The Good Thief's Guide to Venice (10 page)

I hauled the door aside until I was faced with a large slab of glistening steel with a metal wheel in its centre. Above the wheel was an electronic keypad. I lifted the balaclava on one side of my face and pressed my ear against the cold metal, shaped my left hand into a fist and knocked twice. I couldn’t hear even the vaguest echo. That made it solid – six inches, at least. It wasn’t something I needed to know, since I hadn’t planned on attacking it with a laser, but I was intrigued all the same.

Reaching for my envelope of instructions, I flipped through the handwritten pages under the light from my torch until I found the section I was looking for. The code consisted of nine digits, and it had been printed down the left-hand margin of a sheet of notepaper. I was a tad miffed by the way it had been laid out, as if I was prone to making basic errors, but since cracking the code for myself would have been seriously time-consuming, I decided to set my grievances to one side.

Facing up to the keypad, I rolled my neck around on my shoulders, extended a finger and began to carefully input the code. I was halfway through when I was interrupted by a sudden buzz and crackle in the walls, followed by a bright light being flung around the room. My heart jitterbugged in my chest and I jumped like I’d been prodded with a stick, until it dawned on me that the electricity had been turned back on and that the light was coming from the giant glass chandelier above me. I spun round and checked the corners of the ceiling. Sure enough, a camera was pointing down at me from an area above the window. There was no point covering it now – it had done the job it was designed for. Luckily, so had my balaclava, so I turned my back to the camera without even a wave and resumed my work with the code.

Not long afterwards, the keypad emitted a friendly melody that prompted me to place my hands on the metal wheel and steer the palazzo to the left. The locking mechanism clanked and clunked, much like a nuclear sub taken way too deep beneath the ocean, and then it fell quite silent. I hooked a finger around the wheel and the door surprised me by swinging out very fast and striking my shin.

I yelped and hopped and cursed, and then I raised my head, peered inside the lighted vault and fell into a mournful silence. The strongroom was larger than the kitchen in my apartment. It had a thick concrete floor and the walls and ceiling were clad in shiny steel plating. It was lined with an extensive selection of metal shelving, and the greenish light from the twitching fluorescent bulbs gave it the appearance of a top-secret science lab.

Mouth open, I stepped inside to a world of high-denomination bank notes wrapped in neat plastic bundles, jewellery boxes from all the right stores containing all the right stones, and a selection of oil paintings and sketch works from a number of artists I’d very definitely heard of. I ran my gloved fingers over stacks of bond certificates and formal-looking deeds, display cases of gold coins, a shelf of Rolex watches and a stack of locked metal security boxes that teetered alarmingly at my approach. A pair of antique pistols were hanging on the far wall, barrels crossed, and beneath them was a very fine porcelain jug of Oriental origin. In short, it was a veritable Aladdin’s cave – by far the most extensive bounty I’d ever stumbled upon – and sadly for me, I’d been expressly forbidden to take anything at all.

I turned and raised a quizzical eyebrow to the camera above me, which was somewhat pointless, on account of my balaclava. Then I lowered my head and offered the briefcase a similar assessment. Well, at least it wouldn’t be lonely once I’d returned it to the vault. I could set it down on the floor, right in the very centre, where it could wait undisturbed for its lucky owner to discover it.

Yeah, right
.

Looking back, it amazes me that I’d managed to resist temptation for so long. Almost twenty-four hours with the case in my possession, and I hadn’t opened it. Yes, I’d thought about it. And sure, it had been hard to see what harm could possibly befall me. Graziella had claimed that she’d know; that I’d lose my Hammett novel for good; that I’d be killed. Well, phooey to all that. I’d taken a long, hard look at the case.
Several
looks. It was nice. It was expensive. But it wasn’t magic. It wasn’t wildly futuristic. And I simply didn’t believe there was any way she’d be able to tell if I took a swift peep at exactly what I was depositing on her behalf.

More to the point, it seemed reasonable to assume that the case contained something truly special, bearing in mind how Graziella had chosen to swipe it ahead of all the other riches on offer in the vault. Hell, it could be that I was about to find something that would dwarf the value of Hammett’s book, and buy me a small Caribbean island besides.

I cracked my knuckles – the good ones at least – and knelt down in front of the case. The combination dials that secured it were about as good as they come. High quality, no flex, which made it difficult to feel any stiffness when I hit upon a correct number. Difficult, but not impossible, and I was determined to do the job right. Two minutes in, and I had the sequence for the three rotary dials on the left. Five seconds later, and my thumb had rolled the same code into the dials on the right. I checked the room for prying eyes, glanced up at the prying camera lens, let go of a sharp breath and sprang the catches.

The lid bounced up. I levered it fully open, and right then, I heard a two-tone electronic note, as if the case had received a text message.
Crap
, I thought. Perhaps Graziella had been telling the truth and the case had dispatched some kind of alert straight to her. Ah well, no sense in going back now …

Glancing down, I readied myself for my first glimpse of the precious bounty I’d been lugging around Venice for the best part of a day, and it took me precisely three seconds to understand what I was seeing.

I know it took me three seconds because the display on the digital watch in the middle of the egg-box interior told me as much. The watch had been set to
10
and now it was at
7
. It was flashing and beeping. Oh, and it was wired to two packages of dun-coloured putty.

6, 5 …

The case was steaming, and it was starting to hiss, like a ready meal left in a microwave for too long. And there I was, mindlessly gawping at it, waiting like an idiot until my brain finally caught up with the plummeting sensation in my gut and the frantic thump in my temples to dispatch a message with the letters
B. O. M. B.
to the parts of my body that were able to react.

4 …

I slammed the lid closed and pushed up from the floor.

3 …

Hands around the case, I threw it like a rugby ball into the back of the strongroom.

2 …

I slammed the door closed, spun the locking wheel to the right and dived for cover.

1 …

But there was no cover. There was just the rug and the chair.

Flattening myself on the ground, covering my head with my hands, I braced myself for the long duration of that one terrible second.

And then a jump jet took off from inside the vault.

You have no idea how precious life is until a tonne of steel door flies past your head at close quarters. I felt the breeze as it went by, and I pressed myself so hard into the ground that I probably left an imprint of my bellybutton on the floorboards.

The door was followed by a tornado of hot air that singed the back of my neck and almost prised me from the floor to throw me against the wall in a heap. Debris showered over me – chunks of plaster and metal and itty bitty pieces of jewellery and expensive artwork. A thick, acrid fog of smoke and dust filled the room. It draped my body, clogging my throat and lungs with the first breath I took. Gasping for air, I cracked my eyes open and squinted out at my surroundings. I was half-blinded by the grit and the smoke, and blinking only made it worse.

I had no idea how big the blast had been. It had seemed mighty substantial to me, but I didn’t appear to be fatally wounded, and so far as I could tell, the palazzo hadn’t begun to lurch and sink into the waters of the lagoon. Probably the vault had contained it. Almost certainly the vault was destroyed.

Turning my head, I found that the strongroom was a scorching furnace of flame and smoke. The remains of the door were hanging at an absurd angle from the buckled frame, and there was no sign whatsoever of the damn briefcase that had triggered it all.

Very carefully, I pushed my chest up from the floor, and by some minor miracle my arms came with me. I patted myself down, probing for injuries. I seemed remarkably unscathed. There were cuts and abrasions to my hands and the back of my legs, and I was fairly sure I’d taken a hefty knock on the head, but aside from the difficulty I was having breathing and seeing, everything seemed to be roughly in order.

Of course, it took me a few seconds more before I discovered that I was experiencing the aftermath of the bomb blast in absolute silence. I’d like to be able to tell you that my ears were ringing, at the very least, but the truth is they were doing nothing of the sort. There was an odd sensation of pressure, like I was in the middle of some hellish aeroplane journey with a severe dose of flu, but the only thing I could come close to hearing were my own thoughts, and sadly enough, they weren’t altogether lucid.

For far too long, I rested on my skinned elbow, gaping at the destruction and the flames with an odd kind of detachment, as if I was viewing everything on a television with the volume set to mute. Then, gradually, what was left of my senses began to take hold of me and I realised there was no way I could stay where I was. The fire might spread, or I might suffocate on the smoke. And I could hardly wait to be rescued, since I was the one who’d ignited the bomb in the first place – and granted, I may not have known about the explosives I was carrying, but I somehow doubted that explanation would be good enough for the Italian authorities.

But where to go? Not back through the palazzo, surely. The house staff might be fleeing the building, but they might be on their way to investigate, and I was in no shape to fight my way past them, or to engage in an impromptu game of hide and seek. It wouldn’t be long before the place would be crawling with firemen and police, and considering my injuries, not to mention the dust and rubble I appeared to have showered in, it wouldn’t take Giuseppe Columbo to figure out that I might have been involved in the explosion.

I made it to my knees, then tottered gamely for a while before struggling to my feet. Swaying woozily, I stooped beneath the reeking smoke billowing across the underside of the ceiling and staggered in the direction of the French doors. The doors were gone, along with most of the wall surrounding them. I rested my hand against the ragged hole in the brickwork and laboured over a mound of plaster until I slipped and toppled onto the balcony.

Broken glass gave out beneath my feet. I raised my foot in a daze and stamped it back down. The sound didn’t carry – I couldn’t hear a thing.

Across the canal and through the hazy drizzle, a group of people at the lighted
vaporetto
stop seemed to be pointing at me. One woman was waving her arms with her mouth wide open in a noiseless shout.

Wiping the dirt and crud from my lips, I tested the wet air. It whistled through to my lungs – the finest thing I’d ever inhaled. My panic eased by a fraction, and I reached for the damp stone balustrade to steady myself. I almost missed. The balustrade was cracked and buckled, drooping over the edge of the balcony as if it was melting. Off to my right, a water taxi was turning at speed, its driver gazing back over his shoulder to log my position.

I looked groggily down at the water of the Grand Canal. The curdlike surface was pricked with rain and alight with the reflection of the flames escaping the gap in the wall behind me. I didn’t know how deep it was, but it looked very cold – ice had formed around the timber stilts that supported the wooden pontoon and the tarred pilings close by.

I turned and glanced back. The room was fully ablaze now – no way through.

I leaned more weight on the balustrade, and almost before I’d made the decision for myself, the thing shuddered and flexed, then hung suspended for a fleeting moment, before shearing loose and tipping me down towards the freezing waters like a vending machine dispatching a dinged can of fizzy pop.

*

It was almost dawn by the time I’d limped back to the Dorsoduro. I was soaked right through, and I was so blue with cold that I could have passed for a Smurf. I couldn’t feel my feet, let alone my fingers, and it took me an age to shunt my key into the lock on the front door to my building and turn the damn thing with my teeth.

The stairs to my apartment took on the proportions of the Dolomites, and I scaled them by leaning against the wall and pausing between steps to catch my breath, as if each riser delivered me to a higher and altogether more demanding altitude. The treads whirled and dipped before me like a staircase in a fairground funhouse, and I teetered in the manner of a concussed drunk. I would have called for help if it had been an option, but the last thing I needed was for Martin and Antea to see me in this state. So long as I kept moving and I focussed on the door to my apartment, I thought I could make it.

Of course, when I eventually did reach my door I faced the challenge of the three substantial locks I’d fitted. The challenge was too much. With my keys gripped uselessly in my swollen hands, I laughed a faint, wheezing laugh at the damn stupid irony of it all – and then I slumped against the door, tried to shape my hand into a fist, gave up, and slapped my open palm on the wood.

I had no way of telling how hard I was knocking. I couldn’t feel the impact and I certainly couldn’t hear it. I laughed my silly, dazed laugh again. I couldn’t hear my laugh, either. I laughed some more, feeling like a comedian in an old silent movie.

My eyes slid sideways. I watched my hand pat the door. I was a man tapping a pillow – a guy punching foam. I blew bubbles from my lips and twirled round onto my back and slid down the door until my soggy buttocks struck the ground. My useless hands rested in my lap, curled and bloated and hooked like those of an old crone. I let my keys drop to the floor and a long, ragged breath escaped my lips.