can only do so much with computer enhancement, and I reckoned the combination of the darkness and the obscurity of being inside a car would make sure I couldn’t be identified.
A quick sortie in the garage revealed that the keys for all the vehicles were hanging on the board where Gianni had deposited his set earlier. I settled on the van, on the basis that it was the least memorable of the three. I opened the door, threw my bag on the passenger seat and climbed behind the wheel. I was just about to stick the key in the ignition when something stopped me.
I don’t believe in sixth sense or second sight or seventh sons of seventh sons. But something was making the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and it wasn’t love at first sight. I took a deep breath and looked over my shoulder into the back of the van.
At once, I wished I hadn’t. There’s only one thing comes in a six-foot-long heavy-duty black bag with a zipper up the front. It didn’t take many of my detective skills to decide that I’d probably solved the mystery of Nicholas Turner’s disappearance.
I was out of the van in seconds. I stood in the garage, leaning against the wall for support, my breath coming fast, clammy sweat in my armpits. The combination of shock and exhaustion was making my limbs tremble. I don’t know how long I stood there like that, frozen in horror, incapable of movement, never mind decisive action. It’s one thing to think somebody might be dead. It’s another thing entirely to find yourself sitting in a van with their mortal remains. Especially when you’re the one who’s responsible for their present state.
It was only fear that got me moving again. Hanging round the Villa San Pietro was about as clever a move as a mouse going walkabout in a cattery. My first instinct was to dive into the Alfa and put as much distance between me and the villa as fast as I could. I was halfway across the garage when I realized that wasn’t an answer I could live with. It was my bug and my fake that had got Nicholas Turner murdered. I couldn’t just walk away and let the people who’d had him killed dispose of the body and wash their hands of the whole business. If I left him here, that’s exactly what would happen. I couldn’t just drive to the nearest police station and tell them what I knew. They might be on the villa’s payroll, for a kick off. And even if they weren’t and I did get them to believe me, I couldn’t think of a cover story that wouldn’t leave me facing charges of false imprisonment, assault, deception, breaking and entering and probably the murder of Aldo Moro.
I thought about waking Delia and bringing her up to speed so we could do it through official channels, but by the time we’d got the wheels of justice rolling, there would be no evidence of murder at the villa, the body would be miles away, and even if it did eventually turn up, there would be nothing to connect it to Gianni and his boss.
Taking a deep breath, I opened the back of the van. Before I did anything else, I needed to be sure it really was Turner in the bag. Gingerly, I reached out for the tab of the zip and pushed it away from me. It wouldn’t budge. I could feel my stomach begin to turn over as I gripped the slick rubberized bag with one hand and forced the zip down. A few inches was all I needed. Nicholas Turner’s eyes stared up at me out of a face gray in the stark fluorescent light of the garage. I gagged and whipped round just in time for the contents of my stomach to miss the van and hit the floor. I stood there, hands on my knees, throwing up till my stomach and throat were raw. Shaking and sweating, my fingers slippery on the body bag, I managed to pull up the zip. Turner’s face showed no signs of how he had met his end, but I’d have been willing to bet it hadn’t been a brain tumor.
I don’t remember how I managed it, but somehow I got back behind the wheel and drove out of the garage. All I could think of was getting out of there and putting some distance between me and the Villa San Pietro. I hurtled down the drive, punching the steering wheel in frustration as the gates took their time opening. I shot down the track so fast I nearly lost it on one of the bends. The shock of that sobered me enough to slow me down to a more reasonable speed. As I hit the main road, I realized I’d have to move the Mercedes away from Casa Nico, since Gianni knew that was where I was staying, and I couldn’t guarantee I’d get back to the car before he was released from his prison.
I left the van parked on the verge by the villa turnoff and jogged the couple of kilometers back to the pensione. There was no sign of the BMW So much for expecting Richard to see sense and come back. I drove the Merc back up the valley, past the van, looking for somewhere to stash it. About a kilometer farther on, there was a cluster of houses and a minimarket. I left the car just off the main road and half jogged, half staggered back to the van. I didn’t pass another car the whole hour.
I turned the van round and headed back toward Sestri Levante. I reckoned I needed to leave the van somewhere no one would notice if it was parked for a few days. I thought about finding some remote forest track in the mountains, but I vetoed that. It would be difficult to find the right place in the dark, it would be impossible for me to remember where it was with pinpoint accuracy, and it wouldn’t be easy for me to make my way back to the Merc. I didn’t want to leave it parked on a street, because I didn’t know how long it was going to take to get anyone to listen to my tale, and after a day or two in Italian sunshine, the van wasn’t going to smell too appetizing. What I needed, ideally, was an underground car park where no one would pay attention.
Either I needed a big city, or a swanky resort where people left their car in the hotel car park for a few days. The solution popped out of my memory just as the autostrada junction hove into sight. The picture-postcard village of Portofino, star of a thousand jigsaw puzzles, its harbor lined with picturesque houses painted every color of the ice-cream spectrum. I’d been there a couple of years before with Richard, and remembered the big car park, half underground, where tourists left their cars to avoid completely choking the center of the former fishing village.
I drove into Portofino just after five A.M. It’s probably the only time of day that there isn’t a queue to get into the village. I drove straight into the car park, taking a ticket at the automatic barrier. I left the van on the lowest level and walked up the stairs to the street. The pale light of dawn was just beginning to brighten the eastern sky as I strolled down to the harbor. There were a few boatmen round in the harbor, but I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself by asking any of them how soon I could get out of the place. I tried to look like an insomniac tourist enjoying the peace and quiet, and strolled down the quayside to where the pleasure boats ran from. I was in luck. At nine, there was a boat that went to Sestri Levante and on to the Cinque Terre beyond.
I walked on round the harbor and found a bench that overlooked the bay. Using my bag as a pillow, I put my head down and managed to doze off. Strange dreams featuring Gianni’s chef’s knife and bodies that climbed out of bags and into passenger seats prevented it from being a restful sleep, but I was so exhausted that even the nightmares couldn’t wake me up. The sound of a pleasure steamer’s hooter jerked me into wakefulness just after eight, and I staggered back into the village, bought myself a couple of sandwiches and a cappuccino from a cafe and headed for the pleasure boat.
I don’t remember much about the sail. I was too jittery from lack of sleep and the horrors of the night. I kept nodding off and starting awake, nerves jangling and eyes staring in paranoia. I couldn’t stop thinking about Turner’s wife and those two daughters. Not only had they lost a husband and father, but they were going to find out about it in a blitz of police and media activity.
In spite of the fact that arriving on dry land brought me nearer to the enemy, I was glad to be off the boat. Somehow, I felt more in control. In Sestri, I found the tourist office and discovered where I could catch a bus up the valley. The next one left in twenty minutes, and I was first on it, complete with brand-new sun hat. I sat at the back, slouched down in my seat. As Casa Nico approached, I put my sunglasses on and pulled the hat down. The bus was so much higher off the road than a car would have been that I was able to look right down on Casa Nico. As the bus rounded the bend beyond the pen-sione, I looked back. Parked behind the building, where I wouldn’t have been able to spot it in a car, was Gianni’s Alfa. I got off at the next stop and walked cautiously past the alley where I’d left the Merc. It was still there, and no one seemed to be watching it. I doubled back behind the houses and came up the alley from the far end. I crept into the car, not even slamming the door shut until I had the engine running. Then I shot out onto the main road and headed up the valley, away from Casa Nico and the Villa San Pietro, my foot hard on the accelerator, my eyes on the rearview mirror. As I joined the autostrada, I wondered how long Giani would stake out the pensione. It was worth the loss of my overnight bag not to have him on my tail.
Nigel Mansell couldn’t have got to Milan airport faster than I did that day. I dumped the car with the local Hertz agent and headed for the terminal. I’d just missed a flight to Brussels, but there was one to Amsterdam an hour later. If I could only stay awake, I could pick up Bill’s Saab in Antwerp, catch the night ferry from Zeebrugge and be home the following morning sometime. Frankly, I couldn’t wait to feel British soil under my feet.
I had half an hour to kill in the international departure lounge. I thought I’d better give Shelley a ring before she decided tracking me down was a job for Interpol. She answered on the first ring, and I could hear relief in her
