Deep and Silent Waters (25 page)

When she and Laura parted, an hour later, Melanie said, ‘Bring me back some Venetian goodies, don’t forget – some amaretti and a bottle of
grappa
would be great.’

‘I won’t forget.’ Laura wished she could talk to Melanie honestly about her fears, but Melanie wouldn’t understand: she was far too down-to-earth. Go to the police, she would say. Get some protection. Don’t ever be alone with Sebastian Ferrese. But Laura was afraid to tell anyone. That might be disastrous, might precipitate the very thing she most feared. It might drive into a frenzy the shadowy figure who had sent those notes and destroyed Jancy, who had threatened to destroy her.

Venice, 1998

Sebastian was already in Venice. The day after he arrived, he met the police adviser on the film, Captain Saltini of the Vigili Urban, the Venetian municipal police.

The Vigili Urban were in charge of local bylaws and traffic control; their co-operation was essential if the film-making process was to be trouble-free, so Sebastian had invited the Captain to meet him for lunch at the luxurious Hotel Europa, on the Grand Canal, a short walk from San Marco. He wanted to talk through the script and discuss the problems involved in shooting outdoors in Venice.

‘At this time, with all this snow, not so many worries with sightseers, just the
paparazzi
,’ the policeman promised. He spoke in English and his accent, though thick, was perfectly comprehensible. ‘Until the carnival starts mid-week, and then there will be a whole bag of students and tourists arriving. It’s always bad weather here in February, not a good time for being out in the streets, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone, even when the Piazza San Marco is several feet under water and it’s snowing.’

Sebastian laughed. ‘Don’t you wish you were twenty again? I know I do.’

Captain Saltini, a tall, commanding-looking man with a swarthy skin and greying dark hair, gave a wry smile. ‘Don’t we all?’

Sebastian picked up his script. ‘It’s the carnival I’m here to shoot, the dancing, the costumes, outdoor scenes. I want to capture the atmosphere by using the actual crowds in the streets.’

‘Yes, yes, I understand, and that’s okay, so long as they agree to let you film them – but you mustn’t film anyone who objects.’

‘You’ll be on hand to talk to them for us?’

The policeman, in his immaculate dark blue uniform, gave him a cynical smile. ‘Sure, sure, that’s my job, but I’m not leaning on anyone for you. I don’t want to find myself falling foul of the Carabinieri.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of asking you to,’ Sebastian said. ‘They’re tough boys and we don’t want any trouble with them.’

The armed officers of the Carabinieri, in their navy blue uniforms with red-striped trousers and peaked caps, were responsible for public law and order, and separate from the Vigili Urban. No doubt there was occasional friction between the two forces when their jurisdictions collided. The last thing Sebastian wanted was to upset either of them.

‘Please, just be around when we need you,’ he asked Captain Saltini, as the waiter removed their cheese plates. ‘Shall we have some brandy with our coffee? Or do you prefer another liqueur?’

‘Brandy for me,
grazie
.’

A few minutes later, holding his brandy up to the light and staring out at the snowlit Grand Canal through the glass, Sebastian said casually, ‘My mother drowned out there, in the canal, you know.’

The other man nodded, eyes sympathetic. ‘I remember.’

Giving him a sharp glance, Sebastian asked, ‘Were you a policeman then?’

Another nod. ‘Only just – it was my first year and I wasn’t sure I liked the job.’ Saltini grinned, showing yellow teeth. ‘I’m still not sure. I’d have liked to be a film director.’ He laughed, to show it was a joke, and Sebastian laughed, too.

‘In some ways the jobs aren’t so very different,’ he said. ‘You need to be observant, quick-witted, a bit ruthless, and pretty tough to do either. Tell me, would the file on my mother’s accident still be in existence, or do they trash old files after a certain time?’

‘These days, no, everything is on computer. But thirty years ago we put everything on paper and files do get lost. But I could look for you, if you like?’ The policeman gazed out of the bar window at the snow-veiled canal. ‘Not my department, of course, but my brother’s a senior officer in the State Police. They deal with serious crime, and I think the accident was handled as a possible murder. I’ll ask if he can get me a photocopy of the file on your mother’s death. After all this time the file may have been destroyed, though.’ His eyes were shrewd. Lowering his voice, he murmured, ‘You know, there was something fishy about that case, but as they never found who was in the other boat they never came up with any answers. In the end it was put down as an accident and the file was closed, but I remember a lot of whispering.’

Sebastian kept his own voice low, and watched Captain Saltini closely. ‘The other day someone here told me that people thought somebody wanted the Count dead, that it
was
murder, not an accident.’

‘
Si
, I heard that, but nobody knows who or why and, after all these years, well…’ The policeman shrugged. ‘No chance of any new answers.’ His dark eyes surveyed Sebastian thoughtfully. ‘If that is what you’re looking for?’

He was smart, thought Sebastian. ‘I’m just curious. I was only six at the time and my father never talked about it, so I really know nothing about what happened, and I’d like to find out exactly how my mother died.’

‘That’s natural,’ Captain Saltini agreed. ‘In your place, so would I.’ He glanced at his watch and pushed back his chair. ‘I’m sorry, I have an appointment at three, I must go. I’ll try to get a copy of that file for you and let you have it tomorrow.’

Sebastian shook hands with him and walked him to the hotel door, said goodbye and went back into the bar. He stood at the window, watching curled flakes of snow flying past like goose feathers.

The weather had been exactly like this on the day his mother had died. As he continued to stare out at the Grand Canal, he could almost hear the crashing, the screams, the splash. He closed his eyes, feeling again the terror and misery he had felt all those years ago as he stood on the landing stage in front of Ca’ d’Angeli, listening to his mother die while the Contessa watched and listened above his head.

Suddenly he realised he had always blamed the Contessa, without ever thinking about it. As a child of six he couldn’t have put it into words but, instinctively, he had feared and disliked La Contessa.

He still did.

By the time Laura flew into Venice the production crew had already been at work for some days. Ca’ d’Angeli was littered with equipment, cables snaking across the floors, the great arc-lights, under their hoods, waiting to be put into position. A carpenter was busy laying a hardboard track on which they could nail the camera dollies, so that the marble and parquet floors would not be scratched, broken or marked in any way. A girl in a tracksuit and big, bulky sweater went backwards and forwards with an automatically rewinding tape measure, checking distances and scribbling notes in her spring-backed pad, while Sidney and Sebastian stood beside one of the gilt-framed mirrors, so absorbed that they didn’t notice Laura’s arrival.

She had been met at the airport by a tall, skinny girl in black ski-pants and a scarlet sweater under a black leather jacket speckled with snow, who took her case from her and hustled her out to a waiting launch. ‘I’m Carmen, assistant director on the film.’ Then she made a face. ‘Sounds good, but there are five of us! There are three units working out here. Sorry to rush you, but I have to shoot a street scene once I’ve dropped you back at the house.’

Laura had felt sick throughout the flight, partly because of turbulence over the Alps, but also from a foreboding that kept her nerves jangling.

The chilly, snow-laden wind outside the airport was another shock to the system. It had been quite mild in London. Keeping her head down, Laura dived into the launch and collapsed on to the seat in the tiny cabin. Carmen joined her and the engine started a second later.

Pulling a walkie-talkie out of her pocket, Carmen said into it, ‘Hallo, Mama San? Carmen here. Carmen. Can you hear me? You’re breaking up a bit. Oh, that’s better. Okay, I found her. We’re just starting back.’

Pocketing the walkie-talkie, she subsided with a sigh. ‘I never seem to stop running. My feet are twice their normal size, I swear it.’

‘But you like the job?’

Carmen glowed. ‘Oh,
yes
! It’s so exciting, especially working for Sebastian Ferrese. He’s wonderful, I’ve been very lucky.’ Then she gave Laura a funny sideways look, and flushed, as if remembering something. Laura could guess what.

‘Isn’t it cold?’ Laura changed the subject. ‘I was here in August and we had a heatwave then.’

‘The weather’s been bitter ever since I got here. I’m beginning to feel like a polar bear.’

‘You don’t bite like one, I hope!’ Huddled inside her tweed jacket Laura pulled up over her head the thick wool scarf she had been wearing around her neck: she didn’t want her hair blown to hell when she got out of the boat. ‘It was almost spring-like in London when I left, but snow was on the way there too. You said you were shooting a scene today? I didn’t think production had started yet. How many other actors are here?’

‘You’re the first. We aren’t expecting anyone else for a few days. We’re using local extras to dress up the scenes, but that means finding dozens of costumes. Wardrobe and Props have been having nightmares.’

‘They always do!’ Laura stared out of the window, which was glazed with snow and white spray. Grey sky, grey sea. The launch bounced over high waves, flinging her about. ‘Lovely weather for filming!’

Carmen laughed. ‘The director of photography’s mad as hell about the weather. We have to have umbrellas over the cameras to keep them dry, and that casts a shadow, but if we get snow inside one we’ll lose that camera while it’s being dried out and maybe even a day’s shooting.’

‘Sidney’s a perfectionist.’

The odd look came again. ‘Of course, you know him.’

‘We worked together before.’ Laura avoided the girl’s curious stare. This was going to be even more difficult than she had expected. It was hard enough to be working with Sebastian again, but it looked as though she was going to meet avid curiosity from everyone else on the production. It would be a nightmare. Even without the added fear of knowing that, somewhere out there, somebody dangerous was watching her and planning … what?

She wished she knew. Acid flooded into her throat, the bile of terror and dread.

‘Tell me what you did before you got this job,’ she asked Carmen, to give herself something less worrying to think about.

It always worked: people loved nothing better than to talk about themselves, and Carmen was no exception. During the rough boat-ride she took Laura through her training at film school, the dozens of letters she had written in search of work, her amazing luck in finally getting a job with Sebastian as a runner on a film he made eighteen months ago.

‘They paid me peanuts and I was on my feet eighteen hours a day most days, but I learnt a lot and worked like a dog, which is why Sebastian gave me this chance as an assistant director. I’m the lowest of the low. All the others are more experienced than me, but it’s pure luck to get a chance to show what I can do.’

Laura smiled. ‘He took a big chance on me in my first film – I knew absolutely nothing about acting or making films. Everything I know I learnt from him.’

Carmen went pink, and averted her head. That look again.

Laura had had a vivid picture of the palazzo in her mind ever since she had first seen it, in August, but as she stepped on to the landing-stage and looked up she found that the reality was even more powerful than she remembered it, although the great archangels were now robed in folds of snow, the little cherubs half obliterated by it.

‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ But Carmen was in a hurry to get inside, out of the blizzard, and urged her towards the entrance.

Face stinging with cold, lashes wet with snow, Laura stumbled inside the empty ground floor, and climbed the great marble stairs into the upper hall – to be met by a scene of utter chaos, which was comfortingly familiar.

Then she saw Sebastian in the middle of it all, talking to Sidney. He was too preoccupied to notice her, but Valerie Hyde, standing close to him, making notes on everything he said, lifted her head and glanced sharply towards Laura, nose beaky, eyes fierce, as if warned of her presence by the instinct with which an owl, hunting in the dark, picks up the invisible fieldmouse hiding in deep grass.

She really hates me, thought Laura. And loves him. Does he know? Jealousy stung in her throat like heartburn, a physical pain, as if she was going to be sick.

Carmen touched her arm. ‘You know you’re staying here? Will you mind? It isn’t exactly the Hilton, although it’s so grand. No central heating, but they’ve had an electric heater in your room for hours. The bathroom’s a frozen waste, I’m afraid. Oh, a magnificent tub with gold feet and bronze fittings – it should be in a museum – but without heating it must be like Siberia. You’ll have to warm the room before you can take your clothes off, I expect. We’re picking up the tab on their electricity while we’re here, so keep your heater on as long as you like. Sebastian told me to make sure you were comfortable. I’ll take you up to see your room now. It’s very beautiful – it could be a set for one of those Hollywood epics about the Borgias or whatever.’ She laughed, and Laura pretended to laugh, too.

‘It will be an experience, anyway.’

Carmen nodded. ‘Come on, then. If we walk round the wall we won’t get in their way.’

Skirting the busy film crew, Laura followed her until the sounds faded and they were in the part of the house kept exclusively for the family.

Stopping at a door at the far end of the great hall, Carmen tapped and waited. ‘These rooms are out of bounds to everyone who isn’t on a special list.’

‘Who is on it?’

‘Sebastian, you, Valerie, Sidney, the heads of the production team. It’s essential that Sebastian has a room he can use during the day as well as at night, so that he can talk to us quietly in private. But the house is crammed with antiques and the insurance is astronomical. If anything was damaged or stolen we’d be out of a job, I should think.’