Isle of the Dead

by Alex Connor

  ‘My wife left me. Said she hated me … Up and went. Kids all grown up, so now there’s no one left. ’Cept me,’ Greyly droned on, narrowing his eyes at Nino. ‘What did you come for?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now, and back then. I know you’ve been here before, but I can’t remember why.’

  Sighing, he slopped some of the booze on to his shirt and brushed it away. Despite the fire, the temperature in the room was chill, due to a draught coming from under the doorway which led into another room. A draught which suggested an open door beyond. Wary, Nino glanced around him, his gaze coming to rest on the drinks trolley. There were five bottles of whisky, three empty – and beside them was another glass which had been used recently.

  ‘You’ve had company?’

  Greyly belched, patting his stomach, and pointed to a photograph of his wife and two sons. ‘They’ve gone—’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A week ago.’

  ‘Why did they go?’

  ‘Apparently I’m a pig. Come from a long line of pigs. Pig family. Only I’m a titled pig … A swine with a gong …’ Greyly replied insanely, slurring his words. But although he was drunk there was something else about him. Drugged? Nino wondered. Was he on drugs?

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘Pissed.’

  ‘Apart from that,’ Nino pressed him. ‘Have you been ill?’

  Galvanised, Greyly leant forward in his chair, staring at Nino. ‘You came to the house with Hester – I remember now! She was a nosy old bat, but kind. She brought you here—’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Greyly slumped back in his seat. ‘Hester’s dead now.’

  ‘I know – she fell.’

  To Nino’s surprise, Greyly put his index finger to his lips, jerking his head towards the closed door.

  Following has gaze, Nino glanced over. The draught still snaked from underneath. It was too cold, he realised – too cold for the temperature of a house. Someone had left the back door open. Someone who had left in a hurry. Someone who had watched him arrive and didn’t want to be seen.

  ‘Who’s been here?’

  ‘No one …’ Harold replied, picking at the corner of his left eye.

  By his feet the dogs snuffled and shifted around in their sleep, the room morose and unwelcoming as Greyly carried on drinking. Nino could feel the cold slithering around him. Silently, he moved towards the door.

  But as he reached it, Greyly shook his head.

  ‘No!’

  Nino paused, turning back to him. ‘Who’s in there?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘There are two used glasses, so you must have had company. You might still have company. Who is it?’

  Teetering to his feet, Greyly grabbed Nino’s arm. His expression was fearful – even his drunkenness couldn’t disguise that.

  ‘There’s no one here. Sit down and have a drink with me.’ His grip increased on Nino’s arm. Even inebriated, he was very strong. ‘Sit with me! I’ve no one else. Fuck them all! I’ve no one left and it’s Christmas. I don’t like fucking Christmas anyway, all that posturing about. All that lord of the manor stuff.’ He burped acidly. ‘My wife’s wrecked everything, you know. All families have secrets – all families. But no, she couldn’t live with it. Cow …’ He dragged Nino away from the door, pushing him into the seat next to his. His condition was deteriorating rapidly, his attention wavering. It wasn’t just alcohol – there was something else. ‘You came to the house with Hester.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Nino agreed, leaning towards him. ‘And she wrote a letter to me, about Claudia. Claudia Moroni.’

  Greyly’s eyes were half closed, the glass tilted, whisky dribbling on to the front of his trousers.

  Taking the glass from him, Nino shook his shoulder. ‘Listen to me! I want to talk about Claudia Moroni.’

  ‘She’s dead too …’

  ‘I know,’ Nino replied, ‘but you remember her story, don’t you? Hester wrote and told me about her. About what happened to Claudia, why she had to leave England.’ He shook Greyly again, trying to regain his attention. ‘She was an ancestor of yours, and she was killed in Venice.’

  His eyes widened, fixed on Nino, suddenly alert. ‘Venice?’

  ‘Yes, Venice. She was killed by Angelico Vespucci.’

  Nino could see some semblance of coherence returning, but as it did so, he could feel a heightening of the draught coming from under the door, and he had the sudden and unpleasant sensation of someone having entered; someone who was now listening to their conversation.

  ‘Did someone come to see you today?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Nino dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Did someone come to see you?’

  ‘No. No …’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘No one,’ Greyly blathered. ‘There was no one … no one … There’s no one left. No one …’ His voice slid off, his head sinking on to his chest as he passed out.

  Uneasy, Nino stood up, looking around for anything he could use as a weapon. Picking up a poker from the grate, he moved silently towards the door and opened it, standing back in case anyone rushed out at him. But there was no one there, only the draught, coming stronger and stronger. Stealthily he passed through the library, moving into the kitchen beyond. The room was in semi-darkness, but there was enough light to see a door swinging open.

  A door which led out into the yard beyond.

  56

  Rachel Pitt knew it wasn’t ideal, that he would probably never leave his wife. All married men said they loved you. That one day, when the time was right, they would tell their wives about you. Of course there never was a right time. If they ever did pick a day then one of the children would be ill, or the wife would be having a bad time at work, and he couldn’t, just couldn’t tell her now. He would, in time. But not this time.

  It wasn’t as though Rachel hadn’t set deadlines over the previous two years. If he hasn’t left his wife by June, she swore, I’ll finish the relationship. But June always slid into July, then tripped the light fantastic down to Christmas. Which she always spent alone. A few times she had gone home, but her mother was divorced and Rachel could hardly see herself confiding. The grim reality of her mother’s life – of her hatred of men and her increasing isolation – served as a mirror to her own existence. Was this to be her lot? If her lover didn’t leave his wife, would she find herself too old and too bitter to find someone else?

  There was no escaping the fact that she loved Michael and found snatching moments with him more palatable than having another man a hundred per cent of the time. Rachel had chosen her life, and she was sticking to it because the chance to walk away had passed. He was too close to her now. Too much a part of her. Too entrenched in her life to consider amputation. Everything she did she made a note of to tell him when they spoke. Her words, her actions, her thoughts centred around this one man who would never be hers.

  Rachel had often wondered if she was a masochist. If she was, in some perverse way, punishing herself for some subconscious fault. Her appeal was obvious, so why attach herself to a man already attached? But she had stuck with Michael, even after she found out he was married. She should have walked away then, but he was charming and he made her feel secure and happy, and he understood her the way no other man had understood her before.

  He was a marvellous lover too, and she knew that also kept her tied to him. And if, sometimes, she was jealous of his wife, he would reassure her. They hadn’t been sleeping together for years. She didn’t know him, love him as Rachel did. They stayed together for the children … Oh, she knew all the clichés by rote.

  The same hackneyed phrases came out year after year, and even when Rachel ceased to believe them, she pretended she did. After all, the relationship wasn’t completely onesided. Michael had helped her out financially many times over the previous five years, and paid most of her rent. And when she had left her job and gone back to study full-time, he had supported h
er. Not that he couldn’t afford it. Being in banking he was rich enough to carry two women, even three. Even three … She wondered about that sometimes. If he could cheat on his wife, could he cheat on her? He travelled around the world – surely attractive women constantly crossed his path? Younger women, prettier women, women he hadn’t known for five years and become used to. Women fresh and flirty, who never thought about wives or children.

  But Rachel did. It haunted her, the fact of his family. She might be able to dismiss his wife or count her as a harridan, but his children were omnipresent, a constant reminder of what she was doing. If the affair was ever discovered, she could imagine the fallout. The trauma for the children. The break-up of the marriage … No, who was she kidding? It would make the marriage stronger. Everyone knew how expensive divorce was, how prohibitive it was to split up shared properties, funds, bank accounts. And children. Whatever Michael promised her, whatever he assured her, he would stay with his family if it came to a choice. Men might like to stray, but in the end the duvet at home always sucked them back in.

  Glancing back at her work table, Rachel noticed the time – nine p.m. Another evening spent alone. Why? She could be anywhere. She was moving in different circles, had studied theatrical design and contemporary playwrights, and was newly employed in a small London theatre. Assistant Stage Manager – maybe fully fledged, in time. But how much time? Did she really want ambition to dictate the way she lived? Did she want to be hanging about in dingy theatre wings while she waited for Michael’s texts, or his furtive, hurried phone calls?

  And lately they had been so short-staffed at the theatre that Rachel had been asked to widen her scope. Already ASM, she was drafted in to help with the reading of all the plays submitted. She had never realised how many people wrote. Words, scenes, whole complete, fascinating existences captured on sheets of A4 paper. She had never realised how extraordinary some lives were, or could be. Some lives, even her life. If she had chosen differently.

  The light was fading as she sat, fingering some papers and staring at the photograph of her lover. It was close to Christmas again. Close to the time when families came together, if only to fight. Close to the time when all the motorways, airports and shops would be blocked with activity and people getting busy for the holidays. But not her.

  And she had only herself to blame.

  So when the phone call came half an hour later to say that Michael would not be able to see her as arranged, Rachel was expecting it. Without rancour, she wished him a happy Christmas and rang off. For a while afterwards she stood looking around her, smiling bitterly at the decorations he would not see, the turkey he would not eat. The one she was going to have to put in the deep freeze for some other occasion he would dodge. Slamming the freezer door closed, Rachel walked into the bedroom and realised that nothing would make her spend another Christmas there. Not alone. Not again.

  In less than an hour she had packed and hired a car, a small Renault she could easily drive. Rachel Pitt was going to take herself away for the holidays. Away from her lover, her mother, her phone, the television, internet and newspapers.

  She needed time to think. And she needed to think alone.

  Venice, 1555

  Pomponio came to his father’s house around midnight on the 26th of December. He came with his shoulders rounded, wearing priest’s vestments, a hood over his head. It was raining heavily, so heavily the water skittled from the roofs and splattered into the bloated canals below. A moon, white and round as a milk penny, glowered in the icy sky.

  The fog had been gone for several days. In its stead came a cold so punishing Venetians stayed in their homes, the sky crackling with stars, a comet flying low over the Doge’s Palace. It was an omen, they said. After three months, after three killings, there was always talk of omens. Of death, of weather that had already taken many of the old.

  The cold came like another plague, but no fever this time; this was a sickness which sank into the bone, smothered all heat from the blood, bled down the flesh, and crept out through a hundred doors laden with souls too young for St Michael.

  Terrified, fleeing for his safety, Pomponio had returned to his father’s house, to the place from which had exiled himself, scurrying like a poor rat in through the studio doors. I left them together, could not watch. I, who have watched so much, could not look upon this.

  The previous night the mob had turned their footsteps away from Vespucci’s house. Instead they came, quiet, respectful but accusing, and stood at Titian’s gates. There were no shouts, no calls for blood: only a dreadful silence under that sickened moon.

  They came as though beguiled, as though Aretino’s accusation had made a truth of it. As though the feckless Pomponio could become a devil overnight. He, who could barely bait a cat, was suspected as the killer. The Skin Hunter of Venice, the man who had made cowards of us all.

  And inside, Pomponio hid like a child behind a studio screen, his monk’s shoes sodden with water, stained dark as blood.

  He pleaded his innocence, which was what we knew. And those were the last words I heard as I left, making for a house on the Grand Canal. There I stood and watched the high barred windows of Aretino’s home, and knew he suffered. Not as a kindly man, but as one seen in his true colours. As one judged brutal in his arrogance. Terrible in his cowardice. A man who thought it fair to sacrifice another’s child, to barter an innocent for his own ends.

  Titian has dismissed him. He has closed his doors to a man he once treasured, to a friend he once loved. His heart is shuttered against him. And the love he once bore for this most odious of men is curdled. In grace did Titian curse him. In defence of his son, he called the gods down on the writer’s head. He held his hands, palms up, and asked if there was anything he had ever refused to give. His purse, his home, his food, his name.

  His name … On saying it, Titian seemed to pause, to count the wisdom of its loan. To wonder at his own naive and reckless trust.

  And I had watched it all. Watched Aretino buckle like a lame donkey under its master’s whip. I saw him realise that all the lies were recognised and others suspected … He recoiled from the painter’s anger and lost his footing on the step, his bulk driving him backward to the floor. For a moment he had looked as though he thought a hand might be offered to help him. But none was.

  Instead Titian turned and spoke no more.

  I saw him broken, Pomponio following his father from the room. And struggling to his feet again was Aretino – cowed, humiliated, seen for the evil he was.

  And this time he saw me. After so many years waiting, with so little power, so minute a chance of revenge, I faced him. I had been a nothing in his eyes, but I remained within the artist’s grace while he was banished. And I, who had waited so long on the moment, thrilled to the sight of his defeat.

  He lumbered to the door, turned, and took long stock of me, as though to threaten. Then he left and made for Vespucci’s house. His power gone, the scapegoat failed, he went to the only person who would still receive him. As the doors closed behind Aretino, a cry went up from across the water. A woman’s cry, hardly more than the screech of an owl.

  All night I sat beside the window, watching. The sick moon, weary of staring, ambled behind a covering of cloud. On the black surface of the water which surrounded us, waves curled and unfurled themselves, lurching inanely at an angry tide.

  I am afraid of water and that night its darkness shivered within me. I thought what horrors there might lie beneath, what wrecks and bones of desperate men, what secrets, purses, weapons and close weeds shuddered within the depths. I wondered how the water would press down, how the cold might seep into the lungs, how someone quick and living would soon slide into that murky hollow.

  It was seven in the morning when the church bell rang. It rang like a call to arms, and wakened me. Leaving the house, I ran to the sound, knowing before I arrived what I would find there.

  Beautiful still. She had once been as wild and savage as an animal, but
now she was quiet. Slowly the Contessa di Fattori was hauled out of the winnowing tide. Her face was ruined, her eyes fixed, her body still perfect in its shape, but flayed. And around her wrist a ribbon had been tied, a label fluttering in a bitter breeze.

  It was the first day of January, 1556. And it came in with the tide and the body of a woman murdered only a little while before, in the dying hours of the dying year.

  She was unrecognisable and the only identity her killer had given her was on the label:

  The Whore of Venice.

  57

  Norfolk

  Rushing into the yard, Nino was just in time to see a man running down the driveway. Moments later he heard a car start up and watched as the headlights illuminated the lane and then disappeared into the darkness. So there had been someone in the house, someone who had managed to get Harold Greyly drunk or drugged, someone who had wanted him incapacitated. And there could be only one reason for that – the intruder had needed time. Time to search, without being interrupted. But what had he been looking for?

  Back in the house, Nino checked on Harold. He was unconscious, snoring loudly, his legs splayed in front of him. Unrecognisable from the arrogant Army man Nino had first met. Walking over to the grate, he damped down the blaze with the water Greyly presumably used to mix his whisky, worried that the chimney night catch fire. Or maybe that was what the intruder had wanted. Intruder? Nino wondered. Or killer?

  It was too much of a coincidence to believe this had been a mere break-in. This had been planned by someone who knew Harold Greyly and the house. Someone who had come for a specific reason: to search. Perhaps they had known exactly where to look, and hoped that by banking up the fire so recklessly there might be an accident after they had left. And there would have been if Nino hadn’t turned up.

  Instinct told him that the intruder hadn’t found what he wanted. Otherwise he would have left as soon as Nino arrived so as not to risk discovery. If he’d got what he had come for why would he have stayed around, eavesdropping? Perhaps he had hoped that Nino, finding Harold Greyly drunk and insensible, would leave. One thing was certain: he hadn’t expected him to stay. And when he did, there was only one option left to the intruder – to run.