David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

“He mentioned us?” the elder—Peroni, he recalled the name now—asked, sounding surprised.

“There were times when he talked about very little else. I knew Leo only for a few months. We talked a lot. We became friends, I think. In spite of the different uniforms. It’s not impossible, is it?” Zecchini pushed away his plate. “How is he?” he asked, a part of him not wanting to know the answer. “I thought of visiting. But it seemed such a mess over there. Such an imposition. Besides, I don’t think an officer of the Carabinieri would be particularly welcome . . .”

Peroni shrugged. “He wouldn’t know. He’s not recovered consciousness, not in a week. The doctors say it’s touch and go. Whatever happens, I don’t think Leo’s going to be back in the job again.”

It was good news they even gave him some chance. From what Zecchini had heard, they’d thought Falcone was little more than a breathing corpse at one point.

“That’s hard to believe,” he said.

“I agree.” It was the young one who spoke. “Nic Costa. Gianni Peroni.”

Zecchini extended his hand. “Please call me Luca. I asked that of Leo. I ask it of you. We’re acquaintances. Not colleagues. That makes some things easier. And eat, please. It’s been a while since I bought a state policeman a meal. Too long.”

He called over the waiter and listened to their orders: meat for the big man, grilled vegetables for Costa. Zecchini was slightly disturbed to discover that, through his friendship with Leo Falcone, he felt he knew these men already.

“You’re looking for work?” he asked, after the waiter had gone.

The newspapers had been full of the aftermath of the incident in Venice. A commissario had been suspended pending possible manslaughter charges. Costa and Peroni were on enforced leave, which was often the precursor to disciplinary action.

“We’ve got plenty of work,” Costa replied.

It was, Zecchini thought, just what he expected. “That doesn’t sound too good. I thought you were supposed to sit at home and twiddle your thumbs.”

Peroni laughed. “The problem is, once you’ve been under that cunning old bastard for a while, it gets decidedly difficult to do what you’re supposed to sometimes. You mean you never noticed, Luca?”

Zecchini took a mouthful of his pork rib. It was cold. The meal was ruined, and he rather guessed it could only get worse.

“We came with a gift,” Costa said. “Or rather a prize.”

“It’s going to cost me?” Zecchini asked.

Costa watched the waiter return with their food, then watched the man leave.

“Nothing comes for free,” he said. “But, if we’re right, if we get lucky . . . with your help. It’s a prize I think you’d like very much.”

Luca Zecchini listened to the two of them. It only took a minute to realise the last thing he’d be doing that evening would be watching Il Trovatore in the company of the delightful Gina.

IT HAD BEEN MORE THAN A DECADE SINCE TERESA LUPO had abandoned medicine for what she saw as the more challenging world of working in a police morgue. Now she felt lost in a hospital. The Ospedale Civile of Venice seemed more like an entire quarter of the city than a medical institution. It ran through a warren of historic buildings, modern accretions, and storeys of blocks that seemed like apartments, until emerging on the bare lagoon waterfront between Fondamente Nuove and Celestia. Teresa couldn’t help but notice the institution sat bang opposite another staging post on the journey of life, the cemetery island of San Michele, whose brick walls blocked—happily, she thought—the view over to the Isola degli Arcangeli on Murano. The Venetians never did like to make more effort than was absolutely necessary.

Three things happened the night Leo Falcone was hurried to the Ospedale Civile in a speeding water ambulance, siren wailing, blue light echoing in the rapidly descending darkness.

First, she remembered how to yell at medics, good medics, people who were patently competent at their job, but just didn’t understand the small matter of priorities. A man with a head wound as bad as the one Falcone had suffered wasn’t in need of much analysis. He was a corpse in the making, screaming silently for someone to freeze the clock and keep him alive until a specialist could be got on the scene to work out if there was any way forward from this mess.

Second, she discovered she’d do anything to stop Leo Falcone from dying. Theoretically, she didn’t want anyone to die, ever, even if that put her out of a job. But this wasn’t about theory. Whatever had happened between her and Falcone in the past, she now had some unexpected bond with this strange, distant, frequently arrogant man whose stricken body had been wheeled through the corridors of the Ospedale Civile at speed, navigating its spider’s web of corridors on a journey, it seemed to her, to nowhere.

And third, she found out that she, and her Roman police pathologist’s card, still carried clout. When they got Falcone into pre-op and found that Venice’s one and only neurosurgeon was on holiday in the Maldives, Teresa simply screeched at them to do what they could to staunch the bleeding, then wait for orders.

There was some luck in the world. Maybe a God even. Pino Ferrante had been at medical school with her all those years ago. All the way over in the racing ambulance ferry dashing across the lagoon, she had been remembering his hands, which were the most beautiful she’d ever seen on a man: long and fine and elegant, like something from a drawing by Dürer. Healing hands, that much was obvious too when he’d completed the training and entered the outside world of medical practice. Pino was now a prosperous neurology consultant in his native Bologna, little more than sixty minutes away if he still drove a car the way he used to. And he was at home when she called, breathless, pleading.

Less than three hours later Falcone was in the operating room, with Pino’s gentle, firm fingers trying to perform wonders she could only guess at, while the four of them, two colleagues-cum-friends, two women who’d found themselves dragged unwittingly into this wounded man’s life, waited on the terrace by the waterfront, swatting midges in the sticky night air, drinking endless plastic cups of bad coffee, asking themselves all manner of questions about the strange burst of violence that had torn through the Arcangeli’s palazzo, and Hugo Massiter’s party, that evening.

Then finally, reaching a decision, one found in anger and a mute, shared hunger for some semblance of justice. One that didn’t require much effort, if they were honest with themselves. Or much discussion, because discussion just got in the way of what was needed.

There were facts before them, Nic said. Staring them in the face, taunting. Gianfranco Randazzo worked for Hugo Massiter. That had been obvious all along. Randazzo had murdered Bracci to close down the case—and Massiter’s deal—wounding Leo Falcone, possibly fatally, along the way.

It was meant to be a neat, tidy package, one that no one was trying to untie, to try to see what might lie inside. Venice would, Nic predicted accurately, be determined to swallow the story Randazzo gave them of that night, even though there were so many questions. Why had the drunken Bracci come to Hugh Massiter’s in the first place? What exactly had he hoped to achieve by taking Raffaella hostage while searching among the masks and the commedia dell’arte costumes for the man he wanted, who was Massiter, Nic said, surely? And why the hell would he bring along a handy piece of evidence, the keys with their telltale ribbon, just to complete the story?