Dead Lagoon - 4

by Michael Dibdin

  By the time he realized what was happening, the only trace of Saoner’s presence was a distant clatter of running footsteps, so distorted by the echoing walls all around that it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. Zen closed his eyes and did a rapid mental scan of the district. The only exit which Saoner would have had time to reach led via a narrow bridge to a quay on the other side of Rio delle Beccarie. From there, two lanes led away from the water. No, there were three – but one was a dead end.

  Zen started to run, not in the direction Saoner had taken, but straight ahead, through the tiny Campo delle Beccarie, across the angled bridge and along the alley beyond. If he did not find Saoner in the next few seconds it would be too late, as the number of variables became so great that a solution would be impossible.

  On reaching the first of the two alleys his quarry could have taken, he stopped dead, listening intently. Apart from the distant lapping of water, all was still. Zen’s eyes narrowed. He ran over his mental map again, satisfying himself that there were no other exits. The alley in which he was standing was lined with an unbroken succession of houses on either side. Zen crossed it and walked quickly to the next intersection.

  In this street there were three openings, all to the left. Zen moved as quietly as he could to the first entrance and peered round the corner. This proved to be a short blind alley cut off at the next canal. He went on to the next opening, whose nameplate showed it to be the entrance to a courtyard behind the large palazzo which faced the street. Inside, all was dark. Zen took a hundred-lire coin from his pocket and tossed it into the passage, where it tinkled resoundingly. Seconds later, Tommaso Saoner scurried out of the other entrance and ran straight into Zen.

  At first he made to turn back, then changed his mind and strode past without a word or a flicker of expression. Zen fell in behind him, keeping closer than before. The two men moved steadily through the fan tracery of alleys and canals centred on San Giacomo dell’Orio. A searchlight suddenly appeared in the darkness ahead, swinging this way and that like a stick. A moment later, a watertaxi rounded the corner and came burbling past them. As the noise subsided, a church bell struck midnight. Zen smiled grimly at this signal that his official tenure in the city was at an end. If his opponents had counted on him meekly packing his bags and going when told to go, they had seriously miscalculated. He felt a weight lift from his shoulders as the twelve ponderous chimes cut through the red tape and procedural minutiae in which he had been enmeshed. As a free agent, he was much more dangerous and effective than he could have been in his official capacity.

  They eventually emerged on to the open quay opposite the long low façade of the railway station, where Saoner suddenly broke into a run. For the first hundred metres or so Zen managed to keep pace, but after that Saoner began to pull ahead. He leapt up the steps of the high bridge across the Rio Nuovo and disappeared, heading towards Piazzale Roma. When Zen reached the top of the bridge he had to pause for breath. Too much desk work had taken its toll of his physique. Nevertheless he forced himself to carry on, even though he now knew that he would be too late. He could already hear the engine of a waiting taxi ticking over to keep the driver warm. By the time he reached the rank, Saoner would be out of reach, roaring off across the Ponte della Libertà in some plush Volvo or Mercedes, having neatly escaped the psychological trap which Zen had prepared for him.

  A short flight of steps lined with dingy bushes led up from the vaporetto landing-stage to the bare expanse of asphalt marked with lanes for buses and cars. At the far end, the neon sign of the multi-storey car park glimmered eerily. The entire place was deserted. A moment later, Zen realized that the engine he had been hearing was one of the water buses which maintained a skeleton service throughout the night. It grew to a roar as the skipper reversed the engines to hold the vaporetto in against the pier. Three young men disembarked and headed off, laughing and talking loudly, towards the car park. The deck-hand had already closed the gate and begun to cast off when a figure emerged from the bushes lining the steps and ran towards the boat. The gate slid open again and the man jumped aboard as the vessel started to move away from the landing-stage.

  Zen sprinted for the steps, yelling to the deck-hand to wait, but his voice went unheard above the clamour of the engine. The gap between the bows and the quay opened rapidly as the skipper put the helm over, heading out into the wide basin between the car park and the railway station on the other bank. Zen ran straight down the pier and was just in time to leap on to the stern as it passed by. The deck-hand had disappeared into the wheelhouse at the other end of the cabin housing.

  The whole craft lurched as the swell in the main channel caught it side on. Zen hung on grimly to the outside of the guard-rails aft as the propellers just below his feet thrashed the water until it foamed like spumante. Then a darkened figure appeared, silhouetted against the double glass doors of the cabin. The door opened and Tommaso Saoner stepped out on to the sunken afterdeck. Zen put his foot on the lower rail and started to clamber over, but he was still balanced precariously on the sloping grid of slippery metal when Saoner reached him, stretched out his hand and helped him to climb inboard.

  Zen collapsed on one of the red plastic seats in the stern. He looked up at Saoner, nodding.

  ‘You see, Tommaso? You’d like to be ruthless and dashing like your hero Dal Maschio, but you’re not. You’re weak and decent. Dal Maschio would have pushed me in without a second thought, and left me to drown or be sliced up by the propellers. You couldn’t bring yourself to do that, but you still think you can run with the people who can, and have, and will.’

  Saoner looked at him emptily, then turned away and walked back into the deserted cabin. Zen lit a cigarette with trembling hands, sheltering the flame against the wind as the boat turned out of the main channel, under a series of wide metal and concrete bridges and out into a broad canal running between a railway marshalling yard and the port area. The deck-hand appeared at the top of the companion-way leading up from the cabin.

  ‘Anyone for Santa Marta?’ he called.

  Saoner stood up. There was a bump as the boat went alongside. Zen threw away his cigarette and followed Saoner ashore. Santa Marta was a bleak area, one of the new quarters built on reclaimed land at the turn of the century. Disused railway tracks ran between the hulks of salvaged boats propped up on concrete blocks. In the distance were redbrick blocks of flats, built to house the dockyard workers.

  Blinding lights razored through the darkness and a speeding bulk flashed past with a blare of noise, missing Zen by a whisker. The experience seemed so utterly abnormal that for a moment he thought wildly of aliens in flying saucers and the like. It was several moments before he recovered enough to notice that the stretch of ground he had been crossing was a road providing vehicular access to the port area. He located the receding figure of Tommaso Saoner and started after him, smiling ruefully. He had not only come within an ace of being killed, but in a way that would have ensured that his name would always bring a smile to everyone’s lips. Aurelio Zen, the man who got run over in Venice.

  On the graceful stone arch across the Arzere canal, Saoner paused briefly, perhaps uncertain which direction to take, or momentarily perturbed by the sight of the prison complex a little further along the canal. The reflection of the streetlamps rolled gently on the trace of swell carried in from the open waters of the lagoon. At the corner opposite, a man dressed in pyjamas was closing the green shutters of his bedroom window. He paused to stare at Saoner, who promptly turned right and set off at a cracking pace, as though he had decided upon a destination and was eager to arrive. But this appearance of purpose and urgency was contradicted by the circuitous course he took, weaving this way and that, first towards Campo Santa Margherita – where Zen closed up, fearing that he might try and rouse some of his NRV colleagues from their beds – and then east towards the Rio Nuovo, before finally doubling back by way of the gaunt church of Angelo Raffaele to emerge on the windswept shore of the Zatt
ere.

  The breeze had knocked the Giudecca channel into short, choppy waves which slapped resoundingly into the stone embankment, occasionally dumping swathes of water on the promenade. A faint mist dulled the light of the infrequent lamps, and the moon had disappeared behind a raft of cloud. To the right, the flares of the oil refinery at Marghera punctuated the darkness. As Zen followed Tommaso Saoner past the florid ocean terminal of the Adriatica line, he felt a sense of weariness and despondency creeping over him. He had been up since the crack of dawn, and it had not been an easy day. He began to realize that he couldn’t keep this up all night, as he had planned. He had to find some way to force the issue, to try and shake Tommaso’s blind devotion to Dal Maschio, if necessary by deceit.

  As they rounded the curving prow of Dorsoduro, the lights of the Riva degli Schiavoni came into view on the other side of the broad channel of San Marco. Where they were, all was dark and deserted. The massive façade of the former Customs warehouses dominated the landward side, while to the right the expanses of the lagoon opened out into chilly vistas of windy immensity. Saoner seemed to have forgotten where he was, for he marched resolutely onwards until he was abruptly brought up short at the brink of the high stone quay forming the tip of the triangular island of the Salute.

  Aurelio Zen caught up with Saoner as he looked down at the black water seething fitfully below. For a time they stood side by side in silence.

  ‘It’s a scam, Tommaso,’ Zen said eventually. ‘Can’t you see that?’

  ‘You think everything’s rotten, because you’re rotten yourself,’ muttered Saoner.

  Zen looked at him.

  ‘Do you really think I’m rotten?’

  Saoner nodded. He glanced at Zen.

  ‘You’ve spent too much time serving the old system, the old masters. But things are changing at long last. You can’t see that. When you look at someone like Dal Maschio, your first thought is to try and tear him down. He’s too new, too threatening. If you allowed yourself to actually listen to what he says, you might end up realizing that it all makes sense. You would have to change the habits and ideas of a lifetime, and that would be too much trouble.’

  He wagged a finger at Zen.

  ‘You called me weak just now. Well, you’re lazy. You’d rather have the devils you know than a man who, whatever his faults, is worth more than the whole of the old gang put together!’

  At their feet, the unquiet water swirled and splashed.

  ‘You talk of Dal Maschio like a lover,’ Zen murmured.

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘He’s won your heart, and you can’t understand why I can’t see what you see in him.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘It’s an old story, and harmless enough in private life. But this is a question of politics. Remember those Greek lessons we sweated through at school, when it seemed the bell would never ring? Polis, a city. Polites, a citizen. It’s not your personal feelings about Dal Maschio that are at issue here, Tommaso. It’s your public duties, your responsibilities as a citizen.’

  Saoner barked a laugh.

  ‘I don’t need moral lectures from you, Zen,’ he snapped, turning away.

  The pursuit began again. At the same deliberate, purposeful pace, Saoner led the way along the other side of the Punta della Dogana, past the Salute church and into the tangled skein of alleys leading to the Accademia, where he crossed the bridge for the second time that night. When they reached Campo San Stefano, he stopped and seemed to hesitate. This was the spot where the leader of the Nuova Repubblica Veneta had taken leave of his acolytes earlier, and for a moment Zen thought that Saoner might try and make a dash to Dal Maschio’s house, and moved to the left to cut him off. In the event Saoner turned the other way, towards the Piazza, bringing them into a district quite unlike any through which they had passed so far, into streets lined with banks, restaurants, hotels and a succession of shops and boutiques catering to the needs of the international shop-till-you-drop brigade.

  But the water seemed to be calling Saoner, and when they reached the lugubrious monstrosity of San Moisè he veered right down a passage leading out on to the quayside. They walked past the ferry landing-stage and the harbour-master’s office, beneath a grove of trees where a mob of starlings squabbled invisibly and along a broad promenade curving away as far as the eye could see. As though in response to these unfettered vistas, Saoner increased his pace until Zen had difficulty keeping up with him.

  They crossed the bridge over the canal leading to the Questura, and then the Rio dell’Arsenale. Here the lighting was sparser and dimmer, and at moments Saoner’s figure disappeared altogether into the rushing darkness. Zen began to lose all sense of reality, as though his night’s dreams, denied, were seeping out to taint his waking consciousness. He dimly remembered what he was doing and why, but only as one remembers some fact about a country one has never visited.

  ‘Tommaso!’

  There was no response. Zen broke into a run.

  ‘Stop, Tommaso! Let’s talk!’

  Saoner neither turned back nor changed his pace. Zen kept on running until he caught up with him.

  ‘This is ridiculous, Tommaso! Let’s not go any further.’

  Like an automaton, Saoner kept striding on. By now they had reached the area laid out by the invading French as a formal public garden with walks, fountains and statues in a vain attempt to make an honest city of the Serenissima. In the depths of winter and the dead of the night, the place looked even more bizarre than usual. Zen grabbed Saoner’s arm and pulled him to a stop. The moon slid out from behind the cloud again, turning the darkness to dusk. The two men stood there breathing fog into the silvery air. The serried trees lining the promenade had been pruned back to an equal height, making them look like giant candelabra.

  ‘All this talk of morality!’ Saoner exclaimed bitterly. ‘You hypocrite!’

  Zen stared at him, genuinely surprised.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I know why you’re out to destroy Dal Maschio! Because you’ve got the hots for his wife, that’s why!’

  ‘That’s bullshit!’

  ‘She spent the night at your place on at least two occasions, according to my informants. They say you were fucking so hard it made waves in the canal.’

  Forcing himself to remain calm, Zen took out a cigarette and lit up.

  ‘That’s very flattering, Tommaso, but unfortunately not true. Signora Dal Maschio and I met socially on a number of occasions – our mothers are close friends – but I’m afraid to say that her only interest in me was as a spy acting on her husband’s instructions to find out what progress I was making in the Durridge case.’

  He released a rippling ribbon of smoke.

  ‘Mind you, in the course of our conversations she did let fall a few stray bits of information herself. I vividly remember her telling me some of her husband’s unguarded comments on his associates in the Nuova Repubblica Veneta. Would you like to hear what he thinks of you, Tommaso?’

  Saoner stamped his feet, as though to warm them.

  ‘I know what Ferdinando thinks of me.’

  ‘I have to say that he was fairly dismissive of his supporters in general. “Clerks and shopkeepers hitting their mid-life crisis. The ones with balls have affairs, the rest give themselves to me.”’

  ‘Ferdinando would never talk like that,’ snorted Saoner.

  ‘As for his views on you in particular …’

  Saoner turned brusquely away.

  ‘I don’t want to know!’

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ Zen chuckled, pulling him back to face him. ‘Cristiana told me that he’s very appreciative of all the work you’ve done so far. “We would never have got where we are today if it hadn’t been for men like Tommaso, simple and strong, dull but dependable, incapable of independent thought but quick to follow orders.” He’s aware of your shortcomings and limitations, you see, but he also fully appreciates your merits. That’s why he
was initially so reluctant to get rid of you.’

  Saoner flinched.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about the reshuffle he’s planning if he wins the election. Assuming the party does as well as expected, Dal Maschio’s whole political position will change completely. He’ll no longer be the leader of some fringe group, but mayor of one of the most important European cities, with a national and international profile and immense powers of patronage and persuasion. To deal adequately with that, he’s going to need a new set of men around him, men of vision and imagination, with quick wits and a nice television manner.’

  Zen let his cigarette fall to the pavement and stepped on it carefully.

  ‘Mind you, I’m sure he’ll find some suitable role for people like you,’ he went on quickly. ‘Something which matches your talents and skills. Cristiana mentioned the possibility of a post with the department responsible for dredging the canals.’

  ‘This is all lies!’

  Zen looked at him steadily and said nothing.

  ‘You’re making it all up!’ Saoner exclaimed in a tone of desperation.

  ‘You’re the ones who are making it up,’ Zen replied quietly. ‘You’ve made an inspirational leader out of an opportunistic mob-orator and you’ve remade the history of the city to fit in with his nonsense about a Venice cut off from the rest of Italy and Europe, inhabited by pure-blooded, dialect-speaking, one-hundred-per-cent Venetians.’

  Saoner clenched and unclenched his hands in desperation.

  ‘That’s enough! I can’t bear any more. Why are you tormenting me like this?’