“Because the matti do what the hell they like. Throw up a little baracca for granmama, just so’s she doesn’t have to annoy the hell out of you living in the same house. No one’s going to tell the authorities. It happens all the time. And why not? Out here, who cares?”
It took less than three minutes. Then they went into another forty-degree roll, Correr feeding some extra throttle in and kicking the rudder hard so enough g-force came in to squeeze them into their seats a little. His passenger hadn’t looked a good flyer when he came on board. Now Correr was changing his opinion. Just to check, he pumped in some more throttle and took the aircraft over to sixty degrees, nailing it into as steep a turn as he dared at that kind of altitude, one that forced both of them hard into their seats and pitched the nose of the Cessna round in a vicious circle, as if it were tethered to a wire. At that angle even he could see down below: fields and shacks and mess. Just the usual.
But, a third of the way through the turn, he spotted something on his passenger’s face. Correr went through three sixty, levelled off, same height, same place on the horizon he’d entered the turn, gave himself ten out of ten for flying, then pointed the Cessna’s nose out to sea. The cop stopped looking out the window and stared at him instead.
“There’s a little shack down there. It’s not on the map. I didn’t notice it before.”
“Like I said. It’s called a chart. There’s a reason you didn’t see it. You weren’t looking. That’s one thing you learn in a little plane. How to look.”
The man nodded. “When you made all that noise a woman came out and started staring up at us.”
“Was she pretty?”
“Couldn’t see.”
“Maybe we should go back and take another look. A little lower this time.” He eyed the cop, expectant. “You are going to get me out of all the shit if it hits the fan, right?”
“Guaranteed,” he said promptly, then strained backwards, looking towards the green tip of Sant’ Erasmo.
Correr did the same. There was a tiny beach not far from the end. He had an idea what was coming next.
“I want you to put me down there,” the cop said, glancing at his watch. “Now.”
“And then?”
“Then you go back to the airfield. I won’t need you anymore.”
He sounded uncertain about that last point. Correr wondered whether to object.
“I can carry four people in this thing, you know. It’s no problem. Really.”
The cop smiled, for the first time since they’d met, and, for no particular reason, Andrea Correr decided he liked this little man, in spite of the badge.
“Thanks, but no thanks. You’ve done enough. Just get us down, please.”
Correr glanced back at the island. Someone was burning charcoal or something. The smoke was drawing straight off towards the open Adriatic, not too quickly, all in a straight line.
Land into a good, reliable wind. Taxi round and take off in the same direction.
His mouth was dry, in the way it used to be when he was first learning to fly on the Lido all those years ago, in a tiny fixed-gear Cessna 150 that was a baby brother to this more complex bigger beast. He could still remember those lessons in Florida. They made it sound so easy after a while. In a way, making it easy was part of the secret.
He laughed to himself, took the half-smoked cigarette from his lips and flicked it out the window. Then he worked the wirepull to withdraw the wheels back into the floats. The plane had been through its annual certificate of airworthiness only two months before. Everything—flaps, ailerons, throttle, gear—worked smoothly.
He pulled the 180 round into the wind, facing the island, and set up for a long, flat descent, nose up, holding the bulky Edos off the water, at just the right angle, until he’d killed enough speed to make it safe to put them down on the waves. Hit it badly and you’d soon discover how hard an object water really is. Someone had written off a Cub while he was there, and that was on a lake that looked like perfect glass, not the dappled, random rippled mesh of wavelets that stood between them and the island.
The man in the next seat was bracing himself nervously. Correr knew why. He’d done the same the first time he’d landed on water. You never appreciated how much the surface would brake the aircraft. Water wasn’t like grass or asphalt. With a good landing the plane came in at around 60 knots, placed its feet onto the surface, then got dragged to a halt in less than a hundred metres.
Which meant they looked perilously close to hard, stony land as they approached, too close, he guessed, and mentally began the countdown for a go-round if things got too close to the margin.
Some story for the flying club, Correr thought, then cut the power altogether, held up the nose, let the speed die, felt the yoke go weak and shaky in his hands as the wings began to lose their grip on the air . . . and, with a loud bang of wave against metal, landed the aircraft plum in front of the beach, coming to a rest no more than ten metres from the sand.
He undid his belt, opened the door and leaned out to look down over the side. He could see the bottom beneath the sea already, rocks and pebbles and tiny fish.
“I can’t go much further,” he said. “Get down and walk out to the front of the float. You can take me in until you see the sand getting so shallow I might hit it. These things don’t do reverse.”
The cop was taking out his wallet, removing a wad of notes.
“Thanks,” he said, extending the money.
“No,” Correr replied with a smile, then grabbing the cash. “Thank you.”
The cop had to wade through about a metre’s depth of water to get on shore. Then Correr turned his plane around, taxied out into the open lagoon, turned once more and performed a takeoff so perfect he wished the surly old instructor at the school in Florida could have seen him.
Wished, too, for the moment he could tell this tale in the flying-club bar. None of them had landed in the lagoon before. Chances were he’d never do it again.
The 180 roared over Sant’ Erasmo. Andrea Correr leaned out the window to wave goodbye. But there was no one to be seen.
THE TWO OF THEM HAD RUN INTO THE BROAD, BUSY main street of the Via Garibaldi, threaded their way past the vegetable seller’s boat, out into the back alleys of Castello and over the footbridge to the deserted island of San Pietro. She had to scream at the Murano boat to hold it at the jetty. Twenty minutes later they were in Raffaella Arcangelo’s laundry room, looking at an old enamel bowl stained pink with bloodied water, a tangle of cotton just visible.
“I didn’t think it was important. Everything’s been so busy I never even got around to looking at the laundry baskets until yesterday. It seemed irrelevant somehow.”
“What seemed irrelevant? Calm down, Raffaella.”
“Oh God. I’m so stupid! I, I, I . . .” She looked distraught at the idea she’d missed something. Raffaella had made that promise to Leo. From what Teresa could see, it still counted.
“Slowly, please. And calmly.”
She sighed. “Uriel had an accident in the foundry five or six years ago. An awful accident. He was lucky he wasn’t hurt more. All the same, it damaged his hearing. I felt so sorry for him. It also meant he had a bad sense of smell and nosebleeds from time to time. Terrible nosebleeds. There was nothing he could do but sit there with a cold wet cloth and wait for it stop. After a while, when it was happening two or three times a week, I never thought about it anymore. He was a man. It was just more washing. He just threw anything with blood on it straight into the laundry basket without thinking. He didn’t know how hard it was to get those stains out. I told him. But . . .”