Lucifer's Shadow

49 Sant’ Erasmo

The morning ferry from the Fondamente Nuove crawled across the expanse of lagoon at a snail’s pace, depositing Daniel a good fifteen-minute walk from Piero’s smallholding. The Adriatic shimmered a weak shade of grey on the eastern horizon and sent a welcome breath of air across the neat rows of vegetables that lined the footpath.

Daniel had waited in the house for an hour and she had not come. Giulia Morelli said she had been released the day before. If she planned to return to Ca’ Scacchi, she would surely have done so already. Her comments in the jail seemed plain enough. She must have known where he would be. So she would have fled elsewhere, to the elderly mother in Mestre, perhaps, or some nearby relative.

To Piero’s, even. He tried to imagine seeing her in these verdant green fields, much as he had done on the day of the boat trip in those final moments before their world had disintegrated. He recalled her standing triumphant after the ridiculous game with the eels. He remembered, too, the taste of the fish in his own mouth and the way she looked at him after he braved the inky bucket of squirming bodies. It was at that point that he had committed himself to the city and, as a consequence, to her.

The cottage grew larger on the horizon. There was no female figure outside, beyond the artichoke field, where the green, flowery heads nodded in the light wind. Only Piero, hacking at some wood on the spare ground with Xerxes by his side, seated, nose erect, staring at his owner in admiration. Daniel shouted a greeting. The dog’s head turned and a loud bark rang across the still of the island. Piero looked up. It was impossible for Daniel to discern his expression from this distance. Even so, he felt Piero seemed disappointed.

The dog bounded up to him, leaping at his thighs.

“Get down!” Piero shouted testily. He was covered in wood shavings from the object he had been carving in the garden. “Damned dog.”

“It’s all right, Piero,” Daniel said, extending a hand. The huge man took it with some reluctance. His skin bristled with wood chips.

“I don’t mean any offence, Daniel,” Piero said. “But why are you here? There must be so many things to do in the city, what with the funeral and this concert I keep hearing about? What can concern you in this backwater?”

“A friend, I thought,” Daniel replied carefully. “One who reminded me of happier times.”

Piero nodded, accepting the reproach. He went to the rough outdoor table, pulled out a plastic bottle, and poured red wine into a couple of paper cups.

“Here,” he said. “To absent companions.”

They drank and there was, Daniel realised, some palpable distance between them. It occurred to him that Piero was Scacchi’s cousin and had not been mentioned in the will. Perhaps this was some source of resentment on his part.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Daniel said. “About so many things. I don’t wish any misunderstandings, Piero. I didn’t write that will. I didn’t even know it existed. Tell me what you want from Scacchi’s estate and you’ll have it.”

The thick brows knotted, and Daniel realised, on the instant, that he had made a mistake. “Money? You’re offering me Scacchi’s money? What need do you think I have of that, Daniel?”

“I apologise. It is just… You didn’t seem pleased to see me.”

“No.” He downed the wine and poured himself more. “I hate deaths. I hate everything about them. I worked with the dead once. You won’t see me on Friday, not on San Michele. I know that place too damn well. But look here. I was going to send it. Now you can save me the trouble.”

He went back to the makeshift bench and pulled from the nest of shavings a small piece of dark, stained wood and placed it on the table. “I carved this for Scacchi. He would have hated the thing in life, but now he’s dead he can’t stop me. Promise this will be in the coffin. That old man needs all the help he can get where he’s going.”

Piero’s work was an intricate cross carved from a twisted gnarl of olive wood.

“Of course,” Daniel said. “It’s beautiful.”

“It is an idiot’s offering to his smart-ass cousin. Who knew me to be an idiot all along. Scacchi would have thrown it in the fire and then complained it burned meagrely.”

Daniel felt the smooth wood and thought of the long care that had gone into the piece. Piero was correct: Scacchi had had little time for the mundane. “I’ll place it there myself. I promise. And I hope you’ll reconsider your decision. I’m no expert on funerals, but I feel you may regret not being there.”

“No. The person is gone with that last breath. Why say good-bye to a carcass? I have Scacchi where he belongs, in my head, still alive there, where he will remain until I join him. I have no need of a funeral to convince myself he is dead. But you must go, Daniel. You are young. For you it’s different. And…” Piero wrestled with the words. “This is all so strange. Scacchi gone. The American too. For what?”

He required an answer, which was impossible. “I have no idea,” Daniel admitted.

“Ah! I’m a cretin. Why should you? Scacchi was a difficult man. He wound himself in mysteries and dealt too often with people best left alone. I know. Sometimes I was his errand boy on those excursions, more fool me.”

Daniel said nothing. Piero scanned his face closely.

“So he treated you the same way too, eh?” he asked. “Don’t deny it, Daniel. We were all, to some extent, Scacchi’s playthings. I loved the old man, in the way one loves a dog that never behaves. But when he wanted something, we were all merely pawns upon his chessboard, and there, I feel, lies the answer to his death. He has cheated someone, no doubt, and for once pushed too far.”

“Laura…” Daniel began to say.

“Laura! What fools the police are! To put her in jail like that. Do they have a brain in their heads?”

“She confessed, Piero. What else do you expect them to do?”

“Think about what they are hearing, for a start. Do they believe everything some villain tells them? Of course not. Yet when some poor woman whose head is mad with grief makes up this kind of cock-and-bull tale, they swallow every word and put her in prison. And all the while the real crooks swan around the city free as birds. You wonder why I live in Sant’ Erasmo? It is to distance myself from the stupidity that rains down upon you, day and night, in that place across the water.”

Daniel placed his paper cup on the table and held his hand over it when Piero tried to pour more wine. “Where is she now?” he enquired. “I need to talk to her.”

“I have no idea. Why ask me?”

“Because you’re her friend. You know her. This is important, Piero.”

“I have no idea!” His angry voice boomed across the low, flat fields. Xerxes’ ears fell flat to his head as the dog scuttled off to the corner of the clearing. Daniel said nothing. Finally, Piero apologised.

“I shouldn’t have shouted, Daniel. My nerves are frayed. You ask these questions and assume I have some answers. I have no more than you.”

“Where could she be? She said she had an elderly mother in Mestre.”

Piero cast him a withering glance. “A mother in Mestre? Laura was an orphan, Daniel. She came straight from the home to work for Scacchi many years ago. There was no mother. A man, no doubt, and why not?”

“But she told me!”

“Your capacity for belief astonishes me, boy. I wonder you manage to walk the streets of that place without having the clothes stolen off your back.”

“Then who is she? Where might she be?”

“Daniel, Daniel. How many times must I tell you I do not know. Besides…”

Daniel waited. Piero seemed unwilling to go on. “Besides what?”

“You care for her, I think. More than the care of a friend. Is this correct?”

“I believe so. I believe she feels the same way towards me.”

Piero took a swig of wine, then spat on the ground. “This tastes like piss. The wine has turned this past week. The world has turned too. Oh, Daniel! How can it be true that Laura loves you? She’s not mute. She’s not deaf or blind. If she cared to contact you, she could, surely. Yet she’s gone. With no news to you or me. What does that tell you? Are these the actions of a woman who has a care?”

Daniel suppressed his anger. “It tells me she is frightened, perhaps of the men who killed Scacchi. Perhaps she seeks to protect me from them for some reason. I don’t know. That’s why I must talk to her. If she tells me to my face that she wishes to see me no more, then so be it. But I can’t leave it like this. I will not.”

“You have no choice. I can’t help you. She will not.” Piero watched the dog slumbering by the canal and sniffed the salt air. “Perhaps it’s in the atmosphere. That poison they push into the sky from all those filthy factories in Mestre. It’s driven us all mad. I thought, that day we came here, that you were one of us. I saw the way you played our little game. We all loved you. Scacchi more than any other. But we were wrong. Every one of us.”

He turned and took Daniel by the shoulders. “You don’t belong here,” he said. “When your business is over, go home. You won’t find any happiness here. Only misery or worse. Go, while you are still able.”

Daniel stared at the man in front of him who now seemed a stranger. “If I didn’t know you, Piero, I would have interpreted that as a threat.”

“No. The very opposite. Sound advice from someone who cares for you. Who does not wish to see you wasting your life chasing ghosts, clutching at thin air. Will you listen? Please?”

Daniel closed his eyes and tried to think of some way through this maze. Piero was right. There were ghosts in the air: Scacchi and Paul laughing on the wind, Laura standing in front of him, staring in bemusement at the eel writhing around his face. And Amy, sad, lost Amy, who had been abandoned from the start.

“I’ll heed you, Piero,” he answered. “Next week I shall leave Venice, for good.”

Two vast arms swept around his body. Daniel found himself gripped to Piero’s massive chest. When he let go, Daniel saw there were tears in the huge man’s eyes.

“If it were in my power to turn back the clock,” Piero said. “If this poor simpleton could give anything to make things other than as they are…”

“No,” Daniel replied, shocked by this sudden turn of grief. “You’ve done everything you could to help me. I’ll always remember you, always the best times, on the Sophia, in our little party.”

“Boy!” Piero gripped him again, and this time the tears flooded down his cheeks.

Daniel disentangled himself somewhat, wondering all the while how Scacchi might have handled such a situation. “But there is something you must promise me, Piero.”

“Anything!”

“That you’ll remember me as I am. Not as others may paint me.”

Piero slapped him on the shoulder and poured two more cups of the sour red wine. Then he turned to watch the nodding heads of artichoke and the dog, who was awake again, tail now wagging hopefully, at the corner of the clearing.

“I know you, Daniel,” Piero said, not looking at him. “I’m not such a fool as some think.”