“I’ll make some inquiries.”
“Do that. Is there anything else I can tell you?”
“You can tell me what you know about Hugo Massiter.”
The question surprised her. “You mean you haven’t heard of him?” she asked.
“Not till today. Now I know that he’s very rich. Very influential. And that, for a few years anyway, he was very much persona non grata in Italy.”
“It was in all the papers, Leo!” she objected. “Surely you must remember. There was a terrible scandal. A piece of music—a wonderful piece of music by the way, I’ve heard it—was peddled as something it wasn’t. First Massiter was responsible. Then he wasn’t. Some Englishman and his girlfriend hoodwinked him, apparently.”
“So I understand,” said the implacable voice on the line. “And people died.”
She’d forgotten that part somehow. It was the music that stayed in her head. The small professional orchestras playing for the tourists now made it a centerpiece of their repertoire, one that was almost as popular as the Seasons. Just as memorable, and fresher somehow.
“People died. It was nothing to do with Hugo Massiter. The papers all said that in the end. Why would he have returned to Venice otherwise? You’re a police officer. You should surely know more about this than me.”
“I should,” Leo Falcone conceded. “And tomorrow?”
She looked at the pasta pot and the cloud of steam finding the window, working its way out towards the iron angel, whose flame burned once more, flickering in the wind, devouring gas they could ill afford. Raffaella Arcangelo wondered how many meals she’d cooked over the years, how much of her life had been spent serving in this kitchen.
“Tomorrow they can feed themselves for a change,” she said.
ARMS GINGERLY INTERLOCKED, NIC COSTA AND EMILY Deacon walked the short distance from the small apartment in Castello to the waterfront by Giardini. It was just ten minutes from here to Peroni’s restaurant in the backstreets, beyond the Arsenale. They needed some time to themselves. More than the evening’s dinner with Peroni and Teresa—and Leo Falcone along as self-invited guest—would allow.
Emily wound herself free and took a table outside a small café. They ordered a couple of overpriced coffees, the cost enhanced by the unencumbered view of the lagoon. The deep yellow stain of the sun was now flooding down from the mountains that rippled the distant horizon of terra firma and everything—the lagoon, the city, the reflections of buildings in the dappled water—took on its warm, rich hue. Sometimes, when he was alone with nothing better to do, Costa would catch the slow vaporetto, number one, up the Grand Canal just to catch the moment, and watch the quiet wonder it created in the eyes of his fellow travellers, even, from time to time, a few Venetians.
“Tell me about the case, Nic,” she suggested. “As much as you can. It must be important if they’re cancelling leave.”
Costa couldn’t forget that Emily was making a fundamental shift in her career. Trying to put away her lost career, as an FBI agent kicked out of the Bureau for insubordination, and replace it with a future as an architect, in a foreign country too. All the same, her past still lived with her. She was always curious, always interested in a challenge. It was one of the facets of her complex, multifaceted personality that intrigued him.
“It’s the usual story. A family affair. A man kills his wife. Then either kills himself, or dies accidentally. We don’t know yet.”
“It sounds straightforward.”
But this was Venice, he thought. Or, more accurately, Murano, a place that welcomed the prying eyes of investigators even less.
“I think so. By the way, we have an invitation to a party tomorrow night. Hugo Massiter. The Englishman with the boat. Does the name ring a bell?”
She looked baffled. “No. Should it?”
“Five years ago. There was a scandal.”
“Five years ago I was in Washington trying to be someone else,” she said quickly. “And when aren’t there scandals?”
He must have looked downcast.
“I’m sorry, Nic. Do you really think I should have heard of him?”
“I have,” he replied. “And I want to know the details. Before we meet him again. He sees himself as a player in the city. He’s buying the Arcangeli’s island on Murano, where those people died. Tomorrow night we’re invited to a party there. He’s renovating it apparently. It’s going to be a gallery.”
Emily’s forehead grew even more furrowed. “This is the Isola degli Arcangeli you’re talking about?”
“You’ve heard of that?”
“Anyone who’s studied modern Italian architecture has heard of it. It’s one of the great follies of the twentieth century.” Her blue eyes were bright with anticipation. “That place is supposed to be amazing. They’ve kept the public out for years. I thought it was unsafe.”
“Not with the work Hugo Massiter’s having done.”
“He’s buying it? I would have thought a site like that would end up being the property of the city. It’s a kind of local monument. An odd one, a forgotten one, but all the same . . .”
Costa recalled Massiter’s quiet complaints of penury, and the Englishman’s obvious closeness to local officials.
“Perhaps there was a small arrangement. I don’t know. He certainly hopes to own it now. He seems a little short of cash too. Does that add up?”
“If he’s trying to restore a failed project like that, you bet. I’ve read up on the Isola degli Arcangeli, Nic. Everyone who hopes to get an architecture degree in Italy does. It’s mandatory, an object lesson in what happens when you’re more interested in design than structure. Much of it was judged to be fundamentally unsound from the outset. If I recall correctly, the man who came up with most of the plans wasn’t even a professional architect. A couple of people got badly hurt there in a roof collapse twenty years or so ago. It’s been closed to the public ever since. You have to be talking about a big, big project getting it back to something close to usable.”
Massiter did seem desperate, perhaps in more ways than he was admitting. And he wasn’t bluffing about the deadline to conclude the deal with the Arcangeli either.
“Rich men’s toys,” he murmured.
“Some toy,” she said, eyes glittering. “I’d give anything to see inside. And we’re going to a party there?”
But it was just another old building, he wanted to say. In a city full of them. Nic Costa was no boor. He appreciated Venice. He loved many of the sights. Still, there was something about the place that disturbed him. Nothing moved. Nothing changed in the lethargic melancholy of the lagoon. Even the people seemed to think their small, mundane lives would run on forever, trapped in the bright wash of the sky that flooded over them.
“I must be coming up in the world,” he murmured.
“We must be coming up in the world,” she corrected him quietly.
He brushed aside the soft hair from her cheek, and kissed her again, more slowly this time, pleased to feel her responding.
“We . . .” he whispered, “ . . . must eat.”
“Do we have to?” she murmured.
There was no choice. Falcone had ordered a chair at the table for a reason. Besides, something told Nic Costa he needed to be on his guard. Perhaps for all of them. Peroni was winding down into holiday mode. Falcone seemed to believe everything, while more complex than it appeared at first, would be a piece of cake. To him, Venice was a backwater, a place where a city cop could wipe the floor with the locals. Costa wasn’t so certain.
“We do,” he said. “Just for a while.”
THE RESTAURANT WAS DOWN A BACK ALLEY BETWEEN Arsenale and the main drag of Castello, the Via Garibaldi, a quarter of working-class houses not far from the police apartments. Peroni found it within a week of their arrival in the city. He had an uncanny sense about where to eat, and a way of buttering up the staff too. Two sisters, big, friendly women, ran the place. Their daughters, pretty teenagers, worked the ten cramped tables, each with four settings, that filled the dark interior. Most nights Nic and Peroni had to queue—though not for long; his partner’s quick wit had soon seen to that. But this was August, when hordes of locals abandoned the city for somewhere cooler. There was only one other group in the place, so Peroni pulled together a couple of tables at the far end of the room to give the five of them plenty of space and privacy, listened, beaming with pleasure, to the brief list of evening specials, then sat back to enjoy the meal, a man in gastronomic heaven.