“We’re just supposed to deliver what they want,” Peroni pointed out. “If we jerk them around, they could make life pretty difficult for us. Randazzo’s an asshole. That Massiter individual looks as if he could pull strings all the way up to the Quirinale Palace.”
“That’s the most apposite comment you’ve made all evening.” Falcone smiled that infuriating smile again, in Costa’s direction this time. “You were right, Nic. Massiter’s name should have rung a bell. He owns an important auction house. Offices in New York and London. There was a scandal too. Five years ago he would have been arrested on the spot, if we could have found him.”
“But now,” Costa asked, “we think he’s in the clear?”
“Absolutely in the clear,” Falcone insisted. “Otherwise he’d never be fool enough to come back here, would he? It’s an interesting tale, though. Here . . .” He reached down into the briefcase he’d brought and took out two folders. “I photocopied what little there is. Not much, I’m afraid. I suspect Mr. Massiter’s records have been thinned somewhat over the years. Why clog up the filing cabinets with information on innocent people, after all? Nevertheless, you will need to read these before we talk to this night watchman tomorrow. It’ll soon be clear why.”
Peroni eyed the folder in front of him. “A week, they said. That’s all we have. After that it turns nasty for us. Again.”
Falcone sniffed at the grappa that had just arrived, tasted it with an approving lick of his thin lips, then thanked the waitress. Costa watched him, concerned. Spirits never used to be a part of the inspector’s routine.
“A week should be ample. I don’t think this is complicated, Gianni. It’s just . . . not as straightforward as it might appear. The locals want a result that leaves the Arcangeli clear to sell their little island and then places Hugo Massiter on a pedestal from which he can lord it over the crooked pen-pushers who put him there. This is their city, not ours. I’m indifferent to both prospects. There’s no reason why we can’t deliver. We need to get to the bottom of this spontaneous combustion idea, naturally. We need to think about the question of keys too, and I’m not sure I fully understand that yet either. And we really need to know more about Bella Arcangelo.”
“What does the autopsy say about her?” Teresa asked.
“About as much as you can expect from a pile of dust. She was in the furnace. If she’d been there much longer . . .”
“You need to see her medical file,” Teresa advised. “In the absence of real forensic, look for someone who’ll have some actual records. And that phone. I don’t need to tell you what it probably means.”
“An affair?” Emily wondered.
“Something she wanted to keep quiet, certainly. Let’s not run ahead of ourselves,” Falcone cautioned.
Emily gazed around the table, dismayed. “This is a vacation?” she wondered aloud.
Falcone picked up the report on Massiter, weighed it in his hand, then let the thing fall on the table. “This is a free ticket into the Isola degli Arcangeli. Talk to Hugo Massiter, Emily. Take a look at what he’s doing there. See if it’s really the charitable act he’s making out it is. I’d value your professional opinion.”
“I didn’t come to Venice to give professional opinions.”
Falcone raised his glass. “Of course not! You came here for the sights. And the company. And you’ll have both. Once we’ve put this little domestic drama to bed and freed ourselves to return to civilisation. Salute!”
None of them moved an inch.
“Leo?” Teresa asked. “What the hell were these art police in Verona like? You’ve come back different somehow.”
“Improved, I hope.”
“I said different.”
Falcone toasted them all again. “They weren’t police, actually. They were Carabinieri. Some of the nicest and most interesting people I’ve met in a long time.”
Even Teresa Lupo was lost for words at that. Leo Falcone, the original version, wouldn’t have been seen dead with the Carabinieri.
“Salute!” this odd, half-familiar stranger in their midst said again.
Five bright clear vials of grappa chinked around the table, not all with the same degree of vigour.
Costa discreetly poured his glass into the coffee cup and caught Emily’s eye. He knew she was intrigued, in spite of herself. There were consolations too. This wasn’t Rome. There were no murderous hoods or lunatics on the prowl. It was, as Falcone said, a self-contained tragedy awaiting resolution. The answers lay somewhere out on the lagoon, in Murano’s dark alleyways and on the Isola degli Arcangeli.
“So, Nic,” Falcone asked, “tell me. I have a duty to train you now. One day you will want to be more than a mere agente.”
“Tell you what?” Costa asked, a little uncomfortable that Falcone should take such a direct interest in him at that moment.
“What’s changed after our discussion here tonight?”
He thought about that, thought about the keys and the door, Bella Arcangelo and the tragic figure her dying husband must have cut on that odd island across the water.
“What’s changed,” Costa said, “is the question. We’re no longer trying to understand the means Uriel Arcangelo used to kill his wife. But why, how and with whom the late Bella appears to have conspired to kill him.”
“Bravo!” Falcone declared, laughing, toasting him with his glass. “An inspector in the making!”
IN THE DAZZLING LIGHT OF THE LAGOON MORNING, THE police launch sped across the shining expanse of water that separated Venice from Sant’ Erasmo. Nic Costa sat up front, enjoying the breeze, trying to extract some local information out of Goldoni, the Venetian cop who was their boatman for the day, and thinking about the avid, enthusiastic way Emily had read the report on Hugo Massiter over breakfast, wondering if it was right for her to become involved. Her enthusiasm was, in part, fired by his own interest in the Englishman, which might well be misplaced. Dragging her into his obsession made him uneasy.
Even so, hindsight was pointless. Almost as pointless as trying to get Goldoni talking. The Venetian cop seemed to know the unseen channels of this inland sea by heart, never referring to a chart or a dial, just pointing the vessel in the direction of the Adriatic, setting the speed to cruise, changing tack when necessary, and picking at a pack of cigarettes throughout. Costa didn’t even know how he understood where to head on the wide expanse of low countryside now looming ahead of them. Sant’ Erasmo, in spite of its size, had no resident police presence, Goldoni had said. Most of the locals—the matti, the crazies—rarely used their cars to go elsewhere, so there were few traffic issues. There was just one bar and a couple of restaurants. Tourists were tolerated but never fleeced. There was nothing to occupy a cop on the vast, flat green farmland, though it covered a larger surface area than Venice itself. Just fields and fields of fruits and vegetables—artichokes and peppers, rocket and grapes—and a small flotilla of battered craft to ferry them to the Rialto markets each day.
They were close enough now to allow Costa to make out a few rusting vehicles, clearly unfit for the road, lumbering along the bright margin between land and sky. He cast a glance back into the cabin. Falcone was there, leaning back in his seat, eyes closed, looking asleep. It was that kind of morning: hot, hazy and airless, a time for lassitude. Peroni was quietly scanning the report he should have read the night before. Costa looked at Goldoni, a man not much older than he, chewing on a fast-expiring cigarette in the face of the sea breeze.