into his pocket. He stared at a row of women’s velvet slippers, red, blue, yellow, pink, beaded and bejewelled, for twelve hundred lire. The letter was like an acid burning its way into his mind. That was one story, he sensed, that he never could use: whatever the truth, or the lie, in that letter, it was far outside his province. Could it be true? If so, the whole damned world was on the skids, and his own country was to blame. It couldn’t be true—surely? Or supposing it was a fake, meant to be taken as true? It would work; it was working on him: he kept saying it couldn’t be true, it couldn’t, surely? He knew one thing definitely: he had been given the hottest package in Venice to hold. If Lenoir had ordered Martin to search him, he wouldn’t be alive at this minute. Clever little Sandra, and sucker Mike... The sooner he got rid of this, the better. The easy way was to throw it into the next canal he crossed. The easy way... Had he become such a yellowbelly as that?

Someone brushed his arm, and he jerked around, ready to hit back.

“Such darling slippers,” the girl was saying, “and only two dollars! Andy, you must bring me here tomorrow morning when the shop opens. Just look!”

“I’m looking.” Her husband glanced after Ballard. “Say, we startled that fellow. Who did he think we were, d’you suppose?”

The girl laughed happily. “Really, Venice is the most
wonderful
place. I think I’ll have the pink ones.”

Upstairs at Quadri’s in one of its small softly lighted rooms, with a window wide open beside their table to let them look out over the Piazza, Claire and Bill Fenner dined on red mullet, drank properly chilled Montrachet, and talked. This, he thought as he watched her, had turned out to be a good idea although it had started badly enough.

At first, Claire had been so depressed by Mike Ballard’s performance that she had scarcely touched her
apéritif
, seemed to have no interest in the tantalising menu. Even this little table, with its splendid view of the lighted colonnade stretching down the other side of the Piazza, had seemed a mistake, for it had let her see Ballard still sitting over there, talking to Jan Aarvan again.

“I can’t bear it,” she said quietly. “I just can’t bear it. Did we
make any mistakes with Ballard, give anything away? Surely he wouldn’t—” She bit her lip, looked down at the white cloth and gleaming silver.

“If he does,” Fenner said equally quietly, putting his hand over hers, “he won’t know he is doing it.”

“And that excuses him?” For taking our lives away? she thought bleakly.

“No excuses offered. It’s just an explanation.”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better,” she said, trying to smile, failing. She looked back at Florian’s. Her eyes widened in disbelief. “We’ve got him,” she said, her voice unsteady with suppressed excitement. “We’ve got him, Bill!”

He looked as casually as he could over his shoulder, and saw the end of Aarvan’s arrest. He looked back at her. “Now,” he said, releasing her hand, “will you drink that Cinzano?”

“Lemon peel and all,” she agreed, beginning to laugh. She raised her glass in a toast. “One down and two to go!” she said very softly.

“I’m glad I’m on your side,” he told her. He glanced over his shoulder at Florian’s once more. Holland was about to sit down at that distant table. So Pietro
had
understood English. Fenner took a deep breath of relief, and finished his drink.

“All I want is justice,” she said, serious again, but no longer unhappy. “Without that, the world is turned upside down, and swamped with bitterness. No thank you—not for me.”

“Now I know why the figure of Justice is always shown as a woman,” he teased her. “Blindfolded, naturally.”

“Naturally?”

“So that in spite of a soft heart, she can play no favourites.” He picked up the menu.

“Soft heart or soft head?” she wanted to know. “It’s strange, though, that women will say one thing and then do another. We sort of back out, find excuses, hope... In a way, we earn our own disappointments.” She looked across the Piazza again.

“Did you warn Mike Ballard?”

“Yes,” she said frankly. “I kept hoping he wouldn’t, he couldn’t. But—well, he did. And that’s that.” She said it sadly.

“Let’s leave him to old Dr. Chris, shall we?”

She studied him thoughtfully. “Men
are
puzzling,” she said. “I had the idea you didn’t like—” She glanced around the room. Talking softly like this, they couldn’t be overheard. Their window table was isolated from those along the walls. “That you didn’t like Chris too much.”

“Oh, just a natural reaction. I felt he resented me.” Which would be a natural reaction, too: there was I, with Claire, happy and confident and alive; and there was Neill Carlson, dead. He said quickly, to pull her away from that direction of thought, “So men are puzzling? And women aren’t?”

“You don’t seem too baffled by them.”

He shook his head. “If we had forty years together, you’d still keep me guessing.”

She looked at him.

“Or fifty,” he said smoothly, studying the menu. “What about some red mullet? But first—let’s see...”

She watched him as he chose and ordered. She felt a strange warmth, a new sense of relaxing, of light in frightening darkness—light that didn’t flicker and vanish, light that held steady and grew. I am tired of walking alone, she thought, of searching and groping and drawing back to past memories. I need someone to lean on, to have with me, and be with; never
alone and lost and afraid any more. But that was only a part of the truth, as she knew when his eyes met hers, and stayed, holding hers.

“And wine, signore?” the waiter murmured politely, bringing them back from that long moment of discovery.

“And wine,” said Fenner absent-mindedly, forgetting the small pride he took in vineyard and vintage. Tonight, water would have tasted like champagne.

So they dined and talked, their small table an island unto itself, the rest of the room forgotten.

And suddenly Mike Ballard stood beside them, signalling the waiter for another chair. “Do you mind if I join you?” he asked. He was too worried to enjoy the amazement on their faces. “Hello, beautiful,” he said to Claire. He was never too worried for that.

“It seems as if you have,” Fenner said coldly as Ballard sat down, his back to the room, and switched off the small pink lamp. He moved away the waiter’s outheld menu. “Haven’t much time.”

“Better order something,” Claire said. It wasn’t only a conditioned reflex springing to work: to make the unusual seem perfectly normal. He’s ill, she was thinking. Not drunk, as she had first thought: something was very wrong with Mike Ballard.

He took the menu, placed it in front of him, rested his elbow on it. “Double Scotch and soda,” he told the waiter. He looked at Fenner. “I’m taking the first plane I can get back to Paris. But there are two things I’ve got to do right away.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “How do we get help to Sandra Fane?”

Fenner recovered quickly. “Why ask me?”

“Cut it out, cut it out,” Ballard said irritably. “She told me to get in touch with you if she escaped. She wasn’t dousing me with eyewash this time. Not tonight.”

Fenner and Claire exchanged a glance. He said, “She escaped? Where is she?”

“She tried to. It didn’t work. When I left that place—it’s called Ca’ Longhi—they had started beating her. Or something.” He could still hear the scream. “They are putting her on board a freighter at midnight—it sails tomorrow morning. I guess you don’t think you owe her much. Still—she delivered half a story. It could have got me dumped into a canal, it’s true,” he smiled grimly, “but she did make sure it got out of that house. So you owe her—”

Claire had seen the waiter arriving. “Bill was explaining to me,” she cut in quickly, “why he is all in favour of a repertory theatre in New York. Don’t you agree that if we could alternate a popular play with a classic each week, we could make one pay for the other?” She watched the waiter leaving. “Yes, Mike?” she asked softly.

“So you owe her something,” he told Fenner. “That’s how I see it.” He didn’t touch his drink. He had slipped one hand into his pocket and brought out a map. Quietly, he inserted it between the pages of the menu, put his elbow back on top of it. “What about it, Bill?”

Fenner looked at Claire. Is this true? he seemed to be asking her. Can we really take his word?

Claire said, “Couldn’t we send the police in?” But on what excuse? she wondered.

“And tell them that a Frenchman is having his mistress beaten
up by two servants? They would think it just some new angle in French fun and games. Besides, Lenoir would find an excuse for anything.” He stared hard at Fenner. “I’ve learned,” Ballard said bitterly. He looked down at the menu. “Can you help?”

“We’ll get word to some people who might be able to.”

“That’s a promise? You’ll get word to them right away?”

Fenner nodded. “You said something about half a story. What is it?”

“A letter. You’ll find it inside this menu. Tell me one thing: is it real or is it a fake?”

“A fake.”

Ballard took a deep breath of relief. “It shook me,” he admitted. He picked up his drink and swallowed a large gulp. “Sure, I read it. I thought I might as well know what I was dying for.” His smile was brief. “Also, I thought I could use it, perhaps. But”—he shook his head—“half a story could be the wrong story. I’ll wait for the whole of it.”

“You’ll get it,” Fenner promised him.

“If it can be told,” Ballard said gloomily. But at least, he thought, Bill Fenner can’t use it at all. That’s certain. He brightened, and finished his drink. “Well—see you in Paris.”

“Not if you go back to your hotel,” Fenner said very quietly.

“You mean—? But I talked my way out of Ca’ Longhi without a slip. And I wasn’t tailed. I am pretty sure of that.”

“Because Lenoir knows where he can find you.” Fenner let that fact sink in, and added, “Wait for us downstairs. Outside. Be careful, Mike. Follow us at a safe distance. We’ll take you to our hotel. You can’t walk the streets all night, or sit at a café, or try to register at another hotel.” His passport would give his name away, and Lenoir’s men would soon track him down.
“I’ll smuggle you up to my room. And I’ll pass word to our friends that you may need a little help, too.”

Ballard’s face was pale. “Me?” He sounded almost indignant.

“Sandra is being questioned right now, isn’t she?”

Ballard nodded. “You think she will break?”

Fenner said nothing. Yes, she probably will. She is being interrogated by experts. How much will she tell? Everything? Or just enough to make a deal with Lenoir? We feel we owe her something, but there is one thing certain: Sandra feels no obligation, no loyalty to us.

“I get you,” Ballard said dully. “If I tried to check out of my hotel tonight—” He didn’t finish. “I get you,” he said again, and rose.

He hadn’t bargained for that, Fenner thought, as he watched Ballard leave. But he would rally, like the rest of us, when he had got accustomed to the idea of more trouble ahead. Fenner lifted the menu, felt for the map, slid it quietly under his napkin, called for the check, added a handsome tip, and pocketed the map along with his wallet. “How do we reach Rosie?” he asked as he helped Claire slip into her coat.

“Arnaldi’s.”

The camera shop near the bridge. It was on the way to the Vittoria, thank heaven. “It’s twenty minutes of ten,” he said as they went down the narrow flight of stairs into the small ground-floor room. “I think we had better cut out that gondola ride.”

She nodded. Not many people down here in this room, she noted, and no one who seemed interested in them. No one was hastily calling for his check, leaving his drink unfinished. No one followed them, either, from the brightly lit arcade, except Mike Ballard, who had waited sensibly on the shadowed side
of one of the arches, and was keeping at a reasonable distance. No one was interested in them at all now. Why? Were they out of suspicion? Perhaps. It was ironic that at this point, when they had managed to free themselves of suspicion, Sandra should have been trapped. What was Bill thinking, feeling? she wondered. His face was expressionless. He hadn’t spoken since they had come down Quadri’s stairs. He was walking quickly, though, his arm through hers, drawing her along. Sandra, she realised, that’s what is driving him like this. I’ll have to start planning for both of us again, she thought unhappily: emotions, in this job, only led to mistakes.