David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

Together was what counted. Together was what would count for Emily and Nic too, one day. Teresa Lupo felt that in her bones. It was a fact, a solid, unmistakable piece of the future slowly emerging into the present, struggling to take shape.

She glanced across the room. Emily was alone, a solitary white figure standing out against the pale old stonework of the hall, abandoned by Nic again for some reason, one Teresa wished she knew so she could beat him around the head with it and say, Look, for God’s sake! People like this don’t walk into your life—anyone’s life—every day.

Cops and love, she thought. What a mixture. What a . . .

The room exploded with a deafening, deadly roar, an explosion that rang off the fragile glass walls, echoing with an odd, resonant timbre, mocking, shaking them all.

This was a sound she was coming to recognise. One that people like Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni had introduced into her life. A single metallic scream, so loud she could feel her eardrums shrink under its violent volume.

“Gianni—” she murmured.

But the big man was gone already, punching his way through the overdressed mob, heading for an area of space that was opening up near the doorway, one that was getting larger by the second as all the costumed fools, the harlequins and the plague doctors, the medieval whores and the court ladies, suddenly got smart, remembered what century they were living in, and recognised the angry howl of a weapon.

“Get out of my damn way,” Teresa spat at some moron in black and white, flailing her arms, not wanting to think about what she’d see.

A man with a gun. There was always a man with a gun.

Both Nic and Leo Falcone were facing him down already, refusing to be cowed, standing to confront the madman who hid behind his hostage, a woman she recognised as the terrified Raffaella Arcangelo, trembling and pale in her black widow’s gown.

NIC . . .”

He listened to the inspector’s warning voice carefully, not taking his eyes off Aldo Bracci for a moment. The man was dead drunk, scarcely able to stand. A stupid, unwanted trick of the memory meant Costa recognised the weapon in his hand. It was an old Luigi Franchi RF-83 revolver, a .38 special with six cylinders, just under a kilo in weight, obsolete, unreliable, the kind of crap they took off small-time street hoods in Rome, thugs who couldn’t shoot straight to save their lives. Not that it mattered. What was important was that this was a firearm, a small harbinger of death housed in ugly black metal.

“This is my call, Nic,” Falcone murmured. “Get back. That’s an order.”

They were just a few metres from Bracci and Raffaella, in the still-bright yellow sun of the dying evening, beneath the wasted brilliance of a vast Murano chandelier suspended from the rusting iron gallery above.

“He’s drunk. He only knows you from this afternoon and that didn’t go well at all,” Costa said quietly. “Bracci just sees you as part of this problem. I came before. Give me a chance.”

“Nic . . .” There was a stern, desperate note in Falcone’s voice.

“No, sir,” Costa declared, and stepped in front of the inspector, held out his arms, wide, hands open, showing he had nothing with which to threaten the furious-looking Aldo Bracci, who cowered behind Raffaella, shaking with fear and rage.

“Put the gun down, Aldo,” Costa said in a firm, even voice. “Put it down, let the woman go. Then we can talk this through. No one gets hurt. Nothing goes any further. It’s all going to be OK. I promise.”

Bracci’s left arm was tight round her throat. Raffaella Arcangelo’s hands hung loose by her sides.

“Too damn late, you bastard!” Bracci’s voice was a tortured howl. This man was not going to understand logic. Costa tried to recall all the tricks a cop could use in these situations. And the golden rule: Keep it calm.

“Talk to me, Aldo,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want you off my back. I want . . .”

The man was close to tears, desperate, and Costa understood why. What had emerged on Murano that afternoon was irreversible.

“I want my fucking life back,” Bracci babbled, as miserable as hell.

Costa nodded, theatrically, making sure the wretched man understood. “I’m sorry about what happened. We just went round to talk to you because we had to. It’s the job. We talk to everyone.”

Bracci’s wild, drunken eyes rolled. “You fuck up everyone? With these stories? You go round dredging up old dirt and scattering it round the streets like dog shit?”

“No. That shouldn’t have happened. I apologise.”

“ Some good that does me! So where am I supposed to go now, smart-ass? Home?”

In that narrow, malodorous street, with an angry face peering out from every window. Aldo Bracci’s life was finished. Costa understood that as well as Bracci did. This was what made Bracci so dangerous.

“Tell me what you want,” he urged.

Spittle flew from Bracci’s mouth as he laughed. The laugh turned into a long choking cough. His shoulders heaved. He looked like a man who didn’t care about anything, least of all himself.

Quietly, patiently, Costa persisted. “You came here for a reason. If I knew what that was . . .”

The glassy, drunk eyes glared at him. “If you knew what that was . . .”

The gun rose again. Bracci was looking around, scanning the crowd, looking for someone, not finding the face he sought.

Bracci jerked back his arm, fired again, straight into the chandelier above him, despatching a shower of tiny glass shards into the room. The crowd was screaming again, falling back, crushing against the temporary tables, sending the plates of delicate canapés and the glasses of sparkling wine crashing on the stone floor.

Costa didn’t move. He looked at Bracci, resolute, determined to see this through. Two shots. Six chambers. If they were full when the man entered the room, there were just four left now. Not that any of them needed to be used.

“Put the gun down, Aldo,” Costa repeated. “Let Raffaella go. Then we’ll walk outside, talk this through. I’ll take you anywhere you want. On the mainland. You name the place.”

The dead eyes blinked. “Anywhere?”

“Anywhere you . . .”

Costa halted. A black figure was scuttling through the crowd, quickly, something in its hand.

“No!” Costa bellowed.

Gianfranco Randazzo was striding into the space Bracci had made, black pistol in hand, firing already, straight at them, like a madman, almost random in his fury.

Costa leapt forward, diving, tearing at Raffaella’s gown, dragging her to the floor, out of Bracci’s grip. The unsteady figure above them didn’t know where to turn. To his disappearing hostage, or to face the hot random rain spitting at him from Randazzo’s weapon.

A red tear opened up in Bracci’s shoulder. A sudden spurt of blood fell warm on Costa’s face. Bracci shrieked. The gun jerked in his hand, twice, firing nowhere in particular.

The screams came from all around them, hoarse, terrified cries uttered by a cast of fake actors snatched abruptly into a cold and dangerous reality. Commissario Randazzo, in his fine black suit, was now casually walking up to the stumbling shattered figure of Bracci, taking aim at the man’s head, like a backstreet executioner, letting loose one final shot into the man’s scalp.

Bracci’s torso jerked back under the force of the bullet. The gun fell out of his dead hand, clattering to the marble floor, spent, its damage done.

Costa recoiled at the sharp, bitter smell of gunfire, then watched in disgust as Randazzo performed one final act, kicking the twitching corpse in the back, sending it rolling onto its side. Bracci’s cheap cotton work jacket, the same he’d worn in his tawdry little furnace, flapped open to reveal the wounded man’s bloodied chest.