Good Thief's Guide to Venice Read online

  Praise for The Good Thief’s Guide series

  ‘Chris Ewan [is] at the vanguard of a new wave of young writers kicking against the clichés and producing ambitious, challenging, genre-bending works [and] adding some wit and balls to [the] genre’ Bateman

  ‘With a nimble touch and effortless charm, The Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas carries us along on an utterly irresistible sin-city caper filled with high-stakes gambling, cunning stagecraft and a dizzying series of twists Ewan pulls off with the skills of a master illusionist’ Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Queenpin and Bury Me Deep

  ‘In Charlie Howard, Chris Ewan has created one of contemporary fiction’s most unlikely yet likeable heroes – a razor-sharp Raffles for the 21st century, whose easy expertise in the dubious arts of breaking and entering intrigues as much as it entertains. Wacky, witty and above all great fun, The Good Thief’s guide to Vegas moves at a blistering pace through the sleazy backrooms of Las Vegas’s casinos, and – with more plot twists than a corkscrew – delivers a satisfying but unexpected denouement, and happily leaves the door open to Charlie’s next adventure’ Anne Zouroudi, author of the Mysteries of the Greek Detective series

  ‘A stylish and assured debut that introduces the fascinating Charlie Howard. Let’s hope Charlie’s as much of a recidivist as Highsmith’s Ripley, cause he’s a character you’ll definitely want to see more of’ Allan Guthrie, author of Two-Way Split, winner of the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year

  ‘This impressive debut owes much of its charm and success to its compelling anti-hero, Charlie Howard . . . The detection is first rate, and Howard is a fresh, irreverent creation who will make readers eager for his next exploit’ Publishers Weekly

  ‘Another sharp helping of wit and calamities . . . This novel is a lot of fun and the series is developing beautifully’ Bookseller

  ‘Ewan’s pacing is spot on, doling out the information in just the right quantities to keep his readers zinging along with the story . . . With such wonderful writing, readers are sure to be hopeful that Ewan decides to take on other cities, other mysteries’ reviewingtheevidence.com

  ‘Intelligent and witty, with a lightness of tone more P. G. Wodehouse than James Ellroy . . . This is, in many ways, crime writing at its best’ Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘One of the most fun and enjoyable crime series around ****’ Scott Pack, Me and My Big Mouth Blog

  ‘Charlie Howard has the potential to be an amoral Simon Templar. Proof all round that the world is more amusing when saints and sinners blur’ The Times

  ‘Sharp characterizations, snappy repartee and good plotting carry the day’ Times Literary Supplement

  Chris Ewan’s acclaimed debut, The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam, won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award. Both Amsterdam and The Good Thief’s Guide to Paris were shortlisted for CrimeFest’s Last Laugh Award for the best humorous crime novel of the year.

  Chris lives in a small village in the Isle of Man with his wife, Jo, and their labrador, Maisie, where he spends his days planning imaginary burglaries and learning how to pick locks. His neighbours are thrilled.

  Find out more at: www.thegoodthief.co.uk

  Also by Chris Ewan

  The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam

  The Good Thief’s Guide to Paris

  The Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2011

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Chris Ewan 2011

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  ® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

  The right of Chris Ewan to be identified as author of this work

  has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78

  of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-84739-959-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-84739-960-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by M Rules

  Printed in the UK by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, Berkshire RG1 8EX

  For Vivien Green and Susan Hill,

  who gave this writer his break.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE

  There was a burglar in my apartment, and for once it wasn’t me.

  I knew it wasn’t me because my intruder was stomping round my living room, bumping into furniture, and I’m a stealthy kind of thief. Added to that, I hadn’t picked a lock or cracked a crib or been anywhere unbidden since I’d first set foot in Venice, almost a year ago. What’s more – and this really closed the case for me – I was tucked up in bed, scribbling a few notes at just after 2 a.m.

  Actually, you can scratch that last bit. I don’t want to be accused of being anything but straight with you, so perhaps I should say that I wasn’t simply jotting down frivolous ideas. In truth, I was thinking of ways to transform my latest Michael Faulks novel into something that might turn my life around for good – my breakout book. Except now my attention had been snatched away by what appeared to be a break-in.

  Hmm.

  I hopped out of bed in my boxer shorts and crept to the door of my room. Peering along the darkened hallway, I could see the glow of torchlight.

  Now, as a general rule – and perhaps this is just me being terribly old-fashioned – I’ve always preferred to burgle places that are empty. In my experience, it makes the whole enterprise a lot more enjoyable and the chances of being caught a good deal less likely. Sadly, my unexpected visitor appeared to disagree. Either that, or he hadn’t done his homework, and whichever it was, I wasn’t altogether keen to point out his error. Then again, I wasn’t altogether keen to stand idly by as he ripped me off.

  But what could I do? I didn’t own a gun, or anything that could be mistaken for one. There were knives in the kitchen, just off the living room, but I didn’t relish the idea of waving a blade around. Sure, it’d be dandy if my intruder went all weak at the knees, held up his palms and sat nice and quiet while the boys in azzurro found their way to my home, but suppose he came at me and got hold of the knife and plunged it somewhere soft and fleshy that
I’d rather it didn’t go?

  The torch swept the living room slowly, as if the person holding the flashlight believed they had all the time in the world. When the beam hit a certain angle, I could almost make out the shape of Mr Curious through the internal glass doors. He didn’t strike me as an ogre, but neither was he a waif. He seemed broadly average, except that the average Venetian resident doesn’t make a habit of breaking into people’s homes – least of all when the front door of the home in question has been fitted with quality locks by an experienced thief.

  I smiled in the darkness. Thinking of my door had given me an idea. No, I wasn’t about to run outside and rouse a vigilante mob – I’d simply remembered the coat hooks in my hallway. And I’d also remembered the umbrella hanging from one of them.

  The umbrella was as long as my leg, with a black fabric canopy and a sturdy wooden handle. If I could get to it, I could swing it like a club, or jab it like a sword. Hell, if push came to shove, I could ram the thing in the bugger’s mouth and open it inside his oesophagus.

  I edged into the hallway and skulked through the dark on my toes, but I needn’t have worried. My visitor was making so much noise striding around the living room that I could have bumbled into a drum kit without being heard. Funny, I’d always favoured baseball trainers when I was on the prowl, but this clown appeared to be wearing tap shoes.

  I lifted the umbrella down from its hook. It felt heavy enough to do some serious damage, assuming I was really prepared to use it. I didn’t know about that. Speaking as a thief, it was all too easy to put myself in his (very noisy) shoes, and I was reluctant to barge in and land a series of blows without waiting to gauge his reaction.

  I rolled my shoulders and circled my neck, trying to loosen the tension from my muscles. Nope, didn’t work. Wiping my brow with my forearm, I glanced down at my bare feet. I was naked aside from my boxer shorts and the umbrella. It didn’t make me feel any better.

  The light from the torch had settled on the wall at the end of the living room, exactly where my desk was positioned. My laptop was there. It contained the working draft of my novel. The only version.

  I lifted my foot in the air and kicked the double doors hard. They spread like a split log and I burst through with the umbrella high above my head. The light from the torch hit me square in the eyes and I squinted and reeled, thumping into the wall and fumbling for the light switch. The room lit up brightly. I spread my feet and prepared to swing hard with the umbrella.

  Nobody was coming for me.

  My eyes were stinging and watering from the stark electric light. I squinted towards my desk. My laptop was still there. I swivelled left and finally I saw him.

  Her.

  She was blonde. Very blonde. A platinum wonder with a red painted smile on her full, plush lips. The teeth were white and dazzling, the eyes sparkling and alert. Her pose was provocative, taunting even. Shoulders back, chin up, she had one leg through my window and the other in my living room, straddling the sill. Long leather boots with high heels. Blue skinny jeans and a zipped leather jacket. A climbing harness around her waist.

  All too slowly, I remembered the situation I was in.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ I asked.

  The smile grew wider. The head barely shook.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  The plump lips puckered up and she raised a gloved finger to them. I gaped at her, unsure how to react, and before I was able to resolve the puzzle, her long lashes fluttered, her left eye closed in a wink and she leaned right back in a graceful curve and fell plumb from the window.

  ‘Wait!’

  Rushing across the room, I braced my hands on the crumbling ledge and thrust my head out into the foggy night air. I caught a flash of her torch, close to the shrouded canal water below. She had one hand gripping the rope she was lowering herself on and the other wedged behind her bottom. She glanced down just once before letting the rope slip free and dropped with a thud onto the flagstone pavement, the noise muffled by the soggy air.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘What the hell? Come back.’

  Ignoring me, she freed the rope from her climbing harness, then stepped aboard a white speedboat, kicked off from the moss-clad canal bank with a grunt and reached for the starter cord. The engine fired with a throaty splutter and a blue diesel puff.

  I tugged at the rope hanging beside my window. She’d secured it to the roof, which suggested she’d targeted my apartment from above. I gave some thought to lowering myself down to her – the kind of thought that’s destined to go precisely nowhere – and meanwhile she cranked the throttle and sped off beneath a low, arched bridge in the direction of the lagoon, her blonde hair flickering in the misty darkness like a guttering flame. Within seconds she was gone, and all that remained was the slap of disturbed water, the stench of diesel in the dank air and the fading note of her engine rebounding from the walls of the crooked buildings that surrounded me.

  I dragged my head back inside and shook it groggily, then turned to find my friend and literary agent, Victoria, emerging from her guest bedroom to do much the same thing. She stumbled towards me in spotted pyjamas and fluffy slippers, her hair like an Eighties revival night gone wrong and a slick of drool glistening on her chin.

  ‘Charlie?’ She yawned without covering her mouth. ‘What’s all the fuss?’

  ‘Break-in,’ I mumbled, cupping my hand to the back of my neck.

  ‘My God. Anything gone?’

  I looked again at my laptop, untouched on my desk. My notebooks and papers were there too.

  ‘Nothing,’ I told her.

  But then my eyes drifted up to an empty space on the wall and my heart clenched with the sudden realisation of what I’d overlooked. Something was very much missing, and something else had been put in its place.

  TWO

  It’s fair to say that most writers are superstitious. I’ve heard of authors who have to write with a favourite pen on a particular brand of writing paper, and others who can’t begin a novel until they’ve completed some familiar ritual – like running a half-marathon, or clipping their toenails, or getting divorced. Me, I have two quirks that I’m aware of. I like to move to a new city when I’m about to start a book, and I always write with my framed first edition of The Maltese Falcon hanging above my desk.

  The Maltese Falcon is my most valuable possession. It’s worth a tidy sum – somewhere approaching six figures based on the last time a first edition came up at auction – which explains why I store it in an airtight picture frame. But more importantly, I’ve never succeeded in writing anything publishable without it watching over me. I’ve tried once or twice, just to see if the spell could be broken, but I’ve always found it impossible to get one of my burglar novels moving without the spirit of Sam Spade along for the ride. So, crazy as it might seem, The Maltese Falcon had become a kind of talisman for me.

  And now it was gone, replaced by a square of red card.

  ‘What is it?’ Victoria asked. ‘Charlie?’

  I couldn’t answer her. The best I could manage was to let go of a despairing wail and stagger towards the space on the wall where Hammett’s novel used to be.

  ‘For God’s sake, speak to me.’ Victoria clicked her fingers. ‘What on earth is the matter?’

  I passed my hand over the floral wallpaper, as if something of the book’s magic still lingered. I wailed some more. I’m pretty sure my bottom lip trembled.

  ‘Oh, Charlie,’ Victoria said. ‘Tell me they haven’t taken your copy of The Maltese Falcon.’

  I swallowed something the size and consistency of a cricket ball, then found my voice.

  ‘Gone,’ I croaked.

  ‘Gone?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You bloody idiot. I said you should have kept it somewhere safe.’

  Now, I firmly believe that if anyone else had uttered those words, I would have felt compelled to toss them out of the window into the shallow waters below. But since it was Victoria, I chos
e to let my shoulders sag instead.

  ‘In fact,’ she went on, in the manner of a dentist drilling two extra fillings for no particular reason, ‘I distinctly remember warning you that something like this could happen. I believe I even mentioned that you, of all people, should have been aware of the risks.’

  At this point, I confess that my patience began to fade just a smidgen, and I may have mumbled something a touch uncharitable.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she asked.

  ‘I said, “Would you mind closing the window?”’

  Victoria placed her hands on her hips and squinted at me. She tapped the toe of her slipper on the floor.

  ‘It’s getting cold,’ I added, shivering for effect.

  ‘You don’t need to tell me that.’

  She gave my torso a dubious once-over and I remembered how little I was wearing. The boxer shorts and umbrella didn’t do a great deal to cover my modesty. I folded my arms across my chest. My arms didn’t do a great deal to cover my modesty, either.

  ‘I’ll go and find some clothes.’

  ‘You do that.’ Victoria slammed the window closed against the dismal fog. ‘And I’ll put the kettle on. It appears we have some thinking to do.’

  We had plenty of thinking to do, as it happens. First, we thought about who could have known about my Hammett novel. Then we thought about how we might set about identifying and tracking down a female cat burglar. But more than anything else, we thought about the square of red card she’d left behind.

  It was about half the size of a paperback novel and it featured an image of an open book on one side. Printed in black ink on the pages of the book was a good deal of Italian text. My Italian was terrible, but we managed to make some sense of it with the help of a battered language dictionary.

  From what we could decipher, the card was a flyer for a business that specialised in bookbinding and restoration, located in the district of San Marco. The intricate craft of bookbinding, and the stores that promote it, are very much a Venetian speciality. But for the life of me, I couldn’t recall asking for any assistance with the preservation of my Hammett novel, and it was more than a little perverse to suppose that a shop might send a burglar to collect my book for restoration in the dead of night.