Blood on the Water (2 page)

But it was good business, the manager thought. Shops in the tangle of alleyways and squares hung up their finery on ribbons, the hollow glamour of masks and costumes whoring for trade. No one noticed the cold – or they pretended not to. The manager had watched women with bare shoulders parading in the piazzas, hot for attention, their skin corpse-cold. And all around them, in the chill, in the reek from the water, the wedding cake palaces and confectionery churches teetered on the city’s ancient piles.

Mr Deacon sipped at his brandy, the manager wiping the bar top again. He could see that the Englishman was still in shock, his hands gripping the brandy glass, his eyes unfocused. And outside, as they waited for the police to arrive, a foghorn sounded on the hidden sea.

*

I knew the city well, but even I had got lost a number of times when the fog came down. Remembering what Mr Deacon had told me I headed not for the police, but for the Caninni bridge. Was he right? Or would I be sending
the authorities on a wild goose chase?
He had seemed certain, but he was middle-aged, possibly his eyesight wasn’t as keen as it had once been. And the weather was eerie, casting its milky light around and bleeding into the shadows. Nothing was clear. Nothing sharp, in focus.

I walked hurriedly, aware of the time passing, knowing that Mr Deacon’s launch would come for him in less than an hour. All around the buildings made snow shapes in the fog; the water lapping, unseen. The daylight was dying when I reached the bridge and stepped on to it. I looked around. There was no one about. But who would be in such weather? Locals would hunker down indoors and the few tourists that had visited would have limped
morosely back to their hotels.

I heard the foghorn and realised that it probably belonged to Mr Deacon’s cruise ship. I could imagine that he heard it too, in the cafe, sipping a drink and trying not to remember what he had just seen. What I was now looking for.

There was no one on the bridge as I looked down into the water. It gazed back up at me, bored, empty. Slowly I made my way along the little bridge, stopping at regular intervals.

I saw nothing. Then a scruffy flotilla of ducks swam past, under the bridge, under my feet, coming out on the other side and dissolving into the mist. A lamp went on over the entrance of the Casino, but it made little impact; a greasy yellow halo, nothing more. Perhaps Mr Deacon had been mistaken after all. Perhaps he had seen nothing, only imagined the gory image.

In a square beyond I could hear music; someone had turned up the volume so loud that the beat reverberated around the old houses and slunk under the opal water. The sound stirred about the houses and the bridge, the misplaced reggae thumping the listing tide. Then, just as suddenly, an explosion of voices flared up and the music was turned off. Silence, huge as a white whale, swallowed me whole.

And then I saw it. It came out from the side of the canal suddenly, drifting into the water as though it had been tied up and was now released. She was obviously dead. Bloated, skinned, old blood around the face which was a pulp, her arms extended as though she was sunbathing. Long dead. Smelling foul. Freed from whatever had held her, she glided towards me, then dipped under the bridge and into the concealing fog.

Mr Deacon had been right all along.

*

The manager sighed and Mr Deacon looked at his watch anxiously. What was holding everyone up? he wondered. The customer had been helpful, but surely he should have been back by now with the police. Time was running out; there was less than half an hour until the launch came to take him back to the boat. He couldn’t miss it.
Oh Abigail
, he thought desperately,
what a mess I’ve got myself into. It would never have happened if you’d been here …

He couldn’t get the image of the corpse out of his mind. Even drinking a second brandy, with the manager watching him suspiciously, didn’t help.

At last, irritated, Mr Deacon turned to him, his basic Italian stretched to its limit: “The man … l’uomo …” he struggled. “Chi è?”

The manager shrugged. “Non lo so.”

“
You don’t know him
!” Mr Deacon said, surprised. “He’s a stranger?
Sconosciuto?
”

“Si, sconosciuto.”

That was odd, Mr Deacon thought. He had presumed that the customer had been a regular, he had seemed so much at home in the cafe. He glanced at his watch again as the foghorn sounded in the distance. Why had he walked over the Caninni bridge? Why go there of all places? Of all the bridges in Venice, why had he picked that one? If he’d taken a different route he would be on his way back to the quayside now, waiting for the launch. He was suddenly desperate to return to the boat and to his unwelcoming little cabin. Even dodging the pitying looks from the other passengers was better than this: sitting in a strange cafe, in a strange city, having seen something he would never be able to forget.

Another five minutes passed. Mr Deacon watched the daylight fade, the fog growing more and more dense, more isolating. What if the launch couldn’t get back to him? What if it missed him and he was left stranded? He could imagine the bureaucratic tedium of what would follow during his delay in Venice. He would have to give his statement, take the police back to the Caninni bridge, show them the scene of the crime.

And then what? When the rotting cadaver was hauled out of the filthy water, then what? He would have to view it all over again and assure the police that
this
was the corpse he had seen. As if he might be mistaken and mix it up with all the other bodies he saw daily!

It was all right being a good citizen, Mr Deacon told himself, but enough was enough. He had tried to help; he had reported what he seen. That would have to be sufficient. The police could sort out the matter for themselves; he wasn’t waiting any longer. Instead he was going to make his way back to the quayside and catch the launch.

But just as he stood up to leave the police walked into the cafe. Relieved, Mr Deacon smiled and put out his hand. But no one took it. Instead they handcuffed him.

*

I would never have done it if I hadn’t been pushed into it. But I would say that, wouldn’t I? One thing was vital: I had to time it perfectly. So I waited another half an hour and then I left the Caninni bridge. I did exactly what I said I would do – I went to the police and reported a crime. I told them, in my perfect Italian, that in a small hotel on the Romina square was an Englishman who had killed his wife.

They listened intently, and I knew that Mr Deacon wasn’t going anywhere because he was waiting for the launch which would take him back to the boat. I knew he would stay in the cafe, where the police would find him. I relied on that.

“Why did he confess to you?” they asked.

And I lied. I said we had become friends and Mr Deacon had confided in me, unable to live with what he had done. And besides, as we were both English he had felt a bond between us. Maybe he thought I would understand.

“What happened?”

And I told them that the murder had occurred a month earlier, on the Deacons’ last trip to Venice. They had argued. In a rage, Geoffrey Deacon had killed his wife and dumped her body under the Caninni bridge. He had, I went on to explain, weighted down the corpse and tied it with ropes,
which was why it had not been discovered until now. Now that it had worked free of its bonds and was drifting in the canal.

“Ask the manager,” I told them, “his English is poor but he was listening to our conversation, he must have heard mention of Mr Deacon’s wife being dead. The exact words were ‘she’s dead now’.”

Poor Mr Deacon, I don’t think he suspected anything while he waited for the launch to
arrive. And when I’d finished my story, I told the police that I couldn’t go back to the cafe with them and face the murderer. Instead I would call by the police station the following day.

Of course I never intended to. Instead I left for the quayside, skirting the Romina square. I could hear the foghorn and knew that I only had a few minutes to get to the place where the launch would pick me up. You see, as I said earlier, Mr Deacon didn’t look his age. He was tall, like myself, and a widower; reserved, his grief made him keep his distance from other people. Which made him the perfect scapegoat.

The fog worked well for me. When the launch came back to pick up the passengers they would do a headcount. I was just another expected number. A single man in an overcoat, wearing a hat. A solitary man with no luggage. A man eager to get back to his cabin and the boat which would set sail for Naples that night. From where I could jump ship and take a flight out of Italy.

Waiting by the quayside, I breathed in to steady myself. If the body had stayed tied up, I would never had had to dupe Mr Deacon. But my wife
did
come free of the ropes I had tied around her body. Somehow the bitch had mouldered and grown bloated and worked herself loose, floating to the surface of the canal just as a lonely Englishman passed.

I have been an opportunist all my life. A quick thinker, ready to grab a chance. Especially one which would work to my advantage. So that foggy day in drizzling Venice, when my crime unexpectedly popped up to the surface and Mr Deacon witnessed it, I snatched the only chance of freedom I had.

Ruthless, some people call me. My wife certainly did. I would rather think of myself as composed. I felt in the coat pockets and drew out Mr Deacon’s passport and wallet. He had been in such a shocked state he
never noticed that I had swapped coats with him in the cafe. I could board the cruise ship using his documents, one man among a crowd of people. A shy man who kept to his cabin.

And meanwhile the Venetian police would be interrogating Mr Deacon. Or rather, Mr Terence Baker, because it would be
my
papers they would find in his pocket. He would protest, of course, and deny everything I had said, but all of that would take time. And I was banking on Mr Deacon’s poor Italian, and my phone call to the manager of the cafe
to hold up progress.

“Don’t do anything to alert him,” I had told the man, “but your customer’s a criminal and the police are coming for him. He’s a liar; don’t let him fool you. He killed his wife.” I was relying on the manager’s sketchy grasp of English, knowing that he had been eavesdropping on our conversation in the cafe. “Didn’t he say that his wife was dead?”

“Yes, yes!”

“He did – and he killed her here … Can you see him?”

I could imagine the
manager turn and stare at the scared Englishman in his cafe. “Si, si, he’s still here.”

“You see how shocked he is? You know why? Because her body’s just come to the surface. He’s knows it’s over now. I saw her. I saw what he did to her …”

“But he asked for the police—”

“He wanted to pretend that someone else had killed her, but it was him all along.” I paused. “Keep calm
; the police are on their way. You must tell them what you heard him say. That his wife was dead. Give him a drink – as many as he wants. Just keep him there.”

The launch was only a couple of minutes late. Just as I had thought, no one even looked at me as I boarded, and when we got back to the cruise ship my papers were waved through. In Mr Deacon’s cabin I stretched out on the bed and waited. In a while the engines would turn again and we would set sail for Naples. From there, I could go wher
ever I pleased. Or rather, Geoffrey Deacon could.

The police would realise their mistake in time, of course. Mr Deacon would call the British Embassy and the English police, and in the end he would be able to prove his true identity and get home. But the confusion would give me time to escape – and that was all that mattered.

People don’t see details. They see the obvious. A tall man with good posture wearing an overcoat and a hat. Age: indeterminate. Accent: British. Character:
reserved. I slid into Mr Deacon’s skin as easily as a Venetian wears a Carnival mask. I borrowed him.

I could have done worse.

I must admit, I thought about it. When he first came into the hotel’s cafe, talking about seeing a body I thought about asking him to go with me to point it out. I thought how easy it would be – in such a maudlin fog – to knock Geoffrey Deacon out and push him into the canal. I even imagined, for a little moment, that he might float alongside my wife and she would tell him how I’d ripped at her skin. How, after killing her, I had enjoyed debasing what once I’d loved.

But I couldn’t do it to you, Mr Deacon, and I really don’t know why. It wasn’t a moral decision, or any fear on my part, but something stopped me. Perhaps you have a guardian angel. I know I haven’t. I lost my angel long ago. They leave us when we kill; did you know that? I imagine they bow their golden heads, wings folded, limping back to God with all manner of excuses
 …

Do you know Venice? In winter, in the fog. In a rage, when the cold is all around, but inside you blister with hatred. Do you know
that
Venice? It’s a killer’s city. Its geography is a villain’s map, its alleyways created for attacks. And the canals – what seeping little burial waterways those courses run. When I fixed my wife’s body under the bridge I wondered how many seasons she would see. How long her eyes would last before they putrefied, how many peevish currents would send reeds and waterfowl to stare at her. I knew no gondola would find her, the bridge was too low for water traffic, but I knew one day she would resurrect herself.

Blood and water don’t mix forever.

I told you before, in 1555 Venice suffered one of the worst winters in history. The fog came thick and lasted for months, and a killer came to life. Titian painted him, and his name was Angelico Vespucci, known as The Skin Hunter. Venetians feared him then and fear him still. Some even say he comes back now and then.