‘I can’t think why, either,’ said Adam. ‘I don’t think we feature very highly on his list of favourite people, do you, Gwen?’
‘I don’t think we do, Adam.’
Then they stopped talking and both looked at me. I was starting to find it uncomfortably hot in there, a combin ation of the Venetian summer sun and the UV lamp. Why the lamp? In this heat? She must have noticed my glance. ‘I said the work wasn’t developing as I wanted, Nathan. I’m using these to speed the process up.’ I shook my head again. ‘The faces, I mean. They’re covered in a very thin wash of watercolour. Watercolour fades in natural light.’
‘But there’s plenty of natural light in the space, especially with those mirrors set up.’
She shook her head. ‘Not over the last week. Too much cloud. The UV lamps are to speed things up. I need to know things are going to work properly before I leave for home.’
I looked past her, into the opening that led to the first room of the exhibition. She nodded. ‘Please, Nathan. Do go and have another look.’
Adam chuckled, as if he were privy to some private joke. ‘Aye, go on, Nathan. Take a good look.’
I got slowly to my feet, and walked to the entrance. I turned to look back at them but they showed no sign of moving. Gwenant gave a gentle little motion of her hand, and mouthed the words ‘Go on.’
I stepped through, into the dark, and measured my pace as I walked up to the first canvas, uncertain as to what to expect. Nothing seemed to have changed. There was the same figure in those great, rich Tintoretto-style robes; the same unidentifiable face that was little more than a pink blobby mask. I looked closer. Was it possible that there were some physical features there? A nose, a mouth, eyebrows? I shook my head. Gwen and Adam, for reasons best known to themselves, were trying to spook me, and I was seeing things that weren’t there.
I moved on to the next room, and stared at the second portrait. Then I screwed my eyes shut, and shook my head trying to blot out what I had just seen. Then I opened them again. There was no doubt. This time the image was clearer, this time there was a definite face there.
I moved from room to room. From blue to purple to green. Clearer, ever clearer. Orange to white, and clearer still. I was running now, my heart pounding not with the effort but with fear. The violet room.
I stopped in front of the canvas and, again, I screwed my eyes shut. I rested my hands on my knees and breathed deeply. I had to be certain. I opened my eyes and looked once more.
The features were distorted and twisted, but clearly visible under the thin veneer of watercolour.
I knew who it was.
I ran through into the black room. The canvas had been removed, as I expected. Then I forced myself to catch my breath and gather my thoughts. I stepped back into the entrance hall, and stopped dead. Gwenant and Adam appeared not to have moved. They were both smiling. I stared at them for a moment, then grabbed the easel and dragged it round to face me.
It was the painting from the black room. The face was unmistakable. Bloodied, and scarred, and horribly torn, with eyes that seemed almost insane with pain. An image from one of Francis Bacon’s nightmares. But recognisable nonetheless.
The face of Lewis Fitzgerald.
Chapter 23
Adam was the first to break the silence. ‘I think we’ve spooked him, Ms Pryce.’
She laughed her bell-like little laugh again. ‘I think we have, Mr Grant.’
I stared again at the horrible image on the canvas, then back at Adam and Gwenant. ‘You’ve killed him. Oh my God, you’ve killed him.’ I could barely stammer the words out.
Silence hung in the hot, suffocating air. I tried to gather my thoughts. Gwenant was slightly built and perhaps twenty years older than me. Adam was a big guy but still, in those heels, I could at least outrun him. I inched my way around the wall, making for the door. If he gave the slightest sign of taking his designer wedges off I’d be out of there.
Then, as one, they both burst out laughing. ‘Killed him? Oh Nathan, you are a silly!’
Adam dabbed at his eyes. ‘Aye. Oh, we’d make a right fine pair of murderers, eh Gwen?’
I felt my muscles relax. Just a little. I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.
‘No. You don’t, do you? Sit down, Nathan, you’re shaking. I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. ‘Don’t forget the arsenic, Gwen,’ said Adam. ‘Joke!’ he added, as I started, and I did my best to join in as they both laughed.
My hands shook a little as I took a biscuit from the packet that Gwen proffered. I laid it in the saucer and stirred my tea. ‘Well now,’ I said, ‘it seems you’ve got stories to tell about Lewis Fitzgerald.’
‘Only one story, my dear,’ said Gwen.
‘But it’s the same one,’ finished Adam.
‘Which is?’
‘He’s a chiselling little spiv and a crook,’ said Gwen as Adam nodded.
‘Hmmm. Okay, that doesn’t entirely surprise me. Tell me more.’
‘It was back in the late eighties. I was quite young then, just starting out.’
‘Oh, very young indeed, I would have said.’
‘There’s no need to be faux gallant, Mr Sutherland. Please let me continue.’
‘Sorry.’
‘He had a gallery in London. He can only have been a few years older than me, and he seemed quite glamorous. He was already building a reputation. And he offered to represent me. It was a good deal, I thought. There wasn’t much of a scene in Cardiff at the time.’
‘And then?’
‘Oh, he got me work, I’ll give him that. But then cheques started arriving late. Or not arriving at all. And then I discovered that amongst his many talents is a genius for creative accounting.’
Adam nodded. ‘Same here, Mr Consul. I came out of Glasgow School of Art in the mid-nineties. Gwen and I didn’t know each other then. So I signed up with Mr Fitzgerald. Five years later, I’d had exhibitions in London, Stockholm, Berlin, Paris – you name it – and somehow I had less money than when I was a student. Because that mendacious wee shite had been ripping me off. For years. And we could name a dozen more young artists who found themselves in the same situation.’
‘I don’t get it. Why didn’t you take him to court?’
‘You need money for that. And Fitzgerald’s got a lot of it. Ours, to be precise. He could afford some pretty heavyweight representation. Super-injunctions and the like. Very little of it made the newspapers. And we both got some pretty scary letters. Not all of them from lawyers, if you know what I mean. Better to start over again. Forget about it.’
I turned to Gwen. ‘Except you haven’t forgotten about it, have you?’
‘I had. For years. And then I learned that Paul had signed up with him. I knew him, years back, when he was still a student. We were – are – good friends. Paul’s not like us, Mr Sutherland. He’s away with the fairies. He’s not capable, really not capable, of managing his own affairs.’
‘And now, Lewis Fitzgerald is?’
Adam nodded. ‘Aye. And Paul Considine has earned one hell of a lot more money than Gwen or I ever have.’
‘Bloody hell.’
‘So you see, Mr Sutherland,’ continued Gwen, ‘when I learnt that Paul and I would be in Venice at the same time, along with the famous Lewis Fitzgerald, well, I knew that my work would have to be a reaction to the circumstances.’
‘But he was never going to see it. At least, not like this,’ I gestured at the horrible image on the canvas.
‘That doesn’t matter. At some point, between now and November, somebody will see it. And they’ll recognise it. And, hopefully, it will make them laugh.’
‘Laugh? My God!’
‘Oh, it made me laugh, cariad . All the time I was working on them.’ She held my gaze, without blinking. ‘Every single brush stroke. They made me laugh.’
I couldn’t suppress a shudder. ‘I thought y
ou were just a lovely Welsh lady.’
‘I am a lovely Welsh lady. This is just my little way of taking revenge on him.’
‘You have to admit, Nathan,’ said Adam, ‘it’s a more elegant way than just killing him.’
I nodded. ‘Okay. But I don’t understand where the wedding dresses come into it. Unless – unless they’re a symbol of betrayal?’
Adam stroked his beard. ‘Naw, I hadn’t thought of that. I just like wedding dresses.’
‘Oh.’
‘So tell us, Mr Consul. Why exactly are you interested in Lewis Fitzgerald?’
‘I’m not. That is, I wish I wasn’t. But I think something strange is going on. And I’m starting to think that the death of Gordon Blake-Hoyt might not have been an accident.’ I ran through the incident with the glass arrows and the two postcards.
‘So you think someone is running around trying to murder people using methods depicted in historic paintings?’
‘It sounds crazy, but yes. It seems to make sense.’
‘It’s a brilliant idea, I’ll give you that. I wish I’d thought of it. Don’t you, Gwen?’
‘Oh yes, Adam.’
‘So my question is,’ I paused and dunked my biscuit in my tea, ‘do you think Lewis Fitzgerald is capable of murder?’
There was silence for a moment, broken only by a sad little ‘plop’ as the edge of my biscuit dropped off into my tea. Adam shrugged. ‘He’s a bastard. Is he a murderous bastard? I don’t know.’
‘Besides,’ added Gwen, ‘you said yourself that he was injured by one of those glass arrows.’
‘True. Straight through his hand. Must have hurt like hell. I could almost feel sorry for him. But only almost. So here’s the more difficult question: do you think Paul Considine is cap able of murder?’ There was silence again, but neither of them showed any sign of breaking it. ‘Is that a maybe?’
‘It’s a no, Mr Sutherland.’
‘A mentally fragile man takes revenge on his greatest critic and someone who he thinks has ripped him off. It’s a motive.’
‘Mentally fragile. Why do you say that?’
‘Because,’ I struggled to think, ‘because I know he’s had his demons in the past. He seems to depend on Lewis. It makes him seem a bit vulnerable.’
She nodded. ‘You’re right. He is, or was. There were times when he seemed to be in his own little world. And I just wanted to mother him. And then there were times when he’d talk about his work, and it was like he became a different person. When all those words, when everything that was blocked up in him just came tumbling out and he’d fix you with those great blue eyes of his and . . .’
‘And?’
‘And then I wouldn’t want to mother him any more.’ There was silence for a moment. ‘So maybe there’s a motive, Mr Sutherland. But I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it.’ She sounded tired, and sad. ‘I don’t know. It’s up to you to find out.’
‘Just me?’
‘We’re both going home in the next couple of days, Mr Consul. So it looks like it has to be you. You’ve got to be the one who asks too many questions. You’ve got to be like Elsa of Brabant.’
‘Oh. Can’t I be like Lohengrin?’
Gwenant chuckled just a little too long for my liking, and Adam shushed her. ‘No no. He’s just a knight in shining armour. Elsa’s the awkward one who asks the questions that everybody else is afraid to ask.’
‘But it destroys her life!’
‘Well yes. But hopefully that won’t happen to you.’
I closed my eyes, and rubbed my face. ‘More tea?’ asked Gwen.
I shook my head, and got to my feet. ‘No thanks. I’ll be on my way. I’ve got dinner to cook. And difficult questions to think of. And when I’ve done that, I’ll try and think who to ask them of.’
Chapter 24
Francesco Nicolodi.
He’d been with me on vernissage day at the Giardini, and seen pretty much exactly what I had. I couldn’t be sure if he’d spoken to Considine himself, but it would seem unlikely if he hadn’t. But just maybe he’d seen something else. And if he had, he’d almost certainly be saving it up for another exclusive. Where had he said he was staying? The Hotel Zichy. To be precise, the Hotel Ferdinand Zichy.
I should have thought it seemed a bit odd at the time. The Zichy was a low-budget hotel, not far from Spirito Santo. I’d occasionally had to deal with unhappy visitors there. Yes, it was cheap, but in Venice you got what you paid for. The Zichy was, I suppose, a few steps up from an actual flophouse, but had acquired a reputation for dubious hygiene and things going missing. More than one couple had arrived back after a day’s sightseeing to find their room safe empty. After the third occurrence of this I’d complained to Vanni. He’d shrugged. Yes, there was probably something illegal about it all. No, they couldn’t possibly prove it. It seemed, therefore, a very unlikely place for an international art critic to choose to stay.
There was no reason at all to go round there. Given the circumstances of our last meeting, I couldn’t imagine Nicolodi would be pleased to see me. Nevertheless, it was just possible he might be able to help.
Work took me back to the Ospedale, where I did a final bit of interpreting and paperwork on behalf of the elderly couple. I carried their cases to the Alilaguna stop and waved them on to the next boat to Marco Polo airport. Then I took the next vaporetto round to the Giudecca canal. It was outside the rush hour by now, and there were seats free inside. I chose instead to sit outside, to feel the breeze and to look over to the island. I didn’t have much occasion to come round here these days, and the view never became stale. I remembered the story of doomed, tragic Ezra Pound, and how he cried when he realised he would never see the Giudecca again.
The boat pulled into the Zattere stop where the family next to me alighted. No shopping trolleys, big cameras, and dad wearing shorts despite it being relatively early in the summer. In his left hand he held a Russian edition of a popular eating and drinking guide. If they turned left, I’d bet any money that they were heading to Nico’s. They did indeed, and I watched them walk along the fondamenta to the terrazza that was already starting to fill up. Well deduced, Nathan, I thought. Fede would be proud of you.
I’d always loved this part of town. I came here less often that I should, but there had been a time when it seemed no problem was so insoluble that it couldn’t be fixed by a spritz at Nico’s. I turned and gazed across the canal to Palanca. Sergio and Lorenzo would be drinking and playing cards in the communist bar. We’d promised to keep in touch, but it had been over six months since we’d last met. The boat set off again, and, just two minutes later, we were at Spirito Santo. It was one of the stranger vaporetto stops in the city. The casual visitor might be forgiven for wondering why it was there at all. The reason was a depressingly simple one. There were no longer any grocery stores in the area, all having been turned into tourist shops. There was therefore a need to simplify the way of getting an ageing local population to the nearest supermarket at San Basilio. And so, under pressure from the few residents that remained in the area, the Comune had added an extra stop. Every year they threatened to take it away again. And every year, local pressure just about succeeded in keeping it open.
The pontoon was moored outside the long-abandoned church of the same name. Its doors hadn’t opened in over a century, and probably never would again. Rumours persisted that some works of art still remained inside, leading to occasional break-ins, but the official line was that everything of value had long since been removed to the Accademia. Even Federica had never seen the interior. There was, she said, supposedly nothing of interest to see inside and the structure was in poor condition, leaving it useless even as a temporary space for the Biennale. The windows were boarded up now against the elements, as the plaster fought a losing battle against the effects of aqua alta . Tourists scarcely gave it a passing glance. It was, after all, just another dead church.
I turned left after the church and made my way down to th
e Hotel Zichy. The lobby was smart in the way that disappointing hotels always seem to have smart lobbies. Reception was unattended, whilst a bored-looking young man with a man bun polished glasses at the bar to my right.
I stood at the reception desk and waited. And waited some more. I smiled over at the young man. He smiled back at me and nodded. I waited a little more. And then I walked over to the bar.
‘I’m here to meet a friend of mine,’ I said.
‘Sure.’ I couldn’t quite place his accent. Romania, Moldova? That way on. ‘Just ask at reception.’
‘Of course.’ I nodded.
I went back to reception. And waited some more. I glanced over at the young barman, still polishing his way through glasses with Eastern European efficiency. I gave a little cough. ‘Erm, there doesn’t seem to be anyone here at the moment?’
He nodded. ‘Not at this time of day. Only me.’
‘Ah, right. Maybe you can help me?’
‘Of course. Spritz? Beer? Wine?’
I shook my head. ‘No no no. There’s a friend of mine,’ I lied, ‘staying here. I wonder if you could just call his room.’
‘Okay. You just need to ask at reception.’
‘There’s no one here.’
‘Not at this time. Come back at six.’
This was going nowhere. I needed to reset the parameters of our relationship. I walked over to the bar. ‘Okay. Can I have a beer please?’
‘Moretti?’
‘Nastro Azzurro, if you’ve got it.’
He nodded, fetched me a bottle from the fridge, cracked the top and passed it to me.
‘Could I have a glass please?’
He slid one over to me.
‘Maybe some crisps?’
He reached behind him for a small glass bowl, and then brought forth an industrial-size packet from which he transferred a few handfuls.
‘Great. Thanks. Would you like one yourself?’ He looked surprised. I looked around, exaggeratedly, and said in a stage whisper, ‘Ah, go on, no one’s around. I think you’ve probably earned one.’ He gave an approximation of a smile, and then went back to the fridge for another Nastro Azzurro. He was about to drink from the bottle, but I shook my finger. ‘Stick it in a glass. Bottles are just for ultras .’ He grinned.
Vengeance in Venice Page 14
