David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

Her eyes flickered towards the window and the men below. Michele was the head of the family. Falcone wondered what that really meant. Was Michele supposed to be a party to everything?

“I need to speak to my brothers.”

Falcone followed her through the old, fading mansion, down through the warren of dark corridors half lit by dusty chandeliers populated by dead bulbs, listening to the echoes of her hurried footsteps.

THE TOSIS WERE RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING: THERE WAS plenty of information on spontaneous combustion out there. Any number of lunatics, sceptics, and pseudoscientists were busy yelling at each other on the subject. Teresa Lupo had spent two hours sifting through the reams of material on the computer in Costa’s apartment, saving the little she found useful, and examining the documents sent from Anna Tosi’s miracle medium of e-mail. After that, her head spinning with possibilities, she’d popped out to buy some pizza and water from the shop around the corner, returning to the computer immediately, spilling crumbs, Peroni-like, across the keyboard as she worked. All the same she was, she decided, none the wiser. Wrong. She was a touch the wiser, just reluctant to admit it because there was something here that disturbed her greatly: a possibility that the Tosis had a point. This wasn’t spontaneous combustion in some fantasy comic book kind of way, flames licking out from underneath Uriel Arcangelo’s apron, sparked by some passing moonbeam. But people did die on occasion from an event that appeared, on the surface, inexplicable, a sudden, inner fire which seemed to consume them with a shocking rapidity.

“That doesn’t mean there’s no explanation,” Teresa reminded herself. “You just have to find it, girl.”

Here. Stuck in a tiny police apartment in Venice, with nothing but a laptop computer for company. She thought about what she’d be doing if this had dropped on her desk back in Rome. Scouring the Net for clues? Surely. But more than that, she’d be sharing the problem. And she knew with whom.

Teresa Lupo pulled out her mobile phone, reprimanded herself for a few brief milliseconds with the admonition that her absence was a holiday for her staff also, then dialled Silvio Di Capua’s private number.

“Pronto,” yawned a bored voice on the other end, one which immediately jerked into alert suspicion once Silvio realised who was on the line.

“No!” he declared straight off. “I won’t do it. I’m ending this call now. You’re supposed to be on holiday, for God’s sake. Go fake a tan or something. Leave me alone.”

“I didn’t ask you to do a damn thing, Silvio! I was just calling in to see how you are.”

“So I can’t do the job, huh? Give me a break. Do you think I don’t recognise that wheedling tone in your voice? I won’t play. You can’t make me.”

“Of course you can do the job! I wouldn’t have gone away and left you in charge if I thought otherwise.”

“Then what? I’m not getting involved. It’s bad enough you dumping me in the crap when you’re here working. I’m not having it when you’re supposed to be on vacation. Hear me, Teresa. The answer is no. No, no, no, no, no . . .”

There was an image of a charred corpse on the screen: Buffalo, New York, 1973. No obvious explanation. The man smoked. The man drank. So did millions of other people, all of whom managed to work their way to the grave without turning into life-size spent matchsticks.

She smiled. Silvio was giving in already.

“You’re not busy then?”

“Says who? I’m sorting out paperwork you should have done months ago. I’m dealing with a couple of interdepartmental liaison meetings—”

“My . . .” she cooed. “That sounds fun. Are there whiteboards and stuff? Have they given you one of those laser pens? Do you get to use big words and acronyms?”

“You will never understand management—”

“I am management,” she interrupted. “So let me—what’s the management word for it?—let me cascade something down to you, dear heart. When you want to say no, you say you’re too busy. Not, screw you, I won’t do it. Understood?”

There was a brief silence on the line. The roar of defeat.

“Just because I don’t have much in the way of corpses doesn’t mean I’m not occupied.”

“No corpses means no fun, Silvio. Admit it. I know when my little man is bored. You sounded bored when you picked up the phone. I’ve got a corpse. I’ve got a cure for that boredom. If you want to hear it.”

“No!” he insisted.

“Fine. In that case I’ll hang up . . . .”

“Do that! Go have a holiday!”

“Your word is my command. I am about to put down the phone. Or, more accurately, my finger is wandering towards the off button. Do you really want me to press it?”

“Yes!”

“Fine. It’s done. I shall say just two words before doing so.”

A pause was required. Silvio always rose to histrionics.

“ Spontaneous. And combustion .”

Teresa cut him dead, placed her mobile on the desk and began to count to ten. It rang on three. She let it chirrup five times before answering sweetly, “Hello?”

“I detest you with every fibre in my body. You are evil. This is so unfair. You can’t treat people like this!”

“Spontaneous combustion, Silvio. I have a corpse here—well, part of a corpse—and a Venetian pathologist, albeit one who’s a couple of hundred years old himself, who’s determined to write that finding on the death certificate. So what do you think?”

“I think it’s a little early in the day to start drinking. Go sober up, woman. See the sights. Catch a boat somewhere.”

“No kidding. It’s all there. I have photos. I have reports. I have all manner of material I could send you if you’d like. Provided it doesn’t interrupt your whiteboarding, that is. I mean, I expect my people to have priorities.”

He hesitated before replying, wary. “Two points,” he responded. “I will believe in spontaneous combustion the day I come to accept the existence of werewolves. Second, you’re in Venice. Where you are just another dumb tourist, Teresa. Not someone with the authority to go investigating weird deaths, whatever the crazy locals believe. Most people tread in crap accidentally. You seem to like crossing the street to do it. This is a habit I deplore.”

“I was asked to take a look! OK?”

“Who by?” he demanded.

“Falcone.”

“Oh shit. You’re not telling me you’re riding the range with the Three Musketeers again?”

“I ride the range with one of them a lot, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Peroni’s presence still bugged Silvio somewhat. Her assistant hadn’t lost the hots for her completely.

“I was using a metaphor. Let me put it plainly. Are you out of your mind? ”

Maybe, she thought. If she really was considering the weird science stuff the Tosis were pushing her way.

“So what’s your objection to spontaneous combustion?” she asked.

“The same objection I have to reincarnation. Or alchemy. It’s nonsense.”

A tiny light went on in her brain. There were times when she wanted to hug Silvio. His small accidental insights could be just what she needed to trigger her own imagination.

“Without alchemy there’d be no chemistry,” she remarked. “You’re a chemist yourself, along with all those other talents. You ought to know that.”

Silvio swore quietly down the phone. She was spot on. Alchemy may have begun with quacks, but it soon became science under another name. And weren’t glassmakers like the Arcangeli alchemists of a kind too, sharing the same common bonds of secrets and substances, changing the shape of the natural world, bending it to their will?