Teresa Lupo mistrusted the imagination deeply, instinctively. She was a scientist. She was aware of how dangerous it was to produce a theory first, then search for the facts to support it. But watching Nic that night, seeing the fury and determination on his face, understanding for the first time how close he’d grown to Falcone since the death of his own father, Teresa realized she’d do anything in her power to help him. This wasn’t the Nic Costa she’d first come to know and admire when he was a green detective in the Rome Questura, a little lost in the centro storico, the kind of peripheral figure who looked as if he might not last out the year. Events had changed him. Leo Falcone and Gianni Peroni had changed him, and been changed in return too. And part of that change reflected on each of these three very different, now very close, men. It was inconceivable that Nic and Gianni would walk away from this event. Inconceivable that she wouldn’t throw in her lot with them.
And Emily . . .
AFTER FOUR DAYS extracting every last scrap of information they could from the Questura, before they got ordered on paid leave, the men left Venice, desperate to try to rustle up a few allies. Emily was gone too, on a different kind of mission, one that filled Teresa with deep misgivings because she understood how well a former FBI agent was trained for that kind of work, and the ruthless, selfless determination Emily was likely to adopt in pursuing it.
Now she was left alone, clear about her own role. To find forensic evidence, to nail down some facts that linked Hugo Massiter with Bella and Uriel Arcangelo, could, perhaps, place him in the fornace that terrible night. More than anything, they needed to provide some sort of motive for why he would endanger his own business plans by murdering the pair of them in the first place.
She looked at the woman sitting by Falcone’s bed, upright, alert, as if she truly expected Leo would wake up any second, smile and ask for a coffee and a couple of biscotti. Teresa Lupo felt a pang of guilt. She wasn’t alone at all. Raffaella Arcangelo had waited at Falcone’s bedside eighteen or more hours a day since he’d arrived. And by the third day Teresa had, without asking Peroni or anyone else, plucked up the courage to bring her into their confidence, just a little, just enough so that a favour was hard to refuse. Raffaella was a good, straightforward woman. She admired Leo Falcone, seeing clearly in him something that Teresa could only glimpse in the misty distance. She was an Arcangelo too, close to what had happened. She had access to the house and all the materials they needed to try to work some magic.
Teresa gazed down at the carrier bag of objects, each secure in a plastic envelope, which the two of them had assembled from the mansion and the furnace that morning while Michele and Gabriele were away, talking to the lawyers about Massiter’s impending acquisition. Most important of all, some items from Bella and Uriel’s bathroom that would provide DNA.
One of the devices attached to the unconscious Leo Falcone made a kind of beeping noise, then went silent. Wires and meters, CRT displays and drips. Machines designed to keep a human being alive.
“There’s no need to stay around,” Raffaella Arcangelo said in her calm, clear voice, shaking Teresa out of her reverie. “I thought you had things you needed to do.”
“N-n-no . . .” she stuttered, surprised at being brought back into the real world.
Raffaella was in the position she’d come to adopt by the bed. Stiff-backed in the hard hospital chair next to Falcone, a book in her hand. A woman’s book, Teresa noticed. An intelligent romantic tale that all the papers had been writing about of late. It seemed to her that Raffaella Arcangelo had grown a little spinsterish before her time.
“Nor do you,” Teresa observed quietly.
“I know. But I can comfort myself with the thought that it’s just selfish. There’s nothing left for me to do on the island today. Michele’s locked in with the lawyers again. Gabriele too. Once that’s over . . .”
She’d reached some kind of a decision, Teresa felt. One that had, perhaps, eased some long-felt burden.
“Once that’s over I’m leaving. It’s not . . .” She glanced at the prone Falcone. “ . . . what happened. It’s just a decision I should have made years ago. Now there’ll be a little money. Perhaps I’ll go back to Paris. I liked it there. I was a student, briefly. Unless I can be of some help to Leo.”
Teresa Lupo never looked over her shoulder. There was too much in the way of personal wreckage back there. And for Raffaella? Just a few dim memories. Faded, like old watercolours. It seemed a terrible time to start chasing them.
“This is an unusual thing for the likes of me to say,” Teresa observed, “but I’d advise against making any rash decisions.”
She shook her head. “It’s not rash. I’ve wanted to leave for years. I just felt tied to that stupid island. To Michele’s ridiculous dreams. He thinks he’s some kind of a hero. Sticking to the old ways. Trying to keep some ancient craft alive when the rest of them turn out junk for the tourists. It’s a delusion. I’ve lived here all my life and I can see what Venice is becoming. A graveyard. A beautiful one, I’ll admit, but a graveyard nevertheless. It drains the life out of you in the end. That’s happened with Michele already, and he’ll stay here ignoring that fact until it consumes him. I won’t.” Her bright eyes glittered with defiance. “I won’t. Once I’ve seen Leo back on his feet . . .”
There was a question there, one Teresa didn’t feel able to answer at that moment.
“Once I’ve lost that burden from my conscience,” Raffaella continued, “I’m gone.”
Teresa groaned, pulled up a chair by the bed, and took her hands. “Listen, please. What happened wasn’t your fault. What—”
“I was the one Bracci was threatening! If I hadn’t been stupid enough to let him get hold of me—”
“Then he would have grabbed hold of someone else. And Leo and Nic and Gianni would have done exactly what they did. Don’t fool yourself. They’d have done it for anyone.”
Raffaella stared at the still figure beneath the single white sheet. “He will recover, won’t he? That friend of yours seemed optimistic.”
She couldn’t lie. “There’s a chance. There’s a chance he won’t. The brain’s a curious organ. Pino knows more about it than anyone I’ve ever met. All the same . . .”
Raffaella Arcangelo leaned forward, earnest, suddenly intense, less in control of herself than at any time Teresa had witnessed. “He will recover. I know it. And if there’s any justice in this world, someone will pay for all this bloodshed too.”
Teresa Lupo blinked, trying to take all this in. She’d assumed Raffaella shared the opinion of the world at large. That Aldo Bracci, a man found with Bella’s keys in his pocket, a man once accused of sleeping with his own sister, was responsible for the two deaths in the fornace, and had met a deserved fate. There’d even been a letter in the local paper, La Nuova, suggesting Commissario Randazzo deserved a promotion, not suspension, for putting Bracci down like an animal that night.
Raffaella gently removed Teresa’s hand from hers. “I’m not a fool,” she said. “I know why you’re asking for these things. Leo confided in me. If he could speak now, he’d confirm that. I know why you’re looking at Bella’s belongings. You’re not part of any official police investigation. You want the man who really did this to Leo. I want the man who did this to Leo and to my brother. And to poor Bella.” The dark, earnest eyes gazed at her, pleading. “I tried to help Leo,” Raffaella continued. “And I failed. I won’t fail again. I promise. I owe him that.”