The Lizard's Bite Part 18

The room exploded with a deafening, deadly roar, an explosion that rang off the fragile gla.s.s walls, echoing with an odd, resonant timbre, mocking, shaking them all.

This was a sound she was coming to recognise. One that people like Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni had introduced into her life. A single metallic scream, so loud she could feel her eardrums shrink under its violent volume.

"Gianni-" she murmured.

But the big man was gone already, punching his way through the overdressed mob, heading for an area of s.p.a.ce that was opening up near the doorway, one that was getting larger by the second as all the costumed fools, the harlequins and the plague doctors, the medieval wh.o.r.es and the court ladies, suddenly got smart, remembered what century they were living in, and recognised the angry howl of a weapon.

"Get out of my d.a.m.n way," Teresa spat at some moron in black and white, flailing her arms, not wanting to think about what she'd see.

A man with a gun. There was always a man with a gun.

Both Nic and Leo Falcone were facing him down already, refusing to be cowed, standing to confront the madman who hid behind his hostage, a woman she recognised as the terrified Raffaella Arcangelo, trembling and pale in her black widow's gown.

NIC . . ."

He listened to the inspector's warning voice carefully, not taking his eyes off Aldo Bracci for a moment. The man was dead drunk, scarcely able to stand. A stupid, unwanted trick of the memory meant Costa recognised the weapon in his hand. It was an old Luigi Franchi RF-83 revolver, a .38 special with six cylinders, just under a kilo in weight, obsolete, unreliable, the kind of c.r.a.p they took off small-time street hoods in Rome, thugs who couldn't shoot straight to save their lives. Not that it mattered. What was important was that this was a firearm, a small harbinger of death housed in ugly black metal.

"This is my call, Nic," Falcone murmured. "Get back. That's an order."

They were just a few metres from Bracci and Raffaella, in the still-bright yellow sun of the dying evening, beneath the wasted brilliance of a vast Murano chandelier suspended from the rusting iron gallery above.

"He's drunk. He only knows you from this afternoon and that didn't go well at all," Costa said quietly. "Bracci just sees you as part of this problem. I came before. Give me a chance."

"Nic . . ." There was a stern, desperate note in Falcone's voice.

"No, sir," Costa declared, and stepped in front of the inspector, held out his arms, wide, hands open, showing he had nothing with which to threaten the furious-looking Aldo Bracci, who cowered behind Raffaella, shaking with fear and rage.

"Put the gun down, Aldo," Costa said in a firm, even voice. "Put it down, let the woman go. Then we can talk this through. No one gets hurt. Nothing goes any further. It's all going to be OK. I promise."

Bracci's left arm was tight round her throat. Raffaella Arcangelo's hands hung loose by her sides.

"Too d.a.m.n late, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Bracci's voice was a tortured howl. This man was not going to understand logic. Costa tried to recall all the tricks a cop could use in these situations. And the golden rule: Keep it calm. Keep it calm.

"Talk to me, Aldo," he said. "Tell me what you want."

"I want you off my back. I want . . ."

The man was close to tears, desperate, and Costa understood why. What had emerged on Murano that afternoon was irreversible.

"I want my f.u.c.king life back," Bracci babbled, as miserable as h.e.l.l.

Costa nodded, theatrically, making sure the wretched man understood. "I'm sorry about what happened. We just went round to talk to you because we had to. It's the job. We talk to everyone."

Bracci's wild, drunken eyes rolled. "You f.u.c.k up everyone? With these stories? You go round dredging up old dirt and scattering it round the streets like dog s.h.i.t?"

"No. That shouldn't have happened. I apologise."

"Some good that does me! So where am I supposed to go now, smart-a.s.s? Home?" So where am I supposed to go now, smart-a.s.s? Home?"

In that narrow, malodorous street, with an angry face peering out from every window. Aldo Bracci's life was finished. Costa understood that as well as Bracci did. This was what made Bracci so dangerous.

"Tell me what you want," he urged.

Spittle flew from Bracci's mouth as he laughed. The laugh turned into a long choking cough. His shoulders heaved. He looked like a man who didn't care about anything, least of all himself.

Quietly, patiently, Costa persisted. "You came here for a reason. If I knew what that was . . ."

The gla.s.sy, drunk eyes glared at him. "If you knew what that was . . ."

The gun rose again. Bracci was looking around, scanning the crowd, looking for someone, not finding the face he sought.

Bracci jerked back his arm, fired again, straight into the chandelier above him, despatching a shower of tiny gla.s.s shards into the room. The crowd was screaming again, falling back, crushing against the temporary tables, sending the plates of delicate canapes and the gla.s.ses of sparkling wine crashing on the stone floor.

Costa didn't move. He looked at Bracci, resolute, determined to see this through. Two shots. Six chambers. If they were full when the man entered the room, there were just four left now. Not that any of them needed to be used.

"Put the gun down, Aldo," Costa repeated. "Let Raffaella go. Then we'll walk outside, talk this through. I'll take you anywhere you want. On the mainland. You name the place."

The dead eyes blinked. "Anywhere?"

"Anywhere you . . ."

Costa halted. A black figure was scuttling through the crowd, quickly, something in its hand.

"No!" Costa bellowed.

Gianfranco Randazzo was striding into the s.p.a.ce Bracci had made, black pistol in hand, firing already, straight at them, like a madman, almost random in his fury.

Costa leapt forward, diving, tearing at Raffaella's gown, dragging her to the floor, out of Bracci's grip. The unsteady figure above them didn't know where to turn. To his disappearing hostage, or to face the hot random rain spitting at him from Randazzo's weapon.

A red tear opened up in Bracci's shoulder. A sudden spurt of blood fell warm on Costa's face. Bracci shrieked. The gun jerked in his hand, twice, firing nowhere in particular.

The screams came from all around them, hoa.r.s.e, terrified cries uttered by a cast of fake actors s.n.a.t.c.hed abruptly into a cold and dangerous reality. Commissario Randazzo, in his fine black suit, was now casually walking up to the stumbling shattered figure of Bracci, taking aim at the man's head, like a backstreet executioner, letting loose one final shot into the man's scalp.

Bracci's torso jerked back under the force of the bullet. The gun fell out of his dead hand, clattering to the marble floor, spent, its damage done.

Costa recoiled at the sharp, bitter smell of gunfire, then watched in disgust as Randazzo performed one final act, kicking the twitching corpse in the back, sending it rolling onto its side. Bracci's cheap cotton work jacket, the same he'd worn in his tawdry little furnace, flapped open to reveal the wounded man's bloodied chest.

Calm, unmoved by the continuing pandemonium around him, Randazzo stared down at his victim, seeing something. He crouched by the body, flicked the jacket back onto the torso.

The commissario reached into the side pocket and coolly removed a set of keys, joined together by a single ring, marked by a yellow sash.

"Was this what you were looking for?" Randazzo called. "Well, Falcone? Falcone? Falcone?"

Costa was helping the weeping Raffaella Arcangelo to her feet. His arms shook. His brain was fighting to make sense of what he'd seen.

"Are these her keys?" Randazzo bellowed, scrabbling through the dead man's pockets as the commotion around them grew. Randazzo bellowed, scrabbling through the dead man's pockets as the commotion around them grew.

Furious, Costa took two steps towards him, glared at the emotionless man in the black suit, now stained with Aldo Bracci's blood, then wrested the gun from his hand.

"Consider yourself under arrest. Sir. Sir. I'll see you in jail for this." I'll see you in jail for this."

Randazzo laughed in his face. "What? Are you serious? You people are way out of your depth here. You have been all along."

A single long howl, louder than the rest and familiar in a way that made Costa's blood run cold, silenced the commissario. Randazzo turned his attention to the back of the room, and was suddenly silent, the colour draining from his cheeks, an expression of unexpected dread frozen on his face.

Nic Costa had his back to the racket. All the same he could recognise that voice, that deep, furious bellow of despair.

It was Teresa Lupo and somewhere inside the torrent of wordless anger streaming from her throat he heard his name.

Two stray bullets had screamed into a room full of people, Aldo Bracci's final gifts to a world he felt had abandoned him.

Nic Costa knew what that meant. Knew too, somehow, what he'd see when he summoned enough courage to turn around and look for himself.

It could have been a painting. Something by Caravaggio-half deep shadow, half washed in the b.u.t.tery rays of the dying sun.

Peroni was a taut foetal ball on the ground, rocking, silent. Teresa knelt beside him, fighting to do something, anything, with the rags in her hands, struggling to staunch the sea of red that grew like a flood tide from the figure on the hard, cold floor.

Leo Falcone lay motionless, his head in Emily Deacon's lap, his tan face staring back at them, eyes unfocussed, mouth gaping open, blood streaming gently from his lips, falling onto her white, white wings.

IT WAS 1961, A COLD SUMMER IN THE VALLE D'AOSTA. Bone-chilling mountain mists hung around the family chalet outside Pre-Saint-Didier in the Little St. Bernard Pa.s.s. A week had pa.s.sed without sight of the rising bulk of Mont Blanc, separating this last wild piece of northern Italy from France and Switzerland, an aloof rocky giant, crowned with snow. The child, just turned seven, had felt lost without some view of the mountain. It was a consolation, during these long, lonely summer interludes, a kind of company for him. And that was the year-the very year, some odd external voice reminded him-when he needed company more than ever. The boy Leo was aware of himself, seated at the long, old wooden table, so roughly made it looked as if it had been shaped with an axe. Alone in the familiar living room. Yet not alone. Bone-chilling mountain mists hung around the family chalet outside Pre-Saint-Didier in the Little St. Bernard Pa.s.s. A week had pa.s.sed without sight of the rising bulk of Mont Blanc, separating this last wild piece of northern Italy from France and Switzerland, an aloof rocky giant, crowned with snow. The child, just turned seven, had felt lost without some view of the mountain. It was a consolation, during these long, lonely summer interludes, a kind of company for him. And that was the year-the very year, some odd external voice reminded him-when he needed company more than ever. The boy Leo was aware of himself, seated at the long, old wooden table, so roughly made it looked as if it had been shaped with an axe. Alone in the familiar living room. Yet not alone.

You never did look, the voice said. An old voice, familiar too. the voice said. An old voice, familiar too.

I never wanted to.

It was, he somehow realised, himself speaking. Years older. Wiser too, perhaps. And sad. The child didn't believe in ghosts. His father, a practical, unemotional accountant who handled money for many of the larger northern corporations, would have no room for such nonsense. He'd thrown away some of the books Leo brought home from boarding school. They were too fanciful, he said. Apt to give a child the wrong ideas. Arturo Falcone was, as he never failed to remind his son Leo, a self-made man. He'd risen out of the misery and chaos of World War II, putting himself through college working at night as a barman and waiter. Everything in little Leo Falcone's life came from this odd, distant man, a father on paper only, a distant figure, seen only in the holidays, when he'd retire to a chair with a newspaper and a gla.s.s, to bury himself deep in his own thoughts. Leo was an only child, which made the grat.i.tude he felt he owed his father for any attention whatsoever both more deserved, and more difficult to deliver.

The room was freezing. His parents had left him there with nothing but this curious voice, a more desolate echo of his own, for company.

He looked at the clock, an old Black Forest cuckoo clock. Like something from a dream, the pendulum hung still, trapped artificially on the right side of the housing, which was a copy of a wooden mountain chalet, very like the one in which Leo now sat, stiffly upright on a hard, uncomfortable chair, aware that the room was reverberating from some sound that had penetrated it from elsewhere, a booming, rolling, chiming noise, the metallic ring of bells followed by the lunatic chirrup of the cuckoo's bellows.

They talked of avalanches here, in the winter. The mountains were perilous, solitary places. There were still bears, some said. And wild mountain men who would take a child just to enslave it, to put the stolen boy out into the fields to work the pastures, gone forever into a life of servitude, because someone had to work, always.

His father told him that last story. One night when he'd been bad. Or at least forgetful, leaving the key inside the gla.s.s front door, where any thief might smash the window, s.n.a.t.c.h it, put a hand through and enter. A stranger, an intruder, a man who could rip the fragile fabric of family apart with his hands.

Keys are what stand between decent people and chaos, Arturo Falcone told him, before he beat the boy Leo, with a relentless, chill deliberation that was, in some way, more painful because of the mental hurt it inflicted. Forget the keys and your little world dies, and you with it. Parents disappear. The lonely little boy from a cold, upper-middle-cla.s.s family becomes a dirty mountain goatherd, abandoned to a life of misery and shame.

Better off dead, his father said. his father said.

Dead.

He hated that word as a child, even before he fully understood what it meant. From an early age Leo Falcone found he was able to read the faces of others, see behind their expressions and guess at what they were truly thinking. It was a kind of magic, the very sort his father would have beaten out of him had he known it existed. But exist it did, and Leo knew what went through the minds of men and women, all adults, all better than him, when they said the dead-word.

Terror.

A long, slow, uncontrollable sense of dread, one that wouldn't disappear until something-some other more immediate concern or, in his father's case, a bottle of mountain brandy-displaced it from their heads.

Dead.

The boy Leo found he was able to say the word himself, at this freezing, deserted table, and, for the first time, experience none of the sense of cold, inner foreboding he expected.

He drew the icy air into his lungs, two big, painful breaths, screwed up his face with an anger and force he would never have dared show had his father been present. Then he yelled . . .

Dead, dead, dead . . . DEAD!

There was a sound from high on the wall. The frozen pendulum on the clock moved, making a single swing from right to left before standing still again, defying gravity, defying everything that Leo had come to believe was solid, safe and natural in the world. Then it spoke again, that twin chorus, half metallic bell, half thunderous cuckoo roar, the very noise that had awoken him in this place.

It wasn't just a cuckoo clock. He should have remembered.

The tiny wooden doors opened. From within, circling, circling, came two small round wooden figures. Husband and wife, he in mountain dress, leather leggings, a colourful shirt with braces, and a small green hat with a minute visible feather in it. She . . .

Leo blinked. He remembered both figures now. The woman was plump and bustling and comical, in a white dress with blue spots, a kindly, rosy face, set forever in a wooden smile.

This woman was gone. In her place was a large, naked figure, no higher than a finger, but made of flesh, real flesh, pink and white and flaccid in the way he'd noticed when his mother walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing, unaware he was there.

Real flesh with weals and wounds and blood, real blood, blood that spat and spurted out of her under the vicious, constant blows of the little man who circled, arms thrashing, blade flashing.

Little Leo blinked. The clock was changing, even as he watched.

Now the little man wore a surgeon's mask and a close-fitting surgical cap. His arm worked feverishly, slashing, slashing.

Under the knife we go we go . . .

. . . someone, the older Leo, sadly laughing, said at the back of his head.

There was screaming too. Screaming from the little figures in the clock. Screaming from beyond this cold, cold room.

Little Leo's eyes fell on the door, the solid wooden barrier that led to his parents' bedroom, a place he feared, a place where he didn't belong. There was a huge carved wooden heart on the crossbeam, a sign of love, he imagined, though it seemed somehow out of place. And now this heart, old polished oak, was beating, slowly, weakly, pumping with a feeble resignation that was audible, moving in rhythm with his own, frightened pulse.

Behind this palpitating wooden heart was their sanctuary, their private place in which a child was never allowed, no matter how much he needed them, how frightened he felt. There was no gla.s.s panel here, no window, nothing to allow anyone to glimpse what happened behind that solid, impa.s.sable wood. There was, too, no stupid, weak means to circ.u.mvent what was meant to be-safety, security, certainty-when you placed a key in the door and turned the lock.

The key was there, on the table, taunting him. Old black metal, fancily worked so that it felt awkward in the hand, too large for the clumsy fingers of a child that grasped at the sharp angles of the handle and failed to find purchase. Even if he dared. Their bedroom was forbidden territory. Leo had known that all his short life. What happened there was for them alone.

The bell and the roar of the cuckoo ripped through the air again. Leo watched the pendulum make a single crossing, from left to right, then stay stuck in time, spotted now with blood from the plump little female figure who thrashed and screamed and fought in her tiny, tightly defined circle of life on the porch of the carved clock.

Nothing stops the flailing man, he thought. Not the pendulum. Not the ghostly voice in his head. Not G.o.d Himself. Because the flailing man is a part of G.o.d too, the part that always comes in the end.