The Lizard's Bite

by David Hewson

  “Who are these people?” he asked, amazed, stepping up to them, touching their grimy clothes, peering into their frightened faces. “Daniel? Is it really you? Laura?”

  The man retreated from Massiter’s closeness, muttering some coarse words in Veneto. The older individual in the black suit came and stood between them, flashing a card with the familiar Carabinieri badge.

  “Signor Massiter,” he said. “I am Maggiore Zecchini. We believe we have apprehended the two individuals who slandered you all those years ago. We need to interview you about them. Now, please. I know you are busy. Nevertheless . . .”

  Massiter found himself behind her left shoulder, trying to catch the bright, sharp, terrified glint in her eyes. She didn’t look at him. Only at the occhio, the great glass window to the lost world beyond.

  “Why me?” he asked. “Why now?”

  The Carabinieri major shuffled on his feet, nervous. “We have fingerprints for Forster. We know it’s him. We have no identification records for the woman. It’s important we know for sure. I understand you’re busy. This won’t take long. But it’s important we carry out a formal interview, on Carabinieri premises. I have a launch waiting outside.”

  Massiter laughed and, in a single swift movement, came so close to her, gripped her shoulders, leaned down. She cringed, trying to pull away from him, but he was too powerful, and had no intention of letting go, not for anything, the disapproval he could feel around him, Emily hissing at the young agente, furious, outraged.

  The police were fools. Massiter knew this all along. In a way he had no need of his present position to defeat them.

  He thrust his nose into her hair, took a deep breath, hearing her begin to weep. She had the aroma of the fields and the sea, of animals and the soil. He listened to the music beyond the window and wondered how long he could bear to wait, how sweet the moment would be when he could trap her alone in a room somewhere, perhaps in a hidden corner of the apartment in the glass palazzo, where the music would still play in his head, and there would be no one, no interfering policeman, no do-gooder citizen, to prevent him taking, roughly or sweetly, the choice was hers, exactly what he wanted.

  “Enough,” the young cop barked, and thrust himself roughly between their bodies, forcing her away. “You must come with us now, Signor Massiter.”

  “Why?” he asked. “This man is Daniel Forster. You know that as well as I. And this is Laura Conti, who was maid to the late Scacchi, whom Forster murdered. You know that too.” He stared at her, hungrily. “I have a little influence, Laura. Whatever you think, whatever nonsense Forster may have tried to instil in your head over the years, I can and will help.”

  He turned to the Carabinieri major. “She is a simple woman, Zecchini. Easily led. She’s been through enough pain already. I won’t allow any more.”

  And then, smiling at her, trying to see into those dark, frightened eyes. “Laura. I know you had nothing to do with Scacchi’s death, or that of those police officers. I will provide everything at my disposal to prove it. You will be free. I promise that. There is nothing to fear.”

  He touched her cheap, faded shirt, until Costa, under the glaring eye of Forster, removed his hand.

  “You need clothes,” Massiter said to her. “A lawyer. Somewhere to stay. And some time in which we may reacquaint ourselves.”

  “You will come with us!” Costa ordered. “Now. This is a criminal investigation, and you’re a material witness.”

  He glanced at the Arcangeli. All of them too cowed, too miserable, to say a word.

  “Oh, please!” Massiter said. “I’ve a party to go to! And—and many important people to see. People you would not wish me to disappoint.”

  “You must join us now, sir!” the Carabinieri major demanded. “By nine o’clock at the latest you can return. Then have your party! Then sign your contract!”

  They were so transparent. So idiotic.

  “But, gentlemen,” Massiter complained, “there’s no need! The Arcangeli and I grew tired of dickering more than an hour ago. The contract’s signed already. The deed’s done. Several million euros are now on the way from the state and the city into my bank accounts, a few million on the way to theirs. All we’re waiting for is the presence of the mayor and then I can break the good news to the parasites down below.” He paused, allowing this to sink in. “The Isola degli Arcangeli is mine. And everything that goes with it. Every bureaucrat, every hack politician, every avaricious cop. You may take Forster to jail. You will take Laura to my lawyer, and then, when she’s bailed, on my surety, to a hotel of my choosing. But for now . . .”

  Still, they didn’t give up. Two more were marching up the stairs.

  THERE WAS A MOB OF DINNER JACKETS AND EVENING gowns all around her, a heavy brew of accents fighting for attention over the music. Teresa Lupo wanted to yell at them to shut their quacking mouths. Silvio had got through with a result, one that was early for some reason she couldn’t hear over the din. What Alberto Tosi had said kept running round her head too, not making any sense at all, not in the neatly aligned series of facts and suspicions they’d been chasing so hard these past few days.

  She stood on the steps of Ca’ degli Angeli, aware that Peroni and Nic had gone ahead with the rest of them, trying to separate Silvio’s tinny squeaking in her ear from the racket all around her.

  Then a waiter drifted into view, proffered a silver platter of canapés in her face. She gave him a desperate glance.

  “Do me a favour. I just got a call to say my uncle died. I need a little quiet. Can you move these people along?”

  The waiter’s flat, unemotional face suddenly flickered with sympathy. “Signora! I am so sorry. Of course.”

  He was busy in a flash, shooing with a white-gloved hand, shushing them into a semblance of silence.

  Finally, she could listen again to Silvio’s babbling and hear what he was saying, making a mental note to herself as she did that it really was time to sit down with her assistant and teach him not to get overexcited at tense moments.

  “Silvio, Silvio . . . Calm down.”

  A heavy shoulder in grubby black brushed against hers. Instinctively she pulled back, aware this was the boatman, who didn’t appear too clean from afar, or too bright from close up. He was covered in muck and ash, and holding a long bundle of kindling twigs tightly, both arms underneath the wood, striding into the entrance of the house, towards the broad marble stairs, intent on something, a fixed, hurt expression on his face.

  Then she listened to Silvio one last time, relieved that he finally managed to say what he meant to.

  Quick decisions. She both hated and adored them. She dropped the phone back in her pocket and followed in the steps of the boatman, trying to avoid the chunks of twig that marked his path, thinking, desperately trying to find some way through what she knew.

  Teresa Lupo rounded the staircase and saw the open door to the large, handsome room where they were all gathered. The warm yellow light of the sun streamed through those curious windows she’d noticed from outside. Hugo Massiter, a man she’d only seen twice, once on a launch in the Grand Canal, once in the palazzo next door, stood in the centre of the room looking as if he owned everything around him already. The bricks, the mortar, but most of all the people.

  “Nic . . .” she said, but no one was listening, no one was doing anything but look at the boatman, who shuffled stupidly, like an idiot, ahead of her, clutching the bundle of kindling in his arms.

  It was the oldest Arcangelo who spoke first. Michele got out of his seat, one good eye flashing hatred and fury, emotions, she thought, that had been looking for somewhere to escape long before this poor, dumb native wandered into the room.

  “What are you doing, you idiot?” Michele bellowed. “What are you doing?”

  There was a brief quiet lull. It felt like being in the eye of a storm.

  “I thought you’d need firewood,” the boatman said in a dull, detached brogue as coarse as his clothing. “They told m
e you’d still be working, Signor Michele. If you work, you need help.”

  The couple she’d seen in handcuffs were there, trying to hold one another, trying to form some sort of bulwark against everything that surrounded them.

  “Go, Piero,” the young man said, half choking on the words. “There’s nothing more you can do.”

  “Do?” the boatman wondered.

  The young woman was sobbing, hating something about the sight of the boatman. Or fearing it, perhaps.

  “Piero,” she pleaded. “Listen to me! Go!”

  Michele Arcangelo walked up to the man, slapped him as hard as he could, twice across the face, front of hand, back of hand, screaming, with so much force Teresa could feel the hatred welling up from the man as he raged in front of them.

  “Matto! Matto! Matto! Get out of here!”

  But he didn’t flinch. He was looking at the Englishman now. Massiter stood there, amused, arms folded, feet apart, the stance of a victor.

  Nic, she said or whispered or simply thought, Teresa Lupo wasn’t quite sure.

  “Signor Massiter,” the boatman said in a calm, thoughtful voice, one that seemed more assured, and rather more intelligent, than she’d expected.

  “You know my name?” The Englishman beamed. “I’m flattered.”

  “I know your name,” he said, nodding. Then he turned to look at the couple.

  “Another Scacchi warned us about you, long ago. You cannot run from the Devil, he said. The Devil always finds you. Or you find him.”

  “Piero, Piero!”

  It was Gianni Peroni, working his way towards the boatman now, with the kind of swift, certain intent she’d come to recognise. The big cop could wrestle a man down in an instant if the sweet talk didn’t work.

  “No one moves,” the boatman said, and released the bundle of kindling, let the twigs fall noisily onto the polished floor and the shining table, sending Michele Arcangelo into a paroxysm of screaming, foulmouthed wrath once more. Until . . .

  “Nic,” Teresa said, and heard her own voice faintly over the sudden silence.

  “No one moves.”

  They froze. Not one of them—not Nic, not Peroni, or even Luca Zecchini—felt like trying to steal a finger towards the pistols in their jackets. Something in the man’s face told them this would be a very bad idea indeed.

  In the boatman’s hands, held with a lazy, knowing grace, was a long, old shotgun, double-barrelled, as worn and used as the man himself. A man who now punched the weapon into Hugo Massiter’s chest, propelled him viciously to the great bowed window, sending him back so hard the Englishman’s head cracked against the glass, shattering it with a sudden, piercing crash.

  Hugo Massiter howled in pain and shock.

  “No,” a female voice said, and Teresa was unsure where the sound came from, the handcuffed woman, Raffaella Arcangelo, or her own dry throat.

  “What do you want?” Massiter roared, raising a hand to his head, looking in astonishment and shock at the blood some hidden wound at the back of his scalp deposited on his fingers. “What insanity is this?”

  “I want nothing,” the boatman replied quietly, calm, unworried.

  Massiter’s face contorted with fury.

  “Venetians! Venetians! Name your price and be done with it. A man like me has bought the likes of you all before. I’ll buy you all again, twice over, if that’s what it takes.”

  Piero Scacchi didn’t flinch, didn’t take his eyes off the pompous Englishman trapped against the gleaming glass. “You make two mistakes,” he said. “One: I am not a Venetian. Two: you are not a man.”

  The gun jerked, the room filled with its terrible roar. Hugo Massiter’s torso rose in the air, flew back against the stains of the bull’s-eye windows, and was caught there by a second explosion, one that ripped his chest apart, thrust him out of the room altogether, out into the open air where, for one brief moment, he appeared suspended in a sea of whirling shards, a dying man flailing in a cloud of glass that reflected his agony as it tore his shattered body to blood and bone.

  Then he was gone, and from the unseen quay below came a mounting communal murmur, more animal than human, a buzzing, humming storm cloud of fright, punctuated by the growing rattle of screams.

  She was half aware of one other event too. Peroni had finally reached the boatman, held him at the fractured windows, with just enough strength to stop him from following his victim out into the golden evening before finally, more through the man’s own lassitude than Peroni’s considerable force, grappling him to the floor.

  “It didn’t match, Nic,” Teresa Lupo whispered, finally able to get the words out of her mouth though she knew no one else could hear. “It didn’t match at all.”

  IT WAS THE SECOND WEEK OF SEPTEMBER, LATE AFTERNOON under a sun losing its power. An unseasonable hint of chill, the coming death of summer, lurked within the breeze rising from the Adriatic. It chased across the grey waves, buffeting their faces as they waited on the edge of the graveyard on San Michele. Funerals always made Leo Falcone uncomfortable, though he’d been to many over the years. Now he was trapped inside a wheelchair, reliant on others in a way he found disturbing, a way that reminded him of a younger Nic Costa, once stricken in much the same fashion. There was no easy form of escape, no excuse to put work before personal matters. Nothing but the relentless internal reflection that had been dogging him for a week or more.

  “Leo?” Raffaella asked. “Are you ready? Michele was too stingy to pay for private transport back. The boat service stops soon. We don’t want to miss it.”

  “A minute,” he said, recalling the coffin going into the fresh ochre earth beyond the line of cedars that separated them from the plots. “I was thinking.”

  There’d been so much time for that lately. Fresh thinking. Old thinking, the kind that had happened before he awoke and which still remained in his head, clear and unwilling to go away. The question, as Leo Falcone understood only too well, was what to do with those dark, unsettling reflections.

  When Uriel Arcangelo went into the ground, a temporary sojourn, like every San Michele corpse, to be removed a decade hence to make way for more dead, his interment had been watched by just five personal mourners. The three Arcangeli, newly enriched by Hugo Massiter’s purchase of their island, Falcone, and the lawyer who had handled the family estate. The black-suited, quietly officious men of the funeral company outnumbered family. It seemed apposite somehow. The Arcangeli never ceased to be outsiders, even in death.

  At least Uriel had received a more proper end than Massiter. The Englishman’s power had vanished the moment his body shattered on the island’s worn paving stones, scattering the crowds, sending them screaming. When Massiter died some spell was broken. Venice was acutely aware of social status. The city’s burghers escaped discovery of their illicit financial transactions. The Arcangeli found their own money problems transformed, escaping from poverty to comparative riches overnight. The future of the island remained as much in doubt as before, but it was now someone else’s problem, an architectural curio left in legal limbo, owned by the estate of a man with no known relatives, no apparent heirs. Already there were mutterings in the local press about a campaign to take it into public ownership. A hotel and an apartment block would one day rise on the Isola degli Arcangeli. Falcone felt certain of this. The way the family, even Michele, acquiesced to the notion after Massiter’s demise indicated, surely, that its days as a struggling glass enterprise were past.

  All the same, he found it remarkable how little the name of Hugo Massiter entered into any conversation or public discussion. After the initial flurry of publicity about the arrest of Piero Scacchi on a charge of murder, the story had swiftly died away. The previous day there had been a brief paragraph on an inside page of one newspaper revealing that Massiter’s body had been flown to England for a private burial paid for by his estate, an event that would, Falcone suspected, be watched by lawyers and accountants, if anyone at all. For Venice, at that point, in
some final solitary ceremony, the issue of culpability would be closed, interred alongside the ravaged flesh and bone of Hugo Massiter. No one had been brought to account for the killing of Gianfranco Randazzo, which was, the papers now hinted, the result of a gangland row over an extortion racket in which the late commissario had been involved. No one, it seemed, much remembered the deaths of Aldo Bracci, or Uriel and Bella Arcangelo. Venice had a capacity for forgetfulness which Leo Falcone almost envied.

  He forced himself to concentrate on the present, and gazed at her with that slow, selfish hunger allowed to a man confined to a wheelchair. Raffaella Arcangelo looked serene, complete somehow, in mourning. She wore a long black dress, expensively cut, and a thin woollen jacket against the cutting breeze. Her hair had been styled by a professional, probably for the first time in years, he guessed, and now curved into her attractive, scarcely lined face. She had the appearance of an intelligent and elegant college professor, something, it occurred to Falcone, she could perhaps have been had the island not dragged her home from Paris out of financial necessity.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  She smiled, a little shyly. “It’s taken a long time for you to frame that question, Leo.”

  There was no reproach in her soft voice, though perhaps he deserved some.

  He glowered at the wheelchair, unintentionally. “I’m sorry. My mind’s been on other things.”

  “Of course,” she replied. “I was being thoughtless. You deserve some indulgences.”

  He didn’t believe that to be true. His injuries were temporary, something to be overcome, not resented. Besides . . . “Forget about me, Raffaella. I was interested in you. What will happen now?”

  She glanced at Michele and Gabriele. Her brothers were already on the jetty, waiting for the next boat.