Iain Pears - The Titian Committee

‘All you have to do is hang around, work on your expense account, then knock out a perfectly harmless report in which you sound brilliant and penetrating but exonerate everyone for not arresting the murderer while also making it clear that you have established that it is not a matter for our department. Standard sort of thing. That should do the trick nicely.’

She sighed more openly so he would realise the sacrifice she was making for the public good. A nice man, an amiable soul, but a bit of a bulldozer in many ways. She knew him well enough to know a fight was pointless. She was going to Venice, and that was settled.

‘You think they won’t find whoever it was?’

‘Shouldn’t think so for a moment. I’m a bit hazy on the details but first reports make it sound like a mugging that got out of hand. I’ve no doubt you’ll find out when you get there.’

By the time the internal Alitalia flight began its circling descent to Venice’s Marco Polo airport bright and early on Monday morning, Flavia had forced herself back into a moderately good humour, despite having risen from her bed at an ungodly hour, yet again, to catch the plane.

Were it not for the circumstances, she would ordinarily have been overjoyed at the prospect of getting out of her underventilated, over-inhabited office in central Rome. Venice, after all, was not such a bad place to spend a day or two. As it was going to be a brief trip, she travelled as light as was compatible with being prepared for all eventualities. Trousers, dresses, skirts, shirts, sweaters, a dozen or so books. Maps of Venice and the surrounding area, railway and airport timetables, overcoat for the cold, raincoat for the rain. Boots for walking, good shoes just in case, pads of paper and notebooks, a few files of police business, towels, dressing-gown, gloves, a torch for emergencies. She would, probably, wear nothing except jeans and sweaters, as usual, but there was no harm in being prepared.

As the plane swept in, she occupied herself with tidying her hair and setting her clothes to rights. She wanted to look good as she got off at the airport. Such vanities she normally dispensed with; she was fortunate that she could afford to do so without it making much difference. Besides, no matter how much she combed, her hair would be a mess once the wind that always blew around Marco Polo had finished with it. But Venice is a place that demands that you make yourself presentable. It is an old and dignified city and insists on respect from visitors; even tourists occasionally try to make themselves look less unsightly than usual once they fall under its spell.

She started as she meant to go on. Bottando had insisted it was important she spend as much money as possible, and she intended to follow his instructions. The value of her presence would be calculated in direct proportion to the size of her expense account, he had said, not by what she got done. This, among the more cynical of her colleagues in the department, was known as the Bottando Ratio. If the government was to convince itself that the department had played a crucial role in trying to resolve this unfortunate affair, then the bill would have to be a hefty one.

So she shunned the public water bus into the city and settled herself into the back of one of the long, varnished motor taxis that ply their trade between the airport and the main island. No airport in the world has a more beautiful approach to the city it serves. Instead of a bus crawling along crowded motorways or a train through industrialised desolation, you rush through the lagoon, past crumbling islands until Venice itself peeps up over the horizon. Apart from the fact that the ride made her feel a little queasy, it was a glorious experience, especially in weather which was perfect, despite the presence of some not very encouraging clouds.

The driver, suitably sea-worthy in black T-shirt, cap and red neck-scarf, piloted with skill and speed along a route marked out by ancient lumps of wood sticking up above the surface of the glistening water. He paid her little attention, beyond the obligatory wink and flashing smile as he helped her in and stowed her luggage. The other occupant was much more inclined to pass the time of day. Had Fellini ever decided to film ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, this was the man for the title role. His face was a piece of old driftwood, and his age, if uncertain, was definitely over seventy. He was short, grizzled beyond imagining, had an appallingly-fitted set of dentures which clicked alarmingly when he smiled, and still seemed as though he could tear blocks of concrete in two with his bare hands.

He settled himself down beside her in the stern, beamed and clicked at her for several minutes, then embarked on his morning entertainment. Was she on holiday? Staying long? Meeting someone? – this with a sly glance – visited Venice before? She answered patiently. Old men like to talk, like the company of the young, and besides, his curiosity was so intense that it could not possibly be objectionable. He was, he told her proudly, the father of the driver and had himself been a gondolier in Venice all his life. Now he was too old to work but liked occasionally to accompany his son.

‘I bet you didn’t have boats like this when you were his age,’ Flavia said, more to vary her conversational diet from a stream of yesses and noes.

‘This?’ the old man said, wrinkling up his face so that his nose almost disappeared beneath the surface. ‘This? Call this a boat? Pah!’

‘It seems very nice,’ she observed vaguely, aware that this wasn’t exactly the most nautical way of phrasing it.

‘All flash and noise,’ he said. ‘About as well made as an orange box. They can’t make boats any more. Can’t do anything properly in the lagoon any more.’

Flavia looked over the flickering, shining water to the island of Burano on her left, saw the seagulls whirling overhead in the wind and spotted an oil tanker peacefully chugging its way out to sea in the distance. The boat cut a creamy wave through the dark green water of the lagoon as it headed towards the city. ‘It all appears in proper order to me,’ she said.

‘Appears, yes. But it’s not appearances that count. They’ve forgotten about the flow.’

‘Beg your pardon?’

‘Flow, young lady, flow. This lagoon is full of channels. Very complex, each one serves nature’s purpose. They used not to disturb that. Now they chop huge paths through the lagoon to let things like that in.’ He gestured dismissively at the tanker.

‘With the wind and the tide in the right direction, everything goes haywire. Just like that. Can happen in minutes. Water flows in the wrong direction, washes everything to the surface, floods and leaves it. Smells disgusting. Comes of trying to be too clever. The city’s choking in its own muck because of their stupidity.’

He was getting into his stride about the iniquities of the modern age when his son, glancing over his shoulder and evidently fearing for his tip, ambled back. Flavia wished he had stayed where he was. It was no doubt perfectly safe to leave an unguided boat hurtling through the water at high speed, but she would have felt more confident had someone been there just to make sure. A demonic driver on the roads, she was nervously cautious when it came to water. The result, no doubt, of growing up in the foothills of the Alps.

A few sharp words and the old man was dispatched forward to wrap some ropes, or whatever you do on boats, and she was left alone to study the scenery. Flavia watched with delight as the first signs of Venice itself rose above the horizon. The campanile, then the tower of San Giorgio, the crumbling brick of the Frari. More boats, buses, gondolas and the heavy working barges that ferried goods from place to place, appeared on the water. Then the crumbling brick and peeling stucco of the buildings on the main island itself, as the taxi swung around its northern end and headed for the Piazza San Marco.