by David Hewson
She waved it away.
‘Alberto. You know as well as I what will happen. Paola Boscolo will tell her inspector. He will tell his superior. A meeting will be called, officers assigned, possibilities explored. They’re already bewildered by what’s happening. You said yourself. How often is Venice afflicted by murder? If we had something concrete to give them, an address, say, they’d be there in five minutes. But we don’t and in the circumstances, without something more substantial, we’ll only add to their confusion. You heard him. If he sees a uniform he’ll kill her. Do you think for one moment that’s an idle threat?’
‘The police!’ Tosi barked.
She stabbed her finger on the table.
‘Not yet. Not now. He thinks I know where Sofia is. I can’t disappoint him. Can I?’
The old man fell quiet. Filippo Strozzi muttered a few words of self-recrimination.
‘How were you to know?’ Tosi asked him.
‘Of course I should have known,’ Strozzi snapped. ‘An order out of the blue? Some stranger asking to meet her in a café? This is no way to do business.’
He briefly closed his eyes.
‘Tell me exactly what he said, Filippo,’ Teresa demanded.
She listened carefully. Then she replayed the phone call again, pausing on the video though the sight of Camilla clearly caused Filippo Strozzi intense distress.
‘Does the name Schütze mean anything to you?’ she asked.
Strozzi nodded.
‘It’s on the bank account,’ he said. ‘For the property.’
‘Why would a man ostensibly called Michael Ruskin give his property company a German name?’ she wondered.
None of them could begin to guess.
‘He does have a shop,’ Tosi said, pointing at the phone. ‘That’s a real costume, surely.’
‘A shop that’s closed,’ she added. ‘In the middle of carnival.’
‘It can’t be anywhere central,’ Strozzi said. ‘Someone would notice. Venice is a small world. I know the competition. We talk to one another. It’s not possible.’
‘It’s a shop!’ Tosi insisted.
‘I don’t know . . .’ Strozzi looked lost. ‘A studio maybe? A place they make things?’
‘And you’ve never done business with any company called L’Arciere?’ Teresa asked.
Strozzi thought for a moment, shook his head, checked his address book anyway.
‘Not that I know. Companies come and go. People stay the same. Maybe. Under a different name.’ He looked desperate. ‘You’re telling me this is Michael Ruskin? The same man?’
His big, bear-like face contorted in bewilderment.
She threw the photos onto the table and told them where she’d found them.
‘I think it’s just one of the names he uses,’ she said. ‘He and Sofia were lovers here sixteen years ago. She became pregnant. The relationship soured. She had an abortion. He took that very badly. This obsession with the painting in the Accademia. The name he came to use here . . .’
‘Ruskin?’ Tosi repeated. ‘Like the Englishman?’
‘Quite.’
Strozzi seemed genuinely taken aback.
‘This seems impossible.’
‘It’s not. She came back for some reason. It wasn’t coincidence. It wasn’t a rental apartment she picked out of the paper. Did you know?’
‘No!’ His hefty arms flailed the air. ‘None of this. Sofia never mentioned a thing.’ He thought for a moment then said, ‘I didn’t see them together. Not once. Though . . .’ Strozzi scowled. ‘If he came in by the back way . . .’
She stood up and looked at the ceiling. There was a small chandelier there, dusty and cheap. She stood on the chair, reached into the uppermost circle of glass and pulled out a small, tube-like lens. Then she sat down, leaving the thing dangling over them.
Both men looked at her aghast as she told them what she’d found in the office upstairs.
‘So we were some kind of zoo for him?’ Strozzi asked. ‘Circus animals he could spy on when he felt like it?’
‘I suppose. Why’s he so sure I know where Sofia is?’ Teresa wondered.
‘Because he’s insane,’ Strozzi said.
No. It was more than that.
‘Sofia couldn’t do all this on her own. Look at the mess that’s her apartment. Look at her life. She couldn’t conceal herself in this city without help. And these stories . . .’
The stories said it all.
Teresa Lupo placed both her arms on the table and stared at them.
‘Someone’s hiding her. Someone who knows what’s going on here is writing those things, trying to help me find her.’
‘It could be him,’ Strozzi objected, pointing at the dangling camera in the ceiling. ‘Using you.’
‘How would he know about Alberto?’ she asked, nodding towards Tosi. ‘About the investigation into the body of St Mark?’
Tosi frowned and said, ‘I thought I told you. Anyone could read about that in the paper and put two and two together. You and I have been in the press in the past, remember. That case in Murano.’
‘Then how did he find out Sofia had invited me here in the first place? That she frequented that scuola in Castello? About Camilla and that English boy, Jason? How? Even with those cameras . . .’
Strozzi shuffled in his wheelchair.
‘He didn’t remember Camilla’s name,’ he said. ‘When he called me. I remember that. He had to ask. Twice, I think.’
‘The man’s a criminal,’ Tosi cut in. ‘He wants you to think this.’
‘No.’ Strozzi was adamant. ‘I don’t believe so. Why would he hide such a thing? If he didn’t know that, how could he know she was sick? About Jason too?’ He glanced at Teresa. ‘Whoever wrote those things, it couldn’t be him.’
‘Well?’ she said, waiting.
‘You think it was me?’ Strozzi asked, clearly amazed, pointing at his huge chest with a long, strong finger. ‘A man who can’t even stand on his own two feet? I’m flitting round Venice in the dark saving Sofia from the monster? I wish.’ He slapped the arms of the wheelchair as if he hated the thing. ‘Truly I wish. But it’s not me. Nor do I write stories, of any kind.’
Silence. She watched Tosi. Finally he shook his head in amazement and said, ‘If only . . .’
She glanced at her watch. Six thirty. In ninety minutes he’d call and demand some hard information he could check. A route to Sofia free of interference, of the police, of anything that might get in his way.
‘Then who?’ she demanded. ‘Who?’
Tosi put a finger to his cheek and said, ‘We’re wasting time. We need to call the Questura so they can start looking for this poor girl. You heard what he said.’
There was information in that phone call. She had to extract every minute piece of it.
The bells.
He was near the Rialto somewhere. They were the same peal she’d heard when she’d stood next to Il Gobbo in the freezing February night, sipping at a spritz, wondering how she could find Sofia.
Time doesn’t work around here any more.
This was such a stretch, and so out of character, she could scarcely believe she was considering it. Some distant memory of a guide book told her the clock on the church of San Giacomo opposite was notorious for being the most unreliable in Venice. Time didn’t work there, any more than it did for the Count of Saint-Germain.
She got up.
‘Where are you going?’ Tosi asked.
‘Out. Here’s my deputy’s number in Rome.’ She scribbled Silvio Di Capua’s direct line and handed it to Tosi. ‘Phone him first. Tell him all we know. Tell him to put it on his list. After that call Paola Boscolo. Tell her what you told him. If there’s anything of use in the system, on the networks somewhere, Silvio will find it before anyone and get it to her. Make sure Paola Boscolo understands the threats. If they flood the city with uniforms he’ll kill her anyway.’
‘Teresa . . .’ Tosi objected.
But she w
as out of the door, face down, trying to keep out the wind and the rain.
Signora Rizzolo’s pasticceria would be closed.
There was only one person left who might be hiding Sofia from the vengeance of the man called Michael Ruskin.
Jason Cunningham lived above the little café, in a room Signora Rizzolo gave him as part of the job. She prayed he’d be there, had no idea what she’d do if he wasn’t.
The rain was incessant. When she reached the café Teresa stood back in the narrow street, feet wet, shivering with cold, and looked at the upstairs windows. No lights. Curtains closed.
Then someone tapped hard on her shoulder and she almost jumped out of her skin. A large, round figure stood next to her, face in darkness, head completely covered by a clear plastic rain hood.
‘We’re closed, signora,’ said a cheery Venetian voice. ‘But if you want some bread, or frittelle, I can always let in a friend. Move into the doorway, please. I have no wish to drown in front of my own pasticceria.’
Teresa followed Bella Rizzolo into the shelter of the building. She was unlocking the door already.
‘I was looking for Jason. I wanted to speak to him.’
‘Too late,’ the woman told her. ‘Come in. I’ll make you a hot chocolate. It’s too dismal to be out there.’
‘Jason . . .’
‘Sofia’s still missing, he tells me.’
She took off her hood and looked earnestly at Teresa.
‘This is a mystery indeed. Such a lovely woman.’
‘I really need to talk . . .’
Signora Rizzolo shook her head and the rain went everywhere.
‘You just missed him. He goes out every night at this time.’ She laughed. ‘Every night of late. Choir practice, he says. The English. They have such a strange sense of humour.’
She winked.
‘I think it’s that pretty Croatian girl, you know. Camilla. Beautiful child. Jason’s so shy. But I think they meet––’
‘Camilla’s been working these last few nights,’ Teresa said immediately. ‘Serving drinks at carnival parties.’
A puzzled look, then, ‘Perhaps it is choir practice. Who knows?’
‘You’ve no idea where he goes?’
Signora Rizzolo’s finely sculpted eyebrows rose in surprise.
‘Of course not!’
‘I meant . . . none at all?’
She shook her strong shoulders, the way a bird ruffles its feathers, sending rain everywhere.
‘The boy’s a stranger here. It would be unkind to leave him entirely to his own devices. He catches the number two vaporetto. The fast one that goes to Rialto and the station and Piazzale Roma.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve seen him once or twice when I’m out with Lancelotto.’
Teresa asked, ‘Who’s . . .?’
Grinning like a schoolchild, the woman reached deep into her vast winter coat and retrieved the tiniest of chihuahuas. It wore a thick hooped jacket designed to look like a gondolier’s sweater and a plastic hood fashioned after a straw boater. The tiny animal glared at her then let loose three falsetto barks.
‘He has the heart of the lion. But I can’t let the little dear walk in this weather. Not with such puddles.’
‘Jason . . .’
‘You can catch him if you hurry.’ She pointed to the clock on the wall. ‘The two minutes past seven. He catches it every night. The English. So punctual. It’s always struck me that––’
‘Grazie,’ Teresa said, then patted Lancelotto so rapidly the little beast couldn’t bite her, and was out of the door, marching towards the Accademia stop by the bridge.
The vaporetto was packed. She just managed to leap on board before it pulled out into the seething swell of the Grand Canal. The inside cabin was so full she was forced to stand in the open by the doors, staring through the misted windows at the people crammed together inside.
She could just make out Jason. He was giving up his seat for an elderly woman with a stick. Smiling as he did so. He had a large carrier bag in his right hand.
The boat skipped most of the stops on the canal, heading straight for the main destinations. They would be at the Rialto in minutes. Teresa called Tosi. He’d informed Paola Boscolo about the threat to Camilla. The police were incandescent that she had disappeared into the night without waiting for them.
‘They want you to get in touch with them right now,’ the old man insisted. ‘That Boscolo woman was using language I would never expect of a lady.’
‘Tell her I’ll talk to her when I damned well feel like it,’ she said. Then she thought a bit more and added, ‘Correction. Say I’ll call when I can.’
‘Teresa!’
‘You’re breaking up,’ she lied. ‘Sorry . . .’
She had her hood around her head. Jason didn’t even look her way. He seemed distracted. Not worried. Not conscious of the people around him, though many were in carnival garb: counts and princesses, a space monster and, at the back, she saw, two more figures in the black garb of the Plague Doctor.
Dogs, she thought.
Neither of the men was carrying one, but that didn’t mean the little white animal wasn’t hidden beneath one of those voluminous cloaks.
Plague used to roll around the city like the sirocco wind, an unwanted gift of the seasons, something that came and went. Redentore, the great church across the Giudecca canal, visible from the crooked block where Sofia and the man who called himself Michael Ruskin were once lovers, was built to give tribute to the end of the plague. Salute, its counterpart, behind Sofia’s apartment close to the tip of Dorsoduro, was erected almost a century later to offer thanks for relief from a second epidemic – and prayers against a third. On the brisk, chill waters of the lagoon the fragility of life seemed too exposed at times, too naked, prompting the response – the richness of imagination, a luxury of buildings, of culture, of life – that made Venice what it was.
This city could swallow you whole. Entice you with its beauty. Ensnare you in its dark and winding alleys. Then, before you knew it, you were lost, like Sofia. Perhaps like Michael Ruskin too. Cut off from the rest of the world and its humdrum mundanity, just as this glittering dark chain of islands was detached from the mainland by a swirling strip of lagoon pierced by nothing more than the slender artifice of a bridge.
Cross that and for some all logic, common sense, any rational view of life disappeared. Sane people did not live on islands built on tree trunks hammered into banks of mud. Nor did they hide behind masks, slipping from one identity to another as easily as someone else might try on a different set of clothes.
Wasn’t that what Saint-Germain was trying to tell her more than anything? That if she followed her heart and tried to solve the riddle of Sofia’s disappearance through the means she knew best – good sense and reason – she would surely fail? Those rules no longer applied. Others, more imaginative, less easy to define, were needed.
Tosi, a rational man, saw only a single solution. Bring in the police. Leave this to the Questura. Let them flood the streets with uniforms and the overwhelming power of force and numbers.
Then Camilla Dushku would be dead for certain.
Teresa had come so far down this path already, further than her instincts should have allowed. Now she stood in the open midsection of a freezing-cold vaporetto, braving the wind and rain between Accademia and Rialto, wondering what to do.
She stared through the glass again. It was almost opaque. Either she grasped it now or this nettle would be lost to her, and the fate of Camilla and Sofia abandoned to the ordinary, the dull rote of the slow, mechanical workings of law enforcement.
I don’t just want to catch criminals, she thought. I want justice. I want release. These two are different.
The boat was docking at Rialto, on the wrong side of the canal for the markets and the shadowy arcades where Camilla was surely held captive. And, since this was where Jason was headed, perhaps the place Sofia was hiding too.
The rush of faceless people carried he
r with them as they fought to get off the boat. The rain had eased to nothing more than a gentle drizzle though the Venetians, who, oddly, seemed to hate water with a vengeance, still wandered around beneath an army of umbrellas.
She waited under the awning of a tourist tat store and watched Jason get off, look right and left, in the most amateur of fashions, as if trying to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
He walked to the bridge and started to cross it. Towards the market. Towards Il Gobbo.
Sofia was never one to shirk an easy solution. If she’d met someone during those long, cold nights outside here, someone who’d offer shelter, this would surely be the place she’d stay. One quick journey across the Grand Canal would throw any curious follower off the scent. Then she could scuttle back over the bridge, into the darkness, the nexus of lanes and alleys so tangled even a map might not help a stranger out of the maze.
Why hadn’t Teresa realized this earlier? The cold, blunt answer came easily. Because it was in her nature to scan the broad horizon looking for answers. Sometimes this meant you overlooked the ones that lay close by, scraps of paper at your feet.
At the top of the bridge Jason paused and went to the balustrade over the central stretch, staring back towards the Accademia. The canal here was so beautiful, even on a damp, cold February night. To the right the reflections of the lights of the restaurants on the Riva del Vin glistened in the black water. Crowds of carnival figures stood by the edge, captivated by the sight, arms interlinked, silent and happy.
A life was made up of moments, and some of them at least were meant to be like this.
She wandered up, jostled his elbow in a friendly way, and said, ‘Fancy meeting you here.’
The young Englishman almost leapt over the stone handrail from shock.
‘I’m not that scary, am I?’ Teresa asked.
She took the bag from him and started to sort through the contents. Just as she expected: a stock of food and supplies from the supermarket. Cold chicken and ham. Cheese and water. Something oddly English too. A can of Heinz baked beans.
He didn’t say a word.
‘It’s all right,’ she told him. ‘You don’t need to explain. Sofia can come later. We’ve more important things to do.’