by David Hewson
When she got there a single state police officer was standing over the bloody mess, wondering what to do. She flashed her ID and told him to stand back. Three bodies lay on the ornate patterned pavement. A woman in an elaborate carnival costume of purple silk and gold was sobbing, her mask by her side, what looked like a badly broken arm outstretched on the cold cobbles. An elderly man in the guise of an aristocratic eighteenth-century count, the husband perhaps judging by the way she reached out for him, groaned next to her, clutching his stomach.
You two will live, Teresa thought, aware as always that this was a time for swift clinical judgement, not sympathy.
The Plague Doctor was different. The man in the black costume was a broken mess on the ground, twisted, bloodied, torn. She got down and carefully removed the white mask, lifting it up by the long shiny nose with her right hand, freeing the fastening at the back of his head with her left. It was a coarse middle-aged face, light in colour, clean-shaven, mouth locked in an expression that would, in a living human being, be counted as a sardonic smile.
‘Stand back. Police,’ snapped a voice from behind.
‘I’m a doctor,’ she said, without looking. ‘And police too.’
Teresa Lupo didn’t budge. Death always moved her, all the more so when it seemed so inexplicable, so pointless. Was this a serious attempt at murder at all? Or madness? A theatrical form of suicide, in front of the largest audience anyone with a death wish could ever muster in Venice?
The ruff had ridden up under the force of the fall. She could see pale skin, grey chest hair, and something else too. Taking a tissue from her bag she retrieved the familiar object. It was a European Union passport with a maroon cover.
Then she got to her feet and turned round. Tosi was there next to a couple of uniformed cops, making excuses for her behaviour, trying to reassure them.
‘Sorry,’ Teresa said to the first cop, a surly-looking man in an ill-fitting blue uniform. ‘Old habits die hard.’ She held out the passport. ‘Here. For what it’s worth this man came here to die. You don’t carry your passport underneath a costume like that for no good reason. He was trying to save you some work.’
She flicked open the back pages.
‘He being . . .’
The name stared up at her, and a picture of the man beneath the mask, looking severe and serious, academic even.
Someone, the passport said, called Jerome Aitchison.
Six hours later she was still in the Castello Questura. Alberto Tosi had done his best to help though no one seemed to pay him much attention. She had, at least, been assigned an officer to talk to about her missing aunt, a friendly young female sovrintendente from Chioggia at the tip of the lagoon, Paola Boscolo. She looked just turned thirty and readily admitted she dealt chiefly with domestic abuse cases. Like every police officer in Venice that day she had been assigned to carnival duties and would remain attached to them for as long as was necessary.
This large, cheery woman with a permanent smile had very little to say that wasn’t blithely encouraging. Teresa felt sure she would have some happy aphorism to pass on to the late Jerome Aitchison’s relatives if only they could be found. It seemed the man had none. From what they had gathered in calls to England over the previous few hours he was a solitary academic, in precisely the uncertain and unhappy position over his employment that the mysterious, and now disappeared, story had suggested.
‘What are you going to do?’ Teresa asked for the umpteenth time.
The interview had begun two hours after the incident in the piazza, and followed at sporadic intervals as Paola Boscolo received further information. The starlet, Luisa Cammarota, was, as Teresa suspected, only slightly wounded, though deeply traumatized. The two spectators who were hit by the falling body of the Englishman had suffered minor injuries which would require no more than a night’s stay in hospital. The feeling in the Questura was that the city had got off lightly. Teresa wasn’t quite so sure. Had Aitchison intended serious harm to anyone but himself he would surely have chosen a more direct and efficient means of attack.
‘As I’ve said, Teresa . . .’ The woman seemed to be on immediate first-name terms with everyone she met. ‘We’ve logged your aunt’s name on the missing-person list. When you provide us with an up-to-date photograph . . .’
‘This is the best I have,’ Teresa said, showing the woman the picture she’d brought from Rome. It was at least ten years old: Sofia by the seaside at Ostia when they’d gone there one weekend.
‘Does she look like this now?’ Paola Boscolo asked.
She does to me, Teresa thought, and could hear in her head the sad, desperate voice of so many of the relatives she’d met in these circumstances as part of her work.
‘Yes,’ she said simply, and then insisted the policewoman copy the photo and give her back the original. She needed something for herself. The only photo in the apartment was even older. There wasn’t even an ID card, which proved, Teresa felt, that Sofia had left the place voluntarily with a purpose in mind.
‘I’ll make sure it’s distributed,’ the woman said when she came back after copying the picture. ‘We have a national system––’
‘I know about the system. I work in the Questura in Rome, remember.’
The uniformed officer smiled beatifically.
‘Rome’s a long way from Venice,’ she said. ‘We will look at your aunt’s case exactly as we would any other.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about,’ Teresa blurted out, and immediately regretted it.
‘If you know about missing-person cases,’ Boscolo said carefully, ‘you know too how powerless we can be. We have very few options without some hard information, which is sadly lacking here. People disappear for a variety of reasons. Money. Love. Depression. From what you say of your aunt it could be any or all of the three.’
Teresa’s temper was at breaking point.
‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘You said yourself she tried to harm herself here sixteen years ago.’
‘No! I said something happened here then. I don’t know the details.’
‘Most missing people turn up after a while. Safe and sound,’ the officer insisted. ‘We’ll do what we can. But you must realize . . . usually there is some contact within the family. Someone will know, even if they’re not telling right now.’
‘The Englishman . . . The story I was sent.’
To Teresa’s astonishment Paola Boscolo held up a large, matronly hand and attempted to wave her into silence.
‘Enough,’ the woman said. ‘Please. You have told me this . . . thing a million times.’ She shrugged her big shoulders. ‘Where is it?’
‘I’ve already said . . .’
‘Disappearing ink?’
The woman had very large manly eyebrows and they were raised all the way.
‘It does exist,’ Teresa told her. ‘My forensic people in Rome can look at that paper and confirm it’s been treated in some way.’
‘Your forensic people in Rome aren’t involved in this case.’
‘Are you?’ Teresa asked.
‘Yes.’ She shuffled the documents in front of her, a sign that this was, perhaps, the last formal interview Teresa was to be allowed. ‘I will do what I can, what I would do for anyone in such circumstances.’
‘Listen to me. Jerome Aitchison taught actuarial science at Cambridge. He was suspended for an alleged sexual assault on a student. He came here trying to make sense of his life and, if that story is correct, met my aunt. After which, for reasons that seem a mystery to you, he appears to have formed some kind of fixation with the unfortunate starlet chosen for that circus act today. With the consequences we’ve all seen. How would I know all that if I didn’t see that story?’
Paola Boscolo’s pale flabby face remained fixed in a smile. For one brief moment Teresa thought, she suspects me for some reason. It was ridiculous.
‘Isn’t the answer obvious?’ the policewoman said. ‘Your aunt left you th
is information, in this curious form. She wishes you to know something but not so much.’
‘It was hardly reassuring.’
‘Perhaps she meant it that way. When people are disturbed they do odd things. Maybe she met this Englishman . . . I don’t know. Give us the paper. We’ll work on it. But if you think it makes much of a difference to what we can do at the moment . . . I’m sorry. How?’
It was a reasonable point, not that Teresa was going to allow that.
‘Give me an officer to work with and I’ll find out,’ she said quickly.
The woman’s eyes opened wide in amazement.
‘That’s what they’d do in Rome,’ Teresa added, not very convincingly.
‘Then Rome is even further from here than I realized. Do you have any idea how many people there are in Venice right now? For the carnival?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘Me neither. We don’t have the time or the resources to start chasing strange fairy stories. What with the drunks and the pickpockets, and now this terrible attack on the actress. Please, as a fellow officer. You must understand.’
‘I understand my aunt’s missing and may be in danger. And that one way or another something links her to Jerome Aitchison.’
Paolo Boscolo cleared her throat and stood up.
‘The first is undeniable. I suggest you talk to her friends and relatives. Find out the places she liked to go when she felt down.’ She hesitated then added, ‘And pray for her. I will.’
‘I have to say that when a serving police officer suggests the best thing I can do is say a prayer then I really start to worry.’
‘A little faith never hurt anyone.’
Teresa Lupo bit her tongue. The obvious remark – that Paola Boscolo clearly had no grasp of history – would scarcely have been helpful.
The woman passed over her card.
‘My mobile number and email address. Use them. Any time. Night or day. If you have something concrete for me, I promise I’ll do what I can to help.’
From beyond the office came the sound of a couple of belligerent drunks being hauled into interview. The woman threw open the door. Teresa saw them: red-faced, in dishevelled medieval costumes, masks around their necks on elastic bands. One had thrown up on his flowery waistcoat. The other looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to pass out or start a fight.
Paola Boscolo’s eyebrows rose again and she said, ‘When the opportunity arises. Thank you. Is the old gentleman, your friend, still here?’
‘You mean Alberto Tosi, who was until recently the city pathologist of Venice?’
The woman smiled and said, ‘I think I remember the name. He retired, I believe.’
‘No. He had to go home.’
‘Then I assume you can make your own way. Goodnight.’
It was almost seven when she finally left the Questura. The night was black as ink and icy cold, well below freezing. The clear starlit sky suggested there was little change in the weather in the days to come. People in bizarre costumes wandered the streets shivering happily. Carnival, in its original form at least, was about a brief burst of gaiety before the enforced fasting and self-denial of Lent. Not that anyone fasted any more, or denied themselves much if they could afford it. Judging by the voices of the revellers – French, American, Japanese, Chinese, more than Italian – the world had moved beyond such seemingly simplistic ideas. Venice during carnival was an endless procession of masked men and women, eager for pleasure in the processions, the private parties, and the concerts, relishing the anonymity their disguises brought them, the chance to escape for a few brief days the cares and constrictions of the real world, terraferma.
She walked to the waterfront near La Pietà, ‘Vivaldi’s church’, the guide books said, though they lied. She and Emily Deacon had learned that as they wandered this area together during that earlier case. The marble Palladian façade was early nineteenth-century, the interior a reconstruction from two decades after the composer’s death, one he would never have recognized. Venice was built on myths and fabrications, ones so tantalizing and beautiful they were usually forgiven the moment they were revealed.
A sudden harsh memory struck her, so forcefully she had to sit on a bench outside the church to recover. The story from the night before had been perceptive. At that moment she recalled standing here with Emily discussing music and art, slowly getting to know the woman who would briefly be married to Nic Costa. It was somewhere nearby that she’d come to realize how much she liked and admired this resolute, tough American woman. That reminiscence was painful, as the unknown author of the lost short story had predicted.
Paola Boscolo had a point. Such knowledge could surely only have come from Sofia in the first place. The two of them had spoken about Venice a few years before when Sofia was home. Her aunt had never mentioned spending any time here. Teresa had probably talked too much. It wasn’t long after Emily’s murder. There was much to say, a lot to get off her chest.
She watched the slow swell of the lagoon. Beneath the moonlight it looked like semi-molten lead. She wished she could call Peroni. Introduce them all into this mystery, him, Falcone, Costa, her assistant Silvio Di Capua too. Together their array of quirks and talents could uncover answers hidden inside the most cryptic and difficult of puzzles. They’d want to help without a second thought. There was more than friendship at stake here. Over the years, watching the institutions that were meant to matter crumble and fall apart, the state, the police themselves after a fashion, something had emerged between them, a kind of love that was a bulwark against the harsh cruelty of the world. The sort of mutual protection an ordinary Italian like her would once have sought in faith or politics or trust in the goodness of society, before such intangible elements seemed to fade beyond reach.
But the cops were somewhere in Sicily on a covert mission that demanded operational silence. She couldn’t call them. They couldn’t respond to her. In Rome Di Capua would be facing the fury of the departmental officers over her unauthorized absence, the unfinished budget, the quarterly reports. She hadn’t done him any favours there, and that omission, uncharacteristic and thoughtless, made her feel a little guilty. It was a rotten time to leave the unit in the lurch, however pressing her personal problems.
Who did she have to take their place? Alberto Tosi, a retired pathologist, well-meaning but out of the investigative loop for a good few years, with no real influence over the present-day Questura. That had been obvious from the moment she’d been assigned a domestic officer to investigate a case that was at best curious and possibly downright sinister.
Not to forget, she reminded herself, a charming if somewhat naive young Croatian woman and a crippled pianist trapped in a wheelchair. They all wanted to help. She felt sure of that. But how?
A group of men in dark cloaks, with tricorn hats and ghostly white masks, went past without a word, marching like soldiers, desperate to keep warm. At least, she comforted herself, her own clothes, an unglamorous baggy winter anorak and heavy winter trousers, saved her from the worst of the freezing weather.
As they stumbled into a shady sotoportego three or four feathery swirls of light snow appeared out of the black mouth of a nearby rio, whirling like ghostly dervishes.
The flat shoes, mind, were still sliding on the icy cobbles . . .
That prompted a guilty thought. She called Frascati. As she expected, the incident in the piazza was the lead story in the news, one that her mother mentioned instantly.
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Teresa lied. ‘I’ve been to see the police in person. They’ve logged Sofia as a missing person. Things are moving, and I’ll make very sure they move a little faster tomorrow.’
Did her mother know this was less than the full truth? Was there some maternal instinct that enabled her to detect when her daughter was being disingenuous? Perhaps, Teresa thought. But if that were true they knew each other well enough by now not to mention it. Their last mindless screaming argument had occurred a good deca
de or so before, the spark some insignificant subject Teresa could no longer recall. With age came a kind of peace between them, the sort that existed between two neighbouring states that had come to acknowledge their mutual differences and given up trying to resolve them. Her mother was stolid, serious, doggedly middle-class and conventional. All traits Teresa Lupo could admire even if she did not wish to share them.
Different kinds of people. As was Sofia too, not that she’d realized quite how different until recently.
‘Does anyone know anything?’ Chiara asked.
‘The people in the apartment block say Sofia was happy there. She had plans. To make money, to get some kind of job.’
‘What kind?’
‘Making masks,’ Teresa said without thinking.
There was a long pause. Then her mother said, ‘Don’t feel you have to call me unless you have something to say.’
Fifteen minutes later in a back lane leading towards the Accademia bridge Teresa’s phone rang.
‘Good evening!’ Tosi declared with boundless enthusiasm. ‘Did the police help?’
‘Not a lot.’
‘Buffoons! All they think about are tourists and their blasted stolen handbags. We have no need of them. We have ourselves . . .’
‘Alberto . . .’ She found herself smiling at the idea that this kindly old man could so take to heart the disappearance of a relative of someone he barely knew. ‘There’s no need—’
‘I’ve found your Gobbo,’ Tosi broke in. ‘Take a boat to the Rialto immediately. Meet me in the market. In front of the church of San Giacomo. On the San Polo side, as you come off the bridge.’
‘He’s there now?’ she asked, amazed.
‘I guarantee it.’
‘Do you want me to call the police? We don’t want him to leave.’
She heard laughter down the line.
‘I don’t think we need worry about that,’ Tosi said cheerily. ‘To the Rialto please. And best bring some ear plugs if you have them.’
She thought she knew this part of Venice well, but that was during the morning, in the daylight. Then the piazzas and arcades near the Grand Canal thronged with fish and fruit and vegetable stalls as they had done for centuries, while those close to the Rialto bridge were given over to hordes of tourists buying masks and souvenirs and other trivia.