Days Without Number (43 page)

'You beat up an old man?'

'I threatened to. That's all it took. He told me everything.'

'I doubt that.' Nick was understating the case. He was in fact certain that Farnsworth had played a more central role in events than he was likely to have admitted. But Nick was also certain that he no longer cared.

'Your father and grandfather uncovered some secret at Tintagel in the Thirties. Digby Braybourne knew what it was, but Farnsworth only ever heard hints and whispers. It's to do with Trennor. Something valuable's hidden there. Farnsworth reckoned your father's death gave him the chance to find out what, so he started digging. He claims Harriet Elsmore is Braybourne's daughter, out for revenge and the secret. She sucked Tom into her plans and, as far as I'm concerned, she's responsible for what happened to him.'

'She probably is.'

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'Right. So, where is she? You know, don't you, Nick? You know where she's hiding.' 'She isn't hiding.' 'Where is she?'

'It's too late, Terry. For her, for you, for me. For everyone.' 'I'm not leaving until I find out where she is.' 'No. I don't suppose you are.' Nick stepped across to the basin, ran some cold water on to his hands and wiped his face. 'Well, OK, then. Here's how it is. Earlier this morning, Harriet Elsmore, real name Emily Braybourne, murdered Demetrius Constantine Paleologus, the man she blamed correctly - for her brother's death. She murdered one of his bodyguards too. Then she killed herself. With a bullet through the head. These stains on my sleeve are her blood. I saw her die. The police are cleaning up the mess even as we speak. Picking up the pieces. Searching for clues. Go looking for her now and all you'll do is implicate yourself - and me. Things are bad. But you can only make them worse by pressing on with this. Go home, Terry. Make your peace with Kate. You'll find a way. A lot sooner than you'll find anything here, except a heap of trouble. I'm sorry, I really am. But there's no revenge to be had. It's all been used up. There's nothing left.'

After Nick had said his piece, Terry's bluster was suddenly spent. He had been sustained by the belief that he could bludgeon his way to justice and a reconciliation with Kate. Now he knew better. He was out of his depth and far from home. He had been foolish to come. But he was not so foolish as to remain.

'If she's dead, that finishes it,' he mumbled, his eyes downcast. Td better get back to Kate.'

'Good idea.'

'There's a flight at five fifteen.' Terry glanced at his watch. 'I could be on it.'

'I think it'd be best if you were.'

'I can't afford to get mixed up with the police.'

'Neither can I.'

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'I've been through the wringer these past few days, Nick. I probably haven't been thinking straight. Maybe Kate hasn't been either. I won't get her back by staying away, will I?'

'No.'

"That settles it, then.'

'Yeah. I reckon it does.'

But Terry's hangdog departure settled nothing for Nick. He could only wait for Basil to show up at the Zampogna, telling himself all the while that he would show up. Soon. Or later. Or eventually.

An hour passed. Then two. Fears and fantasies began to swarm in Nick's head. Perhaps Demetrius had never meant to release Basil. Perhaps the CCTV pictures had been faked. Perhaps Basil was dead, his body lying undiscovered in a disused warehouse, like Nardini's, or somewhere else - or anywhere else.

Then the memories crowded in. The last moments of Emily Braybourne's life jostled with Nick's recollections of the night they had spent together in the hotel at Heathrow. The closeness and the distance; the longing and the losing: they became one in the end.

He had waited long enough. There was nothing else for it. He was done with evasion. All he could do for Basil was go to the police and tell them as much as he knew in the hope that it would be enough. And all he could do had to be done now, while he was still capable of it. He threw on some clean clothes and set out.

It was a half-hour ride on the vaporetto from Ca' d'Oro to San Zaccaria, the nearest stop to the Questura. The boat was crowded with the usual assortment of tourists, students and shoppers, though as far as Nick was concerned it might as well have been empty. He stood in the stern, alone with more fears and regrets than he could hold in his mind. He was numb now, his thoughts amounting to nothing beyond an incoherent dread. What was to follow could no more be altered by him 361

than what had already happened. He was a prisoner as much of the future as of the past.

The vaporetto chugged past the Palazzo Falcetto, where ricostruzione was still in progress, and on round the curve of the Grand Canal, while a grey shroud stretched itself slowly across the sky and a moist breeze began to blow. The afternoon grew rapidly cold and dank.

As Nick gazed blankly ashore, the march past of mouldering palazzi gave way to the greenery of the Giardinetti Reali and the stately flank of the Doge's Palace. Between them, a view of the Piazzetta and the Basilica was briefly framed by the two columns of San Marco and San Teodoro. Glancing up at the winged lion atop the right-hand column, Nick suddenly remembered his attempt to warn Basil against coming to Venice in the first place. 'You'll be stepping into the lion's den.' But Basil had brushed the warning aside. 'There are a lot of lions in Venice. Bronze or marble for the most part.' Nick smiled, despite himself.

And then he saw, standing near the foot of the lion's column, a figure he took at first for a hallucination - a figment of his own wishful thinking. It could not be Basil, he told himself. It simply could not be. He blinked. But the figure did not vanish. He blinked again. And still it was there. And this time he knew for sure. It was Basil.

The next four or five minutes were an agony for Nick. The

vaporetto slowed as it approached San Zaccaria, and slowed again. Basil was out of sight now and Nick could only hope he had not strayed far. He leapt off on to the landing-stage while the boatman was still pushing back the rail, ran down the ramp, then sprinted along the riva towards the bridge leading to the Piazzetta.

As he crested the hump of the bridge, the area around the columns came into view. There was no sign of Basil. His heart jolted. But he kept running.

Then, as he rounded the corner of the Doge's Palace and glanced to his right, he saw him. Basil was sitting on one of

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the flood platforms stowed in front of the Basilica, staring into space. He was wearing the cagoule Nick had last seen him in, though it looked even scruffier, and his walking boots, rather than the espadrilles Nick had glimpsed on Demetrius's television. He had surely lost some weight, which, combined with the white stubble round his head and chin, made him appear old and haggard, almost pitiful.

Nick slowed to a walk, daring himself to believe what he saw. The distance shrank between them. Then he called his brother's name. Basil looked round. And the smile that lit his face was anything but pitiful.

'Nick! Thank God.' Basil jumped up and threw a hug round Nick. 'I'd nearly given up waiting.' Two surprises were thus compressed into one. Basil had apparently been waiting for Nick, just as Nick had been waiting for him, though they had been doing it in different places. The other surprise was that Nick had never been hugged by his brother before in his life.

It was a fleeting innovation. Nick unwrapped himself and gazed into Basil's smiling face, slowly realizing that he too was smiling, just as broadly.

T've been at the Zampogna. Expecting you at any moment. For about three hours.'

'They said they'd bring you here, Nick. Some time this afternoon. They said I was to stay here until you arrived and that it would be the worse for you if I didn't.'

'When did they let you go?'

'It must have been around noon. They've been holding me in a derelict house on some abandoned island out in the lagoon. I was brought here by launch and told very clearly that I'd only see you again if I obeyed their instructions to the letter. Our cousin Demetrius Constantine is not a fellow to be trifled with, as I'm sure you're aware, nor yet to be trusted. In this case, however, I had no choice but to trust him, or at any rate his messengers. I'm more delighted than I can say that my trust has been vindicated.'

'I'm not sure it has.' Nick was actually sure of the reverse. Dropping Basil off at San Marco and telling him to stay put

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had to be part of some devious ploy. But the ploy was now irrelevant. 'One thing's certain. We don't have to worry about Demetrius any more.'

'We don't?'

'Listen, Basil. We need to get out of Venice. In a hurry.'

'I wouldn't argue with that. My visit's hardly been a happy one.'

'Have you got your passport? I couldn't find it in your room.'

'It's in my pocket.'

'Same here. So, what's stopping us?'

'I ought to settle my bill at the Zampogna.'

'Already done. All we need to do is grab our things from the room and scoot.'

'I have the impression there's something you're not telling me, Nick.'

'I'll tell you everything once we're on our way. That's a promise.' Not quite, Nick reflected. He would tell Basil almost everything. And leave him to guess the rest.

'You're not going to try to force me on to an aeroplane, are you?'

'Not if you can find us a train to catch p.d.q.'

'How about the overnight express to Paris? It leaves at seven forty-five. That's how I'd planned to depart, after all. Though not necessarily tonight.'

'But tonight it is. Let's go.'

They took a water taxi up to the Fondamenta dell'Abbazia, as close to the Zampogna as it could get. Installed in the cabin with the door firmly closed, Basil related how he had been set upon while walking back towards the Zampogna after his visit to San Mich�le on Monday morning. Heavies had shoved him, bound and gagged, into the covered hold of a builder's boat and taken him out into the lagoon, where he had been transferred to a launch, blindfolded and borne away to a bare, plastered room in a crumbling old house on a deserted island. Demetrius had shown up later, demanding to be told the 364

secret that his father and Basil's father had apparently shared. But Basil could not tell him.

'It is surprisingly easy to refuse to disclose what one genuinely does not know, Nick. And the threat of death only confirmed the equanimity with which I regard the prospect. Monasticism taught me that as well as a tolerance for physical hardship. My lost vocation stood me in remarkably good stead, in fact. I was not really frightened at all until I realized that you too were in Demetrius's clutches. Unless, of course, you're about to tell me that you never were.'

'No. I'm not about to tell you that.'

'Doubtless he had you abducted for the same reason.'

'Yes. The same.'

'Why have we been released, then? Because he came to understand that neither of us could help him? Or ... because one of us could?'

But there Nick called a halt. He wanted to be out of Venice before he told Basil what had happened. He wanted to be sure they had made good their escape before he revealed what they were escaping from.

Basil's grasp of basic Italian got them in and out of the Zampogna within minutes, leaving Carlotta bemused but content, given that Nick had already paid her for the night's stay. Denying themselves a final visit to Luigi's bar, they headed west towards Santa Lucia. Night had fallen, but time was on their side.

It was still on their side after they had bought their tickets, so Basil proposed telephoning Irene to reassure her that they were both well. Nick could hardly object. But he could insist on being the first to speak to her.

'Old Ferry Inn.'

'Irene, this is Nick.'

'Nick? Where in God's name have you been?'

'I've found Basil. He's fine. So am I. We're at the railway station in Venice, waiting for a train out.'

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'Where did you find him?'

'A monastery. He'd booked himself in for a retreat.' As cover stories went, Nick reckoned the one he and Basil had just cobbled together was far from implausible.

'Without telling anyoneT

'You know Basil.'

Tut him on.'

'I will in a minute. The thing is, Irene, I literally only caught up with him an hour ago. There hasn't been time ... to go into everything.'

'Have you told him about Tom?'

'Not yet.'

'Do you want me to?'

'No. I'll do it later.'

'All right. But there's been a lot of anguish here in your absence, you know. I've had Terry on to me. He and Kate have had a pretty major row, apparently. And he seems to blame you.'

T'm sure he does.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'We're all to blame, to greater or lesser degrees.'

'Are you feeling OK, Nick? You sound . . . odd.'

'I can't imagine why.'

'Have you contacted this cousin of ours - Demetrius?'

'Demetrius Andronicus Paleologus died a year ago, Irene. Dad's will meant nothing.'

'What?'

'I'll explain when we get back.'

'When's that going to be?'

'Oh .. .' Nick contemplated the wilderness of his short-term future for a moment. 'Soon enough.'

While Basil spoke to Irene, Nick cast his eye around the station concourse. Everything was calm and orderly. There was no sign of the police, nor of pursuit in any form. Their train was up on the departures board. They were going to make it. He thought suddenly of Emily and seemed to feel the 366

coldness of the mortuary slab against his skin, a coldness Emily could no longer feel. He shuddered, certain in that moment that he would never stop regretting his failure to save her from herself - and certain also that he would never want to.

The Rialto Express to Paris pulled out dead on time. They had paid for a sleeping compartment, but made no early move to occupy it. The restaurant car was busy, but there was a virtually empty seating carriage just beyond it. The train gathered speed across the night-blanked flatness of the Veneto Plain. Somewhere between Padua and Vicenza the whiskies Nick was drinking started to take effect. He began to talk.