Fuck, he thinks. Ted must have thought about it and realized he’d been stupid. Slowly he resumes chewing, swallows. Takes a gulp of very good red wine and stares out the restaurant window onto West Fifty-Second Street. He thought it was too good to be true.
It was fun while it lasted. He got a lot of amusement out of it– Ted Westcott telling him he was being blackmailed and offering him money because he got the wrong man. How stupid can you be? What a blunder!
He thinks about what to do next. He can’t send Ted a part of any digital file, because he doesn’t have any. He hasn’t been spying on them, seeing and hearing things he shouldn’t. He really wishes he’d thought of it, though. Somebody obviouslydid. When he doesn’t send proof, Ted will know he’s made a terrible mistake. He wishes he could see Ted’s face.
After some thought, he texts back.Ted, I’m not going to send you anything. You have to trust me. Stick to your part of the deal and I will stick to mine.It’s not going to work, because it’s not an unreasonable request Ted’s making. Ted will know he’s bluffing.
John has learned something valuable through all of this, though. Ted has obviously done something he shouldn’t have– probably murdered his brother on that boat– and somebody has digital evidence of it. He might be able to work with this somehow. Perhaps he can find out who is blackmailing Ted. Maybe he can help Ted out. Eliminate the threat.
There’d be money in that.
Jill takes one look at John’s text, which is not in all caps, and is written in such a different style, and knows immediately that he is not their blackmailer. It’s almost secondary that he refuses to send proof. He obviously doesn’t have the camera footage. Ted has been unbelievably stupid. How could he have played into a known con man’s hands like that? She turns on him, ‘It’s not him! It was never him!’
Ted is still staring at his phone. Then he looks up at her, swallowing. His face is grim. She takes a deep breath. And then another. She wants to slap him. Instead she whispers, ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ted says. ‘I’ll think of something.’
‘We can’t get rid of the blackmailer if we don’t even know who it is, Ted!’ she hisses, trying not to give in to her risinghysteria. She turns her back to him, pressing her lips together, closing her eyes. Then she opens her eyes and turns around to face him again.
‘We have to find out who it is,’ she says. ‘And we have to beabsolutely sure.’
The next day is Sunday, and they are walking to another restaurant in the evening. The day has been a difficult one, with both Jill and Ted lost in their own troubled thoughts. Jill is angry at Ted for making such a terrible, stupid mistake, and he knows it. They have been chilly with each other. She no longer trusts him to get them out of this mess, and he seems to sense it. They cross over a small arched bridge and turn a corner.
And it’s then that Jill sees them, coming out of the darkness and the mist. A man and a woman, their shapes familiar. They come closer, and when they are mere steps away, Jill sees with a start that it’s Lara and Ben Donleavy. Here, in Venice. She suddenly feels faint, and her knees begin to buckle. Ted must feel her droop, because his hand beneath her arm supports her sudden weight. He sees them too. It’s a shock. She has been thinking constantly of Lara, and now she has appeared out of the dark and the mist of Venice as if she’s conjured her. Her fear made real, tangible.
Lara doesn’t appear to have noticed her falter.
‘Jill! Ted!’ Lara exclaims, as if in surprise.
She does it very well, Jill thinks. She is quite an actor after all. ‘What are you doing here?’ Jill manages to say with false pleasure, recovering herself. She can pretend too.
‘We’re on a little holiday, on a whim,’ Lara says. ‘I confess weknew you were here– Nadya told me you were in Venice. We wanted to surprise you– in case you wanted some company.’
Lara and Ben have followed them here, Jill thinks, the blood pounding in her ears.Why?She is suddenly, sickeningly, afraid that Lara is the one behind the texts, the one responsible for the cameras.
‘We’re at the Gritti Palace. Where are you staying?’ Lara asks.
Jill can’t find her voice.
‘We’re at the Gritti too,’ Ted replies.
‘I thought so– you raved about it after your honeymoon. How long are you staying?’ Lara asks.
Again, Ted answers. ‘We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.’
‘We just got here this afternoon,’ Lara says. ‘We’re here till Thursday. So we’ll have a couple of days’ overlap, at least.’
She looks as if she’s delighted at the prospect. Jill feels like she wants to be sick.
‘Have you eaten?’ Ben asks.
Jill wonders: if Laraisbehind this, does Ben have any idea what’s going on? Is he part of it? She glances at Ted and, feeling cornered, says, ‘No, we were just on our way to dinner. Would you like to join us?’
‘We’d love to, wouldn’t we, Ben?’ Lara says glancing at her husband.
‘Of course,’ Ben agrees, looking pleased.
Jill doesn’t think he has any idea of the subtext here. She’s always found Ben to be quite straightforward, a decent man. Jill steels herself as they continue on their winding way to the restaurant, over bridges, crossing little courtyards in the dark. Ted is holding her hand and squeezes it firmly, as if to communicatestrength. She lets him, even though she is angry at him, disappointed in him. But they are in this together. They will figure it out, Jill tells herself. They have to.
