JAMES PATRICK

CHAPTER 4

“Now, this building is called the palavo contarini del Bovolo,” Mr Craig announced. “Bovolo is the Venetian word for snail shell and, as you can see, this wonderful staircase is shaped a bit like a shell.”

Bob Stanice stifled a yawn. “If I see one more palace, one more museum or one more canal,” he muttered, “I’m going to throw myself under a bus.”

“ There aren’t any buses in Venice,” James reminded him.

“A water bus, then. If it doesn’t hit me, maybe I’ll get lucky and drown.” Bob sighed. “You know the trouble with this place? It’s like a museum. A bloody great museum. I feel like I’ve been here half my life.”

“we’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Not a day too soon, James.”

James couldn’t bring himself to agree. He had never been anywhere quite like Venice. But then there was nowhere in the world more remotely like it, with it’s narrow streets and dark canals twisting around each other in an intricate, amazing knot. Every building seemed to compete with it’s neighbor to be more ornate and more spectacular. A short work could take you across four centuries and every corner seemed to lead to another surprise. It might be a canal side market with great slabs of meat laid out on the tables and fish dripping blood on to the paving stones. Or a church, seemingly floating, surrounded by water in all four sides. A grand hotel or a tiny restaurant. Even the shops were works of arts, their windows framing exotic masks, brilliantly colored glass vases, dried pasta and antiques. It was a museum, may be, yet one that was truly alive.

But James understood what Bob was feeling. After four days, even he was beginning to think he’d had enough. Enough statutes, enough churches, enough mosaics. And enough tourists all cramped together beneath a sweltering August sun. Like Bob he was beginning to feel overcooked.

And what about Viper?

The trouble was, he had no absolutely idea what Mark Gregory had meant by his last words. Viper could be a person. James had looked in the phone book and found no fewer than fourteen people with that name living in and around Venice. It could be a business. Or it could be a single building. Scuole were homes set up for poor people. La Scala was an opera house set in Milan. But Viper didn’t seem to be anything. No signs pointed to it; no streets were named after it.

It was only now he was here, nearing the end of the trip, that James began to see that it had been hopeless from the start. If Mark had told him the truth, the two men, he and David Patrick had been hired killers. Had they worked for Viper? If so Viper will be carefully concealed… perhaps inside one of these old places. James looked again at the staircase that Mr Craig was describing. How was he to know that these steps didn’t lead to Viper? Viper could be anywhere. It could be everywhere. And after four days in Venice, James was nowhere.

“We’re going to walk back down Frezzeria towards the main square,” Mr Craig Announced. “We can eat our sandwiches there and after lunch we’ll visit St Mark’s Basilica.”

“Oh great!” Bob exclaimed. “Another church!” They set off a dozen school children, with Mr Craig and Miss Clinton in front, talking animatedly together. James and Bob trailed at the back, both of them gloomy. There was one day left, and, as Bob had made clear, that was one day too many. He was as he put it, all cultured out. But he wasn’t returning to London with the rest of the group. He had an older brother living in Naples and he was going to spend the last few days of the summer holidays with him. For James the end of the visit would mean failure. He would go home, the autumn term would begin, and …

And that was when he saw it, a flash of silver as the sun reflected off something at the edge of his vision. He turned his head. There was nothing. A canal leading away. Another canal crossing it. A single motor cruiser sliding beneath a bridge. The usual façade of ancient brown walls dotted with wooden shutters. A church dome rising above the red roof tiles. He had imagined it.

But then the cruiser began to turn, and that was when he spotted it a second time and knew it was really there: a silver Viper decorating the side of the boat, pinned to the wooden bow. James stared as it swung in to the second canal. It wasn’t a gondola or a chugging public vaporetto, but a sleek, private lunch, all polished teak, curtained windows and leather seats. There were two crew members in immaculate white jackets and shorts, one at the wheel, the other serving a drink to the only passenger. This was a woman sitting bolt upright, looking straight ahead. James only had time to glimpse black hair, an upturned nose, a face with no expression. Then the motor launch completed it’s turn and disappeared from sight.

A Viper decorating motor launch.

Viper.

It was the most slender of connections but suddenly James was determined to find out where the boat was going. It was almost as if the silver Viper had been sent to guide him to whatever it was he was meant to find.

And there was something else. The stillness of the woman. How was it possible to be carried through this amazing city without registering some emotion, without at least moving your head from left to right? James thought of Mark Gregory. He would have been the same. He and this woman were two of a kind.

James turned to Bob. “Cover for me,” he said urgently.

“What now?” Bob asked.

“Tell them I wasn’t feeling well. Say I’ve gone back to the hotel.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll tell you later. “

With that James was gone, ducking between an antiques shop and café up the narrowest of alley ways, trying to follow the direction of the boat.

But almost at once, he saw that he had a problem. The city of Venice had been built on overall a hundred islands.. Mr Craig had explained this on their first day. In the middle ages the area had been little more than a swamp. That was why there we’re no roads

Just water ways and oddly shaped bit of lands connected by bridges. The woman was on the water; James on land. Following her would be like trying to find his way through an impossible maze in which h their paths would never meet.