Page 27 of The Venice Murders (Flora Steele Mystery #11)

27

Even before he reached the top step, he heard the voices. A girl, her voice cracking, seeming to plead with an unknown visitor. Or was it visitors? Then a heavier, harsher voice. An uttered curse, an angry bellow, and the sound of a chair falling to the floor.

Jack slipped through the open doorway, his ears straining to hear more, unaware that Flora had followed him up the flight of steps and into the house.

The narrow hall was empty, but from the room ahead came the unmistakable noise of scuffling bodies, of more chairs being overturned, and finally a girl’s frantic cry.

Without waiting to hear more, Jack rushed forward, pushing wide the half-closed door that lay ahead and, abruptly, coming face to face with two hulking men. They were holding a girl between them, both her arms clamped tight to the men’s sides. Her head was bowed and her hair a tousled mess, but she was a girl he recognised. Bianca Benetti.

One of the men, still holding firm to his captive, took a step forward so that his breath came hot and nauseous into Jack’s face.

‘ Uscire! ’ he barked.

‘I’m sorry.’ Jack was at his most urbane. ‘But I don’t speak Italian.’ He had no intention of going anywhere, not until he’d seen these blockheads out of the house and Bianca safe.

‘Get out!’ the man snarled in English.

‘Not yet, I think.’ Jack offered them a polite smile. ‘We’re here to see Signorina Benetti. We’re having tea with her.’

Walking past the two men – true gorillas, he thought – Jack pulled out the remaining kitchen chair and sat down at the small, square table, a benign smile on his face. The men appeared nonplussed. Should they let Bianca go and attack this man before throwing him down the front steps, or should they continue to hurt and harass the girl while he looked on? Or would it be best simply to accept defeat and leave? Jack could imagine the various options passing through their minds until a mutual choice was silently agreed upon and option number one became their preference.

Damn it, he thought. Fate was playing games with him. Again. Not content with demanding he escape an underground prison and a watery death, it had now decided that he must take on these two towering brutes in what would be an unfair fight – and somehow triumph.

In unison, the men advanced on Jack, having flung Bianca to one side so roughly that she collapsed against a kitchen cabinet. Grabbing him by the shoulders, they began to heave him from the chair, prior to administering the punishment they had in store. Immediately, he allowed his body to fall limp and, for the moment, that confounded them. But their hold on him faltered only for that moment and, when they rejoined the battle, it was with even more force than before. They had levered him halfway out of his seat when Flora determined enough was enough.

A saucepan was at hand, she saw, usefully abandoned on the draining board, and, rushing into the room, she snatched it up and aimed it at the head of the man nearest her. It landed with a satisfyingly loud thwack, a second stroke sounding even louder. Once again, the man’s hold on Jack slackened, this time very considerably. He slewed around, slightly punch drunk, his face a blob of scarlet, and Flora braced herself for his counter-attack. Bianca, though, having recovered her breath and her feet, had snatched another saucepan hanging from the line of hooks on the cabinet and was busy inflicting a similar injury on the second man.

For an instant, the outcome teetered in the balance but Jack, having staggered upright, broke free of the last restraint and was making for the cabinet himself, plainly in search of a weapon with which to join the saucepan-wielding women. The men, now bereft of their captives, seemed hesitant, unable to process what was happening. There was a panicked exchange of looks that said clearly, ‘Let’s go.’

And they did, swearing in Italian that they would be back. That Bianca Benetti would pay, in one way or another.

‘What did that thug mean,’ Jack asked, ‘that you’d pay one way or another?’

They were sitting, somewhat uncomfortably, on a circle of wooden-backed chairs in a room opposite the kitchen. The Benettis’ living room was narrow with barely space for more than an old and beautiful walnut chest of drawers and the trio of single chairs, their shabby cushions fraying at the edges. A wide picture window, however, brightened the space and looked out onto a pleasant communal garden that was shared by several of the houses in the street.

‘I owe them money,’ Bianca admitted, her voice dull and defeated. ‘And I can’t pay.’

‘You borrowed money from those men?’ Flora frowned at the idea. It seemed extraordinary to Jack, too.

‘Not them.’ Bianca slowly stirred sugar into the coffee she had just made. ‘From their boss. Those men are just his…enforcers…is that what you call them?’

‘In American films, perhaps.’ Jack gave a half smile. ‘So, who is their boss?’

‘A horrible man. Two horrible men. They stay at the Minerva for two, three weeks and I was their chambermaid. I talked to them many times and I thought they were good people. I told them I was in trouble – that I must have money very quickly – and they said they could help.’

‘The help they offered was a cash loan?’

She nodded.

‘It must have been a large sum.’ That was pretty clear, Jack thought, but why had Bianca been so desperate for money that she was willing to trust a man or men who were so obviously dubious? Had she been in a blind panic and why?

‘The money wasn’t for you?’ Flora hazarded.

‘For my father,’ the girl said. ‘He needed money. Needed it quickly. When Mirabelle , the first Mirabelle , was smashed to pieces and could not be repaired, he had to pay for a new boat. Or he would not work.’

‘But the new boat, the one that took us to Burano – wouldn’t your father have already ordered it?’ Flora was still frowning, trying, Jack could see, to work out how suddenly it had become imperative to borrow this huge sum.

‘The boat had been ordered,’ the girl confirmed, ‘and built. But not paid for. When it was ready to collect, Papa had not the price, so he asked the boatyard if they would keep it a while until he could find the money. Then the accident happened and he had to have the boat. He had to pay. He was desperate, and that is when I arranged the loan.’

‘And what exactly were the terms of the loan?’ Jack was unsure there would be anything written down, but it was as well to check.

Bianca confirmed his worst fears. ‘It was something we agreed,’ she said, trailing off.

‘Agreed verbally?’

She nodded again, then burst out, ‘It was going to be fine. They were nice people, I thought. They would let Papa repay when he could. But then they asked for interest and Papa managed to pay, but it wasn’t enough. They told us that now they want all their money back, plus more interest. That he must sell the boat, sell this house. They come here often, push their way into the house to threaten him, to bully him, until…’ She broke off, her voice choked. ‘Until they left him dead,’ she finished. ‘And now they have come for me.’

Her feet beat a muffled tattoo on the polished floorboards. ‘I should never have done it. I would never have done it if I had known what kind of men they were. Papa had no idea how to get the finance. I thought I was saving him!’

She jumped up, too distressed to continue, and, gathering up their empty cups, rushed back into the kitchen.

‘I’m so sorry, Bianca.’ Flora had followed her, putting her arm around the girl’s shoulder and hugging her close.

‘It was my fault that Papa was in trouble.’ Bianca blew her nose forcefully. ‘And I grabbed the chance to make things right. Or that is what I thought.’

‘How could it have been your fault?’ Jack heard his wife ask, as he joined them in the kitchen. He shared Flora’s puzzlement. There was certainly something odd about the financial pickle Bianca had landed herself in. Any money Piero had lent must have been returned by the time he had to pay for the boat.

‘I was getting married,’ she said in explanation, her voice lifeless. ‘But you know that. We were moving to an apartment in Mestre, a new apartment. It is not the best place to live and the flat was not expensive, but I had saved only a little and Franco had nothing at all, although I did not know it. Not for a long time. We needed to pay a deposit and then we would arrange a loan for the rest of the price, but through a bank. It is the proper way.’

‘The deposit, though – you borrowed it from your father?’ Flora guessed.

‘ I didn’t,’ she said indignantly. ‘I knew nothing. It was Franco who asked my father for money, then pretended to me that it was his money paying the deposit, but it was not. It was Papa’s and when his old boat was destroyed and he had suddenly to pay for the new one, the money he had saved had gone to Franco.’

‘Was there a reason that Franco had no savings?’ That seemed extraordinary to Jack. ‘He was in a very good job. In fact, he’d had a number of very good jobs.’

The question had Bianca grip the back of a chair and look blankly down at the bare wooden table.

‘He drank,’ she said at last. ‘I did not realise how much, not immediately. When I first met him, he would have two, three drinks maybe, in an evening, and that would be it, but then gradually he drank more until he would get through a whole bottle of wine in one evening, all by himself. Spirits, too. When I found out that he had borrowed money from my father, that he had no money of his own, I realised that he’d spent everything he earned in one bar or another.’

She sank down onto the chair, Flora taking the seat opposite. ‘I think that deep down Franco was not happy with his life.’ She gave a small, bitter laugh. ‘To me, it always seemed glamorous. He worked in a luxury hotel. He was an important member of their staff and he met famous people every day, people with money, with influence.’ She paused. ‘But perhaps his heart was not content.’

That fitted with what Sally had told them, Jack thought, remembering their conversation. Franco hadn’t seemed to enjoy the world he’d made for himself. He’d been born into a country family with a life as a small farmer awaiting him once he grew up. But he’d wanted more. Or thought he did. He’d travelled to England seeking his fortune, looking for new opportunities, and found them. But evidently it hadn’t made him happy, and he’d decided to return to Italy. With experience of working in a five-star London hotel, he’d won a job at the Cipriani, but contentment still appeared to elude him. There’d been regular visits to his family, long spells spent back in Asolo. Had he missed his earlier life so very much? Thinking about it now, it might well have been why he’d chosen to marry a girl from a very similar background. Bianca’s father was a working boatman on the canals of Venice, and how different was that from a farmer tilling a few fields for his living?

‘Was it your idea to buy the apartment in Mestre?’ Flora broke the long silence.

The girl shook her head, a flat denial. ‘It was Franco’s. As soon as we got engaged, he said we must buy a flat. He was certain it would be better than renting. His parents had rented their farm all their lives, he said – the house they lived in, the fields they worked – and what had they to show for it? What would they have when they could no longer work?’

‘And Mestre?’ she asked gently.

Bianca sighed. ‘It was not Franco’s idea of a good place to live but it was all we could afford. He did not like the small houses, the factories, and he hated how far he would have to travel to get to the Cipriani. What he longed for was an apartment in Venice. Don’t we all?’ Again, that small bitter laugh. ‘One in Dorsoduro perhaps, by the side of a small canal. But you have to be rich to live in Venice and we were not. There was no chance that we could ever afford such a place.’

‘If Franco borrowed the deposit from your father, then surely he could have asked the builders for it to be returned – when he broke the engagement and no longer needed the apartment?’ Jack felt baffled at the many things that seemed not to add up.

Bianca jumped up abruptly, spilling a few drops of coffee on already stained tiles. ‘He could have done, if he had ever paid the deposit,’ she said in a strangled voice. ‘But he never did.’