The Lizard's Bite

by David Hewson

  “We’re human,” she said pointedly.

  “Quite. And, being human, Uriel took the apron meant for Bella that night, and she his. Which she wore in the furnace, wondering why the place was so hot and the burners so difficult to control. Coming to no harm whatsoever, not until she returns to the house, puzzled, sensing, I imagine, that something’s wrong.”

  Raffaella signalled her tentative agreement with a raised forefinger. “This could have happened, I suppose.”

  “It did. And when she gets back, our reluctant killer, someone who wanted Fate to make the decision over whether Bella lives or dies, is faced with a choice. To acquiesce or to act? To finish the job or pretend nothing has happened? It must have been difficult. There would have been a little planning in advance, of course. But the act . . . That had to be decided one way or another in a matter of moments, which is why, when violence was the course of action taken, it was so sudden. Her death had to be achieved quickly, before any doubts crept in. This was no longer a cerebral, detached event. It required strength, determination. Those bloodstains on the bedroom wall . . .”

  “From what I saw,” she observed, “Hugo Massiter was a strong and determined man.”

  “Undoubtedly. But something unexpected has happened too. Before she’s murdered, Bella has decided to call Uriel, who’s half drunk, half sleeping in the office next door. She’s told him there’s something wrong with the furnace. It’s overheating. Perhaps she wants to meet him there. So he goes in a little earlier than normal, finding the door ajar, since that was the way it habitually fell, and closing it behind him. The furnace is out of control now. The trap which was laid for Bella falls shut upon him, which was the last thing that was intended.”

  He watched the way she glanced at the grave and then turned away, a lost, sad cast in her eye.

  “I said it was an accident all along,” she murmured.

  “You did. As far as Uriel’s concerned I’ve no doubt you’re right. I’m sorry that’s no comfort to you. I wish there were some other interpretation I could place on events. I really do.”

  To his surprise, she smiled.

  “You were the only one with a kind word, you know. From the outset. It struck me from the start that you have a peculiar and rather touching interest in other human beings, Leo, yet very little in yourself.”

  He gestured at the wheelchair. “I’ve time to change. I’ll try to think like everyone else. Not like a police inspector.”

  “Is that what you do? I was rather under the impression you thought like a criminal.”

  It was a perceptive observation. Up to a point.

  “If you look for explanations . . . it’s important to see events from both sides of the fence. The perpetrator’s. The victim’s. Criminals interest me. I admit it. I’ve never been much of one for believing they’re made at birth. Something happens. Something forms them. If I can understand what that something is, then . . .”

  “Then you become a little like them.”

  It was an observation, not a question. He wasn’t minded to argue.

  “This is the job I do. It would be surprising if something doesn’t rub off along the way. But you’re missing my point. Criminals are made, not born. Even a man like Aldo Bracci.”

  Her face lit up with astonishment. “Aldo Bracci was a brute and a thief! He slept with Bella all those years ago! You know that!”

  “He was a Bracci,” Falcone declared. “Wasn’t he doing precisely what was expected of him?”

  She was silent. Then Raffaella sat down on the bench next to the grave, glanced at her watch, and said, “We need to be going. The last boat leaves soon.”

  “I’m nearly done. Aldo Bracci brings me almost to the close. Why do you think he came to Massiter’s party that evening? Carrying a gun and Bella’s keys?”

  She shook her head, puzzled. “Nic told me he believed Commissario Randazzo placed the keys in Bracci’s pocket after he shot him. From what I recall, that was certainly possible. Randazzo was in Massiter’s pay. Isn’t it obvious? The commissario was trying to make sure Bracci would be blamed for his sister’s murder to get Massiter off the hook.”

  Falcone scowled. “Nic is young and clever but he still has much to learn. I spoke to Randazzo that night. He barely had sufficient presence of mind to seize the opportunity to kill Bracci. Nothing more. Aldo had those keys. Someone, perhaps Massiter himself, perhaps someone else, gave those keys to him. In an anonymous letter, say. One suggesting they’d been found in Massiter’s yacht, or that apartment on the island, proof that Bella, his own sister, was murdered by the Englishman because she was pregnant. Bracci was already drunk. It could have been enough to set him off.”

  “The Braccis are a violent family. They always settle their scores in the end.”

  Falcone concurred. “Which everyone would know, of course. And if Aldo turned up at an event like that, dead drunk, the keys in his pocket, screaming nonsense, against Hugo Massiter of all people, who would have believed him? It would be one more piece of evidence against the brother, however much he’d try to protest. His class, his character, would convict him from the outset. It’s a clever trick. To turn a man’s own anger and reputation against himself. It was unfortunate that he saw you first. That you were the one he chose.”

  “I was by the door. The first person he met. You seemed preoccupied at the time. Inattentive, I might say.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish I’d spent more time with you. I honestly do.”

  She asked, “Is that it? Can we go now?”

  “Keys,” he murmured, seeing again the image of the cabin in the mountains. “Or more accurately, a single key. Uriel’s for the fornace door. That was what puzzled me all along. That was what tricked me and I doubt I would ever have seen past it either, not without . . .”

  A meeting with his younger self, in a place of their own joint imagination, returning to the pivotal event that had made Leo Falcone who he was.

  “Keys are pieces of metal,” she said. “You’re better with human beings.”

  “Part of it was filed down,” he went on. “Did I mention that?”

  Raffaella looked hard at her watch and said, “Leo. The boat.”

  “The boat can wait. It was filed, and I couldn’t understand why. Or rather I saw only one reason, viewed everything from a single direction. Uriel was dead inside a locked room. The only key he owned had been tampered with to ensure it didn’t work. It seemed so obvious. This was done to keep him in. There could be no other reason. Yet . . .”

  “Leo!” she shouted, tapping her wrist.

  “I was so stupid.”

  He looked her full in the face, knowing now he couldn’t be wrong, that in this deserted graveyard, with Uriel Arcangelo’s corpse a metre deep in the earth beside him, there would be a resolution of a kind, though he was not sure whether it was one he wanted, or where, in the end, it might lead.

  “The key was filed to keep him out, Raffaella,” he said, his voice rising unintentionally. “It was Bella you wanted dead. Not Uriel. Never Uriel. You hoped to send her into the fornace, where the burners were fixed to rise and rise, with an apron that would catch fire if Fate decided. You had to make sure Uriel couldn’t get in if he tried. So you filed the key. Uriel, if he found his way there, would blame the lock or the drink. Then he’d look for Bella’s keys, and fail to find them. Eventually he’d wake the person closest to him. His sister. You’d stall, I imagine. You’d an idea how long it would take for the furnace to do its job. And by the time you arrived to open the door, Bella would be dead. Victim of an unfortunate industrial accident no one would ever be able to explain entirely, but one that carried no suspicion of wrongdoing at all.”

  She leaned back on the bench and closed her eyes, saying nothing.

  “But Bella, or Uriel, picked the wrong apron. The furnace was in worse condition than you knew. From there, everything else followed. Bella’s return to the house and your inevitable response. Your need to place the blame on Aldo Bracc
i, first. Then, when matters were beyond your control, Bracci’s murder and that of Gianfranco Randazzo. Massiter’s murder too, which happily occurred after the sale of the island you hate so much. So many deaths from such a simple mistake which no one, least of all you, could have foreseen.”

  A trio of gulls screamed overhead, fighting over some scrap of food. Then there was silence. The two of them were, he knew, alone now in the cemetery, forgotten by any distant caretaker huddled in his watch house, charged to guard this island of the dead after the sun fell.

  “Do they haunt you, Raffaella?” he asked.

  IT HAD BEEN THREE DAYS BEFORE THE QUESTURA HAD let Costa and Peroni out of their grip. Then they let go in an instant, brushing the pair of them out of the building with an admonition never to return. There would be no reprisals. Cases like Hugo Massiter’s had to be buried in their entirety or not at all.

  So Nic Costa bade farewell to Venice and, with a weary sense of acceptance, caught the first flight to Rome, one he chose because it landed at Ciampino, the small city airport, not far from the old Appian Way.

  A place he both missed and feared, not knowing what would greet him at the old farmhouse that had, during their too-brief time together there, felt like home once more.

  She was outside, working on the grapes that hung in black and green festoons over the terrace, when the cab deposited him at the drive. A wicker basket full of fruit stood by the door. Emily was dressed in jeans and an old cotton tee-shirt, her blonde hair tied back to reveal her face, which was now a shade paler than he recalled in Venice.

  He dumped his bags on the old paving stones and thrust out the bouquet he’d picked up at the airport: roses and freesias and anything else that smelled sweet. She looked at them and laughed.

  “That’s the second bouquet I’ve had in a couple of weeks,” she said. “Are you trying to spoil me?”

  “I don’t . . .”

  He shook his head. She pointed to the timbered inner terrace. The bunch of peperoncini Gianni Peroni had bought from Piero Scacchi on Sant’ Erasmo hung there, the flesh of the peppers slowly wrinkling, preparing for winter.

  Emily nodded at the basket of fruit, then sat at the table, where Costa joined her. “I thought I’d better pick them. There are so many. Those vines need attention. You can’t just leave things to grow the way they want, year after year. What do you do with all these grapes anyway?”

  “My father used to make wine. Just vino novello. Simple farmer’s wine. It’s beautiful for three months and then it’s vinegar. He never had time to show me how. Or I never had time to learn. One or the other. I can’t remember which.”

  “You’ve still got two weeks’ leave. You could learn.”

  No. He’d thought this through already.

  “I promised you a vacation. Anywhere. Tuscany. I don’t care. Just tell me.”

  “Here,” she said immediately. “Nowhere else. This is where we need to start, Nic. I need you to show me the places you knew when you grew up. I want a couple of bikes so you can take me cycling along the Appian Way. And now I want to learn to make wine. Is that OK with you?”

  He wanted to hold her and didn’t dare. He wanted to tell her what he was thinking and couldn’t find the words.

  “I didn’t know if you’d still be here,” he said. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d gone.”

  Emily Deacon let her head roll back, untied her hair and shook it free. “You obviously don’t quite know me well enough yet,” she said softly. “I am not, nor will I ever be, in the habit of leaving a man quietly. If I go you will hear screaming and language you have, previously, never associated with a woman of my upbringing. Do I make myself clear?”

  He took her hands across the table.

  “Good,” she added. “Would you have hated me? If I’d left?”

  “I’d have missed you. I’d have hated myself.” He peered into her sharp, inquisitive eyes. “I’m so sorry. I never realised we were in so deep. Or what I was asking. Can you ever forgive that?”

  There was a faint, wry smile. “Forgiving you was never going to be the problem, Nic. It’s me. I don’t know when or if I can forgive myself.”

  Time, he thought. That was what they’d need. Time and each other.

  “Tell me what to do,” he urged.

  “Be yourself. Be here when I need you.”

  Costa thought of his father and the turbulent period his life entered in his thirties. A kind of peace emerged in the end, but it wasn’t achieved without pain or sacrifice. That seemed to be part of human relationships, and it was only the child in him that tried to believe there was another, less arduous way.

  “That I guarantee,” he said. “None of this is easy, is it?”

  “No. But I imagine it’s better than the alternative.” She leaned to kiss him on the cheek. “That’s why I’m still here. As long as it feels this way, that’s why I’ll stay.”

  “In that case I’m a lucky man.”

  “Damned right you are,” she agreed. “So how’s Leo? Will he go back to the job?”

  Costa had spent the previous morning with Falcone in the hospital. It was good to see his progress, though the man was different somehow, as was their relationship.

  “He’s on the mend. Leo will be back in the Questura. In the end.” He picked up a bunch of grapes on the table. “And before this turns to vinegar. We’ll both be back.”

  “Both?”

  She leaned forward, in anticipation and some concern, waiting for the rest. It was good news. Costa had convinced himself of that.

  “I have a small assignment along the way.”

  “Where?” she asked quickly.

  “Rome. Just Rome. With a little travel I think you could enjoy too.”

  “Nic . . . ?”

  He’d spent the previous afternoon discussing everything with Luca Zecchini over a long and enjoyable lunch in an expensive restaurant just off the tourist haunts off the Rialto. It was an unexpected offer, but the Carabinieri and the state police were supposed to liaise from time to time. It was a reward too, a deserved one.

  “Zecchini’s people cracked those files you gave them. Almost the first time they tried.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “They found the password. It was based on the phone number at Massiter’s previous home in Venice. Apparently—”

  “Apparently the Carabinieri have some very smart people,” she interrupted. “What did they get?”

  “Names. Bank accounts. Routes. Shipments. Everything. It’s a gold mine. Read the papers over the next few weeks. It’s the biggest breakthrough they’ve had in years.”

  She laughed. “Hugo always struck me as the kind of man who’d be lax about things. He felt invulnerable. He knew they’d never touch him.”

  “They didn’t. They just picked the lock. Without you . . .”

  “Then . . .” Emily looked wistfully at the garden, with its rampant weeds and untended vegetables. “I was going to say it was worth it. But it wasn’t.”

  Nic Costa looked at her, made sure she knew he felt the same way. He’d learned something in Venice. That there was a limit to the price he’d pay—and allow of anyone—from now on.

  “No,” he agreed. “It wasn’t. There’s an art exhibition planned for Rome in the spring. The biggest in years. Zecchini threw me a ticket to be part of security. It’s a reward. I get to see such things. They’re bringing a Caravaggio from London for the event. Boy Bitten by a Lizard. I’ll have to make sure it gets here and back in one piece. Lots of others too. You’ve been to London. Do you know it?”

  “It’s wonderful,” Emily said, that familiar spirit of delight now back in her face. “There’s a young, innocent-looking boy, a flower in his hair, the kind Caravaggio liked. He’s reaching into a bowl of fruit. All of a sudden a small lizard leaps out and bites his hand. Hard. You see the boy’s shock and his hurt, and it’s all the more real because he was expecting pleasure. It’s an allegory, I guess. About the sudden pai
n you can get when what you’re really expecting is its opposite. You’ve never seen it?”

  Paintings had left his life of late. He realised now how much he missed them.

  “When you’re unpacked you can help me with the fruit,” Emily Deacon declared. “Caravaggio or no Caravaggio, I’m not letting all those grapes go to waste.”

  He’d managed to recall the image of the painting now. Nic Costa couldn’t wait to witness the canvas close up, real, as alive as the day it was painted. With Emily at his side.

  “Everyone gets bitten by the lizard sometime,” he said. “What matters is what happens after.”

  WHY ARE YOU PURSUING THIS, LEO?”

  It seemed a curious question.

  “Because it’s what I do.”

  “Without asking yourself the purpose? Or the price?”

  She sat on the bench, still, confident. He heard the blast of the vaporetto’s horn as it departed the quay on the far side of the island.

  “It’s what I do,” he said again.

  “But why? The Venice Questura won’t listen to you. No one will. Not even your own men, I think. Have you told them?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I wanted to discuss this with you first.”

  “Always the gentleman,” she said with a brief smile.

  “There is evidence,” he pointed out. “You provided it yourself. The shirt with Massiter’s monogram and Bella’s blood on it. The second DNA sample there, which is primarily sweat, lacks the Y chromosome. Teresa found out shortly before Massiter was killed, too late to be of use unfortunately. It’s female DNA. We don’t have a sample of yours but I’d put good money on it being a match.”

  “I washed everything in that house, some of it by hand,” she said, half smiling. “Would that be such a surprise?”

  “Then . . .”

  Leo Falcone had, to his dismay, never considered this. He was now abruptly aware that he had lost more of his sharpness in hospital than he’d appreciated. There was one plain fact outstanding, though.