The Good Thief's Guide to Venice by Chris Ewan Read Free Book Online Page B

gritted my teeth, and eased the door open with my toe.
    No resistance. No noise.
    Now for the tricky part. Did I lead with my hand, my foot, or my face? Difficult to tell. I switched the torch for the screwdriver, then switched them back again. Flattening myself against the wall, I drew a breath and starting counting to ten. I quit at seven and gave the door a solid shove. Before the handle had struck the wall, I moved round and paced swiftly into the apartment.
    The place was unlit and very cold, with a strong smell of mould and decay. Instinct took me to my right, where the cone of light from my torch revealed two modest rooms, both empty. I turned and retraced my steps as far as a bathroom with a white porcelain sink, squat toilet and grimy cubicle shower. Next to the bathroom was a cramped kitchen with a stand-alone cooker, an unplugged fridge and bare cupboards. No signs of habitation whatsoever. I tried the light switch – nothing.
    That left one room at the front of the apartment, which was almost as big as the rest of the place put together. The floor was linoleum, laid in a geometric pattern and covered in a fine layer of dirt and grit. A low, empty bookcase had been fitted along one wall and a time-worn sofa abutted it. There was nobody on the sofa or anywhere else for that matter. Across from me, a pair of full-length doors had been flung wide open. Discoloured net curtains billowed inwards in the faint night breeze.
    The open doors explained the wintry temperature in the apartment, but they didn’t explain much else. I cut the light from my torch and waited in the darkness for a short while, watching the curtains gust and sway, feeling the chill breeze against my face. It was possible this was just another sign of an abandoned apartment, but somehow I didn’t think so. Lifting the screwdriver up by my ear, I moved slowly forward, then parted the curtains and stepped onto a cramped stone balcony ringed by iron railings.
    The balcony looked down over a stagnant canal and a small humped bridge away to the right, beyond a cat’s cradle of plastic washing lines. Across the canal, one floor above me on the opposite building, was another balcony. And standing upon it, glancing up from her watch and venting a relieved sigh, was the agile blonde who’d lately burgled my home.

 
SEVEN
    She wasn’t blonde any more. Gone were the flowing platinum locks, replaced with a severe black bob-cut. The hairstyle gave her a harsher, more steely appearance. Still striking, undoubtedly, and without question the same woman, but quite different all the same. Her features looked sharper, especially the cheek bones, though I guess that could have had something to do with the cold.
    Her balcony was far grander than my own, adorned with carved stone heads that had the appearance of Greek gods. She was leaning her elbows on a discoloured stone plinth, her chin balanced on her clenched fists, dark hair grazing her knuckles.
    ‘ Ciao , Charlie. You are late again,’ she said, with an elaborate wink.
    I didn’t answer. I was too busy closing the French doors so that I couldn’t be sneaked up on from behind. She might have wanted me to believe that she was working alone, but I had to balance the risks.
    I leaned out over the edge of my balcony and considered the drop. It was perhaps fifteen feet to the inky waters below, and there was no pavement or walkway where a muscle-bound accomplice could lurk – the scummy liquid pressed right up against the walls of the buildings.
    I looked again at the property my late-night caller had chosen to access for our rendezvous. On closer inspection, I could see that it was little more than a construction site. Large sheets of thick plastic had been draped inside the unglazed windows on the upper floors, and scaffolding filled the alleyway to the side, just beyond the bridge. The scaffolding would have made it easy for her to climb up and get in through one of the unsecured windows, and part of me