The Lizard's Bite

IT WAS INFURIATING. EVERY QUESTION HE AND PERONI threw at the Arcangeli brothers got bounced back with a curt, unassailable reply. The brothers weren’t even surly enough to be called evasive. Maybe they really did have nothing new to tell. Costa finally got sick of Michele’s cigarette smoke, excused himself and decided to take another run around the foundry. The brothers and their workmen had been busy. He could see now that they would, indeed, be back in production before long. New pipe work gleamed around the patched-up furnace.

He walked idly around the interior, thinking, doing what Falcone would have advised: trying to imagine himself into the scene. Uriel Arcangelo, alone with the fire and the molten crucible of glass that lay alongside his wife’s blazing body, turning to dust in the flames.

Practical matters.

They counted, Falcone said.

Costa tried to work out what else they could have missed the previous day. It was impossible to tell. The floor was swept clean. Any shred of unseen evidence that had lurked there before was now surely gone. The picture the island—perhaps the entire city—wanted to present to them, of a guilty Uriel trapped to die by the side of his victim, still stood in place.

Costa wandered over to the carpenters and stared at the new doors. They didn’t look good enough to last more than a couple of cold lagoon winters. The Arcangeli’s workmen were on a different scale from those Massiter was employing on the palace along the quay. These were odd-job men, trying to come up with a quick fix. From what he’d seen of the previous doors, these simply followed the same design: a pair of thick wooden slabs, almost four metres high, joined in the middle by a heavy mortise lock, and attached to the original ancient hinges, which were so solid they had remained when the firemen first entered, swinging their axes.

The new doors were ajar now. Behind, on the quay, Costa could hear Michele and Gabriele Arcangelo talking to each other about when to restart the furnace, about glass, chemicals and recipes, times and temperatures, like two cooks trying to agree on some arcane recipe.

Peroni wandered over, grumbling, then smiled at the locals. The two carpenters looked like father and son, both squat men, the elder with a beard. Murano seemed to run on families.

“Nice day,” Peroni said with a grin. “You boys finished here?”

“Finished what we’ve been told to do,” the father said.

“So they’re back in business?” Costa asked.

“They were in business before?” the son replied, extracting a brief chuckle from his old man.

The two men watched, smoking, idle, as Costa walked up and pushed both doors, gently. Each went back on its hinges smoothly, and stayed open.

“You’d think there’d be springs,” Peroni commented. “To make sure they’d stay closed. If that was my place, I’d have springs. Too many lazy bastards in this world leaving doors wide open. And all those secrets inside.”

“You’d think,” the father agreed curtly. “We replace like for like, just as the insurance people say.”

“Is it really a secret?” Peroni wondered. “Making glass, I mean?”

“We don’t make glass.”

Costa tried each door lightly. The left one fell into place, as it should. The right stopped marginally short. A tiny amount, so little that most people wouldn’t have noticed. Nevertheless, they hadn’t been like this when Piero Scacchi arrived. Someone had to have closed the right hand door deliberately. It couldn’t have fallen shut by itself. Except . . .

The revelation sparked in his head with a blinding clarity. Uriel couldn’t have unlocked the door. His key didn’t work. It must have either been open, slightly ajar as it was now, or someone had let him in.

He pulled the door shut. The lock was automatic. Which meant that, had Uriel let himself in through the open door then closed it behind him, he was effectively trapped in the room. It seemed a neat ruse. Uriel would be bound to visit the furnace to work. Once he was inside, there was no easy way out. Costa made a mental note to pass this on to Falcone. It could be useful information, and he wanted to make a point: that the door and the lock puzzled him too.

The old man was eyeing him with open, mute aggression.

“What’s the big deal anyway?” he demanded. “All the papers are saying what happened. A man knocks off his wife. Doesn’t happen much around here. Unless you know otherwise.”

“We’re from Rome,” Peroni said pleasantly, then turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door to keep an eye on the Arcangeli brothers, who were still in deep discussion on the quay. “We’ve got shit for brains, my partner and me, in case you hadn’t noticed. Do you know something? We don’t have a damn clue about what happens around here. I don’t even know why Uriel would want to kill his wife. Do you?”

The two workmen shuffled awkwardly on their feet. Both said nothing.

“You’re local,” Costa added, accusingly. “Two people, your own people, are dead. Aren’t you even interested?”

“He wasn’t one of ours,” the elder grumbled. “No one ever said that. People here mind their business. You should try it.”

“Does that make him less of a man?” Costa asked.

“You didn’t know him. You don’t know any of them. You wouldn’t understand.”

“But Bella was one of yours. The Braccis have been here for years.”

The son spat on the dry, dusty ground and said, simply, “Braccis.”

Peroni gave Costa the look. It was clear they weren’t liked either. And Nic Costa knew there was no point in trying to find out why. Talking to these two was as futile as throwing questions at the Arcangeli.

The men were looking behind him.

“Now she,” the younger one said, a note of respect in his voice, “is different.”

Costa turned. He saw Raffaella Arcangelo striding towards her brothers, heading across the narrow wharf at a determined pace, anger in her eyes. Falcone followed behind.

“Michele!” the woman yelled. “Michele!”

It was one of those public events you couldn’t not watch. The carpenters were all eyes, taking in everything.

“You should check those doors are done. They look a little flimsy to me,” Costa ordered them.

“Stick to police work, sonny,” the old man bit back. “We’re taking a break.”

Then the pair ambled over towards the group by the water, just close enough to hear every word of the furious family confrontation developing under the burning sun. A noisy one, too, not without interest, though best played out, Costa judged, indoors.

He went up to Falcone and whispered in the inspector’s ear. “Sir . . . This shouldn’t be happening. Not here. It’s too public.”

“Let’s see,” Falcone murmured.

Costa nodded towards the pair of eavesdropping carpenters. “We’ve company . . .”

“Forget about the company.”

Costa glanced at Peroni and knew his partner was thinking the same thing. This was the old Falcone routine, the one they hadn’t seen since they left Rome. The trick the inspector used from time to time, of letting a situation come to a head, letting the emotions run out, then seeing where they led. Sometimes Costa couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t like letting a couple of cars crash just to see who was the worst driver.

And something was different here. Falcone had an interest in this woman, one that went beyond the professional. It was implicit, in the hungry way he was watching her, that she intrigued Leo Falcone.

What ensued was a bitter, full-on domestic fight among the Arcangeli, beneath the flickering flame of their iron namesake, an event that went, in some way, to the very heart of this peculiar family. It was as if Raffaella had been waiting for years to throw this kind of fury in the direction of her eldest brother, and with it all the accusations she’d been harbouring. Of lies. Of deceit. Of a failure to protect the family’s interests. The tide had burst and Costa wondered if any of them, Raffaella or Michele, understood how difficult it would be to return to their previous state of mutual acceptance once the storm had subsided.

Michele stood there, arms crossed, watching her, saying nothing, that frozen side of his face turned towards her anger, as if it were some kind of shield to protect him from the fiery stream of words that tumbled from his sister’s mouth.

“You knew,” she said, finally. “You knew Bella was pregnant. She didn’t tell Uriel. She didn’t tell me. But she came to you. And you did nothing.”

The dead eye glinted back at her like flawed glass, run through with some streak of impurity.

“Say something,” she spat at him. “Speak, Michele! It’s not like you to be lost for words.”

The dead side of his face turned away from her. He gazed at the hazy waterline, the little island of San Michele and the city in the distance, then returned to confront her again, good side visible.

“Of course I knew!” he yelled. “I’m supposed to know these things, aren’t I? That’s what I do around here. Take on all your problems and fix them. Because God knows you can’t do that for yourselves. Not you. Not him . . .” Michele nodded towards Gabriele, who stood silent, watching the water. “Not poor dead Uriel most of all. What do you think he’d have done if I’d told him? Huh? If I’d said his wife had got herself knocked up? And who by? Her own stinking brother. What do you think Uriel would have made of that?”

Raffaella was staring at him, gasping for breath. Unable to speak.

“You’re sure of that?” Falcone asked him. “About the brother? She told you?”

“She didn’t need to tell me,” Michele replied mournfully. “We all knew what went on between them . . . .”

“That was years ago,” Costa said. “There’s no evidence it happened recently.”

“Ask her!” Michele barked, pointing at his sister. “She heard them. She knew. She never dared tell Uriel either.”

Raffaella shook her head. Tears were beginning to stream down her cheeks. “I only said it was a possibility. It could all have been a mistake. Perhaps it wasn’t Aldo.”

“Then whose brat was it?” Michele demanded. “Not Uriel’s, that’s for sure. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She’d still have come to me to sort out the whole damn thing. And I’d still have done it. I’d fixed for her to get rid of it. Today, in case you’re interested. Paid in advance. I don’t suppose I’ll get that back from the clinic.”

“We had the right to know,” she insisted.

“She didn’t seem to think so,” Michele declared, exasperated. Costa stared into his face. There could have been the making of tears in that single living eye. “I didn’t want this, Raffaella. I didn’t want any of this but it’s what God gave me and I can’t walk away. I’m sorry. I’m deeply, deeply . . .”

The old grey face went into his hands. Costa watched Michele’s shoulders begin to heave, heard the choked sob come, just once, from his hidden mouth.

“Michele, Michele,” she murmured, then clutched her brother tightly, whispered some unheard words into his ear. The two of them stood there locked together on the waterfront, watched avidly by three cops and a couple of Murano carpenters who had an expression on their smug faces Nic Costa didn’t like at all. And Gabriele, who sat down on the kerb edge of the quay now, eyes on the water still, looking like a lost child.

“I said this was a matter to be conducted indoors,” Costa reminded Falcone with undisguised bitterness.

To his surprise, Falcone nodded, looking repentant. He couldn’t take his eyes off the distraught Raffaella, clutching her brother.

“I heard you, Nic. I’m sorry. I keep trying to apply the rules I use in Rome. It just doesn’t work here, does it? Jesus . . .”

The carpenters were slinking towards the bridge, back to town. Father and son, for sure. They had that closeness Nic had seen on so many Murano faces, a tight, conspiratorial intimacy that formed a barrier to the world outside.

“No matter,” Falcone grumbled. “It’s out of the bag now. I want to see this Bracci character. I need to know what he looks like.”

Peroni nodded at the departing pair. “We’re going to have to hurry if we want to be first,” the big cop observed.

Falcone sniffed. He looked tired. Unsettled. The heat was getting to all of them, Costa thought. This was all supposed to be so easy.

“We’ll wait,” the inspector ordered, watching Raffaella Arcangelo detach herself from her brother, tears staining her cheeks. “I owe someone an apology.”

Costa wondered about that. Falcone rarely said sorry. It wasn’t in the nature of the man. Then the phone began to vibrate in his jacket. He took it out and heard Emily’s excited voice on the line. He walked away, intent on keeping this conversation, at least, private.

“Nic?”

“Hi. How are things?”

“Fine. You sound down. Is everything OK?”

“Not so great, to be honest.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I have a favour to ask. Can you meet me at the party tonight? And bring my clothes? The evening dress and everything. I laid them out on the bed. No creases, please.”

He couldn’t get a grip on what she was saying. “I don’t understand.”

“You wanted me to get close to him,” she replied, a note of reproach in her voice. “I’ve been working in the palazzo most of the day. I won’t be finished in time to go back to the apartment. It’s amazing here. Where are you?”

Automatically, his eyes went up to the vast glass palace next door. The sun was so bright all he saw was its fiery reflection. He was just a minute’s walk away from her. Watching the Arcangeli try to pick up the pieces of a bitter row, wondering what would happen to the Braccis now that Bella’s secret was about to go public.

“Outside the fornace but I don’t think we’ll be here long. Is there anything else you need?”

“Just you,” she replied sweetly. “And some time. I’ve got news.”

Costa listened to her confident tones with unease. She was supposed to talk to Massiter, nothing more. But it wasn’t in her nature to hold back, not when some prize lay in her grasp.

“Good or bad?”

“Maybe neither. But it’s instructive either way. Got to go now . . .”

The line went dead. Nic Costa glanced again at the gleaming palazzo along the quay. Emily was in there somewhere, out of reach.