The Lizard's Bite

by David Hewson

  “So what exactly are you looking for?” Correr yelled over the noise of the engine.

  The pair of them wore noise-cancelling David Clark headsets, but they still fought to keep out the racket from the hefty Lycoming engine up front.

  “A man and a woman,” the cop barked back. “Hiding.” Which didn’t seem of much help.

  “If I wanted to hide,” Correr suggested, “I’d do it there.”

  He popped the cigarette in his mouth once more and pointed to the island city on the horizon. From this height it seemed modest, a forest of brick spires rising from a tightly packed community of houses.

  “They can’t be there. People would recognise them.”

  “Then maybe they’re gone.”

  The cop shook his head vigorously. “Doesn’t add up. They don’t have the money. Besides, they’ve got ties. Strong ties. I just don’t see them running.”

  “So why are we looking in the lagoon?”

  The little cop was gazing in the direction of Murano at that moment, towards the trio of weird, decrepit buildings Correr had been reading about in the papers. One day soon there could be a hotel there, and a new gallery, thanks to the rich Englishman who was closer to men of influence in Venice than a middle-class man like Andrea Correr could ever hope for. Still, these developments were worth remembering. The travel agent in him knew there could be money to be had soon.

  The cop squirmed in the passenger seat then turned and looked at him. “If I’m right, they had some help. From a farmer on Sant’ Erasmo. Someone who knows this lagoon like the back of his hand. If he wanted to hide them somewhere, I thought . . .”

  He went quiet.

  Correr wished he’d mentioned this idea before they took off.

  “You’re not local, are you? Most of the little islands are uninhabited. You couldn’t just hide someone there. You’d need a roof over your head. Besides, those little ones get looked after by the conservationists and the archaeological people. They’d be screaming the roof down if they found so much as an empty Coke can. I don’t think . . .”

  “I know, I know.”

  It was a stupid quest and Correr saw he didn’t have to point that out.

  “So where would you hide someone?” the cop asked.

  Correr laughed. It was obvious. “If I was a farmer on Sant’ Erasmo? In my back garden. Or somewhere nearby. That place is bigger than Venice. No one goes there except the locals. I don’t think they even have police.”

  “They don’t.”

  “Then there you go. Search the island. You can’t do it from the air. You’re going to need a lot of men too because the matti wouldn’t piss on you if flames were coming out of your ears.”

  “Take me back there,” the man ordered.

  “Sure . . .” Correr wheeled the big tin bird round and set the nose on the low silhouette of Sant’ Erasmo, black against the bright horizon. “Anywhere in particular?”

  “Southern tip. Away from the vaporetto stop. Away from everyone. You have a maritime map of the lagoon by any chance?”

  “Four. They’re known as charts, by the way.”

  Correr reached into the glove compartment, scrabbled behind several half-spent packets of cigarettes, and found the set he wanted. The cop stared at them, surprised.

  “This is a floatplane,” Correr explained. “Besides, I sail too. And I happen to like charts.”

  “They show buildings? Individual houses?”

  “You’d be amazed what you can find on charts. Of course, on Sant’ Erasmo you’d need to double-check everything.”

  “Why?”

  People from terra firma. They just didn’t get it.

  “Because the matti do what the hell they like. Throw up a little baracca for granmama, just so’s she doesn’t have to annoy the hell out of you living in the same house. No one’s going to tell the authorities. It happens all the time. And why not? Out here, who cares?”

  It took less than three minutes. Then they went into another forty-degree roll, Correr feeding some extra throttle in and kicking the rudder hard so enough g-force came in to squeeze them into their seats a little. His passenger hadn’t looked a good flyer when he came on board. Now Correr was changing his opinion. Just to check, he pumped in some more throttle and took the aircraft over to sixty degrees, nailing it into as steep a turn as he dared at that kind of altitude, one that forced both of them hard into their seats and pitched the nose of the Cessna round in a vicious circle, as if it were tethered to a wire. At that angle even he could see down below: fields and shacks and mess. Just the usual.

  But, a third of the way through the turn, he spotted something on his passenger’s face. Correr went through three sixty, levelled off, same height, same place on the horizon he’d entered the turn, gave himself ten out of ten for flying, then pointed the Cessna’s nose out to sea. The cop stopped looking out the window and stared at him instead.

  “There’s a little shack down there. It’s not on the map. I didn’t notice it before.”

  “Like I said. It’s called a chart. There’s a reason you didn’t see it. You weren’t looking. That’s one thing you learn in a little plane. How to look.”

  The man nodded. “When you made all that noise a woman came out and started staring up at us.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “Couldn’t see.”

  “Maybe we should go back and take another look. A little lower this time.” He eyed the cop, expectant. “You are going to get me out of all the shit if it hits the fan, right?”

  “Guaranteed,” he said promptly, then strained backwards, looking towards the green tip of Sant’ Erasmo.

  Correr did the same. There was a tiny beach not far from the end. He had an idea what was coming next.

  “I want you to put me down there,” the cop said, glancing at his watch. “Now.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you go back to the airfield. I won’t need you anymore.”

  He sounded uncertain about that last point. Correr wondered whether to object.

  “I can carry four people in this thing, you know. It’s no problem. Really.”

  The cop smiled, for the first time since they’d met, and, for no particular reason, Andrea Correr decided he liked this little man, in spite of the badge.

  “Thanks, but no thanks. You’ve done enough. Just get us down, please.”

  Correr glanced back at the island. Someone was burning charcoal or something. The smoke was drawing straight off towards the open Adriatic, not too quickly, all in a straight line.

  Land into a good, reliable wind. Taxi round and take off in the same direction.

  His mouth was dry, in the way it used to be when he was first learning to fly on the Lido all those years ago, in a tiny fixed-gear Cessna 150 that was a baby brother to this more complex bigger beast. He could still remember those lessons in Florida. They made it sound so easy after a while. In a way, making it easy was part of the secret.

  He laughed to himself, took the half-smoked cigarette from his lips and flicked it out the window. Then he worked the wirepull to withdraw the wheels back into the floats. The plane had been through its annual certificate of airworthiness only two months before. Everything—flaps, ailerons, throttle, gear—worked smoothly.

  He pulled the 180 round into the wind, facing the island, and set up for a long, flat descent, nose up, holding the bulky Edos off the water, at just the right angle, until he’d killed enough speed to make it safe to put them down on the waves. Hit it badly and you’d soon discover how hard an object water really is. Someone had written off a Cub while he was there, and that was on a lake that looked like perfect glass, not the dappled, random rippled mesh of wavelets that stood between them and the island.

  The man in the next seat was bracing himself nervously. Correr knew why. He’d done the same the first time he’d landed on water. You never appreciated how much the surface would brake the aircraft. Water wasn’t like grass or asphalt. With a good landing the
plane came in at around 60 knots, placed its feet onto the surface, then got dragged to a halt in less than a hundred metres.

  Which meant they looked perilously close to hard, stony land as they approached, too close, he guessed, and mentally began the countdown for a go-round if things got too close to the margin.

  Some story for the flying club, Correr thought, then cut the power altogether, held up the nose, let the speed die, felt the yoke go weak and shaky in his hands as the wings began to lose their grip on the air . . . and, with a loud bang of wave against metal, landed the aircraft plum in front of the beach, coming to a rest no more than ten metres from the sand.

  He undid his belt, opened the door and leaned out to look down over the side. He could see the bottom beneath the sea already, rocks and pebbles and tiny fish.

  “I can’t go much further,” he said. “Get down and walk out to the front of the float. You can take me in until you see the sand getting so shallow I might hit it. These things don’t do reverse.”

  The cop was taking out his wallet, removing a wad of notes.

  “Thanks,” he said, extending the money.

  “No,” Correr replied with a smile, then grabbing the cash. “Thank you.”

  The cop had to wade through about a metre’s depth of water to get on shore. Then Correr turned his plane around, taxied out into the open lagoon, turned once more and performed a takeoff so perfect he wished the surly old instructor at the school in Florida could have seen him.

  Wished, too, for the moment he could tell this tale in the flying-club bar. None of them had landed in the lagoon before. Chances were he’d never do it again.

  The 180 roared over Sant’ Erasmo. Andrea Correr leaned out the window to wave goodbye. But there was no one to be seen.

  THE TWO OF THEM HAD RUN INTO THE BROAD, BUSY main street of the Via Garibaldi, threaded their way past the vegetable seller’s boat, out into the back alleys of Castello and over the footbridge to the deserted island of San Pietro. She had to scream at the Murano boat to hold it at the jetty. Twenty minutes later they were in Raffaella Arcangelo’s laundry room, looking at an old enamel bowl stained pink with bloodied water, a tangle of cotton just visible.

  “I didn’t think it was important. Everything’s been so busy I never even got around to looking at the laundry baskets until yesterday. It seemed irrelevant somehow.”

  “What seemed irrelevant? Calm down, Raffaella.”

  “Oh God. I’m so stupid! I, I, I . . .” She looked distraught at the idea she’d missed something. Raffaella had made that promise to Leo. From what Teresa could see, it still counted.

  “Slowly, please. And calmly.”

  She sighed. “Uriel had an accident in the foundry five or six years ago. An awful accident. He was lucky he wasn’t hurt more. All the same, it damaged his hearing. I felt so sorry for him. It also meant he had a bad sense of smell and nosebleeds from time to time. Terrible nosebleeds. There was nothing he could do but sit there with a cold wet cloth and wait for it stop. After a while, when it was happening two or three times a week, I never thought about it anymore. He was a man. It was just more washing. He just threw anything with blood on it straight into the laundry basket without thinking. He didn’t know how hard it was to get those stains out. I told him. But . . .”

  Teresa looked again at the bowl. “You found a shirt with blood on it?”

  “It was nothing unusual! It was just like I’d seen before!” Raffaella gazed back at them with sad, apologetic eyes. “I can’t believe I could have been so stupid.”

  “No problem,” Teresa said.

  “But it’s been soaking there since yesterday.”

  Silvio Di Capua was eyeing the object in the water confidently. “You could put that in a drawer for the next twenty-five years as it is and we’d still be able to get DNA out of it. And in twenty-five years . . .”

  “Heel, boy,” Teresa cautioned.

  Silvio couldn’t stop babbling. “More than that too. If this was part of the killing, you can bet there’s evidence on there we can’t even see either. Sweat from his hands. Saliva. We can get them both.”

  “Both?” Raffaella asked, blinking.

  “Oh, you bet!” Silvio went on, eyeing the shirt greedily. “If that doesn’t ID the victim and the culprit, it’s going to be very unusual indeed.”

  Teresa had to leap forward to stop Silvio from snatching the wet shirt from the bowl. She got a grumpy glance for her pains.

  “Let’s deal with this one step at a time,” she said firmly. “Can you show me where you found this, please?”

  They went up one flight of stairs and followed her down one of the mansion’s dark, dank corridors, to a large bedroom that must once have seemed regal. Now the wallpaper was old and peeling, the bed still roughly made from the last time anyone had slept in it.

  “I haven’t been able to get round to doing anything in here,” Raffaella told them. “It didn’t seem right somehow . . . .”

  “That makes it all the better for us,” Teresa replied, walking round, staring at the walls, checking the old raffia laundry basket that was now empty.

  She stopped by the window, which looked out onto the rusting corrugated iron roof of one side of the foundry. Then she reached for the latch, threw up the glass, let some welcome air into the room and leaned as far out over the windowsill as she dared.

  With one hard push she got herself back inside and turned back to look at the adjoining wall. In an ordinary investigation this would have been the first place to start. But this case was closed before anyone got round to opening it. Even Leo hadn’t seen fit to take a closer look, but perhaps he was distracted by other matters, personal and intellectual.

  “Here . . .”

  She pointed at some faint, tiny mark on the wall, something so indistinct Silvio and Raffaella had to come close and squint to see it.

  Then Raffaella gasped, fell back onto the bed, hands to her mouth, eyes filling with tears and shock.

  “Don’t pass out on me, please,” Teresa pleaded. “I need you. This is very standard minimal blood spray consistent, at this height, with a single blow to the head. Hard instrument, maybe a small hammer. My guess is . . .”

  She moved Silvio in front of her, mimicking, in her own mind, the position she believed Bella must have taken when attacked.

  “ . . . Bella was here, standing, when he came for her. One powerful blow to the skull.”

  She swung the imaginary weapon with her hand, landing it softly on the side of Silvio’s head where fringe met bald scalp, just behind the ear.

  “If he hit her repeatedly, we’d have had much more blood than this. One would be enough to render her unconscious anyway. If he did it well, there’d be no noise either. Who else was in the house?”

  Raffaella raised her head, her eyes wet with tears. “I was here all that night. Michele and Gabriele too. It’s not possible. We would have heard something. We would have woken up.”

  “Everybody thinks that. You’d be amazed how often people in the next room sleep through murder. If there’s no fighting, no gun . . .” This was a big, old cavern of a place. Dark, with plenty of places to hide. He could have waited for her in the bedroom, pounced with that one crashing blow, then carried her downstairs without anyone knowing. It wouldn’t have been hard. “If he planned it, everything could have happened very quickly. Without a struggle, or there would have been signs. Then he moves on to Uriel and finds himself a scapegoat.”

  “All the same . . .”

  “Trust me,” Teresa insisted, then went back to the window. “You need a ladder, Silvio. Out there, at the very end of the corrugated iron, you’ll find some kind of tool. I can’t work out what it is. Something from the furnace, I guess, some kind of spike or maybe a hammer. He must have thrown it through the open window thinking it would reach the water. It was dark. He had no way of knowing it never got there. Now let’s look at that shirt.”

  They followed her back to the kitchen. Teresa Lupo went t
o the sink and carefully poured off the liquid, leaving the fabric lying in a damp, wrinkled heap in the base of the bowl.

  Then she looked at Silvio. “I want you to take this and the hammer, or whatever it is, over to the lab in Mestre straightaway, tell them to drop everything else and run rapid DNA tests on anything they can find. Not just blood. Sweat. Saliva. Urine. Anything. And you stay there breathing down their necks until there’s an answer. I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care who you have to yell at.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine,” he said.

  “It will be, once you’ve been up on that roof. And after that,” she continued, glancing at Raffaella, “you and I are going to visit Leo. He should be out of that machine by now. I can probably get a sneak look at the scans.”

  She was unravelling the damp material with a slow, surgical care. Then she stopped.

  Men were arrogant bastards sometimes. They were like dogs. They felt they had to leave their mark on everything.

  On the pocket of the shirt—a fine cotton one, she now noted—were two initials, sewn into the fabric as a monogram: HM.

  HE WISHED HE COULD SCREAM. HE WISHED HE COULD move, and tried to will some life into his fingers, tried to believe something, a single nerve, the flicker of a muscle, answered in return.

  Before him, the shifting, glassy door changed shape, became transparent, and Leo the boy was silent, recognising the face that peered back at him.

  It was his older self, the now-familiar walnut tan, a sleek, shiny bald head, damaged, cracked, showing bloody fault lines, like those on Humpty Dumpty after the fall. The face of a man, unsure whether he was alive or dead, or simply somewhere between the two.

  “Little Leo,” his elder self pleaded. “Look and think, for pity’s sake.”

  The pained brown face faded. Leo could see beyond now, into the bedroom, the forbidden bedroom, the place where so many mysteries seemed to breed.