“This is not . . .” Teresa’s thoughts were on Silvio Di Capua, who’d called in sick at the morgue in Rome, flown to Venice the night before, and was now organising some private lab arrangements with a handful of specialist companies, places that could handle the material she needed to send them. “ . . . a conversation we should be having, Raffaella. There are risks.”
“What risks? They can fire you. And your police friends. What can they do to me?”
Teresa thought about some of the background material Nic and Gianni had managed to extract from the Questura’s computers before getting thrown out. There were more than mere careers at stake. Hugo Massiter had all the makings of a big-time political animal. If he’d been Italian, he could have got himself a seat in Parliament and looked very comfortable there. Massiter had connections, real criminal connections. And not with the old Italian guard either. The Englishman favoured the new Mafia, men from the Balkans who rarely felt bound by old-fashioned codes of honour.
“Tell me what you require,” Raffaella insisted. “I don’t need to know the details.”
It was, Teresa thought, worth a shot. And it would drag Raffaella away from this quiet, bright room, where the air conditioning still didn’t keep out the salty tang of the lagoon and the horns of the passing traffic. That would be a result in itself. The woman needed to remind herself there was a living world beyond these four white walls.
“Someone else was on the island that night,” Teresa said. “Not Aldo Bracci. Someone who had a reason to speak to Bella, we think. Someone . . .”
It was difficult to decide how far to go. She trusted this woman. She just didn’t want to get her involved too deeply. It would be wrong, too, to put ideas into her head. Although they’d done that for themselves. Perhaps her objections were ridiculous.
“I can’t say any more,” she admitted apologetically. “If you could look again, that would help. Anything unusual. Anything at all . . .”
Raffaella nodded. “Of course.”
Teresa glanced at the still figure in the bed, wishing he’d do something. Cough. Snore. Any damn thing.
“He will recover,” Raffaella declared. “I know it.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
A thought occurred to her. “Did Bracci say anything that night? When he had hold of you?”
“Just drunken nonsense. I didn’t understand any of it.”
Nonsense took on an importance of its own when it came from a man with a gun.
“What kind of thing?”
The dark eyes gazed at her, sad, resolute. “I can’t be sure but I thought he said, just once, ‘Where’s the Englishman?’ There were several Englishmen there that night. Massiter. Some of his lawyers. Some of the city’s art people. It probably doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Probably.”
How many Englishmen did Aldo Bracci know? Teresa wondered. Bracci didn’t move in art and legal circles. It had to be Massiter surely, not that a half-heard comment sounded much like evidence to her.
She took Raffaella’s hands again and asked, “This is just a wild guess, but do you think it’s possible Hugo Massiter and Bella were having an affair?”
“No!” A sudden smile broke Raffaella’s face. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Why? He looks like a ladies’ man to me.”
“Bella! Bella?” Raffaella looked aghast at the idea. “I mean this as no disrespect to her, but I think a man like him would set his sights a little higher. If the gossip’s right, he doesn’t sleep with the poor. I don’t think he needs to, does he?”
“You never saw any sign of it? He had that apartment next door.”
She waved away the notion with a firm hand. “During the day only. Michele insists on that. And Bella never went near the place. There are workmen around constantly. A man like Massiter would show some discretion, surely.”
“Then somewhere else? He’s got this boat, hasn’t he?”
“So they say. I still . . . it feels wrong.”
Teresa glanced at the unconscious Leo Falcone. “He always has some smart comment for these situations. Something that sends you back to look at what you had and try to see it in a new light. It rarely works. But then it doesn’t need to that often.”
Raffaella was struggling to come up with something. This was, Teresa’s instincts told her, a bad way to extract information from people.
“She left the island quite a lot during the day,” Raffaella suggested. “I assumed she was visiting friends. Or shopping. Bella never seemed short of a little money recently for some reason.”
“Then she could have visited his boat?”
“I suppose so.” She looked doubtful. “I’m sorry. This is all a little beyond me. Perhaps you’re right. Is that what an affair would be like? Fitting in a few minutes in bed during the occasional afternoon? It seems so feeble. So sad. But then I’m not an expert. Relationships . . .”
“Join the club,” Teresa agreed, when the other woman failed to continue. “Love is a mystery to me too.”
“But I thought you’d found it?”
Raffaella had seen her and Peroni several times in the hospital. Perhaps it showed.
“I think I have. I just don’t know how I got there.”
Raffaella Arcangelo nodded.
Teresa liked this woman. A lot. That was all the more reason to get her away from Leo’s bedside.
“L’amore è cieco,” Raffaella said softly, beautifully.
Love is blind.
THE IDEA THAT LEO FALCONE HAD BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED by anything more than bad luck offended Luca Zecchini’s sense of fairness. To make matters both more complicated and more interesting, the state police inspector’s two men had mentioned a name that pricked so many bad memories from the not-so-distant past it ruined Zecchini’s appetite completely.
“You seem remarkably sure about the guilty party, if I may say so,” he observed when the two cops from Rome had finished. “I heard Leo was the victim of an unfortunate accident. Sometimes these things are best left alone.”
“Until the next accident? And, yes, we’re sure.” Costa looked tougher, more determined than Zecchini had expected from Falcone’s description.
“I’ve followed this in the papers, Nic. They all say the lunatic the commissario shot was responsible for those murders. That part of the case is closed. All they’ve got to do now is deal with their own. Are you telling me there’s more? That Leo was shot deliberately?”
“No,” Peroni conceded, and Zecchini found, to his shame, that a small part of him regretted the fact there would be no easy way to send them packing with their fantasies. “It was an accident,” the big Roman cop continued. “But killing Aldo Bracci wasn’t. Randazzo was improvising there. Trying to do his paymaster a favour.”
The two of them stared at him, expectant.
“Even if you’re correct, gentlemen,” Zecchini answered, “what can I do? This is a case for the police. Not us. We don’t intervene in each other’s affairs. It would be unheard of. I couldn’t contemplate that.”
“We’re not asking you to cross any lines,” Costa said quickly. “This falls squarely in your existing responsibilities. Art theft. Smuggling.”
Luca Zecchini doubted that greatly.
“You know,” he replied, “perhaps you should be wondering what Leo would be doing in these circumstances. He’s a practical man. He’d know when he was beaten. You’re off duty for the time being. You don’t have the right to question people. To investigate anyone, least of all someone of this man’s standing. Also, I always found Leo to be reluctant, meticulously reluctant, to reach hard decisions in advance of hard evidence.”