The Lizard's Bite Part 25

She moved Silvio in front of her, mimicking, in her own mind, the position she believed Bella must have taken when attacked.

" . . . Bella was here, standing, when he came for her. One powerful blow to the skull."

She swung the imaginary weapon with her hand, landing it softly on the side of Silvio's head where fringe met bald scalp, just behind the ear.

"If he hit her repeatedly, we'd have had much more blood than this. One would be enough to render her unconscious anyway. If he did it well, there'd be no noise either. Who else was in the house?"

Raffaella raised her head, her eyes wet with tears. "I was here all that night. Michele and Gabriele too. It's not possible. We would have heard something. We would have woken up."

"Everybody thinks that. You'd be amazed how often people in the next room sleep through murder. If there's no fighting, no gun . . ." This was a big, old cavern of a place. Dark, with plenty of places to hide. He could have waited for her in the bedroom, pounced with that one cras.h.i.+ng blow, then carried her downstairs without anyone knowing. It wouldn't have been hard. "If he planned it, everything could have happened very quickly. Without a struggle, or there would have been signs. Then he moves on to Uriel and finds himself a scapegoat."

"All the same . . ."

"Trust me," Teresa insisted, then went back to the window. "You need a ladder, Silvio. Out there, at the very end of the corrugated iron, you'll find some kind of tool. I can't work out what it is. Something from the furnace, I guess, some kind of spike or maybe a hammer. He must have thrown it through the open window thinking it would reach the water. It was dark. He had no way of knowing it never got there. Now let's look at that s.h.i.+rt."

They followed her back to the kitchen. Teresa Lupo went to the sink and carefully poured off the liquid, leaving the fabric lying in a damp, wrinkled heap in the base of the bowl.

Then she looked at Silvio. "I want you to take this and the hammer, or whatever it is, over to the lab in Mestre straightaway, tell them to drop everything else and run rapid DNA tests on anything they can find. Not just blood. Sweat. Saliva. Urine. Anything. And you stay there breathing down their necks until there's an answer. I don't care what it costs. I don't care who you have to yell at."

"The pleasure's all mine," he said.

"It will be, once you've been up on that roof. And after that," she continued, glancing at Raffaella, "you and I are going to visit Leo. He should be out of that machine by now. I can probably get a sneak look at the scans."

She was unravelling the damp material with a slow, surgical care. Then she stopped.

Men were arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.ds sometimes. They were like dogs. They felt they had to leave their mark on everything.

On the pocket of the s.h.i.+rt-a fine cotton one, she now noted-were two initials, sewn into the fabric as a monogram: HM.

HE WISHED HE COULD SCREAM. HE WISHED HE COULD move, and tried to will some life into his fingers, tried to believe something, a single nerve, the flicker of a muscle, answered in return. move, and tried to will some life into his fingers, tried to believe something, a single nerve, the flicker of a muscle, answered in return.

Before him, the s.h.i.+fting, gla.s.sy door changed shape, became transparent, and Leo the boy was silent, recognising the face that peered back at him.

It was his older self, the now-familiar walnut tan, a sleek, s.h.i.+ny bald head, damaged, cracked, showing b.l.o.o.d.y fault lines, like those on Humpty Dumpty after the fall. The face of a man, unsure whether he was alive or dead, or simply somewhere between the two.

"Little Leo," his elder self pleaded. "Look and think, for pity's sake."

The pained brown face faded. Leo could see beyond now, into the bedroom, the forbidden bedroom, the place where so many mysteries seemed to breed.

"You knew this was happening all along," the older Leo said. "And, being a child, you did nothing. Yet you understand now, Little Leo. You can stop it. Not in the past. But now. In your head. Our Our head. Just by seeing. Just by being there." head. Just by seeing. Just by being there."

"Afraid," he whispered, hearing the same voice, noting the mutual frailty there.

"Leo." The voice was so feeble, so ghostly, it terrified him more than anything. "You have have to." to."

The thing hovered there in front of him, shaking manically with the racket beyond the door, and the clatter of the unseen machine outside this coffin of wood and gla.s.s.

"Afraid of the key."

"Which exists in order that . . . ?"

It was wrong to mock a child, even an unreal man-child.

He peered apprehensively through the transparent door and watched the kicking and the blows, watched how she rolled to lessen the pain, glancing in desperation at the door, staring straight at him, begging, asking why.

"To keep her in!" the child screeched. "I told you, I told you, I told . . ."

The man was there again now, obscuring the view of his parents, for which he was thankful. Except his tanned head looked worse now, the cracks seemed to have multiplied, blood eased through them, seeped down the walnut skin, ran into the bright, white eyes, began to form all over this dying man's skull like a spider's web, ensnaring him, tightening, squeezing out what sc.r.a.ps of life remained.

"I hear your thoughts," the fractured man whispered. "I read the same fairy stories. Remember, Leo?"

"Humpty Dumpty . . ." murmured the dying man. "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'"

He was in agony, struggling for the strength to carry on.

"'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master-that's all.'"

His vision was changing, fading. These were the last moments.

"Facts are like words. We've learned that over all these years. They're open to interpretation. It is, in the end, simply a matter of who will be their master."

The boy Leo looked at the figure before him and understood that, at this moment, he was seeing the saddest man in the universe, a man of bleak, worn-down emotions, though a being filled with knowledge too, possessed of an important secret the boy now understood implicitly, shared since it came, in the end, from both of them.

"The key . . ." said the fading face.

" . . . is there to keep me out to keep me out!" the boy Leo roared. "The key is there to keep me out! Out! Out! Out!" "The key is there to keep me out! Out! Out! Out!"

Somewhere beyond his imagination the metal beast screamed, a cacophony of gears, dying iron, settling, its work finished.

The boy reached out, held the key, turned it, saw in amazement the way the door became a real door now, the wood that he remembered from his childhood, the old metal familiar in his hand.

It was the worst year. The one where his family fell apart, descended into divorce and hatred, a cold, hard place in which a small boy could do nothing except retreat into his sh.e.l.l, hardening that brittle armour that kept the harshness of the real world at bay. He remembered everything now, everything his mind had blocked out over the years, about that dreadful holiday in the mountains, with the two of them locked in that distant, forbidden room, thinking their screams never found their way beyond the walls to reach a frightened lonely child lost for words, lost for action.

The wood disappeared. There was only light. And Leo-who was, he understood, both boy Leo and man now-found himself propelled forward, into the bedroom from which he was forever banished, forced his way between them, pus.h.i.+ng back the dead old dusty figure that, in some dark, damaged part of his head, represented what was left of the memory of his father.

He looked into the heartless face, enjoyed the surprise he saw, and said the word, the dread forbidden word, the boy Leo had never dared utter to him in his lifetime.

LEO FALCONE OPENED his eyes-his real eyes, he noted-and found that he was in a bright clinical room with the cloying harsh smell of a medical ward. He lay on a bed which was now being withdrawn from a large white barrel-like object, one he faintly recognised from hospital scenes in the movies. his eyes-his real eyes, he noted-and found that he was in a bright clinical room with the cloying harsh smell of a medical ward. He lay on a bed which was now being withdrawn from a large white barrel-like object, one he faintly recognised from hospital scenes in the movies.

A pretty young nurse, with glossy black hair tied back in a bun and sparkling, happy eyes, peered down at him, grinning.

"Welcome to the world, Inspector Falcone," she said in a pleasant southern voice. "It's been a long time."

"How long?" Falcone snapped. "And where the h.e.l.l are my men?"

AN OLD MONASTERY, HIDDEN INSIDE A CHURCH BY THE gasworks in Castello, no more than three minutes on foot from where Peroni and Nic had been staying for the last eight months. Neither of them had a clue it existed. For anyone trying to hunt down Gianfranco Randazzo, this was surely the last place to look. They would never have found it if Peroni hadn't called in one last favour from Cornaro, the one officer in the Castello Questura who hadn't treated the pair of them like lepers. gasworks in Castello, no more than three minutes on foot from where Peroni and Nic had been staying for the last eight months. Neither of them had a clue it existed. For anyone trying to hunt down Gianfranco Randazzo, this was surely the last place to look. They would never have found it if Peroni hadn't called in one last favour from Cornaro, the one officer in the Castello Questura who hadn't treated the pair of them like lepers.

Gianni Peroni smiled at the pleasant monk in the brown habit who had greeted them, baffled, and seemingly incapable of anything that might pa.s.s as a.s.sistance.

"We need to speak to Commissario Randazzo," Zecchini said again, his face beginning to grow red with exasperation. "Now, please."

"This is a police matter. And a Carabinieri one too," Peroni added.

The monk shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Then it must be very important indeed. But I was told Signor Randazzo was not to be disturbed. He is here, as I understood it, for the sake of his health. A man of a nervous disposition . . ."

That seemed to be pus.h.i.+ng things a little far, even for an unworldly monk.

"He's on his own?" Peroni asked.

"No. Normally there are men with him." The monk frowned and, for a moment, looked like someone who inhabited the world Peroni knew. "Two ugly men in particular. Police officers, I believe. Not the kind of people we get in here very often. That part puzzles me, I admit. But we're here to do service. Not to ask questions."

"Who's in charge in this place?" Zecchini demanded.

"No one at the moment. Administratively we are in what one might term an interregnum."

As someone down at the Questura doubtless knew, Peroni thought.

"Father," he said, and saw from the look on the man's face that he had somehow picked the wrong word, "it's important we talk to Randazzo."

"We have a warrant warrant." Zecchini brandished a piece of paper.

The monk stared at the doc.u.ment. "A warrant? What's that?"

"It's a piece of paper that says you'll d.a.m.n well bring him to us whether you like it or not!" Zecchini yelled.

The curses he added rang around the bright, sunlit cloister, sending a flutter of doves scattering for the cloudless sky.

But nothing dented the monk's composure. He simply folded his arms and kept on smiling, silent. Peroni couldn't stop himself from casting a sour glance at the Carabinieri major.

"We don't want to search a monastery," he told the monk calmly. "And I'm sure you don't want that either. There would be so many officers. So much disruption. And noise."

The monk didn't like noise. Peroni had watched the way his nose wrinkled when the volume of Zecchini's voice rose.

"No one wants noise," the big cop added, craftily.

The monk laughed, and Gianni Peroni was surprised to realise the man was laughing at them. And that there was precious little between a smile and sneer on his face.

"He's not here. They went out for lunch. And no . . ."-the answer came before the question-"I don't know where and I don't care. This is a small and quiet community, gentlemen. When we're asked to help the city, we do so, without asking questions. We trust our betters. Do you?"

Zecchini scowled at him, then asked, "Gone for good?"

The monk's arms opened, the hands raised in a gesture of futility. "We're neither a prison nor a hotel. I can help you no more. I can . . ."

Gianni Peroni couldn't take his eyes off the doves. They'd a.s.sembled again around the foot of the statue of Saint Francis. It was a great place to hide a man. So good it seemed odd Randazzo felt moved to leave it, if only for a meal.

Then, as he watched, the birds began to lift again, a whirling fury of grey and white feathers, rising, racing in every direction, mindless, terrified.

Four, maybe five, shots rang out from somewhere beyond the monastery's quiet walls, bounced off its bright, clean terra-cotta and echoed around the small, perfect square, threading their way through the colonnades.

Luca Zecchini had his gun in his hand in an instant. The monk gaped at the weapon, both shocked and angered by its visible presence.

"Where?" Zecchini yelled.

Gianni Peroni wasn't going to wait for this little charade to play itself out. Bawling out some scared, unworldly monk who'd never heard a gunshot in his small, protected life wasn't going to find them Gianfranco Randazzo. Peroni marched his big frame back into the outside world, thought about what he knew of this area, and where a police commissario with a taste for good food might want to eat. There weren't many options. Then he began to run, aware, after just a few long strides, of Zecchini and his men playing catch-up in his wake.

TERESA LUPO HAD TOLD PINO FERRANTE SO MUCH about the patient whose life he'd saved that long night she dragged him from his dinner table in Bologna. She'd told him how Leo Falcone was a man worth preserving, a fine, honest, conscientious about the patient whose life he'd saved that long night she dragged him from his dinner table in Bologna. She'd told him how Leo Falcone was a man worth preserving, a fine, honest, conscientious ispettore ispettore in the Rome police, someone who deserved better than to be butchered by some naive Venetian surgical hack, even if they could find one. in the Rome police, someone who deserved better than to be butchered by some naive Venetian surgical hack, even if they could find one.

Now Falcone lay back on his bed, eyes wide open, blazing at each of them in turn, spitting fury in all directions. Pino glanced at her and smiled, that self-deprecating smile she'd known from their college days, the one that couldn't offend a soul but still managed to say, Really? Really?

Even Raffaella Arcangelo seemed a little taken aback. Clearly this was one side of Leo she'd never witnessed.

Pino let Falcone exhaust himself with one final set of demands-all the latest case notes on Aldo Bracci and the Arcangelo case, what new forensic there was, and a recall of Costa and Peroni, from wherever they happened to be malingering, presumably to give the inspector someone new to yell at-then sat down by the bed, folded his arms, and peered at the p.r.o.ne man there.

"Inspector Falcone," he said mildly. "You've been seriously wounded by a gunshot to the head. You have been unconscious now for more than a week. I would have hoped a man who has been through what you have would have asked me one or two questions about his condition. Otherwise . . ."

The surgeon now had a rather hard smile, it seemed to Teresa, one he'd learned since college.

"Perhaps I will be driven to the conclusion that you are not so sufficiently recovered as you seem to believe."

Falcone, propped up on a couple of pillows, bandages round his scalp, face lacking that full tan she'd come to take for granted, was silent for a moment.

Then, with all his customary bullishness, he replied, "I am a police officer in the middle of a murder investigation. It's my duty to be kept fully informed. It's your duty not to get in my way. I would advise you to remember that."

Pino waited. When it became clear Falcone didn't intend to utter another word, the surgeon said, "Would you like to ask me anything now? Or would you like me to leave and allow you to continue bellowing at your colleagues until your strength runs out? Not that I think you have much energy left for that. The choice is yours." He looked at his watch. "I would like to be home in Bologna by eight, so please make your decision this instant."

Falcone glanced at Teresa and Raffaella Arcangelo, as if they were somehow a part of this. Then, in a subdued tone, he asked, "What the h.e.l.l's wrong with me?"

"You were shot through the head," Pino replied with a shrug. "There was damage to the brain. It's a sensitive organ, even in an insensitive man. A mysterious organ too. I can go through the details later but they won't tell you much. To be honest, they don't tell me that much either. This is the way things are with neurological matters. What I see now is what I'd expected. Hoped for, to be honest with you. There is some paralysis below the waist. You should also expect to experience headaches. Blackouts maybe. And some side effects from the medication for sure. We will need to monitor all these things for a while."

A purple blush of outrage began to suffuse Falcone's face. "I have to work!"

"That's ridiculous." Pino said it bluntly. "A man in your condition cannot work. Even if you were physically capable, your mental state is still fragile, however much you wish to believe otherwise. You need what any other man or woman needs in such circ.u.mstances. Convalescence. Constant care. Regular follow-ups. You will be reliant on others for some time. I trust you can teach your ego to accommodate this fact, Ispettore. Ispettore."

"I . . ." The words died in Falcone's mouth. This was a situation he had clearly never encountered before.