by David Hewson
‘Please, Arnaud. Not now.’ It puzzled her that they’d left just a single sleeping bag, and not much food for two people either. ‘I have to ask. You weren’t a party to this, were you?’
He stiffened as if she’d uttered the most offensive of insults.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said immediately.
The long strip of Malamocco, dividing the lagoon from the Adriatic, lay less than a kilometre away. There were lights in the houses but they were so distant no one there would easily see anything on Poveglia, even if she possessed something more substantial than the small lantern Tosi had left.
‘We’re stuck here until they come back, aren’t we?’
‘A boat might pass,’ he suggested.
She murmured a more modern epithet than the one he’d used earlier. Then Teresa Lupo uncorked the prosecco, poured him some in the one plastic cup they’d left and retrieved a spent one from the party for herself.
‘And the probability of that, Arnaud?’
He raised his cup in a toast.
‘With luck, who knows?’
Saint-Germain took the smallest of sips. He was still clutching his little black book in front of him.
She nodded at the battered leather cover, looked at him and said, with some resignation, ‘Well I suppose you have my full attention now. Best tell your tale.’
To her surprise he hesitated, looking a little guilty.
‘I’d rather you told me yours.’
Teresa Lupo sighed.
‘What tale’s that? I don’t have one.’
Saint-Germain shrugged.
‘Not true. I must confess. This meeting is not entirely par hasard,’ he said. ‘Not simply to do with the bones of the Evangelist or my own history. You do have a story. It’s essential you remember it.’
She sat down on the single wooden bench by the narrow jetty and patted the space next to her.
‘What tale?’ Teresa Lupo asked.
‘An important one,’ he said, joining her. ‘About the man you encountered here in February, during carnival. The Plague Doctor. The most important tale there is at the moment. Surely you know that?’
She felt a sudden chill on the warm summer air.
‘Important? I don’t even know a story about the Plague Doctor.’
‘But you do,’ he insisted. ‘If you can only remember.’
‘Remember what?’ She was alarmed by the volume and intensity of her voice.
‘This is going to be more difficult than I thought,’ Saint- Germain declared.
‘If I knew what you were talking about . . .’
‘Then we’d have no business here at all. Very well. My story . . .’
He patted his jacket and the book underneath.
‘You shall have it in due course. But in order to understand that you must first hear another . . .’
A RENDEZVOUS IN THE DARK
First thing the next morning she took a close look at the pages. The text was unchanged, readable though as baffling and impenetrable as the night before. She had no doubt what this meant: there was nothing in the documents that could possibly be of use to the police. This cryptic, unfinished piece of fiction was for her benefit alone, one piece in a puzzle yet to be revealed.
There was no answer from Camilla’s door. Strozzi was playing the piano with such intensity and beauty that she felt unable to disturb him for the moment. Teresa let herself out of the block and walked down to the waterfront, heading for the vaporetto. Ahead, crossing the first bridge, she saw the young Croatian woman. So she ran and caught up with her, and the two stepped briefly round the corner for a coffee and frittelle – it seemed ridiculous to eat anything else for breakfast during carnival.
Teresa told her about the Rialto and Il Gobbo, nothing more. This latest story would remain private from everyone until she knew what to make of it.
Camilla nodded and stared at her cappuccino.
‘Did you know that’s where she went?’ Teresa asked.
The young woman smiled and looked out of the window of the tiny pasticceria. There was a matronly middle-aged figure in a pink nylon jacket behind the counter, laughing and joking with the locals. Behind her stood a tall, serious young man in a baker’s uniform covered with flour, as if he’d come straight from the ovens. Teresa couldn’t help noticing he kept stealing glances at Camilla and that, when he answered the woman at the counter, he spoke cracked Italian in an accent that sounded English. His interest was returned once with a wry grin, nothing more. Camilla simply smiled and held on more tightly to her bags full of masks for the small shop that Strozzi rented near the Guggenheim.
‘I think Sofia liked to go out,’ Camilla said carefully, toying with her coffee. ‘I thought I told you that.’
‘Late at night? Drinking?’
‘Not so much, I feel. Not often anyway. There were never any problems. Once she lost her keys. That was all. I had to help her in.’ Camilla would not look at her. ‘She wasn’t in a bad way. Sofia was very happy. No money. No idea, I think, where she was going. But she wasn’t miserable. Not just before she disappeared. I thought . . . I wondered . . .’
‘She had someone?’
‘Maybe. She never mentioned it. I didn’t want to pry. That would have been rude. There was something private about Sofia. Something she didn’t want the rest of us to see.’ She took another bite of her frittella. ‘I don’t want to be party to someone else’s secrets. I don’t pry into matters that are none of my business. I would hate it if someone did that to me.’
Peroni always said you had to listen to the words people didn’t say just as much as the ones they did.
‘She wasn’t always so happy then?’
Camilla sighed and said, ‘Not always. Not until lately.’
Teresa Lupo looked at the young woman’s hands. They were fine, artistic, slender, covered in paint and what looked like white dust. Everything about her seemed so pale, almost bloodless. She’d been up early making masks that morning. Carnival came once a year. The opportunity could not be missed.
‘If there’s something you know and you’re not telling me, something that may seem insignificant . . .’
The young woman’s eyes turned again to the window and the bright day outside. She stayed silent.
‘Camilla. I’m worried. I think Sofia met this man, Jerome Aitchison. The one who died yesterday after he tried to kill that actress in the piazza. No one’s seen Sofia for a week. No one’s heard from her.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not possible she went off with such a horrible person.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because she was happy! Smiling. So content. I can’t believe she was involved with someone bad. Not for one moment. She was no fool.’
‘Sofia wasn’t always what she seemed. I’ve known her all my life and I’m starting to realize that. There was something else going on.’ She picked a mask out of one of Camilla’s bags, a woman’s in gold and ivory, beautifully painted. ‘She could be like this, I think. Beautiful, fetching, adorable. But deceptive.’
‘No. That’s not true.’
This conversation seemed to depress Camilla Dushku for some reason. She traced the face of the mask with her fingers then placed it back in the bag.
‘Filippo says I’m better at making these stupid things than he is now,’ she said. ‘What an idiotic way to earn a living. This place, this city. It’s unreal. And yet I don’t know how to leave. If I did I’d only come back. It gets to you. Like a disease. Like a virus.’
She finished her coffee and pushed the cup to one side then added, ‘Like it got to Sofia. So she came back too.’
Teresa waited in silence until finally Camilla asked a little nervously, ‘What?’
‘Yesterday, when I told you Sofia lived here once before you said you didn’t know. Today . . .’
This felt strange. Like an interrogation, and it wasn’t meant to be that way. She liked Camilla Dushku. All she wanted was the truth.
T
he young woman sighed, pushed back her long hair with one hand and then said, ‘Yesterday I lied.’
‘Why?’
There was pain on her pretty face, not for herself either.
‘Because she made me promise. I was never supposed to know. It was an accident. Something she blurted out. Like me just now. Damn!’
‘When she was drunk?’
‘Just that one night! She locked herself out. Around Christmas. She was miserable. And lonely. I’d never seen her like that before. Filippo had a spare key. Signor Ruskin gave him a set for the block because he was never there. So I got it from Filippo and I helped her in. I stayed with her because I was worried.’
‘About what?’
‘About her state of mind. She seemed so desperate. Miserable about something I guess. Nothing was working out. It was Christmas. She had no one.’
She had us, Teresa thought, if only she could have picked up the phone. If only we’d made her believe that was easy, and right.
‘Filippo and I took care of her the next few days. It was just one bad night and too much to drink.’
‘And she told you she once lived here. What else?’
‘I promised!’
She was close to tears. This had to be made as easy as possible.
‘Sixteen years ago,’ Teresa said, ‘Sofia had some kind of breakdown. I was never told at the time. It was kept from me. My mother came here and looked after her in hospital. She says she never really understood what happened either. She thought . . . she thinks Sofia tried to kill herself.’
‘No . . .’ Camilla said, shaking her head.
Teresa gripped her slim, talented fingers.
‘I was kept in the dark then,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to happen now. Not with what’s at stake. Camilla . . .’
‘Sofia lost her baby!’ she said so loudly that the tiny café became quiet and still as every face turned to stare at them. The cheery woman behind the counter looked shocked and suddenly serious. So did the tall young man next to her. The genteel calm of this charming middle-class haven in Dorsoduro had been briefly punctured by the world beyond.
‘A baby?’ Teresa whispered, scarcely able to believe what she’d just heard.
Camilla took a deep breath, removed her hands from the table and leaned a little closer.
‘That’s all I know. Sofia was pregnant. She lost the baby for some reason. It still got to her. At least it did at Christmas. She said that was the worst time. She saw all the families. Thought about them.’
Teresa tried to remember the last time Sofia had been in Rome for the holiday. She couldn’t.
‘What else did she tell you?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. She was very upset. I didn’t ask questions. How could you? The following morning she was so embarrassed. She swore me to secrecy. I never told anyone, never would.’
‘Did she mention the father?’
Camilla shook her head vigorously.
‘No! It was as if there wasn’t one. As if she was on her own back then as well. As if that’s how she spent all her life. Until lately. When she was happy. And then.’ A click of her fingers. ‘She’s gone.’
That was Sofia in a nutshell. Alone. In Italy or elsewhere, wandering, searching, hanging round anyone who’d talk, looking for something she couldn’t begin to name. This, Teresa felt sure, was what caused her mother so much pain. She had seen the desolation in her younger sister decades before, recognized the gaping emptiness in someone she loved and found it impossible to fill.
Then here in Venice, in the middle of a bitter winter, someone, Jerome Aitchison perhaps, came along and met that need. Shortly after, Sofia disappears.
A child.
It was hard to think of more questions. Motherhood was something Teresa hadn’t associated with her aunt and, when she thought about it, that in itself seemed shocking. She’d never thought of motherhood herself. There were medical reasons. But even without those, children didn’t seem to fit in with her career, any more than it suited Sofia’s peripatetic meanderings throughout Europe and beyond.
There was also the question of identification. She had told herself, ‘Because I’m like Sofia, she’s also like me.’
Neither assumption made the slightest sense in the way she’d originally intended, as a compliment to both.
‘That’s all she said,’ Camilla added. ‘She was so upset I never mentioned it again. I put her to bed and sat with her. We talked for a while, about other things. About Venice. When I was sure she was asleep I cleared some junk off that sofa of hers and slept there. The next couple of days we never let her out of our sight. It didn’t take long before she was happy again. She wanted to be happy. She wasn’t . . . suicidal or anything. It was just a black mood, a bad memory. Then . . .’
‘Then she found Il Gobbo and a man who wore the costume of the Plague Doctor. And off they went across the Grand Canal on a gondola. And no one’s seen her since.’
‘The Plague Doctor?’
‘The last time anyone saw her she was with a man dressed like that. Does it mean anything to you?’
‘Not to me.’
‘She must have brought people back from time to time,’ Teresa said.
‘No. I don’t remember that at all. I thought it was odd. She could have done, you know. There’s no reason why not. Especially lately. That last week. I wondered if she had a boyfriend. I asked her.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She went all bashful. Shy. I almost thought . . . scared. It was as if she wanted to keep something secret. Maybe . . .’
Camilla looked into her coffee cup.
‘Maybe what?’
‘Maybe he was married or something,’ she said and sighed. ‘Who knows? Sofia was happy. You could see it in the way she looked, the way she bounced out of the place. You don’t know who this man was?’
Jerome Aitchison. Or so it appeared.
‘I’m not sure,’ Teresa said. ‘One week ago Sofia left the bars in the Rialto with him. It was two in the morning. They took a gondola across the canal and no one’s seen her since.’
Camilla sat there open-mouthed, plainly astonished.
‘Two in the morning? You have to talk to the police,’ she said finally.
‘I have talked to them. They’re too busy to care. Besides, what do I have to show them? Some stray coincidences. Nothing that adds up. And a missing person. The world’s full of those.’
‘Sofia’s disappeared before, hasn’t she?’
Teresa watched her very closely and asked, ‘Why do you say that?’
‘You get to know them after a while. Venice is full of people drifting through, not sure where they’re going.’ A pause and then she added, ‘Like me, I guess.’
‘I never knew,’ Teresa murmured. ‘That was kept from me too.’
Worse, she thought, I never noticed.
The young woman leaned forward and said, ‘Tell me what I can do.’ You could speak the truth straight out, Teresa thought. But she didn’t say that or much else. No admonition was necessary.
She got up and went to the counter to pay for the coffees and frittelle. The large Venetian woman there smiled at her, clearly concerned. Then the young man in the white uniform came forward and said, in half-decent Italian, ‘We couldn’t help overhearing. Sofia came in here too. Everyone loved her. If there’s—’
‘Do you know something?’ Teresa cut in, a little sharply. ‘I’m grateful, honestly. But if I’m going to find her I need some . . . facts. Some certainty.’
‘A beautiful, kind human being,’ the woman behind the counter insisted. ‘We know no more than that, signora. But if we can help . . .’
They gazed at her, she in an antiquated garish pink nylon uniform, he in the white short-sleeved gown of a baker. The doctor in Teresa Lupo couldn’t help noticing the sticking plaster and cotton pad in the crook of his arm.
‘You give blood,’ she said, nodding at the small wound. ‘That’s a good thing to do. I wish more Itali
ans did it so readily.’
‘I’m English, love, not Italian,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Can’t you tell?’
The Venetian woman grinned and pinched his cheeks, the way a mother might a child.
‘He is my saviour. My St George slaying the dragon that is the city council with their taxes and their thieving. Never such a baker and pastry chef have you met. Did you taste those frittelle? And he’s English. He speaks so funny! Say something for the lady, Jason. Speak like a proper man from Yorkshire.’
A sly, shy expression crossed the young man’s long pale face then he snuggled up to the woman behind the counter, put an arm round her shiny, old-fashioned jacket and cooed, in a very strong English accent, ‘Ooh . . . you do look lovely, Mrs Rizzolo.’
She wriggled out of his grip, giggling, then paused for a moment and said, very seriously, ‘Miracles do happen, signora. But mostly to those who believe in them.’
Teresa took her change, nodded and didn’t say a word.
On the way out she asked Camilla about the envelope the previous night. Someone had put it in her mailbox.
‘It was me,’ she said straight away. ‘I found it on the mat when I came back in the afternoon. Pushed through the door, I suppose. Very strange. The post doesn’t come on Sundays. Who was it from?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe someone called Arnaud. The Count of Saint-Germain. Know him?’
Camilla burst out laughing, and Teresa was pleased to see her cheerful again. She had warmed to this young woman and knew she ought to feel a little guilty – though didn’t – for extracting from her a secret Camilla felt duty bound to keep hidden.
‘Do I look like the sort of person who knows a Count?’ The girl thought for a moment then added, ‘Though I met plenty of people who looked like one last night. Russian mainly. Not French. Not aristocrats either. Real ones anyway.’
‘Carnival,’ Teresa said.
‘Si. Carnival!’
Camilla picked up her bags.
‘I have to restock the shop now. We’ll be open at ten. A long day ahead. Another party to wait on this evening. You have my number. Call me. About anything.’
I will, Teresa thought, and walked back to the vaporetto stop. The sign said she had to wait ten minutes for a boat. So she phoned Alberto Tosi and arranged to meet him at eleven o’clock outside the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, not far from the Castello Questura where she had spent so many fruitless hours the afternoon before.