The Lizard's Bite

IT WAS NOW ALMOST SEVEN. THE THREE OF THEM WOULD be late for Massiter’s party, but it was inevitable. Falcone wanted the men to write up everything in the Questura before leaving. It was important, the inspector insisted, to make sure all the facts, as much as they understood them, were set down for the record. He didn’t want any room for mistakes, holes through which problems might slip. Teresa had been occupied too, in a way that hadn’t proved entirely satisfactory, if he read correctly the troubled expression on her face.

It was a gorgeous evening. Even on the vaporetto there was scarcely a hint of breeze. The city stood breathless, trapped inside its own archaic splendour.

“Was Leo right?” Costa asked. “Did you get anything out of the morgue here?”

A disgruntled frown creased her face. “Sort of. They’re not exactly state-of-the-art. To be honest with you, it was a bit amateur-hour there. All the serious stuff gets sent over to the mainland.”

Peroni and Nic looked at each other. Costa knew they were thinking the same thing.

“And this isn’t serious?” he asked. “Two people dead? In very odd circumstances?”

Teresa was staring at the approaching island next to the vaporetto jetty, its trio of buildings misty in the heat haze. Costa followed the line of her gaze. Something about the Isola degli Arcangeli disturbed him. The place clung onto the side of Murano proper by that single metal bridge, with its iconic angel, unsteadily, as if it were unsure whether to belong, or whether to cast itself off into the shallow waters of the lagoon.

“You’d think . . .” she murmured. “I just don’t know. I’ve persuaded Silvio to do a little work on the case. We’ll see.”

“Oh wonderful,” Peroni groaned. “How does Leo manage that? Getting everyone else in the shit alongside him?”

Teresa gave him a sharp glance. “I rather thought we were invited because we’re good at our jobs.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .” Peroni waved a big hand at her. “I keep hearing that. But this isn’t our place, remember. This belongs to the Venetians, and frankly they’re welcome to it. We’ve got our orders from the commissario. A nice neat investigation. Wrap it up. Then go home.” He put a huge arm around Teresa Lupo’s hefty shoulders. “Home,” Peroni emphasised. “Just by doing what we’re told for once. Is it that hard?”

Yes, Costa thought, but didn’t say it. Something stank about the Arcangelo case and they all knew that. Spontaneous combustion. Damaged keys. Aldo Bracci too, locked inside his own house on Murano, an angry mob outside willing him to go. Costa couldn’t get the picture of Bracci out of his head. There was more than just misery inside the man. There was knowledge too, something he was, perhaps, wondering whether to share.

Teresa got back to the point. “Silvio’s got some ideas. About this spontaneous combustion thing. He’s more the chemist than I am. I’ve sent him some material to work on. Perhaps tomorrow, the day after, we’ll know more.”

“What sort of material?” Costa asked.

“Fibres. From his clothes. People don’t just catch fire, Nic. Not in this world. It was very hot in there. Very strange conditions. Uriel was partly deaf and had lost his sense of smell too. Someone who knew that could have doctored the apron. There’s an explanation. Physical laws apply. It’s just a question of understanding them. Maybe . . .”

She stopped. The two men looked at her. It wasn’t like Teresa Lupo to be lost for words.

“Maybe what?” Peroni pressed.

“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s a kind of witchcraft. Or more accurately, a kind of alchemy. I’ve been reading up on the way they make glass. That is alchemy of a sort. They use chemicals and processes going back hundreds of years. If you wanted to set up a furnace like that now, somewhere else, the health and safety authorities would probably kick you out of town as soon as they saw the stuff you wanted to use. Glass is beautiful, but what goes into it to make all those colours, all those features . . . I wouldn’t want it round me day in and day out. Perhaps the suit or the apron picked up some substance. Accidentally. Or . . .”

She gave them that sly look, the one that said, You should be thinking this, boys. “If anyone could come up with some way of faking spontaneous combustion, don’t you think it would be a man who knew the inside of a glass foundry?”

Costa thought about the shattered furnace. Teresa was, as usual, on the ball. They should have done so much more.

“And Bella was pregnant,” Peroni added. “You gave us that. Thanks. Though I don’t imagine her brother’s too grateful.”

“Oh yes,” she murmured. “The brother.”

Peroni must have told her about what had happened that afternoon. Something didn’t ring true.

“On the face of it,” Costa said, “the brother’s the best suspect we’ve got. The only suspect. We know he was messing around with Bella once. He admitted it himself. His only alibi comes from his sons, neither of whom I’d trust for a moment. If Bella had told him about the pregnancy, and the fact the child couldn’t be Uriel’s, he had a motive too. To keep her quiet.”

She didn’t look convinced. “If I were Leo Falcone,” she said primly, “I’d say you were trying to make your suspicions fit your facts. Bracci and Bella were playing those games thirty years ago, weren’t they?”

“Something like that,” Costa confirmed.

“I’m no expert in incest or sexual abuse. But I am a woman. I’ve got to tell you, it doesn’t fit. Why would they turn back the clock? Most people in that situation would want to put the past behind them. Never remember for one moment all the stupid nonsense they got up to when they were kids. They wouldn’t want to take those memories out of the box and bring them back to life. What are the stats for incest among people in their forties, outside the boondocks?”

“This is the boondocks,” Peroni grumbled.

“Is it?” Costa asked. “It’s a closed community. I don’t think that’s the same thing.”

“I agree,” Teresa said firmly. “This place is too urban. Someone would surely have known if it had started again. Something would surely have happened.”

Peroni poked his head around the side of the boat. The familiar yellow sign of the Faro floating jetty was bobbing up and down on the water ahead. And something new: two bright blue neon signs had been erected on the little island next door. One, over the foundry, shone above the fresh glass and woodwork, announcing Fornace. The second was five times its size and spanned the entire entrance of the palace in a large semicircle.

“The Palazzo degli Arcangeli,” Peroni read, squinting at the sign in the distance. “Something did happen, if you recall.”

“I know, but . . .”

She wasn’t going to start an argument. Costa understood her point all the same.

The vaporetto lurched to a sudden halt. Its klaxon sounded. Loud, furious voices issued from the cabin ahead. It was one of those rare incidents of a dispute on the lagoon. Two vessels cutting in front of one another, trying to fight for domination of the busy waves.

Nic Costa stuck out his head to see what was going on. Piero Scacchi’s grubby motorboat was edging out from the jetty by the furnace, the black, taut shape of Xerxes seated amidships, in front of the figure of his master, working the helm. The vessel carried no obvious cargo. He could have made some kind of delivery, perhaps to help restart the furnace.

Scacchi fought his way past the stalled vaporetto, ignoring the curses coming from the cabin, then turned up the feeble motor, raising the vessel to what Costa guessed must have been its maximum speed. He looked glad to be leaving Murano, pointing the nose of his little craft straight for Sant’ Erasmo.

“Hey!” Peroni yelled. “Piero!”

His voice was lost in the roar of the vaporetto’s engine. Probably just as well, Costa thought. Piero Scacchi was a player in these proceedings too. He lived in a place where the country habits Teresa ruled out in Murano were, perhaps, not entirely unknown. And he was privy, surely, to information on Hugo Massiter. Costa was unable to keep from poking at the story of Massiter’s brush with the law five years earlier, and those two disappeared characters in that episode, Daniel Forster and Laura Conti. He wondered what they would have to say in response to Massiter’s version of those events. All the more so now, since Emily seemed destined to spend some time in the Englishman’s presence.

A sound—distant, delightful—drifted across the still evening air. From the open doors of the palace came the lilting notes of a small orchestra, the violins foremost, music that, to Costa’s largely uneducated ear, sounded like Vivaldi. He strained to see beyond the boat stop, towards the private island. White banners now festooned the iron bridge and the arms of the skeletal angel. Beyond, by the long, narrow jetty outside the palace, one never used before when Costa had visited the island, a long line of private water taxies was queuing to unload its human cargo. They were all in carnival costume: Renaissance, Baroque, English Elizabethan. The women stood waiting to disembark in bright, shining, full-length dresses, silk, damask and velvet, mantles around their shoulders, fans flickering, feathered hats pointing skywards. The men were equally varied: fake noblemen, pirates, soldiers, others dressed as commedia dell’arte figures, Harlequin in patchwork with his trademark stick, the plague doctor with his long, vicious beak, Pulcinella in sugarloaf hat and white baggy costume.

“Oh my God,” Teresa murmured. “It’s Leo.”

Falcone’s unmistakable lean, erect figure was indeed visible on the jetty. He was wearing a restrained dark uniform, like that of an old-fashioned military officer. Lines of gold braid stood on his shoulders. Colourful medals adorned his chest.

“The bastard,” Teresa complained. “He knew it was fancy dress all along.”

Raffaella Arcangelo stood next to him, in mourning still. Her medieval-style ankle-length dress was solid, dull black. At its high neckline an ornate lace collar, again the colour of night, allowed only a glimpse of the pale flesh beneath. Her long hair was tied back, parted in the middle, held by a pearl-studded band.

“Now that,” Teresa added, “looks like a couple.”

Peroni eyed the starry crowd mournfully, then jerked his old, rather shiny tie tight to his thick neck, hoping, perhaps, the crooked knot would hide the missing button on his shirt.

“Thank you, Leo,” the big man moaned. “Thanks a million.”

Teresa gave him a straight look. “What’s your beef? You’re wearing a tie. For you that is fancy dress.”

“But . . .”

“But if you knew,” she continued, “you’d never have come. Would you?”

There was another figure on the jetty now. She was walking out onto the bare stone jetty in a long, piercingly bright white gown, a set of swan-feather wings on her back, the perfect, golden-haired angel, poised outside the shining glass palace, her outline dancing in the faintly malodorous heat like a figure from a dream.

Emily Deacon looked immensely happy, fulfilled. At home on the terrace of this palazzo, a place where Costa knew he could never feel at ease. Accompanying her was Hugo Massiter, wearing the costume of a key figure from the commedia dell’arte. Il Capitano, the boastful, violent soldier, a bundle of arrogance hidden inside a naval officer’s blue uniform, a fake sword by his side, owner of a painted mask with a long phallic nose which now sat on Massiter’s shoulder, its expression veering between covetousness and cowardice.

Something flickered inside Nic Costa’s head: a memory from school. Of all those old theatre stories, one in particular. About the Captain and how he kidnapped the lovely Isabella, the inamorata, the innocent and beautiful woman in love who never needed to hide behind a mask or, if Costa recalled correctly, saw much behind the masks of others either.