The Rainaldi Quartet (10 page)

An elderly woman came out on to the steps next to the bandstand as the music ended. She clapped her hands and blew kisses to the musicians who bowed to her graciously in acknowledgement. I recognised her as a well-known Italian actress, more famous for her longevity and flamboyant clothes than her talent. She was caked in orange make-up and around her shoulders – despite the warm evening – she was wearing what appeared to be the last surviving North American buffalo.

‘Why did Tomaso go to Forlani?' Guastafeste said. ‘Why not find the violin first, then put it in an auction and sell it to the highest bidder?'

‘Money,' I replied. ‘You know how Tomaso lived. Always on the edge, always exceeding his income. He'd already been to England. That must have cost. He needed someone to pay the bills. Particularly as his search might well have proved unsuccessful. Forlani could afford the risk, Tomaso couldn't.'

‘We need to find those letters – if the killer hasn't found them already.'

‘You think that was why Tomaso's workshop was searched?'

‘It's a good bet. The violin's the key, I know that.'

Guastafeste finished his beer. ‘We pick up the scent of the violin and we'll pick up the scent of Tomaso's killer.'

*   *   *

We left our table and strolled across the Piazzetta to the Molo. The gondolas were bobbing up and down at their mooring posts, the water slapping against their hulls, making a sound like wellington boots squelching through mud. The church of Santa Maria Della Salute, at the end of the Grand Canal, looked as timeless and ravishing in the sunset as she had when Canaletto captured her in oils.

We walked along the Riva degli Schiavoni, stopping for a while to look at the Bridge of Sighs. Below, in the small canal that runs behind the Doge's Palace, a long line of gondolas was gliding towards us. In the first boat, an accordion player and a balding tenor with a shrill voice were serenading their passengers. The gondolier had one hand on his oar, the other pressing a mobile phone to his ear. In the gondola at the rear of the line sat a single Japanese tourist with only his camcorder for company. I felt a twinge of pity for him. Venice is not a place in which to be alone.

Beyond the Hotel Danieli we turned left down an alley and found a
trattoria
near Campo San Zaccaria, an inferior, overpriced tourist establishment like most of the restaurants in Venice. We had spaghetti with clams, veal cutlets and a carafe of the house red wine, then wandered back to St Mark's. It was late, but there were still plenty of people about, drifting aimlessly around the piazza, seated at the tables outside the cafes where the orchestras were still churning out their saccharine medleys.

I paused, soaking up the atmosphere, in no particular hurry to get back to our
pensione.

‘I need to catch up on some sleep,' Guastafeste said. ‘You stay here, if you like. I'll see you in the morning.'

I sauntered slowly across the square. The lights were on in the open galleries around the edge. The shop frontages shone as brightly as the glass and silverware in their windows. It was cooling down. I could feel a breeze gusting in from the lagoon, stirring the debris, the litter that was scattered over the paving stones. The people were starting to move, getting up from their cafe tables, slipping on jackets or pullovers, heading back to their hotels. Even the pigeons were thinning out, returning to their roosts for the night.

In the gallery at the western end of the piazza I turned to look back at the floodlit basilica and my attention was caught by a figure crossing the square. He was fifty metres away, walking purposefully towards the exit from the square. Tall, gaunt, wearing a white linen jacket, I recognised him as the Englishman I'd encountered in Serafin's office in Milan. He was staring straight ahead, taking no notice of his surroundings, as if his mind were focused on more important matters. I watched him pass by, then made an impulse decision, curious to know who he was, what he was doing in Venice.

I set off after him, following him through the Campo San Moise and along the well-trodden path to the Accademia Bridge. The streets were quieter here, the pavements washed with a sickly greenish light from the wall lamps. Not once did the Englishman look back. We were across the bridge and into the dark alleys on the western side of the Grand Canal when I felt a strange, disconcerting tingle in the nape of my neck. I had a curious feeling that I too was being followed. I paused and looked round, listening. But I heard no footsteps, saw no figures, no shadows behind me. I turned to look ahead again. The Englishman had vanished. I hurried on along the street, unnerved now – by the night, by the sinister atmosphere, by the continuing suspicion that I was not alone.

There was no sign of the Englishman. I turned down an alley and emerged into a tiny unlit courtyard. I paused again. This time I heard footsteps – in front of me, not behind. I walked quickly under an arch and out into another alley. Ahead of me I saw a flash of the Englishman's white jacket and went after him. Moments later he turned off into a narrow passageway. I crept to the mouth of the passage and watched him stop outside a door and ring the bell. The door opened a fraction. I caught a glimpse of a pale face before the Englishman stepped inside and disappeared from sight. I was close enough to hear a lock snap shut as the door closed.

I retraced my steps and stood on the Accademia Bridge looking out over the Grand Canal. A barge loaded with crates of beer passed by beneath me, then a water taxi cruising for hire. I shivered as a gust of cool air swirled up from the canal. There is something fundamentally untrustworthy about Venice. She is like a moody, enigmatic mistress whose loyalties cannot be relied on, a mistress whom you continually fear will leave you for someone richer, more powerful. No man can hold on to her indefinitely, though many have tried. I thought of the great historical figures who had been here before me: Goethe, Stendhal, Mendelssohn, Dickens, Hemingway, the list was endless. Robert Browning died in the Ca' Rezzonico, I could see it clearly a few hundred metres away up the Grand Canal. Richard Wagner died surrounded by silk in the Palazzo Vendramin further north beyond the Rialto Bridge. Byron swam in the waters just below my feet and miraculously survived.

I thought about all these things in passing. But mostly I was wondering why the Englishman should have been visiting Enrico Forlani at half past eleven at night.

5

‘You know something?' Guastafeste said over breakfast the next morning. ‘I think Forlani is holding out on us.'

I spread some apricot jam on a bread roll and looked up. ‘How do you mean?'

‘He must know more than he's letting on. The letters Tomaso showed him – Forlani said he couldn't remember what they contained. I don't believe that. A man like Forlani; he's peculiar, but he's not senile. I want to talk to him again before we leave Venice.'

‘Go back to his house? With that stench?' I said.

‘It won't take long,' Guastafeste replied.

We paid our bill and left our bags at the
pensione
while we walked back over the Grand Canal to Forlani's
palazzo.
The front door of his house was ajar when we got there. Guastafeste looked at it, frowning, then he pushed the door open with his foot.

‘Dottor Forlani?' he called.

There was no reply. Guastafeste examined the door without touching it. The locks were still intact. There was no sign of a forced entry.

‘Maybe he's gone out to the shops,' I said. ‘He has to buy food some time.'

‘And leave his door unlocked? I don't think so, not Forlani. Did you see his alarm system yesterday? He'd close up the place like a fortress.'

We stepped inside and went upstairs. On the first-floor landing we paused to look into the room with the long table. There was no one there. We continued on up the stairs. The smell was just as bad as before, the air just as stale and hot.

Guastafeste came to an abrupt halt. At the far end of the second-floor corridor the door was open. Beyond it the heavy steel door guarding the violin room was also open. We walked quickly down the corridor and stopped on the threshold. The lights were on inside the chamber, all the glass cases illuminated as they had been yesterday. But one thing was different. On the floor of the room, lying in a puddle of congealed blood, was Enrico Forlani.

He was sprawled on his front, his head twisted sideways, his eyes wide open, unseeing. He was still wearing his dressing gown and plastic flip-flops. On the floor all around him, mixed in with the blood, were fragments of glass from the shattered display case which the old man appeared to have fallen against and broken.

Guastafeste went in. I hung back near the door, averting my gaze. The air-conditioning was on in the room, but even so I could detect a faint putrid odour which I guessed was the smell of flesh starting to decompose. I put my handkerchief over my mouth, wondering if I was going to be sick.

I glanced at Forlani. Guastafeste was bending over his body, examining it more closely. He had a policeman's stomach, the ability to tolerate sights and smells that would make most people nauseous.

Guastafeste straightened up and walked across to me, his hand delving into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out his mobile phone. Another image came to me: Guastafeste outside Rainaldi's workshop, doing the same thing. He'd spared me then, shielded me from the shocking realities of violent death, but this time I'd had no such protection. I'd seen Forlani's body. The sight was etched immutably in my mind: horrific, bloody, a vision of nightmares to come.

Guastafeste took me by the arm. ‘Let's wait outside.'

He punched in a number on his phone as we went back along the corridor and down the stairs. I was in a daze, aware only distantly of him talking to the emergency operator, asking for the Venice police, then we were outside in the alley by the front door and I was leaning back on the brick wall, taking deep gulps of fresh air.

‘You okay, Gianni?' Guastafeste asked.

‘I think so. It's just the shock. Two dead bodies in less than a week.' I tried to shut out the images, but they wouldn't go. No matter how hard I tried to direct my mind elsewhere it stayed resolutely on Forlani. ‘What happened?' I said. ‘Was he murdered?'

‘That's hard to tell.'

‘What else could it be? All that blood everywhere.'

‘It looks to me as if he fell – or was pushed – against the display case. Severed an artery on the broken glass. Maybe it was an accident. He was an old man. He could have had a heart attack and fallen into the case. Only an autopsy will give us a clearer picture of what really happened.'

We walked along the alley. It was an unprepossessing passageway, little more than a metre wide, hemmed in by Forlani's
palazzo
on one side and another high wall on the other. Yet when we got to the end, the Grand Canal was suddenly there before us in all its shabby splendour, the buildings along the banks bathed in sunlight, some pink, some orange, some sugar white. A
vaporetto
cruised past, sending a wash of cloudy green water to lap against the steps by our feet.

‘There's something you should know,' I said.

I told him what had happened after we'd split up the previous evening.

‘He went to Forlani's house?' Guastafeste said, a note of urgency in his voice. ‘You're sure it was the same man you saw at Serafin's?'

‘Yes.'

‘You know his name?'

‘No.'

Guastafeste handed me his mobile phone. ‘Call Serafin. Find out who he is. It could be very important.'

I rang Serafin's office in Milan. His secretary said he hadn't come in yet, she didn't know where he was. I tried his mobile number, but there was no reply so I left a message on his voice-mail asking him to call Guastafeste's number as soon as possible.

I was handing the phone back to Guastafeste when I saw the police launch surging towards us. The helmsman brought the vessel in fast then, at the last moment when it seemed a collision with the bank was inevitable, thrust the throttle into reverse to allow the side of the boat to brush gently up against the steps. An officer leaped ashore with a rope and secured the launch to one of the red and white mooring posts along the edge of the canal, then five or six more officers – two in plain clothes – clambered out and headed down the alley with Guastafeste.

I stayed where I was, watching the boats on the canal, trying not to think of the body in the building behind me, until Guastafeste returned.

‘Can you face coming back upstairs?' he asked. ‘The police want to talk to you about last night. And there's something else you can help with. Something I overlooked. The broken glass case. The violin that was inside it is missing. We need to know which one it was.'

I followed him back into the
palazzo
and upstairs to the second floor. The Venetian police officers were grouped around Forlani's body, two of them crouching down by the corpse so that – to my relief – I could barely see it. One of the plain-clothes detectives came across to meet us, introducing himself as Gian Luigi Spadina. I repeated everything I'd told Guastafeste earlier.

‘We're waiting for a call giving us the name,' Guastafeste added when I'd finished.

‘And the missing violin?' Spadina said.

I looked around at the illuminated glass cases, recalling the order in which I'd examined them the previous day. I knew immediately which violin had been in the broken case.

‘The Maggini,' I said.

‘You're sure?' Guastafeste said.

‘Positive. It was quite a well-known instrument. The Snake's Head Maggini, it was called.'

‘Valuable?' Spadina asked.

‘Fairly. Though nothing like as valuable as some of the other violins here.'

Spadina gazed around the room. ‘Why just that one?' he said contemplatively. ‘Why didn't the killer take more?'