The Lizard's Bite Part 22

"It's the one in the picture?" Peroni asked.

"No. But it's close enough."

"Valuable?"

Zecchini nodded. "In a roundabout way. These things are what pa.s.ses for hard currency in the drug trade. We're doing pretty well working on cross-border money laundering. It's not easy to move big amounts of cash around the world anymore. You get asked awkward questions when you try to bank it."

"So you s.h.i.+p valuable antiques instead," Costa said. "They're easier to smuggle. And when they get to the other end, someone turns them into money and pays off the debt."

"Exactly," Zecchini agreed, seemingly impressed by Costa's knowledge. "These things were household G.o.ds. Every worthwhile specimen was either in a private collection or Iraq's museums. There's so much stuff leaking out of Baghdad, all of it through criminal channels, we're under strict instructions to report every last piece we come across."

One of those little planes interrupted the conversation, buzzing low overhead. They had to wait for it to go away before anyone could speak.

"So it's good?" Peroni asked.

Zecchini pulled out his mobile phone. "It's a start. Commissario Randazzo and I need to meet. Are you coming along?"

Costa shook his head, then glanced at his partner. "Gianni, you go. I've something to do."

Peroni didn't look too pleased. "Anyone I know? I don't like being kept in the dark."

"Just a couple of ghosts," Costa replied, nodding towards the window and the blue sky beyond. "And maybe not even that."

AS THE CARABINIERI WENT THROUGH COMMISSARIO Randazzo's personal belongings in a mansion too big for a policeman, Emily Deacon sat on the deck of Hugo Ma.s.siter's launch, picking at the remains of a late breakfast, s.h.i.+elded from the gaze of the tourists on the waterfront behind thick, smoked gla.s.s. She had waited for this opportunity. Ma.s.siter had left the vessel to revisit his lawyers, and declared he wouldn't be returning until the afternoon. She could, he said, drop by if she wanted. It was an invitation she left open. There was work to do. The Croatian gangsters seemed to have departed en ma.s.se too. Now it was just her and the three Filipino women who cleaned and cooked and served, then retired to their quarters to await orders. Randazzo's personal belongings in a mansion too big for a policeman, Emily Deacon sat on the deck of Hugo Ma.s.siter's launch, picking at the remains of a late breakfast, s.h.i.+elded from the gaze of the tourists on the waterfront behind thick, smoked gla.s.s. She had waited for this opportunity. Ma.s.siter had left the vessel to revisit his lawyers, and declared he wouldn't be returning until the afternoon. She could, he said, drop by if she wanted. It was an invitation she left open. There was work to do. The Croatian gangsters seemed to have departed en ma.s.se too. Now it was just her and the three Filipino women who cleaned and cooked and served, then retired to their quarters to await orders.

Evidence.

That was what Nic needed, needed it desperately. In any form she could find.

She stood up, brushed the crumbs of the morning cornetto cornetto off her tee-s.h.i.+rt, then rang for one of the Filipinos to come to clear up. off her tee-s.h.i.+rt, then rang for one of the Filipinos to come to clear up.

It was the youngest who arrived from the galley, dressed in white, dark hair tied back in a bun. A girl who looked no more than eighteen. Emily watched her with the unconcerned disdain she imagined was expected in the circ.u.mstances.

"What's your name?" she asked in Italian.

The girl's eyes flickered, fearful. Emily repeated the question in English.

"Flora," she replied, still nervous.

"It doesn't matter that you don't speak Italian."

"Supposed to."

She didn't like talking. Ma.s.siter preferred his female servants to keep quiet.

"Says who?"

The girl glanced backwards, to where the men would normally be. "Them."

Emily wondered what the Croatians were like when they were on their own with these women. It wasn't hard to guess.

"I could teach you some words. If you like."

"Not right."

The girl knew her place. And this was, Emily realised, the wrong tack, not that she relished the only alternative.

"Mr. Ma.s.siter's not happy with the state of his office," she said severely.

The girl looked shocked. "I cleaned it! Last night!"

"I don't care. He's not happy. If he fires you here . . ."

Flora put down the plates. She was trembling so much she was close to dropping them.

"You won't get home, will you?" Emily continued. "You'd just be dest.i.tute there. No money. No friends. What happens to girls like that, do you think, Flora? Can you imagine?"

"I . . . keep trying."

She was close to tears. Emily hated this.

"Come with me," she ordered. "Maybe we can get you a second chance."

They went downstairs, three short flights, until they came to the secure metal door of Ma.s.siter's lair.

"Well?" Emily asked, crossly.

Flora fumbled with the chain of keys on her belt, found the right one, and opened the lock. Emily marched in, straight to the desk by the small porthole window, where a big laptop computer sat. Then she swept a finger across the table, which was spotless, waved her hand in Flora's face and yelled, "See this?"

"I see noth-"

"Not good enough. None of this is good enough. You're You're not good enough. I'm going to be in here for fifteen minutes. I'm going to make this place dirty in ways you couldn't even begin to guess. Then when I go, you come back in. You clean up. You do it properly. If I like what I see, I say nothing to Mr. Ma.s.siter. Nothing to the Croatians. It's forgotten. If not . . ." not good enough. I'm going to be in here for fifteen minutes. I'm going to make this place dirty in ways you couldn't even begin to guess. Then when I go, you come back in. You clean up. You do it properly. If I like what I see, I say nothing to Mr. Ma.s.siter. Nothing to the Croatians. It's forgotten. If not . . ."

The girl was sobbing. Emily felt awful and knew she couldn't let go now. You did what you had to.

"Out!" she barked, and slammed the metal door behind the girl as she fled.

The computer was an expensive one with a wide screen, shut down, tethered to the desk with a security cable. She couldn't imagine Ma.s.siter letting anyone near it.

She took out the little plug-in memory pod she'd kept with her from her days in the FBI, pushed it into the slot, then turned on the machine, praying for a break. Smart people encrypted their entire PCs. Smart people were in the minority, however. The FBI pod was something any hacker could run up himself for a few dollars of flash memory and a couple of downloads from the Net. On a machine that hadn't been specifically set up to prevent its operation, the thing convinced the computer to boot from its operating system, not the normal one. Then it scanned every last directory on the hard drive and presented them naked to the intruder.

This was the kind of geek stuff they'd trained her in. There was nothing elegant involved. Just command lines and obscure instructions, techspeak she'd committed to memory.

Ma.s.siter's computer was just as she'd expected: secure as long as it remained in control, defenceless the moment she managed to boot it from her little device. Emily watched the familiar routine happen just as it should, watched her little pod take control. Then she scanned the directories, found the one Ma.s.siter had created for his personal account, copied the contents of the doc.u.ments folder, before scouring the drive for his e-mail files and copying them. Finally she looked up the cache on his Internet browser, caught all the temporary files, and captured them too. In under two minutes she had, she thought, recovered every possible piece of information relating to Hugo Ma.s.siter's doc.u.ments, messages and the places he'd visited online. In the U.S. she'd have committed several federal offences already, not that the FBI would have minded too much, under the circ.u.mstances. In Italy . . . She didn't even want to think about the legal implications. There wasn't time. Nic needed help.

Reminding herself how that fact kept haunting her, she took the pod out of the notebook, pocketed it, shut the machine down, and spread a few stray doc.u.ments around the place.

It was the perfect hack. Undetectable and comprehensive, a textbook piece of work.

Then she went back upstairs, found Flora and said, "Do it."

She followed the trembling girl as she rushed into the office, watched her work feverishly to clear up the junk Emily had scattered around the s.p.a.ce, tidy what she could in a room that was as clean as anyone could reasonably expect.

"Enough," Emily declared when the girl was finished, wis.h.i.+ng she could stop hating herself for this charade. "Now lock this place up. Don't ever let me find it in this state again. Then we never say a word about this. Not to anyone. Understood?"

Flora nodded, scared witless, eyes gla.s.sy and damp.

"It's OK?"

"Yes. It's OK. Everything's OK. I'll tell Mr. Ma.s.siter you've been extra good this morning. Don't worry about anything. Just . . ."

You couldn't let the act slip. They hammered that into your head at every last opportunity.

"Just keep this a secret between the two of us. Unless you want to be out on the street."

When they went back upstairs the Croatians were still nowhere to be seen. Tidying up, Ma.s.siter had said. Emily could only guess at what he meant.

Evidence.

YOU COLLECTED all you could. You heaped it up in one big, big pile. And you hoped to G.o.d some small piece would give you what you wanted. all you could. You heaped it up in one big, big pile. And you hoped to G.o.d some small piece would give you what you wanted.

She called Teresa, arranged to meet for a coffee in the place they knew in the Ramo Pescaria, a little alley that led from this glossily artificial tourist world into a semblance of real Italy in the backstreets of Castello. Then she walked into Ma.s.siter's private cabin: a long room, with a dining table and chairs, a TV set, an expensive hi-fi system and a drinks cabinet. The bedroom ran next to it, occupying a good tenmetre length of the starboard side of the vessel. She walked in. Flora had been in here already. Fresh orchids stood in vases on each side of the king-size bed, which was now made up with clean white sheets, perfectly pressed, folded tightly to the divan.

Emily closed the door behind her, locked it, then tore off the sheets as quickly as she could, throwing them to the floor, fighting to get down to the mattress.

They were there, beneath the final slipcover, as she'd expected. It was standard training to look for them in any investigation of a personal nature. Dark, dried stains, rings and rings of them, halfway up the mattress, always a little to one side because something in the way human beings mated meant they always happened this way.

She took a small penknife out of her pocket, knelt on the mattress, and, with great care, worked the blade around each dried puddle of human secretion. It wasn't just s.e.m.e.n. They taught them that at Langley. There was, in most cases, v.a.g.i.n.al fluid too, and with the magic of DNA that could be all the lucky breaks you needed rolled into one, a fixed, unshakable line that led back to the women who'd been here. Every rape case she'd worked on had examined this possibility. There was good reason to think it could help them now too.

There were sixteen in all, each a small circle of fabric which she stashed in a supermarket carrier bag. She left the fainter ones. It seemed inconceivable they'd have sufficient material left in their indistinct stain to make them usable in time. Then she took one last look at the mattress and heaved it over, so the "wrong" side, which was clean and free of stains, was uppermost, put the slipcover back on, and lazily made the bed. That was another order she could bark at Flora on the way out. By the time Ma.s.siter discovered the damage-if he ever did-it would be unimportant anyway.

Ten minutes later, over a strong double macchiato, she pa.s.sed the bag to Teresa Lupo, who looked at her, worried, short for words. Emily couldn't remember a time when the two of them had been like this, uneasy in one another's company, unable to make even a sc.r.a.p of small talk.

She handed over the memory pod.

"Tell the Carabinieri I didn't have a chance to look at them but I don't think Ma.s.siter's smart enough to have encrypted anything. He doesn't seem that sophisticated when it comes to computers. Also I suspect he feels he's inviolate when he's in that little room of his. I'll take another look around later."

She checked herself. Overconfidence was a habitual mistake in the business she was trying to relearn. In truth, Hugo Ma.s.siter seemed to regard himself as inviolate most of the time.

"Will do." Teresa nodded. "Are you OK?"

"Fine. And you? Any news from Nic?"

"They're getting somewhere, I think. He sounded positive. They're leaving the Carabinieri to it for a while. Chasing something else."

"That's good." She glanced at the carrier bag. "Some of that's old. Do you think we might have Bella there?"

"We've got good lab facilities. Silvio found them. Costing a fortune but this is the private sector. I can get results faster than I could back home. It's amazing what money can do."

"It surely is."

The thought had been nagging her all along. "And you've DNA for Bella?"

Teresa nodded vigorously. "From the house. It's unmistakable."

"And anything else? If there were other women?"

She shrugged. "It would be handy to have a database of every last woman of screwable age in Venice, of course. That would speed things up no end. But for now I guess we'll just have to try to factor them out. It would only tell us about his habits, of course. Bella's the only other sample we've got."

Emily Deacon thought about this. Actions had consequences. None of them knew what they would be at that moment. She'd been taught to think ahead, to put markers in place that could be recovered later, used to prove who you were, what you'd done.

She took a clean tissue out of her pocket, put it to her mouth and carefully deposited a ball of saliva there. Then she held the tissue out in front of her.

"Give me an evidence bag. Then you can factor out that."

TOURISTS RARELY STUMBLED ON SAN FRANCISCO DELLA Vigna. The church lay in a small Vigna. The church lay in a small campo campo close by the Celestia vaporetto stop, just a couple of minutes away from the hospital. But even Gianfranco Randazzo, who had never set foot in the place, and regarded this backwater of Castello as a close by the Celestia vaporetto stop, just a couple of minutes away from the hospital. But even Gianfranco Randazzo, who had never set foot in the place, and regarded this backwater of Castello as a quartiere quartiere well beneath his standing, was surprised by what lay behind Palladio's severe white frontage. This was a Franciscan monastery still, more than five hundred years after its foundation. Beyond the gloomy interior, with its Lombardo sculpture cycle and canvases by Veronese and Bellini, lay a connected pair of quiet cloisters formed by two storeys of cells and offices. It was a community that seemed to come from another world, one untouched by the pressures of modern life. Doves flitted through the bars of shade made by the angular lines of columns. Flowers grew around the statue of Saint Francis that stood in the sun at the centre of the first cloister, opposite the cell they'd allocated him. Here, during the brief moments he was alone in the tiny bare room or seated in the shade of the colonnades, was a kind of peace, some guarantee of anonymity. The Questura had left him with no choice in the matter anyway. Someone had been pulling strings to keep him out of the way. He would remain in San Francisco della Vigna until the internal investigation, which he'd been promised would deliver nothing more than an admonition, was complete. well beneath his standing, was surprised by what lay behind Palladio's severe white frontage. This was a Franciscan monastery still, more than five hundred years after its foundation. Beyond the gloomy interior, with its Lombardo sculpture cycle and canvases by Veronese and Bellini, lay a connected pair of quiet cloisters formed by two storeys of cells and offices. It was a community that seemed to come from another world, one untouched by the pressures of modern life. Doves flitted through the bars of shade made by the angular lines of columns. Flowers grew around the statue of Saint Francis that stood in the sun at the centre of the first cloister, opposite the cell they'd allocated him. Here, during the brief moments he was alone in the tiny bare room or seated in the shade of the colonnades, was a kind of peace, some guarantee of anonymity. The Questura had left him with no choice in the matter anyway. Someone had been pulling strings to keep him out of the way. He would remain in San Francisco della Vigna until the internal investigation, which he'd been promised would deliver nothing more than an admonition, was complete.

The worst part was the company. Two Questura jokers, Lavazzi and Malipiero, men he'd learned to despise over the years for their laziness and casual insolence, were deputed to be close by most of the time during the day, and were replaced by a changing cycle of equally dull drones each evening. Now, with Randazzo unable to pull rank, their efforts at insubordination took new directions. Randazzo had grown tired of their vicious personal cracks after just a couple of hours. The prospect of a long stay in the monastery with these two was inconceivable. He would, before long, go over their heads and demand some new companions. But not just yet, because Gianfranco Randazzo had, in his days inside the monastery, failed to answer satisfactorily a question that had been haunting him since he'd been forced into this temporary exile. Were this duo here to keep him safe from the outside world? Or did the miserable pair really see themselves as jailers, ordered to keep him close in case Randazzo felt like fleeing?

The last was ridiculous. Randazzo was aware of how many important men, Ma.s.siter above all, he had served that night in the palazzo. It was inconceivable such men wouldn't repay the favour. Venice ran on rules, private, unwritten rules, but rigid ones nevertheless. Without rules, the place would descend into chaos. And one rule was inviolate. Debts were repaid in the end, always.

Malipiero had just spent an hour or more complaining about the fact that the Franciscans didn't have a single TV set in the place.

Randazzo looked at him and asked, "Why don't you try reading?"

"Huh!"

He looked as if the very idea itself were poisonous. Randazzo had managed to get through a couple of books in his time in the cell. Dry volumes on some arcane aspects of Italian law that he'd made a note to read once they told him what was happening. The books made him feel better, and contained some awkward truths he could throw back at a few city men should they need reminding of what he was owed. This entire episode was a necessary diversion in his career. He appreciated that. It didn't mean he couldn't profit from the experience.

"Books can help you get on," he told Malipiero.

"Helped you a lot," Lavazzi sneered.

The two men-Lavazzi and Malipiero-looked remarkably alike, almost like brothers. Both were around thirty-five, a little on the short side, running to fat, their corpulent frames now squeezed inside cheap dark blue suits. They were the kind of men who ruined a decent commissario's statistics, until he turned on them, kicked them back out on the streets with orders to get some work done. Then the petty crooks didn't stop coming through the door, guilty and innocent, until Lavazzi and Malipiero got bored again and returned to drifting from bar to bar, b.u.mming beers and panini.

"Why don't you two just go for a walk?" Randazzo suggested. "It's ridiculous being here all the time."

"Those Bracci brothers are very p.i.s.sed off," Lavazzi replied. "You blew away their old man, in front of all those people. Can you blame them?"