I made an attempt at proffering the wallet, but he met my gaze and just shook his head. No time. Go inside please. Take off the rucksack. San Marco, sir, wait here, take the next boat in that direction. Go inside please. Inside please . . .
I stood on the fondamenta and watched the boat depart. When they decided to go on strike, I could curse ACTV, the public transport company, as much as anyone. And then there were those occasions which made me wonder how anyone could do their job without being driven clinically insane. I shook my head. To hell with it. I’d need to see Vanni at the Questura , sooner rather than later. There was an ACTV office with a lost property department nearby. I’d drop the wallet off then. I stuck it in my pocket, and made my way down to Accademia.
I met Dario at Bacarando later that afternoon. I felt a bit disloyal to Eduardo and the other Brazilians, but it was close to Rialto and would make Dario’s journey back to Piazzale Roma, and Mestre, that much quicker. He’d been working in Venice that afternoon, but I was aware that I was pushing things a bit by dragging him out for a beer for the second time in three days. He smiled, as he always did, but he looked tired.
‘Long day.’
‘Long day, long night. Emily didn’t sleep well, so we didn’t. And my boss was in a bad mood for some reason. How about you?’
‘A British national at the Venice Biennale got his head chopped off by a sheet of plate glass.’
He nodded and took a sip of his beer. ‘Okay. You win.’
‘So it’s going to be a busy few days. Repatriation of body to sort out.’
‘You’ve done that before though, right?’
‘A few times. It’s never nice though.’ Given the sheer number of people who visited, it was inevitable that some of them wouldn’t find their way home again. In some ways it was surprising how rarely it happened. But when it did happen, it was an unpleasant business to deal with. Francesco, at least, had saved me a potentially agonising conversation with Blake-Hoyt’s relatives.
‘So what happens? Post-mortem?’
‘Dunno. I mean, the guy’s head’s come off. Can’t see a post-mortem really adding very much to that. They might do one anyway, I suppose, just in case they decide to prosecute.’
‘You think they might? And who?’
‘Ah, someone’s going to be in big trouble over this. Don’t know who though. The guys who actually built the installation, most likely. Can’t see how it’s the artist’s fault. Shit for him though. Biggest day of his career and then this happens. The poor guy looks like a wreck anyway.’
Dario checked his watch.
‘You’ve got to go, haven’t you?’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s okay. Thanks for coming out. I needed a beer.’
‘You seeing Federica tonight?’
‘Not tonight. She’s at her place on the Lido. Sometimes I go over, but I worry about what Gramsci will get up to. You know, raiding the fridge, inviting unsuitable cats around for parties. That sort of thing. I’ll have an early night, tomorrow’s going to be busy.’
‘More Biennale stuff?’
‘Scotland and Wales. And it’s unlikely the body will be released tomorrow but it’s best to be prepared. I’m supposed to be there when the casket is sealed.’
‘Okay. Just don’t straighten his tie.’
I snorted the remains of my beer. ‘We really shouldn’t be talking like this.’
He shrugged. ‘Black humour. It helps. Sometimes it was the only thing that kept us going in the army. Right, I’ve gotta go.’
‘No worries. Don’t forget, we’ll have you round for dinner sometime.’
‘That’d be great. Just let us know when, we’ll get a babysitter for Emily.’
‘Don’t be daft, bring her as well. She can just sleep when she gets tired.’
‘You sure? What’s your cat like with kids?’
‘As good as he is with the rest of the human species. And inanimate objects. But seriously, I haven’t seen her in ages. Is she talking?’
His face lit up and the tiredness seemed to drain out of his face. ‘ Mamma. Papà . And – get this – one time she said Ummagumma !’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Nope. She was just burbling away and then out it came – Ummagumma . I tell you Nat, I actually cried.’
I wasn’t a hundred per cent convinced that Emily, apropos of nothing, had suddenly come out with the title of a progressive rock album from 1969, but I didn’t like to say so. Dario was a happy soul by nature, but I didn’t remember him ever looking quite so happy as this.
‘That’s brilliant. I’m happy for you, you know that?’
He looked at the floor, slightly embarrassed. ‘Thanks, Nat.’
‘Ah come on, let’s get another drink in. And something to eat.’ Bacarando always made me feel hungry. The glass cabinet held some of the best cicheti and polpette in Venice, along with skewers of meat, seafood and roasted vegetables. You could even get something that was the closest the Italians were ever going to get to a pie.
He shook his head. ‘I haven’t got time. I really haven’t got time.’ Then he smiled again. ‘Okay, I’ve got time. But just a small one. And a skewer of prawns.’
‘I’ll get these.’ I smiled at the cameriera . ‘Two small beers, a skewer of prawns, and a portion of sardines. Or are they anchovies?’
She shrugged. ‘Small fish.’
‘A portion of small fish then.’ Small crispy fish, species unknown, to be eaten whole with a squeeze of lemon.
Bacarando kept background music at a low volume, but we could just about make out the opening chords of ‘Satellite of Love’ over the noise of the crowd. We drank in silence as we listened respectfully to Lou Reed’s sepulchral tones.
I gave a little shiver as the song drew to a close. Spine-chilling. And that was Lou in a good mood. ‘We should come here more often, you know?’
‘We should. It’s not what I’d call progressive but—’
‘It’s old music for old people.’
‘Exactly.’ Dario extracted the final prawn from his skewer and popped it in his mouth. Then he gave his beer a swirl, and drained his glass. ‘And now I really have got to be getting back.’
I gave him a hug. ‘Okay, go and get your tram. I’ll see you soon. Love to your lovely girls.’
He strode off in the direction of Rialto, making his way through the early evening crowds in Campo San Bartolomeo. I thought about stopping off for a drink at the Brazilians on the way back home, but thought better of it. It was tempting to go and grab a pizza, but two pizzas in three days risked dragging me back into my bad old ways. I went up to the flat instead.
‘How about that then, Grams?’ I swept him into my arms. ‘I think I’m growing up.’
He mewled, and swiped at me, missing my nose by a couple of millimetres.
‘You’re not impressed, I can tell. You’d like old useless Nathan back.’ He yowled, as if to indicate that – in his opinion – old useless Nathan had never really gone away.
There wasn’t a lot in the fridge, but my new regime of going to the shops occasionally was paying off. I skinned and gently warmed some chopped fresh tomatoes and garlic in oil, threw in a few torn basil leaves and used it as a basic pasta sauce along with some diced mozzarella.
I plopped myself on the sofa, along with a large glass of wine, and took my mobile out. Federica would have heard about the day’s events by now. Hell, everyone would have heard. I was about to call her when I became aware of something in my pocket digging into me.
Considine’s cigarettes. There was, I remembered, one left.
It put me in something of a moral quandary. I didn’t smoke in the flat any more. On the other hand, there really was only one left and so . . .
I went through to the kitchen, failed to find an ashtray, and returned with a small coffee cup. I went through my jacket pockets until I located the lighter, and then withdrew the final, slightly crumpled coffin nail from the packet. I lit up, and took a dr
ag. A Paul Considine cigarette. Thinking about it, ‘Considine’ sounded like a classy name for a brand. I probably wasn’t doing it justice.
There was something else in my jacket pocket. I fished it out. The wallet. I’d completely forgotten about it. No worries, I’d drop it off at the ACTV office on my way to the Questura tomorrow. I opened it up and flicked through it in the hope that it would give me a heads-up as to who it belonged to. No Carta d’identita . No tessera sanitaria . Presumably, then, not an Italian citizen or resident. There was no bank card, no credit card, no driving licence. An utterly, and somewhat surprisingly, anonymous wallet. Nothing, it seemed, beyond the small amount of money. Somebody, perhaps, had got there before me and stolen those things of value or those things that could be sold on. Still, there were a few banknotes. Why leave those? I riffled through them. Forty-five euros in total. Then I felt something else between my fingers. A blister pack of tablets. Something called Priadel.
What the hell was Priadel? It occurred to me that the owner of the wallet could, right at this moment, be desperately looking for their essential medication. Perhaps I needed to check it out. I went into the office, logged on to the computer and googled. Priadel. 150 mg. Lithium carbonate based. Typically used in the treatment of bipolar disorder. I took a closer look at the results. Okay, it was something you needed to take every day but there didn’t seem to be any potentially lethal effects if you missed a dose.
I went back to the living room, and replaced the blister pack in the wallet. There was something else in there that I’d missed, in between the banknotes. A small, crumpled piece of paper. I brought it closer to my face. A fragment of newspaper, torn from The Times , with Gordon Blake-Hoyt’s photograph above the strapline. There was something written on it, scrawled in block capital letters across the text.
JUDITHA TRIUMPHANS
Chapter 6
Gramsci was slipping. He wasn’t the first to wake me up. The phone was ringing, a Rome number.
‘Ambassador Maxwell?’
‘Good morning, Nathan. I hope you managed to sleep last night. God knows, I didn’t.’
‘Well, it was – something of a shock, I think you’d have to say.’
‘That’s an understatement. Anyway, I just wanted to check that everything’s all right with you? We’ve put out an official statement. I think the Biennale people have done the same. Now I take it the relatives have been informed.’
‘Yes.’ Well, hopefully.
‘Okay. Good. Well there’s probably nothing else that can be done from our end. Are you okay running with the rest of it?’
‘No problems, Mr Ambassador. It might take up to a week for repatriation, but there’s nothing to be done about that.’
‘Right. Good man. Oh, I see our friend the journalist was quick off the blocks.’
‘I’m sorry, who?’
‘Fellow you were talking to. I’ve got his name here somewhere – Nicolodi. Francesco Nicolodi. He’s got a column in The Times this morning.’
I jumped out of bed. ‘He’s what?’
‘In The Times . A sort of eulogy for the unfortunate Mr Blake-Hoyt, and some not very nice things about Mr Considine.’
I wedged the phone under my jaw, struggled into my trousers and half-hopped into the office to switch the computer on. ‘I’ve not seen it. I’ll take a look now.’
‘Well he’s very nice about us. “British diplomatic service responded admirably.” So I think we can feel quite happy about the part we played. Anyway, thanks for all your work yesterday, Nathan. If anything really urgent comes up you can always contact the embassy, but it seems you have it all in hand.’
‘I think I do.’ The hell I do. ‘Thanks again.’ We hung up. I brought up The Times website. Arts section. Oh hell, paywall. I didn’t know if the edicola in Campo Sant’Angelo would have a copy at this hour, so I ran back into the bedroom, and took my wallet from my jacket. This needed to be checked right now.
‘The British Diplomatic Service proved itself a model of grace under pressure despite . . . scene of horror . . . appalling tragedy . . . one of the country’s best-known critics . . .’ At least, I thought, he’d managed to avoid the word ‘bloodbath’. And, I had to admit it was quite flattering. Good old Francesco.
‘Serious questions will now need to be asked of the British Council. Namely, why did they choose Mr Considine – a man known to have serious personal and emotional problems – for such a high-profile event? Secondly, were they aware of the nature of the installation and, if so, were all appropriate steps taken to minimise the risk to the public? Finally, there are question marks hanging over the very originality of the piece and, again, were the Council aware of this? Providing full and frank answers to all these questions is the least the Council can do, by way of respect to the many friends and colleagues of Gordon Blake-Hoyt.’
You shit.
I heard the apartment door open. It gave me a little start. Federica. She’d had a key for months now but I kept forgetting.
‘ Ciao, cara .’
‘ Ciao, tesoro . Are you okay?’
‘I was. Not so sure now.’
‘What’s wrong? You’re in all the papers, you know.’ She plonked a stack of them down on the table. ‘There’s a nice photo of you in La Repubblica .’
I leafed through the pile. Il Gazzetino, La Nuova, La Stampa, Il Corriere della sera, La Repubblica . We were on the front pages of every one. La Repubblica had printed the group photograph outside the main doors together with, perhaps inappropriately, a head shot of the unfortunate Mr Blake-Hoyt.
I tapped the monitor screen. ‘Look at this. Just look at it.’
She pulled her glasses from her bag, and scanned the article. Then folded her glasses away again. ‘Mmm. Not nice.’
‘No. And I think it’s my fault. I agreed with this guy that he’d contact Blake-Hoyt’s colleagues. I didn’t think he was going to use that as an in for his article.’
She patted my cheek. ‘You worry too much, Nathan. He just made the most of an opportunity. Mr Blake-Hoyt was unlikely to be filing any more copy, so he just made sure he was the first to jump in. That’s all.’
‘It’s shit though. The poor artist. He seems a bit fragile. I’m worried about what this will do to him. And this journalist – this Francesco Nicolodi – have you heard of him?’
She shook her head. ‘Not him, not Mr Blake-Hoyt. And for that matter I don’t really know all that much about Paul Considine. Only what’s on the Biennale website.’
‘He didn’t seem like a bad guy. Francesco, I mean. He seemed nice. Genuine.’
She smiled, and gave me a hug. ‘That’s your problem, tesoro . You’re just too nice.’
‘I don’t think so.’ I drew myself up to my full height and put my hands on my hips. ‘For example, it’s,’ I checked my watch, ‘gone nine o’clock and I haven’t fed Gramsci yet.’
‘My goodness.’
Gramsci mewled upon hearing his name. I stared down at him. He glared up at me.
‘Okay, I think my point has been made. He knows who the boss is.’
We went through to the kitchen, and I fetched down his box of food. I measured out one hundred grammes of multicoloured biscuits and then set to picking out the yellow ones.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Oh, I bought him a new brand of biscuits the other day. It turns out he doesn’t like the cheesy ones.’
I made us a coffee. Before I washed the cups I unobtrusively tipped the cigarette ash from mine into the bin. Not quite unobtrusively enough. I caught her gaze. ‘Not classy?’
‘Do you really need me to answer that? Anyway, I thought you’d given up smoking in the house?’
‘I have. This doesn’t count. It was—’
‘Just the one,’ she completed.
‘—just the one, and it wasn’t mine. It belonged to the artist. I suppose it was a present.’
‘You begged a packet of cigarettes?’
‘Not the whole lot
, there were only two left.’
‘You begged a packet of cigarettes from an utterly distraught man who’d just seen the greatest day of his career end in chaos?’
‘I think you’re making it sound a bit worse than it actually is.’
She gave me one of her disappointed little looks. ‘Well you’re a catch, Nathan, aren’t you? What a lucky girl I am.’ She sniffed again. ‘And get some windows open. What if you had a surgery today?’
‘Okay, okay. I’m a terrible person. I know that. Anyway, and more importantly,’ I produced the clipping with a flourish, ‘there’s something I need you to take a look at.’
She took it from me, and turned it over in her hands. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘Well, as well as begging cigarettes from a broken-hearted man yesterday, I picked up someone’s wallet. On the vaporetto . I forgot to take it to lost property. No idea who it belongs to, there’s no ID of any kind inside. I’m wondering if it’s Considine’s. He showed me a clipping from The Times just before everything kicked off.’
‘ Juditha Triumphans . After Vivaldi’s opera?’
‘Strictly speaking, it’s an oratorio.’ She glared at me. ‘Sorry. It’s just that it’s rare for me to know something you don’t so I always think I need to make the most of those very occasional opportunities.’
‘Okay. Good recovery. Carry on.’
‘ Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie. “ Judith triumphant over the barbarians of Holofernes.” Vivaldi wrote it in tribute to the Venetian triumph in the siege of Corfu.’
‘And, of course, Caravaggio, Gentileschi et al. Judith of Bethulia beheads the Assyrian leader Holofernes in his tent.’
‘Yep.’ I remembered Caravaggio’s work, Judith working with bloody, surgical precision as Holofernes awakes in the middle of the act, as the ancient servant on the right of the picture holds out a cloth to collect his head. Or the even greater violence of Artemisia Gentileschi’s version, as Judith and her maid hold the struggling barbarian down as Judith sets about her work.
Vengeance in Venice Page 4
