The two workmen shuffled awkwardly on their feet. Both said nothing.
“You’re local,” Costa added, accusingly. “Two people, your own people, are dead. Aren’t you even interested?”
“He wasn’t one of ours,” the elder grumbled. “No one ever said that. People here mind their business. You should try it.”
“Does that make him less of a man?” Costa asked.
“You didn’t know him. You don’t know any of them. You wouldn’t understand.”
“But Bella was one of yours. The Braccis have been here for years.”
The son spat on the dry, dusty ground and said, simply, “Braccis.”
Peroni gave Costa the look. It was clear they weren’t liked either. And Nic Costa knew there was no point in trying to find out why. Talking to these two was as futile as throwing questions at the Arcangeli.
The men were looking behind him.
“Now she,” the younger one said, a note of respect in his voice, “is different.”
Costa turned. He saw Raffaella Arcangelo striding towards her brothers, heading across the narrow wharf at a determined pace, anger in her eyes. Falcone followed behind.
“Michele!” the woman yelled. “Michele!”
It was one of those public events you couldn’t not watch. The carpenters were all eyes, taking in everything.
“You should check those doors are done. They look a little flimsy to me,” Costa ordered them.
“Stick to police work, sonny,” the old man bit back. “We’re taking a break.”
Then the pair ambled over towards the group by the water, just close enough to hear every word of the furious family confrontation developing under the burning sun. A noisy one, too, not without interest, though best played out, Costa judged, indoors.
He went up to Falcone and whispered in the inspector’s ear. “Sir . . . This shouldn’t be happening. Not here. It’s too public.”
“Let’s see,” Falcone murmured.
Costa nodded towards the pair of eavesdropping carpenters. “We’ve company . . .”
“Forget about the company.”
Costa glanced at Peroni and knew his partner was thinking the same thing. This was the old Falcone routine, the one they hadn’t seen since they left Rome. The trick the inspector used from time to time, of letting a situation come to a head, letting the emotions run out, then seeing where they led. Sometimes Costa couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t like letting a couple of cars crash just to see who was the worst driver.
And something was different here. Falcone had an interest in this woman, one that went beyond the professional. It was implicit, in the hungry way he was watching her, that she intrigued Leo Falcone.
What ensued was a bitter, full-on domestic fight among the Arcangeli, beneath the flickering flame of their iron namesake, an event that went, in some way, to the very heart of this peculiar family. It was as if Raffaella had been waiting for years to throw this kind of fury in the direction of her eldest brother, and with it all the accusations she’d been harbouring. Of lies. Of deceit. Of a failure to protect the family’s interests. The tide had burst and Costa wondered if any of them, Raffaella or Michele, understood how difficult it would be to return to their previous state of mutual acceptance once the storm had subsided.
Michele stood there, arms crossed, watching her, saying nothing, that frozen side of his face turned towards her anger, as if it were some kind of shield to protect him from the fiery stream of words that tumbled from his sister’s mouth.
“You knew,” she said, finally. “You knew Bella was pregnant. She didn’t tell Uriel. She didn’t tell me. But she came to you. And you did nothing.”
The dead eye glinted back at her like flawed glass, run through with some streak of impurity.
“Say something,” she spat at him. “Speak, Michele! It’s not like you to be lost for words.”
The dead side of his face turned away from her. He gazed at the hazy waterline, the little island of San Michele and the city in the distance, then returned to confront her again, good side visible.
“Of course I knew!” he yelled. “I’m supposed to know these things, aren’t I? That’s what I do around here. Take on all your problems and fix them. Because God knows you can’t do that for yourselves. Not you. Not him . . .” Michele nodded towards Gabriele, who stood silent, watching the water. “Not poor dead Uriel most of all. What do you think he’d have done if I’d told him? Huh? If I’d said his wife had got herself knocked up? And who by? Her own stinking brother. What do you think Uriel would have made of that?”
Raffaella was staring at him, gasping for breath. Unable to speak.
“You’re sure of that?” Falcone asked him. “About the brother? She told you?”
“She didn’t need to tell me,” Michele replied mournfully. “We all knew what went on between them . . . .”
“That was years ago,” Costa said. “There’s no evidence it happened recently.”
“Ask her!” Michele barked, pointing at his sister. “She heard them. She knew. She never dared tell Uriel either.”
Raffaella shook her head. Tears were beginning to stream down her cheeks. “I only said it was a possibility. It could all have been a mistake. Perhaps it wasn’t Aldo.”
“Then whose brat was it?” Michele demanded. “Not Uriel’s, that’s for sure. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She’d still have come to me to sort out the whole damn thing. And I’d still have done it. I’d fixed for her to get rid of it. Today, in case you’re interested. Paid in advance. I don’t suppose I’ll get that back from the clinic.”
“We had the right to know,” she insisted.
“She didn’t seem to think so,” Michele declared, exasperated. Costa stared into his face. There could have been the making of tears in that single living eye. “I didn’t want this, Raffaella. I didn’t want any of this but it’s what God gave me and I can’t walk away. I’m sorry. I’m deeply, deeply . . .”
The old grey face went into his hands. Costa watched Michele’s shoulders begin to heave, heard the choked sob come, just once, from his hidden mouth.
“Michele, Michele,” she murmured, then clutched her brother tightly, whispered some unheard words into his ear. The two of them stood there locked together on the waterfront, watched avidly by three cops and a couple of Murano carpenters who had an expression on their smug faces Nic Costa didn’t like at all. And Gabriele, who sat down on the kerb edge of the quay now, eyes on the water still, looking like a lost child.
“I said this was a matter to be conducted indoors,” Costa reminded Falcone with undisguised bitterness.
To his surprise, Falcone nodded, looking repentant. He couldn’t take his eyes off the distraught Raffaella, clutching her brother.
“I heard you, Nic. I’m sorry. I keep trying to apply the rules I use in Rome. It just doesn’t work here, does it? Jesus . . .”
The carpenters were slinking towards the bridge, back to town. Father and son, for sure. They had that closeness Nic had seen on so many Murano faces, a tight, conspiratorial intimacy that formed a barrier to the world outside.
“No matter,” Falcone grumbled. “It’s out of the bag now. I want to see this Bracci character. I need to know what he looks like.”
Peroni nodded at the departing pair. “We’re going to have to hurry if we want to be first,” the big cop observed.
Falcone sniffed. He looked tired. Unsettled. The heat was getting to all of them, Costa thought. This was all supposed to be so easy.
“We’ll wait,” the inspector ordered, watching Raffaella Arcangelo detach herself from her brother, tears staining her cheeks. “I owe someone an apology.”