The Lizard's Bite (3 page)

He was halfway there when he felt something move on his apron, an odd, hot finger tickling at his chest. Uriel Arcangelo looked down and refused to believe his eyes. A fire was sprouting out of the fabric over his midriff. A healthy, palpable tongue of flame, like that of an oversize candle, was emerging from beneath the vest as if his own body possessed some kind of internal burner beneath the skin. And it was growing.

The flame flickered upwards, outwards. He stamped at it with his sleeve, only to see the fire catch the fabric there, dance along his arm, mocking him, like the furnace itself, which was now wheezing at his back, louder and louder… .

Uriel. Uriel.

The air shook. Instinctively, he knew what had happened. One of the burners had crumbled into dust. The searing heat had worked its way back through the pipe, towards the dead stopcock, feeding on the flammable carbon gas, devouring it every inch of the way.

The explosion hit him full in the back, so hard he fell screeching to the timber floor. He felt his teeth bite on the fossilised wood, felt something shatter in his mouth, sending a pain running into his head where it met so many other messages: of fear and agony and a dimming determination that he could survive all this, if only he could reach the door and the key, the magic key he’d had the foresight to leave there only a few long minutes before.

P
IERO SCACCHI CLAMBERED UP THE RUSTY LADDER, STAGGERED onto land, then found his own momentum sent him tumbling onto the hard, dusty stone of the island’s tiny quay. He crawled on all fours, holding his breath against the force of the hot wind. His mobile phone was still in the boat. He’d no idea how to alert anyone nearby quickly, though someone, somewhere, would surely notice, even in this backwater of Murano, on an island that kept its little footbridge to the outside world permanently locked now there was no public showroom for visitors to see. And if the fire were to spread to the palazzo, it would threaten to move on to the house itself, where the rest of the Arcangeli tribe were sleeping, in their separate bedrooms spread throughout the capacious mansion.

The burst of flame that had raged over the
Sophia
had died quickly. That, at least, seemed a mercy. But the cobbled stones of the broad jetty outside the foundry were now strewn with shattered glass and glowing embers of smouldering timber. Already he’d cut his hands stumbling into the shards and felt the burning stab of scorching splinters bite into his skin.

Cursing, he climbed to his feet and lumbered towards the half-shattered foundry windows, trying to locate the human sound he’d heard earlier. The frames ran to the ground to allow spectators outside to watch the process within. Now a miasmic storm of dust and smoke poured out of the chasm the blast had made in the centre. He shielded his eyes against the black, churning cloud and tried to imagine what force could have wrought such terrible damage.

Scacchi had no experience of fire. It rarely happened on Sant’ Erasmo, was scarcely worth considering on the boat. With its scorching breath in his face, he felt ignorant and powerless against the inferno’s might.

The old hosepipe was where he remembered, against the brick wall next to the double doors, curled like a dead serpent slumped against a hydrant that looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades.

Then he heard the hiss of escaping gas, and behind it the sound he’d heard before, magnified, a pitch higher: a human being, screeching in agony.

Piero Scacchi swore angrily, ripped the hose from its fastenings, lugged it under one arm and tore at the huge industrial tap with his powerful right hand. It gave, after much effort. A stream of water, not a powerful one, began to make an unenthusiastic exit from the nozzle.

He edged towards the shattered windows, directing the flow at the nearest flames as they ate into the tinder-like woodwork, watching them diminish reluctantly into a hissing, steamy mass, allowing just enough scope to let him get closer. Scacchi edged in front of the glass and the bright, sunlike light streaming from the interior. The colossal heat made each brief, laboured breath agony, made his skin shrink tight and painful on his face. And then all thoughts of his personal predicament disappeared as Piero Scacchi found himself full of grief and sorrow for the human being he knew, all along, would be inside.

SCACCHI RACED to the old wooden doors, tugged up the handle and heaved backwards with all his weight. Nothing moved. They were locked, from the inside in all probability. He could feel the force of the mechanism holding firm against his strength. Uriel must have had the key, he thought. But he was too scared, too gripped by the flames, perhaps, to use it.

“Uriel!” he shouted, not knowing how his voice would carry in this strange, fiery world beyond his vision. “The door, man!
The key
!”

There was no human sound inside now, nothing but the triumphant roar of the inferno.

Scacchi threw aside the hose and looked around for something, some iron bar or timber, that he could use to pry open the entrance. The quayside was empty save for a few boxes of broken glass, ready to feed the new firings. Then he looked again at the windows and knew there really was no other way.

He’d saved a couple of lives on the lagoon before. Idiots from terra firma playing stupid games with boats, unaware of the dangers. If he’d been willing to risk his neck for them, there really was no excuse to stand back and allow a good man like Uriel Arcangelo to die in these flames.

“No choice,” he muttered, and grasped the pipe beneath his arm. “None…”

Scacchi’s attention fell to the cobbled terrace by the boat. The dog had left the boat to find him. The animal now stared back from the edge of the quay, its terrified eyes burning with the reflection of the fire inside, black fur shiny and slicked back against its skinny body. Xerxes must have swum the short distance to the steps by the bridge, away from the ladder where the subterranean entrance lay with the
Sophia
moored next to it. Swum there in spite of his fear.

The spaniel threw back its head and let loose a long, pained howl.

Scacchi looked at the dog. He’d brought it up since the day it was born. It did everything he asked. Usually.

“Bark,” he ordered. “Bark, Xerxes. Wake the dead, for God’s sake!”

Then, as the fevered yelping began to rise in volume, as the animal started racing back and forth along the waterfront, he tucked the hose beneath his arm and took a deep breath of the outside air, wondering how long it would last him in the ordeal ahead.

Cuts and bruises. Smoke and flame. In the end they didn’t matter much at all when a human life was at stake.

Piero Scacchi hammered out an entry route with the iron nozzle of the decrepit hose, widened it with his elbow. Then he launched himself through the remaining spikes and shards, feeling nothing because that would require a loss of concentration and, at that point, there was too much for one man to focus on. Everything — machines, walls, worktables, timber beams and pillars — seemed to be ablaze. He was entering a world that was not quite real, a universe of flame and agony where he felt like a dismal foot soldier fighting a lone battle against an army of bright fiery creatures.

One brighter, more animated, than the rest.

“Uriel,” he said again, this time quietly, unsure whether the words were of any use to the half man, half fiery spirit rolling and screeching on the ground in front of him.

The creature paused for a moment, looked back at him. He was, Scacchi instantly understood, not quite human at that point, beyond rescue, and knew it too.

THE AUTHORITIES HAD ARRIVED. Late as ever.

Piero Scacchi watched in quiet dismay as two jets of water, thick, powerful streams, nothing like his own pathetic effort, burst through what remained of the windows, brutally taking out the last of the glass, then worked their way into the hall, so forceful they raked debris from the brickwork and the blackened, fragile timber that still was trying to support the foundry roof.

A storm cloud of steam rose from the kiln to join the smoke, the flames hissing in fury at their impending demise. And Scacchi looked again at what remained of the dark form, like human charcoal, that lay in front of him now, trying to remind himself this had once been a man.

He liked Uriel. He’d always felt touched by his sadness, and the strange sense of loss that seemed to hang around him.

Then one racing stream of water met the furnace itself, fell upon the beehive structure, fought with the baking hot brickworks of the convex roof.

The fire was dead, killed by a flood tide of foam and water. Some kind of victory had been won, too late for Uriel Arcangelo, but soon enough to save his family, that insular clan who would now, Scacchi thought, be gathering to witness the strange, inexplicable tragedy that had burst out of the night, bringing a fiery death to their doorstep.

Unable to stop himself, Piero Scacchi walked forward and peered into the belly of the beast. The object lay there, crumbling in the moaning embers, unmistakable, a shape that would, perhaps, explain everything, though not now because there was insufficient space in Piero Scacchi’s brain to accommodate the stress of comprehending what it might mean.

A tumultuous crash at his back made him turn his head. The firefighters’ axes were finally tackling the stupid wooden doors. If only the man inside had found the strength to turn the key.

If only…

Scacchi nodded at the white, fragile skull, sitting flat and jawless in the embers, shining back at him, and murmured a wordless benison.

A strong arm seized him by the shoulder; a voice barked at him to move. He removed the fireman’s fingers, stared into the man’s face with an expression that brooked no argument.

Then he went outside, back through the shattered doors this time, coughing, feeling his eyes begin to sting from the smoke, his skin chafe with steam burns, cuts and splinters bite into his hands.

On the cobbled quayside the family was gathering among the firemen and a couple of local police. Two Arcangeli were missing — Uriel and his wife. Some wordless intuition, which he hoped was just stupid, anxiety-fraught speculation, whispered to Piero Scacchi a version of what might have happened that night, and why, perhaps, a man might die rather than turn the key to an ancient set of doors and save himself.

Then Michele was on him, eyes flaming, shaking a bony hand in his face, so close his fingers touched Scacchi’s weary painful cheeks.

“Island moron!” this chief of the clan spat at him, shaking with fury. Michele was a short man, not far off sixty now. And in a suit already too. The Arcangeli dressed for their own funerals, Scacchi thought to himself, and cursed his own impudence.

Michele wound his two puny fists into Scacchi’s smoky, tattered jacket.

“What did you do, you idiot?
What
?”

Scacchi removed the man’s hands from his clothes and pushed him away, making sure that Michele saw this was not a good idea, not an action to be repeated.

Gabriele stood away from his elder brother, in an old suit too, silent, his dark, liquid eyes staring at the black shining water. Perhaps he was awaiting orders, as always. Raffaella was next to him, still in a nightdress, eyes bright with shock and anticipation, staring at Scacchi, with some sympathy, he thought, and a little fear.

An ambulance boat had arrived. A medic came up and looked at him. Scacchi shook his head and nodded towards the foundry.

“I tried to help,” he said quietly over his shoulder, half to Michele, half to anyone who cared to hear. He was aware of how old and hoarse and exhausted his voice sounded.

Then he marched past the busy firemen, past the bystanders, through the flashes of a lone photographer who had somehow reached the scene.

The dog sat upright, a taut black triangle by the ladder down to the boat, whimpering in gratitude for the man’s return.

“Home,” Scacchi muttered, and scooped up the animal in his arms, burying his head in its damp, smoky fur, wondering whether it was smoke or something else that brought tears to his eyes.

T
HE TWO MEN STOOD OUTSIDE SANTA LUCIA STATION, shielding their eyes against the bright sun, watching the constant commotion on the crammed and busy channel close to the head of the Grand Canal. It was close to eight in the morning and Venice’s brief rush hour was under way. Commuters poured in from the buses from Mestre and beyond, now discharging their loads across the water in Piazzale Roma. Vaporetti challenged one another for the next available landing jetty. Water taxis revved their diesels trying to impress the foreigners they were about to fleece. And an endless flow of lesser vessels — private dinghies, commercial barges, skiffs carrying flowers and vegetables, the low slender shape of the occasional gondola — fought to weave their way through the flotilla of traffic. Behind them a train clattered across the bridge from the mainland, terra firma, its rattle carrying across to the canal with a resonant, unnatural force.

Light and noise. Those, Nic Costa thought, would be the overriding impressions he’d take home with him to Rome once this tour of duty was done. Both seemed amplified in this city on the water, where everything was brighter than on land, every sound seemed to cause some distant echo among the warrens of tightly packed buildings crowded together over the constant wash of the lagoon.

The sirocco had expired overnight. Even at this early hour, high summer was upon the city, airless, humid and dank with the sweat of puzzled tourists trying to work out how to navigate the foreign metropolis in which they found themselves.

Gianni Peroni finished his small
panino
, stuffed with soft, raw prosciutto, and was about to jettison the paper bag it came in towards the canal when Costa’s disapproving frown stopped him. Instead, he thrust it into his pocket and cast a backwards glance at the steps of the forecourt where a couple of shady-looking characters were exchanging money.