I waved my hand, beginning to feel sleepy from the food and drink. “As I said. This is the price, sir. We should waste no more time on these matters.”
He looked at me and sighed. “Do you know? I cannot decide whether you are the most uncharacteristic Venetian I have ever met, or the most cunning of them all.”
“I am a country lad from Treviso, not the city. I lack the wit for all this mental juggling.”
“Hmmm. Now, that I do doubt. You’ve been juggling with me all the time. Thinking of one thing back home while you dealt most professionally with me here.”
I said nothing. I was not to be drawn.
“Very well, then!” He rose from his chair and held out a hand. “Let us put the sordid matter of capital behind us, shake upon this contract, then take a whiff of putrid Roman air. It’s boiling hot out there, my son, but I’ll not let you go without a few of the sights. What do you say?”
I took his outstretched hand. Marchese was the first man of Rome I had ever done business with, and a true Roman he was at that. “I say it will be, like everything else in your company, the greatest pleasure.”
And so we found our way around the greatest city on the face of the earth. With Marchese as my guide, always keen to point out a landmark here, a piece of crumbling statuary there, Rome came alive. I walked with Caesar and Augustus, trembled at the presence of Nero, and stood silent before the Colosseum. I felt like a child in the presence of a generous, kindly uncle who possessed the key to the most wondrous secret garden in the world. By the banks of the Tiber, the old man showed me the former site of the wooden bridge of the Ponte Sublicio, which Horatius and his comrades had so bravely defended against Lars Porsena and the entire Etruscan army. Then he led me to Tiber Island, a ghetto for the city Jews, who had been there under curfew since Pope Paul IV had them herded behind its walls, under pain of death, some 170 years before.
At this last I became thoughtful, which he mistook for tiredness (the old man’s stamina, in spite of his lameness, never seemed to wane provided he paused now and then), and so we returned to the Quirinal.
In the house we chatted idly. Old Marchese scarcely took his eyes off me. Eventually he put down his glass and said, “Lorenzo. Your mind is not entirely upon our conversation.”
“I am sorry, sir,” I replied. “There are personal matters with which I need not trouble you. I apologise if I seem distant.”
“Sometimes these things are best discussed with others.”
“Sometimes. But not on this occasion. Were it otherwise, be assured I would not hesitate to discuss them with you, since rarely have I enjoyed so much congenial company in one day, and with someone who began it as a stranger and ended, I hope, a friend.”
“I should be most offended if you regarded me otherwise. To prove as much, I shall ask you, as a friend, to settle one last quandary which you may resolve at your leisure, in bed, on the coach back to Venice, or later as it pleases you.”
He went to the bookshelf, took out a thick volume, then reached behind it and retrieved a sheaf of paper. When he brought it over, I could see it was written in the same careful scrawl used for the manuscript I had read that morning.
“There is a missing chapter in what I showed you, Lorenzo. Not all my cases were successful, though that is not why I withheld this one. I had wondered whether I should show this to anyone. I still do not know if it is fit for the light of day. You must help me. Read it, and I shall abide by your decision.”
I took the pages, then rose and said good night to him and his wife. The day had been long. Tomorrow’s journey would be tiring. Yet in bed, in the quiet, small room on the Quirinal, I found sleep difficult. I drifted, half-dreaming. Images from ancient Rome assaulted me: Caesar dying beneath a rain of bloody blows; Caligula murdered by his bodyguard; the head and hands of Cicero, butchered by Augustus’s men and displayed for all to see upon the speaker’s platform in the Forum.
Then these ancients disappeared, and in their place I saw Rebecca, naked, pale-faced, and frightened, her hands covering her modesty, apparently unable to speak. We were in her room in Venice, as if it were still the scene of our last meeting when we had argued, and she, I believe, wished to reveal something but lacked the courage or opportunity. I opened my mouth, but no words appeared. Her eyes pleaded for my aid. I was unable to walk towards her. Then, with an effort that made the tears tumble down her cheeks, she lifted a single, white hand from her body, showed me the palm, and uttered four words: “There is no blood.”
I awoke, shaking, as if in a fever.
It was impossible to sleep. Seeking something to distract my confused mind, I reached for Marchese’s manuscript, lit a candle, and began to read.
An hour later I understood the dream and much, much more. With cold dread in my heart, I raced along the corridor to hammer on my host’s door, demanding entrance.
47
Hard questions
Giulia Morelli sat outside the café in the square of San Cassian, watching Biagio squirm on the hard plastic seat. The sergeant was off duty, out of his uniform, and, moreover, in the company of a detective.
“You look uncomfortable,” she observed. “Relax. I don’t bite.”
He swore. “I can’t believe I agreed to do this. What’s wrong with your people?”
“All in good time,” she answered. “You know why I feel like this?”
“Yes,” he groaned. After the interview with Rizzo, she had probed him about his background: college in Rome, his home city. Venice was an accident. There were no relatives. Biagio could not be a part of any clique, not unless he had been recruited since his arrival two years ago, and that seemed improbable. She had to trust someone. He seemed the best option.
“When I have the evidence,” she said. “When everything is so obvious it can’t be stopped. Then I can move with some hope of success. If I raised any suspicions now, I would be halted the moment I mentioned the wrong names. Then we’d both regret it.”
He nodded and cast a sour eye at the ancient brickwork of Ca’ Scacchi across the rio. Biagio could be trusted, she felt. But that did not mean he was a willing participant.
“The English kid isn’t going anywhere,” he noted. “We’ve been sitting here for an hour. He hasn’t even stuck his head out to get some breakfast.”
“You’re right,” she agreed, and wondered what that meant. If the newspapers were right, Daniel Forster was a brilliant musician. His first composition, a masterly re-creation of a Baroque violin concerto, by all accounts, would receive its première at La Pietà the following Friday. Yet he behaved as if he were adrift in the city. The deaths of Scacchi and the American had affected him; of that she had no doubt. But there had to be more to his lassitude than simple grief. She had set Biagio to tail him. He reported only one visit to La Pietà, on Monday evening. Daniel Forster had spent almost the whole of Tuesday inside Ca’ Scacchi, making just a single phone call, and that to the undertaker (she had discreetly placed a tap on the line). He left the house once only, to buy wine and some precooked lasagne. It was now eleven in the morning on the Wednesday. The moment she assumed would be the greatest achievement of his life was only two days away. And he was behaving like a recluse, as if the palpable excitement now building around La Pietà— which was reflected in the growing presence of the international media — were nothing to do with him.
“We could sit here forever,” Biagio moaned.
“I agree.” She had hoped to be able to follow Daniel in the street, catch him off guard, away from what he surely now regarded as his home territory. Biagio was right, though. Daniel Forster seemed to have retreated behind the shell of Ca’ Scacchi for good.