Lucifer's Shadow

51 An eventful interview

He had changed. Giulia Morelli sat next to Daniel Forster in the upper hall of the Scuola di San Rocco and tried to make sense of the situation. She had left a message on his answering machine that tantalised deliberately, holding out the promise of some kind of offer. She expected him to respond, but not so quickly or with such apparent determination. The doubt and misery which she had seen in him the previous day were now gone.

She followed his eyes and gazed at the paintings in the corner of the hall, feeling all the same that the game could still be hers. “I love this place,” she said. “I could sit here for hours. It’s as if someone painted the entire history of the world on these walls.”

“You really think that?” He seemed surprised.

“Sure. A policewoman can like paintings, Daniel. Music too. You’ll get me a ticket for the concert, won’t you?”

“I thought you didn’t take bribes.”

“True!” she laughed. “You’re very sharp today. Your eyes aren’t red. I think you’re no longer living in the bottom of a bottle of cheap rosso.”

“The wine has turned this past week,” he said obliquely. “I’ll have tickets left at the door. Just the one?”

She shrugged. “That’s all I need, Daniel. I’m a solitary sort. You’re kind.”

“It’s nothing.” His eyes seemed fixed on the painting, though it was one of the less conspicuous ones, a work she had never much noticed before.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“The room,” he lied. “Why do you really like this place?”

“As I said. Because it feels as if there is an entire world in here. All the emotions. Every story there’s ever been, for good and evil.”

His gaze stayed on the canvas in the corner.

“Tell me about that one,” she asked.

“It’s the Temptation of Christ. You haven’t noticed it before?”

She stared at Tintoretto’s two figures, refusing at first to believe him. But there was nothing else the work could be: there was Christ in darkness and doubt, and Lucifer with the rocks in his extended hand.

“No,” she said, surprised. “Not really. There are so many bigger works here. And…” Giulia Morelli paused, needing her words to be precise. “It’s odd. It is Christ who is in the shade and the Devil in the light. A handsome Devil too.”

“ ‘The Venetian Lucifer,’ Scacchi called him. He warned me that we would meet one day and I should face a choice.”

There was something important here. “Did you meet his devil?” “Perhaps,” he replied. “Perhaps I’m in his company now.”

“Ah,” she said, pleasantly impressed. “So that is why we meet here, not at Ca’ Scacchi?”

“No.” He wore an ingenuous smile and Giulia Morelli felt once more that Biagio was right: Daniel Forster was an honest man, if rather more slippery than she had first imagined. “To tell the truth, I was just tired of being in that big, empty house, waiting to hear another voice. And I love this place, as you do. As Scacchi did. These faces talk to you after a while.”

She said nothing, waiting.

“And you have, I think, something to tempt me?” he guessed. “Or so you hope, judging from your message.”

She made a noncommittal noise. “We both want the same thing, Daniel. To find whoever murdered your friends. I’ve some ideas in that regard, but no evidence. I could arraign you, of course, and try to force you to assist.”

“As you see fit,” he replied dryly. “Scacchi had little regard for the police. I should tell you that.”

“He had good reason to wish to avoid us from time to time. What else would you expect?”

He shook his head, unconvinced. “It wasn’t that. Scacchi was ambivalent about moral matters. That made it impossible for him to deal with anyone of a similar mind, and I imagine you must by definition fall into that category. The law isn’t black and white here, is it?”

“Some of us try to make it that way,” she insisted.

“Perhaps. But you do Scacchi a disservice if you think he disliked the police simply out of self-interest. You served him no purpose. Since he was unable to define his own position, he relied upon the certainties of others to define it for him. That was why he liked me, I believe. Why he adopted me, almost. What he took to be my steadfastness, my relentless sincerity, allowed him a pillar he could lean on, depend upon. For a while, anyway.”

He could not stop looking at the painting. She was unable to see the emotion in his eyes.

“And he was wrong,” Daniel added firmly. “Utterly wrong. Which is why we are here.”

“We should talk about this,” she said. “At length.”

“No,” he insisted. “Like him, I have nothing to gain from you.”

“So you’ve found the woman? The housekeeper?”

She had his attention then. The two figures on the canvas were entirely forgotten.

“Come, Daniel,” she continued. “She’s not returned to Ca’ Scacchi.

You’ve no idea where she is. You need to speak to her. You need to understand why she has abandoned you.”

“That’s a personal matter,” he replied coldly. “None of your damn business.”

“I wouldn’t argue with that. Yet we can help each other here. In return for your assistance, I can point you to where she may be found.”

He stared the length of the hall, seeming to weigh her offer. “Tell me now and I’ll help you.”

“No! Do I look a fool?”

“So much for trust!”

“Oh, Daniel. Don’t work so hard at being exasperating. You’re a young man in love. It’s written all over your face. If I tell you what I know, everything else will be forgotten. My case. This concert of yours that has the whole city on the edge of their seats. Everything. Both of us might lose more than you think. Have you thought of that? She confessed , Daniel. There was a reason.”

He turned away from her and stared at the opposite wall. “She lost her head. She was mad with grief.”

Did he really believe that? She held it out as a possibility, too, much as the idea grated. “Perhaps. Neither of us knows.”

His eyes went dead. “Then you haven’t a clue where she is, or surely you would have dragged this from her. Please. No more. I’m tired of these games.”

Giulia Morelli reached into her bag and pulled out the photographs she had retrieved that morning from the files and the morgue.

“This isn’t,” she insisted, “some ‘game.’ There are three men dead now, not two. And one more, sometime before you came here, who was connected to this case, too, I believe. There’s no reason to think they will be the last. The Venetian Lucifer isn’t just some paint on canvas. He’s real. He’s here. He’s around us now. He breathes in our ears, he laughs in our faces. You see this man?”

She passed him the photograph of Rizzo from the files. It was two years old, taken the last time he had been pulled in for some minor theft on the Lido. Daniel looked at it with no perceptible interest. Giulia wasn’t fooled. He knew this face.

“Just some little crook who, from time to time, wound his way between the legs of this demon of ours,” she said, not expecting a reaction.

She handed him the second picture, taken on the pathologist’s slab the previous day. There was a black, bloody hole in Rizzo’s temple. His dead eyes stared at the camera.

“That’s what he looks like now,” she said, watching Daniel’s face.

Daniel Forster went white. She wondered if he might throw up.

“You can deal with the devil who did this. Or you can deal with me and, when it’s over, try to make your peace with Laura. If you’re still alive.”

He didn’t flinch. His eyes were back on the wall again.

Angry in spite of herself, she took hold of his chin in her hand and forced him away from the painting, forced him to look in her eyes.

“I’ve no more patience for this, Daniel. I’ve no more time. Choose now, please. And choose wisely.”