We clinked glasses. ‘ Noroc!’ I said.
He gave a little start. ‘ Vorbiti romana?’
‘ Numai putin. Lucrez ca traducator .’ I switched back to Italian. ‘I have a friend who’s Romanian. He taught me a bit. Maybe you know him. He has a business on the bridges. Carrying dogs, you know?’
He broke into a broad smile. ‘Mr Gheorghe! Yes. He’s a legend.’ We clinked glasses again. I finished my beer. ‘Same again? And have one for yourself.’ He fetched another two bottles. I stretched my hand across the bar. ‘Nathan.’
‘Adrian.’ We shook.
‘Tell me Adrian, can we smoke here?’
He shook his head. ‘Of course not. But everybody does.’ He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a crumpled packet of something I’d never seen before. He extracted two cigarettes. ‘Here. My treat this time.’ I took a light from him and took a cautious drag.
My new friend kindly offered me a paper handkerchief with which to wipe away my tears. Eventually, I finished coughing and took a draught of my beer. ‘Smooth,’ I croaked.
He grinned. ‘ Carpati . Cheapest cigarettes in Romania. My dad’s favourite. He was in Revolution Square back in 1989. Always said he was more scared of the cigarettes than the Securitate .’
I took another, delicate little puff. ‘He was a wise man, your father,’ I said, dabbing at my eyes. We smoked and coughed in silence for a few minutes. ‘So tell me, Adrian,’ I said, ‘what’s it like working here?’
He shrugged. ‘You’ve seen the reviews?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re kind of right. It’s not so great. And sometimes stuff goes missing, you know. And one of us gets the blame.’
‘But not you?’
‘Not me. I’m too smart.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Listen, Adrian, I think you’ve got a guy called Francesco Nicolodi staying here at the moment.’
He looked blank for a moment, but then his face cleared. ‘Southern Italian guy? Maybe drinks a bit too much? Here for the Biennale?’
‘Two out of three at least. I can’t swear to the second. Is he here?’
He shook his head. ‘Not any more. Checked out this morning.’
‘Ah shit. Do you have any idea where he went? Back down south or off to the UK?’
‘No idea.’
‘Hell. It might be important. You really have no idea at all?’
‘Sorry.’ Then he looked over his shoulder. I followed his gaze to the clock on the wall. One o’clock.
‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘the rooms haven’t been cleaned yet?’ He nodded. ‘So I guess that – hypothetically speaking – someone might be able to have a look around there.’
He shook his head. ‘I’d lose my job.’
‘Yeah, but it’s a shit job.’
‘True enough.’ He beckoned me over to reception and took down a key. ‘Just put in a good word for me with Mr Gheorghe, eh? It sounds more fun than this place.’
I grinned. ‘I most certainly will.’
I wasn’t quite sure what I expected to find. I wasn’t even one hundred per cent sure what the hell I was doing there. Maybe it came down to just two things. Considine seemed like a nice guy, fragile, but a nice guy at heart. Francesco, I didn’t like. More to the point, he’d made a fool of me. Deep down I was hoping to find something that proved it was his fault. Or, if not that, at least something that showed it wasn’t Considine’s doing.
And in the end, I found precisely nothing. The room was clean enough, although on the small side; a faded carpet lay on a parquet floor in need of sanding and revarnishing. There was the lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke. Residents here, I imagined, just preferred to ignore the rules. A small safe was fixed to the usual position in the wardrobe. No electronic code here, just a very basic key. One that would be very easy to copy. It helped to explain those visitors who’d come to me with stories of things going missing.
I opened drawers, checked the waste bin and even the bathroom cabinet. Nothing. But what had I expected? A match book? A map with circles drawn on it? A silly idea. I went back down to the lobby. Adrian was still at reception. I passed the key back to him.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘Not a thing. Sorry, I’ve wasted our time.’
He shook his head. ‘No you haven’t. We had a beer. That makes it a better afternoon than most here.’
‘Thanks. Okay, I’ll be off. I’ll have a word with Gheorghe, as I promised.’ I turned to leave, and then something caught the corner of my eye. An old-fashioned telephone cubicle. ‘Wow. Does that thing still work?’
He laughed. ‘Not since I’ve been here. Even here, all rooms have a telephone. It’s a wifi point now. Just a shared PC.’ It figured. Why spend money on wifithroughout the hotel when most people would probably have a smartphone? If you were running a hotel on the cheap, it was a good budget solution. A thought struck me.
‘Could I just have a quick look?’ He seemed surprised, but nodded anyway. I walked into the cubicle, and closed the door behind me. The authentic smell of the 1950s. No telephone now, just a budget-brand laptop secured to the wall with a cable. I tapped the keyboard a few times until the screen powered up, and opened the browser. I clicked the ‘History’ tab.
I almost laughed. It hadn’t been configured to clear the history after exiting the browser. It was all there, at least for the past few days. I scrolled through. Mainly news sites in various different languages. And then Francesco’s name. He’d googled himself. He’d actually googled himself. There was his Times article and his name seemed to be mentioned – alongside mine – in a couple of news reports. That was it. Except – no – as I rechecked I could see a ten-minute gap between Francesco’s search and that of, presumably, the next user who was looking at a Bangladeshi news site. And directly after Francesco’s search for himself came the address of the Palazzo Papadopoli. One of the most exclusive hotels on the Grand Canal and about as far removed from the Hotel Zichy as one might imagine. He’d clicked on the ‘Accommodation’ tab. Naturally. The Papadopoli was not a place to have anything as vulgar as ‘Rooms’. There was no room rate mentioned. If you had to ask, you almost certainly couldn’t afford it.
So Francesco had gone from one of the cheapest places in town that still dignified itself by use of the word ‘hotel’, to one of the most exclusive. He could, I supposed, have been spending the money he got for his article. No. I had no idea how much money The Times paid for an unsolicited column, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t buy you a night in the Palazzo Papadopoli. Come to that, it probably wouldn’t even buy you a spritz in the Palazzo Papadopoli. Interesting though. Something to think about.
I exited the cubicle and smiled at my new friend. I left five euros on the bar for him and gave him a nod. ‘Have another beer on me,’ I said.
Chapter 25
Gramsci was in a fractious mood. He was too dignified ever to have anything that could be considered ‘a mad half-hour’ and preferred to express himself in casual, petty acts of destruction. In this case, scrabbling away with his claws at the base of the sofa; directly next to his scratching post, as unmarked and pristine as the day I unwrapped it.
I ignored him. He scrabbled away a little more. He’d invented a new game recently, where he’d stretch full length, sink his claws into the sofa and pull himself upright. Federica was stretched out on the other sofa. Her mum was still away visiting an old friend in Chioggia, giving her another night off. ‘He needs entertaining.’
‘He’ll get bored in a minute.’
She peered over the top of her glasses at me. ‘He won’t. Will he?’
‘No.’ I said. The scratching continued. I sighed. It had only been a few months since Fede had persuaded me to have the sofas re-covered. I reached for his ball. He reacted with excitement, jumped on the sofa and hunkered down behind the arm in a defensive position. I walked as far away from him as I could and tossed the ball in my hand a couple of times. ‘Okay
Grams, the usual thing is it?’ His claws scrabbled happily. ‘I’m bowling, is it? You don’t feel like having a go for once?’
‘Why do you speak to him in English?’ said Federica.
I gave myself as much of a run-up as I could manage in the confined space of the living room, delivered an overarm bowl, and watched Gramsci bat it straight back to me with his paw. ‘Clever cat. Well done.’ I turned to Fede. ‘I don’t know. I just always have.’
‘But he’s an Italian cat.’
‘Yes, but English is his first language.’
‘He’s bilingual? You have a bilingual cat?’
‘He might be.’ I took another run-up. ‘He’s very clever, you know.’ Gramsci took a wilder swipe this time, and the ball pinged off the coffee table as Fede – who was becoming used to this sort of thing – removed her wine glass just in time. She tossed the ball back to me.
I sat on the floor at the base of the sofa, and leaned my head against Federica’s shoulder. She kissed the top of my head. ‘I suppose he is quite clever. You’ve got him very well trained.’
‘I have, haven’t I? It took some time, but I got there in the end. I even managed to get him to fetch a ball once. 2013 I think it was.’
‘I was talking to the cat, Nathan.’ She took a sip of her wine and passed me the glass to put down on the table, which I did after grabbing a quick sip myself. ‘So, have you got any work to do tonight?’
‘Me or the cat?’ She peered over the top of her glasses again and frowned. Sometimes I wondered if she genuinely needed them or if they were just a prop for expressing disapproval. ‘Nothing important. Nothing that needs to be done right now. Mr Blake-Hoyt is obstinately remaining dead, which is going to annoy his brother, but there’s not very much I can do about that. Oh, and there’s investigating Francesco Nicolodi.’
‘Do you think he’s got anything to do with it?’
‘I really don’t know. But I can’t think of anything else. I think Lewis and Paul might actually have left town. That whole business with Scarpa the other day, I think he was just hoping I’d get beaten up. Nicolodi’s kind of like a last throw of the dice. And if that doesn’t work, well I think I’ll just have to give up. Did you find anything with the CCTV?’
‘Sorry, caro . I did check it out, but the recordings are deleted every twenty-four hours. And as there was no incident reported, no denuncia , there was no reason why anybody should have thought to keep them.’
‘Damn. That’s a shame. Oh well, like I said, Nicolodi’s kind of like the last chance now.’
She closed her laptop, and checked her watch. ‘Still only half-past ten.’
‘Is there anything good on RAI?’ We looked at each other wordlessly for a couple of seconds, and then laughed.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll have an early night. Are you coming to bed?’
I was about to say yes, and then the sound of claws against fabric came from the other sofa. Gramsci, clearly, had other plans.
‘I’ll be along in a minute.’ I sighed.
I tossed some balls for a few minutes until he curled up on the sofa for a sleep. I wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t a cruel ploy, however, and didn’t think I could risk going to bed yet. I sat down at my desk and logged on to my computer. Francesco said he worked for World of Art , or something like that. No, that wasn’t it. Planet Art .
I brought up their website but it was only a cobbled-together skeleton. There were various images of famous contemporary works on the home page, but it didn’t look like a professional job. I clicked on the ‘Articles’ and ‘Subscription’ tabs but both just led me to a ‘Page under construction’ message. The ‘About’ tab had a generic blurb about ‘Exploring the worlds of contemporary art’ and listed a Francesco Nicolodi as founder and editor-in-chief. The English was shonky, as if run through Google translate.
That was it. I supposed it was possible they just hadn’t got properly off the ground with their electronic version yet. I did a search on British art periodicals but could find no reference to Planet Art .
This got stranger and stranger. I ran through the facts again. Francesco Nicolodi arrives in Venice for the Biennale, claiming to be a journalist with an art magazine that seems not to exist. He checks into a fleapit of a hotel for a couple of days and then upgrades to one of the most exclusive residences in Venice.
I had no idea at all if he had anything to do with Gordon Blake-Hoyt’s death. Almost certainly not; he’d been with me nearly all the time as far as I could remember. Nevertheless, I’d promised myself that I’d try and help Considine, and Francesco was pretty much the only lead left.
Something to check out in the morning. In the meantime, Gramsci seemed fast asleep. I could turn in for the night. I got to my feet as quietly as I could. Not quietly enough. The chair scraped across the floor, and I froze. Gramsci didn’t stir. I padded across the floor, until I reached the bedroom door. I’d done it.
A yowl came from behind me, followed by the scrabbling of claws against fabric. I sighed, again, and bent to pick some balls up off the floor.
Chapter 26
I held a surgery the following morning. Nobody turned up, but I received some flowers from the elderly couple as a token of thanks. They looked lovely, and a simple substitution of labels meant that I’d be able to give them to Federica later on. It was therefore early afternoon by the time I set out for the Palazzo Papadopoli. San Silvestro would be the nearest vaporetto stop but I didn’t fancy standing on a crowded boat. It was a lovely day, so I decided to take the traghetto from Sant’Angelo to San Tomà and walk up from there.
I rarely used the traghetti these days. If you had a season ticket it was cheaper just to use the vaporetti to cross over the Grand Canal. Yet there were times that it was still the quickest way of crossing from one side to another, although there were fewer and more sporadic services every year. At one time, when the Rialto Bridge had been the only means of crossing the Grand Canal, there had been over thirty routes. Now we were down to just seven. Dario had once told me, with a warm glow in his voice, of how the traghetti would run all night when he was young. And now they all finished before sunset. I wondered if I’d still be in Venice when the final service closed for the last time.
I shook my head. The thought had brought a little cloud of gloom to hover over me. If anything could clear it away, a brief gondola ride across the canal could.
There were just a few of us in the queue at Sant’Angelo, waiting as the boat made its way from the San Tomà station on the opposite side. Traghetti were typically manned by ex-gondoliers who didn’t quite want to give up their work just yet, and younger ones waiting for a place on a gondola station that would permit them the lucrative work of a regular gondolier.
I didn’t recognise the old guy, his face lined with broken veins and weatherbeaten to a deep nut-brown after years of working outside. The other, however, was a young woman. The only female gondolier in Venice. We’d met a few times, always on this same route, but weren’t quite on first-name terms. She recognised me and gave me a smile.
I smiled back, ‘Come stai ?’
‘I’m very well thanks. Can we use English?’
‘Sure. Sorry, is my Italian that bad?’
‘Not at all. But I need to practise.’ Fair point. Gondoliers needed a high degree of fluency in at least one other language.
‘How’s it going? With getting a place on a station, I mean?’ I asked as we pushed off.
‘Not too bad. Maybe another year, maybe two. But I’ll get there.’
‘Good. I hope so.’ I couldn’t help but notice that she had the most extraordinary painted nails. ‘I’ll never know how you manage to keep your fingernails looking like that.’
She grinned. ‘Practice.’ She nodded at the old guy up front. ‘You should check out Marco’s. They’re even more beautiful.’
‘I’ll make sure I do when I get off.’
The Venetian tradition was to stand on the traghetto , whilst tourists
tended to sit. This was one of the occasions on which I was happy to look like a visitor. I’d only been in the city for a couple of weeks when the wake from a speeding ambulance nearly pitched me over the side. The gondoliers preferred to have you sit if you looked as if you might be somebody that would need rescuing.
The crossing took less than two minutes. But two minutes to look up and down the Grand Canal, under a clear blue sky. I’d been in Venice for over five years, and yet this service was the closest I’d ever been to being on an actual gondola.
We arrived at the San Tomà station, and I waved goodbye. Marco did, indeed, have beautiful nails. I set out for the Palazzo Papodopoli, the crossing, as expected, having blown away the dark clouds.
It was possible to reach the palazzo directly from the Grand Canal. Indeed, if you could afford to stay there, it would be bizarre to arrive any other way. George Clooney, of course, had been on the front page of almost every newspaper in the world when he arrived for his wedding via the front entrance the previous year. I was using the rather more modest rear entrance. Which, in a strange way, was technically the front entrance. I buzzed the intercom, and stepped back to give an ingratiating smile to the security camera. It must have been convincing enough, as the gate clanked open. My feet crunched on the reassuringly expensive-sounding gravel path as I walked to reception.
My invitation to Clooney’s wedding had, unfortunately, gone missing in the post. This was, therefore, the first time I’d been inside. I was forced to concede that my pal George did indeed have extremely good taste. If you liked the baroque that was. If you liked rococo as well, hell, it was even better. I studied the ceiling. Cherubim and seraphim under a swirling pinky-blue sky. Almost certainly . . .
‘Giambattista Tiepolo.’ I gave a little start. The speaker was an attractive blond-haired woman in middle age, immaculately dressed in a black trouser suit.
‘So I was thinking,’ I said.
Vengeance in Venice Page 15