The Lizard's Bite

THE INTERIOR OF THE PALAZZO DEGLI ARCANGELI WAS breathtaking. Banks of orchids and roses massed in fragrant lines at the hall’s edges. Broad white ribbons ran in festoons from the wood and metal superstructure of the building, meeting to form a crown around the trunk of the fossilised palm tree at its centre. The three rising semicircles of glass now glittered with the winking eyes of hundreds of tiny floodlights set over the crowd below, a field of anonymous actors playing such old, old parts Costa had to delve deep into his childhood to remember their names. At the rear, on a low podium, the small orchestra was sawing away, still audible over the chatter of three hundred people, enough to make up several commedia dell’arte troupes.

Nic Costa thought he could detect Emily’s touch in places: vases of tall white lilies, a handful of medieval paintings, copies probably, hung in old gold frames, and skeins of fine gold wire, wrought in fluid, writhing shapes five metres above the crowd, like a near-invisible skin between them and the fragile glass high above. Everything was muted yet purposeful too. Still, the event had the feeling of a party taking place in some newly reborn building waiting to find its purpose, a place that had woken from some long slumber only to find itself invaded by vandals.

They conversed briefly with Leo Falcone and Raffaella, who clung to the inspector’s arm looking a little cowed by the evening’s glamour. Then they ploughed on, feeling awkward in such company, Costa searching for Emily again in the gaudy packed throng, Peroni and Teresa following in his wake.

It was soon apparent that the entire Arcangelo clan was there. Most men wore the bauta, the tight powder-white traditional mask that fitted over the nose and cheeks, but left the mouth free for eating and drinking. Even so, these were modern times. After a little while in the baking, close room, the awkward fittings must have grown tiresome. Both Arcangelo brothers were out of theirs within minutes. Michele conversed with a woman Costa didn’t recognise, looking animated, cheerful almost. A different creature from the surly individual they’d tried to pump for information earlier. Gabriele was less changed. Miserable in his plague doctor costume, he stood alone, close to the drinks table, his long-nosed mask on his shoulder, gulping at a glass of spritz, unwilling or unable to strike up a conversation with anyone.

Costa excused himself as he pushed past a couple who were still masked and dressed like neon peacocks, in a fashion that seemed more suited to a carnival in Brazil than a private party in Venice. Then he rounded a table of canapés, sighed as Peroni picked up a fistful and began munching, turned and found himself staring into the dry, dead face of Gianfranco Randazzo.

“Someone else in civilian dress,” the commissario moaned, glancing at Peroni too. “That’s a relief. Are you wondering what the hell you’re doing at this charade?”

“Eating,” Peroni declared, holding up a couple of delicate biscuits bearing bresaola, wind-dried beef, topped with sautéed porcini. The big man grimaced at his glass of prosecco. “Don’t suppose they’ve got any beer here?”

“Duty officers aren’t supposed to drink,” Randazzo said curtly.

“We’re aware of that, sir,” Costa replied, toasting the commissario. In spite of Peroni’s protests it was good stuff, better than the weak fizz he usually found in the Veneto. “Right now we’re off duty. Right now we can do what the hell we like.”

Randazzo scowled. The man seemed tense, more unhappy than usual. “So what’s new? I suppose I ought to be grateful. At least I get a break from the complaints. You know we hardly ever need to send a man to Murano. It’s that kind of place. Now I’ve got three out there. Doing nothing but push back the crowds. Why didn’t you just take Bracci into custody?”

“On what grounds?” Peroni asked, intrigued.

“That’s for you to invent,” Randazzo snapped. “Do I have to tell you everything?”

The commissario glanced at Teresa Lupo. Her presence made him uneasy somehow, a fact she wasn’t likely to miss.

“I suppose you had a good day too,” he mumbled. “Poking your nose in our business. I should have been told about that trip to Tosi. Before it happened.”

“Tosi phoned you?” she asked, surprised.

“Of course! He works for me.”

“Lucky man,” Teresa Lupo said pleasantly, then turned her back on him and rejoined Peroni.

Randazzo prodded Costa in the chest. “There are limits,” he said, “to what I will take from you three.”

Nic Costa wasn’t interested in pursuing this conversation. Randazzo was a small man. Massiter’s man, if Costa understood the situation correctly. He was here because he’d been told to be here. The grumpy, sour-faced commissario could entertain himself. Besides, he’d spotted Emily. She was over on the far side of the room, a dreamlike figure in white, free of Massiter, getting an energetic chat-up line from some idiot dressed up like an eighteenth-century French aristocrat.

Nic Costa nodded at Randazzo. “I genuinely believe that to be true, sir. If you’ll excuse me.”

Then, with a mild shoulder charge, a toned-down version of the play from his rugby days, Costa was through the costumed scrum, pushing them aside with a stream of muttered apologies, determined she wouldn’t get away.

He picked up two fresh glasses of prosecco from a bewigged waiter in blue silk and backed his way through the throng to find her.

Emily laughed, a warm, entrancing sound, and took her glass.

His eyes roved over the white, white angel costume, the perfect feathered wings. “I brought your clothes. You asked me. And this . . .”

He took the tiny bouquet of bloodred peperoncini from Piero Scacchi’s smallholding out of his pocket.

“Doesn’t seem much, in these surroundings.”

Emily placed the waxy peppers carefully in the feathers of her right wing, where they stood like some strange, symmetrical wound.

“It’s the loveliest thing I’ve seen all day,” she told him.

There was a wicked radiance in her eyes. This was all a game. A tease, maybe.

“Don’t you like it?” Emily Deacon revolved once, like an ethereal model, just for his eyes.

“No.”

“Nic!”

He scowled. “I like it. Where on earth did you get it?”

“Hugo ordered it from some costumier in the city. It was his idea.”

“I bet. Did he have any others?”

She blinked. “I suspect so,” she answered frankly. “I learned quite a lot about Hugo Massiter today.”

“Does any of it help?”

“I don’t know.”

She ducked backwards, behind one of the slender iron columns that ran in a line close to each edge of the hall, supporting the balcony above. There were crowds above them, scores of people, their feet clattering on the ironwork. The place seemed too delicate to be real. Her bright, sharp eyes scanned the mob to make sure no one was listening. The lively sound of the orchestra, now working its way through the spring section of the Seasons, rang behind them.

“Probably not,” she disclosed quietly. “I learned that he’s obsessed with Laura Conti. The woman who almost ruined him, if you remember.”

Costa nodded. The story of Laura Conti and Daniel Forster wouldn’t go away.

“He doesn’t look the romantic type to me. He’s rich. The kind of man who could have pretty much any woman he feels like.”

“I can’t believe you said that!” she complained. “Do you really think it’s only about the money?”

“No! I meant . . . He’s not married. He seems a solitary type, not someone to enter into a long-term relationship. I rather thought men like that attracted a certain kind of woman.”

“That’s a retraction of a sort, I suppose. How about this as an explanation? The reason Hugo’s obsessed with Laura Conti is precisely because she’s not that kind of woman. She’s someone who actually said no to him. Or perhaps said maybe, and then no, which would be even worse.”

“That would get to him?” he asked.

“It would get to most men, wouldn’t it?”

There was something here he still didn’t understand. And it got in the way too.

“As Falcone reminds me constantly,” Costa went on, “Daniel Forster and Laura Conti aren’t part of this case. What about the Arcangeli? What’s his relationship with them?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know any more than you do. He likes women. Perhaps he was Bella’s secret lover. It wouldn’t surprise me. You have to appreciate something. Women matter to him.”

“I’d gathered that.”

“No,” she said with a sigh. “This isn’t about me. It’s . . . universal. Hugo’s the kind of individual who sees women as a challenge. Scalps for his hunting belt. It’s not about love. Or sex even. It’s about possession. He’s more charming than most, but that’s what he’s like, and he’s very good at it too.”

Costa found the words just slipped out, unbidden. “Does he want you for a scalp?”

“Probably,” she answered without hesitation. “But I don’t feel flattered. Men like Hugo want women the way others want cars. It’s all about ownership, Nic. I rather imagine that once he’s sat in the driving seat, so to speak, the attraction wears off. But with Laura Conti, it didn’t, for some reason. That’s what’s bugging him still. It doesn’t make sense to him. It doesn’t fit in his neat, nicely ordered world, which is a place where he’s very much in control.” She took a sip of the prosecco, smiled. “And it won’t go away. Bella, on the other hand, did. That’s as much as I know.”

“I guess that’s a kind of definition of love. The not-going-away part.”

“I guess.”

Her blue eyes were on him. When he saw her like this, lovely inside the stupid, radiant dress, with the stain of the peperoncini by her shoulder, he wondered why he ever doubted the bond between them.

“I think I’ve had enough of this masquerade, Nic. Shall we go?”

Costa’s eyes swept the room, the silk and the satin, the wigs and the pale, powdered faces. “You’d leave these people for a little police apartment in Castello?”

“No,” she answered with a wry smile. “I’d leave them for you, idiot.”

Nic Costa laughed. That was one more talent she possessed. Then he took one last glance around him. Leo Falcone was talking earnestly to Commissario Randazzo now, free of the black-clad, shy form of Raffaella Arcangelo, whose elder brother, now next to Falcone, still held the unknown woman in conversation, an avaricious expression on his maimed face. Close by, Peroni and Teresa were embroiled in an animated discussion by the side of an attendant whose food tray they were pillaging.

His eyes roved to the nodding waters, the moored boats, the stone jetty. There was someone there. The last person Nic Costa expected to see was walking into the Palazzo degli Arcangeli at that moment.