The Lizard's Bite

NIC . . .”

He listened to the inspector’s warning voice carefully, not taking his eyes off Aldo Bracci for a moment. The man was dead drunk, scarcely able to stand. A stupid, unwanted trick of the memory meant Costa recognised the weapon in his hand. It was an old Luigi Franchi RF-83 revolver, a .38 special with six cylinders, just under a kilo in weight, obsolete, unreliable, the kind of crap they took off small-time street hoods in Rome, thugs who couldn’t shoot straight to save their lives. Not that it mattered. What was important was that this was a firearm, a small harbinger of death housed in ugly black metal.

“This is my call, Nic,” Falcone murmured. “Get back. That’s an order.”

They were just a few metres from Bracci and Raffaella, in the still-bright yellow sun of the dying evening, beneath the wasted brilliance of a vast Murano chandelier suspended from the rusting iron gallery above.

“He’s drunk. He only knows you from this afternoon and that didn’t go well at all,” Costa said quietly. “Bracci just sees you as part of this problem. I came before. Give me a chance.”

“Nic . . .” There was a stern, desperate note in Falcone’s voice.

“No, sir,” Costa declared, and stepped in front of the inspector, held out his arms, wide, hands open, showing he had nothing with which to threaten the furious-looking Aldo Bracci, who cowered behind Raffaella, shaking with fear and rage.

“Put the gun down, Aldo,” Costa said in a firm, even voice. “Put it down, let the woman go. Then we can talk this through. No one gets hurt. Nothing goes any further. It’s all going to be OK. I promise.”

Bracci’s left arm was tight round her throat. Raffaella Arcangelo’s hands hung loose by her sides.

“Too damn late, you bastard!” Bracci’s voice was a tortured howl. This man was not going to understand logic. Costa tried to recall all the tricks a cop could use in these situations. And the golden rule: Keep it calm.

“Talk to me, Aldo,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want you off my back. I want . . .”

The man was close to tears, desperate, and Costa understood why. What had emerged on Murano that afternoon was irreversible.

“I want my fucking life back,” Bracci babbled, as miserable as hell.

Costa nodded, theatrically, making sure the wretched man understood. “I’m sorry about what happened. We just went round to talk to you because we had to. It’s the job. We talk to everyone.”

Bracci’s wild, drunken eyes rolled. “You fuck up everyone? With these stories? You go round dredging up old dirt and scattering it round the streets like dog shit?”

“No. That shouldn’t have happened. I apologise.”

“Some good that does me! So where am I supposed to go now, smart-ass? Home?”

In that narrow, malodorous street, with an angry face peering out from every window. Aldo Bracci’s life was finished. Costa understood that as well as Bracci did. This was what made Bracci so dangerous.

“Tell me what you want,” he urged.

Spittle flew from Bracci’s mouth as he laughed. The laugh turned into a long choking cough. His shoulders heaved. He looked like a man who didn’t care about anything, least of all himself.

Quietly, patiently, Costa persisted. “You came here for a reason. If I knew what that was . . .”

The glassy, drunk eyes glared at him. “If you knew what that was . . .”

The gun rose again. Bracci was looking around, scanning the crowd, looking for someone, not finding the face he sought.

Bracci jerked back his arm, fired again, straight into the chandelier above him, despatching a shower of tiny glass shards into the room. The crowd was screaming again, falling back, crushing against the temporary tables, sending the plates of delicate canapés and the glasses of sparkling wine crashing on the stone floor.

Costa didn’t move. He looked at Bracci, resolute, determined to see this through. Two shots. Six chambers. If they were full when the man entered the room, there were just four left now. Not that any of them needed to be used.

“Put the gun down, Aldo,” Costa repeated. “Let Raffaella go. Then we’ll walk outside, talk this through. I’ll take you anywhere you want. On the mainland. You name the place.”

The dead eyes blinked. “Anywhere?”

“Anywhere you . . .”

Costa halted. A black figure was scuttling through the crowd, quickly, something in its hand.

“No!” Costa bellowed.

Gianfranco Randazzo was striding into the space Bracci had made, black pistol in hand, firing already, straight at them, like a madman, almost random in his fury.

Costa leapt forward, diving, tearing at Raffaella’s gown, dragging her to the floor, out of Bracci’s grip. The unsteady figure above them didn’t know where to turn. To his disappearing hostage, or to face the hot random rain spitting at him from Randazzo’s weapon.

A red tear opened up in Bracci’s shoulder. A sudden spurt of blood fell warm on Costa’s face. Bracci shrieked. The gun jerked in his hand, twice, firing nowhere in particular.

The screams came from all around them, hoarse, terrified cries uttered by a cast of fake actors snatched abruptly into a cold and dangerous reality. Commissario Randazzo, in his fine black suit, was now casually walking up to the stumbling shattered figure of Bracci, taking aim at the man’s head, like a backstreet executioner, letting loose one final shot into the man’s scalp.

Bracci’s torso jerked back under the force of the bullet. The gun fell out of his dead hand, clattering to the marble floor, spent, its damage done.

Costa recoiled at the sharp, bitter smell of gunfire, then watched in disgust as Randazzo performed one final act, kicking the twitching corpse in the back, sending it rolling onto its side. Bracci’s cheap cotton work jacket, the same he’d worn in his tawdry little furnace, flapped open to reveal the wounded man’s bloodied chest.

Calm, unmoved by the continuing pandemonium around him, Randazzo stared down at his victim, seeing something. He crouched by the body, flicked the jacket back onto the torso.

The commissario reached into the side pocket and coolly removed a set of keys, joined together by a single ring, marked by a yellow sash.

“Was this what you were looking for?” Randazzo called. “Well, Falcone? Falcone?”

Costa was helping the weeping Raffaella Arcangelo to her feet. His arms shook. His brain was fighting to make sense of what he’d seen.

“Are these her keys?” Randazzo bellowed, scrabbling through the dead man’s pockets as the commotion around them grew.

Furious, Costa took two steps towards him, glared at the emotionless man in the black suit, now stained with Aldo Bracci’s blood, then wrested the gun from his hand.

“Consider yourself under arrest. Sir. I’ll see you in jail for this.”

Randazzo laughed in his face. “What? Are you serious? You people are way out of your depth here. You have been all along.”

A single long howl, louder than the rest and familiar in a way that made Costa’s blood run cold, silenced the commissario. Randazzo turned his attention to the back of the room, and was suddenly silent, the colour draining from his cheeks, an expression of unexpected dread frozen on his face.

Nic Costa had his back to the racket. All the same he could recognise that voice, that deep, furious bellow of despair.

It was Teresa Lupo and somewhere inside the torrent of wordless anger streaming from her throat he heard his name.

Two stray bullets had screamed into a room full of people, Aldo Bracci’s final gifts to a world he felt had abandoned him.

Nic Costa knew what that meant. Knew too, somehow, what he’d see when he summoned enough courage to turn around and look for himself.

It could have been a painting. Something by Caravaggio—half deep shadow, half washed in the buttery rays of the dying sun.

Peroni was a taut foetal ball on the ground, rocking, silent. Teresa knelt beside him, fighting to do something, anything, with the rags in her hands, struggling to staunch the sea of red that grew like a flood tide from the figure on the hard, cold floor.

Leo Falcone lay motionless, his head in Emily Deacon’s lap, his tan face staring back at them, eyes unfocussed, mouth gaping open, blood streaming gently from his lips, falling onto her white, white wings.