Carnival for the Dead

by David Hewson

  The inspector actually laughed at that.

  ‘These are such suppositions! How can one possibly know such things?’

  ‘I don’t. Aitchison was a stranger to the city . . .’

  ‘According to your story?’ Paola Boscolo interrupted. ‘The one that disappeared?’

  The one that disappeared. Quite. Teresa didn’t intend to labour that point.

  ‘Forget the story,’ she said quickly. ‘The clothes this woman was wearing. Sofia had something like them in her apartment. They’re from a painting in the Accademia. A Carpaccio. The Ursula cycle.’

  Paola Boscolo was scribbling all this anxiously in her notebook and Teresa wanted to scream at her. To shout, ‘This is more than peripheral detail. More than a line on someone’s pad. This is the heart of the mystery. Somehow. In ways I can’t even begin to guess.’

  Then she realized from the expression on the young policewoman’s face that Paola Boscolo actually thought this might be evidence against Sofia. Not just Aitchison.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ Teresa exclaimed. ‘Can’t you see? Someone, Aitchison if you wish, is obsessed with Carpaccio. Obsessed with the Ursula painting in particular. For whatever reason he sees women as victims, as objects, to be used then cast aside. Murdered, if it pleases him. Sofia was on his list.’

  And I’d be dead too, she told herself, if I hadn’t fought back. This was not what he expected of a woman. He wanted beauty, subservience, an innocence he could ruin.

  ‘Just like the English,’ the inspector observed.

  ‘What? You think that kind of obsessive behaviour is restricted to the English? Don’t you ever read the papers? Or is Venice a world apart?’

  He glared at her.

  ‘It is a world apart, signora, and for that we’re grateful. What I meant was it’s the lot of the English to come here and be obsessed. To see us as some kind of architectural freak show, not a place where real men and women and their families try to live in conditions that are sometimes difficult. Aitchison is not the first to suffer such an obsession. Nor will he be the last . . .’

  Teresa threw her arms around herself, trying to stay warm. There was a murdered woman in this room, and all he could talk about was the eccentricity of foreigners.

  One of the men in white bunny suits wandered over and said something about moving the body. She wanted to tell him to stop. To wait until daylight. Police floods didn’t uncover everything. She would have wanted to see this place with the shuttered windows thrown open and the winter sun streaming through.

  Instead she looked at Paola Boscolo and said, ‘If there’s nothing else, can I go now?’

  It was almost one in the morning when the police launch moored at the private jetty by the Ponte agli Incurabili. The sleet had turned to steady snow. The uniformed police officers made a fuss of getting off the boat and helping her onto the slippery promenade. In the past few days she’d warmed to the Venetians. They could be standoffish, brusque and occasionally obtuse. But they intended none of this and were sensitive and thoughtful when it mattered. More than anything, she felt, they were self-absorbed, not much interested in the world beyond their city. They possessed, too, mannerisms and customs that were starchy yet polite, almost gracious, in a very antiquated fashion. Alberto Tosi, with his energetic enthusiasm to help and his solitary inner sadness, typified them in many ways.

  None of this had occurred to her before. She had only seen the place, she realized, not the people. Or, more truthfully, she had regarded them as adjuncts to the panoramic landscape before her, props on a gorgeous crumbling stage.

  As the launch set off on the moonlit glittering canal, with one of the officers waving back to her from the stern, she marvelled again at the astonishing view that lay at Sofia’s doorstep. There was nowhere in the world quite like this. It was, as she often thought, like something out of the imagination of the English painter, Turner. But Turner had never painted people much, not that she could recall. That was an omission.

  Another recollection. Her fictional self, meeting Arnaud, the Count of Saint-Germain, was struck by the connection with Turner too. Whoever wrote those stories must have spoken to Sofia. Teresa had talked to her about Venice and painting, she felt sure. It would have been so like her aunt to have thrown into the conversation, ‘And my clever niece, who finds killers for the Rome Questura, once noticed . . .’

  The problem was that Sofia would say such a thing to anyone. A stranger on a vaporetto. Someone at the next table in Signora Rizzolo’s lovely little café. Even a man in a mask.

  Coming through the door into the cold stone hallway, every light out, she wondered whether there’d be anything in the postbox. Hoped not, if she were honest with herself. The rising tempo of the delivery of these fragments of the story had begun to concern her.

  The envelope was there in the mailbox but it was so thin it seemed impossible that it could contain anything meaningful.

  Teresa took it and trudged upstairs, turned on the light, felt moved for some reason to check every room in Sofia’s decrepit apartment to make sure she was on her own.

  Then – avoiding the document for the time being – she looked at the computer. One message from Silvio, the usual pleading. Nothing else.

  Rome seemed a universe away.

  She glanced at the tailor’s dummy by the door. The gown there, sky-blue, the red cape, the gold brocade, the crown of pearls . . . these things sent such a shudder through her she had to walk across the room, take the grubby cover off the sofa and throw it over the still form of the torso for some peace of mind.

  She found it impossible to stem the flood of thoughts, of possibilities, racing into her head. Ideas she would normally have dismissed as ridiculous speculation, entirely devoid of any basis in fact, as Paola Boscolo and the surly inspector had intimated the moment Teresa had first tried to imagine them out loud in the foul-smelling room in the Casino degli Spiriti.

  The first was this. The woman, Fiorella Gabrielli, had been summoned to Venice through her husband, a common if affectionate pimp, days after Sofia had gone missing. She’d been murdered in Sofia’s place. Second best. A substitute. While her husband was despatched to the Piazza San Marco, told to shoot the young starlet and throw himself off the campanile. Luisa Cammarota was chosen at random, purely to make a show. There was no other link at all.

  What kind of husband would agree to such an ultimatum?

  A desperate one. A fool. Someone who loved his wife and hoped against hope to save her. Or perhaps the very opposite. Someone who understood the fate he’d brought her to and couldn’t live with the knowledge.

  What would be the purpose of such a subterfuge? To fool the authorities into thinking Jerome Aitchison was dead.

  St Jerome, the cop from Cambridge had said. A novice in Venice, according to the story, captivated by Sofia in the little scuola by the bridge.

  These two portraits of the man couldn’t both be true. Was it possible Aitchison had been visiting Venice for years? That he was, in reality, the man Sofia met before? The one who made her pregnant then did something so terrible she aborted the child and tried to kill herself?

  The picture she’d built up of the Englishman – from the stories and the conversation with the police inspector in Cambridge – had become so clear she’d started to believe it. To wonder whether he might be the one writing the stories. The Plague Doctor of the previous night. Arnaud, the Count of Saint-Germain. The worried, caring doctor Marco, baffled as he tried to treat the fictional Camilla. All desperate for answers, lost for a way forward.

  Could a man like Aitchison write such good Italian? With such style? A lecturer in actuarial science? And why?

  She looked at the computer and knew she was too tired to do anything useful with it. Then she remembered a single, inescapable fact, one that offered some comfort.

  If the gown Sofia was supposed to wear was still here, and someone else’s body lay in that desolate mansion, her aunt, by rights, ought to be alive so
mewhere. In hiding. In fear. Waiting.

  First things first.

  She opened the envelope. This time there were just two pages inside. One way or another this narrative was coming to its conclusion.

  One Among Many

  Teresa Lupo stayed by the jetty feeling a little light-headed, from the strangeness of the evening, not Tosi’s prosecco. The resident owl hooted again and was joined by another nearby. A thin finger of cloud moved slowly across the moon, an indication of a coming change in the weather.

  It was hot and stuffy on the lagoon. She much preferred Venice in the autumn or winter, and would return then, in October, November perhaps, to remind herself of this meeting and attempt to find some perspective on its significance.

  In the distance, moving quickly, the lights of a low, swift vessel emerged from the night. She was on her feet in a flash, shouting, as loud as her lungs allowed. The boat disappeared in the direction of Chioggia as quickly as it came, not stopping for a moment, not hearing her over the sound of its whiny outboard motor.

  Vaporetti and larger boats circled the distant outline of Venice constantly, as out of reach as spaceships coming in to land on a far-off planet. She and Arnaud would be trapped here until Tosi’s launch returned in the morning, perfectly timed so that she would miss the final meeting of the symposium, and the crucial vote. They had planned well.

  There were only two possible decisions. She was still unable to imagine what her odd and amusing companion could possibly have meant when he spoke of a third.

  She laid out the sleeping bag and by the side of it the sheets Tosi had left. Then she picked up the torch, not that it was truly necessary on a night like this, and wandered down the winding, stony, overgrown path Arnaud had taken, back to the vineyard, the only place it led.

  He’d had enough time, she thought. They needed to talk again. Aspects of his story required clarification. Perhaps they might help her see more clearly the way forward through the fogbound mystery in which she found herself.

  There was no one to be seen in the low patch of open ground where they had sat together earlier. Only the distant twinkling windows of the houses on Malamocco.

  ‘Arnaud,’ she called. ‘Arnaud!’

  A large bird rose up from the water margin, startling her. She flapped her hands, fearing it would fly into her face. Stumbling on the soft, soggy ground, her foot caught something and Teresa Lupo found herself thrown rudely to the earth.

  The grass was soft and accommodating and gave no indication of the hard white layer of bone that must lie somewhere beneath. When she recovered her equilibrium she saw his face a short distance away on the ground, and the sight frightened her for the first time since she’d set foot on the Island of the Dead.

  Arnaud, the Count of Saint-Germain, lay on his back on the thick vegetation, arms crossed over his chest, black lacquered cane in hand, face to the starry evening sky. He wore a half-smile and his eyes were wide open, unfocused, without the bright, sharp spark of life she’d seen there from the moment they first met. His mouth was a touch agape. She leaned forward, listening for breath. Then she picked up his left wrist, trying not to recoil from the coldness of the skin, and felt for a pulse.

  There was nothing.

  Over the years she’d seen so many corpses. She knew what death looked like, could sense its presence as if it were some ever-present actor waiting in the wings of the theatre that was life, ready to be called when his lines were due.

  ‘Oh Arnaud,’ Teresa Lupo whispered.

  Wearily she went back to the jetty, picked up the things Tosi had left. When she returned she placed a cheap tartan blanket over his body and the sleeping bag next to him.

  She found it impossible to cover his face, for a little while anyway, until she realized there was no real alternative. There were bugs about, and proprieties to do with the end of a life, a remarkable one if he were to be believed.

  It was a ridiculous story. She knew that. As ridiculous as the idea that an ancient skeleton in the Basilica San Marco might be the bones of a man who once served water to the – perhaps equally fictional – human being who called himself Jesus.

  Yet Arnaud believed every word, as if he’d lived them. That mattered, surely. If enough people trusted, with all their hearts, in something that was no more – or less – than legend, did that fairy story cease, at some stage, to be fable and take on, instead, the mantle of truth?

  Cautiously, with what the pathologist hoped amounted to a semblance of tenderness, she pulled the fabric over his handsome features then curled up inside the harsh, thin nylon bag beside him. One more corpse among many. A sea of ancient bones beneath him, anonymous, unmourned, for a hard, cold bed.

  She was determined not to cry, and almost managed. But she was tired, bewildered, and, in spite of herself, a little scared.

  THE ARCADES

  He lay on the bed in the studio above the shop, watching the TV news. It was three thirty in the afternoon. Dusk was falling. Outside the long night would soon begin. Drunks in masks. Tourists wandering the alleys and dark porticos looking for something, some place, some person, they would never find.

  Now was the between time. Only a few visitors meandering the freezing streets.

  He’d barely slept. The image of the woman in the Casino degli Spiriti haunted him. Not the Roman. It was the dead figure on the floor, the whore from Bologna in the magical dress.

  Ursula.

  A saint waiting to be transformed. A virgin about to enter into the greatest secret of all.

  It infuriated him he didn’t dare return to the Accademia any more and sit, as he used to, staring at her face in each of the canvases, following her journey from innocence, through promise, into the shadows.

  He was torn between two canvases most of all. The image of her asleep in bed, beautiful, waiting for the husband, the physical revelation that would never come. An angel at her feet, a creature of God delivering the portent of her death. A murderer with wings.

  And the final painting. The kneeling saint, praying in that dress he’d recreated here, in the studio. The unsullied maiden, ready for sacrifice, for martyrdom above a life tainted by the pagan, the physical, the unclean.

  Real women were different. He knew that. Had all along, if he were honest with himself.

  He wouldn’t set foot outside the door again until darkness was here entirely. The TV and the radio spoke of nothing but the murder in Castello. The event had, they said, cast a pall over the carnival itself. The very idea made him laugh. Men and women hiding their identity, seeking to pretend they were something else. What did they expect? A light interlude of pleasure, an absence of responsibility? And then normality resumed?

  They were fools. The police too. What photographs they had of Jerome Aitchison were everywhere. The public was warned not to approach the man. They were also asked to look out for Sofia Bianchi, though the fat policewoman who spoke for them made it clear that she was not necessarily considered a suspect in the crime and was, perhaps, one more victim.

  If only they knew.

  He walked to the tiny bathroom, turned on the single light and stared at himself in the mirror. The wound wasn’t as bad as he’d first thought. A skin-coloured plaster now covered that part of his forehead. But his arm still ached from the effort of the previous night. His body wasn’t what it used to be.

  That fine wooden bow had cost him more than a thousand euros from a specialist manufacturer in Austria. It now lay in pieces scattered among a variety of public rubbish bins stretching from Zanipolo through the Fondamenta Nove to the Rialto. The shiny black-feathered arrows he’d smashed to pieces and placed in a restaurant’s rubbish containers behind the tiny, too-perfect church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli. Long before that, in a back-street Castello sotoportego that stank of dogs and rotting refuse, he’d changed out of the archer’s costume. It now lay at the bottom of the lagoon, stuffed inside two supermarket carriers which he’d weighed down with abandoned garbage and the sword. After that
he walked the rest of the way in the simple, everyday clothes he wore beneath, shivering, teeth chattering, trying to think.

  Scared.

  No. Never that. Fear was a distant memory, not quite real.

  He’d spent the last eighteen hours naked, flitting between sleep and consciousness, watching the TV, picking at food, drinking water from the tap. He liked being this way. Pale skin. Bony bald head with not a single whisker of hair, a scalp so easily transformed by one of the many wigs he owned. It was an everyday, functional body, one he knew so well he didn’t even think about it any more. Naked, he was one more mannequin waiting to be clothed. Waiting to be transformed, metamorphosed, into whatever he wanted. Over the years he’d learned to shrug identities off and on like the second skins they were. It was a useful talent.

  The bathroom was on the first floor at the back, above the studio storage space. The floor was plain, cracked terracotta tiles, so cold at that moment his feet felt numb. The place was airless, rank with his sweat and odour. Not his favourite in the city. It was a prison, functional, nothing more.

  Yet there was nowhere else that was safe. Sofia Bianchi had dictated that. Then along came another, a relative. And matters got worse.

  When he thought about his present position the icy, bleak anger inside him rose and consumed his every thought. He hated this city. Had ever since the news, sixteen years before. The few brief, faceless weeks of carnival apart, winter was the worst. The pale, bleached landscapes. The people with their heads bowed against the wind and sleet and snow.

  The festival here, like so much else, was tied to the pointless fairy stories of the Church, a brief moment of gaiety, of life, before the lean time of Lent. As if a man needed to break from his true nature. As if there was, in truth, some aspect of him that rose beyond the everyday.

  He went back into the bedroom and took out the small leather case he kept with him always, even when it had to be strapped to his chest beneath a medieval archer’s tunic. There were five passports in it, all for different countries. Three open tickets provisionally booked for the same day out of Fiumicino the following week. First class, all under different names, changeable with a phone call. One to Rio de Janeiro. Another to Cape Town. A third to Melbourne. The southern hemisphere. Summer to Europe’s winter. Warmth and promise.