There was just one problem, and it was both the prize and the potential pitfall in the present proceedings. The young cop seemed to think that, if he found what he wanted, Correr would simply land his plane on the water, taxi into the shore, leave him there, and then zoom back home. Given those big Edo floats visible to all, it was an understandable mistake. But his Cessna had been flown with the internal carriage wheels extended for as long as Correr could remember. He’d been talked into buying the expensive old floatplane by a flying-club regular who’d omitted to mention one salient point: The law forbade him to land it anywhere in the lagoon. Only sea use was allowed, and the choppy waters of the Adriatic were deemed too difficult for all but the most experienced of pilots. The only aircraft Correr had ever landed on water was a Piper Cub at the school in Florida, and that was a small, ancient, two-seater tandem contraption of canvas and wood, one that was started by standing on the float and hand swinging the prop. It was more like a toy than a real aircraft, a plaything that flitted in and out of stretches of water rarely troubled by more than a passing breeze.
The 180 was a complex machine, with a variable-pitch prop, more controls than he could handle sometimes, even after a decade of ownership, and the awkward retractable undercarriage that would have to be wound up into the floats before the plane so much as touched a single wave. And the lagoon was no still patch of Everglades lake, more the sea in miniature, with a dappled surface that was unreadable from above, riddled with invisible currents, under constant barrage from random blasts of gusting chop rolling all the way down from the Dolomite Mountains. A part of him told Andrea Correr he’d be insane to do as the young cop insisted. A part of him said he’d never get this opportunity again in his life, and he could always blame the police if it all turned horribly wrong.
They’d been round and round most of the obscure islands of the lagoon, twice, all at the same barely legal height, all with the Cessna just hanging in the air, bumping above its stall speed, so that the young cop got the best view from the right-hand passenger seat in the turns. Correr had lost count of how many cigarettes he’d smoked, despatching the butts through the open side window. He knew a few of these places: San Francesco del Deserto, with its Franciscan monastery. Lazzaretto Nuovo, the former leper colony that now housed a scattering of disused military buildings. Santa Cristina, with its tiny brick church. Others just came from the cop’s tourist map, a litany of unknown names, La Salina, La Cura, Campana, Sant’ Ariano . . . just hunks of grassy rock deserted over the centuries, with, at best, a few derelict buildings to indicate people had once lived there.
The cop was starting to look desperate. Correr couldn’t work out whether to feel disappointed or relieved. The thought of putting the plane’s fat feet down on the lagoon still sent a tingle of anticipation and dread down his spine.
They were now over Mazzorbo, the long, barely inhabited island next to Burano, to which it was connected by a bridge. Correr hunted ducks hereabouts in winter, and liked to eat at the restaurant by the vaporetto stop where, in season, the local wildfowl regularly found their way onto the plate, and at prices that were a fraction of those in the city.
He glanced at the fuel gauge: good for another hour. Oil pressure and temperatures looked steady. The old Cessna was a reliable beast. Pretty soon, though, they’d run out of places to look. The lagoon wasn’t so large from the air. They’d been low enough to see into people’s gardens and swimming pools, low enough to get him a ticking off once he got back to the Lido. No one liked intrusive flying. It just brought in more complaints.
“So what exactly are you looking for?” Correr yelled over the noise of the engine.
The pair of them wore noise-cancelling David Clark headsets, but they still fought to keep out the racket from the hefty Lycoming engine up front.
“A man and a woman,” the cop barked back. “Hiding.” Which didn’t seem of much help.
“If I wanted to hide,” Correr suggested, “I’d do it there.”
He popped the cigarette in his mouth once more and pointed to the island city on the horizon. From this height it seemed modest, a forest of brick spires rising from a tightly packed community of houses.
“They can’t be there. People would recognise them.”
“Then maybe they’re gone.”
The cop shook his head vigorously. “Doesn’t add up. They don’t have the money. Besides, they’ve got ties. Strong ties. I just don’t see them running.”
“So why are we looking in the lagoon?”
The little cop was gazing in the direction of Murano at that moment, towards the trio of weird, decrepit buildings Correr had been reading about in the papers. One day soon there could be a hotel there, and a new gallery, thanks to the rich Englishman who was closer to men of influence in Venice than a middle-class man like Andrea Correr could ever hope for. Still, these developments were worth remembering. The travel agent in him knew there could be money to be had soon.
The cop squirmed in the passenger seat then turned and looked at him. “If I’m right, they had some help. From a farmer on Sant’ Erasmo. Someone who knows this lagoon like the back of his hand. If he wanted to hide them somewhere, I thought . . .”
He went quiet.
Correr wished he’d mentioned this idea before they took off.
“You’re not local, are you? Most of the little islands are uninhabited. You couldn’t just hide someone there. You’d need a roof over your head. Besides, those little ones get looked after by the conservationists and the archaeological people. They’d be screaming the roof down if they found so much as an empty Coke can. I don’t think . . .”
“I know, I know.”
It was a stupid quest and Correr saw he didn’t have to point that out.
“So where would you hide someone?” the cop asked.
Correr laughed. It was obvious. “If I was a farmer on Sant’ Erasmo? In my back garden. Or somewhere nearby. That place is bigger than Venice. No one goes there except the locals. I don’t think they even have police.”
“They don’t.”
“Then there you go. Search the island. You can’t do it from the air. You’re going to need a lot of men too because the matti wouldn’t piss on you if flames were coming out of your ears.”
“Take me back there,” the man ordered.
“Sure . . .” Correr wheeled the big tin bird round and set the nose on the low silhouette of Sant’ Erasmo, black against the bright horizon. “Anywhere in particular?”
“Southern tip. Away from the vaporetto stop. Away from everyone. You have a maritime map of the lagoon by any chance?”
“Four. They’re known as charts, by the way.”
Correr reached into the glove compartment, scrabbled behind several half-spent packets of cigarettes, and found the set he wanted. The cop stared at them, surprised.
“This is a floatplane,” Correr explained. “Besides, I sail too. And I happen to like charts.”
“They show buildings? Individual houses?”
“You’d be amazed what you can find on charts. Of course, on Sant’ Erasmo you’d need to double-check everything.”
“Why?”
People from terra firma. They just didn’t get it.