The Lizard's Bite (12 page)

“At forty euros a bottle that’s an expensive decision. So will you just cast your eyes over what I’ve got here? Give me a second opinion. Just me, you understand. I don’t want you getting into a catfight with Tosi. He doesn’t look as if his heart could stand it.”

“I don’t give second opinions,” Teresa snapped. “I dish out
facts
.”

“Facts then,” Falcone agreed, waving at the pretty waitress for more wine. Then, ruefully, “That’s all we need. Consider these—”

“This doesn’t concern anyone but us three,” Costa warned. “We didn’t invite you to dinner to share the case around.”

“Come, come, Nic!” Falcone was loving this. He’d had more wine than anyone else. He was different too somehow. Off the leash, in new territory. “I invited myself here. And where are we going to find a better table in Venice to knock around a few ideas? We all know Teresa wishes she wore a badge instead of carrying that leather bag around.”

He watched her, eyebrows raised, waiting for an objection.

“Quite,” Falcone continued when none came. “And Emily’s ex-FBI. One colleague. One ex-colleague. Discreet ladies both. Think of all the expertise we have here. And what are we ranged against? You saw it for yourselves today. A bunch of provincials.”

“Provincials who happen to be in charge,” Peroni grumbled.

Ignoring the remark, Falcone reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the plastic bag with Uriel Arcangelo’s keys inside. “So let’s consider this.”

“Oh great,” Peroni sighed. “Now we’re taking evidence out of the Questura. Here it begins, gentlemen. Behold, another nosedive in our faltering careers.”

“Don’t be so stuffy.” Falcone waved down his complaints. “The people here think criminal procedure begins and ends with a screaming match in an interview room. They won’t even notice it’s gone. Consider this. A man dies, consumed by fire, inside a locked glass foundry, with his own wife’s body — clearly predeceased, since the one witness we have was unaware of it to begin with — in the furnace in the same room. There is only one door into the place, and no other easy way of entry and exit. The man’s key is in that door, on his side. What are we meant to assume?”

Costa noticed the gleam in the women’s eyes. Falcone knew what he was doing.

“That he killed his wife, then perhaps killed himself?” Emily suggested.

Teresa was already shaking her head. “Self-immolation is a very rare form of suicide,” she noted. “Men who kill their wives are invariably the cowardly sort — they take pills. They drive a car off a cliff. More often they nick themselves with a knife and don’t have the guts or the decency to take it any further.”

“An accident then?” Peroni asked.

Teresa nudged his elbow. Hard.

Falcone looked delighted.

“See,” he said to Costa and Peroni. “Just a few small facts and already we discover something we didn’t know. What would we do without these two?”

Teresa Lupo screwed up her pale, round face. “Please don’t praise me, Leo. It feels so
wrong
. This Uriel guy must have died for some reason. How badly was he burned? What tests have forensic run on his clothing?”

He shrugged. “I’m a detective. I can’t give you a meaningful answer. He was terribly burned from the waist up. The rest of his clothing seems pretty much intact. Everything was covered by foam from the fire officers, which hampers forensic, or so they told me. But we’re not talking your calibre of people here. Or…”

This next point had only just occurred to him.

“Or people who would be quite as diligent as you, I suspect. You should look for yourself.”

“There you go again,” Teresa complained. “If I’m to help, you need to cut out the praise.”

“If you wish. So what else do we know?”

Falcone’s comments about the key had been bugging Costa all day. The inspector had made him feel like an idiot when he drew the obvious conclusions. Now Costa could see why.

“That perhaps the key doesn’t signify what it appears,” Costa observed.

Peroni nodded. “Meaning?”

“The door could have been locked from the
outside
. Uriel
could
have been locked in there by someone else and simply placed his own key in the door from the
inside
. Except…”

Falcone picked up the plastic bag and shook it. “Except… why didn’t he just unlock it himself and walk free?”

“I seem to recall,” Teresa said, “a little lecture from a Roman police inspector. One that said, look for the simple solution. Usually it’s the right one.”

Falcone sipped his wine, closed his eyes briefly, appreciating it. “In Rome usually it is. But this is Venice. And we mustn’t forget that. Here’s one more thing: the dead woman had a mobile phone.”

“Is that such a surprise, Leo?” Peroni asked. “Most people do.”

“Not the Arcangeli. I checked with Raffaella. As far as she was aware, none of them owned one. Yet it was there. In the corner of the foundry. I found it when you two were supposed to be looking around today. It was underneath a portable table they used for moving glass. A table that could have just as easily been used for dumping a body into the furnace. Clearly our Venetian colleagues don’t believe in such a thing as a thorough search. I checked with the phone company. The phone was registered under the name of Bella
Bracci
. The dead woman’s maiden name. Her old family address too. There’ve been no outgoing calls on it for weeks, which is useful of course because that doubtless means it was used mainly for incoming calls, where we can’t trace the number if it’s been blocked. But ninety minutes before we had the first report of the fire, someone did phone out on it. To the direct line in the Arcangeli’s office at the back of the foundry. The very place where, as far as we understand it, Uriel would have been before he went to work.”

Teresa was scribbling some notes on a napkin.

“I can see where you’re going with this,” she said. “But as you said yourself, you’ve still got one big problem. Uriel had a key. He could have walked out at any point, if he’d wanted to. The fact he didn’t means as sure as hell he wasn’t entirely innocent here.”

Falcone pushed the plastic bag over to her and indicated the long shaft of the mortise key. “What do you think?”

Teresa threw up her hands in despair. “It’s a key! I’m a pathologist. Not forensic.
I don’t do keys
!”

“Take it out if you like,” Falcone suggested.

“Oh Jesus.” Peroni sighed. “Listen to the sound of distant shit meeting a distant fan.”

But Teresa Lupo already had the key in her hand and was turning it round in her large, powerful fingers, staring at the thing close up, frowning.

“It’s been altered,” she declared, placing the bunch back on the table, leaving the big one uppermost, pointing to the inside edge. It gleamed, just faintly, through the grime and smoke of the blaze. “As I said, I’m not a key person, but it looks to me as if someone’s filed off a tooth or something.” She looked at Falcone. “Does it still work?”

“That depends how you define ‘work,’” he answered. “I tried it in the lock. It goes in. It turns. And turns. And turns. It’s useless. It doesn’t lock. It doesn’t unlock, either. Which is how it’s meant to be.”

“And Bella’s keys are missing,” Costa noted.

The five of them absorbed this information. The young waitress came over and asked about dessert. Falcone cheerily ordered tiramisu and was amazed by their silence.

“Make that five,” he said to the girl. “They’ll get their appetites back.”

They still hadn’t said a word by the time the girl was back in the kitchen, laughing and joking with the women there.

“Excellent food here,” Falcone said. “I wish you’d told me about it earlier.”

Peroni cast him an angry glance. “And I wish I’d never mentioned it in the first place. Why can’t you leave these things in the Questura, Leo?”

Falcone seemed surprised by the question. “Because the Questura, Gianni, is probably the last place we should be discussing these things, don’t you think? They’re working on behalf of Hugo Massiter, and no one else. A man who clearly inspires terror in the likes of Randazzo, and will doubtless do so even more once the island is his. The Questura wants us to sign off on two deaths as something we know, for a fact, they cannot be. All to crown this Englishman the saviour of Murano, and save a few city officials some awkward questions about the healthy state of their bank accounts.”

“We’re just supposed to deliver what they want,” Peroni pointed out. “If we jerk them around, they could make life pretty difficult for us. Randazzo’s an asshole. That Massiter individual looks as if he could pull strings all the way up to the Quirinale Palace.”

“That’s the most apposite comment you’ve made all evening.” Falcone smiled that infuriating smile again, in Costa’s direction this time. “You were right, Nic. Massiter’s name should have rung a bell. He owns an important auction house. Offices in New York and London. There
was
a scandal too. Five years ago he would have been arrested on the spot, if we could have found him.”

“But now,” Costa asked, “we think he’s in the clear?”

“Absolutely in the clear,” Falcone insisted. “Otherwise he’d never be fool enough to come back here, would he? It’s an interesting tale, though. Here…” He reached down into the briefcase he’d brought and took out two folders. “I photocopied what little there is. Not much, I’m afraid. I suspect Mr. Massiter’s records have been thinned somewhat over the years. Why clog up the filing cabinets with information on innocent people, after all? Nevertheless, you will need to read these before we talk to this night watchman tomorrow. It’ll soon be clear why.”

Peroni eyed the folder in front of him. “A week, they said. That’s all we have. After that it turns nasty for us. Again.”

Falcone sniffed at the grappa that had just arrived, tasted it with an approving lick of his thin lips, then thanked the waitress. Costa watched him, concerned. Spirits never used to be a part of the inspector’s routine.

“A week should be ample. I don’t think this is complicated, Gianni. It’s just… not as straightforward as it might appear. The locals want a result that leaves the Arcangeli clear to sell their little island and then places Hugo Massiter on a pedestal from which he can lord it over the crooked pen-pushers who put him there. This is their city, not ours. I’m indifferent to both prospects. There’s no reason why we can’t deliver. We need to get to the bottom of this spontaneous combustion idea, naturally. We need to think about the question of keys too, and I’m not sure I fully understand that yet either. And we really need to know more about Bella Arcangelo.”

“What does the autopsy say about her?” Teresa asked.

“About as much as you can expect from a pile of dust. She was in the furnace. If she’d been there much longer…”

“You need to see her medical file,” Teresa advised. “In the absence of real forensic, look for someone who’ll have some actual records. And that phone. I don’t need to tell you what it probably means.”

“An affair?” Emily wondered.

“Something she wanted to keep quiet, certainly. Let’s not run ahead of ourselves,” Falcone cautioned.

Emily gazed around the table, dismayed. “This is a vacation?” she wondered aloud.

Falcone picked up the report on Massiter, weighed it in his hand, then let the thing fall on the table. “This is a free ticket into the Isola degli Arcangeli. Talk to Hugo Massiter, Emily. Take a look at what he’s doing there. See if it’s really the charitable act he’s making out it is. I’d value your professional opinion.”

“I didn’t come to Venice to give professional opinions.”

Falcone raised his glass. “Of course not! You came here for the sights. And the company. And you’ll have both. Once we’ve put this little domestic drama to bed and freed ourselves to return to civilisation.
Salute
!”

None of them moved an inch.

“Leo?” Teresa asked. “What the hell were these art police in Verona like? You’ve come back different somehow.”

“Improved, I hope.”

“I said different.”

Falcone toasted them all again. “They weren’t police, actually. They were Carabinieri. Some of the nicest and most interesting people I’ve met in a long time.”

Even Teresa Lupo was lost for words at that. Leo Falcone, the original version, wouldn’t have been seen dead with the Carabinieri.

“
Salute
!” this odd, half-familiar stranger in their midst said again.

Five bright clear vials of grappa chinked around the table, not all with the same degree of vigour.

Costa discreetly poured his glass into the coffee cup and caught Emily’s eye. He knew she was intrigued, in spite of herself. There were consolations too. This wasn’t Rome. There were no murderous hoods or lunatics on the prowl. It was, as Falcone said, a self-contained tragedy awaiting resolution. The answers lay somewhere out on the lagoon, in Murano’s dark alleyways and on the Isola degli Arcangeli.

“So, Nic,” Falcone asked, “tell me. I have a duty to train you now. One day you will want to be more than a mere
agente
.”

“Tell you what?” Costa asked, a little uncomfortable that Falcone should take such a direct interest in him at that moment.

“What’s changed after our discussion here tonight?”

He thought about that, thought about the keys and the door, Bella Arcangelo and the tragic figure her dying husband must have cut on that odd island across the water.

“What’s changed,” Costa said, “is the question. We’re no longer trying to understand the means Uriel Arcangelo used to kill his wife. But why, how and with whom the late Bella appears to have conspired to kill him.”

“Bravo!” Falcone declared, laughing, toasting him with his glass. “An inspector in the making!”

I
N THE DAZZLING LIGHT OF THE LAGOON MORNING, THE police launch sped across the shining expanse of water that separated Venice from Sant’ Erasmo. Nic Costa sat up front, enjoying the breeze, trying to extract some local information out of Goldoni, the Venetian cop who was their boatman for the day, and thinking about the avid, enthusiastic way Emily had read the report on Hugo Massiter over breakfast, wondering if it was right for her to become involved. Her enthusiasm was, in part, fired by his own interest in the Englishman, which might well be misplaced. Dragging her into his obsession made him uneasy.