David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

Love is blind.

THE IDEA THAT LEO FALCONE HAD BEEN SERIOUSLY INJURED by anything more than bad luck offended Luca Zecchini’s sense of fairness. To make matters both more complicated and more interesting, the state police inspector’s two men had mentioned a name that pricked so many bad memories from the not-so-distant past it ruined Zecchini’s appetite completely.

“You seem remarkably sure about the guilty party, if I may say so,” he observed when the two cops from Rome had finished. “I heard Leo was the victim of an unfortunate accident. Sometimes these things are best left alone.”

“Until the next accident? And, yes, we’re sure.” Costa looked tougher, more determined than Zecchini had expected from Falcone’s description.

“I’ve followed this in the papers, Nic. They all say the lunatic the commissario shot was responsible for those murders. That part of the case is closed. All they’ve got to do now is deal with their own. Are you telling me there’s more? That Leo was shot deliberately?”

“No,” Peroni conceded, and Zecchini found, to his shame, that a small part of him regretted the fact there would be no easy way to send them packing with their fantasies. “It was an accident,” the big Roman cop continued. “But killing Aldo Bracci wasn’t. Randazzo was improvising there. Trying to do his paymaster a favour.”

The two of them stared at him, expectant.

“Even if you’re correct, gentlemen,” Zecchini answered, “what can I do? This is a case for the police. Not us. We don’t intervene in each other’s affairs. It would be unheard of. I couldn’t contemplate that.”

“We’re not asking you to cross any lines,” Costa said quickly. “This falls squarely in your existing responsibilities. Art theft. Smuggling.”

Luca Zecchini doubted that greatly.

“You know,” he replied, “perhaps you should be wondering what Leo would be doing in these circumstances. He’s a practical man. He’d know when he was beaten. You’re off duty for the time being. You don’t have the right to question people. To investigate anyone, least of all someone of this man’s standing. Also, I always found Leo to be reluctant, meticulously reluctant, to reach hard decisions in advance of hard evidence.”

Costa pushed away his plate. He’d hardly picked at his food. “We’ve asked ourselves that question. We’ll have hard evidence too. I don’t want to mislead you, Luca. There are other lines of attack open to us. The Arcangeli case, which is far from closed. And the charges Massiter skipped away from five years ago.” He glanced at Peroni. “Plus we may have some forensic too.”

Peroni didn’t seem too happy with that last observation. Maybe the older man understood just how perilous it could be to play games like these. It was time, Zecchini realised, to come to the point.

“Then let me put it plainly. Hugo Massiter is a man of extreme influence and importance, more so by the day, from what I read in the papers. Once he becomes the owner of that island, he becomes virtually untouchable. I live here. Everyone in the Veneto follows what happens in Venice, because that’s the place the money goes. Very large sums of money that bind the giver and the receiver in ways you people in Rome can’t imagine. When that deal’s done, Hugo Massiter becomes something different. Part of the establishment. You’d need written permission from the Quirinale Palace just to talk to him about a parking ticket after that. And now—”

“Now what?” Peroni interrupted.

“Now he’s just a very powerful crook with some friends who ought to know better. If you screw around with him, he will, surely, come looking for his revenge. This is not idle speculation. I’ve watched careers destroyed trying to take down that man. I’m not much inclined to invite the same fate.”

Costa’s eye, bright, alert, inquisitive, caught his. “You know him personally?” the young policeman asked.

“No details. I’m just giving you the big picture. Massiter’s a man who’s wriggled out of our grasp many times in the past, then turned up smiling with not an etto of blame on him. You’d need a motive—”

“Got it,” Peroni interjected. “This deal he had with the Arcangeli. He needed it closed down.”

“So why did he kill the brother and his wife?” Zecchini demanded. “What’s the point of that?”

“It’s personal,” Costa said. “He got Bella pregnant. She was putting pressure on him. He killed her, then set Uriel up for the blame.”

“You can prove some of this?”

“We’ll get there,” Costa insisted.

“You’re going to have to do better than that! Suspicions fall off that man like dead skin. We’ve tried to screw Massiter for art smuggling in the past. Many, many times. You people thought you had him for murder five years ago. Instead . . .”

This wasn’t just about guilt. It was about proof, and the ability to see through the judicial process. They all knew that—police, Carabinieri, and the armies of lawyers who had, over the years, been assembled on both sides too.

Costa was unmoved. Luca Zecchini tried hard to remember more of what Falcone had said about these two men. Of their honesty, their disregard for their own safety when it came to a case that mattered.

“Leo’s my friend as well,” he added. “I don’t think he’d want you to put your necks on the line for him. Not just on a hunch. Not like this.”

“Is that what you think this is? A hunch?” Costa seemed disappointed. “Some personal vendetta on Leo’s behalf?”

“It seems—”

“No! We’ve looked at the records, Maggiore. And those are just ours. God knows what’s there on your side. Hugo Massiter is a cancer in Venice. He’s everywhere. In the government. In the city. Alongside all the organised crime that’s coming in from across the Adriatic.”

The two of them must have seen the expression on his face.

“You’d be amazed the stuff we managed to dig up before they threw us out of the Questura. We called a friend in the DIA too,” Peroni said. “We know about the Serbians and the Croats. How he plays them off against one another. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Zecchini groaned. No one talked to the anti-Mafia people unless they were desperate. “This isn’t your field,” he warned. “Leave it alone.”

Costa fed him a sour glance. “So you don’t want him?”

Zecchini couldn’t miss the taunting tone in his voice. “I’d give my right arm to arraign that bastard on anything. But we’ve been there before and we failed. That makes it harder to go back again, to get the lawyers nodding the case through, unless it’s more watertight than anything we’ve had before. And mark my words. What we’ve been able to throw at him in the past was good. He should have been in jail ten times over. Would have been too, if it weren’t for his friends.”

“If the case is good enough,” Costa objected, “even his friends will abandon him.”

“Really?” He couldn’t believe they could be that naive. “Well, here’s something else I discovered. Every time we lose, he gets stronger. I’d need something very special just to get the authorities to read a file on Hugo Massiter right now. Once he’s signed that contract, and all those millions of public money are behind him, all those grateful politicians in his debt . . .”

He looked at the wasted food. Zecchini had expected more of them. Maybe he’d be on the date with Gina after all that night. He wasn’t going to stick out his neck over some amateur, unauthorised probe into someone who always managed to slip out of their grasp.