David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

“I don’t know.”

She ducked backwards, behind one of the slender iron columns that ran in a line close to each edge of the hall, supporting the balcony above. There were crowds above them, scores of people, their feet clattering on the ironwork. The place seemed too delicate to be real. Her bright, sharp eyes scanned the mob to make sure no one was listening. The lively sound of the orchestra, now working its way through the spring section of the Seasons, rang behind them.

“Probably not,” she disclosed quietly. “I learned that he’s obsessed with Laura Conti. The woman who almost ruined him, if you remember.”

Costa nodded. The story of Laura Conti and Daniel Forster wouldn’t go away.

“He doesn’t look the romantic type to me. He’s rich. The kind of man who could have pretty much any woman he feels like.”

“I can’t believe you said that!” she complained. “Do you really think it’s only about the money?”

“No! I meant . . . He’s not married. He seems a solitary type, not someone to enter into a long-term relationship. I rather thought men like that attracted a certain kind of woman.”

“That’s a retraction of a sort, I suppose. How about this as an explanation? The reason Hugo’s obsessed with Laura Conti is precisely because she’s not that kind of woman. She’s someone who actually said no to him. Or perhaps said maybe, and then no, which would be even worse.”

“That would get to him?” he asked.

“It would get to most men, wouldn’t it?”

There was something here he still didn’t understand. And it got in the way too.

“As Falcone reminds me constantly,” Costa went on, “Daniel Forster and Laura Conti aren’t part of this case. What about the Arcangeli? What’s his relationship with them?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know any more than you do. He likes women. Perhaps he was Bella’s secret lover. It wouldn’t surprise me. You have to appreciate something. Women matter to him.”

“I’d gathered that.”

“No,” she said with a sigh. “This isn’t about me. It’s . . . universal. Hugo’s the kind of individual who sees women as a challenge. Scalps for his hunting belt. It’s not about love. Or sex even. It’s about possession. He’s more charming than most, but that’s what he’s like, and he’s very good at it too.”

Costa found the words just slipped out, unbidden. “Does he want you for a scalp?”

“Probably,” she answered without hesitation. “But I don’t feel flattered. Men like Hugo want women the way others want cars. It’s all about ownership, Nic. I rather imagine that once he’s sat in the driving seat, so to speak, the attraction wears off. But with Laura Conti, it didn’t, for some reason. That’s what’s bugging him still. It doesn’t make sense to him. It doesn’t fit in his neat, nicely ordered world, which is a place where he’s very much in control.” She took a sip of the prosecco, smiled. “And it won’t go away. Bella, on the other hand, did. That’s as much as I know.”

“I guess that’s a kind of definition of love. The not-going-away part.”

“I guess.”

Her blue eyes were on him. When he saw her like this, lovely inside the stupid, radiant dress, with the stain of the peperoncini by her shoulder, he wondered why he ever doubted the bond between them.

“I think I’ve had enough of this masquerade, Nic. Shall we go?”

Costa’s eyes swept the room, the silk and the satin, the wigs and the pale, powdered faces. “You’d leave these people for a little police apartment in Castello?”

“No,” she answered with a wry smile. “I’d leave them for you, idiot.”

Nic Costa laughed. That was one more talent she possessed. Then he took one last glance around him. Leo Falcone was talking earnestly to Commissario Randazzo now, free of the black-clad, shy form of Raffaella Arcangelo, whose elder brother, now next to Falcone, still held the unknown woman in conversation, an avaricious expression on his maimed face. Close by, Peroni and Teresa were embroiled in an animated discussion by the side of an attendant whose food tray they were pillaging.

His eyes roved to the nodding waters, the moored boats, the stone jetty. There was someone there. The last person Nic Costa expected to see was walking into the Palazzo degli Arcangeli at that moment.

GIANNI PERONI POSSESSED AN ARMOURY OF TALENTS for infuriation. At that moment, surrounded by costumed buffoons, slightly giddy on three rapid glasses of good prosecco, alongside untold canapés of lobster and bresaola, Teresa Lupo truly believed he was entering upon fresh ground in his ability to drive her crazy.

“Don’t worry about it,” Peroni said again. “It’ll be OK. We’ll see another doctor. There’s a witch back home near Siena. Well, I say witch . It’s more kind of folk remedies and stuff . . .”

“Gianni!” she barked, loud enough to send the harlequin next to her trotting off hastily for somewhere a little less noisy. “Are you listening to a single word I say? This isn’t a question of finding the right doctor. Or some country quack from one of your hick villages. It’s human anatomy. Physics. Not some kind of magic.”

“That’s what you said about spontaneous combustion,” Peroni reminded her. “Until you started looking.”

Her head whirled. Sometimes she felt like thumping his big chest with both fists. “No. It’s not like it at all. What I said was true. Spontaneous combustion, the way people think of it, doesn’t exist. But maybe something we interpret as it does. That is not what I am talking about here.”

“Severe tubal occlusion.”

Notch up one more trick for the fury machine. Peroni’s pronunciation was perfect, even if he didn’t understand the first thing about what the condition was.

“Which means?” she demanded.

“Which means we look for some other solution. If that’s what you want . . .”

“Christ! Let me put this in layman’s terms. The wiring’s burnt out. The plumbing’s fucked. I am a freak—”

“If you were a freak they wouldn’t have a name for it—”

“Shut up and listen, will you?”

He wasn’t smiling. Or rather, he was, but in that wan, “just tell me what to do” way that always made her feel helpless.

“I’m listening.”

She wished it were somewhere less noisy. Less public. It had been a mistake to bring up the subject when she did. But the prosecco prompted her to get the thing over and done with. She had to get the news off her chest somehow. Keeping it tight inside herself did no good at all.

“I can’t have children,” she said slowly. “That will never change. You can fool yourself otherwise if you like, but I won’t, Gianni. I can’t. It just makes things . . . worse.”

Teresa Lupo was aware there were tears in her eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, just in time for Peroni’s arms to come round her frame in a powerful, firm embrace.

“Does it matter?” she whispered into the side of his head, half wondering what all these people around them were making of the spectacle.

“Of course it matters,” he murmured.

She snivelled on his chest, then looked up into his battered face. “But I want children, Gianni.”

“And I want what you want. And we both don’t get this, together.”

Together.

Just as Emily had said, on the waterfront, the day before, both of them dog-tired, watching the dazzle on the water, picking at ice cream.