“Basta,” said Padoan. “There is no point in further conversation.” His voice was conclusive; maybe he realized he’d given away the fact that he too had feelings.
We passed a couple of gondolas bearing French tourists in eighteenth-century costume who cheered our masks. One of them made Donald Duck noises. We none of us acknowledged them. Nobody could see my gun, as I was pressed in close to Lucio—and even if they had been able to, I suppose they would just have taken it for another piece of Carnival jollity.
Bloody Carnival, I thought, along with half the Venetian population.
Then I saw a small carabiniere boat, coming around the bend in the Grand Canal, by the Fontego dei Turchi. It was about fifty yards away—and we were going to turn off right in another few seconds. I looked at it and said suddenly with a forced note of triumph, “Carabinieri!”
Padoan didn’t swivel around, as I’d rather forlornly hoped—though not expected. He said to Lucio, “True?”
“Yes, but we’re turning now.” And he began to swing the boat into the side canal.
Padoan now gave the merest flicker of a glance aside—the beak wobbled to one side. As he did so his left hand made the slightest of movements on his knee as if he were about to lift it; the right hand stayed rigidly raised and pointing inside the pocket.
And as he made this tiny movement I suddenly saw a clear picture in my mind: I saw him in my studio in Acton, standing by the easel and flicking a cigarette lighter—with his left hand.
I knew I had to take the biggest gamble in my life—in the next half second.
I shoved Lucio viciously with my gun hand and my shoulder, and, even before he hit the water, swiveled the gun in Padoan’s direction: he froze, his left hand halfway inside his coat, where it had lunged for his holster under the right armpit, and his right hand outside his pocket—empty.
“Hands up,” I said. “Slowly.”
The boat was rocking wildly of course, but even so, for one second I had the sensation that he and I were locked more fixedly than ever in a frozen tableau—it was Venice that was swirling and swooping. His eyes stared into mine, but for the first time they must have received a message and not just transmitted one: he must have seen in my eyes my absolute determination, because during that split second I knew—knew, beyond a shadow of doubt—that at the first sign of swift movement I would kill him. His hand came slowly out from his coat, empty. He raised both hands.
As he did so I became aware of the thousand things that were happening around us: the crazy rocking of the boat, the gabble of excited French and Italian and Venetian, the thrashing and splashing of Lucio, the vaporetto with a hundred faces turned in our direction, the carabiniere boat speeding toward us—and the perfection of the Grand Canal—completely unaffected by our little squabble. Well, what else would one expect of the Serenissima?
I found myself smiling. I was going to get to paint it after all.
22
“YOU must have all looked very silly,” Lucy said.
“What?” I was thrown for a moment. “Oh, well, yes, I suppose so. Right then I didn’t actually think of that. Er, is that all you’re going to say?”
“Oh, no, of course, you were wonderful. A real hero.” And she leaned across the table to kiss me.
“Well, I wasn’t bad, actually,” I said. “though I says it meself. Excuse a smirk or two.”
“I bet Menegazzi didn’t let you do much smirking.”
“No, that’s why I want to indulge myself with you.”
We were eating at a restaurant not far from Lucy’s hotel and the old Palazzo Sambon. (There being no apparent reason for further anonymity, she was going back there, to her pajamas and her job.) The only other customers were a French couple who’d obviously had a row and were drinking cappuccinos in a sullen silence that made their clown costumes and makeup look a trifle incongruous. The place had probably been full earlier on, but it was now almost midnight, and indeed it was only because the waiter knew Lucy that we’d been given a table—for a quick pasta dish and wine. We’d finished the pasta and were now killing the bottle—or rather the jug, which bore the Venetian slogan, “Magna, bevi e tasi. Eat, drink, and shut up.” For most of the meal we’d obeyed this injunction, having been too weary and hungry to do otherwise.
I’d spent the last seven or eight hours in the Questura, answering questions—mostly the same questions, asked by different people—dictating declarations, explaining things, and even, for two crazy minutes, being photographed by the press, an experience that had woken many less happy memories: Menegazzi had been by my side and fielded all the questions for me; I’d limited myself to an occasional “I’m very relieved it’s over,” “I’m happy to have helped save the paintings,” “Yes, I was very frightened.” Later I’d looked out of the window of the Questura and seen a police boat come rushing up the canal and then get sent back by the television reporters, whose cameras hadn’t been focused properly at that moment; an interview with an unshaven English painter was okay for a few seconds or so but the viewers would want their license money’s worth of action as well.
“And he didn’t mellow at all?” Lucy asked about Menegazzi.
“Well, I’m not in jail for destruction of hospital property and sheer idiocy, so I suppose by his lights he mellowed. And in fact, after a bit of a lecture about vigilantes and people taking justice into their own hands, he said something along the lines of: Well, at least it worked out all right.”
“He talked about vigilantes?”
“Yes. I kept pointing out that I wasn’t Charles Bronson out to clean up the streets: all I’d wanted to do was save the paintings.”
She looked at me with her glass to her lips and said, “But tell me, did you—” She stopped.
“Did I what?”
“Well, did you feel just the slightest temptation to pull that trigger?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
“I suppose what held me back was just the thought that it would—it would make a beautiful moment ugly.”
“Get blood on the paintings, you mean.”
“Well, yes.” I sipped my wine. “Maybe I haven’t got a morality, just a sense of aesthetic fitness. Like the Borgias. At that moment I was really feeling things like—well, like a painter. I mean, it was my painter’s eye that had saved me—that visual memory of Padoan’s left-handedness; and it was a determination to live to paint again that kept my nerves steady. And it was, well, it was the thought of Cima and the perfection of his work that kept me from blowing Padoan’s guts out.”
“I see. Another of those miracle-working paintings. And you didn’t even get to see it—them.”
“No. Only on television. They let me watch the news in a back room. Menegazzi standing next to the pictures and saying something about my rather foolish but fortunately successful action. And the rest was all, ‘Brilliant operation by the antiterrorist forces,’ et cetera, et cetera.” I paused. “Still the Cima looked good.”
“And what about Padoan? How did he look, once the, er, mask was off?” She put these last three words in quotation marks.
“A boring little academic. Which was apparently what he once had been.”
“And he didn’t make any last desperate move, or anything like that?”
“No. I suppose he was never one for useless risks. Perhaps when he’s studied the whole situation in a completely rational way, he might hang himself in his cell. In a completely rational way, of course.”
“Anyway,” she said, “you’re redeemed, right?” She poured me another glass of wine. “You’ve proved you’re on the side of civilization.”
“Well,” I said, “I like to think so—but probably, in a year’s time, all anyone will remember is that that junkie forger was mixed up in art smuggling and terrorism as well.”
“Don’t be so cynical. You know you don’t really believe that.”
“Well, do you remember that headline in The Star when it came out that I’d forged a
Renoir nude: ‘Experts fooled by nude in playboy drug case.’ Sheer genius that, to get so much spice into eight words.”
“I remember. You a playboy. I wondered if they’d ever seen how you dressed.”
I smiled. “All Italy did this evening: baggy terrorist trousers and sweater. They didn’t send anyone round to the hospital for the clothes you’d taken there until about eight o’clock.”
“With your apologies for the sheets, I suppose.”
“Yes. But as I said to Menegazzi, I couldn’t think of any other way of making a discreet exit from the hospital—and I’d known Mr. Robin for years: I had to get to see him personally. I couldn’t just send the police round. I had to check I was right, and hear his version of the facts.”
“Poor Derek.”
“Yes. This is one scandal he’s not going to be able to get around by sacking the person responsible.”
“Well, he’s not actually under arrest at the moment, is he?”
“No. He’s in libertà provvisoria—on bail. Paid for, I imagine, by the Britannia School. I suppose at bottom I feel sorry for him too—which is probably more than he ever did for me.” I finished the glass and looked out of the window. “Funny.”
“What?”
“That’s the third time I’ve seen that man go past.”
“What man?”
“Well, I presume it’s the same man: a big cloak and a black mask.”
“Oh, come on, Martin. Haven’t you had enough melodrama for one day?”
“For a lifetime. Sorry. It was just an observation. I expect he’s just a lost tourist. I’ve probably gone paranoid.” I turned back to her. “Anyway where does Mr. Robin’s dilemma leave you?”
“Out of work I suppose. Still, as I told you, I never thought of this as being my career.”
“So back to acting?” I looked out of the window again.
“I hope I’m not boring you,” she said with gentle sarcasm.
“Sorry, but there he goes again.”
“Go and ask him what he wants.”
She was probably still being sarcastic, but I said, “I think I will.” I got up and told the waiter to prepare the bill—to his obvious relief. The French couple had finished their cappuccinos and were now drinking digestivi, which perhaps partly explained the new looks of disgust and fury beneath their painted smiles. With an explanatory murmur to the waiter (“I think there’s a friend outside…”) I stepped out into the alley. The cloaked man was a few yards away; he turned around as I came out, but instead of a face presented a mere black blur. I was suddenly aware of the silence and emptiness of the alley, even though the restaurant door was just behind me.
“Excuse me,” I said in Italian, “but are you lost?”
“No. I want to speak to you.” The voice was a hoarse whisper. It brought to mind uncheering notions, such as a worm-eaten face behind the mask, or a mere empty skull.…
I forced myself to ask a reasonable question. “Who are you?”
“Come out with your girlfriend and I’ll tell you. I want to speak to both of you.”
“Why don’t you come inside?”
“It’s better outside.”
“Martin, can I help?” It was Lucy. She was standing by the cash desk, paying the bill, and had leaned over and opened the door to ask this question.
“He wants to speak to both of us.”
“Who is he?”
“He won’t tell.”
“I’m not coming out unless he takes off that mask.”
I turned back to the black figure and said, “Did you understand?” I translated what Lucy had said.
“I don’t intend any harm.”
I suddenly recognized the voice. “Zennaro.”
“What?” He was caught off guard and spoke in his normal voice, at once “correcting” himself with a hoarse whisper of the same word. I could now see the mask; it was of black plaster, with a mouth slit and eyeholes. With the hood of his cloak over his head, the effect was of total darkness.
“I think you can come out,” I said to Lucy. “He’s safe enough.”
“You think?” she said.
I said to Zennaro, “Is there any point in keeping the mask on now?”
“If I want to I will,” he said, almost sulkily, and making only the feeblest attempt at a hoarse whisper now.
“I really don’t think you need to worry,” I said to Lucy.
“Who is he?”
“He’s Zennaro—you remember: the man in Busetto’s pay.”
“Signorina!” This was the waiter’s voice, complaining—reasonably enough—about Lucy’s holding the door open.
“Hang on,” I said to Zennaro. I slipped inside the restaurant and got my coat. Lucy put hers on too. She said, “Look, what the hell does he want?”
“I don’t know. To talk to us. I’m sure he’s not dangerous. And anyway there are two of us.”
She frowned but said, “Okay.”
We said good night to the waiter and joined Zennaro in the alley. “How did you know where to find me?” I asked as we started walking in the direction of the hotel. He walked by my side, forcing Lucy to tag along a few steps behind. It was surprising how his appearance had lost all its suggestions of the sinister the moment I’d recognized his voice: even as masked mystery man he was a washout.
“I saw you on television,” he said, “and they said you worked for the Britannia School. I know the Britannia School has people staying in the hotel here, so I came and asked for you and they told me you might have come here with this lady.”
“Who told you?” I said.
“Some English girls.”
Lucy said, “Well, I didn’t tell them.”
“Never mind,” I said. “They probably married us off the moment you took me upstairs to wash my face.” I turned back to Zennaro. “And why the urgency to see me?”
“I want to know what you’re up to.”
“Wasn’t that clear from the news? I was looking for those paintings.”
Lucy suddenly pulled me away from Zennaro. “Martin, be careful.”
“What?”
“The voice.”
“What do you mean?”
“His voice.”
“What about—oh, no. Put it down.” From inside his cloak Zennaro had pulled out his flick knife. He stood against the wall in that vague crouching stance I remembered from his studio. He had either understood what Lucy had said, or had been put on his guard by her attitude and tone of voice. Or maybe he just liked pulling knives out. At any rate the cloak and mask had suddenly reacquired a few suggestions of the sinister.
“Don’t you see?” Lucy said. “He’s the man who was in the palazzo that night.”
“What?” I was still watching that gently circling blade, which caught the nearby lamplight.
“It was him—that voice—that knife.”
Lucy had been speaking English. I said in Italian, “Was it you that night in Palazzo Sambon?”
He said, “Yes—and what were you doing there?”
“Look, why don’t you put that knife down?”
“I want to know what you were doing there.”
“And I want to know what you were doing there.”
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Lucy said. She put her hand out and said in sudden stern Italian: “Give me that knife.”
The next moment it was in her hand. She didn’t exactly snatch it and he didn’t exactly hand it over, but somehow she ended up holding it. She clicked the blade closed and put the knife behind her back. He said, “But—but—” and then shut up, realizing that he would only make himself look sillier.
I said, “Is that how you talk to the students?”
She said, “When I have to.”
“A bit riskier with a murderer.”
“Well, it suddenly seemed to me he couldn’t be one. Not the way he was holding that knife.”
“Oh,” I said. Then: “It looked good enough to me.”
“Film stuff. Not for
real.”
“I see,” I said. “And so you decided he wasn’t a real murderer.”
“I took a gamble which paid off.”
Zennaro broke in rather plaintively. “What are you saying?”
I said, “Did you kill Osgood?”
“The fat man? No.”
“But it was you, not a terrorist, that we met in the palazzo that night?”
“Yes. But I didn’t kill him. He was already dead when I got there.”
“So why did you attack us?” I said.
“I didn’t know who you were. I just wanted to get out.”
“So why were you there?”
“Why were you there?”
“Oh, God,” said Lucy. Then, in her stern voice again: “We heard noises in the palazzo from our hotel, so went to see what was going on. All right?”
“Er, yes,” he said nervously. I half expected him to add, “Sorry, miss,” and touch his hood. He said, “Let’s walk on a bit.” I suppose it wasn’t such a good idea to keep talking under the same windows. We proceeded down the alley, with Zennaro now walking between the two of us, which was just about possible without our actually rubbing shoulders.
He went on: “I’d been following that fat man.”
“Why?” I asked.
“What else could I do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I heard about Busetto getting killed, and I didn’t know where that left me. I mean, if the police started looking into Busetto’s affairs…”
“Yes, I see,” I said.
“And he hadn’t paid me, so I was really in the shit. I mean, I couldn’t afford to clear out, even if I wanted to. And then I remembered you telling me that the man behind Busetto was staying at the Danieli Hotel, so I thought maybe I could go and have a word with him.”
“What sort of word?”
“Well, point out my situation, and, you know … ask for a bit of help.”
“Very reasonable,” I said.
“So I went along there, and when I asked at the desk, they told me he’d just that minute gone out, but they told me I couldn’t miss him, he was a really fat man in a summer suit. So I went out and saw him going toward the piazza. I followed him to a restaurant, and I kept meaning to go in and have a word, but then thought it was a bit too public, so maybe I should wait till he came out. So I hung around while he ate.”
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