The Gondola Scam (30 page)

Nothing looks more daunting than a
padlock, and nothing's easier. If you've got one on your garden shed, try
picking it with a thick hairpin. Some come simple, like this first one. Five
seconds. The second had some combination rollers I'd never seen before, so I
sawed it through with my hacksaw—always carry the smallest and cheapest,
incidentally. The door gave, beautifully oiled.

Funny feeling, seeing a familiar
corridor for the first time. We'd all been blindfolded, of course, but I wasn't
prepared for how narrow the corridor was. I put the door to, and followed my
little torch. Finding a handrail just where I knew it always was, by the steps,
was somehow astonishing. There were no other obstacles, no alarms, no angry
shouts. Two careful minutes, and I entered the subterranean factory. I was in
possession. Exactly as I'd planned.

A quick look round. Everything just as
left, fakes in various stages of completion, each faker's position showing his
own particular level of tidiness. All predictable and well. My wall plate had
not been disturbed, thank God. I slung my jacket and started work.

28

A couple of tallow lanterns did for light.
Domenico, ham-fisted as ever, aged his handiwork by tallow smoke. Only the
Cantonese still try that kid's trick nowadays, which shows you the level of my
fellow faker's expertise Duck-eggs.

In our stone masonry comer I'd drilled
a steel plate, head height and as wide as a man can stretch, nothing more than
some old shoring batten left by the military. Now it was pinned into the thick
wall by four long steel bolts. From its face projected three metal pegs.
Ostensibly it was a simple reinforced lifting device. To me it was one gigantic
cork. If anything pulled at it from outside, a hell of a gap would appear in
the cellar wall, and maybe the wall would go with it.

Nothing like fear to make you crack on
speed. I used a cold chisel to bang out the bricks, levering with a crowbar and
flinging the debris anywhere like someone demented. One brick to either side,
top and bottom. Then another between. And another. When I could reach my arm
round behind the big steel batten, I was satisfied. Then I set to weakening the
wall still further, slamming the chisel into mortar, peppering my face with
brick fragments.

There came that ugly moment when the
mortar in one of my new recesses grew damp and started seeping water. I drew
off with a terrified yelp. Like a fool, I even began cramming bricks back to
stop it before I realized my stupidity and made myself pause to think straight.

Every faker of Old Masters carries
packets of children's balloons, to hold his pigments. They're a godsend. They
can be tied at the neck. They're waterproof, airproof. They're cheap,
lightweight. They don't crack or shatter, so buy a bumper pack and you can
match the balloons with the pigment each contains. The cleverer the forger the
neater he is. I easily blew up a whole bag of them to about a quarter of their
capacity so quick I went dizzy. By now I was going like the clappers and reeled
a bit as I tied the balloons to a string, a long multicolored chain. The string
I fastened to a strong cord, and the cord to the metal chain. I fixed its free
end to a metal peg on my plate.

Now for the nasty bit. I'd no idea
where the water level normally came to on the outside. All I knew was it would
be hellish high out there now. Shaking scared at the possibilities, I procured
one of the polythene tubes from Luciano's rolls of painting canvas. They're
about four feet long, and wide enough to take the chain. The balloon string
went into it easily, trailing the rope and chain. There'd be a hell of a squirt
from the water out there, so I collected great bags of clay from the sculptors'
enclave across the factory floor, and made sure it was handy. Then, all ready,
I slammed my chisel into the seeping mortar and tore the half brick out.

The water shot me off my perch like a
popgun going off. The horrid filthy stuff cascaded into the cellar with such
force I was slithering screaming across the floor, scrabbling for a hold to
stop myself. I was lucky not to have been brained. Panicking at the near
destruction I'd caused, I avoided the violent rush and climbed up underneath it
to see what I'd done.

My hole into the lagoon was about as
big as my palm. Enough for the tube. The water which had clouted me so savagely
was merely a thin spout, as if from a hose. Not much. It leapt over my shoulder
and hit the cellar floor about halfway across. I lifted the tube and got
drenched shoving the damned thing into the waterspout, driving it in. Naturally
the chain and my balloon rope was washed out so I had to do the whole thing
again. That's where my time went. It must have taken all of half an hour to fix
it in place, the seeps sealed with clay and the edges of the tube held with
nailed battens. I was a wreck. The clay packed the tube, so no seepage from
that.

Out there on the surface of the lagoon,
beyond the cellar wall, there now bobbed a string of multicolored balloons.
Easy enough for anybody to find. I could have done with a kip, but drove myself
to make certain my chain was securely fixed to the steel plate. Once that went
it'd need more than Lovejoy with a handful of clay to stop the water flooding
and sweeping in, rising . . .

"Agh." I’d yelped, scaring
myself even worse, but only for a split second. It took me just as long to grab
my jacket, blow out the tallows and dash out of that now vulnerable cellar,
with its puddles of water and mini-workshops crowded along its walls like
huddles of untidy market stalls. Even so, leaving that mass of fakes and
forgeries there, some hopeless, others not really too bad, was a pang, but I've
always found that terror's a better prime mover than petrol ever was.

Odd, but I felt clean in my funeral
boat as I did the rest of the job. Even though I knew that time had gone faster
than my plans wanted, I was somehow content. Almost confident. I found the
balloon string by creeping the barge along the building's lagoon wall and
dangling over the side with my Keeler torch practically on the water.

Still in that extraordinary mood of
euphoric contentment when it seems nothing can possibly go wrong and everything's
going right, I cut the engine and gently hauled the balloon string aboard. The
chain came into my hand. I hauled as much aboard as would come. About eight
feet, until the chain stopped with a jerk and I knew it was holding taut on my
steel plate in my weakened wall. I cut the balloon string and airily chucked
them overboard. Let some seaborne sleuth work that one out when they were found
bobbing mysteriously on the briny. More cavalier still, I let the little stern
anchor go overboard and used its shackle to fasten the chain to the barge's
stern. Now my barge would stay there for sure. No nautical complexities like
anchors to worry about.

Phase X of my plan had depended almost
entirely on Keith nicking a dredger and bringing it over to the island. Fix
chain to dredger, drive off and out comes the steel plate bringing half the
cellar wall with it. Cellar flooded, and the subterranean factory would be
submerged in a torrent of lagoon. They'd stay submerged forever in the sinking
mud of the lagoon floor. That
was
the
idea. Do Tonio in the eye and leave old Mr. Pinder's scam untouched, if not
vastly improved. If it wasn't for Keith, the idle sod. He was probably
paralytic drunk back in Venice by now. I'd have to nick the dredger myself now,
once I found some way of fixing the chain in some prominent way. Then I'd use
the dredger's engine to pull the plug, and home to report to old Pinder and
reap a richly earned reward. Pity about my stone carving, but I didn't mind too
much, because I'd signed "Lovejoy fecit" with the date to entertain
any future archeologist who came diving through the nuclear fallout in years to
come.

A dull boom sounded. Long, long pause
while I waited and tried not to worry about it. An echo from one of those
wailing sirens that sounded so mournfully out in the black night? That boom.
It was in the building.
I thought,
Christ. Just when I'd been feeling all confident.

Cut and run? Every neuron snapped into
action, sending tingling messages of escape. I even found myself fiddling with
the controls. Then I thought. Caterina. Okay, so she hated me and loved Tonio.
So she was double-crossing stepmother Lavinia, who made me laugh and promised
me much. And so she possibly knew that Tonio was a psychopath, possibly even knew
he had done for Mr. Malleson and old Crampie. But the cellar was a death trap.
And what if she honestly had turned up on her own in good faith, like I'd said.
I thought. Oh, hell. Just my luck. From perfect confidence I was plunged back
into my usual dither. All because of some stupid noise. I'm pathetic, I told
myself, pulling on the chain so the barge bumped against the brickwork and I
could climb into the entrance above the plaque. My brain felt back-combed. I
was completely befuddled, all reasoning gone. Don't think I'd fallen for
Caterina. I hadn't. I'm not that daft. Just because a bird has everything and
can't stand the sight of a bloke doesn't mean he can't take a hint. And so
what, if she has a boyfriend who did for Mr. Malleson?

The trouble was I hadn't come in this
way. I'd sneaked in on the other side of the island. The steps were deeply
awash and my feet sloshed nastily in my shoes, making silence difficult. The
wretched lagoon was slurping greedily ever higher, bloody thing. As if I'd not
enough to worry about.

Cursing everything, I fumbled round the
wall, inching as if on a ledge. I actually might have been, for all I knew or
could see. There was comfort in the notion that I could always find my way back
to my funeral barge by simply following the wall until I hit.

A vague golden glow showed brightly to
my right and I squelched a pace back. A light. It moved an instant, then was
gone. I'd been in the entrance to the factory, not realizing I'd got that far,
and the light had been flicked on briefly, as if from a torch.
Somebody was in there.
And that somebody
was being damned quiet. I'd used the same trick myself with my Keeler, partly
covering its light with the fingers and putting light ahead for an instant at a
time.

I was almost on the point of deciding
to scarper when I heard a low murmur. A man's voice. And a low laugh. Another
murmur, receding. They were moving along the corridor and down into
my—their—cellar. Still I hesitated, scared, but the logic was inescapable. I
knew they were in there. They didn't know I was outside. And I knew for certain
there was no other exit except the corridor and this external door.
I had them.

Exulting, I slipped my shoes and socks
off, felt round me, and put them beside the door. No need to risk my mini-torch
now. The glow down the corridor leading to the underground factory came more
frequently, now they felt more certain they were unobserved.
Was
it plural still? I slid after them,
palpating surfaces for stairs, handrails, any landmark at all as I went. They
were in the cellar now with no attempt at concealment.

"He's tried to make a lifter. See?
On the wall." Placido? Or . . .

"What for?" Now that
was
Caterina's voice.

They were inspecting my handiwork.

A laugh. "Hoping to lift all this
to the floor above. Poor fool. The high water has defeated more than him."
Another laugh. At me, of course. Not Tonio's voice, though.

"Where is he?"

"On his way. No need to
worry."

"Come here."

Then silence. The torch came on,
stilled. No movement. Had they sensed me?

Out in the corridor near the metal door
I listened in a fever. Caterina and a bloke, that's for sure. But why the
stillness? And they'd gone very, very quiet. Maybe I should just cut my losses
and get the hell out, leaving them to it. A faint regular sound, like a distant
tapping, struck my ear. Worried, I glanced back along the corridor but it
seemed to be coming from inside the cellar where Caterina was. And a, what, a
distant but steady beat of noise. As if of a rhythmic exhalation, even a
grunting.

I peered round the door like a kid in a
comic.

Cesare and Caterina were together down
there, oblivious. In the torchlight their copulating shadows moved
metachronally, explaining the rhythmic beats. Caterina's legs were splayed to
take a grip of Cesare. Her arms clasped him. Her mouth was on his as he beat
into her on the long central table where the artists and sculptors argued
continuously over space to put their materials. Cesare. And—in— Caterina. Not
Placido. Not Tonio. Or all the lot of them.

For an instant a voyeur's curiosity
delayed me, almost fatally. I'd no idea clothes looked so ridiculous when
couples were taken by storm, in the act as it were. I'd assumed they only got
into a mess afterwards somehow. But there was a gun on the table near Cesare's
hand and I saw sense.

"Sorry," I said, as the door
slammed and I dropped the great metal stave to lock it. I meant the sudden
noise.

"It's Lovejoy!" came audibly
from Caterina a moment later. I moved a few steps away up the corridor in case
he shot that damned thing.

"Yeah, me!" I called. "I
see why you were so glad to know where Cosima's convalescing, Cesare."

He laughed, actually laughed.
"Placido's on a little Sicilian trip, Lovejoy. Don't think she'll make a
complete recovery."