David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

She looked over the edge of the precipice. It was a long way down, and straight onto stone.

“Here,” he said, extending his arms. “I’ll hold you. It scared me too, first time round.”

She let Massiter place his arms around her waist, then leaned over the edge of the metal balustrade, looking to her left, feeling how he gripped her: firmly, out of a pure practical need. All the same, it was a strange sensation, to be dangling out towards the lagoon in the arms of this odd Englishman. She wondered, for a moment, what Nic would have made of the sight, then reminded herself why she came here.

The tall tower of the distant church at the northern end of the lagoon was just visible in the distance.

“Thanks,” she said, and leaned back, noting the way he relaxed his grip immediately.

Hugo Massiter sat down, a handsome man, not yet past his prime, Emily decided, though perhaps he had a different opinion.

“I think you’d need a degree of arrogance to want to own a place like this,” she observed. “That and a lot of money.”

“Cheers!” He raised his glass. “Plenty of one. Little of the other, I’m afraid. My idea was to put up a little competition for Dame Peggy, once I’d knocked the place into shape.” He nodded towards the city, and, she assumed, the Guggenheim.

“You want to start a gallery?” she asked.

“Why not? I’ve sold enough paintings over the years. Seemed to me it was time to keep a few for myself. I just hate the idea of them being stuck in a box in storage. Or in a room where no one gets to see them except me. It’s such a waste. Also, that makes me sound like Howard Hughes or someone. Which I’m not.”

“I don’t imagine anyone would figure you for a recluse,” Emily suggested. The wine was perfect, so cold it made her throat ache.

He placed his glass on the table, leaned back in his chair, frowning, looking exhausted.

“You’ve no idea what people figure me for,” he complained ruefully, before shooting her a sharp, incisive glance. “Or have you?”

He was staring at her with an open, unavoidable concern. Hugo Massiter was trying to determine just how much she knew.

“You’ve had a lot of press in your time,” she answered carefully.

“I’ve been a very visible man. That’s understandable. It’s just the damned lies. You’ve heard the story I’m talking about? Please be honest with me, Emily. Everyone around here knows and thinks that, by not mentioning it, they’re being polite. That’s kind of them, but to be honest, I hate beating about the bush. I don’t want you sitting there thinking you might be supping with the devil.”

She nodded. “I remember the story. It was about a piece of music, wasn’t it?”

“No,” he sighed. “Not really. It was about me. My ego. My need to feel I was doing something worthwhile.” He paused to watch the traffic on the water. “I trusted someone who betrayed me,” he continued. “Very nearly destroyed me, to be honest with you. If I hadn’t got the hell out of Italy damn quick and found myself some extremely good and very expensive lawyers, I could be sitting in a jail cell right now. All because I let my guard down. All because . . .”

His eyes wandered down to the water again. Then he was looking intently at her again.

“Let me tell you something about Venice. Something I should have learned years ago. It’s not the crooks you need worry about. They’re ten a penny and easy to spot a mile off. It’s the innocents. They’re the ones who kill you in the end. And here we are. Years later. Me wondering if I’m about to do the same again.”

“I’m sorry?” she said, confused.

“Remember Swift,” Massiter murmured.

“‘A flea hath smaller fleas that on him prey,

And these have smaller fleas to bite ’em.

And so proceed ad infinitum.’

“My fleas are gathering, young Emily. Unless I can pull off some rather clever tricks over the next few days, everything, this place included, will go down with the ship. What the hell. Fleeing the police on some trumped-up murder charges is one thing. But going bankrupt—my God . . . Do I need another drink or what?”

“No,” she said firmly. “I don’t think you do.”

He touched his forehead with his index finger, a deft salute of obedience. Hugo Massiter certainly had a way about him.

“I need this charade to look good tonight. There are influential people coming. Tell me the truth now. What will they think of me with all this junk my young architect friend downstairs has introduced?”

She shrugged. “Depends who they are.”

“People with taste. Some of them. People with money. Power. If they knew the state of my bank account, they’d never step through the door. You won’t tell them, will you?”

“I won’t even tell my police friend.”

Massiter smiled. “Oh, that’s fine. He knows. But I’m pleased you’re both discreet. I’m not, as you see, which is why I depend so much on discretion in others.”

“I was thinking . . .” He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Thinking what?”

“Wondering really. If I turned this building over to you. As a project, say. You might even get paid something in the end. What would you do?”

Emily Deacon laughed, then sipped her wine. “Panic.”

“I don’t believe that,” Massiter replied, serious all of a sudden. “Not for a moment. I mean it. What would you suggest?”

She’d been thinking about that all along, as a highly perceptive man like Massiter doubtless knew. The building was, in a sense, unfinished. It was just waiting for the final touches of someone’s imagination.

The answer was so obvious. She was amazed Massiter hadn’t seen it for himself. Emily glanced back at the plain apartment behind them, a place brimming with reserved taste.

“Do what you did here. Live with what you have. Make it habitable. Make it real .”

Massiter was chortling. “ It’s not finished! There are interior walls half built. There are parts that simply make no sense.”

“Any more than those velvet drapes and fake Titians they’re putting in downstairs? A half-finished masterpiece is better than a completed monstrosity any day. Please . . .”

He put his hand over his mouth, thinking. “How’s your Italian?”

“Better than yours. I’ve lived here for most of my life.”

“So have I!” he objected. “Well, a good part, anyway.”

“You’ve spent your time talking. I spent mine listening.”

He was no fool, though, she thought. Perhaps it was the prospect of putting off creditors. Perhaps—she’d seen the glint in Hugo Massiter’s eye, she knew a man who liked women—it was something else altogether.

“You’d need to talk this time, my dear,” he pointed out. “You’d need to tell a bunch of thieving Venetian builders what to do, and spot when they’re rooking me. Think you’re up to it?”

She drained her glass and placed it firmly on the table. The air below was alive with the curse of workmen, doing what the hell they liked, she suspected.

“I haven’t applied for the job.”

Massiter didn’t even notice her objection. “And we’d need to dream up some ruse to allow me to fire that idiot down there. I can’t just get rid of him. He’s too well connected for that.”

There she was one step ahead.

“Did you order real marble for those dreadful tables by the door? Or fake?”

Massiter bristled. “I didn’t order anything. They were the idiot’s idea. And I do not deal in fakes.”

“They’re veneer. Marble layered on wood. It’s obvious if you look at the edges. I doubt it’s the only problem—”

“It’s enough,” Massiter interrupted, suddenly furious, getting to his feet. “Follow me, please.”