The creature paused for a moment, looked back at him. He was, Scacchi instantly understood, not quite human at that point, beyond rescue, and knew it too.
THE AUTHORITIES HAD ARRIVED. Late as ever.
Piero Scacchi watched in quiet dismay as two jets of water, thick, powerful streams, nothing like his own pathetic effort, burst through what remained of the windows, brutally taking out the last of the glass, then worked their way into the hall, so forceful they raked debris from the brickwork and the blackened, fragile timber that still was trying to support the foundry roof.
A storm cloud of steam rose from the kiln to join the smoke, the flames hissing in fury at their impending demise. And Scacchi looked again at what remained of the dark form, like human charcoal, that lay in front of him now, trying to remind himself this had once been a man.
He liked Uriel. He’d always felt touched by his sadness, and the strange sense of loss that seemed to hang around him.
Then one racing stream of water met the furnace itself, fell upon the beehive structure, fought with the baking hot brickworks of the convex roof.
The fire was dead, killed by a flood tide of foam and water. Some kind of victory had been won, too late for Uriel Arcangelo, but soon enough to save his family, that insular clan who would now, Scacchi thought, be gathering to witness the strange, inexplicable tragedy that had burst out of the night, bringing a fiery death to their doorstep.
Unable to stop himself, Piero Scacchi walked forward and peered into the belly of the beast. The object lay there, crumbling in the moaning embers, unmistakable, a shape that would, perhaps, explain everything, though not now because there was insufficient space in Piero Scacchi’s brain to accommodate the stress of comprehending what it might mean.
A tumultuous crash at his back made him turn his head. The firefighters’ axes were finally tackling the stupid wooden doors. If only the man inside had found the strength to turn the key.
If only . . .
Scacchi nodded at the white, fragile skull, sitting flat and jawless in the embers, shining back at him, and murmured a wordless benison.
A strong arm seized him by the shoulder; a voice barked at him to move. He removed the fireman’s fingers, stared into the man’s face with an expression that brooked no argument.
Then he went outside, back through the shattered doors this time, coughing, feeling his eyes begin to sting from the smoke, his skin chafe with steam burns, cuts and splinters bite into his hands.
On the cobbled quayside the family was gathering among the firemen and a couple of local police. Two Arcangeli were missing—Uriel and his wife. Some wordless intuition, which he hoped was just stupid, anxiety-fraught speculation, whispered to Piero Scacchi a version of what might have happened that night, and why, perhaps, a man might die rather than turn the key to an ancient set of doors and save himself.
Then Michele was on him, eyes flaming, shaking a bony hand in his face, so close his fingers touched Scacchi’s weary painful cheeks.
“Island moron!” this chief of the clan spat at him, shaking with fury. Michele was a short man, not far off sixty now. And in a suit already too. The Arcangeli dressed for their own funerals, Scacchi thought to himself, and cursed his own impudence.
Michele wound his two puny fists into Scacchi’s smoky, tattered jacket.
“What did you do, you idiot? What?”
Scacchi removed the man’s hands from his clothes and pushed him away, making sure that Michele saw this was not a good idea, not an action to be repeated.
Gabriele stood away from his elder brother, in an old suit too, silent, his dark, liquid eyes staring at the black shining water. Perhaps he was awaiting orders, as always. Raffaella was next to him, still in a nightdress, eyes bright with shock and anticipation, staring at Scacchi, with some sympathy, he thought, and a little fear.
An ambulance boat had arrived. A medic came up and looked at him. Scacchi shook his head and nodded towards the foundry.
“I tried to help,” he said quietly over his shoulder, half to Michele, half to anyone who cared to hear. He was aware of how old and hoarse and exhausted his voice sounded.
Then he marched past the busy firemen, past the bystanders, through the flashes of a lone photographer who had somehow reached the scene.
The dog sat upright, a taut black triangle by the ladder down to the boat, whimpering in gratitude for the man’s return.
“Home,” Scacchi muttered, and scooped up the animal in his arms, burying his head in its damp, smoky fur, wondering whether it was smoke or something else that brought tears to his eyes.
THE TWO MEN STOOD OUTSIDE SANTA LUCIA STATION, shielding their eyes against the bright sun, watching the constant commotion on the crammed and busy channel close to the head of the Grand Canal. It was close to eight in the morning and Venice’s brief rush hour was under way. Commuters poured in from the buses from Mestre and beyond, now discharging their loads across the water in Piazzale Roma. Vaporetti challenged one another for the next available landing jetty. Water taxis revved their diesels trying to impress the foreigners they were about to fleece. And an endless flow of lesser vessels—private dinghies, commercial barges, skiffs carrying flowers and vegetables, the low slender shape of the occasional gondola—fought to weave their way through the flotilla of traffic. Behind them a train clattered across the bridge from the mainland, terra firma, its rattle carrying across to the canal with a resonant, unnatural force.
Light and noise. Those, Nic Costa thought, would be the overriding impressions he’d take home with him to Rome once this tour of duty was done. Both seemed amplified in this city on the water, where everything was brighter than on land, every sound seemed to cause some distant echo among the warrens of tightly packed buildings crowded together over the constant wash of the lagoon.
The sirocco had expired overnight. Even at this early hour, high summer was upon the city, airless, humid and dank with the sweat of puzzled tourists trying to work out how to navigate the foreign metropolis in which they found themselves.
Gianni Peroni finished his small panino, stuffed with soft, raw prosciutto, and was about to jettison the paper bag it came in towards the canal when Costa’s disapproving frown stopped him. Instead, he thrust it into his pocket and cast a backwards glance at the steps of the forecourt where a couple of shady-looking characters were exchanging money.
“Why do you think stations always attract dirtbags?” he wondered. “I mean, half these people wouldn’t look out of place around Termini. In Rome it makes sense. Almost. But here?”
Nic Costa thought his partner was right, up to a point. He and Peroni had spent almost nine months in Venice now. It was exile of a kind, a form of punishment for an act of internal disobedience too subtle for conventional discipline. In truth their stay had almost been a holiday. Venice was so unlike Rome. Everyday crime here meant minor pickpockets, drunks and petty drugs. Even the layabouts around Santa Lucia bore only a passing resemblance to the hard-core hoods who made a crooked living around Rome’s main railroad station, and Gianni Peroni knew it. Still, Costa couldn’t throw off his natural sense of caution. In spite of appearances, Venice wasn’t some backwater paradise where a couple of cops, now in uniform because that too was part of their sentence, could allow their minds to wander for long. They’d been treated with too much suspicion and resentment in the little neighbourhood station in Castello for either of them to be comfortable. There was more too. The melancholy torpor of the lagoon was deceptive. Costa had heard snippets of the gossip going round the station. There were no big crimes filling the columns of the newspapers, but that didn’t mean there were no big criminals. Life was never black and white in Italy but, in the lagoon light, water, sky and buildings sometimes resembled the conjoined universe of doubt Turner depicted in those canvases of the city Costa had admired at the temporary Accademia exhibition earlier in the summer. Something about the place both disturbed and interested him. Venice reminded him of a bad yet familiar relative, dangerous to know, difficult to let go.