The Lizard's Bite

THE TOSIS WERE RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING: THERE WAS plenty of information on spontaneous combustion out there. Any number of lunatics, sceptics, and pseudoscientists were busy yelling at each other on the subject. Teresa Lupo had spent two hours sifting through the reams of material on the computer in Costa’s apartment, saving the little she found useful, and examining the documents sent from Anna Tosi’s miracle medium of e-mail. After that, her head spinning with possibilities, she’d popped out to buy some pizza and water from the shop around the corner, returning to the computer immediately, spilling crumbs, Peroni-like, across the keyboard as she worked. All the same she was, she decided, none the wiser. Wrong. She was a touch the wiser, just reluctant to admit it because there was something here that disturbed her greatly: a possibility that the Tosis had a point. This wasn’t spontaneous combustion in some fantasy comic book kind of way, flames licking out from underneath Uriel Arcangelo’s apron, sparked by some passing moonbeam. But people did die on occasion from an event that appeared, on the surface, inexplicable, a sudden, inner fire which seemed to consume them with a shocking rapidity.

“That doesn’t mean there’s no explanation,” Teresa reminded herself. “You just have to find it, girl.”

Here. Stuck in a tiny police apartment in Venice, with nothing but a laptop computer for company. She thought about what she’d be doing if this had dropped on her desk back in Rome. Scouring the Net for clues? Surely. But more than that, she’d be sharing the problem. And she knew with whom.

Teresa Lupo pulled out her mobile phone, reprimanded herself for a few brief milliseconds with the admonition that her absence was a holiday for her staff also, then dialled Silvio Di Capua’s private number.

“Pronto,” yawned a bored voice on the other end, one which immediately jerked into alert suspicion once Silvio realised who was on the line.

“No!” he declared straight off. “I won’t do it. I’m ending this call now. You’re supposed to be on holiday, for God’s sake. Go fake a tan or something. Leave me alone.”

“I didn’t ask you to do a damn thing, Silvio! I was just calling in to see how you are.”

“So I can’t do the job, huh? Give me a break. Do you think I don’t recognise that wheedling tone in your voice? I won’t play. You can’t make me.”

“Of course you can do the job! I wouldn’t have gone away and left you in charge if I thought otherwise.”

“Then what? I’m not getting involved. It’s bad enough you dumping me in the crap when you’re here working. I’m not having it when you’re supposed to be on vacation. Hear me, Teresa. The answer is no. No, no, no, no, no . . .”

There was an image of a charred corpse on the screen: Buffalo, New York, 1973. No obvious explanation. The man smoked. The man drank. So did millions of other people, all of whom managed to work their way to the grave without turning into life-size spent matchsticks.

She smiled. Silvio was giving in already.

“You’re not busy then?”

“Says who? I’m sorting out paperwork you should have done months ago. I’m dealing with a couple of interdepartmental liaison meetings—”

“My . . .” she cooed. “That sounds fun. Are there whiteboards and stuff? Have they given you one of those laser pens? Do you get to use big words and acronyms?”

“You will never understand management—”

“I am management,” she interrupted. “So let me—what’s the management word for it?—let me cascade something down to you, dear heart. When you want to say no, you say you’re too busy. Not, screw you, I won’t do it. Understood?”

There was a brief silence on the line. The roar of defeat.

“Just because I don’t have much in the way of corpses doesn’t mean I’m not occupied.”

“No corpses means no fun, Silvio. Admit it. I know when my little man is bored. You sounded bored when you picked up the phone. I’ve got a corpse. I’ve got a cure for that boredom. If you want to hear it.”

“No!” he insisted.

“Fine. In that case I’ll hang up . . . .”

“Do that! Go have a holiday!”

“Your word is my command. I am about to put down the phone. Or, more accurately, my finger is wandering towards the off button. Do you really want me to press it?”

“Yes!”

“Fine. It’s done. I shall say just two words before doing so.”

A pause was required. Silvio always rose to histrionics.

“Spontaneous. And combustion.”

Teresa cut him dead, placed her mobile on the desk and began to count to ten. It rang on three. She let it chirrup five times before answering sweetly, “Hello?”

“I detest you with every fibre in my body. You are evil. This is so unfair. You can’t treat people like this!”

“Spontaneous combustion, Silvio. I have a corpse here—well, part of a corpse—and a Venetian pathologist, albeit one who’s a couple of hundred years old himself, who’s determined to write that finding on the death certificate. So what do you think?”

“I think it’s a little early in the day to start drinking. Go sober up, woman. See the sights. Catch a boat somewhere.”

“No kidding. It’s all there. I have photos. I have reports. I have all manner of material I could send you if you’d like. Provided it doesn’t interrupt your whiteboarding, that is. I mean, I expect my people to have priorities.”

He hesitated before replying, wary. “Two points,” he responded. “I will believe in spontaneous combustion the day I come to accept the existence of werewolves. Second, you’re in Venice. Where you are just another dumb tourist, Teresa. Not someone with the authority to go investigating weird deaths, whatever the crazy locals believe. Most people tread in crap accidentally. You seem to like crossing the street to do it. This is a habit I deplore.”

“I was asked to take a look! OK?”

“Who by?” he demanded.

“Falcone.”

“Oh shit. You’re not telling me you’re riding the range with the Three Musketeers again?”

“I ride the range with one of them a lot, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Peroni’s presence still bugged Silvio somewhat. Her assistant hadn’t lost the hots for her completely.

“I was using a metaphor. Let me put it plainly. Are you out of your mind?”

Maybe, she thought. If she really was considering the weird science stuff the Tosis were pushing her way.

“So what’s your objection to spontaneous combustion?” she asked.

“The same objection I have to reincarnation. Or alchemy. It’s nonsense.”

A tiny light went on in her brain. There were times when she wanted to hug Silvio. His small accidental insights could be just what she needed to trigger her own imagination.

“Without alchemy there’d be no chemistry,” she remarked. “You’re a chemist yourself, along with all those other talents. You ought to know that.”

Silvio swore quietly down the phone. She was spot on. Alchemy may have begun with quacks, but it soon became science under another name. And weren’t glassmakers like the Arcangeli alchemists of a kind too, sharing the same common bonds of secrets and substances, changing the shape of the natural world, bending it to their will?

“What I’m saying,” she persisted, “is that I’m beginning to believe this man really did die in a way that can be interpreted as spontaneous combustion. The question is: What does that actually mean? How could it happen?”

“Get their forensic people on it!” he objected. “That’s why they’re there.”

She recalled how Falcone had slyly got her intrigued. It was a superb trick.

“But they’re not as good as you, Silvio. You’ve worked forensic and pathology. They’re slow. They’re unimaginative. This is Venice. They’re wet behind the ears when it comes to real crime. It’s just the tourist police out here,” she continued, steeling herself to what she understood to be a big lie. “Trust me.”

“I know what’s coming. You’re gunning for resources. We get audited, remember? We have to assign work to cases. How am I supposed to hide all that from the managers?”

Teresa prodded at the keyboard, loading up the Tosis’ documents and photos, adding in a few of her own.

“I’m sending you something to read,” she said, despatching the lot off to Silvio’s private address. “Go through it. Then get back to me with a way we can go forward with this. You’ve got till tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow! For fu—”

He was still cursing, with a florid ingenuity, when she hung up.

ALCHEMY. CHEMISTRY. ANALYSIS. There was a big black hole in the Tosis’ findings, one that hadn’t been looked into closely enough because everything had to be signed off in a rush, and by another branch of the Tosi family, who probably didn’t bother to get too involved either. But without some scrupulous work there, Uriel Arcangelo’s death would remain a mystery, would nag her with its unproven possibilities and hidden corners. People didn’t just catch fire from the inside out without a reason. Not in her world. It was important to make this clear.

It was important to remember the medical details too. Bella’s pregnancy was doubtless the news that would start punching Falcone’s buttons. But it was Uriel who interested Teresa. Uriel with his lousy sense of smell. If someone had soaked his apron in lighter fluid, would he have noticed?

There was a prerequisite and it was a lot to ask. If any other pathologist had made the same request of her, she’d have sent them away with a sound ear-thrashing. All the same . . . Alberto Tosi was a gentleman.

It took ten minutes to track him down. The man, to her amazement, was taking coffee and cake in a café, not poring over what little evidence he had, trying to wring some answers out of it.

“Doctor!” Tosi said cheerfully.

“Please call me Teresa,” she replied. “If I may call you Alberto.”

“Of course!”

It was best to be direct, to act as if this were a normal request, one that could scarcely be refused.

“I need Mestre to send a sample from Uriel’s apron and clothing. And a piece of timber from the floor where he was found. The burned part. Nothing large. I need these sent overnight by courier to my lab in Rome.”

She recalled how technology impressed him. “They have a new machine there,” she lied. “Sort of a spectroscope on steroids. We borrowed the thing from the FBI to see if it’s worth buying. I doubt we’ll throw up anything you haven’t uncovered yourself, of course, but it would be extremely useful if we could test some material from the fire.”

There was a pause on the line.

“This is most unusual. Surely . . .”

“We only have the machine until Wednesday, Alberto. You know what Americans are like. I’m probably breaking the law just telling you this. Naturally, I’m not trying to interfere with your work. It’s just the best opportunity I have to evaluate this particular toy.”

The decision hung in the balance.

“If I buy the thing, you’re welcome to come and play with it in the future,” she promised.

Teresa heard the clink of a coffee cup, tried to imagine the glint of excitement in the old pathologist’s eyes.

“This machine. What does it do?” Alberto Tosi asked, breathless.

“It’s a kind of . . .”

Shit, she thought. Why did he have to ask a question like that, just when she least expected it?

“ . . . magic,” she stuttered. “You wait and see.”