“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.”
50
A hurried return
I could not have blamed Marchese if he thought me mad. At four in the morning, with the sun beginning to rise over the city, I began to tell him, in a stream of tumbling words, of the man I knew as Oliver Delapole and he as Arnold Lescalier, the scar upon the cheek which confirmed their joint identity, and why I must return to the city on the instant. The magistrate listened to me patiently as I laid out my case as openly and honestly as I dared. It was imperative Delapole was stopped and apprehended. But in doing so, I had to ensure Rebecca and her brother escaped the Doge’s net, too, for reasons Marchese could not hear.
As I might have expected, Marchese saw the lacuna in my tale in an instant. “This concerns you greatly, Lorenzo. The man is a beast, no doubt, but not a common rapist. I do not see why you should worry yourself at a simple meeting.”
“The Englishman may be able to make demands of her,” I offered lamely. “And she is vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable? You made her sound a strong character to me.”
“Sir, I recall the way he looked at her when we met. He finds her attractive. Given the opportunity, he will use any means he can to press himself upon her.”
“Ah.” The old man’s face spoke volumes. “You and this lady, then…?”
“Please, my friend. I do not have the time to gossip. I love this woman, and that is all there is to say.”
He placed a finger thoughtfully to his cheek, and I realised how formidable a foe Marchese must have been to those he had pursued. Nothing escaped his attention. “Yet Lescalier… Delapole… whoever he is… This man will meet many women in the course of a week, Lorenzo. We must report him to the authorities, of course. But I think you should be content that having done no harm we know of, and still unaware we have him in our sights, he will play the part of the English fool a little while yet. Unless…”
I buried my head in my hands, unable to speak.
“Lad,” the old man said, and there was now a note of impatience in his voice. “I cannot advise without the facts.”
He was right. I was acting like a child. I thought of our last meeting and the way Rebecca had struggled to tell me the truth and, in the end, failed to summon the strength, dismayed by my own coldness. I thought of the dream. Her single outstretched hand and those four words: There is no blood.