The Lizard's Bite

by David Hewson

  “Rich men’s toys,” he murmured.

  “Some toy,” she said, eyes glittering. “I’d give anything to see inside. And we’re going to a party there?”

  But it was just another old building, he wanted to say. In a city full of them. Nic Costa was no boor. He appreciated Venice. He loved many of the sights. Still, there was something about the place that disturbed him. Nothing moved. Nothing changed in the lethargic melancholy of the lagoon. Even the people seemed to think their small, mundane lives would run on forever, trapped in the bright wash of the sky that flooded over them.

  “I must be coming up in the world,” he murmured.

  “We must be coming up in the world,” she corrected him quietly.

  He brushed aside the soft hair from her cheek, and kissed her again, more slowly this time, pleased to feel her responding.

  “We . . .” he whispered, “ . . . must eat.”

  “Do we have to?” she murmured.

  There was no choice. Falcone had ordered a chair at the table for a reason. Besides, something told Nic Costa he needed to be on his guard. Perhaps for all of them. Peroni was winding down into holiday mode. Falcone seemed to believe everything, while more complex than it appeared at first, would be a piece of cake. To him, Venice was a backwater, a place where a city cop could wipe the floor with the locals. Costa wasn’t so certain.

  “We do,” he said. “Just for a while.”

  THE RESTAURANT WAS DOWN A BACK ALLEY BETWEEN Arsenale and the main drag of Castello, the Via Garibaldi, a quarter of working-class houses not far from the police apartments. Peroni found it within a week of their arrival in the city. He had an uncanny sense about where to eat, and a way of buttering up the staff too. Two sisters, big, friendly women, ran the place. Their daughters, pretty teenagers, worked the ten cramped tables, each with four settings, that filled the dark interior. Most nights Nic and Peroni had to queue—though not for long; his partner’s quick wit had soon seen to that. But this was August, when hordes of locals abandoned the city for somewhere cooler. There was only one other group in the place, so Peroni pulled together a couple of tables at the far end of the room to give the five of them plenty of space and privacy, listened, beaming with pleasure, to the brief list of evening specials, then sat back to enjoy the meal, a man in gastronomic heaven.

  Nic Costa knew good eating when he saw it and this was good, seriously good, in a way they rarely found in Venice because it was all utterly authentic, as close to home cooking as they were likely to get outside a private house. Costa’s vegetarianism had now relaxed to the extent that he ate fish, principally because it was so good there. A plate of pasta with tiny brown shrimps was the first course for each of them, some crisp, fresh rocket on the side. Peroni had insisted on stinchi for the meat eaters, ham hocks slowly roasted in garlic and oil. Costa had decided to stick with the gorgeous sarde in saor, fresh sardines slowly marinated with vinegar, oil, onions, pine nuts and sultanas, a Venetian speciality the two sisters prepared themselves, and one which couldn’t be bettered anywhere in the city. Even Leo Falcone looked content once he’d pulled a bad-tempered face at the house red, a weedy Veneto makeweight pumped straight from the barrel, and replaced it with a couple of bottles of fancy Amarone from behind the counter.

  Then Falcone pushed away his plate, with that wily expression on his face that always made Costa uneasy, smiled at Teresa Lupo and said, “Spontaneous combustion. You’re a pathologist. Have you ever met a case? Is it rare?”

  She gagged on her ham joint and stared at him, dumbfounded. “‘Spontaneous combustion’?”

  Falcone pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and placed it on the table. Teresa picked it up, began reading, looked at the official crest on the top, then choked again.

  “He’s quite an old pathologist they have here,” Falcone disclosed. “Seems knowledgeable. According to him Uriel Arcangelo died of spontan—”

  “What next?” she interrupted. “Are we going to have people expiring of witchcraft or something? Did you find any wax dolls with pins in them lying around, Leo? Are you going to give up forensics and use a Ouija board instead? Good God . . .” She put down her knife and fork, a sign that she was surely taking the matter seriously. “You cannot allow this to be recorded as a stated cause of death. I won’t allow it. You’ll be a laughingstock. Every nut magazine and TV programme on the planet will be after you.”

  Falcone beamed back at her, unruffled. “The pathologist here, Tosi, said it’s a documented phenomenon. There was even a case in Dickens. Bleak House, I believe . . .”

  Teresa’s voice rose to an angry howl. “Dickens wrote fiction, for Christ’s sake! I’m a pathologist. I deal in science, not mumbo jumbo. Listen to what I am saying. Regardless of some ancient British author’s opinions to the contrary, there is no such thing as spontaneous combustion. It is physically impossible. A myth. A fantasy. The kind of thing that should be filed alongside alien abductions, telepathy and stigmata.”

  “All matters which some people believe in. With documented cases . . .” he repeated.

  “No, no, no! Look. This is just part of the fashion for irrational bullshit that poor bastards like me have to put up with these days. People hate a world that’s logical, rational, and largely capable of explanation. So they fill it with this crap because it makes them feel safe at night somehow, thinking that there really are ghosts and flying saucers out there, and we’re not just what we appear. A collection of atoms wandering through the world waiting for the day we start to fall apart. You cannot—”

  “Tosi’s adamant he’s going to put that on the death certificate,” Falcone pressed.

  “Stop him! Please! It’s not possible. The man must be gaga or something.”

  Peroni put down his knife and fork and stabbed a finger at Falcone. “If Teresa says it’s not possible, Leo . . .”

  “You heard Randazzo!” Falcone objected. “We just do as we’re told. Sign off the papers. Then go home early. Besides, we’ve got a witness statement from this garzone who saw Uriel Arcangelo die. He was on fire.”

  Falcone’s incisive, birdlike eyes peered out at them from that familiar, walnut face. He was engrossed by this case, Costa realized, and would surely refuse to let go with his talons until he got to the bottom of what had happened on the Isola degli Arcangeli.

  “Fire, the witness said, that came from inside him,” the inspector continued. “Fire’s combustion, isn’t it? It sounds spontaneous to me.”

  “Oh no!” Teresa wagged a finger in Falcone’s impassive brown face. “I know what you’re trying to do. I’m off duty here. You’re not stealing my holiday the way you stole theirs. This is down to you, Leo. If the pathologist you’ve got believes in fairies, that’s your problem. Go take an aromatherapy course and deal with it.”

  “He seems a rational man,” Falcone replied mildly. “A little traditional. A little set in his ways, perhaps. You have to remember he doesn’t have your kind of experience. Murder and Venice rarely meet. Tosi knows that too. He was very flattering about you when I mentioned we’d worked together.”

  He poured some more wine and left it at that, with Teresa gagging for the rest of the compliment. “He’s heard of me?”

  Falcone held the glass up to the light, admiring the deep red penumbra it cast on the white tablecloth. “First thing he said when I told him I came from Rome. ‘Do you know Dr. Lupo? Did you read about the wonderful work she did on the body from the bog?’”

  “Leo . . .” Peroni growled.

  “All I’m saying,” he continued, “is that if Teresa here would like to take a look at this case of spontaneous combustion . . .”

  “Don’t use that phrase,” she cautioned menacingly. “Don’t even utter the words.”

  “If you wished to take a peek at the body, I don’t think it would be a problem.”

  Teresa Lupo reached over, snatched the expensive bottle from his grasp, then tried to pour herself a glass. The bottle was empty.

  �
�Hard to make a decision without a drink,” she announced.

  Falcone sniffed and stared at the label on the Amarone. Dal Forno Romano, one of the best, and fifteen degrees proof. Costa’s late father had had a taste for that one. It was, he had said, like Barolo, a fighting wine.

  “At forty euros a bottle that’s an expensive decision. So will you just cast your eyes over what I’ve got here? Give me a second opinion. Just me, you understand. I don’t want you getting into a catfight with Tosi. He doesn’t look as if his heart could stand it.”

  “I don’t give second opinions,” Teresa snapped. “I dish out facts.”

  “Facts then,” Falcone agreed, waving at the pretty waitress for more wine. Then, ruefully, “That’s all we need. Consider these—”

  “This doesn’t concern anyone but us three,” Costa warned. “We didn’t invite you to dinner to share the case around.”

  “Come, come, Nic!” Falcone was loving this. He’d had more wine than anyone else. He was different too somehow. Off the leash, in new territory. “I invited myself here. And where are we going to find a better table in Venice to knock around a few ideas? We all know Teresa wishes she wore a badge instead of carrying that leather bag around.”

  He watched her, eyebrows raised, waiting for an objection.

  “Quite,” Falcone continued when none came. “And Emily’s ex-FBI. One colleague. One ex-colleague. Discreet ladies both. Think of all the expertise we have here. And what are we ranged against? You saw it for yourselves today. A bunch of provincials.”

  “Provincials who happen to be in charge,” Peroni grumbled.

  Ignoring the remark, Falcone reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the plastic bag with Uriel Arcangelo’s keys inside. “So let’s consider this.”

  “Oh great,” Peroni sighed. “Now we’re taking evidence out of the Questura. Here it begins, gentlemen. Behold, another nosedive in our faltering careers.”

  “Don’t be so stuffy.” Falcone waved down his complaints. “The people here think criminal procedure begins and ends with a screaming match in an interview room. They won’t even notice it’s gone. Consider this. A man dies, consumed by fire, inside a locked glass foundry, with his own wife’s body—clearly predeceased, since the one witness we have was unaware of it to begin with—in the furnace in the same room. There is only one door into the place, and no other easy way of entry and exit. The man’s key is in that door, on his side. What are we meant to assume?”

  Costa noticed the gleam in the women’s eyes. Falcone knew what he was doing.

  “That he killed his wife, then perhaps killed himself?” Emily suggested.

  Teresa was already shaking her head. “Self-immolation is a very rare form of suicide,” she noted. “Men who kill their wives are invariably the cowardly sort—they take pills. They drive a car off a cliff. More often they nick themselves with a knife and don’t have the guts or the decency to take it any further.”

  “An accident then?” Peroni asked.

  Teresa nudged his elbow. Hard.

  Falcone looked delighted.

  “See,” he said to Costa and Peroni. “Just a few small facts and already we discover something we didn’t know. What would we do without these two?”

  Teresa Lupo screwed up her pale, round face. “Please don’t praise me, Leo. It feels so wrong. This Uriel guy must have died for some reason. How badly was he burned? What tests have forensic run on his clothing?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a detective. I can’t give you a meaningful answer. He was terribly burned from the waist up. The rest of his clothing seems pretty much intact. Everything was covered by foam from the fire officers, which hampers forensic, or so they told me. But we’re not talking your calibre of people here. Or . . .”

  This next point had only just occurred to him.

  “Or people who would be quite as diligent as you, I suspect. You should look for yourself.”

  “There you go again,” Teresa complained. “If I’m to help, you need to cut out the praise.”

  “If you wish. So what else do we know?”

  Falcone’s comments about the key had been bugging Costa all day. The inspector had made him feel like an idiot when he drew the obvious conclusions. Now Costa could see why.

  “That perhaps the key doesn’t signify what it appears,” Costa observed.

  Peroni nodded. “Meaning?”

  “The door could have been locked from the outside. Uriel could have been locked in there by someone else and simply placed his own key in the door from the inside. Except . . .”

  Falcone picked up the plastic bag and shook it. “Except . . . why didn’t he just unlock it himself and walk free?”

  “I seem to recall,” Teresa said, “a little lecture from a Roman police inspector. One that said, look for the simple solution. Usually it’s the right one.”

  Falcone sipped his wine, closed his eyes briefly, appreciating it. “In Rome usually it is. But this is Venice. And we mustn’t forget that. Here’s one more thing: the dead woman had a mobile phone.”

  “Is that such a surprise, Leo?” Peroni asked. “Most people do.”

  “Not the Arcangeli. I checked with Raffaella. As far as she was aware, none of them owned one. Yet it was there. In the corner of the foundry. I found it when you two were supposed to be looking around today. It was underneath a portable table they used for moving glass. A table that could have just as easily been used for dumping a body into the furnace. Clearly our Venetian colleagues don’t believe in such a thing as a thorough search. I checked with the phone company. The phone was registered under the name of Bella Bracci. The dead woman’s maiden name. Her old family address too. There’ve been no outgoing calls on it for weeks, which is useful of course because that doubtless means it was used mainly for incoming calls, where we can’t trace the number if it’s been blocked. But ninety minutes before we had the first report of the fire, someone did phone out on it. To the direct line in the Arcangeli’s office at the back of the foundry. The very place where, as far as we understand it, Uriel would have been before he went to work.”

  Teresa was scribbling some notes on a napkin.

  “I can see where you’re going with this,” she said. “But as you said yourself, you’ve still got one big problem. Uriel had a key. He could have walked out at any point, if he’d wanted to. The fact he didn’t means as sure as hell he wasn’t entirely innocent here.”

  Falcone pushed the plastic bag over to her and indicated the long shaft of the mortise key. “What do you think?”

  Teresa threw up her hands in despair. “It’s a key! I’m a pathologist. Not forensic. I don’t do keys!”

  “Take it out if you like,” Falcone suggested.

  “Oh Jesus.” Peroni sighed. “Listen to the sound of distant shit meeting a distant fan.”

  But Teresa Lupo already had the key in her hand and was turning it round in her large, powerful fingers, staring at the thing close up, frowning.

  “It’s been altered,” she declared, placing the bunch back on the table, leaving the big one uppermost, pointing to the inside edge. It gleamed, just faintly, through the grime and smoke of the blaze. “As I said, I’m not a key person, but it looks to me as if someone’s filed off a tooth or something.” She looked at Falcone. “Does it still work?”

  “That depends how you define ‘work,’” he answered. “I tried it in the lock. It goes in. It turns. And turns. And turns. It’s useless. It doesn’t lock. It doesn’t unlock, either. Which is how it’s meant to be.”

  “And Bella’s keys are missing,” Costa noted.

  The five of them absorbed this information. The young waitress came over and asked about dessert. Falcone cheerily ordered tiramisu and was amazed by their silence.

  “Make that five,” he said to the girl. “They’ll get their appetites back.”

  They still hadn’t said a word by the time the girl was back in the kitchen, laughing and joking with the women there.

  “
Excellent food here,” Falcone said. “I wish you’d told me about it earlier.”

  Peroni cast him an angry glance. “And I wish I’d never mentioned it in the first place. Why can’t you leave these things in the Questura, Leo?”

  Falcone seemed surprised by the question. “Because the Questura, Gianni, is probably the last place we should be discussing these things, don’t you think? They’re working on behalf of Hugo Massiter, and no one else. A man who clearly inspires terror in the likes of Randazzo, and will doubtless do so even more once the island is his. The Questura wants us to sign off on two deaths as something we know, for a fact, they cannot be. All to crown this Englishman the saviour of Murano, and save a few city officials some awkward questions about the healthy state of their bank accounts.”

  “We’re just supposed to deliver what they want,” Peroni pointed out. “If we jerk them around, they could make life pretty difficult for us. Randazzo’s an asshole. That Massiter individual looks as if he could pull strings all the way up to the Quirinale Palace.”

  “That’s the most apposite comment you’ve made all evening.” Falcone smiled that infuriating smile again, in Costa’s direction this time. “You were right, Nic. Massiter’s name should have rung a bell. He owns an important auction house. Offices in New York and London. There was a scandal too. Five years ago he would have been arrested on the spot, if we could have found him.”

  “But now,” Costa asked, “we think he’s in the clear?”

  “Absolutely in the clear,” Falcone insisted. “Otherwise he’d never be fool enough to come back here, would he? It’s an interesting tale, though. Here . . .” He reached down into the briefcase he’d brought and took out two folders. “I photocopied what little there is. Not much, I’m afraid. I suspect Mr. Massiter’s records have been thinned somewhat over the years. Why clog up the filing cabinets with information on innocent people, after all? Nevertheless, you will need to read these before we talk to this night watchman tomorrow. It’ll soon be clear why.”