My vision blurred. I had one last chance. ‘Did Ford kill Angus Bright?’
He stopped abruptly, and I almost tumbled face first onto the pavement. His bewildered expression swam in front of my face, then everything went black and his words filtered through the fog.
‘Angus Bright is not dead.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I couldn’t open my eyes, but I could tell from the rumble and movement beneath me that I was in some kind of vehicle. Everything hurt. I shifted my legs and there was a dull thud as my feet hit a wall. It felt as if I were climbing out of a deep, deep hole. Whenever I seemed to be making progress, I’d slide back towards sleep again.
Eventually my head started throbbing and, with difficulty, I opened my eyes a crack. The light was so bright. Pain speared into my brain. The vehicle swayed from side to side and my stomach swooshed.
Christ. How much had I drunk last night? I couldn’t remember anything.
I rubbed my eyes with my fists, blinking repeatedly to bring my blurry vision into focus, and found myself looking into the sleepy eyes of a middle-aged woman less than a metre from where I lay. Her head was on a pillow and she was under a dark blue blanket identical to the one covering me. I sat up in fright and my head slammed into something above me.
‘Jesus!’ I clutched the top of my head, which pounded harder in response.
The other woman sat up—more carefully than I—and held a hand out towards me. ‘Stai bene?’
‘OK… I’m OK.’ I mustered a reassuring smile as I took in my surroundings. We were in a sleeper compartment of a train, and I’d just bumped my head on the bunk above mine. The woman and I were the only ones in the compartment.
Then my gaze turned to the window and my mouth fell open. As far as I could see, from directly below the window right out to the horizon, there was nothing but water. It appeared the train was skimming briskly across the sea. Was I still dreaming? What was going on? And where the hell was Nick?
My bag! I threw the blanket back, but it wasn’t under there, so I leapt off the bunk to look on the other beds. My companion pointed underneath my bunk.
‘Your bag is there,’ she said in halting English. ‘Your friend stayed until your ticket was checked before he left last night.’
‘My friend…?’ I searched my bag. My phone, purse and passport were still there. A ticket stuck out of the top of my passport. I pulled it out.
Paris Bercy—Venezia Santa Lucia, it read. Venezia. Venice? I was back in Italy? What the hell?
‘The man who brought you to the train last night,’ the woman said. ‘You were very… sleepy.’ Her eyes dropped to my clothes and I followed her gaze to see that my breasts were practically spilling out of my tank top and I was wearing nothing below but a pair of black lacy control underwear. And then the previous night started coming back to me in snatches. I remembered finding the recording in Le Chat Masqué. I remembered lying to Nick and brushing off his attempt to help. I remembered dressing like a prostitute and going back to the bar to find the strange, red den downstairs.
Oh god, Nick. He’d been expecting me to knock on his door last night to discuss my meeting with Ford. I had to let him know what’d happened. I scrabbled for my phone and switched it on, but just as I’d navigated to his number, the phone gave three defeated bleeps and shut off. Fuck.
My head pounded as I tried to piece together the events of the night. My captor must have put me on this overnight train to Venice while I was still conscious, so no one suspected foul play, then stayed with me until the ticket inspector had stamped my ticket before leaving me to sleep the night away without suspicion.
Once again I cursed myself for my stupidity in drinking the Coke, which had landed me halfway across Europe with no new information. Except… I struggled to get my addled brain back on task. There was something in the back of my mind that I was sure I’d stored for future reference. Something important. I rested my head in my hands.
‘Are you OK?’ my companion asked.
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t think properly yet. ‘I’m just trying to wake up.’
I had to get to Venice and call Nick.
Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy. Naturally, there were public telephones in the train station, but once I’d deposited my coins into one, I realised that I didn’t know Nick’s mobile number off the top of my head. And there wasn’t even a phone book there so I could call the hotel.
I hung up the receiver and, to add insult to injury, the phone had swallowed my money. Cursing, I found the bathroom and surveyed the mess that was my reflection with dismay. My vigorous eye rubbing had smeared the expertly applied cheap make-up across most of my face, so my trashy-teenage-floozy look had morphed into washed-up-hooker-with-a-drug-habit. And I didn’t even have any other clothes to change into, because of course I’d left them all on my bed back in the hotel room in Paris. I scrubbed the majority of the make-up from my face and fixed my hair as best I could before exiting the station.
I came to an abrupt halt.
I’d been caught up in the vibe of Barcelona. I’d marvelled at the wonders of Rome. I’d been charmed by the beautiful uniformity of Paris. But it all paled in comparison with the sight before me.
I’d seen Venice in photos and movies, but nothing could’ve prepared me for this. The Grand Canal lay before me, sparkling in the morning sun and alive with activity. Large vaporetti and smaller water taxis sidled up
