It was another few minutes before I realized we were passing along the side of a proper island; I twisted around and through the mist made out the faint but definite shape of a square tower.
“Torcello!” I said.
“I think so,” she said. “Shall we try and find someone?”
“Burano,” I said. This one-word answer was intended to convey the meaning, “Torcello’s got a tiny population and won’t have any hospital facilities; we might as well go on to Burano, which is just over the way from Torcello and which will certainly have facilities of some kind.” She nodded; she was getting better at catching my meaning.
I went through the next quarter of an hour in a kind of painful daze. I somehow managed to get the message across to Lucy that she should go around to the back of the church on Burano, since there was a mooring place there very close to the central square—and very close to the carabinieri station as well, as I remembered. (I think I grunted the words “behind the church”—and waved my good arm.) Then from the cold darkness of the lagoon we passed to the cheerful noise and illuminations of carnivalesque Burano: people clustered around our boat, helped us both out; awed voices commented on my wound, on the guns at the bottom of the boat. We were escorted into piazza Galuppi, which was strung with colored lights; young people in masks and animal costumes were dancing to the sound of Beatles songs. Questions in dialect came at us from multicolored faces, from plastic and rubber animal masks—fortunately none of them Mickey Mouse. Lucy kept repeating, “I terroristi, i terroristi,” and this word spread around the square, mixing into the music.
Then there was neon-lit cleanliness and hush as I was laid down on a plastic-covered bed; a white-coated man with a big black mustache (which seems to be obligatory for male Bura-nelli) asked Lucy questions as he undid my bandages. The Beatles were a faint pulsing noise in the distance. I thought, Well, where better to drip blood than on colorful melodramatic Burano?
I faded out on this happy thought.
20
I CAME to with a sense of sudden panic, looking for the animal or vampire that had sunk its teeth into my shoulder. My eyes came to slow focus on a tiny dim-lit room in which I was the only person lying down. A man in a white coat and a carabiniere were sitting on a bench a foot from my bed. I realized I must be pretty groggy since the whole room seemed to be throbbing and bouncing—and then I realized that we were in a boat.
“Where am I?” I said. It seemed the most appropriate question, but came out as a mere croak. I said it again, and this time, after a moment’s thought, in Italian.
“We’re taking you to Venice. You’re going to spend the night in the hospital there.” It was the man in the white coat who answered. He had no mustache—obviously not a Buranello.
“Where’s Lucy—the girl—”
“She’s answering questions. As you will be when we get to Venice.”
“Why couldn’t I stay there?”
“There are no proper hospital facilities on Burano. And besides, too many people knew you were there.”
So I had to be kept hidden. I lay back and pondered this not very cheering thought. The man in the white coat spoke up again to tell me they’d removed the bullet and no serious damage had been done: I’d just have to keep my arm in a sling for a week or two.
And keep out of the way of any other bullets, I added to myself. Aloud I said, “Thank you.”
There was no further conversation. I wondered what had happened to my clothes: I seemed to be wearing some kind of nightgown. I couldn’t work up enough energy to ask, however. My arm was in a tight sling now, and the pain at my shoulder was somewhere below a padding of bandages. The handcuff had also been removed, I was pleased to notice.
The ambulance boat came to a stop; I was helped out of the cabin; I felt slightly dizzy but was capable of walking. We had driven up to a landing stage inside the hospital building itself, and I was guided up the steps to where two policemen and a man in a gray suit were standing next to a wheelchair. The policemen were both carrying guns: were they expecting me to make a break for it? A sudden dive and a one-armed swim for freedom perhaps.
I sat in the wheelchair as that seemed to be what was expected of me, and I looked at the man in the gray suit. I thought I recognized him: he was either Edward G. Robinson or the investigating magistrate whose photo had appeared in the papers—Menegazzi. The latter, more probably. He was carrying a small briefcase.
He walked alongside the wheelchair, which was pushed by one of the ambulance men. We rose in a lift and I was then pushed along a marble corridor to a private ward. I was helped into bed by a nurse and then left alone with Menegazzi. Through the door’s glass panel, however, I could see one of the policemen standing in the corridor.
Menegazzi sat down on one of the two chairs near the bed. He opened his briefcase and drew out a small tape recorder. He started it recording and put it on my bedside table. Then he took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth, but after looking around the room and shrugging, he took it out again. He didn’t put it away, merely refrained from lighting it. For the rest of our conversation it stayed in his hand, as a kind of indication of how much he’d like to get the interview over and done with. Finally he spoke. “Martin Phipps.”
“Yes.”
“Artist, jailed for forgery, regular visitor to Italy.” They all three sounded like accusations.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been on the move here in Venice. Never two nights in the same hotel.” His accent was Veneto, but not Venetian.
“No, well, you see—”
“Never mind about that. We’ve had quite a long statement from your girlfriend, and from a certain Alvise Ballarin.”
“Ah. So he—”
“He came to us this morning.”
“He’s got nothing to do with any of this business.”
“So he kept saying. We believe him. I gave him a good bawling out all the same. Idiots, all of you.”
I suppose I should have felt a sudden wave of relief at this point, but Menegazzi’s tone didn’t encourage it. It wasn’t one of avuncular tolerance for our scampish escapades; it rather suggested that he would like to see idiocy as a jailable offense.
He went on: “I now want the whole of your story.”
“What about the terrorists—that island—”
“I told you; your girlfriend gave us a statement. We sent boats out. Found the two who’d got shot and the two who’d been bashed on the head.”
“What—you caught them?”
“They made no resistance. All declared themselves political prisoners and refused to speak.”
“Were they badly hurt?”
“More than you. That bother you?”
“No.”
“Good. Wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said yes.” At this discovery that I was as callous as he was, there was the faintest hint in his voice of a mellowing toward me, as if he wasn’t going to set the electrodes under my testicles just yet. “Your friend is going to identify them.”
“And the others?”
“No trace.”
“Okay. So what do you want to know?” This news definitely helped my position: whatever my precedents were, I had contributed to the arrest of four terrorists. Maybe they’d give me a medal.
“The whole story of your cretinous interfering.”
Well, maybe not a medal. “I suppose it started when I met Toni Sambon.” There now: that was the end of my protective reticence. I went on talking. I kept Francesca out of my account and, on a sudden rush of generosity, Mr. Robin and his school: but I withheld no detail of my own actions, even the most truly cretinous ones—like my entering of Busetto’s flat. Menegazzi let out a snort as I told him this part and I said a definitive bye-bye to the medal. He didn’t even look faintly impressed when I described my trick with the iron bar on the island. He put in occasional questions, using his cigarette as an extra admonitory finger. I picked up snippets of information from his questions, such a
s the fact that Osgood’s business was being looked into in England, and Zennaro was still in hiding.
At the end he said, “It ties together. Most of it.” But he didn’t look satisfied. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and rolled it around there, as if he really was putting in for an Edward G. Robinson look-alike competition. Then he said, with the cigarette still there, “But there are too many coincidences.”
“Yes, well—”
“Never mind.” He took the cigarette out again. “You’ll stay the night here. That’s our decision. As far as the doctors are concerned you could walk out now. We’ll keep a couple of our men on guard and tomorrow we’ll probably come and ask some more questions.”
“Where’s Lucy?”
“She’s safe.”
“Can I contact anyone?”
“Who?”
“Well, Alvise Ballarin for example.”
“Wait.” He switched the recorder off and put it back in his case. Then he got up and left with no more than a nod. He was already fishing out his lighter. I was left with a hundred and one other questions—like, where were my clothes?
* * *
Was I under arrest or just being protected for my own good? This was the question I went to sleep with, and woke up with. The policeman outside the room made no objections to my walking down the corridor for a pee, and certainly didn’t come and stand guard outside the loo door. But then he probably guessed I wasn’t likely to make a run for it in a nightgown.
Well, at least I didn’t have to piss in a bucket, I told myself.
I took stock of my room: I had a view of the lagoon, with the cemetery isle just visible through the mist. (I’d often thought what a cheery sight this must be for all the wards on the lagoon side of the hospital.) There was a pair of cheap but wearable slippers under the bed, a chest of drawers that contained sheets and a rather tatty but quite warm dressing gown. I suppose I wasn’t the first patient who’d turned up with nothing.
As far as the nurses were concerned I was just another patient. One of them came and took my temperature—normal—and checked the bandages and plumped up the pillows. I was given a cappuccino and a soggy croissant: I thought of my breakfasts over the previous week with nostalgia. I asked for and was given a copy of the Gazzettino. There wasn’t a word about me or Lucy in it, nor about the arrests: presumably they’d happened too late at night. (Or the editor had been in a bar on the other side of town.) I read the general news and then lay back on the pillows listening to the Sunday-morning bells of the surrounding churches and thinking.
At around midday Lucy called: the policeman on guard had a word in his walkie-talkie and was told he could let her through.
She walked in, her hands in the pockets of her gray coat, her face serene and smiling. She came straight over and kissed me.
“Hi,” I said. I looked through the door’s glass panel. “I think that kiss is just getting clearance.” The policeman was talking into his radio again. “You might have been passing me the secret microfilm in your tooth.”
“Oh.” She drew away a little, her cheeks flushing. “How are you?”
“Fine. I apparently have only ‘soft-tissue injuries.’ No bones or ligaments affected.”
“Good.”
“Well, it’s a lot better than I’d ever have thought judging by how I felt. Anyway, where are you being held?”
“I’m not. I was questioned most of the night at Burano and then at the Questura here, and then they told me I could go. I had to leave my passport, mind you.”
“Well, I’ve had to leave my clothes. Where did you sleep?”
“They fixed up a room in a pensione near the Questura and told me not to go out too much. But then I thought, seeing it’s Carnival, I could put a mask on.” She pulled a simple spangled mask out of her pocket.
“Ah yes. But how did you get on to me here?”
“I just asked down at reception.”
“Oh, great,” I said. “And they told you just like that.”
“Well, they asked for identification and then phoned someone or other. Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Yes, yes. Just imagining Padoan down there asking.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t dare.”
“No, of course not. Great big hospital receptionist, probably on a hot line to NATO headquarters.”
She laughed. “I expect Padoan’s halfway to Africa now.”
“Do you really think so?”
She thought for a second or two and shook her head. “I don’t know. Listen, have you really got no clothes?”
“Just what you can see.”
“Well, I could go and fetch something from Alvise’s.”
“Thanks. That would be a help.” I suddenly remembered I had a set of clothes still at the laundry near Via Garibaldi. Well, there was no reason why Lucy should have to go there as well. “You couldn’t lend me some money? Just so I can buy a paper and make a phone call and things.”
“Of course. Ten thousand enough?”
“Plenty. Thanks. So what did they ask you?” I said.
She told me what she’d told them: as she talked I noticed the lines of strain around her mouth and eyes, and a new nervous habit of pushing at her hair. It struck me that I’d been the lucky one—just going to sleep at the end of the whole business, while she’d had to put up with hours of interrogation—bright lights and hard faces and Menegazzi no doubt blowing smoke into her eyes. It was probably worth a bullet to have got out of that.
“I told them all about you,” she said. “Mind you, they already knew a lot; but I told them what a romantic idiot you were.”
“What a what?”
“Oh, you know—you and Cima da Conegliano.”
“Oh, yeah. Me and him.” Well, it was a nicer coupling than me and Osgood, or me and Zennaro.
“You know: how you’re obviously out to—to redeem yourself.”
“I see. And how did a roomful of antiterrorist cops take this?”
“Well, the chief one—Menega … Menegallo?”
“Menegazzi.”
“Yes, him. He nodded and smiled.”
“Smiled?”
“Yes. Quite a nice smile.”
“You obviously have to be blue-eyed and feminine to get that from him. So he believed it?”
“I think so. He said it all—‘quadrava.’ Tied together, I suppose. I did get a bit confused at the beginning because I couldn’t remember all the names: well, I got Busetto and Zennaro mixed up.”
“Ah. You’re never very brilliant with names, are you?” This little fact suddenly tickled my mind, like a loose dangling thread that I knew led somewhere, but as I tried to follow it through it flicked out of my mind’s grasp.
She was saying, “And then I had to identify the four of them that they caught, but of course I’d only had glimpses of them without their masks. Still, it was only a formality.”
“How did they look?”
“Heroic and defiant: you know, martyrs to the cause.” She paused. “Bastards.”
“Yes. Except I suppose they think of themselves as romantic idiots. Them and Che Guevara, me and Cima.”
“Don’t talk rubbish. They’re killers. You’re just a dreamy fool.”
“My God. And all this time I’ve been thinking of myself as a hard-bitten ex-con.”
“Exactly—just like Rick in Casablanca. Romantic underneath it all.”
“I hope you didn’t say that to Menegazzi.” I sat up straighter in bed. “Did he mention coincidences to you?”
“No.”
“Ah. Well, he did to me, and I’ve been thinking hard. Also about loose ends. Like, how you said the terrorists got on to you.”
“What about it?”
“Well, they didn’t know about you working for the Britannia School, did they?”
“No,” she said, obviously thinking hard. “At least not then.”
“Another thing. Why does the Britannia School course choose that hotel?”
“Th
ey’ve always gone there. When I did the course myself, most of the students were there.”
“Well, you weren’t.”
“No, but only because there were so many that year that some of us had to overflow to another place. I think the hotel offers Mr. Robin special prices.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never asked. I think it was just a promotion deal when the hotel opened.”
I remembered that the woman had told me she hadn’t been there very long. “I see,” I said. “Have you got in touch with Mr. Robin?”
“Not yet. But it was a weekend off for me anyway. There’s no reason why I should have been missed.”
“So you’re just going to go back to your job tomorrow, without saying a word.”
“I don’t know. Not if the police say I’m still in danger here.”
“So back to London?”
“Martin, give me a moment or two. And yourself?”
“I’ve still got to redeem myself, haven’t I? That Cima’s not been found yet.”
“Oh, God.” She got up and kissed me again. “Well, I suppose I love you for what you are, not despite it. Which probably makes me a romantic fool too.”
“Well, a fool, after all I’ve put you through.”
“I won’t say I’ve loved every minute of it—but it was worth it.” Her eyes had lost their tiredness.
I suddenly felt better than I’d felt for several days: a crazy wave of optimism had gone rushing through my veins—for the first time I felt there were good things ahead. Nothing definite—no pictures of domestic peace in a country cottage, or my pictures winning prizes at the Biennale—just a general feeling that there was light at the end of the tunnel: and not the oncoming train, or a cigarette lighter poised against my paintings, but real daylight—like the glow in her eyes.
Well, she’d said I was a romantic idiot. “Thanks,” I said. It wasn’t a brilliant speech, but I followed it up well.
The door opened and we broke apart again, Lucy flaring away like a traffic signal. It was my lunch being brought in by a woman in white. “Visiting time is over,” she announced.
“Okay. I’ll come back this afternoon, Martin. With clothes. Four o’clock okay?”
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