Deep and Silent Waters

by Charlotte Lamb

  ‘And you never believed her?’

  ‘Oh, at first, yes. She terrified me. I didn’t dare leave her alone at times, in case she did kill herself. Her therapist told me people like that never do. If they keep saying they will and don’t, they never will. It’s an attention ploy. “She wants your attention,” he said. “She needs to know you care.” Well, I was sick of giving her my attention at the end. I was so tired of her scenes and tantrums. So that last time I ignored her. Took no notice at all when she opened the window, climbed on to the sill, screamed at me, “I’m jumping, I’m jumping”. “Go ahead, you stupid bitch,” I said, without even looking round. “Jump, give me some peace!” And she did. Okay?’ His voice hoarsened. ‘That last time she went ahead and fucking did it.’

  And fell screaming, ‘No, no, no,’ all the way down while he had run to the window and had frozen in horror and panic.

  He looked at the policeman with eyes that burned. ‘So in a way you’re right. I killed her. She died because I wouldn’t give her my attention. And if you want to know if I feel guilty – of course I fucking well do. If I had had any idea that that one time she would really do it …’ His voice broke. ‘Oh, go to hell,’ he said, putting his arms on the table and his head down on them.

  They left him alone for an hour or so after that. He lay down and tried to sleep. He was so tired he was hallucinating, seeing images of his mother screaming in the blizzard over the canal, of Clea falling, crying out all the way down, of Laura …

  The door opened. His nerves jumped. They were back. ‘Leave me alone, I’m not answering any more questions,’ he said, not moving from the bunk.

  Bertelli walked towards him. He had a large plastic bag dangling over his arm. In it was something wet and black. A coat?

  ‘Do you recognise this, Signore?’

  Sebastian shook his head.

  ‘Stand up, please.’ The man’s voice was curt.

  Sebastian almost refused to obey, but what was the point? They would pull him to his feet. So he swung his legs off the bunk and got up. The policeman held the plastic bag against him. Adjusted it. Stared.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sebastian asked. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It was found floating on the canal, close to where Miss Erskine was attacked. It fits the description of a cape she says her attacker was wearing.’

  Sebastian stepped back involuntarily, away from the cold plastic bag and what it contained.

  ‘I told you, I was nowhere near there, I was in Florian’s, I never saw her.’ He drew a long, audible breath. ‘I wouldn’t harm a hair on her head. If I knew who stabbed her, I’d kill the bastard.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be very clever, would it?’ Bertelli frowned, yet his dark eyes were not unfriendly. ‘We’ll find him, don’t worry, Signore. And the law will deal with him when we do. We would like you to sign a statement. We talked to the waiter who served you in Florian’s, and the other customers. You were in the café when the attack took place. And you’re too tall, anyway. Miss Erskine said the cape came down to feet of the attacker. I can see it would only come midway down your legs.’

  ‘So you believe me now?’ Anger choked Sebastian’s throat, his voice sounded slurred. ‘Well, thanks for nothing. I told you I didn’t do it. You’ve kept me here all this time, grilling me, when you should have been out there looking for whoever really did do it.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve been following up many other leads, don’t worry. I’m sorry, Signor Ferrese, but you want us to catch the man who tried to kill Miss Erskine, don’t you? We need to know everything we can about her – how else can we be sure whether it was a random attack, or one aimed specifically at her?’

  Sebastian asked, ‘Have there been other attacks?’

  ‘No, this is an isolated incident – so far. But we have to check every avenue. Tell me, to your knowledge, has Miss Erskine any enemies? Male or female?’

  ‘I told you about the threats—’

  ‘Yes, but did you suspect anyone you knew?’

  Sebastian bit out, ‘No!’

  ‘When your wife jumped, Signore, were you alone with her? Just the two of you, in the room?’

  A silence, then Sebastian said, ‘No, my assistant was there. Valerie Hyde. What are you getting at? Who have you been talking to? You know what it’s like in any organisation – people get jealous, resentful, envious, they jockey for position, they bitch about each other in private. Valerie has her enemies, just as I do. You don’t want to take any gossip too seriously.’

  ‘I am only interested in hard evidence, Signore, don’t worry.’

  ‘Have you talked to Valerie?’

  ‘Not yet. I will do that tomorrow.’

  ‘Go easy on her. She’s not a happy woman. She’s alone in the world, she has very few friends. Her work is her life.’

  ‘You like her very much?’ The man watched him closely and Sebastian wondered what his face was betraying to the policeman’s shrewd, clever eyes. He tried to look as blank as Bertelli did, but he hadn’t had the training for it. The policeman gave almost nothing away; his emotions must be in the deep freeze. Sebastian wished his own were.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry for her. And I like her – of course, I do, but if you mean more than that, no. There was a time, years ago, when we had a brief fling, but that was all it was. She isn’t my type. Since then, niente, zilch, zero. She works for me. That’s all there is to our relationship. And anyway—’ He broke off.

  Bertelli considered him, staring into his eyes. ‘What were you going to say?’

  Heavily, Sebastian said, ‘Look, I think I may have to fire her and I feel guilty about it, okay?’

  ‘Why are you going to fire her?’

  Sebastian didn’t want to talk about it: he felt disloyal, discussing Valerie behind her back, but he had opened this can of worms by a slip of the tongue, and he knew Bertelli wasn’t going to let him close it again.

  ‘She – she’s too … obsessive. She’s on my case day and night. I can’t move without tripping over her. I find it uncomfortable.’

  Bertelli listened thoughtfully, scratching his chin. Sebastian sensed that the man knew he had left a good deal unspoken.

  ‘So, she’s in love with you? When you had this … what did you call it? … fling? What does that mean, I wonder? Just one night, or a little more than that? Hmm? Well, whatever, it meant nothing on your side – but she was more serious? You knew it at the time? That she was in love with you? Or did you realise it later?’

  Red in the face now, Sebastian said, ‘Maybe. I don’t know for sure how she feels. Look, it was a long time ago, and it wasn’t even really an affair, just a …’

  ‘Fling!’ nodded Bertelli. ‘I understand. But she went on working for you afterwards. You say it is years since you slept with her. Why do you suddenly feel you must fire her?’

  ‘I suppose I feel guilty about her. I’ve come to realise I’m all the life she has and I’ve begun to feel claustrophobic around her.’

  ‘What sort of woman is she? Beautiful?’

  ‘No. Too thin for that. She’s energetic, quick in everything she does. Black eyes, dark hair, dresses well, but her face and body are bony, angular. Not very feminine.’

  Bertelli smiled. ‘And you like feminine women?’

  ‘Don’t most men?’ Sebastian looked defiantly at him.

  Bertelli shrugged. ‘I suppose. Okay, I’ll have a written statement of what you’ve told us typed up. Read through every word, then, if you accept that the statement is an accurate reflection of what you said, would you sign it at the bottom on the last page?’

  ‘Are you releasing me?’

  ‘For the moment, but you must not leave Venice. We may need to talk to you again.’

  Urgently, Sebastian asked, ‘Laura … Is she – how is she?’

  There was a faint sympathy in the policeman’s eyes now. ‘You are in love with her, aren’t you?’

  ‘Did I ever deny it? I’ve loved her from the minute I met her.�
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  ‘You were still married then, though?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sebastian’s face was weary. ‘Oh, yes, to the most beautiful woman in the world, Captain Bertelli. Clea was the biggest star in films, and breathtakingly lovely, even at the end.’

  ‘Yet you fell in love with Miss Erskine on sight?’

  They stared at each other. After a silence, Sebastian said, ‘Laura was shiningly innocent, Captain, a very young girl with eyes as pure as the sea. If you had known my wife you would understand why I found Laura irresistible. And still do. She still has that sweetness and purity, even now. I love her more than life itself. Literally. If she died, I’d want to die too.’

  ‘She’s in no danger, Signore. She was stabbed several times in the upper arm and shoulder – her attacker was undoubtedly aiming for her heart, but Miss Erskine put up her arm to fend off the knife. That saved her life. Luckily, someone came round the corner before the murderer could stab her again, and the man – if it was a man – ran off. Miss Erskine has had an operation and is heavily sedated, but we were able to talk to her while she was conscious.’

  ‘Can I visit her?’

  ‘Not tonight, Signore. Perhaps tomorrow. I’ll send you back to Ca’ d’Angeli in one of our boats now.’

  Sebastian looked at the plastic bag and what it held. ‘Are you sure that’s what he wore?’

  ‘Yes. Forensic has found Miss Erskine’s blood on it.’

  ‘The bastard …’

  ‘We’ve taken a lot of other samples from it. We have his DNA. We’ll find him. As you know, we’ve taken your DNA, and we’ll be testing it, and tomorrow we’ll ask every member of the film crew to give us a DNA sample.’

  ‘You really think it was one of us?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Bertelli smiled at Sebastian.

  ‘It seems pretty likely,’ Sebastian conceded unwillingly, thinking of his friends, colleagues he had worked with for years. Sidney? It couldn’t be. No, not Sidney.

  ‘Just the men, at first.’

  ‘At first? You surely don’t think it could be a woman?’

  ‘It was someone short. And a knife is as much a woman’s weapon as a man’s. And … there are other reasons.’

  ‘What other reasons?’ Sebastian remembered the questions about Valerie. Surely to God they didn’t suspect her? No. No, he couldn’t believe it.

  ‘I can’t say. But, please, make sure nobody from the film company leaves Venice until I say they can go.’

  The film crew went to bed late that night. They sat about in a gloomy silence all evening in a little bar along the Rio San Barnaba, one of the many canals bisecting the Dorsoduro, the peaceful residential area directly opposite the San Marco district, where the Accademia, Venice’s greatest art gallery, was to be found.

  Sidney was staying in a pretty little pensione in Campo San Bamaba Square and had become infatuated with this part of Venice. He loved to walk around the tiny narrow streets, called calle, or along the canals, absorbing everything he saw. He was fascinated by the houses behind high walls, windows shuttered against prying eyes, an air of mystery hanging around them with the white mists of the lagoon. He was crazy about the great churches, the open, windy squares, the elegant little bridges with their shimmering reflections on the water below their perfect bow shape.

  ‘What’s it mean?’ asked Carmen, the junior assistant director, her young face pale, her hair loose and tousled, staring a little unsteadily out of the window at dimly lit buildings on the other side of the narrow canal.

  ‘What’s what mean?’ Sidney asked, looking in the same direction but seeing nothing to explain her question.

  ‘Dorsowhat’s-it,’ she muttered.

  ‘Dorsoduro. It means “hard backbone”.’ He leant over, refilled his glass from one of the copper jugs of wine standing along the table at which, much earlier, they had eaten dinner, a simple meal of bean soup followed by risi e bisi – the traditional Venetian dish of rice and peas sprinkled with grated Parmesan. They had all skipped dessert and gone on to coffee, but none of them wanted to leave yet.

  ‘Did you know Venice is made up of over a hundred tiny little islands?’ Sidney asked.

  Nobody seemed interested, but he didn’t let that put him off. ‘All built over now, of course, but once, long ago they were islands, made up from soil that washed down from the Dolomites. That’s what Venice started from.’

  ‘Why did they want to live out here in the middle of the sea?’

  ‘Protection, I guess. Living on an island made it harder for enemies to get at them and life was dangerous a thousand years ago, especially in the Med, with pirates and bandits roaming around. Fear makes people do the damnedest things. That’s why they built Venice here. It couldn’t have been easy. First, they had to drive wood piles into the lagoon bed, rows and rows of them, all very close together. On top of that, they laid a single row of bricks, then a band of Istrian stone, a sort of marble, and then they made their homes on this platform.’ He paused to drink some of his luscious, glowing red wine.

  ‘Sidney, Sidney, you’ve been reading books again,’ the Camera Operator mocked him plaintively. ‘How many times d’you have to be told? You’ll go blind. It’s a nasty habit, give it up.’

  ‘Look, the girl asked me for information, I gave it to her. We don’t all want to talk about football, you know.’

  ‘You don’t know zilch about football. That’s why you don’t want to talk about it!’

  ‘Moron!’

  ‘D’you want a punch in the mouth?’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up, all of you!’ Valerie snarled, and everyone in the cramped, smoky little bar turned to look at her.

  ‘It’s okay, Val, we’re just having fun. We’re all friends, aren’t we, Joe? You look shattered, though. Why don’t you go back to your place and get to bed?’

  Sidney’s voice was gentle but she glared at him, her intense, black eyes all pupil, in her white face. The red scar of her mouth made her look like a crazy clown.

  ‘Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?’

  The others looked down into their glasses.

  Sidney said, ‘The strain’s getting to you, you won’t be fit for work tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you so stupid you don’t know this picture is dead in the water now? There won’t be any work to do tomorrow.’

  They avoided each others’ eyes. Sidney said flatly, ‘Of course we know – why do you think we’re drinking ourselves stupid? There’s nothing we can do but wait and see what happens.’

  ‘You’re ostriches, the lot of you!’

  ‘Go on back to your room, Val, and get some sleep. If the police let Sebastian go, he’ll want to get on with the schedule. We still have to shoot some street scenes.’

  ‘Don’t you realise? With her out of it, there’s no picture. He won’t recast, he’ll just junk the whole project.’

  ‘She may recover sooner than you think—’ Carmen began, but Valerie almost screamed at her, ‘She won’t recover. She can’t. She’ll die. She’s probably dead already, she has to be. There was so much blood—’

  They all looked at each other, their eyes startled, wide. Valerie got to her feet and blundered out into the dark of the Venetian night.

  Carmen whispered, ‘You don’t think …? She’s so fixated on Sebastian. She wouldn’t – It couldn’t be her, could it?’

  Sidney looked round the circle of faces. ‘Where was she when Laura got attacked? You were all in the area, around St Mark’s Square, and those shopping streets beyond it. Did any of you see her?’

  ‘No,’ Carmen said. The others shook their heads one by one.

  Sidney got to his feet. ‘She doesn’t strike me as the murderous type. Don’t let your imaginations run riot. Leave the detection to the cops. And now I’m off while I can still just about make it to my pensione. I’ll pay the bill – it can go on expenses. In the circumstances, I think it will get through. You lot can stay here and drink – but from now on it’s on you. N
ight, everyone.’

  Sidney paid with his credit card, and tucked it and the receipt carefully into his sheepskin-lined wax jacket, which he zipped up to his throat before walking out of the bar into the chilly night air.

  The snow had long stopped falling. The sky was alive with stars, as bright as if they were almost within reach. They and the Victorian-style street-lamps were reflected in the dark water of the canal. The narrow streets were empty, silent, every window shuttered.

  ‘I’ll walk along with you, Sidney,’ said Carmen, who was also staying at his pensione. ‘I think I may be a bit tipsy.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Sidney said, linking his arm with hers in a friendly way. ‘I hate the middle of the night, don’t you? Three in the morning especially. Depresses me, especially when I’m alone.’

  ‘Me, too,’ she said, swaying and bumping her shoulder against his.

  Sidney looked down at her sleepy young face, wishing he was her age again. ‘You’re gorgeous, Carmen – you know that? Why don’t we share a bed tonight? Keep each other warm and safe.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ she said, without resentment, but smiled, flattered by the pass. She might not fancy Sidney, but he was almost god-like in her eyes. She had known his name, seen his films while she was still at school, and she couldn’t believe she was here, walking arm in arm with him, talking so easily to him.

  ‘Okay, fair enough,’ Sidney agreed amiably. A look of relief passed over Carmen’s face at his cheerful acceptance of the brush-off. The last thing she wanted to do was offend him.

  He said, ‘Darling, remember, I’m old enough to be your father, but I know a thing or two about women, and how to please them, which is more than most guys your age can say. If you change your mind, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you?’