The Lizard's Bite nc-4

by David Hewson

Teresa was staring at the approaching island next to the vaporetto jetty, its trio of buildings misty in the heat haze. Costa followed the line of her gaze. Something about the Isola degli Arcangeli disturbed him. The place clung onto the side of Murano proper by that single metal bridge, with its iconic angel, unsteadily, as if it were unsure whether to belong, or whether to cast itself off into the shallow waters of the lagoon.

  “You’d think . . .” she murmured. “I just don’t know. I’ve persuaded Silvio to do a little work on the case. We’ll see.”

  “Oh wonderful,” Peroni groaned. “How does Leo manage that? Getting everyone else in the shit alongside him?”

  Teresa gave him a sharp glance. “I rather thought we were invited because we’re good at our jobs.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .” Peroni waved a big hand at her. “I keep hearing that. But this isn’t our place, remember. This belongs to the Venetians, and frankly they’re welcome to it. We’ve got our orders from the commissario. A nice neat investigation. Wrap it up. Then go home.” He put a huge arm around Teresa Lupo’s hefty shoulders. “Home,” Peroni emphasised. “Just by doing what we’re told for once. Is it that hard?”

  Yes, Costa thought, but didn’t say it. Something stank about the Arcangelo case and they all knew that. Spontaneous combustion. Damaged keys. Aldo Bracci too, locked inside his own house on Murano, an angry mob outside willing him to go. Costa couldn’t get the picture of Bracci out of his head. There was more than just misery inside the man. There was knowledge too, something he was, perhaps, wondering whether to share.

  Teresa got back to the point. “Silvio’s got some ideas. About this spontaneous combustion thing. He’s more the chemist than I am. I’ve sent him some material to work on. Perhaps tomorrow, the day after, we’ll know more.”

  “What sort of material?” Costa asked.

  “Fibres. From his clothes. People don’t just catch fire, Nic. Not in this world. It was very hot in there. Very strange conditions. Uriel was partly deaf and had lost his sense of smell too. Someone who knew that could have doctored the apron. There’s an explanation. Physical laws apply. It’s just a question of understanding them. Maybe . . .”

  She stopped. The two men looked at her. It wasn’t like Teresa Lupo to be lost for words.

  “Maybe what?” Peroni pressed.

  “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s a kind of witchcraft. Or more accurately, a kind of alchemy. I’ve been reading up on the way they make glass. That is alchemy of a sort. They use chemicals and processes going back hundreds of years. If you wanted to set up a furnace like that now, somewhere else, the health and safety authorities would probably kick you out of town as soon as they saw the stuff you wanted to use. Glass is beautiful, but what goes into it to make all those colours, all those features . . . I wouldn’t want it round me day in and day out. Perhaps the suit or the apron picked up some substance. Accidentally. Or . . .”

  She gave them that sly look, the one that said, You should be thinking this, boys. “If anyone could come up with some way of faking spontaneous combustion, don’t you think it would be a man who knew the inside of a glass foundry?”

  Costa thought about the shattered furnace. Teresa was, as usual, on the ball. They should have done so much more.

  “And Bella was pregnant,” Peroni added. “You gave us that. Thanks. Though I don’t imagine her brother’s too grateful.”

  “Oh yes,” she murmured. “The brother.”

  Peroni must have told her about what had happened that afternoon. Something didn’t ring true.

  “On the face of it,” Costa said, “the brother’s the best suspect we’ve got. The only suspect. We know he was messing around with Bella once. He admitted it himself. His only alibi comes from his sons, neither of whom I’d trust for a moment. If Bella had told him about the pregnancy, and the fact the child couldn’t be Uriel’s, he had a motive too. To keep her quiet.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “If I were Leo Falcone,” she said primly, “I’d say you were trying to make your suspicions fit your facts. Bracci and Bella were playing those games thirty years ago, weren’t they?”

  “Something like that,” Costa confirmed.

  “I’m no expert in incest or sexual abuse. But I am a woman. I’ve got to tell you, it doesn’t fit. Why would they turn back the clock? Most people in that situation would want to put the past behind them. Never remember for one moment all the stupid nonsense they got up to when they were kids. They wouldn’t want to take those memories out of the box and bring them back to life. What are the stats for incest among people in their forties, outside the boondocks?”

  “This is the boondocks,” Peroni grumbled.

  “Is it?” Costa asked. “It’s a closed community. I don’t think that’s the same thing.”

  “I agree,” Teresa said firmly. “This place is too urban. Someone would surely have known if it had started again. Something would surely have happened.”

  Peroni poked his head around the side of the boat. The familiar yellow sign of the Faro floating jetty was bobbing up and down on the water ahead. And something new: two bright blue neon signs had been erected on the little island next door. One, over the foundry, shone above the fresh glass and woodwork, announcing Fornace. The second was five times its size and spanned the entire entrance of the palace in a large semicircle.

  “The Palazzo degli Arcangeli,” Peroni read, squinting at the sign in the distance. “Something did happen, if you recall.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  She wasn’t going to start an argument. Costa understood her point all the same.

  The vaporetto lurched to a sudden halt. Its klaxon sounded. Loud, furious voices issued from the cabin ahead. It was one of those rare incidents of a dispute on the lagoon. Two vessels cutting in front of one another, trying to fight for domination of the busy waves.

  Nic Costa stuck out his head to see what was going on. Piero Scacchi’s grubby motorboat was edging out from the jetty by the furnace, the black, taut shape of Xerxes seated amidships, in front of the figure of his master, working the helm. The vessel carried no obvious cargo. He could have made some kind of delivery, perhaps to help restart the furnace.

  Scacchi fought his way past the stalled vaporetto, ignoring the curses coming from the cabin, then turned up the feeble motor, raising the vessel to what Costa guessed must have been its maximum speed. He looked glad to be leaving Murano, pointing the nose of his little craft straight for Sant’ Erasmo.

  “Hey!” Peroni yelled. “Piero!”

  His voice was lost in the roar of the vaporetto’s engine. Probably just as well, Costa thought. Piero Scacchi was a player in these proceedings too. He lived in a place where the country habits Teresa ruled out in Murano were, perhaps, not entirely unknown. And he was privy, surely, to information on Hugo Massiter. Costa was unable to keep from poking at the story of Massiter’s brush with the law five years earlier, and those two disappeared characters in that episode, Daniel Forster and Laura Conti. He wondered what they would have to say in response to Massiter’s version of those events. All the more so now, since Emily seemed destined to spend some time in the Englishman’s presence.

  A sound—distant, delightful—drifted across the still evening air. From the open doors of the palace came the lilting notes of a small orchestra, the violins foremost, music that, to Costa’s largely uneducated ear, sounded like Vivaldi. He strained to see beyond the boat stop, towards the private island. White banners now festooned the iron bridge and the arms of the skeletal angel. Beyond, by the long, narrow jetty outside the palace, one never used before when Costa had visited the island, a long line of private water taxies was queuing to unload its human cargo. They were all in carnival costume: Renaissance, Baroque, English Elizabethan. The women stood waiting to disembark in bright, shining, full-length dresses, silk, damask and velvet, mantles around their shoulders, fans flickering, feathered hats pointing skywards. The men were equally varied: fake noblemen, pirates, soldi
ers, others dressed as commedia dell’arte figures, Harlequin in patchwork with his trademark stick, the plague doctor with his long, vicious beak, Pulcinella in sugarloaf hat and white baggy costume.

  “Oh my God,” Teresa murmured. “It’s Leo.”

  Falcone’s unmistakable lean, erect figure was indeed visible on the jetty. He was wearing a restrained dark uniform, like that of an old-fashioned military officer. Lines of gold braid stood on his shoulders. Colourful medals adorned his chest.

  “The bastard,” Teresa complained. “He knew it was fancy dress all along.”

  Raffaella Arcangelo stood next to him, in mourning still. Her medieval-style ankle-length dress was solid, dull black. At its high neckline an ornate lace collar, again the colour of night, allowed only a glimpse of the pale flesh beneath. Her long hair was tied back, parted in the middle, held by a pearl-studded band.

  “Now that,” Teresa added, “looks like a couple.”

  Peroni eyed the starry crowd mournfully, then jerked his old, rather shiny tie tight to his thick neck, hoping, perhaps, the crooked knot would hide the missing button on his shirt.

  “Thank you, Leo,” the big man moaned. “Thanks a million.”

  Teresa gave him a straight look. “What’s your beef? You’re wearing a tie. For you that is fancy dress.”

  “But . . .”

  “But if you knew,” she continued, “you’d never have come. Would you?”

  There was another figure on the jetty now. She was walking out onto the bare stone jetty in a long, piercingly bright white gown, a set of swan-feather wings on her back, the perfect, golden-haired angel, poised outside the shining glass palace, her outline dancing in the faintly malodorous heat like a figure from a dream.

  Emily Deacon looked immensely happy, fulfilled. At home on the terrace of this palazzo, a place where Costa knew he could never feel at ease. Accompanying her was Hugo Massiter, wearing the costume of a key figure from the commedia dell’arte. Il Capitano, the boastful, violent soldier, a bundle of arrogance hidden inside a naval officer’s blue uniform, a fake sword by his side, owner of a painted mask with a long phallic nose which now sat on Massiter’s shoulder, its expression veering between covetousness and cowardice.

  Something flickered inside Nic Costa’s head: a memory from school. Of all those old theatre stories, one in particular. About the Captain and how he kidnapped the lovely Isabella, the inamorata, the innocent and beautiful woman in love who never needed to hide behind a mask or, if Costa recalled correctly, saw much behind the masks of others either.

  THE INTERIOR OF THE PALAZZO DEGLI ARCANGELI WAS breathtaking. Banks of orchids and roses massed in fragrant lines at the hall’s edges. Broad white ribbons ran in festoons from the wood and metal superstructure of the building, meeting to form a crown around the trunk of the fossilised palm tree at its centre. The three rising semicircles of glass now glittered with the winking eyes of hundreds of tiny floodlights set over the crowd below, a field of anonymous actors playing such old, old parts Costa had to delve deep into his childhood to remember their names. At the rear, on a low podium, the small orchestra was sawing away, still audible over the chatter of three hundred people, enough to make up several commedia dell’arte troupes.

  Nic Costa thought he could detect Emily’s touch in places: vases of tall white lilies, a handful of medieval paintings, copies probably, hung in old gold frames, and skeins of fine gold wire, wrought in fluid, writhing shapes five metres above the crowd, like a near-invisible skin between them and the fragile glass high above. Everything was muted yet purposeful too. Still, the event had the feeling of a party taking place in some newly reborn building waiting to find its purpose, a place that had woken from some long slumber only to find itself invaded by vandals.

  They conversed briefly with Leo Falcone and Raffaella, who clung to the inspector’s arm looking a little cowed by the evening’s glamour. Then they ploughed on, feeling awkward in such company, Costa searching for Emily again in the gaudy packed throng, Peroni and Teresa following in his wake.

  It was soon apparent that the entire Arcangelo clan was there. Most men wore the bauta, the tight powder-white traditional mask that fitted over the nose and cheeks, but left the mouth free for eating and drinking. Even so, these were modern times. After a little while in the baking, close room, the awkward fittings must have grown tiresome. Both Arcangelo brothers were out of theirs within minutes. Michele conversed with a woman Costa didn’t recognise, looking animated, cheerful almost. A different creature from the surly individual they’d tried to pump for information earlier. Gabriele was less changed. Miserable in his plague doctor costume, he stood alone, close to the drinks table, his long-nosed mask on his shoulder, gulping at a glass of spritz, unwilling or unable to strike up a conversation with anyone.

  Costa excused himself as he pushed past a couple who were still masked and dressed like neon peacocks, in a fashion that seemed more suited to a carnival in Brazil than a private party in Venice. Then he rounded a table of canapés, sighed as Peroni picked up a fistful and began munching, turned and found himself staring into the dry, dead face of Gianfranco Randazzo.

  “Someone else in civilian dress,” the commissario moaned, glancing at Peroni too. “That’s a relief. Are you wondering what the hell you’re doing at this charade?”

  “Eating,” Peroni declared, holding up a couple of delicate biscuits bearing bresaola, wind-dried beef, topped with sautéed porcini. The big man grimaced at his glass of prosecco. “Don’t suppose they’ve got any beer here?”

  “Duty officers aren’t supposed to drink,” Randazzo said curtly.

  “We’re aware of that, sir,” Costa replied, toasting the commissario. In spite of Peroni’s protests it was good stuff, better than the weak fizz he usually found in the Veneto. “Right now we’re off duty. Right now we can do what the hell we like.”

  Randazzo scowled. The man seemed tense, more unhappy than usual. “So what’s new? I suppose I ought to be grateful. At least I get a break from the complaints. You know we hardly ever need to send a man to Murano. It’s that kind of place. Now I’ve got three out there. Doing nothing but push back the crowds. Why didn’t you just take Bracci into custody?”

  “On what grounds?” Peroni asked, intrigued.

  “That’s for you to invent,” Randazzo snapped. “Do I have to tell you everything?”

  The commissario glanced at Teresa Lupo. Her presence made him uneasy somehow, a fact she wasn’t likely to miss.

  “I suppose you had a good day too,” he mumbled. “Poking your nose in our business. I should have been told about that trip to Tosi. Before it happened.”

  “Tosi phoned you?” she asked, surprised.

  “Of course! He works for me.”

  “Lucky man,” Teresa Lupo said pleasantly, then turned her back on him and rejoined Peroni.

  Randazzo prodded Costa in the chest. “There are limits,” he said, “to what I will take from you three.”

  Nic Costa wasn’t interested in pursuing this conversation. Randazzo was a small man. Massiter’s man, if Costa understood the situation correctly. He was here because he’d been told to be here. The grumpy, sour-faced commissario could entertain himself. Besides, he’d spotted Emily. She was over on the far side of the room, a dreamlike figure in white, free of Massiter, getting an energetic chat-up line from some idiot dressed up like an eighteenth-century French aristocrat.

  Nic Costa nodded at Randazzo. “I genuinely believe that to be true, sir. If you’ll excuse me.”

  Then, with a mild shoulder charge, a toned-down version of the play from his rugby days, Costa was through the costumed scrum, pushing them aside with a stream of muttered apologies, determined she wouldn’t get away.

  He picked up two fresh glasses of prosecco from a bewigged waiter in blue silk and backed his way through the throng to find her.

  Emily laughed, a warm, entrancing sound, and took her glass.

  His eyes roved over the white, white angel
costume, the perfect feathered wings. “I brought your clothes. You asked me. And this . . .”

  He took the tiny bouquet of bloodred peperoncini from Piero Scacchi’s smallholding out of his pocket.

  “Doesn’t seem much, in these surroundings.”

  Emily placed the waxy peppers carefully in the feathers of her right wing, where they stood like some strange, symmetrical wound.

  “It’s the loveliest thing I’ve seen all day,” she told him.

  There was a wicked radiance in her eyes. This was all a game. A tease, maybe.

  “Don’t you like it?” Emily Deacon revolved once, like an ethereal model, just for his eyes.

  “No.”

  “Nic!”

  He scowled. “I like it. Where on earth did you get it?”

  “Hugo ordered it from some costumier in the city. It was his idea.”

  “I bet. Did he have any others?”

  She blinked. “I suspect so,” she answered frankly. “I learned quite a lot about Hugo Massiter today.”

  “Does any of it help?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She ducked backwards, behind one of the slender iron columns that ran in a line close to each edge of the hall, supporting the balcony above. There were crowds above them, scores of people, their feet clattering on the ironwork. The place seemed too delicate to be real. Her bright, sharp eyes scanned the mob to make sure no one was listening. The lively sound of the orchestra, now working its way through the spring section of the Seasons, rang behind them.

  “Probably not,” she disclosed quietly. “I learned that he’s obsessed with Laura Conti. The woman who almost ruined him, if you remember.”

  Costa nodded. The story of Laura Conti and Daniel Forster wouldn’t go away.

  “He doesn’t look the romantic type to me. He’s rich. The kind of man who could have pretty much any woman he feels like.”

  “I can’t believe you said that!” she complained. “Do you really think it’s only about the money?”

  “No! I meant . . . He’s not married. He seems a solitary type, not someone to enter into a long-term relationship. I rather thought men like that attracted a certain kind of woman.”