“I’m going to take a look at the Villa San Pietro,” I told him.
He looked at me as if I’d gone stark staring mad. “You can’t just drive up there like the milkman,” he said.
“Correct. I’m going to walk up, like a tourist. And you’re going to take the receiver with you, just in case the buckle’s going anywhere Turner isn’t.”
“You’re not going up there on your own,” Richard said firmly.
“Of course I am,” I stated even more firmly. “You are waiting down here with a car, a phone and a bug receiver. If we both go and Turner comes driving back down with the buckle while we’re ten minutes away from the cars, he could be outside the range of the receiver in any direction before we get mobile. I’m not trekking all the way across Europe only to lose the guy because you want to play macho man.”
Richard shook his head in exasperation. “I hate it when you find a logical explanation for what you intend to do regardless,” he muttered, throwing himself back into the driver’s seat of the BMW. “See you later.”
I waved him off, then moved the Merc up the road a few hundred yards. I scuffed some dust over my trainers, put on a pair of sunglasses even though dusk was already gathering, hung my camera round my neck and trudged off up the drive.
There was a three-foot ditch on one side of the twisting road, which appeared to have been carved out of the rough scrub and stunted trees of the hillside. Ten minutes brisk climbing brought me to the edge of a clearing. I hung back in the shelter of a couple of gnarled olive trees and took a good look. The ground had been cleared for about a hundred meters up to a wall. Painted pinkish brown, it was a good six feet high and extended for about thirty meters either side of a wrought-iron gate. Above the wall, I could see an extensive roof in the traditional terracotta pantiles. Through the gates, I could just about make out the villa itself, a two-story pink stucco building with shutters over the upper-story windows. It looked like serious money to me.
I would have been tempted to go in for a closer look, except that a closed-circuit video camera was mounted by the gate, doing a continuous 180-degree sweep of the road and the clearing. Not just serious money, but serious paranoia too.
Staying inside the cover of the trees and the scrub, I circled the villa. By the time I got back to the drive, I had more scratches than Richard’s record collection, and the certainty that Nicholas Turner was playing with the big boys. There were video cameras mounted on each corner of the compound, all programmed to carry out regular sweeps. If I’d had enough time and a computer, I could probably have worked out where and when the blind spots would occur, but anyone who’s that serious about their perimeter security probably hasn’t left the back door on the latch. This was one burglary that was well out of my league.
I found Richard sitting on the bonnet of his car on the forecourt of a building with all the grace and charm of a sixties tower block. Green neon script along the front of the three-story rectangle proclaimed Casa Nico. Below that, red neon told us this was a Ristorante-Bar-Pensione. The only other vehicles on the parking area were a couple of battered pickups and a clutch of elderly motor scooters. So much for Italian style.
“This is it?” I asked, my heart sinking.
“This is it,” Richard confirmed gloomily. “Wait till you see the room.”
I gathered my overnight bag, the video camera bag and my camera gear and followed Richard indoors. To get to the rooms, we had to go through the bar. In spite of the floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, it somehow managed to be dark and gloomy. As soon as we walked through the bead curtain that separated the bar from the forecourt, the rumble of male voices stopped dead. In a silence cut only by the slushy Italian muzak from the jukebox, we crossed the room. I smiled inanely round me at the half-dozen men sprawled round a couple of tables. I got as cheerful a welcome as a Trot at a Tory party conference. Not even the human bear leaning on the Gaggia behind the bar acknowledged our existence. The minute we left by a door in the rear, the conversation started up again. So much for the friendly hospitality of the Italian people. Somehow, I didn’t see myself managing to engage mine host in a bit of friendly gossip about the Villa San Pietro.
The third-floor room was big, with a spectacular view up the wooded river valley. That was all you could say for it. Painted a shade of yellow that I haven’t seen since the last time I had food poisoning, it contained the sort of vast, heavy wooden furniture that could only have been built in situ, unless it was moved into the room before the walls went up. Above the double bed was a crucifix, and the view from the bed was a massive, sentimental print of Jesus displaying the Sacred Heart with all the dedication of an offal butcher.
“Bit of a turnoff, eh?” Richard said.
“I expect Jeffrey Dahmer would have loved it.” I sat down on the bed, testing the mattress. Another mistake. I thought I was going to be swallowed whole. “How much is this costing us?” I asked.
“About the same as a night in the Gritti Palace. Mind you, that also includes dinner. Not that it’ll be edible,” he added pessimistically.
After we’d had a quick shower, I set the bug receiver to auto-alert, so that it would give a series of audible bleeps if the buckle moved more than half a kilometer from its current relative position. Then we went in search of food. Richard had been right about that too. We were the only two people in the cheerless dining room, which resembled a school dining room with tablecloths. The sole waitress, presumably the wife of Grizzly Adams behind the bar, looked as if she’d last laughed somewhere around 1974 and hadn’t enjoyed the experience enough to want to repeat it. We started with a platter of mixed meats, most of which looked and tasted like they’d made their getaway from the local cobbler. The pasta that followed was al dente enough to be a threat to dentistry. The sauce was so sparing that the only way we could identify it as pesto was by the color.
Richard and I ate in virtual silence. “What was that you said about it being time we had a bit of a jaunt?” I said at one point.
He prodded one of the overcooked lamb chops that looked small enough to have come from a rabbit and scowled. “Next time, I won’t be so bloody helpful,” he muttered. “This is hell.
I haven’t had proper food for two days and I’d kill for a joint.“ ”Not many Chinese restaurants in Italy,“ I remarked. ”It’s on account of them inventing one of the world’s great cuisines.“ Richard took one look at my deadpan face and we both burst out laughing. ”One day,“ I gasped, ”we’ll look back at this and laugh.“
“Don’t bet on it,” he said darkly.
We passed on pudding. We both have too much respect for our digestive tracts. At least the coffee was good. So good we ordered a second cup and took it upstairs with us. The one good thing about the bed was the trough in the middle that forced us into each other’s arms. After the day we’d had, it was more than time to remind each other that the world isn’t all grief.
My eyelids unstuck themselves ten hours later. The bleeding heart on the wall wasn’t a great sight to wake up to, so I rolled over and checked the receiver sitting on the bedside table. No movement. By nine, we were both showered, dressed and back in the dining room. Breakfast was a pleasant surprise. Freshly baked focaccia, three different cheeses and a choice of jam. “What’s the game plan for today?” Richard asked through a mouthful of Gorgonzola and bread.
“We stick with the buckle,” I said. “If it moves, we follow. If it stays put and Turner moves, we stay put too and follow Plan B.”
“What’s Plan B?”
“I don’t know yet.”
After breakfast, Richard took his BMW up the valley past the drive. I’d told him to park facing up the valley and to follow anything that came down the drive, unless I called him and told him different. I sat on a bench on the forecourt of Casa Nico, reading Bill’s thriller, the receiver in my open bag next to me. I hoped that anyone passing would take me for a tourist making the most of the watery autumn sunshine. I only had thirty pages to go when the receiver bleeped so loudly I nearly fell off my seat.