Page 63 of The Venice Murders

‘Prigionieri?’ The man frowned even more deeply, unsure it seemed if they were making fun of him.

‘Sì, at La Zucca.’ Jack pointed towards the restaurant – far closer than Flora would have imagined. Was it such a short distance that they’d swum? It felt as though they’d taken on the Atlantic Ocean.

‘Ah!’ the officer exclaimed. Their plight was now making sense. ‘You swim from the cellar?’ He sounded astonished.

Jack nodded. ‘It was the only way to escape,’ he said simply.

‘Vieni, vieni!’

The man hustled them forward, and they had no choice but to follow him to the nearest police launch. At the bottom of the polished steps, he spoke rapidly to his colleague at the wheel and in minutes two large blankets were produced. Gratefully, they took one each and swathed themselves in warm wool.

‘Caffè,’ their rescuer ordered. Then turning to them, ‘We talk later,’ and with that, he strode away.

‘I’m not sure these chaps are the Venice police,’ Jack said, as he cuddled her close. ‘The badge looks different.’

‘Is different,’ their new acquaintance said when he brought them the coffee. ‘We are from Rome.’

Jack’s face cleared. He evidently understood what was going on and Flora wished she could, too.

‘Art theft,’ Jack told her.

The man nodded. ‘We come for the Rastello.’

‘But how did you know where to find the painting?’

He tapped a finger against his nose and grinned. ‘We have ways.’ Then laughing, he said, ‘A man, he talk.’

‘A waiter at the restaurant?’ Jack hazarded a guess.

‘Sì, il cameriere.’ He handed them two mugs; it was the best coffee Flora had ever tasted.

‘What made you think of the waiter?’ she asked, when the officer had returned to the helm.

‘When the chap came to the table tonight, I sensed he was uneasy. He was asking me to come to your aid but was doing it under orders, I felt, and he didn’t like it one bit.’

‘But you came still!’

Jack grinned. ‘A wife in peril! What else could I do? But that waiter, I’ve remembered, was the man who came between Franco and the owner when they quarrelled the first night we ate at La Zucca. And he was the same man who served us when you first went searching for the women’s washroom. When we left, I reckon he must have seen Luigi Tasca come after us. With a knife.’

‘The same knife as tonight’s?’

‘Who knows, but at least Tasca was only practising on me. Unlike this evening.’

‘If the waiter called the art squad, it must have been before the fight. Otherwise they’d never have got here in time.’

‘I guess so. Maybe, for him, seeing us locked up, as well as Filomena and the painting, was the last straw. He’ll be in trouble for not calling the police earlier, but far less trouble than if he were caught in the restaurant red-handed. Look, something’s happening.’

They stood up, mugs in hand, and watched as Matteo Pretelli appeared on the quayside. He was handcuffed and being marched between two policemen to a second launch.

‘He’s alive!’ Flora looked stunned. ‘He wasn’t the one to die.’

‘Nor was Silvio Fabbri.’ The restaurant owner was next to appear, once more handcuffed and pushed none too gently down the steps of the launch.

‘Hewasin the restaurant after all,’ Flora said. ‘Keeping watch, no doubt.’

‘And recognised us. Which was why you were forced into that room and I had a sack thrown over my head.’

As they stood watching still, an ambulance pulled up at the quayside and they hadn’t long to wait before a stretcher, carried by two orderlies, emerged from the La Zucca entrance. Ominously, a sheet covered the entire body.

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