David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

Bracci cast a weary eye over a dated-looking vase newly out of the workshop, cursed in impenetrable Venetian, then walked over to the office and placed it in a pile marked “Seconds.” The two cops waited in their seats, wondering, Costa feeling a little edgy after downing three coffees in succession as they trawled the bars for gossip before approaching Aldo Bracci. They had followed Falcone’s orders to the letter. They’d eaten a couple of plates of pasta in a small, unimpressive restaurant. To Costa’s surprise it had been a smart move. People hereabouts weren’t naturally talkative. Until you mentioned the magic name, Arcangelo. Then a picture began to emerge, both of the family and of Murano itself, a place with little time for newcomers who failed to appreciate their place.

“Kids,” Bracci cursed. “You teach them and then they just piss off somewhere chasing money. There’s no loyalty in this business anymore. No craft. It’s just cash, cash, cash.”

“At least you’ve got staff,” Peroni noted. “More than I saw at your late brother-in-law’s place.”

Bracci’s cold eyes glowered at them. “Men like to be paid from time to time. Don’t you?”

“Sure,” Costa replied. “Is this a convenient time to talk, sir? We don’t wish to intrude on your grief.”

Not that there seemed much of that, Costa thought. Bracci was as brisk and unmoved as the Arcangeli, though in a different way. There was a sign on the door of the furnace when they arrived, one that announced “Closed for mourning.” It was only when they persisted that they realised the place was working, behind shuttered windows, perhaps not wanting the world outside to know.

“Grief,” Bracci repeated. “Bella got a morning of grief. When you people finally allow us to bury her she’ll get some more. Not that it makes much difference to her now, does it? We don’t overdo the ceremonies. You’re outsiders. You won’t understand.”

Costa and Peroni looked at one another. Neither was sure how to conduct this interview. Bracci didn’t look like the bereaved brother. Nor did he seem entirely detached either.

“Are the Arcangeli outsiders?” Costa asked.

Bracci stifled a grim laugh. “What do you think? You’ve met them?”

Peroni shook his head. “They’ve been here fifty, sixty years or something? How long does it take?”

“It was 1952,” Bracci corrected him. “That arrogant old bastard sold his boatyard in Chioggia and took on that wreck of an island, thinking he could teach us all a lesson or two.”

“Did he?” Costa asked.

The man wriggled on the old, battered leather chair at the desk. “For a while. Angelo Arcangelo was a different breed. Not like those kids of his at all. He treated them so hard they never learned how to stand on their own two feet. Stupid. Angelo knew how to make money, though. He knew how to sweet-talk all those rich foreigners. To say to them, ‘Look, see this! It’s how they made it three centuries ago! Burnt seaweed and pebbles. A furnace burning wood. It’s perfect! Think what it’ll be worth twenty years from now!’ Or to get some so-called modern artist to come up with some designs he could pretend were some kind of masterpiece or something. Except . . .”

He reached down into the desk drawers and pulled out a small box that rattled as he lifted it. “Fashions change. You change with them or one day no one rings the bell.”

He scattered the contents of the box on the table. They were tiny trinkets, gaudily coloured. Fake cartoon characters. Mickey Mouse. Homer Simpson. Donald Duck. Only just recognisable. They were junk, and Bracci knew it.

“I can get some schoolkid in here turning out fifty of those an hour. I pay him four euros. I sell them for fifty euros to some huckster near the station. He passes them on for four, maybe five a pop to the idiot tourists who want to take home some genuine Murano glass. Which is what they got too. No arguments there. Do you think the Arcangeli are going to stoop that low?”

That wasn’t their business, Costa thought, and said so.

“So what is their business, smart guy?” Bracci asked. “Let me tell you. They work in a museum. That stupid old furnace, ten times bigger than they need. They got no modern equipment, nothing that saves time or money. They use all these old recipes and designs. It takes them four times longer than the rest of us to make something that, for most of the world out there, looks exactly the same. You think they’re going to get four times the price? No. Not even double. Not even the same price sometimes, because this is old stuff they’re selling. Designs that went out years ago. With flaws, because the old ways give you flaws and no one buys the fact they’re really features, not anymore. You know what the Arcangelo business is? Going bust, that’s what. And if it weren’t for Bella I wouldn’t care a damn. Except now she’s gone, so as far as I’m concerned the Arcangeli can go screw themselves. Go sell the whole damn place to that Englishman and turn it into an amusement park or something. Who gives a shit?”

“The Englishman?” Costa asked blithely.

“Oh, come on!” Bracci spat back. “It’s an open secret they’ve been trying to screw a deal out of him. It’d be done by now if the old man hadn’t set up so many covenants on it the lawyers are getting rich trying to deal with them all. Mind you . . .” Bracci raised a finger to make his point. “ . . . what the Englishman wants, the Englishman gets. I wouldn’t want to jerk him around for a moment. Too many important friends. And if he buys that island . . .”

“What?” Peroni demanded.

Bracci scowled. “Then he’s made. You could put up anything there. A hotel. Some kind of shopping mall like they have on terra firma. If the Arcangeli had any sense they’d just put the whole place out onto the open market. They’d make a fortune. Except they want to keep on making glass. Stupid.”

Costa found this perception of Massiter interesting. The Englishman was a man of substance already. With the island in his grasp, he would become even more important.

“How do you feel about the idea of an English neighbour?” he asked Bracci.

“Wonderful. But at least we’d have just the one asshole to contend with. Is there something serious you want to ask me? Because if there isn’t . . .” He looked at the pile of glass cartoon characters on the desk, then gently scooped them back into the box.

“Tell me about the Bracci family. Parents. Brothers. Sisters.”

“I’m the brother.” He kicked open the door to the furnace. Two men in their twenties, thickset and surly, glared back at them by the side of an oven a tenth the size of the Arcangeli’s. One had close-cropped hair. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing a set of old deep-blue tattoos on each arm. The other was a touch slimmer, with longer hair, a little less aggressive-looking, but not much.

“Enzo.”

Tattoos nodded.

“Fredo. These are my sons,” Aldo Bracci said. “The staff here too, most of the time. Their mother pissed off to Padova with some insurance clerk years back. Better off without the bitch.”

“Yeah.” Enzo Bracci nodded, then glowered at his brother, waited for him to go back to work before closing the door on them.

“Nobody else?” Peroni wondered.

“It was just me and Bella. I think my dad kind of stretched some of the rules about being a Catholic, if you get my meaning. Not that there’s anyone around to ask anymore. There’s been Braccis here for five hundred years. Go take a look in the church if you don’t believe me. The old man spawned the two of us and that’s enough to make sure we won’t disappear. My boys will do the same. As for Bella . . . She was the one who decided to marry into that bunch of jumped-up peasants. That was her problem. Besides . . .”