David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

The face of a monk, bald, tanned, friendly, with the cowl around his neck, appeared at the open window. The man put a single finger to his lips and hissed, “Ssshhhh . . .”

Lavazzi waited for him to disappear, then swore quietly, stared at Randazzo and said, “We’re all fucking bored. OK? Saying it just makes things worse. Besides . . .”

He looked at his watch. It was getting close to midday. Lunchtime. These two never missed the opportunity to stuff their faces, usually for free, Randazzo guessed. Guard duty hadn’t stopped them disappearing for an hour around this time every day, coming back with a rosy glow and some pasta sauce on their chops. All Gianfranco Randazzo had to eat was the plain, dull fare of the monks.

“We could go out for lunch,” the commissario suggested.

“You paying?” Malipiero asked immediately.

“If you like,” Randazzo replied. It would be worth it. Also, if he was picking up the bill, he could order them to sit at another table and get some decent privacy for himself.

The two men glanced at each other. Randazzo’s spirits rose. A good meal, a couple of glasses of wine . . . There was a little restaurant he knew in the Campo Arsenale, home cooking in the shadow of the great golden gateway, close to the four lions every Venetian knew were looted from Athens in one of the republic’s raiding adventures way back when. It was hard to walk anywhere in Venice without seeing something that had been purloined over the centuries. The city took what it wanted, when it wanted. Randazzo had learned that lesson as a boy.

He could see the greed glinting in the guards’ faces. A part of him wished he could persuade the pair to turn their backs on a visit from Chieko too, though he wondered what the rules of the monastery would be about allowing women into this bright little oasis nestling near the gasworks in Castello. That could be . . . entrancing if it worked.

Then he remembered Massiter crowing about her in that stupid apartment of his inside the glass palace and the way he’d ignored her ever since.

“Well?” he growled. “I don’t have all day.”

“Really?” Lavazzi laughed. “Wait there. I’ll go make a call and check. Maybe . . .”—he glanced at his partner, an expression there Randazzo didn’t understand—“ . . . it’s not such a bad idea after all.”

Malipiero went quiet when his partner was gone. He was, Randazzo judged, the lesser of the pair.

“Who do you two keep calling all the time?” Randazzo demanded, cross for no real reason, wishing his temper would stay in place for once. “Girlfriends. Boyfriends. Those are Questura phones. I get to see the bills when they come in. If you’re running up private business on my account, you’ll get to know about it.”

The man kept staring at his fat, grubby hands, whistling some stupid pop tune that was on the radio all the time. That was, Randazzo thought, the closest he could get to entertainment.

Then Malipiero stopped, glowered at him, and said, “You know, I wish you’d make up your mind. Are you the upstanding honest guy here? Or just like the rest of us? It gets confusing for simpletons like me.”

“Don’t be so fucking impertinent!” Randazzo yelled.

The face came back to the window, offended this time, as close to cross as a monk could get.

“Gentlemen,” the man said, “if you don’t behave correctly here, I shall have to ask you to leave. We are accommodating. We are, however, only human.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Malipiero grumbled, waving him down. “Go say a prayer or something. We’ll leave a little change in the box by the door.”

The monk disappeared, a worldly epithet echoing gently in his wake.

“You just leave one long line of satisfied customers everywhere you go,” Randazzo observed.

The whistling began again, until Lavazzi returned, grinning, carrying something in a plastic bag.

“You’re on,” he said. “We’re clear to go out for two hours. Then it’s back in your cell, Commissario. Hope you brought plenty of money with you.”

“Enough,” Randazzo murmured, staring at the bag.

“Oh yeah,” Lavazzi added, still smirking like a teenager. “That was the condition. You’ve got to go out in kind of a disguise.”

He reached into the bag and took out the contents. It was a brown monk’s habit, complete with dressing gown–style belt.

“With that bald head you’re going to look the part,” the cop declared.

Maybe it was another of the pair’s jokes. Maybe someone back at the Questura really did think he ought to be discreet. Randazzo decided he didn’t care. He was going to have an hour in the outside world, with some real wine, not that piss the monks drank, some real food, in the dining room, at a quiet, shady table, while Lavazzi and Malipiero sat on the pavement in the sun, sweating.

Randazzo picked up the habit.

“Do I get some privacy?” he asked. “To change?”

“There you go again, Commissario,” Malipiero said. “Asking us to break the rules. It’s OK. Really. We’ll just stay and watch.”

TERESA LUPO AND SILVIO DI CAPUA MUNCHED ON COLD pizza and looked at their workload: the e-mailed initial reports from the two labs they had chosen for their research in Mestre, one for chemical analysis, one for pathology, and the earliest results from the material sent via Alberto Tosi to Rome. It was now twelve-thirty. From what Nic had said they had no more than a few hours to come up with something the Carabinieri could throw at the Englishman. It wasn’t looking good.

The most promising route should have been the data files Emily had—one way or another—got out of Massiter’s computer. This was hard evidence, the kind detectives liked because you could pass it round the room and let everyone appreciate its worth without some geek there to translate. Teresa had passed the memory pod on to the plainclothes detective who came to collect it after she’d called, but not before everything it contained was copied to her own machine first.

Silvio, who knew computers so much better than Teresa did, had tried to open the files in any number of ways she failed to comprehend. The best he got, while mumbling low curses and imprecations full of obscure acronyms, was a screen full of garbage and obscure characters. The files weren’t just protected with a password. They’d been encrypted too. When she asked, more out of desperation than hope, whether it could be cracked, Silvio had muttered something about months of work and vast amounts of some obscure thing called MIPS-years. Which, translated into everyday language, meant, as far as she understood it, someone could crack the files, but it would take a lot of time and more computers than someone like old Alberto Tosi would believe existed on the entire planet. Months down the line, if a formal investigation into Massiter got under way, perhaps it could turn into something useful. For the moment it was worthless. Which meant they were back at the beginning, trying to read the runes of the scraps of material and human evidence they had.

After failing with the data files, they had turned to the reports on Uriel’s apron and the wood samples. The more she looked at them, the more Teresa felt like screaming.

She glugged down some mineral water purloined from Nic’s fridge. “You’re the chemist, Silvio. Ketone. What the hell is ketone? Refresh my memory.”

He gave her that “I can’t believe you don’t know this” look that she was noticing more and more these days. Silvio had lost some weight recently and had refined his choice in clothes, which now ran to grey corded slacks and a pale lavender polo shirt. If he kept on like this he’d finally get a girl sometime soon, she thought.