The Lizard's Bite

WHEN HE CAME TO, DANIEL FORSTER WAS STILL THERE, gun by his side, barrel not quite in Costa’s face. Costa raised his fingers to the site of the blow. There was blood there. He winced.

“A little of the English comes back in your voice when you’re angry,” he observed.

Daniel Forster glared at him. “You deserved it.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions, Mr. Forster. Can I get up? Would it be too much to ask for some water?”

Laura Conti spoke to him rapidly in English, something Costa couldn’t catch, then she went to the sink and came back with a glass. Costa dragged himself off the floor and took the water, gulping at it gratefully.

“You won’t do anything stupid, Daniel,” she said firmly. “I mean that.”

Costa found himself shocked by the man’s appearance. Daniel Forster was a cultivated man. Now he looked lost, broken, damaged. It was Laura Conti who was protecting him, it seemed. Not the other way round.

“Hear me out . . .” Costa began.

The shotgun waved in front of him again.

“Shut up! We’ve planned, you know. We can be out of here in an hour. There are boats. There are people who’ll help us. We’ll be gone before they even find your corpse.”

The woman put her hand firmly on the weapon. “No, Daniel. I won’t permit it.”

“I’m not who you think,” Costa said, gingerly reaching into his jacket and offering the ID card there. “I’m a police officer. I’m here to ask you to help us do what we should have done years ago. Put Hugo Massiter in jail.”

Forster looked astonished. Then he laughed. It wasn’t an encouraging sound.

“Listen to him, Daniel!” Laura Conti snapped. “Give him a chance.”

“A chance for the police to put Hugo in jail?” Forster asked. “How many chances do they want?”

“Just one good one,” Costa replied immediately. “You can give it to us.”

It was the woman who answered. She fixed him with sad, resigned eyes and said, “No. That’s not possible. We can’t help you. In any way. I’m sorry.”

“Do you just want to stay in hiding for the rest of your lives? Being people you’re not? Keeping out of the way?”

“And staying alive,” Daniel Forster said glumly. He scanned the room, clearly hating what he saw. “Even like this.”

“I promise you won’t be in danger,” Costa added quickly. “We can provide protection. Whatever you need.”

Forster laughed again. There was a little less harshness in the young Englishman’s voice this time. Nic Costa saw a glimpse of the man he must once have been.

“We had what we needed once before,” he said with a sigh. “A home. Money. Our freedom. Most of all, each other. Massiter came back from the dead somehow and stole everything but the last.”

He put down the weapon, clutched the woman around the waist briefly, kissed her cheek, then looked across at Costa again, his face stony with determination.

“He won’t take that away too,” he added.

“But this isn’t who you are,” Costa objected, watching the way the woman closed her eyes when Forster embraced her, the shared pain there when she reopened them.

She looked at the ID card more closely. “Hugo Massiter stole who we were years ago, Agente Costa,” she told him. “What kind of a life do you think we’d go back to?”

He didn’t have an easy answer. Then his phone rang inside his jacket pocket, a noise so loud it made each of them jump.

Costa took the call, watched by them, closely. Peroni was on the line. Nic listened, said little in reply, then put the phone away. They must have seen the expression on his face.

“Bad news?” she wondered.

“I thought we had another witness,” Costa said. “One who could bring Massiter down if I failed to find you.”

“And . . . ?” she asked hopefully.

There was no point in lying.

“He’s dead. No witnesses. I can surmise. We’ve been able to do that a lot. But proof . . .”

She took the empty glass from him, came back with it full, looked at his head, patted the blood there with a tissue.

“Are you beginning to understand?” Laura Conti asked him.

“Not really,” Costa admitted. “Tell me.”

“It’s very simple,” she replied. “You can’t win, and by the time you realise that, it’s too late, because he already has you. The moment you get close to Massiter you’re lost.”

Costa thought of Emily, and the risk she’d undertaken, willingly, of her own volition, though he could have prevented it.

“Too late for that,” he muttered.

Laura Conti stared at him with sad, dark eyes. “In that case, I pity you,” she said.

“I won’t back down from this man,” Costa said. “Nor should you. He was responsible for the deaths of people you knew. Piero’s cousin and his companion. He killed those police officers. He ruined you. I thought . . .”

Costa hesitated. He was getting nowhere.

“What?” Forster asked. “That we’d want revenge? What good would revenge do us? We just want to survive.”

“Nothing more,” the woman added. “You can’t ask us to throw that away.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. As I said, we can protect you.”

“The way you protected your witness?” she demanded sharply. “Please. We know this man better than you. Go now. Leave us alone. Tomorrow we’ll be gone. You won’t tell anyone we’re here, will you? There are no secrets in Venice. Not for long.”

Forster was eyeing the gun again.

“You’re sure of this?” Costa asked.

They both nodded. There was nothing left he could use, no coercion, no persuasion.

“We’re sure,” she said.

He nodded. “In that case it’s important you listen to me. In a few hours, Massiter will sign a business contract. A very large one. A contract which will seal his position in the city and beyond. Once that’s done, no one will dare touch him. Not on a local level. Not a regional one. Not even the national authorities, I believe, because . . .” Meeting this pair, seeing the fear in their eyes, brought home to him the scale of the step Massiter was taking. “ . . . he will have such power over so many people. After that, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to go against him.”

Daniel Forster swore bitterly under his breath.

“I’ll tell no one of your whereabouts,” Costa promised. “All the same, it would, perhaps, be prudent to think of going as far away as possible. And don’t tell anyone where you are. Certainly not Piero. You’ll just extend the risk to him further. If I can help in some way . . .”

“I could have killed him, you know,” Forster said. His eyes glinted in the gloom of the shack. “Once before.”

“Why didn’t you?” Costa asked.

The young Englishman stared at the gun, a look on his face that was both hatred and regret.

“Because I was a fool.”