The Lizard's Bite

THERE WAS A PICNIC AREA AT PIERO SCACCHI’S FARM. They sat outside at one of the three tables, listening to the man tell his tale, slowly, with conviction and plenty of detail, as if he’d practised everything beforehand. There was little here that was new to them. Scacchi’s recollections matched pretty much everything he was reported to have told the officers who first interviewed him. If anything, Costa thought, Scacchi had it all down a little too pat, as if he were trying to second-guess what they wanted to hear in the hope they’d nod, say thanks, and then be gone, leaving him to go back to his fields and the dog which had sat, alert between Scacchi and Peroni, throughout their discussion.

Scacchi had arrived at the island fifteen minutes before the fire broke out. It was an unscheduled visit. He was dropping off some material the Arcangeli had ordered on his way back from an early morning delivery to the markets. He’d done his best to try to rescue Uriel, unaware that the man’s wife was also in the burning foundry. That the attempt failed seemed a matter of deep regret for the farmer, who was close to tears when he described trying to force an entry into the building with what tools he could find. Costa couldn’t help but notice the scores of cuts and burn marks on his hands and arms. If anyone could have dragged a man alive from that inferno, it was probably Piero Scacchi.

Yet there was something evasive about him too. He didn’t like talking to the police, though it struck Nic Costa that he really had no good reason to feel that way. Scacchi seemed as straight as a die: a hardworking farmer, struggling to keep a large estate going single-handedly, unable to afford extra help. There seemed no reason why he couldn’t wait to get them out of there.

Falcone checked the details about the door, which Scacchi confirmed was locked, apparently from the inside. Then he asked about the state of Uriel when Scacchi first came upon him.

“I told you. I told the ones I spoke to before. He was on fire. From his chest. Like it came from inside somehow. Then later . . .” Scacchi kicked at some pebbles on the sandy ground. “What a waste,” he murmured. “I thought it was just one life. But two . . . Why?”

“We don’t know,” Costa replied. “We don’t even understand how Uriel died.”

Scacchi cast an eye at his fields. A healthy crop of purple artichokes waved in the breeze next to a patch of bright red peperoncini, the fruits like tiny scarlet flower heads. These crops were waypoints in the man’s life, Costa thought, beacons around which he could navigate with certainty.

“He wasn’t human,” the farmer continued. “He was on the floor and there was so much fire. That’s when I knew I couldn’t save him. Not even if the stupid hose had been working. He was fire, just fire, his chest . . . I saw his eyes, though. He saw me too. He just wanted to die . . . .”

“You could smell gas?”

Scacchi shook his head. “It was all so fast. Smoke. Fire. I don’t know what I could smell. Yes. There was gas everywhere. That ridiculous angel of theirs went out because it was leaking from the foundry so much. It’s a miracle the house wasn’t . . .”

He gave up. Peroni patted the farmer on his knee, a gesture only the big cop could have got away with.

“You were brave, Piero,” Peroni declared. “A sight braver than most of us would have been in the circumstances.”

It didn’t make much difference.

“But for what reason?” Scacchi asked. “They both died. I achieved nothing.”

“You did what you could,” Peroni insisted.

“Five minutes earlier . . .” he murmured. “To die like that. No one deserves it.”

“Did you know Uriel?” Falcone asked.

Scacchi shook his head. “Not well. I saw him when I was working. I did what he wanted. He seemed a nice enough man. A little lonely. A little sad. But they’re all like that—the Arcangeli. He drank too. Most nights he was stinking drunk. I shouldn’t say that but it’s true. It didn’t stop him working, though. I never saw him miss a night there. Six, seven days a week.”

“And Bella?” Falcone wondered.

“She worked there. On her own before Uriel came in, usually. They didn’t work together often. The way she talked to him you’d have thought she was the boss. I kept clear. After Michele employed me, I only ever dealt with Uriel and Raffaella. He told me what to do. She paid me. She’s the only Arcangelo you’d ever get money out of. A good woman.” He leaned forward. “A fine woman. Without her, that family would have been bankrupt years ago. The only reason anyone extends them any favours is out of respect for her.”

Costa thought of the tall, dignified figure he’d seen at the curious glass eyrie projecting out over the lagoon. Raffaella Arcangelo did possess something her surviving brothers—and Uriel for all he knew—lacked. Perhaps Scacchi, a lonely man himself, had ideas in that regard too.

“Why do you need the money?” Falcone asked suddenly.

Scacchi laughed. “Huh! Finally a question I couldn’t see coming! Why?”

He cast an eye around the estate, then got up for a better look. They rose too.

“What do you see here?” he asked. “Gold? Frankincense? Myrrh?”

“You’ve got those purple artichokes they say only taste right if they come from Sant’ Erasmo,” Peroni replied immediately. “You’ve got leeks and onions as good as any I’ve seen back home. Some beautiful peperoncini. I think I see rocket. Also a smoking shed. What do you smoke there, Piero?”

“Sometimes eels,” the farmer replied, a little taken aback.

“Where I come from in Tuscany, we smoke,” Peroni said. “Eel. Boar. Plus we shoot ducks and put them in there too. You’ve got a good gundog. What’s he called?”

The spaniel brightened and wagged its tail at the mention of some word.

Scacchi was melting a little under Peroni’s insistent good nature. “Xerxes. It’s a stupid name. It’s supposed to mean he’s the general of the marshes. He is too when he’s out there. The rest of the time . . . Please, don’t use the g-word. He gets worked up. When it’s not the duck season he’s bored witless.”

Peroni laughed and stroked the dog’s soft head. “Plus you’ve got these picnic tables,” he added. “They interest me.”

“A man needs money, OK? I got debts on this place. My mamma never paid everything. Farming won’t cover it all. I do odd jobs for the Arcangeli. I take people places by boat for a quarter of what those crooks in the speedboats charge. The city. The airport. Wherever. And this friend of mine in the city brings tourists cycling out here sometimes. I get to feed them at the tables. And no . . .”—he waved a strong, scarred finger in their faces—“ . . . I don’t declare a penny of it for tax. You’re going to tell them now, I guess.”

Falcone smiled. “You don’t have police on Sant’ Erasmo. Why should you have taxmen too? That seems a little unfair.”

Scacchi calmed down a little. “You don’t look like bad guys. What the hell are you doing in Venice?”

“Long story,” Peroni grumbled. “For another day. I want to try some of those artichokes, Piero. A couple of kilo. How much?”

The farmer spat on the ground and swore under his breath.

“Take what you want,” he groaned. “You cops never go home empty-handed, do you?”

Peroni came back with a better oath, spoken more loudly, then pulled out a twenty-euro note from his wallet. “Now that,” he said, “just shows you really don’t know us. Fill a couple of bags with the best you’ve got, please. Keep the change.”

Piero Scacchi eyed the note, then took it, nodded, said a short word of thanks, and walked off. The three men watched him go.

“We’ve got to ask him about Massiter,” Costa pointed out.

“Don’t try and go too quickly with him,” Peroni cautioned. “It just won’t work.”

“You mean you do see there’s reason to go further?” Falcone seemed surprised.

Peroni cast him a vicious look. “I’m not stupid, Leo. I’ve been around you long enough to spot a few things. Piero’s got something to say, all right. Although I’m not sure he can quite work out what it is exactly. Or how it fits in either.”

“Out here?” Falcone waved a disdainful hand at the nodding heads of carciofi. “I don’t think so. It’s a waste of time—”

“Massiter . . .” Costa interrupted.

“Massiter’s irrelevant. The answers are in Murano somewhere. In the here and now. Not in some old fairy tale.”

There was the sound of a bark. With the dog at his heels, Piero Scacchi was returning, carrying two old carrier bags brimming with food. The three men watched as Scacchi placed the contents of the bags on the table for their inspection. Peroni sorted through them with obvious delight: artichokes, peppers, a bag of frozen smoked eel, fresh new potatoes, waxy and yellow, grapes, a bottle of wine, almost black in colour. And three bunches of tiny peperoncini, like miniature bouquets of exotic flowers.

The farmer nodded at the peppers. “You can let them dry. They’ll keep all winter. Put them in some oil. I guess you have the idea.”

“You make wine too?” The big man was beaming over every last item in the bags, looking as if he wanted to start cooking there and then.

“It’s called self-sufficiency,” Scacchi said. “You learn it in a place like this.”

“I guess so,” Peroni said. “Don’t you ever take a day off?”

Scacchi fixed him straight in the eye. “Do you?”

They could have left it there, Costa thought. They could have let Leo Falcone have his way, walking on, not bothering with all those little questions, the ones that seemed irrelevant, and usually were. Except that wasn’t Falcone’s routine. Not in Rome. Sometimes it was the job of a friend and colleague to issue reminders.

“What do you think happened to Laura Conti and Daniel Forster?” Costa asked, scrutinising Scacchi’s bland, bloodless face for emotion. And finding none, just hearing Leo Falcone utter a low, heartfelt curse under his breath.

“Why ask me? I’m just some scruffy farmer from the lagoon.”

“It was your cousin they killed. You must have known them.”

The dog lay down on the hard, dry ground, burying its nose in its paws, aware of the sudden chill in the conversation.

“Must I?” Scacchi asked.

“You mean they didn’t kill him?” Costa persisted.

“Nic . . .” Falcone warned, ostentatiously looking at his watch.

“I mean a scruffy farmer from the lagoon doesn’t have a clue about what goes on . . .”—Scacchi nodded towards Venice—“ . . . over there. Any more than you do.”

It was an answer, of a kind. Nic Costa didn’t know what to make of it, although he was glad he’d asked, in spite of Falcone’s obvious annoyance.

Scacchi was thinking about something. He asked them to wait, then walked back to his house, a low, ramshackle collection of old wood and corrugated iron, made more cheerful by a line of tall sunflowers, nodding their yellow heads in the light sea breeze.

“The next time I say no,” Falcone declared, “you will listen. Or hear about it afterwards.”

“Understood,” Costa replied, and lived with the icy chill that followed.

Scacchi was returning with something in his hand. He threw them on the table: four postcards, each picture up. Standard tourist stuff. Cape Town. Bangkok. Sydney. Buenos Aires. The last, from Argentina, was posted three months before. The others spanned the previous year, roughly four months apart.

Costa turned them over. On the back of each was a single scrawled name, printed in individual letters, each drawn in a tidy, almost childlike hand.

Daniel.

“I imagine he wants to tell me they’re alive,” Scacchi said.

“It just says ‘Daniel,’” Costa pointed out.

“True.” Scacchi nodded. “So what do you want me to say? I don’t know why he sends them to me. I scarcely knew either of them. Perhaps it’s insurance in case you people come knocking. Perhaps . . . Really. I don’t know. I don’t care either.”

“Can I take these?” Costa asked.

“If it makes you happy . . .”

He was about to put the cards in his pocket when Leo Falcone placed a hand over them.

“That won’t be necessary,” the inspector said curtly. “This isn’t part of our investigation. I’m grateful for your time. Now . . .”

Piero Scacchi and his dog stood immobile, watching them as the police launch left Sant’ Erasmo, two dark, unbending figures, at home in the solitary verdant landscape that enclosed them.

They sat mutely in the boat cabin for a while. Then Falcone glanced at Costa.

“I don’t wish to labour the point. But I am not going to complicate what we have any further by going round picking up signed postcards from people who decamped from this place years ago, even if they are wanted for other crimes.”

“I heard you,” Costa said.

Falcone glowered at him, unable to miss the edge in the young policeman’s voice.

“But . . . ?” he prompted.

“But they weren’t signed postcards. They were printed. Letter by letter.”

The inspector was wrong. It was time to let him know.

“Daniel Forster was a student at Oxford. A good one too, by all accounts,” Costa went on. “Could he fool everyone—Massiter, the media, us—and still be unable to sign his own name?”