David Hewson - The Lizard's Bite

“Would you mind if we came and took a look around? I want to see Bella’s bedroom. Perhaps take away some more samples.”

The bed trick worked for Emily. It was worth trying again, though it still didn’t put Massiter there on the night of the murder.

“Of course.”

“And one more thing. I need you to think hard about this, Raffaella. Did you see anything after they were killed—anything at all—that showed traces of blood? Marks on paintwork or the floor. Spots on a cloth. Something out of place. Anything.”

The other woman was silent. Teresa’s heart skipped a beat.

“Raffaella?”

Teresa could picture her, hand to her mouth, thinking, trying to work out what was wrong.

“You’d best come now,” Raffaella said at last. “I think I’ve been a fool.”

THE THIRTY-YEAR-OLD CESSNA 180 PERFORMED A TIGHT forty-degree right-hand turn low over the shining, mackerel-skin waters of the lagoon, an ungainly red and white bird with high wings and a couple of gigantic Edo amphibious floats jutting out where the undercarriage should have been. Andrea Correr, who owned a couple of hotels on the Lido, two restaurants in San Marco, and one of the biggest tour agencies in town, took the cigarette from his fingers, stuffed it in between his lips, then fought the wheel, trying to remember the water-landing lessons he’d had nine years before on an alligator-infested lake a few miles outside Orlando. Correr liked to think of himself as a good pilot, an amateur, but one who’d built up almost a thousand hours in a decade of flying from the little airfield hidden away at the tip of the Lido. When some young cop came out to the aircraft stand, waving his badge, demanding to be picked up on official business, and offering to pay for the gas too, Correr didn’t have too many hesitations. He didn’t own a professional licence. He’d have to take the money as a contribution towards costs, and wouldn’t, for a moment, dream of giving the cop a receipt in return, not that Correr had mentioned this small catch on the airfield pavement.

There was just one problem, and it was both the prize and the potential pitfall in the present proceedings. The young cop seemed to think that, if he found what he wanted, Correr would simply land his plane on the water, taxi into the shore, leave him there, and then zoom back home. Given those big Edo floats visible to all, it was an understandable mistake. But his Cessna had been flown with the internal carriage wheels extended for as long as Correr could remember. He’d been talked into buying the expensive old floatplane by a flying-club regular who’d omitted to mention one salient point: The law forbade him to land it anywhere in the lagoon. Only sea use was allowed, and the choppy waters of the Adriatic were deemed too difficult for all but the most experienced of pilots. The only aircraft Correr had ever landed on water was a Piper Cub at the school in Florida, and that was a small, ancient, two-seater tandem contraption of canvas and wood, one that was started by standing on the float and hand swinging the prop. It was more like a toy than a real aircraft, a plaything that flitted in and out of stretches of water rarely troubled by more than a passing breeze.

The 180 was a complex machine, with a variable-pitch prop, more controls than he could handle sometimes, even after a decade of ownership, and the awkward retractable undercarriage that would have to be wound up into the floats before the plane so much as touched a single wave. And the lagoon was no still patch of Everglades lake, more the sea in miniature, with a dappled surface that was unreadable from above, riddled with invisible currents, under constant barrage from random blasts of gusting chop rolling all the way down from the Dolomite Mountains. A part of him told Andrea Correr he’d be insane to do as the young cop insisted. A part of him said he’d never get this opportunity again in his life, and he could always blame the police if it all turned horribly wrong.

They’d been round and round most of the obscure islands of the lagoon, twice, all at the same barely legal height, all with the Cessna just hanging in the air, bumping above its stall speed, so that the young cop got the best view from the right-hand passenger seat in the turns. Correr had lost count of how many cigarettes he’d smoked, despatching the butts through the open side window. He knew a few of these places: San Francesco del Deserto, with its Franciscan monastery. Lazzaretto Nuovo, the former leper colony that now housed a scattering of disused military buildings. Santa Cristina, with its tiny brick church. Others just came from the cop’s tourist map, a litany of unknown names, La Salina, La Cura, Campana, Sant’ Ariano . . . just hunks of grassy rock deserted over the centuries, with, at best, a few derelict buildings to indicate people had once lived there.

The cop was starting to look desperate. Correr couldn’t work out whether to feel disappointed or relieved. The thought of putting the plane’s fat feet down on the lagoon still sent a tingle of anticipation and dread down his spine.

They were now over Mazzorbo, the long, barely inhabited island next to Burano, to which it was connected by a bridge. Correr hunted ducks hereabouts in winter, and liked to eat at the restaurant by the vaporetto stop where, in season, the local wildfowl regularly found their way onto the plate, and at prices that were a fraction of those in the city.

He glanced at the fuel gauge: good for another hour. Oil pressure and temperatures looked steady. The old Cessna was a reliable beast. Pretty soon, though, they’d run out of places to look. The lagoon wasn’t so large from the air. They’d been low enough to see into people’s gardens and swimming pools, low enough to get him a ticking off once he got back to the Lido. No one liked intrusive flying. It just brought in more complaints.

“So what exactly are you looking for?” Correr yelled over the noise of the engine.

The pair of them wore noise-cancelling David Clark headsets, but they still fought to keep out the racket from the hefty Lycoming engine up front.

“A man and a woman,” the cop barked back. “Hiding.” Which didn’t seem of much help.

“If I wanted to hide,” Correr suggested, “I’d do it there.”

He popped the cigarette in his mouth once more and pointed to the island city on the horizon. From this height it seemed modest, a forest of brick spires rising from a tightly packed community of houses.

“They can’t be there. People would recognise them.”

“Then maybe they’re gone.”

The cop shook his head vigorously. “Doesn’t add up. They don’t have the money. Besides, they’ve got ties. Strong ties. I just don’t see them running.”

“So why are we looking in the lagoon?”

The little cop was gazing in the direction of Murano at that moment, towards the trio of weird, decrepit buildings Correr had been reading about in the papers. One day soon there could be a hotel there, and a new gallery, thanks to the rich Englishman who was closer to men of influence in Venice than a middle-class man like Andrea Correr could ever hope for. Still, these developments were worth remembering. The travel agent in him knew there could be money to be had soon.

The cop squirmed in the passenger seat then turned and looked at him. “If I’m right, they had some help. From a farmer on Sant’ Erasmo. Someone who knows this lagoon like the back of his hand. If he wanted to hide them somewhere, I thought . . .”

He went quiet.

Correr wished he’d mentioned this idea before they took off.