by David Hewson
Tosi took her to a tiny local bar down a back alley near the scuola. She stood outside for a moment and stared at the sign over the door: the Cason dei Sette Morti.
‘Morbid name,’ the old pathologist said. ‘It comes from some old lagoon tale.’
‘About what?’
He huffed and puffed awkwardly then said, ‘Ghosts and spectres and dead men walking and talking as if nothing untoward had happened.’
Teresa went in and immediately interrogated the pleasant old bartender behind the counter about an odd Englishman named Jerome Aitchison who might have been here recently. Her questions drew a blank, genuinely she believed. The story on the yellow pages was mostly untrue. Yet Jerome Aitchison did exist and had tried to murder the young actress Luisa Cammarota the day before. Whoever wrote those words knew about him, knew this place and the nearby scuola and Sofia’s connections with it.
Tosi announced that he remembered from her previous visit how much she liked salt cod.
‘The baccalà here . . .’
The bartender beamed as Tosi lavished fulsome praise on the small puddles of white, puréed fish being set in front of them.
They sat down and she realized how right he was. The taste, so delicate, so redolent of the sea somehow, took her back many years.
The place looked more like a junk shop than a bar. It was full of bits and pieces accumulated over time. Old amusement machines, clearly out of order, shelves of books, fishing nets, agricultural implements, scores of sepia and black-and-white photographs of long-dead Venetians staring at the camera as if it had intruded upon some private ceremony. Three grandfather clocks, none apparently working, stood in shady corners. An obscure fortune-telling device was attached to the wall next to the toilet, a sign declaring ‘broken’ taped over the coin slot.
‘The owner likes to collect things,’ Tosi said by way of explanation.
Reluctantly she told him about the fiction that had disappeared from the mustard-coloured pages sent to her the previous Saturday night. Told him everything she remembered. Then she explained how she knew about the First International Symposium on the Genetic Analysis of the Skeletal Remains Attributed to St Mark. He sipped his ombra of weak white wine, eyes glassy with shock and bafflement.
‘What can it possibly mean?’ he asked when she’d finished.
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘To think I’d treat a lady in such a way. That any of us would. Abandoning someone to a place like that.’
‘You know Poveglia?
He shuddered again and said, ‘I know of it. The Island of the Dead. As you said. Well that’s one thing I can guarantee about our symposium, should you turn up. There’ll be no boat trips.’
She finished her cicchetti and bought him another ombra. The wine was prosecco spento, so weak it scarcely counted. He seemed terribly upset, by Sofia’s absence and the idea that he had somehow been introduced into the mystery almost as a villain in the piece.
‘Let’s go and see the police again,’ Tosi suggested. ‘My name still carries a little weight here, I think.’
But it didn’t and they both soon knew it.
They walked round to the Castello Questura and, after waiting for thirty minutes, found themselves sitting side by side in an interview room, Tosi getting somewhat red in the face as Paola Boscolo explained what was being done about the case of the missing Sofia Bianchi.
Everything and nothing was the answer. The beaming sovrintendente explained how she had followed the procedures in the book, alerting neighbouring police forces and the national missing persons register. She had personally called every hospital and homeless hostel in the region without success, leaving her own mobile number and emailing them the last photo they had of Sofia.
None had any record of a woman answering her description. Then she listened carefully, sympathetically, as Teresa told her about the baby Sofia had lost here sixteen years before.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand why a Catholic nation allows abortion.’
‘Because we’re not a Catholic nation,’ Teresa responded through gritted teeth. ‘I’m not here for a conversation about the morality of terminations. There must have been a father. It’s possible Sofia came back to see him . . .’
‘I thought you said she had something to do with this Englishman? Aitchison? The one who died in the Piazza San Marco?’
‘I . . . I . . .’
She struggled for the words, for some kind of logic. Both were absent.
‘Teresa,’ the policewoman continued, with that same infuriating familiarity. ‘If your aunt had an abortion here all those years ago it was a private matter, nothing illegal. The police would never have been involved. There would be no need of any official record. No requirement to register the father’s identity. As I said before, if you wish to pursue these matters you may find it easier to do so through your family, through Sofia’s friends—’
‘I’m trying!’
Tosi intervened and told Boscolo about their conversations in the Rialto the previous night.
‘Here are hard facts,’ he insisted. ‘Sofia went to these places regularly. She was seen leaving in the early hours of the morning, with a man dressed as the Plague Doctor. They took a gondola.’
The police officer opened her hands, smiled and said nothing.
‘You could ask,’ Tosi went on. ‘Make inquiries.’
Boscolo was staring at Teresa, knowingly.
‘Ask what?’ she said. ‘Did someone see a woman in the night? Teresa understands we have nothing to work with here. No evidence of a crime or of wrongdoing. A woman in a delicate mental state goes missing—’
‘With a man!’ Tosi said rather too loudly.
‘With a man,’ the policewoman agreed. ‘Listen to me. Venice is a small and crowded place. On the rare occasions we have crimes of violence we know about it. In Rome, in Naples, in Milan, a woman might scream and no one cares to notice. In this city everyone hears everything. Had Sofia come to some harm a week, ten days ago, we would have found something by now. I understand that this uncertainty is disconcerting but believe me. Sometimes no news is good news, as they say. Now . . .’
She shuffled the documents on her desk.
‘Carnival continues. There is paperwork to be concluded with regard to the dead Englishman. I have much to do. We will continue to look for your aunt. Be assured of that.’
It was starting to get dark by the time they left. Tosi stayed with Teresa as they walked back to the waterfront.
By the lagoon Teresa kissed his cold, whiskery cheek, held him for a moment and said, ‘Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘Cope,’ he said forcefully. ‘You’re a champion at coping. I knew it the first time we ever met. In circumstances like these coping is a powerful antidote to doubt and misery and despair. Perhaps the best there is.’
She laughed.
‘It’s nice that I don’t have to cope alone.’
He shuffled on his stiff legs.
‘That policeman of yours . . . Peroni. He’s a very lucky man. I hope he realizes it.’
‘We’re both very lucky, Alberto. And yes, we know.’
He took her arms and gazed into her face with a stern, determined expression.
‘I will make inquiries, my dear. Be assured of that.’
She walked to the vaporetto stop and took the fast boat back to Zattere, her heart a little lighter. Alberto Tosi was a charming, intelligent, fiercely dedicated old man. He desperately wanted to help. They all did.
But what could any of them do without the next envelope? The next marker along the trail?
As the fast sleek boat pulled into Zattere she ached to see it, to know what happened next.
There was nothing in the downstairs mailbox. Teresa walked up and checked the stone steps in front of the green door of Sofia’s apartment. Nothing there either.
She stood on the cold winding staircase for a moment, unable to believe
this. The tale of the Count of Saint-Germain and her visit with him to the Island of the Dead was not simply unresolved, like that of Carpaccio’s Dog. It was blatantly unfinished, left hanging in the air, demanding answers. Where else could they possibly be found?
Laughter rose from two floors below. She walked down and entered through the half-open door. Camilla was there by the side of Strozzi who was now away from the piano, a hunched, bulky figure in his wheelchair. The two of them were fighting frantically with paper and paste and paint.
‘Busy times,’ he said, nodding at Teresa as she came in. ‘So many people. So many orders. So much . . .’ He breathed a deep sigh, as if of relief. ‘. . . money. Any news?’
‘No,’ she said simply.
Every wall of the room was occupied by masks, all of them white and ghostly, some waiting for paint to give them a little life, a good half, she saw, Plague Doctors like elongated crows’ skulls mounted as trophies on display.
‘The postman . . .’ Teresa began.
‘Has been,’ Camilla said. ‘Bills, bills, bills.’ She stopped what she was doing, which appeared to be applying paste onto some kind of a template, and asked, ‘No news at all?’
‘None that means anything,’ Teresa muttered.
The two of them stared at her, clearly concerned.
‘Camilla told me about the Rialto,’ Strozzi said. ‘And this man in the costume of the Plague Doctor. They went off together? In a gondola?’
‘Just across the canal,’ she confirmed. ‘After that . . .’
‘Inexplicable,’ he said. ‘A gondola? What could she have been thinking?’
I think she was in love,’ Teresa said, though she wasn’t quite sure why. ‘Infatuated, I guess. Acting on a whim.’
‘Lots of people are like that,’ Strozzi replied with a shrug. ‘Look at us.’
He gestured at the paper and the masks.
‘I was supposed to be a concert pianist. And Camilla?’
They both looked at her.
‘Still thinking about that,’ the young woman said, and splashed some more paste onto the mask in her hands.
‘Did Camilla tell you about the baby?’ Teresa asked him.
His face was stony, blank.
‘No,’ the young woman said quietly, a little offended. ‘I do not tell tales.’
‘That’s a good thing,’ Teresa observed. ‘But sometimes tales are necessary.’
She explained what had happened during Sofia’s previous time in the city. About the baby. About the abortion. And the overdose. Strozzi listened attentively, shaking his head sadly. Then, when she’d ended, he asked, ‘Do you know who the father was?’
‘No. I thought perhaps . . . you might.’
‘Why me? I’m just the man downstairs. I liked Sofia. I wanted to help. We both tried to cheer her when she was down. But that’s as far as it went. I was not party to her secrets.’
‘If it wasn’t for the drink,’ Camilla added, ‘I don’t think I would have been either. There was something very private about her. I respected that. So did Filippo. How else should we behave?’
Now she seemed to have offended both of them, and for no good reason.
He took Camilla’s arm and said, ‘This work . . .’ He put aside the small, feminine mask in his hands. ‘It’s nothing next to finding Sofia. But help us help you. Otherwise we’re lost.’
I can’t, Teresa thought. Not without some insight. Or the next instalment of the story.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long day. I’m tired. I apologize if I appeared rude.’
‘Ah!’
Filippo Strozzi raised his hand.
‘No need for apologies. I remember! One thing I have to tell you. It may be nothing at all and it’s too late to do anything about it now, I’m afraid. But that costume you found in Sofia’s apartment. The one you believed was for the carnival?’
‘What about it?’
He scratched his beard.
‘I could be wrong but I think I know where it comes from. Or at least the original. There’s something round the corner in the Accademia.’
‘A painting?’ she murmured.
‘Si. By an artist called Carpaccio. A very beautiful, very disturbing series of paintings in some ways.’
Teresa Lupo closed her eyes. The thought of staring at another of Carpaccio’s finely detailed dead Venetians sent a shiver through her. There was something in the work she’d seen in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni she found deeply unsettling. The saint gazing through the window, hearing the news of his friend’s death as if by some mystical medium. The panoply of books and scientific instruments around, all the trappings of the academic, the man of the world, the scientist just like her. And the dog on the floor, staring up at him, asking a simple, unanswerable question that still eluded her.
‘Tomorrow at nine thirty,’ Strozzi’s voice boomed, bringing her back to her senses. ‘If you have the time. We should go and look. As I said . . . I may be wrong.’
‘I doubt that somehow,’ Teresa told him.
She went back upstairs. There were only two emails waiting. The first was from Silvio Di Capua and ranged from threats to pleading, all with one aim, to bring her back to Rome immediately.
‘Poor Silvio,’ she said to the glass-eyed pheasant in its case. ‘Always living in fear.’
She saw the name on the second and went into the kitchen to make herself one of Sofia’s curious mugs of tea. She’d still not found the time to stock the apartment with food. Now it was too late again. She would have to go out and a part of her knew already where she was headed.
Beyond the kitchen window a liner glided along the canal, its vast dark hulk ribboned with cabin lights, its might sending a tremor through the building. She didn’t mind this now. It was a reminder that there was a world outside, one that could reach into the interior enclosed community that was Venice and touch it, if only for a little while.
She called Di Capua. From the noises behind him she guessed he was in that bar he loved so much near the Piazza Navona. She’d left Rome only two days before. It seemed like weeks.
‘You’re coming back?’ he said straight away.
‘No. I’m not.’
‘Teresa! I’m telling you! This is serious. Career-threatening serious. No one’s sacrosanct. Not the way things are today. You’ve been here so long you earn twice as much as the rest of us. And I mean that word. Earn. I know how much we need you. That doesn’t mean those penny-pinching bureaucrats upstairs do.’
‘You know, you’re the smartest minion I’ve ever had,’ she said, and meant it. ‘I taught you well.’
‘Don’t talk like this. Get on a train first thing in the morning. Walk in and say you’re sorry. It’s just a few days. If you come back now the worst that can happen is a suspension or something.’
‘Silvio . . .’
She heard him move somewhere. Outside perhaps, for a little privacy. She could imagine the street of Governo Vecchio in her head, see him standing on the cobblestones in the cold winter night.
‘I shouldn’t be telling you this,’ he continued. ‘They’d kill me if they knew. Peroni and company are coming back. Probably by the weekend. They could help . . .’
‘Peroni’s a cop in Rome. I’m in Venice.’
And besides, she thought, there was something here he couldn’t understand, any more than she at that moment.
‘You can handle things,’ she said. ‘And you will. I’ve got to go now. Goodnight.’
She ended the call and felt a little guilty.
The second message was from Orsini, the senior civil servant responsible for the administration of the department. The man who hired and fired. A decent enough individual. An obedient and thoroughly unimaginative servant of the state. One who resented her occasional recalcitrant moment and disregard for the rulebook. That was his problem, not hers.
They couldn’t dismiss her, not on the basis of a few days’ unauthorized absence and the occasional
past misdemeanour. Suspension. Demotion. Maybe even some formal hauling over the coals. There wasn’t a lot else they could do.
The decision was hers, had to be. She thought of Augustine at his desk then leaned over her new computer and typed out a reply. It was formal and polite. Her absence was due to pressing personal reasons. She apologized for not explaining these earlier. They were family matters, of no concern to the Questura. If he looked at the duty rosters he would, she suggested, see that she was owed at least a week of extra time, as well as due holiday. While it was unconventional to take this without warning it wasn’t unknown.
Orsini had made it plain in his email that he wanted a date for her return. As politely as she could, she told him this was impossible. When her business here was done, she would be back. In the meantime he had Silvio to rely upon, a skilled and intelligent officer who possessed all of her finer points and none of the weaker ones.
When she was done she pushed back the computer and read the message again, carefully, word by word. Her emails were, on occasion, notorious for their intemperate language and judgements. This would not be one of those.
Her finger hovered over the send button for a moment. Then she hit it.
She was aware of an unexpected sense of freedom, of having turned a previously unseen corner. Until Sofia was found she would remain in Venice, whatever the consequences.
Teresa wandered into the bedroom, lay down and fell asleep almost immediately. The shivering passing of another cruise liner woke her around eight o’clock.
She climbed into the cracked enamel bath and stood under the dribbling, lukewarm shower for a while. Then she found her best clothes, investigated Sofia’s compendious make-up drawer, did her best with what little she understood, including some lipstick. It was clumsy she guessed, though not as much as a mask. But who’d really notice in the dark?
Just after nine she set off into the night, much as her aunt must have done, walking through the intermittent snow to the Salute stop where she caught the number one vaporetto to the Rialto, the one that stopped everywhere along the way.
It was busier than before. A crowd of people in costumes and masks obscured the statue of Il Gobbo, almost filling the square opposite the church of San Giacomo. From the adjoining campiello came the deafening blare and hypnotic strobe lights of the outdoor disco. She had to remind herself again: this was the Rialto, the place where the tourists came and gazed at stalls of exotic gleaming fish and colourful vegetables.