David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

An Alitalia jet whined overhead, making its descent into the airport that lurked at the distant water’s edge, forever growing, eating away a little more of the wild marshland each year. Emily waited for the roar of its engines to subside, then took the fluted glass, tasted the chilled vintage Dom Pérignon, telling herself that she would drink one glass and one glass alone, then leaned back, letting her blonde hair reach into the slipstream created by the vessel’s gathering speed, aware that Hugo couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Where are we going exactly? I’m used to getting directions.”

“You can leave the directions to me. We’re going to the Locanda Cipriani. Torcello. You’ve never been?”

She’d heard of the place. Hemingway had written much of Across the River and into the Trees there, in between duck hunts and drinking sessions. She’d read the book as a teenager, while going through her Hemingway phase. It was the unlikely story of a romance between a dying middle-aged American colonel, scarred by the war, and a young, beautiful Italian countess. A love that was returned. She hadn’t needed to dip into the biographies to understand that Hemingway had been telling his own story, recounting the growing fears and disappointments of age, trying to convince himself they could be balanced, if not countered entirely, by the presence of a teenager who was willing to have sex with him in a gondola at night. It was a lecherous old man’s fantasy, and the tragedy was that Hemingway hoped in vain to conceal that fact from everyone, most of all himself.

“Tell me about Laura Conti,” she said. Hugo had spent the afternoon away from the yacht, locked in a series of seemingly endless meetings with lawyers, advisers and the Arcangeli brothers. This was the first real opportunity she’d had to start pushing some questions his way. “I’m the curious type.”

Hugo raised his glass. “And I’m the indiscreet type, as I told you. Except . . .”

He glanced towards the low island in the distance and then his watch. “Dinner at the Locanda. It’s been such a long time. And now there’s so much to celebrate.”

“Except what?”

His smile fell for a second. He stared at her with a sudden, brutish frankness. “Intimacies require intimacy. I’m no fool, Emily.”

She placed the glass, two-thirds full, on the polished walnut table that sat between them. Massiter’s temporary home had been a place of some interest for her. The yacht’s crew, mainly men, with women for waiting and cleaning duties alone, were either Croatian or, in the case of the menials, Filipino. There was a small locked office on the lowest floor, down a narrow set of stairs, beneath the eight cabins, the largest of which—Massiter’s—occupied the prow. The vessel was, he said, rented, a necessary evil between selling his last apartment on the Grand Canal to raise funds for the Isola degli Arcangeli project and moving into his new home there. He wasn’t happy in the yacht, though its opaque smoked windows kept out the curious glances of the tourists on the broad and busy waterfront leading from the Doge’s Palace to the Arsenale. There had to be a reason he would have chosen a home like this, and that, surely, lay in the small office. She recalled the locked room in the apartment he had built for himself in the palace on the island. He had a fondness for small, dark places in which to hide things. It was simply a question of penetrating them.

“I told you last night. Nic and I had a fight. I needed somewhere to stay, Hugo. Don’t read more into it than that.”

She thought about Nic, who by now should have cleared the little apartment in Castello. He and Peroni had found some expensive temporary accommodation, two bedrooms, one little kitchen, in one of the narrow streets in working-class Castello, squeezed between the Via Garibaldi and the Biennale Gardens. There would be no free police apartment in Venice again. No secret moments in the tiny bed squeezed between the door and the window that gave out onto a pink-washed street crisscrossed with washing lines. And instead, what? She’d seen the expression on Nic’s face when he left. It was grim and determined and utterly single-minded. Nic needed to bring Massiter to justice, for Leo’s sake. There was a debt lurking there, demanding repayment. Without that, she wondered how he could ever be easy with himself.

“People who need somewhere to stay generally take their custom to hotels,” Massiter said. “You came to me. Why, Emily?”

She was uncertain how to handle him. Hugo Massiter was a mix of contradictions: wily in the ways of the world, yet almost innocent when it came to anything that touched his ego.

“I thought that was what you wanted. I was curious to see if I was right.”

He was watching her avidly, judging, avaricious too. “Does he know you’re with me?”

“No . . .”

She reached for the glass and drained it in two quick gulps, not even fighting the temptation. He was there with a refill the moment it left her lips. It was all a question of confidence. That was what the men in Langley said. A matter of building trust. Of lies and skilled deceit.

“Is it important?” she asked. “I knew I wasn’t going to get the door slammed in my face. Or did you really think I could be your architect?”

This amused him. “Why not? If it doesn’t work, I’ll find someone else. I’ve got the money now and money solves everything. Or at least I will have the money once I sign with the Arcangeli. After that . . . the island’s perfect, just the thing I need to get me back on my feet.”

She wondered about the details of the deal. They could be important. “Were you really that close to the edge?”

“Damn right,” he moaned. “More than anyone knows. I still am until I have the Arcangeli’s signature on the contract. Though I don’t expect that to be a problem now. Tomorrow night. Six o’clock. It’s done. A little ceremony in that beautiful dining room of theirs. Which will be my dining room afterwards.”

“I thought the Arcangeli were going to keep part of the house. You’d live in the apartment.”

He snorted. “You didn’t really believe that, did you? Does the master live in the servants’ accommodation? I think not. There are a few changes to the contract that Michele has yet to comprehend. But he will. When I buy that island, it’s mine. No strings. No caveats. I can do what I like. A hotel. An apartment block. Stores.”

“And the Arcangeli?”

He looked at her, disappointed. “They’ll have capital. They need this deal badly. Their debts are now impossible to ignore.”

Nic had told her exactly what he’d come to see as the Arcangeli’s real concern. They wanted a second chance to continue to make glass, a way to keep their art.

“A livelihood. A working foundry, where they feel they belong. I thought that was important to them.”

“It’s important to Michele. Uriel never gave a damn. Gabriele does as he’s told. The sister’s neither here nor there. They can take the cash. Open a bar. Dream their dreams. Do what the hell they like. Provided . . .”

He licked his lips. There were still some doubts here.

“Provided what?”

“Nothing you need worry about,” he replied curtly. “There’s a little . . . tidying necessary before tomorrow night. But I’m a tidy man. I can deal with that. No lawyer can throw a spanner in the works. It was messier than I’d expected, but that happens.”

“And after tomorrow night?”

He grinned. The broad, coarse gesture changed his face, made his features exaggerated, ugly.

“After that I prosper! More than ever. The auction business is as flat as this damn lagoon, but property . . . That island’s worth ten times what I’m paying them. I can get any number of backers to redevelop that place just by picking up the phone. So could the Arcangeli if they hadn’t been so arrogant. There’s only one industry here now and that’s cramming as many gullible tourists into the streets as possible and fleecing them blind. No one wants glass. No one wants art, not real art anyway. The Arcangeli never learned that lesson. They tried to fool themselves it was different for them. It isn’t.”