Val Mcdermid - Clean Break

“This is it?” I asked, my heart sinking.

“This is it,” Richard confirmed gloomily. “Wait till you see the room.”

I gathered my overnight bag, the video camera bag and my camera gear and followed Richard indoors. To get to the rooms, we had to go through the bar. In spite of the floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, it somehow managed to be dark and gloomy. As soon as we walked through the bead curtain that separated the bar from the forecourt, the rumble of male voices stopped dead. In a silence cut only by the slushy Italian muzak from the jukebox, we crossed the room. I smiled inanely round me at the half-dozen men sprawled round a couple of tables. I got as cheerful a welcome as a Trot at a Tory party conference. Not even the human bear leaning on the Gaggia behind the bar acknowledged our existence. The minute we left by a door in the rear, the conversation started up again. So much for the friendly hospitality of the Italian people. Somehow, I didn’t see myself managing to engage mine host in a bit of friendly gossip about the Villa San Pietro.

The third-floor room was big, with a spectacular view up the wooded river valley. That was all you could say for it. Painted a shade of yellow that I haven’t seen since the last time I had food poisoning, it contained the sort of vast, heavy wooden furniture that could only have been built in situ, unless it was moved into the room before the walls went up. Above the double bed was a crucifix, and the view from the bed was a massive, sentimental print of Jesus displaying the Sacred Heart with all the dedication of an offal butcher.

“Bit of a turnoff, eh?” Richard said.

“I expect Jeffrey Dahmer would have loved it.” I sat down on the bed, testing the mattress. Another mistake. I thought I was going to be swallowed whole. “How much is this costing us?” I asked.

“About the same as a night in the Gritti Palace. Mind you, that also includes dinner. Not that it’ll be edible,” he added pessimistically.

After we’d had a quick shower, I set the bug receiver to auto-alert, so that it would give a series of audible bleeps if the buckle moved more than half a kilometer from its current relative position. Then we went in search of food. Richard had been right about that too. We were the only two people in the cheerless dining room, which resembled a school dining room with tablecloths. The sole waitress, presumably the wife of Grizzly Adams behind the bar, looked as if she’d last laughed somewhere around 1974 and hadn’t enjoyed the experience enough to want to repeat it. We started with a platter of mixed meats, most of which looked and tasted like they’d made their getaway from the local cobbler. The pasta that followed was al dente enough to be a threat to dentistry. The sauce was so sparing that the only way we could identify it as pesto was by the color.

Richard and I ate in virtual silence. “What was that you said about it being time we had a bit of a jaunt?” I said at one point.

He prodded one of the overcooked lamb chops that looked small enough to have come from a rabbit and scowled. “Next time, I won’t be so bloody helpful,” he muttered. “This is hell.

I haven’t had proper food for two days and I’d kill for a joint.“ ”Not many Chinese restaurants in Italy,“ I remarked. ”It’s on account of them inventing one of the world’s great cuisines.“ Richard took one look at my deadpan face and we both burst out laughing. ”One day,“ I gasped, ”we’ll look back at this and laugh.“

“Don’t bet on it,” he said darkly.

We passed on pudding. We both have too much respect for our digestive tracts. At least the coffee was good. So good we ordered a second cup and took it upstairs with us. The one good thing about the bed was the trough in the middle that forced us into each other’s arms. After the day we’d had, it was more than time to remind each other that the world isn’t all grief.

My eyelids unstuck themselves ten hours later. The bleeding heart on the wall wasn’t a great sight to wake up to, so I rolled over and checked the receiver sitting on the bedside table. No movement. By nine, we were both showered, dressed and back in the dining room. Breakfast was a pleasant surprise. Freshly baked focaccia, three different cheeses and a choice of jam. “What’s the game plan for today?” Richard asked through a mouthful of Gorgonzola and bread.

“We stick with the buckle,” I said. “If it moves, we follow. If it stays put and Turner moves, we stay put too and follow Plan B.”

“What’s Plan B?”

“I don’t know yet.”

After breakfast, Richard took his BMW up the valley past the drive. I’d told him to park facing up the valley and to follow anything that came down the drive, unless I called him and told him different. I sat on a bench on the forecourt of Casa Nico, reading Bill’s thriller, the receiver in my open bag next to me. I hoped that anyone passing would take me for a tourist making the most of the watery autumn sunshine. I only had thirty pages to go when the receiver bleeped so loudly I nearly fell off my seat.

I picked it up and stared at the readout. The buckle was moving steadily toward me. I leapt to my feet and jumped into the car, gunning the engine into life. Still the buckle was drawing nearer. There was a sudden change of direction, which I guessed was the turn from the drive on to the main road. I edged forward, ready to pull out after the target vehicle had passed, one eye on the screen. Seconds later, a stretch Mercedes limo cruised past me, followed in short order by Richard in the BMW.

I slotted into place behind him, and our little cavalcade made its way back down the valley and into Sestri Levante. The outskirts of the town were typical of Northern Italy- dusty, slightly shabby, somehow old-fashioned. The center was much smarter, a trim holiday resort all stucco in assorted pastel shades, green-shuttered windows on big hotels and small pensiones, expensive shops, grass and palm trees. We skirted the wide crescent of the main beach and headed along the isthmus to the harbor. As the limo turned onto a quay, I dumped the car in an illegal parking space and watched Richard do the same. I ran up to join him, linked arms and together we strolled up the quay, our faces pointing toward the sea and the floating gin palaces lined up at the pontoons. The great thing about wrap-round sunglasses is the way you can look in one direction while your head is pointing in the other.

From the corner of my eye, I saw the stretch limo glide to a halt at the foot of a gangway. The boat at the end of it was bigger than my house, and probably worth as much as Henry’s Monet. The driver’s door opened and a gorilla in uniform got out. Even from that distance, I could see muscles so developed they made him look round-shouldered. He wore sunglasses and a heavy mustache and looked round him with the economical watchfulness of a good bodyguard. Martin Scorsese would have swooned.

Satisfied that there was no one on the quay more dangerous than a couple of goggling tourists, he opened the back door. By now, we were close enough for me to get a good look at the presumed owner of the Villa San Pietro. He wasn’t much more than my own five feet and three inches, but he looked a hell of a lot harder than me. He was handsome in the way that birds of prey are handsome, all hooked nose and hooded eyes. His perfectly groomed black hair had a wing of silver over each temple. He was wearing immaculately pressed cream yachting ducks, a full-cut canary yellow silk shirt with a navy guernsey thrown over his shoulders. He carried a slim briefcase. He stood for a moment on the quayside, shaking the crease straight on his trouser legs, then headed up the gangplank without waiting for Turner, who scrambled out of the car behind him.