The Lizard's Bite (40 page)

He glanced back at the low mass of his own island now emerging as he rounded the Le Vignole shoreline. The crooked makeshift jetty of home sat there in the distance, calling to him, waiting for Scacchi and the dog to return and make the place whole. This was where he belonged. He and those like him. Not Daniel Forster. Not Laura. Both were victims in a drama that was partly of their own making. That didn’t lessen his sympathy for them. In a way it made him more determined to help, since they seemed blind to their own culpability. They had been robbed of their existences by Hugo Massiter too, just as much as old Scacchi. More, if he was honest with himself, since they continued to live and be haunted by the day they fell into Massiter’s grasp. Piero Scacchi had understood, from an early age, that, to a good man, the damaged deserved assistance from the whole. It was a duty he’d never questioned, not when his mother began to lose first her health, then her sanity. Life was such a brief, irreplaceable gift, and death so dark and empty and terrible, that he was happy to do whatever he could to improve affairs for those whom he pitied.

He kept looking at the jetty, thinking now of other visitors. The odd bunch of police officers, one short, young and enthusiastic, one old and ugly and wise. And the third Roman, the inspector, who had a darkness in his bright, intelligent eyes that Piero Scacchi recognised the instant he saw it.

That man had danced with the Devil, though a part of him had yet to face up to the fact.

A little giddy from the wine, Piero found his gaze wandering, across the lagoon, to the city waterfront, and that long monotonous stretch of tall buildings running from Celestia to the Fondamente Nuove. He read the papers avidly each day. It was important to be informed. They carried much on the rise of Hugo Massiter, and how the Englishman had great plans for the Isola degli Arcangeli. They carried a little, though not too much, about the aftermath of the tragedy in the palazzo, an event he might have witnessed had he not delivered his cargo that evening, then made himself scarce as quickly as possible, anxious to get away from the peacocks and painted ladies pouring onto the island.

The troubled inspector now lay somewhere in that complex of buildings on the distant waterfront. Piero wondered whether the man had met his own personal demons in his sleep, and which of them would win if such a confrontation occurred.

“A man cannot outrun himself,” he said, aware of a slight slur in his voice, one that came from a plastic cup too many of the heady dark wine he’d extracted from the previous year’s crop of Sangiovese, Oselata and Corvina vines that grew like tortured serpents in the dark earth by the sea.

Everything moves to meet its fate, he thought. All that changed was the pace, the speed at which one closed upon the final meeting.

His head swam. He wanted to give the dog another chance at the tiller, to point the vessel across the lagoon at the distant island, with its iron angel, for the last time, a burden he would never have to inflict upon Xerxes again.

Then something caught his attention. A water taxi, long, sleek and polished, rounding his corner of Sant’ Erasmo, opening up its powerful engines, lifting its nose above the grey lagoon, speeding back towards the city.

No one ever used those boats on the island. They didn’t have the money. They didn’t have the need.

Puzzled, he thought about the
Sophia
’s decrepit, puny engine, so weak it could scarcely keep up with the trash boats that trundled garbage from the city to dump on some distant destination at the lagoon’s periphery.

He watched the water taxi’s silhouette diminishing with speed in the distance, and wished he could match a quarter of its speed. Piero Scacchi knew he had to see the Isola degli Arcangeli one more time, and then be done with the place for good.

C
OSTA WAS STILL ON THE PHONE WHEN THEY MOORED at the San Pietro vaporetto stop. The roar of the reversing diesel sent a flock of startled pigeons rising into the perfect sky. He gave the taxi owner a hefty wad of notes, then stepped ashore, fixing his eyes on the crooked campanile ahead of him, wondering how to reach it through the warren of solitary alleyways spreading out from the waterside. Even here, on this deserted island only just attached to the main bulk of Venice, it was impossible to escape the city’s drive for power. Until two centuries before, the sprawling hulk of San Pietro had been the city’s cathedral, a symbol of the Church which the State exiled, quite deliberately, to the distant periphery to make sure no one, not priest nor congregation, was in any doubt that the spiritual must always give way to the temporal. Today, what little power the area had once possessed was entirely dissipated, blown away like pollen on the wind. Deserted save for a few pensioners enjoying the sun on the sparse green grass in front of the cathedral, it seemed an appropriate place to plan the final act of a conspiracy.

He’d called each of them as he made his way across the lagoon. Teresa Lupo, who had now given up watching Leo Falcone sleeping in the Ospedale Civile. She felt content about Falcone. He wouldn’t stir for a while. But the surgeon she’d brought in to manage his case assured them he was out of danger, not that she’d needed his opinion. On the phone, her voice difficult to hear over the noise of the taxi battling across the lagoon, she’d told Costa how she’d seen the fire in Falcone’s eyes as the sedative fought, and won, the battle to put him to sleep. There might be difficult times ahead, but Leo would return to the fray, and keep on returning until something stopped him for good.

It was a quiet, pointed rebuke about Costa’s own position, perhaps, but one he’d little time to consider at that moment.

Gianni Peroni would, he felt sure, still be furious after a brief and ill-tempered episode at the big Questura in Piazzale Roma. In desperation, and against Costa’s advice, the big cop had made one last effort to persuade some individual above the head of Commissario Grassi that the murder of Randazzo could only be investigated properly if it was seen in the light of the Bracci case and, by implication, that of the murders of Uriel and Bella Arcangelo. It had been like screaming at the deaf. Peroni hadn’t got beyond the pen pusher at the desk, who’d made one call, to a name he didn’t recognise, then told Peroni the station was too busy to waste time on someone who no longer worked there.

Luca Zecchini had pleaded the need for some time to himself. It took a while for Costa to get through to the major directly on his mobile. Zecchini was circumspect, unwilling to talk. The Carabinieri had an office not far from the Castello Questura, in the Campo San Zaccaria. It wasn’t hard to guess what Zecchini would do next. Exactly what any safe, conventional officer would in the circumstances. Call back to base, explain the situation to a superior, await orders. Prepare to share the blame. A content, well-ordered man like Zecchini surely believed that only an idiot would stick his neck on the block without good reason. The major had gone a long way already, all on the basis of a brief personal friendship with a man from a rival force. Further than Costa had expected, in all honesty. From the short conversation they had, one in which Costa struggled to persuade him to come to the meeting on San Pietro, it was difficult to gauge how much more Zecchini, or his superiors, could accept.

And then, finally, Costa had phoned Emily, left a message, since she was on voicemail, and received a brief call a little while later, during which she promised to do little more than be at the cathedral as he asked.

There was no time to wonder about the hesitation in her voice, no time for anything but to try to devise a way ahead. It was now almost five p.m. The Isola degli Arcangeli would be signed away to its new fate in little over an hour.

COSTA LOOKED AHEAD and saw a slender figure in a dark silk suit standing half hidden by the side of the crooked white marble campanile that leaned at an odd angle, set apart from the cathedral to which it belonged.

“Where have you been?” she asked bluntly.

“Chasing ghosts.”

“Did you find them?”

This wasn’t the conversation he wanted just then.

“Not exactly. It was a stupid idea, probably. I don’t think Leo would have approved.”

Emily looked at the wound on his head. Laura Conti had bandaged it. He could feel that the dried sticky blood had made its way beyond the fabric.

“You’re hurt, Nic.” Her hand went to his hair, her eyes examined the blow. “Head wounds can be nasty. You should see a doctor.”

“Later. We don’t have time.”

“Don’t we?”

He hadn’t seen her look like this before. Her eyes no longer shone. Her face had a flat, emotionless cast that made her seem older, sadder.

“And you?” he asked.

“I’ve been trying to get you what you want.”

“I know. Thanks.”

He touched her bare arm, then kissed the softness of her cheek, aware of the way she steeled against him. “I mean it. Thanks.”

“I don’t think it worked,” she murmured. “I’m sorry…”

There was an expression on her face, a lost, desolate look there, he didn’t begin to recognise.

“Let’s not prejudge anything,” he urged her. “We’ve more than one way to skin this particular cat.”

“Really? Are you sure he isn’t skinning us? Along with everyone else?”

“Is that how it feels?”

“To me it does. Let’s get started, shall we?” She nodded at the cathedral door. “They’re waiting for you. I want this out of my life forever after this evening. Understand this, Nic. After tonight, I’m gone from Venice.”

Her blue eyes didn’t leave him, looking for something she didn’t seem to find. “With you or without you,” she told him.

He didn’t deserve any better. Costa had been pushing all of them ever since Falcone went into hospital. By force of circumstance, she’d been close to Hugo Massiter. Costa had been blind to what that could mean. He only really began to consider the possible cost when he saw Laura Conti and Daniel Forster cowering in that little hovel on Sant’ Erasmo, still terrified of a man they hadn’t seen for years.

“Tomorrow we leave,” he said, taking Emily’s hands. “Tuscany. Anywhere. Wherever you want. I promise.”

“People in your job make a lot of promises,” she replied, and strode through the door, into the dark, lofty belly of the cathedral, empty save for a caretaker at the door and three figures seated on a wooden bench set in the shadows of the nave: Teresa, Peroni and, to Costa’s surprise, Luca Zecchini, who sat between the two of them. The major looked cheerier than at any time since the two of them had pounced on him as he sat eating a peaceful meal in Verona only a day earlier.

Costa pulled up a couple of flimsy metal chairs, positioned them opposite this unlikely trio, and introduced Emily to the major from the Carabinieri.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come, Luca. I wasn’t sure I should have asked you, to be honest.”

“Hell,” Zecchini answered with a broad grin, “Leo always said you people were good for keeping ennui away. I decided I was getting a little bored lately.”

“And your men?” Costa asked.

“They’re too young and too junior to risk being anything other than bored. I don’t mind putting my own job on the line. But I don’t extend that privilege to my officers. I imagine Leo’s the same.”

“Sure,” Peroni said, laughing. “That’s why we’re here.”

“If we can take Massiter down, he’s yours,” Costa offered. “That should take care of any unpleasantness.”

“Mine. Yours.” The major shrugged, nonchalant. “What does it matter? I’ve talked to my people, Nic. They’ve no ties here. Remember that. They’ve also got a lot of reasons to want Hugo Massiter in jail if there’s a good chance of keeping him there.”

Costa nodded. He understood that last qualification well.

“On the other hand,” Zecchini added. “If we screw up…”

The way his pale, intelligent face turned suddenly glum said it all.

“He’s going to be untouchable once he pushes this deal through,” the major continued. “He’ll have people in his debt well beyond Venice. They’re frightened of Massiter as it is. Once he’s tied them up in all the loans and guarantees and whatever other backhanders go along with something like this—”

“We get the picture,” Peroni interrupted.

“I’m glad you do,” Zecchini told the big cop. “This may be everyday stuff for you. For me…” Without thinking, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes, then, under Costa’s steely gaze, took one look around the gloomy cathedral interior, laughed, and put it away. “And in a church, too. So, people? What do we have? Can we charge this man with anything? Can we even put him under arrest?”

“I don’t know,” Costa said frankly. “What about the smuggling? You tell me…”

Zecchini scowled. “Not a chance. Not with what we have.” He smiled at Emily Deacon. “I don’t want to disappoint you. I’ve no idea how you got that material. From what I know of Massiter it was a very brave thing to do. Our computer people are taking a look at it right now. They say that, without a password, it could take months to try to decode anything. Someone would have to sign off those resources too. I really don’t see that happening. They’re looking. But…”

“It’s not just the computer files,” Peroni objected. “There’s Randazzo. Massiter’s relationship with him. That material in Randazzo’s house.”

“Where’s the proven link?” Zecchini demanded.

“It’s got to be there! Bring Massiter in and ask him.”

“On what grounds? I’ve no evidence that says Randazzo got his illicit goods from Massiter. We’ve nothing that proves the relationship between them was anything other than proper. Or to suggest Massiter was behind the shooting of this Bracci character…”

“We
know
,” Costa insisted.

Zecchini wasn’t going to be moved. “From what I’ve heard I don’t doubt you’re right. Otherwise why would I be here? All the same… In terms of hard fact, I can’t see I’ve anything to help you. If we had a couple of weeks to run up an inventory of what’s in Randazzo’s house, check it off against a known list, perhaps then we’d have something, though a direct link to Massiter could still be hard to prove. But we’re talking about lots of time and lots of manpower, and we don’t have the luxury of either. If I’m wrong, just tell me. I can’t see it any other way.”