ALCHEMY. CHEMISTRY. ANALYSIS. There was a big black hole in the Tosis’ findings, one that hadn’t been looked into closely enough because everything had to be signed off in a rush, and by another branch of the Tosi family, who probably didn’t bother to get too involved either. But without some scrupulous work there, Uriel Arcangelo’s death would remain a mystery, would nag her with its unproven possibilities and hidden corners. People didn’t just catch fire from the inside out without a reason. Not in her world. It was important to make this clear.
It was important to remember the medical details too. Bella’s pregnancy was doubtless the news that would start punching Falcone’s buttons. But it was Uriel who interested Teresa. Uriel with his lousy sense of smell. If someone had soaked his apron in lighter fluid, would he have noticed?
There was a prerequisite and it was a lot to ask. If any other pathologist had made the same request of her, she’d have sent them away with a sound ear-thrashing. All the same . . . Alberto Tosi was a gentleman.
It took ten minutes to track him down. The man, to her amazement, was taking coffee and cake in a café, not poring over what little evidence he had, trying to wring some answers out of it.
“Doctor!” Tosi said cheerfully.
“Please call me Teresa,” she replied. “If I may call you Alberto.”
“Of course!”
It was best to be direct, to act as if this were a normal request, one that could scarcely be refused.
“I need Mestre to send a sample from Uriel’s apron and clothing. And a piece of timber from the floor where he was found. The burned part. Nothing large. I need these sent overnight by courier to my lab in Rome.”
She recalled how technology impressed him. “They have a new machine there,” she lied. “Sort of a spectroscope on steroids. We borrowed the thing from the FBI to see if it’s worth buying. I doubt we’ll throw up anything you haven’t uncovered yourself, of course, but it would be extremely useful if we could test some material from the fire.”
There was a pause on the line.
“This is most unusual. Surely . . .”
“We only have the machine until Wednesday, Alberto. You know what Americans are like. I’m probably breaking the law just telling you this. Naturally, I’m not trying to interfere with your work. It’s just the best opportunity I have to evaluate this particular toy.”
The decision hung in the balance.
“If I buy the thing, you’re welcome to come and play with it in the future,” she promised.
Teresa heard the clink of a coffee cup, tried to imagine the glint of excitement in the old pathologist’s eyes.
“This machine. What does it do?” Alberto Tosi asked, breathless.
“It’s a kind of . . .”
Shit, she thought. Why did he have to ask a question like that, just when she least expected it?
“ . . . magic,” she stuttered. “You wait and see.”
IT WAS INFURIATING. EVERY QUESTION HE AND PERONI threw at the Arcangeli brothers got bounced back with a curt, unassailable reply. The brothers weren’t even surly enough to be called evasive. Maybe they really did have nothing new to tell. Costa finally got sick of Michele’s cigarette smoke, excused himself and decided to take another run around the foundry. The brothers and their workmen had been busy. He could see now that they would, indeed, be back in production before long. New pipe work gleamed around the patched-up furnace.
He walked idly around the interior, thinking, doing what Falcone would have advised: trying to imagine himself into the scene. Uriel Arcangelo, alone with the fire and the molten crucible of glass that lay alongside his wife’s blazing body, turning to dust in the flames.
Practical matters.
They counted, Falcone said.
Costa tried to work out what else they could have missed the previous day. It was impossible to tell. The floor was swept clean. Any shred of unseen evidence that had lurked there before was now surely gone. The picture the island—perhaps the entire city—wanted to present to them, of a guilty Uriel trapped to die by the side of his victim, still stood in place.
Costa wandered over to the carpenters and stared at the new doors. They didn’t look good enough to last more than a couple of cold lagoon winters. The Arcangeli’s workmen were on a different scale from those Massiter was employing on the palace along the quay. These were odd-job men, trying to come up with a quick fix. From what he’d seen of the previous doors, these simply followed the same design: a pair of thick wooden slabs, almost four metres high, joined in the middle by a heavy mortise lock, and attached to the original ancient hinges, which were so solid they had remained when the firemen first entered, swinging their axes.
The new doors were ajar now. Behind, on the quay, Costa could hear Michele and Gabriele Arcangelo talking to each other about when to restart the furnace, about glass, chemicals and recipes, times and temperatures, like two cooks trying to agree on some arcane recipe.
Peroni wandered over, grumbling, then smiled at the locals. The two carpenters looked like father and son, both squat men, the elder with a beard. Murano seemed to run on families.
“Nice day,” Peroni said with a grin. “You boys finished here?”
“Finished what we’ve been told to do,” the father said.
“So they’re back in business?” Costa asked.
“They were in business before?” the son replied, extracting a brief chuckle from his old man.
The two men watched, smoking, idle, as Costa walked up and pushed both doors, gently. Each went back on its hinges smoothly, and stayed open.
“You’d think there’d be springs,” Peroni commented. “To make sure they’d stay closed. If that was my place, I’d have springs. Too many lazy bastards in this world leaving doors wide open. And all those secrets inside.”
“You’d think,” the father agreed curtly. “We replace like for like, just as the insurance people say.”
“Is it really a secret?” Peroni wondered. “Making glass, I mean?”
“We don’t make glass.”
Costa tried each door lightly. The left one fell into place, as it should. The right stopped marginally short. A tiny amount, so little that most people wouldn’t have noticed. Nevertheless, they hadn’t been like this when Piero Scacchi arrived. Someone had to have closed the right hand door deliberately. It couldn’t have fallen shut by itself. Except . . .
The revelation sparked in his head with a blinding clarity. Uriel couldn’t have unlocked the door. His key didn’t work. It must have either been open, slightly ajar as it was now, or someone had let him in.
He pulled the door shut. The lock was automatic. Which meant that, had Uriel let himself in through the open door then closed it behind him, he was effectively trapped in the room. It seemed a neat ruse. Uriel would be bound to visit the furnace to work. Once he was inside, there was no easy way out. Costa made a mental note to pass this on to Falcone. It could be useful information, and he wanted to make a point: that the door and the lock puzzled him too.
The old man was eyeing him with open, mute aggression.
“What’s the big deal anyway?” he demanded. “All the papers are saying what happened. A man knocks off his wife. Doesn’t happen much around here. Unless you know otherwise.”
“We’re from Rome,” Peroni said pleasantly, then turned the key in the lock and pushed open the door to keep an eye on the Arcangeli brothers, who were still in deep discussion on the quay. “We’ve got shit for brains, my partner and me, in case you hadn’t noticed. Do you know something? We don’t have a damn clue about what happens around here. I don’t even know why Uriel would want to kill his wife. Do you?”