A small transparent dance floor was lit up from below by a moving kaleidoscope of primary colours. Half a dozen couples were on it, and a phallic rhythm was being banged out by four seasoned characters in an illuminated corner near the stage, their leader’s sweaty face leering into a microphone and more or less singing while his big hairy hands flickered between cymbals and kettle drums. Big hairy faces with canine teeth glared down from the walls, in glowing pictures which interspersed with sketches of nubile maidens in varying degrees of Eastern promise.
Bianca leaned over towards Webb. “The police keep closing this place down,” she said over the music. “But it keeps opening up again under new management. Different names up front.”
“I expect you have one or two clients here.”
“A few tourists and provincials apart, they are all my clients.”
Webb suddenly realized that in the Lupo Manaro he could be dismembered with an axe, and nobody would notice a thing.
“Look, I need to pay you and go.”
Bianca smiled and shook her head. “First, we have a surprise for you.”
Martini waved into a dark corner of the club. A fat man in a dinner suit leaned over Claudia and, ignoring Webb, made some remark. Claudia laughed and kissed the man, who vanished into the gloom. Webb was startled to catch the eye of a black-bearded character in a velvet tuxedo at a table a few yards in front of him. The man blew a kiss. “Not you, stupid!” he said, waving to someone at the back of the club.
A slow melody began to ooze out of a saxophone; Martini and Bianca wandered on to the floor and started to dance, hugging each other closely.
“Sei stanco?” Claudia asked Webb, entwining her skinny arms around his neck, her luminous lips almost touching his. “Are you tired?”
“Ah, maybe I need some fresh air.” He grabbed his gin fizz.
She pulled back and laughed. “You are so inhibited, Englishman. But tonight, for you, love is free. Why not relax and enjoy life? While you can,” she added enigmatically.
Webb had a desperate inspiration. “Teach me to tango, then.”
The woman squealed with delight and led Webb on to the dance floor. As they reached the floor she whispered something to the man with the sax, who grinned; and the tempo was suddenly sharp and bouncy.
“Popcorn!” cried Claudia, wriggling her bottom, flinging her hands above her head, gyrating and shaking her breasts all at once. It resembled no tango Webb had ever seen. The stage cleared apart from the two of them. His desperate inspiration, to make a break for the rear, had died the moment he saw the heavies off-stage, watching his performance with dispassionate eyes. He concentrated on Claudia, clumsily trying to match her pitching and yawing, while sweat wet his brow and lurid visions of holocaust grew larger by the minute.
After a frenzied minute the tune slowed to a halt like a train coming into a station, there was a smattering of applause and Claudia, grinning and perspiring, led him by the hand back to the settee, where two men and a woman were now seated. The older man Webb had last seen at Doney’s; his grey hair was now reflecting pink in the club lighting. The other two he had last seen viciously murdering Walkinshaw in the dark Tuscolo woods.
Webb took the indicated space between the young ones. Claudia, suddenly aloof, joined Giselle on another settee. Martini and Bianca were deep in some woman talk. They paid him no attention.
The pink-haired man pulled round a chair to face Webb. “Good evening, Mister Fish.” His spectacle lenses were reflecting the reds and blues from the spotlights and candles. “You have been successful?”
“Yes.”
“We have a bargain, remember?”
“How do I know you’ll keep your half of our deal? The moment I tell you what I know, you could finish me.”
“That was what made our bargain so interesting. Neither of us seemed likely to keep it. You might try to steal the manuscript, I might decide to kill you. But if you do not now tell me—allora, my friend has a stiletto in his pocket, only a few centimetres from your kidneys. I have seen him at work with it. It is a particularly distressing death.”
Sweat was coming out of every pore in Webb’s skin. “There is something in the manuscript.”
There was a roll of drums. A little fat man came on and jabbered into a microphone in Italian, and then on strode Mephisto, complete with pointed black beard, top hat and a long black cloak with red inner lining. There was whistling and laughter as a short-haired peroxide blonde in a sequined bathing suit wheeled on a table. The magician bowed and got into his act, which involved the appearance and disappearance of lighted cigarettes, glasses of water, doves…
“Something in the manuscript,” hissed into Webb’s ear.
Webb fumbled with the button on his inside pocket and produced Phaenomenis with shaking hands. He flicked to a page and pointed to Vincenzo’s Latin script. “Here. In this paragraph. A coded message. Renaissance scholars did this. Instead of announcing a discovery in plain Latin they made up…”
“The message?” the man said harshly, every line of his face contorted with greed.
Applause. A guillotine was being trundled on to the stage, one of its wheels squeaking. It was a heavy wooden structure, twelve feet tall, topped by a massive steel blade which gleamed red, white and blue in the strobing lights. The blade hissed down and a watermelon split into two with a heavy thump. Mephisto was calling for a volunteer, to general high-pitched merriment. A Scotsman, a fat Glaswegian with a Gorbals accent, was shouting garbage as three of his equally drunk friends hustled him on to the stage. The blonde seized his arm and his friends staggered off, laughing wildly.
“Must I force everything past your teeth?”
“The Duke of Tuscany hid part of his wealth. I suppose for insurance against a rainy day. But it seems he didn’t trust his courtiers. Vincenzo was unworldly, and he owed his life to the Duke.”
The Scotsman had used rope and chains to tie Mephisto on a plank, with the help of the magician’s assistant; now he was sliding it on a metal hospital trolley until the magician, face up, had his neck under the blade. The Scotsman clattered off the little stage at speed.
“Speak, Fish!” But now the little fat man was on stage again, patting his brow with a handkerchief and demanding total silence due to the perilous nature of the experiment. The peroxide blonde looked solemn. A curtain was pulled, and the audience went still. The blonde pulled a string. The blade accelerated rapidly down. There was a slicing noise which shook Webb’s already jangled spine. A bloody head, eyes bulging and veins stringing from its neck, rolled out from under the curtain. The blonde screamed hysterically, the audience rose in pandemonium and then the curtain was pulled back and Mephisto was standing, head in place and chains at his feet. There was an outburst of relief and laughter and the audience thundered their applause.
“My patience is exhausted.”
“It seems Vincenzo hid some part of the Grand Duke’s treasure on his behalf, recorded the location in his notes in code, but then died before he could tell the Duke where he’d hidden it.” Webb had scarcely slept in days; it was the best he could do at that hour in the morning.