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.
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