A Pigeon Among the Cats (16 page)

The small sailing boats he had noticed when he first walked down to the water were still there and seemed to be about the same distance away. They did not appear to have made much progress towards Trieste where he had thought before they might be heading. It was difficult to assess their size, so far off. But there was a new feature now, a white motor launch, at first moving across the seascape at about the level of the yachts, then altering course to drive straight for the beach.

Straight for me, thought Owen, if the fools don't alter course again, as they must, as they surely must. He began to swim again, uncomfortably aware that he had gone out farther than any other bather, that he was a particularly slow swimmer and that the noise of the launch's engines was growing louder every second.

He did not want to stop swimming, to show his incompetence, but he knew he was getting into shallower water and so the pursuing boat, if it was really pursuing, must soon turn off to avoid going aground. So he stopped his desperate floundering attempt at speed, let his feet sink, found the sand sooner than he expected and faced about, with his hands up to his eyes to sweep away the water, but his small cold eyes peeping through the gaps between his fingers.

The launch was indeed just turning away. It was sideways on now, apparently all set to move to the narrow pier that stuck out to sea from the end of the private part of the beach some distance along the coast.

But it was not the launch and its manoeuvres that sent a thrill of shock through Owen as he turned to swim again towards the beach. It was the clear view he had had of its occupants, who were the three that had sent him fading instantly from Mrs. Lawler's side at St. Mark's Square that morning.

Jake and Jake's bodyguard. The whole opposition, in fact. Why the launch? Why this patrol along the shore? Looking for Gwen, who had not joined the bathing party? Or looking for Gwen's friends? Where had Nurse Franks said they would be? Farther along the beach? Changed their minds and gone sight-seeing? Unlikely. And Gwen? She'd have had time to leave the hotel garden and go to the quayside, only five minutes walk away, to join the launch. So was she in it? Had she recognised him? Told Jake, or simply kept out of sight? Was she reliable enough not to betray him? He doubted it.

Common sense told him to get out while the going was — not good — but still possible. But greed held him, linked with that possessive feeling, half attraction, half contempt, he still had for Gwen. He could not give her up, nor the hope of gain.

His mind was still in a turmoil of questions unanswered, perhaps unanswerable, when he finally arrived at the hut where Mrs. Banks sat knitting as before and Mr. Banks reclined on a rubber mattress, dressed only in a pair of white trousers, his broad chest exposed, sun-tan oil glistening from its sparse greying hairs.

Owen sat down on the sand near them. He had worn his bathing trunks under his trousers and now regretted he must dry off in the sun, having no towel. This process would not last very long, he hoped, because the second move he must take with the Banks couple depended upon his getting into his clothes before Reg Banks went into, the hut again for his shirt and jacket.

The beach was too hot, the afternoon sun was still high overhead, so the drying business happily took no more than half an hour. At the end of this time, Owen got up to brush the damp sand from his seat and the backs of his thighs.

All this time he had chatted at intervals with Mrs. Banks, who responded without enthusiasm, but well within the bounds of good manners. Mr. Banks had volunteered little to the conversation, but enough to show that his eyes, behind his dark glasses, were not closed in sleep, but against the direct rays of the sun.

“I'll go in and dress now,” Owen said, “Unless you want the hut Banks.”

“No, you go ahead,” the latter grunted. But he rolled over and sat up on the rubber mattress, planting his feet on the sand beside it and supporting himself on his spread arms.

Owen went through the bare open outer part of the hut into the small cubicle behind it. Mr. Banks' clothes were in the same place as before, the same neat pile apart from the white trousers. His own pile was quite undisturbed. He must put them all on, he decided, then there could be no discussion about how they had appeared to Banks when he went in to dry himself and get into his trousers.

It did not take him more than a few minutes to dress. He had cigarettes in a packet in the side pocket of his jacket. He took one out, but did not light it. Nor did he put the garment on. Instead he moved his pocket diary into his hip pocket and his wallet that had been there into an inside breast pocket of the jacket. Now was the moment. Action.

Mrs. Banks was startled into dropping her knitting when Owen burst from the hut, wild-eyed, his jacket over one arm, his shirt unbuttoned.

“My wallet!” he gasped. “It's gone!”

“What's gone?” asked Mr. Banks, who had relapsed on to the mattress, this time face down.

“My wallet!” Owen dragged out his diary from his hip pocket. “This … look … it's my diary. Same sort of size. I didn't notice when I put on the bags. Same sort of feel — deliberate — must have been!”

By this time Mr. Banks had hoisted himself from the mattress and struggled to his feet.

“Are you saying you've been robbed of your wallet?” he said in a slow, accusing voice.

“Looks like it,” Owen answered. He had put his jacket down on an empty deck chair while he lit his cigarette from a lighter he had taken from the same pocket as the packet of cigarettes. He now more calmly buttoned his shirt and put on the jacket. He patted the various pockets, pulling out a handkerchief and refolding it, putting away the diary he had pulled from his hip pocket. All the time he drew on the cigarette with every sign of internal dismay, surrounding himself with a little cloud that made him cough. He beat it away, whereupon it enveloped Mrs. Banks who coughed as well.

“Oh,
sorry
!” Owen said in a disturbed voice. “I do beg your pardon!”

“You've had your wallet
stolen
?” Mr. Banks repeated, less accusing now than astonished. “How on earth could anyone … Mildred's been sitting here the whole afternoon …”

“Not quite all of it,” she said. “I did go along to talk to Mrs. Franks for a few minutes.”

“Leaving the hut unguarded?”

“Well, I could see it from their hut.”

“When was this?”

“Must have been after I arrived,” Owen said. “I had a few words with the nurses on my way here. I saw several of the tour people and you, Banks, in the water. Mrs. Banks said I could shed my things in your hut, so I did and went off to the sea almost at once.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “After you'd gone I went along for a few minutes. It can't have been long, because you came out, Reg, not ten minutes after Mr. Strong went in and I was here again when you got back, wasn't I?”

“That's right.”

They were all silent then, looking at one another with anxious, wary eyes.

“So whoever nicked my wallet must have been on the prowl,” Owen said. “Easy enough with the huts in a tight row, as they are. Nip in and out. Could be anyone … visitor, tourist even. They keep the general public out with their thick hedge and the gates and the gate keepers. But there must be a lot of casual staff, hut cleaners and that you'd think.”

“What will you do?” Mrs. Banks said. “Go to the police?”

“I'd much rather not. The wheels of the Law in this country grind very, very slowly.”

“Was there much in your wallet?” Mr. Banks asked.

“Just my spending money and my traveller's cheques. In fact everything till the banks open tomorrow.”

“But they'll …” began Mrs. Banks, but her husband checked her.

“I expect your hotel in Venice will fix you up,” he said firmly. “I think we'd better get a move on, Mildred. I'll just get dressed. Excuse me, Mr. Strong.”

Mrs. Banks rolled up her knitting. She made no further effort to talk. Nor did Owen. The touch had failed almost before it got going. That was plain enough. Ask his hotel, indeed. When he was now booked into the tour hotel in the name of Culver. Was that a mistake? No. Not really. Banks need never know. He did not propose to have any meals in the place. He had paid in advance for his room for the two nights he would use it. Reg Banks would get, the full treatment in the morning. The very full treatment, he promised himself.

He laughed as he waved goodbye to the pair when they left him. He stretched himself out on Mrs. Banks's long chair, looked at his watch and decided he had nearly an hour left before he must meet Tito and take delivery of the new car.

When Owen had left her in the hotel garden Gwen waited there for another half-hour before setting off for Venice again. Since she went straight for the quayside she did not encounter any members of the tour. All the beach parties had long since reached the shore and Owen was with Tito, hidden behind the oleander hedge while everyone outside it was hidden from him.

Gwen was rather late in reaching the Square but Jake, sitting with his bodyguards on the shady side of it, did not reproach her. Instead he announced a treat for her.

“What's that?” she asked.

He got up before she had time to sit down.

“Come and see,” he said.

They moved out of the Square to the waterside, passing the ranks of gently moving, moored gondolas and coming to three launches, white-painted, their brasses sparkling as they swung lazily at their moorings.

There they stopped. Jake gave an order, the bodyguards leaped on to the nearest vessel and while one of them dived below to attend to the engines, the other took hold of the stern warp to draw the boat in close to the quay. Jake stepped on board, handed Gwen over after him and took her with him to the wheelhouse. At a shout from below the man on deck stepped ashore, untied the warp near the bollard and with both strands held firmly jumped back on to the launch as the engines broke into a roar.

“Fend off!” Jake shouted from the wheelhouse. There were rubber tyres hanging on both sides of the launch. Being on the outside of the row, with a substantial gap between it and the gondolas, there was little risk of a collision. They made a clear, neat start, such a smart getaway that it attracted a certain amount of tourist attention, with children's arms waving and levelled cameras clicking.

“What price pictures now?” Gwen asked. She had turned her own head away when the cameras were raised, but Jake who was at the wheel had been steering the vessel, standing firm, balancing as he drove the launch through the wash of the vaporettos into the open waters beyond the mouth of the Grand Canal.

He gave her one furious look but could not spare thoughts or words to retaliate until he had driven the launch beyond the usual track of the smaller ferries and across the track of the big car-ferries and cargo boats in the main channel. Then he handed the wheel to the deck man and took Gwen below, pushing her on to one of the bunks before getting long cool drinks for them both.

“Now,” he said. “What was that crap you shouted as we warmed up?”

“The tourists were taking pictures of us. Your man untying the boat.”

“Casting off.”

“You at the wheel and me, only I turned my head away.”

“The glass would show just a reflection. Abe don't matter. Maybe they was all just tourists, too. I've hired the launch. Cash. All paid for. Two days.”

Gwen listened but could not be bothered to take in the detail. All so familiar. Jake explaining his incredible cunning; his perfect arrangements; his masterly plans. So far successful this time with her help. But that had not always been so. In America, by no means always successful. There had been the years when he was inside. Two stretches of three years. She had suffered the first time, had to work for her living. Not the last: there was more left in the kitty and available on demand.

Remembering other times of crisis and uncertainty as she looked across the cabin at Jake frowning into his glass, she wondered if this ostentatious launch, the show-off at the waterside, had to do with herself or with Owen or neither, some trouble he was keeping to himself.

“This guy,” he said, filling his glass again but not offering to replenish hers. “He's here in Venice?”

“I told you he was in Florence, still following.”

“Is he here?”

Thank God, she thought, that means Jake didn't see Owen slip away from behind Rose Lawler.

“Yes,” she said. She dared not lie.

“You've seen him?”

“Over on the Lido, yes. Out of doors.”

“What's he look like?”

She described a figure as unlike Owen as she could invent with no distinguishing mark, whatever.

“You're a big help. That all you can do?”

“Yes. I hardly know him.” Jake's dissatisfaction was a measure of her success. But she must not overdo it.

However, Jake did not press her any further. She had done her duty, poor silly moll, in reporting Owen at all, which showed she understood the importance of the fact that this stranger had told her he saw her in Geneva. That was the crux of the matter. The guy must be bent, so was he a loner or did he belong to the opposition, to some hitherto unknown rival association, a competitor in the same line or even a political gang out for funds?

Gwen waited for more questions but none came. Nor did any other approaches or demands. This hurt her vanity but did not seriously disturb her. Her personal relationship with the old villain had become as conventional and restricted as a long-time marriage. That was why Owen had been such a welcome change. But she had better not let her thoughts wander to Owen. Jake was far too slick at reading her.

After another drink which this time she shared and a further ten minutes of brooding silence and inward speculation Jake moved to the companion way and going up three steps of it looked about him. Obedient to his orders his men had taken the launch past the western end of the Lido and were heading straight out into the Adriatic. In fact, as Jake found when he had reached the cockpit in rapid time, there was not much more than a blue-grey blur where he had expected to see a long yellow-strand.