The Lizard's Bite

by David Hewson

  “You knew this was happening all along,” the older Leo said. “And, being a child, you did nothing. Yet you understand now, Little Leo. You can stop it. Not in the past. But now. In your head. Our head. Just by seeing. Just by being there.”

  “Afraid,” he whispered, hearing the same voice, noting the mutual frailty there.

  “Leo.” The voice was so feeble, so ghostly, it terrified him more than anything. “You have to.”

  The thing hovered there in front of him, shaking manically with the racket beyond the door, and the clatter of the unseen machine outside this coffin of wood and glass.

  “Afraid of the key.”

  “Which exists in order that . . . ?”

  It was wrong to mock a child, even an unreal man-child.

  He peered apprehensively through the transparent door and watched the kicking and the blows, watched how she rolled to lessen the pain, glancing in desperation at the door, staring straight at him, begging, asking why.

  “To keep her in!” the child screeched. “I told you, I told you, I told . . .”

  The man was there again now, obscuring the view of his parents, for which he was thankful. Except his tanned head looked worse now, the cracks seemed to have multiplied, blood eased through them, seeped down the walnut skin, ran into the bright, white eyes, began to form all over this dying man’s skull like a spider’s web, ensnaring him, tightening, squeezing out what scraps of life remained.

  “I hear your thoughts,” the fractured man whispered. “I read the same fairy stories. Remember, Leo?”

  “Humpty Dumpty . . .” murmured the dying man. “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’”

  He was in agony, struggling for the strength to carry on.

  “‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’”

  His vision was changing, fading. These were the last moments.

  “Facts are like words. We’ve learned that over all these years. They’re open to interpretation. It is, in the end, simply a matter of who will be their master.”

  The boy Leo looked at the figure before him and understood that, at this moment, he was seeing the saddest man in the universe, a man of bleak, worn-down emotions, though a being filled with knowledge too, possessed of an important secret the boy now understood implicitly, shared since it came, in the end, from both of them.

  “The key . . .” said the fading face.

  “ . . . is there to keep me out!” the boy Leo roared. “The key is there to keep me out! Out! Out! Out!”

  Somewhere beyond his imagination the metal beast screamed, a cacophony of gears, dying iron, settling, its work finished.

  The boy reached out, held the key, turned it, saw in amazement the way the door became a real door now, the wood that he remembered from his childhood, the old metal familiar in his hand.

  It was the worst year. The one where his family fell apart, descended into divorce and hatred, a cold, hard place in which a small boy could do nothing except retreat into his shell, hardening that brittle armour that kept the harshness of the real world at bay. He remembered everything now, everything his mind had blocked out over the years, about that dreadful holiday in the mountains, with the two of them locked in that distant, forbidden room, thinking their screams never found their way beyond the walls to reach a frightened lonely child lost for words, lost for action.

  The wood disappeared. There was only light. And Leo—who was, he understood, both boy Leo and man now—found himself propelled forward, into the bedroom from which he was forever banished, forced his way between them, pushing back the dead old dusty figure that, in some dark, damaged part of his head, represented what was left of the memory of his father.

  He looked into the heartless face, enjoyed the surprise he saw, and said the word, the dread forbidden word, the boy Leo had never dared utter to him in his lifetime.

  LEO FALCONE OPENED his eyes—his real eyes, he noted—and found that he was in a bright clinical room with the cloying harsh smell of a medical ward. He lay on a bed which was now being withdrawn from a large white barrel-like object, one he faintly recognised from hospital scenes in the movies.

  A pretty young nurse, with glossy black hair tied back in a bun and sparkling, happy eyes, peered down at him, grinning.

  “Welcome to the world, Inspector Falcone,” she said in a pleasant southern voice. “It’s been a long time.”

  “How long?” Falcone snapped. “And where the hell are my men?”

  AN OLD MONASTERY, HIDDEN INSIDE A CHURCH BY THE gasworks in Castello, no more than three minutes on foot from where Peroni and Nic had been staying for the last eight months. Neither of them had a clue it existed. For anyone trying to hunt down Gianfranco Randazzo, this was surely the last place to look. They would never have found it if Peroni hadn’t called in one last favour from Cornaro, the one officer in the Castello Questura who hadn’t treated the pair of them like lepers.

  Gianni Peroni smiled at the pleasant monk in the brown habit who had greeted them, baffled, and seemingly incapable of anything that might pass as assistance.

  “We need to speak to Commissario Randazzo,” Zecchini said again, his face beginning to grow red with exasperation. “Now, please.”

  “This is a police matter. And a Carabinieri one too,” Peroni added.

  The monk shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “Then it must be very important indeed. But I was told Signor Randazzo was not to be disturbed. He is here, as I understood it, for the sake of his health. A man of a nervous disposition . . .”

  That seemed to be pushing things a little far, even for an unworldly monk.

  “He’s on his own?” Peroni asked.

  “No. Normally there are men with him.” The monk frowned and, for a moment, looked like someone who inhabited the world Peroni knew. “Two ugly men in particular. Police officers, I believe. Not the kind of people we get in here very often. That part puzzles me, I admit. But we’re here to do service. Not to ask questions.”

  “Who’s in charge in this place?” Zecchini demanded.

  “No one at the moment. Administratively we are in what one might term an interregnum.”

  As someone down at the Questura doubtless knew, Peroni thought.

  “Father,” he said, and saw from the look on the man’s face that he had somehow picked the wrong word, “it’s important we talk to Randazzo.”

  “We have a warrant.” Zecchini brandished a piece of paper.

  The monk stared at the document. “A warrant? What’s that?”

  “It’s a piece of paper that says you’ll damn well bring him to us whether you like it or not!” Zecchini yelled.

  The curses he added rang around the bright, sunlit cloister, sending a flutter of doves scattering for the cloudless sky.

  But nothing dented the monk’s composure. He simply folded his arms and kept on smiling, silent. Peroni couldn’t stop himself from casting a sour glance at the Carabinieri major.

  “We don’t want to search a monastery,” he told the monk calmly. “And I’m sure you don’t want that either. There would be so many officers. So much disruption. And noise.”

  The monk didn’t like noise. Peroni had watched the way his nose wrinkled when the volume of Zecchini’s voice rose.

  “No one wants noise,” the big cop added, craftily.

  The monk laughed, and Gianni Peroni was surprised to realise the man was laughing at them. And that there was precious little between a smile and sneer on his face.

  “He’s not here. They went out for lunch. And no . . .”—the answer came before the question—“I don’t know where and I don’t care. This is a small and quiet community, gentlemen. When we’re asked to help the city, we do so, without asking questions. We trust our betters. Do you?”

  Zecchini scowled
at him, then asked, “Gone for good?”

  The monk’s arms opened, the hands raised in a gesture of futility. “We’re neither a prison nor a hotel. I can help you no more. I can . . .”

  Gianni Peroni couldn’t take his eyes off the doves. They’d assembled again around the foot of the statue of Saint Francis. It was a great place to hide a man. So good it seemed odd Randazzo felt moved to leave it, if only for a meal.

  Then, as he watched, the birds began to lift again, a whirling fury of grey and white feathers, rising, racing in every direction, mindless, terrified.

  Four, maybe five, shots rang out from somewhere beyond the monastery’s quiet walls, bounced off its bright, clean terra-cotta and echoed around the small, perfect square, threading their way through the colonnades.

  Luca Zecchini had his gun in his hand in an instant. The monk gaped at the weapon, both shocked and angered by its visible presence.

  “Where?” Zecchini yelled.

  Gianni Peroni wasn’t going to wait for this little charade to play itself out. Bawling out some scared, unworldly monk who’d never heard a gunshot in his small, protected life wasn’t going to find them Gianfranco Randazzo. Peroni marched his big frame back into the outside world, thought about what he knew of this area, and where a police commissario with a taste for good food might want to eat. There weren’t many options. Then he began to run, aware, after just a few long strides, of Zecchini and his men playing catch-up in his wake.

  TERESA LUPO HAD TOLD PINO FERRANTE SO MUCH about the patient whose life he’d saved that long night she dragged him from his dinner table in Bologna. She’d told him how Leo Falcone was a man worth preserving, a fine, honest, conscientious ispettore in the Rome police, someone who deserved better than to be butchered by some naive Venetian surgical hack, even if they could find one.

  Now Falcone lay back on his bed, eyes wide open, blazing at each of them in turn, spitting fury in all directions. Pino glanced at her and smiled, that self-deprecating smile she’d known from their college days, the one that couldn’t offend a soul but still managed to say, Really?

  Even Raffaella Arcangelo seemed a little taken aback. Clearly this was one side of Leo she’d never witnessed.

  Pino let Falcone exhaust himself with one final set of demands—all the latest case notes on Aldo Bracci and the Arcangelo case, what new forensic there was, and a recall of Costa and Peroni, from wherever they happened to be malingering, presumably to give the inspector someone new to yell at—then sat down by the bed, folded his arms, and peered at the prone man there.

  “Inspector Falcone,” he said mildly. “You’ve been seriously wounded by a gunshot to the head. You have been unconscious now for more than a week. I would have hoped a man who has been through what you have would have asked me one or two questions about his condition. Otherwise . . .”

  The surgeon now had a rather hard smile, it seemed to Teresa, one he’d learned since college.

  “Perhaps I will be driven to the conclusion that you are not so sufficiently recovered as you seem to believe.”

  Falcone, propped up on a couple of pillows, bandages round his scalp, face lacking that full tan she’d come to take for granted, was silent for a moment.

  Then, with all his customary bullishness, he replied, “I am a police officer in the middle of a murder investigation. It’s my duty to be kept fully informed. It’s your duty not to get in my way. I would advise you to remember that.”

  Pino waited. When it became clear Falcone didn’t intend to utter another word, the surgeon said, “Would you like to ask me anything now? Or would you like me to leave and allow you to continue bellowing at your colleagues until your strength runs out? Not that I think you have much energy left for that. The choice is yours.” He looked at his watch. “I would like to be home in Bologna by eight, so please make your decision this instant.”

  Falcone glanced at Teresa and Raffaella Arcangelo, as if they were somehow a part of this. Then, in a subdued tone, he asked, “What the hell’s wrong with me?”

  “You were shot through the head,” Pino replied with a shrug. “There was damage to the brain. It’s a sensitive organ, even in an insensitive man. A mysterious organ too. I can go through the details later but they won’t tell you much. To be honest, they don’t tell me that much either. This is the way things are with neurological matters. What I see now is what I’d expected. Hoped for, to be honest with you. There is some paralysis below the waist. You should also expect to experience headaches. Blackouts maybe. And some side effects from the medication for sure. We will need to monitor all these things for a while.”

  A purple blush of outrage began to suffuse Falcone’s face. “I have to work!”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Pino said it bluntly. “A man in your condition cannot work. Even if you were physically capable, your mental state is still fragile, however much you wish to believe otherwise. You need what any other man or woman needs in such circumstances. Convalescence. Constant care. Regular follow-ups. You will be reliant on others for some time. I trust you can teach your ego to accommodate this fact, Ispettore.”

  “I . . .” The words died in Falcone’s mouth. This was a situation he had clearly never encountered before.

  “Leo,” Teresa interjected. “You’re no more or less human than the rest of us. Plus, you’re lucky to be alive. Just take it easy. And then . . .” She glanced at the surgeon, who had once again looked at his watch. “Oh, for God’s sake, Pino . . . Since he won’t ask, I will. How long will he be like this? What does it mean?”

  “It means a wheelchair. For at least two, three months. Possibly longer. It is simply a matter of waiting now. I have no crystal ball. It is possible . . .” He stared at Falcone to make sure this went home. “ . . . if you’re unlucky, that you will be in a wheelchair forever. I don’t think this is irreversible, but one can never be sure. You will need regular physiotherapy to work on that leg. I gather you are a bachelor. Perhaps there is a police home that could look after you.”

  “A home?” Falcone roared.

  “He will not go to a home,” Raffaella said quietly. “Please, Leo. Listen to your surgeon. He surely knows what’s best for you.”

  “And what the hell am I supposed to do all day?”

  “Relax,” Pino suggested mildly. “Read books. Listen to music. Take up a hobby. I recommend painting. It’s a talent found in the most unlikely of men at times. Apart from the physio I don’t expect you to experience much in the way of discomfort. Most men would appreciate the opportunity.”

  “Most men!” Falcone spat back at him. He glared at Teresa. “Get Costa and Peroni in here now.”

  Pino shook his head. “No. I absolutely forbid it. The stress of work is the last thing you need at this time.”

  Falcone glowered at the surgeon. “At least let them send me the files to read. A man’s allowed to read, isn’t he?”

  “By all means,” Pino said, smiling. “You can read to your heart’s content.”

  THE FOOD TASTED BETTER WHEN LAVAZZI AND MALIPIERO were gone. Gianfranco Randazzo sat one table in from the window, alone in the room, eating and drinking slowly, enjoying the food and the solitude, trying to stretch out the meal for as long as possible. Escaping the monastery made him realise how he was beginning to hate the place. He was becoming sluggish and stupid. One more day. That was all he was prepared to wait. Then he’d get in touch with the right men, in the Questura and in the city, to remind them of a few salient facts. And how it was impolite to have to call in favours by name.

  It was now close to two forty-five. He’d worked his way through a larger meal than he’d normally have eaten: antipasti of soft shell crab, calamari and mantis shrimp, porcini risotto, then lamb cutlets with a single contorno of spinach. All accompanied by the best bottle of heavy Barolo on the wine list, almost fifteen degrees proof, a heavy, swirling red of pure alcoholic clout. He felt a little drunk, a little angry too. All of this was undeserved. Aldo Bracci was a lout and a criminal. Th
e thug got what was coming.

  And Randazzo’s reward? To be sent into some kind of exile, humiliated when he stepped outside for a brief respite, forced to wear the stupid, itching, sweaty robe of a monk, a disguise that fooled no one, he thought, not by the way the waiter had looked at him, stifling a laugh, when he’d arrived with the two idiots from the Questura, who’d spent the rest of the lunch filling their faces at his expense.

  There were scores to be settled after treatment like this. Randazzo ran a few possibilities through his head. He wasn’t going to be content with just a chalet in the mountains anymore. Massiter would make millions out of the Isola degli Arcangeli. He wouldn’t miss a few drops of that spilling over, trickling down to the man who removed the final obstacle to the deal.

  He was going over a few more options when the waiter returned with another dish: tiny wild strawberries covered in cream and some kind of booze.

  “I didn’t order that,” Randazzo snarled.

  “Keep your hair on. It’s a gift!” the waiter remarked, grinning, mocking him. “We don’t get monks in here often. I’m hoping you’ll be bringing along some colleagues in the future. If that’s the right word. We always do good business with the Church. We can give you a little sconto off the bill if you like. How does ten percent sound? Twenty for you?”

  “You can start today.” Randazzo glanced at the tables outside. “Make sure it comes off theirs too.”

  Then he looked again. They weren’t there. Lavazzi and Malipiero had, without his noticing, finished eating, then somehow wandered off somewhere, maybe to bum a few drinks from some neighbourhood café.

  Except.

  They were filling their faces for free anyway. It didn’t make sense to Randazzo’s befuddled mind. Sometimes, he thought, there were men who just had to bunk off work, even when there was no good reason. It was bred into their genes. Like a twist in the DNA that, if you could just unravel it, read “lazy bastard, never going to change.”