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The straight-backed wooden chairs in Dottoressa Saviano’s anteroom were instruments of torture. Chiara, try as she might, could find no arrangement of her limbs that provided even a moment of comfort. At present she sat with the erect carriage of a dancer, with her hands folded atop her knees and her feet together on the scuffed wooden floor. The dottoressa’s secretary had cast several admiring glances at Chiara’s stylish pumps—and at her stylish husband as well. She was used to women staring at Gabriel; he was still impossibly handsome. He also happened to be one of the world’s finest art conservators, which conferred upon him an unwelcome local celebrity. Chiara managed the restoration company that employed him. For better or worse, they were among the most prominent couples in Venice.
Their young twins, a boy named for the painter Raphael and a girl called Irene, attended a public scuola primaria a few minutes’ walk from the family’s apartment overlooking the Grand Canal. DottoressaElenora Saviano, the school’s principal, had asked Chiara to drop by her office at 2:00 p.m. to address a matter of the utmost urgency, the nature of which she had refused to discuss over the telefonino. The dottoressa had insisted, however, that Gabriel attend the meeting as well, for what reason she declined to say. The implication was that the undisclosed problem was serious. Chiara was confident she knew the identity of the culprit.
The secretary stole another glance at Gabriel, who pretended not to notice. He was scrolling through the headlines on his new iPhone, a replacement for the device that was damaged during a recent visit to the west of England. His chair was identical to Chiara’s, and yet he looked the very picture of contentment.
“What’s your secret?” she asked.
“I spend all day on my feet in front of paintings. This is a welcome change of pace.”
“What about your back?”
“I swallowed a few of my little green friends before I left the apartment.”
Chiara turned her head toward the anteroom’s only window. It overlooked the school’s central courtyard, which was deserted and darkened by shadow. There was a climbing apparatus and a space for games involving balls, but otherwise the students were left to their own devices during recess. Such was the existence of children in Venice. They played in the calle or the campo and afterward went to the pasticceriafor a sweet. It had never occurred to Chiara, a Venetian by birth, that children might live any other way. When she was a young girl, she had loved her enchanted city of canals and bridges and ancient churches filled with art. Occasionally she went to the Giardini Pubblici for a bit of peace and quiet. But for the most part the only flora she saw were the six trees in the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, the broad square in Cannaregio where her ancestors had lived for centuries.
She awakened her phone and discreetly checked the time. The ever-vigilant secretary noticed nevertheless.
“I’m sure it won’t be much longer, Signora Zolli.”
“We were told—”
The secretary’s phone rang before Chiara could finish the thought. It seemed the dottoressa would see them now. And only fifteen minutes later than promised.
She received them with a doge-like solemnity while seated behind her desk. She was a short woman of perhaps fifty with the figure of a wine barrel. Her hair was pulled back severely from her face. Oversize spectacles magnified a pair of unblinking eyes.
They settled first on Gabriel. “Is it true, Signore Allon?”
“Is what true, Dottoressa Saviano?”
“That you have received a commission to restore the Titian in Santa Maria della Salute.”
The painting, The Descent of the Holy Spirit, hung above one of the basilica’s chapels. The Tiepolo Restoration Company, under Chiara’s capable leadership, had been awarded the contract to conduct a long overdue cleaning of the canvas—with the proviso that the work be carried out by none other than the renowned director of the firm’s paintings department. A story to that effect had appeared the previous week in Il Gazzettino. Of course it was true, thought Chiara. Everyone in Venice knew it was true.
Gabriel’s reply was more diplomatic. “As a matter of fact, I began work on it yesterday.”
“Is it your first Titian?”
Chiara counted slowly to ten while her husband, with admirable forbearance, explained that he had restored numerous paintings by Titian and his workshop. He might have added that he had restored the Bellini altarpieces in San Zaccaria and San Giovanni Crisostomo, one of the Veroneses in San Sebastiano, and a Tintoretto in dell’Orte. And then, of course, there was Caravaggio’s magisterial Deposition of Christ, one of several paintings he had cleaned clandestinely for the Vatican Museums. As it happened, his old friend was now the supreme pontiff. Not surprisingly, Gabriel neglected to mention that as well.
“Might I impose on you for a small favor?” inquired the dottoressa.
“How small?”
“I was wondering whether you might agree to show the children how you go about restoring a painting. We won’t stay for long. Perhaps an hour or two.”
Gabriel, with a glance, requested Chiara’s assistance.
“I’m sorry, Dottoressa Saviano, but my husband never allows anyone to observe him while he works.”
“And why is that, Signore Allon?”
Once again it was Chiara who supplied the answer. “He believes the great artists of the Venetian Renaissance deserve to have their work presented in the best possible light. He opposes any public display of paintings in a damaged state.”
“He doesn’t want to spoil the illusion?”
Chiara frowned. “Surely this isn’t the reason you wanted to see us.”
“I wish it were so.”
Copies of the children’s files lay on Dottoressa Saviano’s desk. She set aside Raphael’s—the boy was a math prodigy who was now studying with a tutor at the university—and opened Irene’s instead. Chiara steeled herself for the worst.
“Your daughter is a remarkable child, Signora Zolli. I have been most impressed by her academic performance, not to mention the speed of her assimilation.”
Chiara raised an eyebrow.
“I was just pointing out that Irene is somewhat new to Venice.”
“But her mother is not. The Zolli family has been living here since the fifteenth century.”
“But your children were born abroad.”
“They are as Italian as their classmates.”
The dottoressa sighed. They had reached an impasse. “Perhaps we should begin again.”
“Yes, let’s. What seems to be the issue?”
“Irene is a natural leader. Even the older students look up to her. But I’m afraid she holds rather strident political opinions for one so young.”
“Since when is having an opinion a problem?”
Dottoressa Saviano opened Irene’s file and extracted a single sheet of paper. “Copies of this were posted throughout the school three days ago. We have reason to believe that Irene was responsible.”
“What is it?”
“See for yourself,” said Dottoressa Saviano, and handed over the document. It was a call for a one-day student strike to protest the Italian government’s inaction on the issue of climate change. “I have to admit, it’s extremely well written for a child of her age. Or perhaps you had a hand in its drafting.”
“I didn’t.”
“Does Irene have a computer at home?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Perhaps you should monitor it more carefully.”
Chiara handed the document to Gabriel. He smiled as he read it.
“You find it amusing, Signore Allon?”
“Quite.”
“I don’t. Not in the least. Evidently your daughter has managed to convince nearly the entire student body to boycott their classes next Wednesday. They plan to march through all six sestieri and stage a rally in the Piazza San Marco.”
“What would be the harm? In fact, it might actually do some good. The young have a right to be worried about their future.”
“The current government does not see it that way. The education minister is of the opinion that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the political left.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
“If the boycott goes forward, there will be serious consequences.”
“For whom?”
“Your daughter, for one.”
Gabriel returned the document. “And what if we were able to find an elegant solution to the problem?”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I prefer not to negotiate with myself.”
“That’s where we’re different, you and I.”
“How so?”
The dottoressa smiled. “I never negotiate.”
* * * * *
Gabriel’s opening position was that the protest march would take place on a Saturday rather than a weekday, that there would be no disruption of classes and no further posting of flyers on school property, and that none of the participants, including the organizer, would be punished in any way. In exchange, the organizer’s father would agree to allow a small delegation of students to observe him carrying out one of the most important restorations undertaken in Venice in many years.
“The delegation,” countered Dottoressa Saviano, “will consist of the entire scuola primaria.”
“Out of the question.”
“And the visit will be two hours in duration, giving you sufficient time to deliver a lecture on the Renaissance in Venice before commencing your demonstration.”
Gabriel sighed. “Done.”
“Not quite.”
“What now?”
“A number of our students have shown artistic promise. I feel that with the proper instruction . . .”
Chiara began to object, but Gabriel placed a hand on her forearm. “I’d love nothing more. How soon can we start?”
“I’ll leave that to your discretion, Signore Allon.” The dottoressa returned the flyer to Irene’s academic file, then, upon further reflection, consigned it to the rubbish bin. “I know you’re terribly busy.”
Chiara managed to smile as she bade the dottoressa a pleasant afternoon, but her anger boiled over downstairs as she followed Gabriel into the street.
“The nerve of that woman.”
“She was a worthy opponent, I have to admit.”
“She’s an extortionist. And you, for some inexplicable reason, surrendered without a fight.”
“There was a method to my madness.”
“You were trying to protect your daughter?”
“I suppose I was.”
“Talk about madness,” murmured Chiara.
“She’s spirited. There’s a difference.”
Thirty minutes remained until the end of the school day, so they walked to Bar Dogale in the Campo dei Frari and ordered coffee. The counterman served Gabriel’s with un’ombra, a small glass of white wine. Chiara requested one as well.
“What are we going to do with her?” she asked. “The dottoressa?”
“Your daughter.”
“Enjoy every minute we have with her.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that, for understandable reasons, Irene has you wrapped around her finger. Therefore, despite her frequent misbehavior, you have never once disciplined her.”
“Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
“Tell me something, Gabriel. Do you think your daughter is a normal child?”
“Of course not. But neither is her brother.”
“Or her father, for that matter,” added Chiara quietly.
“Let’s hope Dottoressa Saviano doesn’t find out. Otherwise she might have second thoughts about taking me on as a part-time art instructor.”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?”
“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”
“Teach?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Why not teach at the university?”
“They won’t have me. Unlike you, I don’t possess an advanced degree from an esteemed institution of higher learning.”
The truth was, Gabriel had no degree at all; he had abandoned his formal study of art to undertake a mission of vengeance for his country’s secret intelligence service. Chiara, after completing her graduate studies at the University of Padua, had worked for the same service.
“Perhaps I should begin referring to myself as Dottoressa Zolli,” she said.
“It does have a nice ring to it.”
“But how will your students address you?”
“Signore Allon, I suppose.”
“What about Maestro Allon?”
“Can you imagine?”
“I can, actually. You’re looking more and more like a maestro every day.” Chiara trailed the tip of her forefinger through Gabriel’s platinum-colored hair. Then she turned to the barman and asked, “Wouldn’t you agree, Paolo?”
“By all means, Dottoressa Zolli. I shall refer to him by no other name from this day forward.” The barman winked at Gabriel. “Another glass of wine, Maestro?”
“A fine idea. And one for Dottoressa Zolli as well.” “I couldn’t possibly,” she protested.
“I must obey the maestro,” said the barman, and placed two more glasses of wine on the counter.
Chiara nudged hers toward Gabriel. “Have you decided what you’re going to say to your daughter?”
“I was planning to leave that in your capable hands.”
“Not this time, darling. It’s your turn.”
“Shall I read her the riot act?”
“You will explain that what she did was wrong. Then you will suggest she find a new hobby. Saving the world from the coming climate apocalypse is exhausting her mother.”
Gabriel eyed the barman. “What say you, Paolo? Do you think I should discipline my daughter for trying to organize a march about climate change?”
“Please don’t, Maestro Allon. Irene is a perfect child. Perhaps the most perfect child in the entire sestiere of San Polo.”
“That settles it, then.”
Gabriel laid a pair of banknotes on the counter and escorted Chiara back to the school. The first children were spilling from the doorway when they arrived. Irene and Raphael, as always, emerged simultaneously. They were surprised to see both of their parents waiting in the street. Irene, an unusually perceptive child, instinctively took Gabriel’s hand rather than her mother’s.
“Do you know why we’re here?” he asked as they walked along the Calle dei Saoneri.
The child nodded, then began to sob. Gabriel glanced helplessly at Chiara. With a circular gesture of her hand, she implored him to press his advantage.
“What were you thinking?” he asked.
“I thought it was the right thing to do.”
“That’s all well and good, but you went about it entirely the wrong way.”
“How?”
“The flyer, for one. It was a terrible mistake.” Gabriel brushed the tears from his daughter’s face. “You must never allow your adversary to know what you’re thinking.”
Chapter 2: Dorsoduro
It arrived in the summer of 1630, having made its way eastward from Milan, which had tried and failed to contain its spread. The Republic, with its busy port and humid air, proved a gracious host, as it had several times in the past. The fleas killed the rats first, then the people. Nearly twenty-one thousand perished between September and December alone. By the time it was finally over, a third of the population was gone. Though the doge and the Council of Ten did not know it then, Venice would never be the same.
The Venetian Senate, while the plague was still raging, decreed that a new basilica should be built on the Punta della Dogana in Dorsoduro, that it should be dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and that once each year, on the feast day celebrating her presentation at the Temple in Jerusalem, the senators and the doge would convene there after processing across the Grand Canal over a pontoon bridge. Gabriel arrived at the basilica early the following morning in a far less conspicuous manner—aboard a Number 1 vaporetto. He made his way across the deserted quay to a seldom-used side entrance crowned by a stone Venetian lion. Two knocks on the heavy wooden door summoned an elderly priest in a black cassock.
“Buongiorno, Signore Allon. And how are you this day?”
“Not well, I’m afraid.”
“Are you under the weather?”
“No, Father Giovanni. It seems my wife is angry with me.”
“Again?” The priest gave a sigh of resignation. “What have you done now, my son?”
“It’s cumulative at this point, Father. Therefore, I have no hope of forgiveness.”
“Perhaps I might have a word with her.”
“I’d leave well enough alone, if I were you. Chances are it will only make matters worse.”
The old priest escorted Gabriel into the murky half-light of the basilica. Eight radiating chapels ringed the soaring octagonal central nave. The view of one of the chapels was obstructed by a shrouded scaffold.
“I’ll leave you to your work,” said the priest, and vanished into the gloom.
Gabriel slipped through a gap in the tarpaulin and climbed the scaffolding to his work platform. For now, his supplies were limited to a flask of carefully calibrated solvent, a package of wooden dowels, and four bags of cotton wool—enough cotton wool, he reckoned, to remove the dirty varnish from approximately half of the enormous canvas. Three months was the estimate he had given the Venetian cultural authorities, with another three months to execute the required retouching. He might have managed to complete the restoration in a timelier fashion were it not for the fact that the basilica, one of Venice’s most prominent tourist attractions, would remain open to the public for the duration of the project. It was not, for any number of reasons, Gabriel’s preferred method of working.
He switched on a pair of standing halogen lamps, casting a harsh white light over the surface of the painting, then wound a swatch of cotton wool around the end of a dowel. It was his habit to listen to opera or classical music while he worked—with an old portable CD player, a faithful companion during countless restorations past—but present circumstances forbade it. He dipped his first cotton swab in solvent and twirled it gently over the wing of the radiant white dove near the top of the canvas. The soiled varnish dissolved at once, exposing Titian’s masterly brushwork.
“Buongiorno, Signore Vecellio,” said Gabriel quietly. “And how are you on this fine morning? Not well? I’m so sorry to hear that. Is your wife the problem, or has your child incurred the wrath of the doge by attempting to organize a march to protest the combustion of fossil fuels? What are fossil fuels, you ask? Perhaps another time, my old friend. It’s a long story.”
Gabriel discarded the soiled swath of cotton wool and fashioned another. He fell into the familiar rhythm of his craft—dip, twirl, discard . . . dip, twirl, discard—and by 9:00 a.m., when the doors of the basilica were thrown open, he had managed to clean a rectangle of canvas measuring about twenty by thirty centimeters. Before long he heard the squeak and shuffle of shoes over the marble floor, and by ten o’clock there was a persistent multilingual din of conversation. He persevered until ten thirty before switching off the lamps and descending the scaffold. As he emerged from behind the tarpaulin, a woman who spoke English with a British accent attempted to engage him in conversation. He feigned an inability to speak her language and, smiling apologetically, set off across the nave.
Outside, he stood on the steps of the basilica and inhaled the first cool, dry air of the season. On the opposite side of the Grand Canal, hidden away amid the luxury shops lining the Calle Larga XXII Marzo, were the business offices of the Tiepolo Restoration Company. He rang the firm’s general manager and asked if she was free for coffee.
“Sorry, darling. But I’m unavailable.”
“For how long?”
“The foreseeable future.”
“And what if I were to grovel?”
“I might consent to having a drink with you later.”
Gabriel crossed the wooden bridge spanning the Rio della Salute and set off toward Caffè Poggi, a quaint little bar near the Accademia. It was his second visit to the establishment, but the proprietor greeted him as though he had been coming there every morning for years. They exchanged pleasantries and banalities about the state of the world while Gabriel drank two coffees and devoured a cornetto filled with sweet almond paste.
“How goes the Titian?” the proprietor asked suddenly.
“How did you know?”
The proprietor indicated the display of Italian newspapers. “I read about it in Il Gazzettino, Signore Allon.”
“The Titian goes quite well.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?”
“I imagine so,” said Gabriel, and went into the street. He took his time walking back to the basilica and arrived to find a line of tourists stretching from the doorway. It was the late-morning rush, the busiest part of the day. Fortunately the doors would close at noon and remain shuttered for three blessed hours, during which time Gabriel would have the place to himself. Better to delay his return by a few minutes, he thought, than to deal with the disruptive noise of the crowds.
And so he continued along the fondamenta to the observation point at the tip of the Punta della Dogana. Perhaps a half kilometer to the east, across an expanse of sparkling water, was the magnificent church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Even Gabriel, a jaded Venetian, never tired of the view.
For several minutes it was his alone to enjoy. Eventually two tourists appeared—Americans, newlyweds apparently—and prevailed upon him to take their photograph. He posed them with Maggiore in the background and snapped the picture. The woman was on the left side of the image, her husband the right. Gabriel thought the photo rather good, though it was marred slightly by a dark mass floating on the surface of the water near the man’s outer shoulder.
He reframed the image, tapped the shutter icon, and surrendered the phone. The young Americans stayed another minute and then departed. Alone once more, Gabriel searched the white-flecked waters of the laguna for the object he had seen a moment ago. The dark floating mass, whatever it was, was gone.
* * * * *
There was a water taxi idling along the quay outside the basilica. Gabriel told the pilot about the object he had seen in the laguna, and the pilot, who spent fourteen hours a day navigating the waters of Venice, assured him it was probably nothing.
Gabriel handed the pilot a hundred euros. “Why don’t we have a look, just to be sure?”
“If you wish, Signore. It’s your money.”
Gabriel stood at the pilot’s shoulder as he eased away from the quay and headed toward Maggiore. “Here,” he said after a moment. “This is where I saw it.”
“There’s nothing, Signore.”
“Put your engine in neutral, please.”
Frowning, the pilot did as Gabriel asked, and the sleek wooden vessel slowed to a stop. The pilot searched the waters off the port side, Gabriel the starboard. Seeing no sign of the object, he ducked into the passenger cabin and headed aft.
“There!” he shouted. “There it is.”
It had resurfaced about thirty meters from the taxi’s stern. Gabriel rejoined the pilot as he engaged the inboard engines and came slowly about. But the object, visible a moment earlier, had once again disappeared from view.
“It’s probably just a plastic rubbish bag, Signore. The laguna is full of them.”
“Do you have a boat hook on board?”
It was a retractable model, four meters in length when fully extended, with a scratch-resistant plastic hook. Gabriel probed the waters off the starboard side of the vessel until he made contact with something heavy and sodden. After several failed attempts, he managed to snare the object and guide it gently toward the surface. The pilot fumbled for the handset of his radio as a human corpse, bloated and partially decomposed, floated into view.
“Don’t,” said Gabriel as he drew the phone from his pocket. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Chapter 3: San Zaccaria
The regional headquarters of the Arma dei Carabinieri, one of Italy’s two national police forces, were located in the Campo San Zaccaria. Capitano Luca Rossetti was attached to the Division for the Defense of Cultural Patrimony, better known as the Art Squad. Gabriel occasionally served as a consultant to the unit and had worked with Rossetti on a major international forgery investigation. Despite a regrettable case of mistaken identity in a darkened corte in San Polo—one that left Rossetti with a broken jaw and Gabriel with several fractured bones in his right hand—they remained the best of friends.
“Where?” asked the Italian policeman.
“Walk through the sotoportego. You can’t miss me.”
Rossetti hurried downstairs to the campo and, phone in hand, sprinted through the passageway that led to the Riva degli Schiavoni, the monumental waterfront promenade stretching along the Grand Canal. There were the usual tourists and vendors, but Rossetti saw no evidence of a dead body.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see you.”
“I’m in the water taxi about a hundred meters due west of Maggiore.”
Rossetti spotted the vessel at once. Gabriel was hanging over the starboard side, a phone in one hand, a rescue pole in the other.
“Whatever you do,” said Rossetti, “don’t let it go.”
Because this was Venice, the Carabinieri maintained a substantial fleet of vessels, the first of which arrived just three minutes after Gabriel’s call. Five more craft appeared soon after, along with waterborne units of the Polizia di Stato, the Guardia di Finanza, and even the Coast Guard. The armada quickly established a blockade around the crime scene, temporarily halting traffic on both the Grand and Giudecca Canals. Gabriel grimly maintained control of the corpse for several more minutes before surrendering it to a pair of Carabinieri crime scene technicians. As they hauled the body into a f lat-bottomed pontoon boat, the pilot of the water taxi turned away and was violently sick over the port gunwale.
“Shall I take us back to the basilica?” asked Gabriel.
“It’s against regulations.”
“I think they’ll make an exception in this case.”
Gabriel started the taxi’s engines and crept forward, breaching the blockade between two of the police craft. The traffic on the Grand Canal was at a standstill. He guided the taxi past motionless barges and vaporetti and slid into an empty spot along the quay.
“Are you feeling any better?” he asked the pilot.
“A little. But I’m not sure I’ll ever forget what I saw this morning.” Neither would Gabriel. He had once discovered the body of a notorious Italian tomb raider in a vat of acid. This was worse.
He stepped onto the quay and headed up the steps of the basilica. The nave was teeming with tourists, seemingly unaware of the commotion outside. Gabriel was glad of their company. He climbed the scaffolding to his work platform and switched on the halogen lamps, flooding the Titian with dazzling white light.
“Sorry for the delay, Signore Vecellio,” he said quietly as he prepared his first swab. “But you’ll never guess what I just discovered in the Canal Grande.”
* * * * *
The doors of the basilica closed promptly at noon, and a heavy silence fell over the nave. Gabriel worked without a break until half past one, when he received a call from Luca Rossetti.
“We need a statement.”
“On what particular subject?”
“This morning’s discovery. The lead detective would like you to drop by the stazione.”
“I’m sure he would, but I’m rather busy at the moment.”
“In that case, we’ll come to you.”
They arrived twenty minutes later and, as instructed, knocked on the side door. The detective was a tall, gaunt figure called Baggio who wore on his shoulders the three silver stars of a colonnello. Gabriel explained that he had spotted something floating on the surface of the laguna at approximately 11:00 a.m., that he had hired a water taxi to investigate the matter, and that the object in the water, as he had feared, turned out to be a human corpse. The advanced state of decomposition made it impossible to say with any certainty whether the decedent was a man or a woman, but it appeared to Gabriel as though it was the latter.
“That is indeed the case,” replied Baggio.
“It looked as though she had been in the water for a while.”
“Perhaps, Signore Allon. But in my experience, the laguna is most unkind to the dead.”
“Is there any evidence of trauma?”
“Our investigation has just begun. But you needn’t concern yourself with such questions. As of this moment, your role in this unfortunate matter is officially over.”
“I would appreciate it if you kept my name out of the papers.”
Colonel Baggio shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. “Leaks happen, Signore Allon. But I assure you, the press won’t hear anything from me.”
Gabriel showed the two Carabinieri officers out and resumed work on the Titian. The crowds returned at three o’clock and remained until five, when the attendants herded them out the door. Gabriel waited until the nave was empty before switching off the lamps and descending the scaffolding.
Outside, he crossed the quay to the vaporetto stop. A Number 1 was traversing the Grand Canal diagonally from the direction of San Marco. He boarded it a moment later and went into the passenger cabin. Chiara was seated in the first row, her eyes on her mobile phone.
Gabriel sat down next to her. “I was promised a drink.”
“Tough day at the office?”
“Eventful.”
“So I heard,” said Chiara, and handed over her phone. The lead item in Il Gazzettino concerned a grisly discovery in the waters near the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. The story was accompanied by a photograph of a man with platinum-colored hair leaning over the side of a water taxi, a retractable pole in his hands. The object pinned against the side of the hull was faintly visible. “Care to explain?”
“I invited you to have coffee with me. And you, of course, refused.” Gabriel returned Chiara’s phone. “Do the children know?”
“Irene was the one who told me.”
Gabriel sighed. “You really should limit the amount of time she spends on the computer.”
* * * * *
The palazzo stood on the northern bank of the Grand Canal not far from the San Tomà vaporetto stop. From the broad loggia of its piano nobile, the Rialto Bridge was visible in the east. The furnishings in the spacious adjoining drawing rooms were contemporary and comfortable, and the walls were hung with an eclectic collection of paintings, including works by Gabriel’s mother and grandfather, a noted German Expressionist and disciple of Max Beckmann. In the master bedroom suite were a pair of Modigliani nudes that Gabriel had painted on something of a dare. Propped on the easel in his studio was a canvas by Sebastiano Florigerio, a pro bono favor for the director of the Courtauld Gallery in London.
Gabriel was supposed to be chipping away at the painting in his spare time, but tonight he hadn’t the strength, so he sat atop a stool at the kitchen counter, drinking from a large glass of Brunello, while Chiara prepared dinner. The menu, at Gabriel’s request, was vegetarian. Nothing with bones and flesh, nothing from the sea.
His phone lay face down before him. He turned it over and looked again at the photograph displayed on the screen. It had been snapped, according to Il Gazzettino, by a passenger on a Maggiorebound vaporetto. Precisely how the newspaper managed to identify the man holding the rescue pole was unclear, though the level of detail suggested a leak from a well-placed official source, probably Colonel Baggio of the Carabinieri. Gabriel shared his suspicions with his wife but received no reply. She was typing on her phone.
“Who is it now?”
“Bianca Locatelli from La Repubblica.”
“Please give her the same answer that you gave the reporters from Il Gazzettino and Corriere della Sera.”
“We should at least issue a statement.”
“Why?”
“If nothing else, it might be good for our business.”
“Only if our business was finding dead bodies. Besides, I’m not the story.”
Chiara placed an assortment of antipasti on the dining room table and summoned Irene and Raphael. Gabriel was suddenly ravenously hungry, but his appetite faded when the children began to question him about the awful events of the morning. The account he gave was nearly identical to the one he had provided to Colonel Baggio, though he left out any description of the condition of the body.
“Where is she now?” asked Irene.
“In the morgue, I imagine.”
“What’s a morgue?” inquired Raphael.
“It’s a place where the dead are kept until they can be buried. A specialist known as a forensic pathologist will try to determine what happened to her.”
“Who was she?”
“The police don’t know yet.”
“Did someone kill her?” asked Irene.
“They don’t know that either. It’s quite possible she simply had an accident of some sort.”
It was also possible that the woman had taken her own life, but Gabriel had no wish to spoil the meal further with talk of suicide. Chiara, sensing his discomfort, deftly shifted the topic of conversation to Saturday’s protest march. It had been Gabriel’s brilliant idea, but he had wisely left the planning in his wife’s hands. The march would begin, she explained, in the Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Castello and conclude—three hours later, provided the children maintained a steady pace—in the Piazza San Marco. Eight other parents had agreed to help supervise the affair. Venetian social etiquette dictated that the arduous trek be followed by a celebratory lunch. Chiara had yet to settle on a venue.
“How many marchers are you expecting?”
“It could be as many as a hundred.”
“In that case, we’ll need outdoor seating.”
“Unless we hold the luncheon here.”
“Where?” asked Gabriel.
“In our apartment, darling. We have more than enough room, and I’m sure the other mothers will help me prepare the food. This is Venice, after all. It’s what we do.”
Chiara slipped into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with a steaming bowl of risotto alla Milanese. Gabriel devoured two portions of the saffron-colored rice while Irene and Raphael excitedly worked out the details of hosting a luncheon for one hundred of their schoolmates. The sound of their voices chased the nightmarish vision of the corpse from his thoughts, but it returned later that evening as he stood at the balustrade of his loggia, watching a water taxi beating its way up the Grand Canal. The laguna, he thought, had indeed been unkind to her. Now she lay on a tray of cold metal in the Venice municipal morgue, alone and in darkness. A woman without a name. A woman without a face.
