Massiter, a master rogue, as all knew and none dared say, played this game like a maestro. The Arcangeli had always been discerning about those they allowed beyond the outstretched arm of their iron angel and its torch, which now burned more brightly than ever. The Englishman decreed that the gates to the island be open, for the first time Alberto Tosi could remember. This evening anyone in Venice was welcome to walk through to admire Massiter’s coronation.
Few, beyond Massiter’s large and growing circle of hangers-on and succubi, seemed to have bothered. Tosi knew what the locals on Murano were like. They hated newcomers. They’d loathed the Arcangeli for decades. Nothing, not money, not influence, would make them feel warm towards Hugo Massiter. This was an adventure beyond them, the arrival of the first speck of canker from across the water that would, one day, consume their impoverished little island and spit out in its place the same gaudy, transient hoopla found everywhere else in the city.
Tosi tasted his weak, badly made spritz and scowled. Then he saw a familiar figure approaching, one who generated both admiration and a little worry.
Anna followed the direction of his gaze. Teresa Lupo, the Roman pathologist, was striding towards them with a deliberate, determined gait.
“I’ll see you later,” the girl muttered. He watched her depart in a flash of bright red silk, gone to where the young were gathered, next to the drinks table manned by serious, white-shirted waiters, working beneath the fiery torch of the iron angel. This was only Alberto Tosi’s second time on the Isola degli Arcangeli. The first had been almost fifty years before, at some grand gathering to which his own father had somehow managed to wangle an invitation. Those were different days, with different people, two decades before the accident that closed the palazzo to the public for good. But even by then the island’s fortunes had changed. Angelo Arcangelo was dead, and he took his dream with him to a temporary grave on San Michele across the water.
He was ruminating on this fact when his attention was drawn by Teresa Lupo’s bright, cheery face.
“You’re a little late for the crime scene, Alberto,” she declared with a brisk, sardonic smile.
He laughed and, for a moment, a rebel part of him wondered whether a lively Roman pathologist on the cusp of middle age could possibly be interested in an ancient widower with little to offer but the same shared interests.
“Which one?” he asked. “This place has so many. Those poor people in the furnace. That Bracci character. Your own inspector. How is he, by the way?”
“Much better,” she replied. “But dreaming for now.”
“Dreaming is a talent to cultivate. Particularly tonight.” He finished his glass and took a second off one of the starchy waiters drifting by. Tosi scowled at the crowd. “I wonder how many dreams these little lives encompass. They’re all too busy counting their money or running through their wardrobes.”
“Perhaps they’re here for the thrill,” she said with a cryptic glee. There was a cunning glint in her eye, one he didn’t quite trust. “To be so near the smell of blood.”
“In Rome they may play those childish games, perhaps. This is just Venice, Teresa. A small and simple city, where we lead small and simple lives.”
She scanned the glittering crowd. “I don’t think they’d like that description.”
“I don’t think their opinion counts for much,” he answered, unable to suppress the bitterness in his voice. “There’s scarcely a real Venetian here.”
“What about him?”
She was pointing down to the quayside where an old, rather shabby boat, with an equally shabby man at the wheel, was docking near the warehouse. A small mountain of grey material occupied part of its meagre hold, alongside a pile of firewood, thin twigs, meagre kindling, the kind they used out in the little shacks of the lagoon. In the bow lay a small black dog, seemingly asleep.
The sight puzzled Tosi. Then he saw the Sant’ Erasmo marking on the stern.
“He’s just a matto making a delivery. Wood and ash, by the looks of things. They use them in the furnace. Not for much longer from what I hear . . .”
She wasn’t listening, which disappointed Tosi, a man not averse to gossip, of which there was plenty at the moment. Instead, Teresa Lupo was on the phone, anxious for some news, disappointed when she seemed not to receive it.
Her eyes had moved to the house. Some figures were walking towards the front door, watched by the shabby boatman. These were the type of men Tosi recognised. Plain-clothed police officers, from elsewhere, not Venice, since Albert Tosi prided himself on the fact that he knew by sight every last person on the city force.
They had two people with them, a man and a woman, dressed in poor rural clothes, like the shabby boatman. Two people who were handcuffed, hands to the front, a cruel and unnecessary action, Tosi thought, since neither showed any sign of resistance.
Teresa turned away and stared at the furnace. It looked like new. The stonework had been cleaned. The long show windows were shiny and spotless. Soon the trinket sellers would arrive, Tosi guessed. Everyone knew what Massiter was like. He wouldn’t allow glassmaking on such valuable real estate for long.
“Did you really sign Uriel’s death off as spontaneous combustion?” she asked, apparently out of the blue.
“No,” he answered with a coy, sly reticence.
“Why not?”
“You made me think better of it. Sometimes we have a tendency to overanalyse. A man burns to death in a furnace consumed by fire. There are unexplained details, but in the end I remained unconvinced by Anna’s efforts. She’s a good girl. A little too enthusiastic at times. The young rely on their imagination too much. Age teaches one to rely on hard fact.”
She was regarding him closely, looking for some emotion, it seemed.
“It could have made things awkward too,” she suggested. “An unusual finding such as that would have attracted attention. Invited others to look, perhaps.”
“I agree,” he said, and raised his glass. “To the unexplained!”
She was, he was coming to believe, a very attractive woman. Not physically, but in her personality. A difficult woman, though. One he would not wish to be around for long.
Teresa Lupo had an important point to make too. He could see that from the sudden serious look in her face.
“I hope you don’t mind me talking shop,” she went on.
“Not at all. Let me do the same. What about that material I gave you? Have you a report back from your magic machine in Rome?”
“No,” she replied grumpily.
“Ah.” He hoped there was some expression of sympathy on his face.
“Those samples you gave me were contaminated when we got them,” she complained. “You should kick a few family backsides in that lab of yours in Mestre.”
He laughed, unsure of her point. “Contaminated with what?”
She paused, as if she were hunting for the name, then said, “Ketone.”
Alberto Tosi pulled a pained face. Some of the chemicals they had to work with these days . . .
“Horrible stuff. Toxic. Highly flammable too, though very good at its job.”
He sighed. Sometimes you had to tell the truth. There really was no point in beating about the bush.
“I must confess something, Teresa. The samples I gave you were just that. Samples. The lab in Mestre did nothing to them. Nothing. As I endeavoured to explain when we first met, this was a closed case. There seemed no reason. What you had was what came straight from the foundry over there.”