The Lizard's Bite (27 page)

The key was there, on the table, taunting him. Old black metal, fancily worked so that it felt awkward in the hand, too large for the clumsy fingers of a child that grasped at the sharp angles of the handle and failed to find purchase. Even if he dared. Their bedroom was forbidden territory. Leo had known that all his short life. What happened there was for them alone.

The bell and the roar of the cuckoo ripped through the air again. Leo watched the pendulum make a single crossing, from left to right, then stay stuck in time, spotted now with blood from the plump little female figure who thrashed and screamed and fought in her tiny, tightly defined circle of life on the porch of the carved clock.

Nothing stops the flailing man, he thought. Not the pendulum. Not the ghostly voice in his head. Not God Himself. Because the flailing man is a part of God too, the part that always comes in the end.

But he couldn’t say the words this time. The pendulum never moved. Some deep, primeval fear began to wake inside little Leo Falcone’s head, turn his bowels to water, make him want to sit on this old seat and pee himself out of terror.

“The past is past,” the older voice said. “Trust me.”

“So what do I do?” he asked, bitter, refusing to break down in tears because that always gave the adults some comfort, and would do so even when those watching, older eyes were his own.

“What you’ll always do. First and last. So much it will get in the way of everything else.
Think
!”

Leo waited and listened and tried to do as the voice said. He didn’t want to be in this place. He didn’t want to see behind the locked wooden door, with its crudely carved, dying heart, or use the big metal key on the table. More than anything, little Leo wished to sleep. To lay down his head on the table, close his eyes, think of nothing, embrace nothing but the dark which seemed, next to this crazed, inhospitable place, a warm and welcoming respite from the torments that were gathering around him.

“Please,” the old voice said, and it sounded terrified.

M
AGGIORE LUCA ZECCHINI WAS A HAPPY MAN. HE WAS back in his beloved Verona after three days at a tedious conference in Milan. There would be a premiere of
Il Trovatore
in the Arena that evening, an event he would attend with a charming and beautiful tourist from San Diego he’d met on the train home the night before. And there was
pranzo
in Sergio’s, the little restaurant around the corner from the office, a place where a man could gather his thoughts. Lunch, for Zecchini, was a staging post for the day, a time at which one might reflect on a morning well spent, and look forward to a brisk afternoon of activity before shrugging off the dark, impeccable uniform of a major in the Carabinieri and re-entering civilian life. Few men enjoyed this small ceremony in the same way: as an ascetic exercise in self-detachment, not a quick opportunity for face-filling. Only one newcomer had, of late, entered the small circle of sympathetic friends invited to join Zecchini on occasion at Sergio’s. Thinking about that unlikely individual now, Zecchini’s mood became muted. Police work was never without its risks. He’d been with the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale since its formation in 1992. The world of art theft and smuggling, which he inhabited on a daily basis, was not immune to violence. Two fellow officers had lost their lives in the last six months mixing with gangsters trying to smuggle historic artefacts from Iraq through Italy on their way to Switzerland. All the same… some incidents seemed odd. Unnecessary. Inexplicable. And tragic, still, a week after the dreadful affair had appeared in the papers.

Zecchini stared at his plate of pork ribs with a portion of greens on the side and wondered whether they would really taste quite so good now. He should have asked Gina from San Diego to join him. Women loved the uniform. He used to joke with Falcone about their sartorial differences. The man from the state police always wore plain clothes, aware that the ugly blue wouldn’t have suited him. Falcone wasn’t a man who fitted in easily.

Then his eyes wandered down the street and met a sight Zecchini found both puzzling and of singular interest. Two men were walking towards him. One, tall and bulky in an ill-fitting grey suit, had a very ugly, scarred face and the physique of a boxer gone to seed. The second was an unusual foil: slight, young, short, in shirt and jeans, rather innocent-looking, except, as Zecchini saw when they got closer, in the eyes, which were determined and a little bleak.

These two were not, he decided, men to cross. And they were, somehow, recognisable too, if only he could place the memory.

Then the younger came over to his table, and asked, in a polite Roman accent, “Maggiore Zecchini?”

“Yes?”

The two men looked at one another, uncertain, it seemed to Zecchini, how to proceed. He thought about their appearance, and what they might do for a living. Then the connection clicked.

“You’re just as he described,” he told them. “Sit down. I’m in need of company.”

The bigger one was at the table in an instant, eyeing Zecchini’s ribs. The younger man pulled up a chair, close to Zecchini. There was no one else on the pavement. The young man clearly wanted to make sure they could talk in privacy.

“He mentioned us?” the elder — Peroni, he recalled the name now — asked, sounding surprised.

“There were times when he talked about very little else. I knew Leo only for a few months. We talked a lot. We became friends, I think. In spite of the different uniforms. It’s not impossible, is it?” Zecchini pushed away his plate. “How is he?” he asked, a part of him not wanting to know the answer. “I thought of visiting. But it seemed such a mess over there. Such an imposition. Besides, I don’t think an officer of the Carabinieri would be particularly welcome…”

Peroni shrugged. “He wouldn’t know. He’s not recovered consciousness, not in a week. The doctors say it’s touch and go. Whatever happens, I don’t think Leo’s going to be back in the job again.”

It was good news they even gave him some chance. From what Zecchini had heard, they’d thought Falcone was little more than a breathing corpse at one point.

“That’s hard to believe,” he said.

“I agree.” It was the young one who spoke. “Nic Costa. Gianni Peroni.”

Zecchini extended his hand. “Please call me Luca. I asked that of Leo. I ask it of you. We’re acquaintances. Not colleagues. That makes some things easier. And eat, please. It’s been a while since I bought a state policeman a meal. Too long.”

He called over the waiter and listened to their orders: meat for the big man, grilled vegetables for Costa. Zecchini was slightly disturbed to discover that, through his friendship with Leo Falcone, he felt he knew these men already.

“You’re looking for work?” he asked, after the waiter had gone.

The newspapers had been full of the aftermath of the incident in Venice. A commissario had been suspended pending possible manslaughter charges. Costa and Peroni were on enforced leave, which was often the precursor to disciplinary action.

“We’ve got plenty of work,” Costa replied.

It was, Zecchini thought, just what he expected. “That doesn’t sound too good. I thought you were supposed to sit at home and twiddle your thumbs.”

Peroni laughed. “The problem is, once you’ve been under that cunning old bastard for a while, it gets decidedly difficult to do what you’re supposed to sometimes. You mean you never noticed, Luca?”

Zecchini took a mouthful of his pork rib. It was cold. The meal was ruined, and he rather guessed it could only get worse.

“We came with a gift,” Costa said. “Or rather a prize.”

“It’s going to cost me?” Zecchini asked.

Costa watched the waiter return with their food, then watched the man leave.

“Nothing comes for free,” he said. “But, if we’re right, if we get lucky… with your help. It’s a prize I think you’d like very much.”

Luca Zecchini listened to the two of them. It only took a minute to realise the last thing he’d be doing that evening would be watching
Il Trovatore
in the company of the delightful Gina.

I
T HAD BEEN MORE THAN A DECADE SINCE TERESA LUPO had abandoned medicine for what she saw as the more challenging world of working in a police morgue. Now she felt lost in a hospital. The Ospedale Civile of Venice seemed more like an entire quarter of the city than a medical institution. It ran through a warren of historic buildings, modern accretions, and storeys of blocks that seemed like apartments, until emerging on the bare lagoon waterfront between Fondamente Nuove and Celestia. Teresa couldn’t help but notice the institution sat bang opposite another staging post on the journey of life, the cemetery island of San Michele, whose brick walls blocked — happily, she thought — the view over to the Isola degli Arcangeli on Murano. The Venetians never did like to make more effort than was absolutely necessary.

Three things happened the night Leo Falcone was hurried to the Ospedale Civile in a speeding water ambulance, siren wailing, blue light echoing in the rapidly descending darkness.

First, she remembered how to yell at medics, good medics, people who were patently competent at their job, but just didn’t understand the small matter of priorities. A man with a head wound as bad as the one Falcone had suffered wasn’t in need of much analysis. He was a corpse in the making, screaming silently for someone to freeze the clock and keep him alive until a specialist could be got on the scene to work out if there was any way forward from this mess.

Second, she discovered she’d do anything to stop Leo Falcone from dying. Theoretically, she didn’t want
anyone
to die, ever, even if that put her out of a job. But this wasn’t about theory. Whatever had happened between her and Falcone in the past, she now had some unexpected bond with this strange, distant, frequently arrogant man whose stricken body had been wheeled through the corridors of the Ospedale Civile at speed, navigating its spider’s web of corridors on a journey, it seemed to her, to nowhere.

And third, she found out that she, and her Roman police pathologist’s card, still carried clout. When they got Falcone into pre-op and found that Venice’s one and only neurosurgeon was on holiday in the Maldives, Teresa simply screeched at them to do what they could to staunch the bleeding, then wait for orders.

There was some luck in the world. Maybe a God even. Pino Ferrante had been at medical school with her all those years ago. All the way over in the racing ambulance ferry dashing across the lagoon, she had been remembering his hands, which were the most beautiful she’d ever seen on a man: long and fine and elegant, like something from a drawing by Dürer. Healing hands, that much was obvious too when he’d completed the training and entered the outside world of medical practice. Pino was now a prosperous neurology consultant in his native Bologna, little more than sixty minutes away if he still drove a car the way he used to. And he was at home when she called, breathless, pleading.

Less than three hours later Falcone was in the operating room, with Pino’s gentle, firm fingers trying to perform wonders she could only guess at, while the four of them, two colleagues-cum-friends, two women who’d found themselves dragged unwittingly into this wounded man’s life, waited on the terrace by the waterfront, swatting midges in the sticky night air, drinking endless plastic cups of bad coffee, asking themselves all manner of questions about the strange burst of violence that had torn through the Arcangeli’s palazzo, and Hugo Massiter’s party, that evening.

Then finally, reaching a decision, one found in anger and a mute, shared hunger for some semblance of justice. One that didn’t require much effort, if they were honest with themselves. Or much discussion, because discussion just got in the way of what was needed.

There were facts before them, Nic said. Staring them in the face, taunting. Gianfranco Randazzo worked for Hugo Massiter. That had been obvious all along. Randazzo had murdered Bracci to close down the case — and Massiter’s deal — wounding Leo Falcone, possibly fatally, along the way.

It was meant to be a neat, tidy package, one that no one was trying to untie, to try to see what might lie inside. Venice would, Nic predicted accurately, be determined to swallow the story Randazzo gave them of that night, even though there were so many questions. Why had the drunken Bracci come to Hugh Massiter’s in the first place? What exactly had he hoped to achieve by taking Raffaella hostage while searching among the masks and the
commedia dell’arte
costumes for the man he wanted, who was Massiter, Nic said, surely? And why the hell would he bring along a handy piece of evidence, the keys with their telltale ribbon, just to complete the story?

None of these issues would now be addressed. The tragedies of the Isola degli Arcangeli were, for the city, closed the moment Randazzo’s bullet shattered Aldo Bracci’s skull. Leo Falcone was simply what a certain kind of military man would call “collateral damage,” and all to crown Hugo Massiter king of the city.

They had looked at each other that night, listened to Nic carefully picking his way through the known facts, feeling a certainty grow inside them, one that didn’t need to be said aloud to be understood. To the Venetians they were strangers, all of them. They’d be excluded from what swift tidying up of the facts would now ensue. If Nic was right — and it soon turned out he was — they’d be squeezed out of the Questura too, kept away from any stray difficult facts.

Which was, if only the Venetians understood it, the stupidest thing the city could do. They didn’t know Costa and Peroni. They didn’t understand what kind of men they were. How the two would spend days, weeks, trying to peer beneath the wrapping of that carefully presented, utterly fictitious case Venice was presenting to the world, picking at the seams until everything fell apart.

Facts, Nic said at the time, acting out a fair impersonation of Falcone at his best.

Who benefited from what happened that night?

Hugo Massiter and his cronies in the council. And the Arcangeli, too, since they finally got the money they so desperately needed, even if it came with strings.