Death Run

by Jack Higgins

  Jade emerged into the upper circle of the theatre. She made her way quietly down to the front seats to get the best view of what was happening on the stage. The theatre might be old and disused, neglected and in need of repair, but on the stage were four men. Three of them were in carnival masks. All of them were standing round a fifth figure tied to a chair. The chair was facing away from Jade, towards the decaying backdrop of the stage – a faded painting of mountains and a castle. But even so she knew who it was – she recognised the profile and the tousled blond hair.

  “Oh, Rich,” she sighed.

  The man dressed as Harlequin turned to look up at the circle – at Jade. She ducked down quickly. Had her words carried right to the front of the theatre? She risked a look over the low wall at the front of the circle. Harlequin had turned away again, but Jade knew she had better be very, very quiet.

  But the sound carried both ways, she realised, as the man who had removed his mask spoke. “Don’t worry. It won’t be long now.”

  “What won’t?” Jade could hear how nervous and frightened Rich was, though he was trying to hide it. “What are you going to do to me? Why don’t you just let me go – it’s not me you want.”

  “But you may be useful.” The man’s English was perfect, only the slight accent gave away that he was Italian. “And anyway, it is not for me to decide.”

  “Then who?”

  “The boss is coming. The big man.” He laughed and the sound echoed round the damp walls of the old theatre. “Doctor Plague will decide what to do with you. I wonder, what will be the treatment? Kill or cure?”

  The men all laughed at that. Jade gritted her teeth. Keeping low, kneeling on the floor in the aisle beside the front row of seats, Jade eased her mobile phone out of her pocket. She checked it was set to silent, and selected ‘Send Short Message’ from the main menu.

  THE GOT RICH. DLD THEATER.

  COME HELP.

  She hoped Dad had his phone on. She hoped he knew what to do if he got a text message – Mum had never understood how her mobile worked apart from the phone bit. Jade wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve as she waited. As she thought about Mum – and about Rich tied to a chair on the stage far below.

  The phone trembled in her hand. It took her a moment to realise it wasn’t just her hand shaking with emotion. She had a text, thank God!

  WHAT DLD THEATRE?

  Jade stared at the message. Then she sent back:

  DUNNO

  A moment later she got:

  OK. WHAT STREET?

  She almost yelled at the phone. Instead she clenched her mouth tight shut, and sent back:

  DUNNO

  A pause, then:

  SO WHATS NEAR IT?

  Jade stared at the phone. She tried to think how she had got here, which turns and side streets she had taken from the junction with the main road, but she just couldn’t picture it. All she could think of was the light reflecting off the water glimpsed between the buildings outside.

  ER – A CANAL

  She could only guess how Dad would react to that. She sent another text; it wasn’t much, but it was the best she could do:

  SIDE STREET BETWEEN MAIN ROAD AND HOTEL. BIG BLACK CAR OUTSIDE.

  There was something happening on the stage below. The four men were stepping back as others arrived. Two people – both in masks. The skull-man and the man in the grey, beak-faced mask stepped up on to the stage.

  The skull-man pulled off his mask and Jade was startled to see that underneath his face looked very much the same – white teeth between bloodless lips, and skin stretched tight and thin over a pale, bald head. The man’s cheekbones jutted out prominently.

  “What have we here?” he asked in a voice that also sounded stretched and thin. “This is not John Chance,” he said angrily, turning to the grey-masked man. “Doctor Plague?!” he demanded.

  Doctor Plague turned slowly towards Rich. There was a rumble of sound from behind the mask – exaggerated and distorted by the beaked shape of the mask. But the sound was unmistakable.

  Doctor Plague was laughing.

  Chapter 3

  The sound of laughter echoed inside Doctor Plague’s mask. “This is the ever-resourceful young Rich.”

  His voice was a rumble amplified by the mask’s beak-like shape – but still Jade could tell that his accent was different from the other man’s. There was something oddly familiar about his voice, in fact. But the man’s next words made Jade’s heart skip a beat. He stepped in front of Rich and said, “How nice to see you again, my friend.”

  Jade leaned forward. The man was facing her. She struggled to make out any features behind the mask. But there was nothing. Until the man reached up and took off the mask to reveal the distinctive weathered face behind. He had dark, thinning hair and a thin, neatly-trimmed moustache.

  “Ralph!” Rich’s exclamation masked the sound of Jade’s gasp of surprise.

  Like Rich, she knew the man – knew him as Ralph, though she also knew that was not his real name. They had met in the former Soviet state of Krejikistan when he had helped Jade and Rich rescue their Dad from a madman. What was a powerful Eastern European gangster doing in Venice?

  “After our mutual friend Mr Vishinsky was no longer ‘available’,” Ralph was saying, “most of his assets fell into my hands. I have a lot for thank you for.”

  “Is that why you brought me here?” Rich asked defiantly. “Well, thanks accepted. No problem. So you’ve become public enemy number one in Krejikistan or whatever. And grown a neat moustache to prove it. Can I go now?”

  Ralph laughed and wagged his finger like a teacher warning a small child. “I am afraid there is a little more to it than that.”

  “I was afraid there might be.” Rich looked up at Ralph, his face set. “Are you going to kill me?”

  Ralph looked offended. “Oh, please. We are all friends here. You, me, your family. And talking of family…” He spread his hands to include the men in suits. “My Italian colleagues too. We just want to talk to your father about some work he did in Mont Passat.”

  Rich shook his head. “He didn’t do any work in Mont Passat. We were only there for a day. Not even that.”

  “Oh, Rich, Rich, Rich.” Ralph shook his head in amusement. “Now we both know that just isn’t true.”

  Jade didn’t hear Rich’s answer. She needed to get closer so she could rescue him if she got the opportunity. Though Ralph had helped them before, she knew only too well that the man was a criminal – he’d told them himself that whatever he did was for his own good, in his own interests. For his own survival.

  She edged her way carefully back towards the stairs. As she went, she dialled Dad on her mobile. He answered at once and she whispered urgently into the phone – telling him as best she could where she was.

  “I’m on it,” Dad told her. “I’ll find you. Just sit tight and wait till I get there, right?”

  “What’s going on?” Jade asked quietly. “You spoke to Ralph – what’s he after?”

  “He said he wanted to talk. I told him I was on holiday. End of story.”

  “Except they got Rich,” Jade pointed out. “I’ll try and get closer. I’ll leave the phone on so you can hear. But, Dad…” Her voice tailed off as she headed down a corridor that ran along the back of the circle, leading – she hoped – closer to the stage.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll hurry.”

  The first door that Jade tried opened into a box almost alongside the stage. It was so close that the curtain that hung down at the side of the stage almost touched the side of the box. It was faded, torn and filthy.

  Jade crept forward, keeping low, hidden by the front wall of the box and shadowed by the way the curtain hung. The seats were worn and the fabric ripped. Jade perched on the front of the cleanest-looking and stared down at the stage. She could see Rich’s profile and Ralph standing talking to him.

  The men had all taken their masks off now. Ralph was the shortest of them,
but standing with his hands clasped in front of him as he spoke to Rich, he was easily the most impressive and powerful figure on the stage. Obviously in charge.

  “So what’s with the masks and the Doctor Plague stuff?” Rich was asking.

  “They are costumes for Carnival,” Ralph explained. “Some are just for decoration, to look pretty.” He gestured to the Harlequin man at the edge of the stage. “Others, like Harlequin, are from the Commedia Dell’Arte. Characters from the plays.”

  “And what about you?” Rich asked. “Doctor Plague, who’s that?”

  “When the plague came to Venice, in medieval times, the doctors wore a black gown and a mask like this to protect them from the disease.”

  Forget dying of the plague, Jade thought as she crouched in the box above the stage. He probably scared his patients to death. She was focused on Ralph as he nodded to one of the Italians. “Family” he had said – Mafia. Jade leaned forward, keeping in the shadows cast by the dusty ragged curtain.

  “The business of crime is a business of money,” Ralph said. “Large amounts of money, one hopes. And like any business, it has to be accounted for.”

  “So?” Rich asked.

  “So the actual accountancy is quite involved. There are so many expenses, so many people on the payroll. Pension schemes, of a sort. Profit and, sadly, loss.”

  “So get an accountant.”

  “Oh I have an accountant. The very best accountant. A man who is both accountant and banker. He is Swiss, of course. The very best in his business. He borrows my money and lends it to others at a good rate of interest. He is a very clever man. Banker to so very many people in my line of work as well as dozens of more legitimate businesses. I really cannot afford to do without him…”

  “And why are you telling me this?”

  Ralph walked quickly across to Rich. He put his hand on Rich’s shoulder and leaned down to look at him closely. “Because several days ago, I heard rumours that my banker was planning to defect. To give himself up to the authorities and hand over access to a large number of accounts he controls. In return for immunity, anonymity, a new secret life.

  “Now, I wasn’t the only person who heard these rumours. There is another man – a very unpleasant man who deals in matters that even I would think twice about – who also heard. And he decided he would have a word with the Banker and see if there was any truth in the rumours. This man, who is known only as the Tiger funds all sorts of unpleasantness – crime and murder and terrorism. He invests and he clears a profit. And the Banker controls almost all his money. So you see, he had a lot to lose. Now then-I think it’s time for a little show. This is, after all, a theatre.”

  A bright light snapped on, shining above Rich on to the faded backdrop like a spotlight. Ralph’s elongated shadow seemed to be standing at the gates of the painted castle. He walked quickly to the side of the stage so as not to be in the way. Then he straightened up and clicked his fingers. On cue, a picture appeared on the backdrop, and Jade realised the light was from a projector somewhere up in the main part of the theatre. The picture showed the hotel and casino where they had stayed just a few nights ago.

  “The Tiger had the Banker taken to Mont Passat. But before he could get there himself to question the man…the Banker disappeared.”

  “And what’s that got to do with us?”

  Jade could hear a hesitancy in her brother’s voice. She could guess what he was thinking.

  The picture on the backdrop changed to grainy moving images – pictures from a security camera complete with time and date stamp on the bottom. The footage showed the inside of a casino. It panned back and forth, taking in most of the gaming floor.

  “This is from the CCTV in the casino on the night the Banker vanished,” Ralph was saying.

  At the edge of its journey, the camera swung past a bar. And standing at the bar, drink in hand, was Jade’s dad.

  “And look who is also there. What a coincidence.”

  “It must be,” Rich said. But he didn’t sound very sure.

  “And if we wind on a bit…” Ralph waved to the man working the projector and the images speeded up – people hurrying and scurrying round the casino floor. “Oh – look,” Ralph went on as the footage slowed back to normal speed.

  It showed Dad at the roulette table. Placing a bet.

  “You getting this, are you?” Jade whispered into the phone, ducking behind the front of the box. “Because when you get here, you are so in trouble.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Rich was saying. He sounded less certain than ever now. “It could be a coincidence. Just a coincidence.”

  “Really?” Ralph sighed. He clicked his fingers again and the projector cut off. “I suppose it could. But neither of us really believes that, do we?”

  Jade was angry as well as frightened now. But never mind what the hell Dad had been up to. It was time to get Rich away from here.

  At that moment, the insistent sound of a car alarm came from close outside. On the stage below, Ralph was talking rapidly to the man with the skull-face. He gestured urgently and the five Italians hurried towards the front of the theatre.

  “Probably nothing,” Ralph said to Rich. “But it is as well to be sure. And we would, after all, like your father to come looking for you. You see, I have a warning to deliver to him.”

  She wasn’t going to get a better opportunity than this – only Ralph was left with Rich on the stage below. Jade heard the main theatre doors bang shut as the others left. She grabbed hold of the ragged curtain hanging down the side of the stage, swung her legs up and over the side of the box and began to climb down.

  Jade could feel the material breaking apart under her hands, could hear an ominous creaking sound from above. She climbed as fast as she could, half sliding down and sending out clouds of dust – desperate not to cough as she breathed in. desperate for Ralph not to look up and see her.

  A patter of dust sprinkled across Ralph’s shoulders. He looked up.

  At the same moment, the curtain began to tear. Jade could hear the threads ripping apart. She felt the curtain fall, jolt to a stop, then start to fall again. She was accelerating rapidly as the material ripped under her weight.

  “Jade!” Rich shouted.

  Ralph was staring up at her in surprise.

  Then the curtain gave way entirely and Jade was falling.

  Ralph gave a cry of realisation. But it was too late – Jade fell right on top of him. Her feet cannoned into the man’s bulky form and sent him sprawling backwards. Jade was on her feet at once, running to where Rich was tied to the chair. She tugged at the knots.

  Several metres away, Ralph struggled to his feet. Then a massive moth-eaten theatre curtain landed on him, burying him in dusty, ragged material.

  “Come on!” Jade yelled as she finally prised apart the knot.

  The curtain heaved as Ralph tried to get out from under it. His hand clawed through the decayed fabric, clutching at the air. In a moment he’d be out and free.

  “Thanks. That was pretty neat,” Rich gasped, as they ran for the back of the stage.

  “That was pretty scary.”

  Rich was grinning. “Looked it. There must be a back way out of here.”

  Behind the stage was a corridor. They sprinted along it, Rich rubbing at his sore wrists, Jade punching Dad’s number into her phone. At the end of the corridor was a fire door. As they approached, it sprang open.

  “Back the other way!” yelled Rich.

  But Jade skidded to a halt. “No – wait.” She could hear a phone ringing. “It’s Dad!”

  And sure enough, Dad appeared in the doorway. “Quick. Someone vandalised their car, but they’ll be back soon.”

  “Wonder who that was,” Rich said as they emerged blinking into the bright sunlight beside a narrow canal.

  “Same guy as lied about drinking, gambling and kidnapping in Mont Passat,” Jade said.

  “Not fair. It was a rescue, not a kidnap,” said Chance. />
  “Whatever.”

  “Later!” Rich yelled at them both.

  At the same moment, there was another shout. The skull-faced man had appeared down the side of the theatre ahead of them. He was holding a gun.

  “Later,” Jade agreed.

  The other Mafia men were close behind Skull-face. They didn’t look happy. Rich, Jade and their dad turned and ran. Ahead of them, the pavement ended in a small wooden jetty. Beyond that was the canal. They were trapped.

  4

  “I am not swimming,” Jade said. “Got that?”

  “Not a lot of choice,” Rich told her.

  “There’s always a choice,” Dad shot back. He was in the lead, running full pelt across the jetty – heading straight for the canal. And when he got to the edge, he kept running.

  Rich was waiting for the splash, but as they reached the edge of the jetty, he could hear Dad yelling at them to hurry up. Somehow – impossibly – Dad was standing on a narrow strip of pathway further along the canal. He looked completely dry.

  Three strides on to the wooden jetty and Rich could see what he’d done. There was a line of five gondolas moored next to the jetty – a bridge across to where Dad was standing. Except the gondolas were bobbing in the water and there was a gap of a metre or more between each.

  The boards were wobbling under their feet, but Rich and Jade ran faster – right to the edge of the jetty. And jumped.

  “Oh, my God!” Rich said. His foot jarred painfully as it hit the bottom of the first boat. The gondola heaved beneath him and he almost fell. Water in the bottom of the shallow boat washed over his shoes. Jade clutched at him as she landed too. They both leaped for the next in the line.

  Again, it was a jarring moment as they landed. But immediately they were on to the next. Rich could hear the thump of heavy footsteps on the wooden jetty behind them. He did not look back.

  On the third gondola, Jade sprawled forwards and Rich grabbed her, dragged her to her feet. He was breathing heavily. “Nearly there.”