David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

“Facts then,” Falcone agreed, waving at the pretty waitress for more wine. Then, ruefully, “That’s all we need. Consider these—”

“This doesn’t concern anyone but us three,” Costa warned. “We didn’t invite you to dinner to share the case around.”

“Come, come, Nic!” Falcone was loving this. He’d had more wine than anyone else. He was different too somehow. Off the leash, in new territory. “I invited myself here. And where are we going to find a better table in Venice to knock around a few ideas? We all know Teresa wishes she wore a badge instead of carrying that leather bag around.”

He watched her, eyebrows raised, waiting for an objection.

“Quite,” Falcone continued when none came. “And Emily’s ex-FBI. One colleague. One ex-colleague. Discreet ladies both. Think of all the expertise we have here. And what are we ranged against? You saw it for yourselves today. A bunch of provincials.”

“Provincials who happen to be in charge,” Peroni grumbled.

Ignoring the remark, Falcone reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the plastic bag with Uriel Arcangelo’s keys inside. “So let’s consider this.”

“Oh great,” Peroni sighed. “Now we’re taking evidence out of the Questura. Here it begins, gentlemen. Behold, another nosedive in our faltering careers.”

“Don’t be so stuffy.” Falcone waved down his complaints. “The people here think criminal procedure begins and ends with a screaming match in an interview room. They won’t even notice it’s gone. Consider this. A man dies, consumed by fire, inside a locked glass foundry, with his own wife’s body—clearly predeceased, since the one witness we have was unaware of it to begin with—in the furnace in the same room. There is only one door into the place, and no other easy way of entry and exit. The man’s key is in that door, on his side. What are we meant to assume?”

Costa noticed the gleam in the women’s eyes. Falcone knew what he was doing.

“That he killed his wife, then perhaps killed himself?” Emily suggested.

Teresa was already shaking her head. “Self-immolation is a very rare form of suicide,” she noted. “Men who kill their wives are invariably the cowardly sort—they take pills. They drive a car off a cliff. More often they nick themselves with a knife and don’t have the guts or the decency to take it any further.”

“An accident then?” Peroni asked.

Teresa nudged his elbow. Hard.

Falcone looked delighted.

“See,” he said to Costa and Peroni. “Just a few small facts and already we discover something we didn’t know. What would we do without these two?”

Teresa Lupo screwed up her pale, round face. “Please don’t praise me, Leo. It feels so wrong . This Uriel guy must have died for some reason. How badly was he burned? What tests have forensic run on his clothing?”

He shrugged. “I’m a detective. I can’t give you a meaningful answer. He was terribly burned from the waist up. The rest of his clothing seems pretty much intact. Everything was covered by foam from the fire officers, which hampers forensic, or so they told me. But we’re not talking your calibre of people here. Or . . .”

This next point had only just occurred to him.

“Or people who would be quite as diligent as you, I suspect. You should look for yourself.”

“There you go again,” Teresa complained. “If I’m to help, you need to cut out the praise.”

“If you wish. So what else do we know?”

Falcone’s comments about the key had been bugging Costa all day. The inspector had made him feel like an idiot when he drew the obvious conclusions. Now Costa could see why.

“That perhaps the key doesn’t signify what it appears,” Costa observed.

Peroni nodded. “Meaning?”

“The door could have been locked from the outside . Uriel could have been locked in there by someone else and simply placed his own key in the door from the inside . Except . . .”

Falcone picked up the plastic bag and shook it. “Except . . . why didn’t he just unlock it himself and walk free?”

“I seem to recall,” Teresa said, “a little lecture from a Roman police inspector. One that said, look for the simple solution. Usually it’s the right one.”

Falcone sipped his wine, closed his eyes briefly, appreciating it. “In Rome usually it is. But this is Venice. And we mustn’t forget that. Here’s one more thing: the dead woman had a mobile phone.”

“Is that such a surprise, Leo?” Peroni asked. “Most people do.”

“Not the Arcangeli. I checked with Raffaella. As far as she was aware, none of them owned one. Yet it was there. In the corner of the foundry. I found it when you two were supposed to be looking around today. It was underneath a portable table they used for moving glass. A table that could have just as easily been used for dumping a body into the furnace. Clearly our Venetian colleagues don’t believe in such a thing as a thorough search. I checked with the phone company. The phone was registered under the name of Bella Bracci . The dead woman’s maiden name. Her old family address too. There’ve been no outgoing calls on it for weeks, which is useful of course because that doubtless means it was used mainly for incoming calls, where we can’t trace the number if it’s been blocked. But ninety minutes before we had the first report of the fire, someone did phone out on it. To the direct line in the Arcangeli’s office at the back of the foundry. The very place where, as far as we understand it, Uriel would have been before he went to work.”

Teresa was scribbling some notes on a napkin.

“I can see where you’re going with this,” she said. “But as you said yourself, you’ve still got one big problem. Uriel had a key. He could have walked out at any point, if he’d wanted to. The fact he didn’t means as sure as hell he wasn’t entirely innocent here.”

Falcone pushed the plastic bag over to her and indicated the long shaft of the mortise key. “What do you think?”

Teresa threw up her hands in despair. “It’s a key! I’m a pathologist. Not forensic. I don’t do keys! ”

“Take it out if you like,” Falcone suggested.

“Oh Jesus.” Peroni sighed. “Listen to the sound of distant shit meeting a distant fan.”

But Teresa Lupo already had the key in her hand and was turning it round in her large, powerful fingers, staring at the thing close up, frowning.

“It’s been altered,” she declared, placing the bunch back on the table, leaving the big one uppermost, pointing to the inside edge. It gleamed, just faintly, through the grime and smoke of the blaze. “As I said, I’m not a key person, but it looks to me as if someone’s filed off a tooth or something.” She looked at Falcone. “Does it still work?”

“That depends how you define ‘work,’” he answered. “I tried it in the lock. It goes in. It turns. And turns. And turns. It’s useless. It doesn’t lock. It doesn’t unlock, either. Which is how it’s meant to be.”

“And Bella’s keys are missing,” Costa noted.

The five of them absorbed this information. The young waitress came over and asked about dessert. Falcone cheerily ordered tiramisu and was amazed by their silence.

“Make that five,” he said to the girl. “They’ll get their appetites back.”

They still hadn’t said a word by the time the girl was back in the kitchen, laughing and joking with the women there.

“Excellent food here,” Falcone said. “I wish you’d told me about it earlier.”

Peroni cast him an angry glance. “And I wish I’d never mentioned it in the first place. Why can’t you leave these things in the Questura, Leo?”