The farmer nodded at the peppers. “You can let them dry. They’ll keep all winter. Put them in some oil. I guess you have the idea.”
“You make wine too?” The big man was beaming over every last item in the bags, looking as if he wanted to start cooking there and then.
“It’s called self-sufficiency,” Scacchi said. “You learn it in a place like this.”
“I guess so,” Peroni said. “Don’t you ever take a day off?”
Scacchi fixed him straight in the eye. “Do you?”
They could have left it there, Costa thought. They could have let Leo Falcone have his way, walking on, not bothering with all those little questions, the ones that seemed irrelevant, and usually were. Except that wasn’t Falcone’s routine. Not in Rome. Sometimes it was the job of a friend and colleague to issue reminders.
“What do you think happened to Laura Conti and Daniel Forster?” Costa asked, scrutinising Scacchi’s bland, bloodless face for emotion. And finding none, just hearing Leo Falcone utter a low, heartfelt curse under his breath.
“Why ask me? I’m just some scruffy farmer from the lagoon.”
“It was your cousin they killed. You must have known them.”
The dog lay down on the hard, dry ground, burying its nose in its paws, aware of the sudden chill in the conversation.
“Must I?” Scacchi asked.
“You mean they didn’t kill him?” Costa persisted.
“Nic . . .” Falcone warned, ostentatiously looking at his watch.
“I mean a scruffy farmer from the lagoon doesn’t have a clue about what goes on . . .”—Scacchi nodded towards Venice—“ . . . over there. Any more than you do.”
It was an answer, of a kind. Nic Costa didn’t know what to make of it, although he was glad he’d asked, in spite of Falcone’s obvious annoyance.
Scacchi was thinking about something. He asked them to wait, then walked back to his house, a low, ramshackle collection of old wood and corrugated iron, made more cheerful by a line of tall sunflowers, nodding their yellow heads in the light sea breeze.
“The next time I say no,” Falcone declared, “you will listen. Or hear about it afterwards.”
“Understood,” Costa replied, and lived with the icy chill that followed.
Scacchi was returning with something in his hand. He threw them on the table: four postcards, each picture up. Standard tourist stuff. Cape Town. Bangkok. Sydney. Buenos Aires. The last, from Argentina, was posted three months before. The others spanned the previous year, roughly four months apart.
Costa turned them over. On the back of each was a single scrawled name, printed in individual letters, each drawn in a tidy, almost childlike hand.
Daniel.
“I imagine he wants to tell me they’re alive,” Scacchi said.
“It just says ‘Daniel,’” Costa pointed out.
“True.” Scacchi nodded. “So what do you want me to say? I don’t know why he sends them to me. I scarcely knew either of them. Perhaps it’s insurance in case you people come knocking. Perhaps . . . Really. I don’t know. I don’t care either.”
“Can I take these?” Costa asked.
“If it makes you happy . . .”
He was about to put the cards in his pocket when Leo Falcone placed a hand over them.
“That won’t be necessary,” the inspector said curtly. “This isn’t part of our investigation. I’m grateful for your time. Now . . .”
Piero Scacchi and his dog stood immobile, watching them as the police launch left Sant’ Erasmo, two dark, unbending figures, at home in the solitary verdant landscape that enclosed them.
They sat mutely in the boat cabin for a while. Then Falcone glanced at Costa.
“I don’t wish to labour the point. But I am not going to complicate what we have any further by going round picking up signed postcards from people who decamped from this place years ago, even if they are wanted for other crimes.”
“I heard you,” Costa said.
Falcone glowered at him, unable to miss the edge in the young policeman’s voice.
“But . . . ?” he prompted.
“But they weren’t signed postcards. They were printed. Letter by letter.”
The inspector was wrong. It was time to let him know.
“Daniel Forster was a student at Oxford. A good one too, by all accounts,” Costa went on. “Could he fool everyone—Massiter, the media, us—and still be unable to sign his own name?”
EMILY DEACON STOOD ON THE SMALL BRIDGE TO THE island, beneath the outstretched arm of the iron angel, listening to the beacon’s sighs, nervous, uncertain of herself. This was a rare condition. Since she left the service of the U.S. government eight months before, she had refused to allow herself moments of doubt. Moving to Europe seemed obvious. She wanted to study architecture, Italian architecture more than anything. The school in Rome was superb, and more than happy to accept her. And there was Nic. Kind Nic, shy Nic, a man who wanted only to make her happy, give her everything she wanted. Except, it seemed to her, himself. Something held him back, an invisible barrier she couldn’t penetrate. Work had forced them together. Once that bond disappeared—as it had to—a vacuum had taken its place. Nic had spent most of the time in exile in Venice, busy almost every weekend. She’d moved into the gorgeous old farmhouse on the outskirts of Rome and found herself, almost immediately, alone, reliant on awkward phone calls instead of real human contact. Some vital step in the process of building a relationship had failed to take place along the way. They needed to retrace their steps, to find what had drawn them together in the first place, return to that moment, and discover a way forward again, together. After reading the report on Hugo Massiter, she understood what the catalyst, if such a thing existed, might be. The same element that threw them together in the beginning. Work.
Now she found herself hesitating on the bridge of the Isola degli Arcangeli, surprised to discover a part of her still enjoyed the old game. Architecture was fine. It stimulated her intellect. It was a challenge, a mountain to climb. But she’d spent four years learning how to be an FBI agent, and a person didn’t shrug off all that training so easily. She wanted to be part of Falcone’s case. There was a quicker, bigger buzz there than anything she could expect in a studio.
Hugo Massiter strode up to the black iron gate that kept the public out of the island. By his side was an older man with a damaged face, one side stricken dead by a stroke. He unlocked the heavy mechanism without a word of welcome, watched her enter, then locked it again before stomping off towards the furnace, on the far end of the island from the exhibition hall, with its scaffolding and workmen.
“Mr. Massiter,” Emily said hesitantly. “When I called I thought you’d have a secretary or something. I didn’t want to interrupt your day.”
“Just me and the brickies here.” Massiter sighed. “I’m not a fan of domestics, apart from Michele there, who lets people in and out. Apparently the rest of us aren’t trusted yet, even though I pay the rent. Welcome to Venice. Can I help?”
“I was hoping for a quick look,” she confessed. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t expect you to be my guide.”
“I remember you from the station,” Massiter said pleasantly. “You and the young police officer are . . . ?”
“Friends.”