by David Hewson
‘Such stones,’ she murmured.
‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning every time I walk somewhere in this city I find myself lost! Every promising calle leads to a dead end and black water.’
‘In that case it’s not a calle,’ he pointed out. ‘Now is it?’
‘Pedantry . . .’
‘Not at all. Words have specific meanings. We should take heed of them. The Venetians inhabit an odd world, I’ll admit. But it’s there for the learning. If a child can navigate these stones then so can a foreigner. I learned, though I’ll admit it took a while.’
Arnaud, the Count of Saint-Germain, nodded, as if agreeing with himself, then shambled off along the path to the vineyard without another word.
THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS
There was an invitation there, one that could not be refused. Teresa began searching for some of the more obvious references from the manuscript. Pushkin’s tale. The opera L’Incostanza Delusa. The quotation from the memoirs of the English politician Horace Walpole. The reference to a history, readily available on the web, by an obscure Scottish journalist called Andrew Lang.
In a very short space of time she was able to ascertain that every last mention of the Count of Saint-Germain cited in the text was true. Or, more correctly, accurate, in the sense that each existed and could be used by anyone pretending to be the mythical figure.
There was more. Recent books and articles that talked of Saint-Germain appearing throughout the twentieth century. Even a strange memoir from a member of the Theosophists that referred to him as ‘one of the hidden immortals who manipulate history’.
‘Tripe,’ Teresa muttered, and was briefly amused by how the peculiar vocabulary of Jason Cunningham had affected her.
The stories she was being sent were obscure and cryptic. They had a specific purpose nevertheless and, it was becoming clear, an arcane kind of meaning. They now told her that whoever wrote them knew not just Sofia and her close circle of neighbours and their friends in Venice, but the very apartment where Teresa now sat. That the author appeared to be aware of her progress, or lack of it, in finding her aunt. The latest instalment also seemed to hint that she ought to feel some kind of urgency in her quest.
And there was even, surely, a direct nugget of hard information. A hint to an answer in the riddle. A clue.
She reread the pages quickly and found the section she wanted, repeating the words, ‘Cambridge is a wonderful city, full of answers for those with the sense to ask the right questions.’
Jerome Aitchison came from Cambridge though his speciality, unlike that of the famous Crick and Watson, lay in unravelling the secrets of death, not life.
She retrieved the police ID badge from her bag to remind herself of the number in case it were needed. There were rules about impersonating officers, though she was unclear whether that applied to her. She’d resigned her post the night before. The wheels within the administration moved painfully slowly. It would take days at least before she was formally removed from her position.
Teresa Lupo experienced a brief moment of self-realization. This was the old her, trying to rationalize everything, to find a reason to act, to believe, to feel. Arnaud – she had begun to think of him this way – had firm views on that.
‘You’re gone,’ she murmured, reaching for her Questura card.
She retrieved the number for the police in Cambridge from the web and, using her Rome police ID, finally got through the switchboard to a duty detective inspector, a gruff though not unfriendly man called Postlethwaite.
‘How’s your weather?’ the English officer asked.
‘Cold. Freezing cold.’ Why did the English always want to talk about the weather? ‘I’m calling about Jerome Aitchison. The lecturer who died here in Venice at the weekend.’
‘Cold here too. I thought you said you were from Rome?’
‘On attachment.’
‘Dreadful story,’ the man said. ‘Glad he’s your customer, not ours.’
‘Thank you. The student who complained that Aitchison had assaulted her. She was called . . . Ursula something.’
‘You speak very good English,’ Postlethwaite complimented her. ‘That’s a funny name. Ursula something. Why do you want to know?’
‘There are loose ends, Inspector.’
‘Usually are, don’t you think? What’s it matter? Poor bloke’s dead.’
Teresa took a deep breath and thought: they’re the same everywhere.
‘This poor bloke tried to shoot dead a young woman here. In front of several thousand people. I would like to know why.’
‘Does it matter? Honestly and truthfully?’
‘Honestly and truthfully, yes. There may be other issues.’
‘I find that hard to believe,’ he said.
‘Why? The student, Ursula . . .’
She could hear the clack of keys on a computer.
‘That wasn’t her name,’ the man said. ‘She was called Imogen Hardwick. I spoke to her myself and if that idiot Aitchison hadn’t shot off to Venice like a scalded cat none of this would have gone anywhere. I didn’t like that young woman one little bit. Jumped up little madam with a very high opinion of herself. Seemed to me she was angling for something from the college. Happens from time to time.’
Teresa tried to understand what he was saying. This was yet another inaccuracy in the stories she’d been receiving from the man pretending to be the Count of Saint-Germain. Was it possible they were all simple mistakes? Or was there something deliberate here? A thread for her to untangle, unwind, then follow to its conclusion?
‘Aitchison did assault this girl, didn’t he?’ she asked.
‘Her word against his. It was a very minor offence if anything. I mean, would some Italian get arrested for patting a lady’s bottom in Rome?’
‘If I saw it the ignorant bastard would be in a cell in five seconds flat. Do you know Italy, Inspector? Has anyone updated your national stereotypes of late?’
‘I’m sure someone at headquarters is putting together just such a course as we speak. To be frank this whole business was so flimsy I wasn’t even sure it was worth sending a file to the prosecutors and letting them decide whether to take him to court. I put the fear of God up Aitchison a bit, I suppose. Not that much. He was an odd sort. Miserable. Confused. Not a ladies’ man at all, though that can work both ways, of course. As far as I can work out he was a little smitten by this Hardwick girl and just got spooked by what she was putting around. So he upped and legged it without a word to a soul. Ridiculous really. No one at the college, on the staff that is, believed her. Next thing he’s in Venice wearing some bloody stupid costume and shooting at a starlet no one’s ever heard of. Then topping himself. So perhaps Imogen Hardwick was right, and it was me who got taken in all along.’
There was a pause.
‘What other crimes?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t say there were other crimes. Other issues. It may be nothing.’
‘Well, my impression was that Jerome Aitchison was the sort of pain in the arse who’d find a five-pence coin in the street and take it round the police station and hand it in as lost property. As honest as they come.’
‘You’re sure he wasn’t a ladies’ man?’
‘As sure as I can be. Not a confirmed bachelor, if you get my drift.’
‘My English fails at a certain level of subtlety, I’m afraid.’
‘Gay. He wasn’t gay. Or so people said. Just very awkward and shy around women. Never had a girlfriend. Or many friends at all.’
She thought of the starlet Luisa Cammarota floating over the piazza in her snow-white angel’s gown, and the blood on her feathers.
‘Not a fan of celebrities?’ Teresa asked. ‘This girl he shot. She was a TV star, an actress. There could have been a secret obsession with women he saw in the papers.’
She could hear the English police officer sigh down the line.
‘Jerome Aitchison was a meek little Cambridge lecturer who
lived in a tiny college room full of obscure books so boring any sane human being would want to fall asleep the moment you set eyes on them. His idea of light reading was the Financial Times and I don’t think you find many starlets in there. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Probably wound up blushing if a woman so much as asked him the time. At least that’s what I was told. Fits with how the man looked to me.’
She blinked and said, ‘You’re sure?’
‘As sure I can be. Listen. This is a university town. You get to know these college bachelors after a while. They live in college rooms. Rarely have any friends outside. They’re a type. We never have any trouble from them. More the other way round. People making trouble for them. Like that Hardwick girl.’
‘You must have a photograph of him,’ Teresa said.
‘Why must I? He wasn’t even charged.’
‘The college . . .’
‘Ask them. Not me. Good luck. He’s an unperson now. They went cold on the poor bastard the moment that girl started making her accusations. After what happened at the weekend he’s gone for good. I checked their website on Monday out of interest. These academics . . . they don’t hang around. It’s all about reputation and ego, isn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
He laughed, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say.
‘Come Monday morning Jerome Aitchison had completely disappeared from that college even though he’d spent most of his adult life, student and lecturer, there. His name was gone, his entry in the department, his photograph . . . everything.’
‘There must be a picture somewhere,’ she pointed out.
‘I imagine there must. If you come up to Cambridge I’d be happy to point you in the direction of some people who might have one. But right now I’m really rather busy, and this case is so very closed for us. Honestly, I don’t wish to be rude . . .’
Nor was he, she thought as the policeman in Cambridge said goodbye. And perhaps Detective Inspector Postlethwaite had proved rather more helpful than he realized.
It was Silvio Di Capua who first taught her how to recover information that had supposedly been removed from the web. There were so many ways if you knew them . . . search-engine caches being among the most popular. She’d tried that with Jerome Aitchison already and got nothing more than the same brief dreary mentions she’d found in a normal inquiry: references to academic documents and some lectures the man had given at a few specialist actuarial conferences around the world. Not a photo anywhere.
There was one more place to look though: the Wayback Machine. According to Silvio some non-profit organization in the US had taken to archiving the web, sometimes in a fairly haphazard fashion, site by site, year by year.
She found the archive, typed in the college address, and got a list of the most recent versions of the website. Slowly, patiently, she worked her way through the different iterations until she found the faculty page.
Aitchison’s name was there. The photo was missing. She wanted to scream. The archive did this sometimes. Text was deemed more worthy of storage than a simple mug shot.
The next hour she spent wading through every version of the college site right back to the very first, which was launched in 1994. Each one listed Aitchison on the faculty. In every case the photo was nothing more than a blank box with the missing graphic symbol.
‘Damn,’ she yelled, and banged the table.
If only the words hadn’t disappeared from the mustard-yellow paper. If only she remembered more.
The building trembled. One more liner meandered past the window, distant figures staring out from the porthole windows on the side. Another reminder of a physical world beyond this strange, dilapidated room, Sofia’s last home before she vanished into the black Venetian night.
In Carpaccio’s Dog Aitchison had mentioned another painting, one that was surely from real life, just as much as the canvas of St Augustine. The depiction of a politician, a pioneer of the science of actuary, who had been slaughtered in a random act of rebellious violence.
Early in that very first lost story Aitchison had remembered walking into another gallery and being shocked by this canvas, perhaps as a portent of something terrible to come later, in Venice.
It happened at a convention. She typed Aitchison’s name and a few keywords into the archived websites.
Amsterdam.
He’d been there as part of an academic conference two years before. She remembered that part of the story quite clearly now.
Teresa Lupo’s stubby, anxious fingers sped across the keys of her cheap little computer, searching, trying combinations of words and places and names.
It took another twenty minutes. Then she found it. A photo of the guests at a dinner in the Mövenpick Hotel, not far from Centraal Station, part of a report of an actuarial conference in an industry newsletter. It was the kind of formal academic event she had to attend herself from time to time, one that gave her the shivers. Dinner jackets and evening dresses. Floral arrangements and presentations.
The caption beneath was part of the photograph, an image, not text. This was why the search engines had missed Aitchison’s name even though it was spelled out clearly among the others, all, the story said, leading experts on actuarial study from around the world. The Englishman was third from the left, a round-faced stocky individual smiling in a childlike, embarrassed fashion, sandwiched between two rather elegant women in cocktail dresses.
He looks happy enough, she thought, if a little uncomfortable in female company, the way some academic bachelors are. Just as the English police inspector had said.
Teresa walked across the room and got the copy of Il Gazzettino she’d kept from Monday. She checked the picture of the passport photo she’d found on the corpse on the pavement close to Florian. Then she looked at Jerome Aitchison, smiling for the camera in Amsterdam just two years before.
The man in the paper seemed a good deal younger, with a narrower face, more hair, different, hooded eyes. The owner of the lodgings where Aitchison had stayed had closed the place and left for Kenya on holiday around the time he’d disappeared. It was entirely possible that no one in Venice had identified the body of this solitary and mysterious man. Nor, according to the paper, had any relative from England. Perhaps all they were relying upon was the passport found beneath his cloak.
Paola Boscolo had an email address on her business card. Teresa sent her the document from the web and, from the newspaper website, a copy of the passport photo.
Alongside them she wrote a short message.
Dear Paola,
This is the real Jerome Aitchison, taken under the circumstances explained in the article. If you place this picture next to the passport photograph you have from Sunday you will, I think, come to the clear conclusion that the man who fell to his death in the Piazza San Marco is someone else entirely. The real Aitchison is, I believe, alive and probably in Venice still. I am now, more than ever, convinced that he is holding my aunt Sofia here against her will.
I have a suggestion regarding the individual you thought was Aitchison. It’s been apparent to me since I saw him on the campanile that, while he may have felt he was supposed to harm Miss Cammarota in the first instance, he was unable to do so with any great conviction when push came to shove, as it were.
My hunch is that he was under some kind of pressure to put on this sinister performance and, perhaps out of fear or a simple sense of decency, buckled in regard to the young woman’s death at the last moment. Whatever this pressure was, it resulted in his suicide, as we all saw.
If you check, your Questura lawyer will confirm that this makes the party responsible for any such pressure guilty of manslaughter at the very least and just possibly, depending on the circumstances, simple old-fashioned murder.
I leave this information in your hands since doubtless it will take the Questura a day or two to digest it in these oh-so-busy times. When I have more news I shall, my own pressure of work permitting, pass it on to y
ou.
Oh, and on a purely practical matter I feel I should point out that manslaughter and murder do, in all parts of Italy under the jurisdiction of the Polizia di Stato, Venice included, count as more serious crimes than pickpocketing, fleecing tourists and being drunk in charge of a stupid mask.
I trust this helps.
Teresa Lupo.
She read the message again before she sent it, trying to remember if she had ever in her life used the word ‘hunch’ in any context whatsoever. As a formal police document it was a fraud. She had no reason to believe Aitchison was holding Sofia. The ideas about the motive of the man who fell to his death dressed as the Plague Doctor were imaginative in the extreme.
All this was deeply out of character, she thought, hitting the send key, hoping that Arnaud, the Count of Saint-Germain, if he existed, would approve.
She estimated that the young policewoman would read it immediately, take a deep breath, curse her impudence, file the message for later consideration, and, just possibly, make some brief inquiries of her own before knocking off for the day. The two pictures were dissimilar. But passport photos could be old and unrepresentative. It was obvious to Teresa that these were not of the same man, and a fairly rapid forensic examination could establish this beyond doubt. But an overworked police officer tended to see what he or she hoped for, and was never in a rush to involve another department.
Falcone would grasp a curious anomaly like this in a shot. She wondered what he and Peroni and Nic were up to in Sicily. Whether their trip had proved successful. How soon she’d see them – something that she would look forward to with the greatest pleasure once the present task was out of the way.
There was another line to follow, one that had occurred to her hours before, when she spoke to her mother. She called Alberto Tosi and politely listened to his fulsome greeting and incessant apologies.
‘Any news?’ he asked finally.
