Ghost Music (29 page)

“I saw Amalea. They must have set her adrift, so that the mattress gradually got more and more waterlogged, and she began to sink.”

We stayed where we were for a minute or two, trying to see below the surface of the water, but the sun grew brighter and brighter, and the Grand Canal began to glitter, and we gave it up.

“I saw her,” I insisted. “Just like I saw her last night.”

“I know you did,” said Kate, clinging to my arm.

“So what should I do? Let her float away, out to sea?”

“Maybe she already has.”

“But what if she hasn't?”

“Let's go back to the Cesarettis',” said Kate. “You look like you could do with a couple of hours' rest.”

“I still think I ought to report Jack Friendly to the
polizia
. And Amalea's body to the coast guard, whatever they're called.”

“
Guardia Costiera.
But they'll never find her.”

I didn't know what to say to that, so together we walked back to the Campo San Polo in silence. The sun grew even warmer, and steam rose from the paving stones, until the streets were filled with a shining fog.

When we got back to the Palazzetto Di Nerezza, Salvina was already there, as were Amalea and Raffaella and Massimo. Salvina was in the kitchen, stirring a large saucepan of spaghetti sauce, while Amalea and Raffaella were both doing their homework at an antique desk in the corner of the drawing room, and Massimo was connecting a long model railroad track along the corridor.

“Oh!
Il vostro naso!
” Salvina exclaimed, when I walked into the kitchen. “Your poor nose! What is happened?”

“Little accident,” I told her.

“It looks like
un pomodoro grande
! A big tomato! You must be careful in case I use it for my bolognese!”

Kate and I went to our bedroom, kicked off our shoes and stretched ourselves out on the bed. Kate looked into my eyes from only four or five inches away, so that I could hardly focus on her.

We lay together for a while, and then I said, “I'll head for home first thing tomorrow morning. Are you going to fly with me, for a change?”

She shook her head.

“Can you explain to me exactly why not?”

“You'll see, my darling.”

“Okay,” I said. “I promised not to ask too many questions, and I won't. But I will ask you one thing.”

“Go on.”

“Do you and Victor still sleep together? It's none of my goddamn business, I know that. But I can't help thinking about it.”

Kate gave me a smile that was almost coy, and kissed me. “You don't have to worry, Gideon. Victor won't touch me, not the way that you do, because he can't.”

When I woke up the following morning, I felt as if I had been drugged. My eyes were swollen and there was a sweetish metallic taste in my mouth. I said, “Kate?” and reached across the rumpled sheets but Kate wasn't there. I picked up my wristwatch and tried to focus on the time. It was only six minutes after seven. Surely she couldn't have left already.

I climbed out of bed, went to the window and drew back the drapes. Outside, it had only just started to grow light, and the air was thick with a greenish gray fog. I could just make out the wallowing surface of the water below the balcony, and the lights along the Grand Canal. The bedroom felt chilly, as if the heating had been turned off.

I wrapped myself in my toweling robe, opened the bedroom door and walked along to the kitchen. There was nobody there, so I went across to the fridge to help myself to a swig of orange juice. But the fridge door had been wedged half an inch ajar with a piece of folded cardboard, and it was switched off, and completely empty.

Shit.
This was Stockholm all over again. I opened up all of the kitchen cupboards, one after the other, and every one of them was empty, except for some glass pickling jars. There was no cutlery in the kitchen drawers, and no saucepans or mixing bowls anywhere. The whole apartment was numbingly cold.

I went back to our bedroom, and through to the en-suite bathroom. Kate's toothbrush and toiletry bag had gone, and when
I opened up the bedroom closet, I found that she had taken her clothes, too. On the bed I found her black silk scarf, thin and twisted in the middle where she had gripped it between her teeth to prevent herself from screaming, but that was all that she had left behind.

I went across the corridor to Enrico and Salvina's bedroom, and knocked.

“Enrico? Are you there? It's Gideon.”

There was no answer. I waited for a moment, and then I opened the door. The bedroom was empty. The bed itself had been stripped right down to the mattress.

I went to the girls' rooms, and it was the same story. Nobody there, and the beds both stripped. In Massimo's room, the bed had even been dismantled, and stacked against the wall. There was no sign of Massimo's toy box, or his train set, and the picture of the dancing mummers had been taken down.

I tried calling Kate on my cell, but there was no reply. All I could do was get dressed, and pack my suitcase. I was jonesing for a strong cup of coffee, but I was sure that plenty of cafés would be open by now.

I carried my case along the corridor, softly whistling my Purina music.
“I met a girl called Kate . . . too early or too goddamned late . . .”
When I opened the drawing room door, however, I stopped whistling, dead. I think I said,
“Oh, Christ,”
but I might have just thought it, rather than saying it out loud.

Hanging by their necks from the giant chandelier, six feet above my head, were Enrico and Salvina. They were both wearing their nightclothes—Enrico a pair of maroon silk pajamas, and Salvina a cream silk nightdress. Their eyes were bulging and Salvina's tongue was sticking out.

They were rotating, very slowly, in opposite directions, as if they had been caught by the spiderlike chandelier, and entwined in its web.

* * *

I stood there and watched them for over a minute, overwhelmed with dread, and with a terrible sense of pity, too, and helplessness. What had they done to deserve to die like this, hung from the ceiling of their own apartment, so that they gradually strangled?

I couldn't think what the hell to do now. Call the
polizia
, as I had wanted to do when Jack Friendly had assaulted me? But supposing the
polizia
arrived and Enrico and Salvina weren't here anymore, or if they
were
, and
I
was arrested for stringing them up?

I decided that I couldn't leave them hanging there, and leave Venice without telling anybody what had happened. Apart from the sheer inhumanity of it, my fingerprints were all over their apartment, and the police would inevitably come looking for me.

But I needed some time to get over the shock of finding them, and also to make absolutely sure that this wasn't another one of those weird distortions in time and space. There was no doubt in my mind that Enrico and Salvina had been hanged, but the question was,
when
? Had it really been this morning, or weeks ago? Maybe it hadn't even happened yet. Apart from that, where had Amalea and Raffaella and Massimo disappeared to? And when had Kate packed her clothes and left me?

I left my suitcase in the hallway and went outside, into the Campo San Polo. It was almost deserted, although the cafés and trattorias were beginning to open up, and a few spectral figures were taking their dogs for a walk through the fog. I found a small café called Al Assassini, and went inside. It was warm, and it was bright, and it smelled of fresh coffee and freshly baked panini.

I sat down in the corner next to the window and ordered an espresso.

“Maybe you want something to eat?” asked the waiter. He had only one eye, and his black hair was varnished with gel. “Pastry, maybe? Sandwich?”

“No,
grazie
.”

“You know what day it is today, signore?”

“Thursday, isn't it?”

“This is San Baltazar's Day, the day of lies.”

“Oh, yes?” All I wanted was a large espresso, not a guide to Venetian saints' days—especially the way that I was feeling.

“This is the day that you must confess all of the lies that you have told during the year to your friends and your business partners and your loved ones, or else evil things will happen to you.”

“Well, that's very interesting. No, actually, I'm telling you a lie. It's not at all interesting.”

The waiter lifted one finger, as if to admonish me, and gave me an enigmatic smile.
I know your game, signore. I can see right through you.
Then he went off to get my coffee.

I tried calling Kate again but she still wasn't answering. I was attempting to get through to Margot when I noticed a white cat sitting under one of the tables on the opposite side of the café, staring at me.
A white memory is watching you, so keep your door locked.
I stared back at it, and eventually it stood up and haughtily walked away. Maybe it was Malkin. It certainly
looked
like Malkin, even though there was no sane or logical way to explain how Malkin could be sitting under a table in a café in Venice. But I was beginning to think that Malkin
was
a memory, rather than a real animal. He was a constant reminder of what Kate wanted me to do for her, whatever that was.

I finished my espresso and paid the check. The waiter said, “You want some good advice, signore?”

“Not particularly.”

“Remember that your eyes can tell lies, as well as your tongue.”

“Well, I'll try to. Whose cat is that?”

“Which cat, signore?”

“The cat I just saw, sitting under the table over there.”

The waiter shook his head. “There is no cat here, signore. For health regulations, you understand?”

I looked into the back of the café, but there was no white cat. “Maybe my eyes are telling me lies.”

The waiter smiled again, and turned away. But I saw his face reflected in one of the wall mirrors, and the only way that I can describe his expression was
sly
—like Gollum.

I walked slowly back toward the Palazzetto Di Nerezza. I stood outside the front door, holding the key in my hand, for over a minute. A small boy with a green balloon in his hand stopped a few yards away and stared at me solemnly, as if he wanted to see what I was going to do next.

“Ciao,” I told him.

He gripped his balloon string tighter and said,
“Ciò è il aerostato mio.”

I opened the front door of the
palazzetto
and went inside. It was still very cold in there, and silent. I walked along the corridor toward the drawing room. Through the yellow-tinted windows I could see the sightseers on the Campo San Polo flickering like ghosts.

I reached the drawing room and immediately looked up toward the chandelier. Enrico's and Salvina's bodies had gone.

I made a quick search of the entire apartment. The bedrooms, the bathrooms, the study, the linen closet. I opened up the wooden chests that stood at the foot of each bed. There was nobody here now: no Cesarettis, either dead or alive.

After I had completed my search, I went back to the drawing room. I opened up the lid of the piano, and picked out the theme music from
Doctor Paleface
. I didn't expect Amalea to reappear, in any form, but I guess it was a kind of a requiem for the Cesaretti family, wherever they were, and whatever had happened to them.

I was still playing when I heard the front door being unlocked, and opened. Footsteps came along the corridor toward the drawing room, and a thirtyish woman in a smart black-and-white houndstooth suit appeared, carrying a briefcase.

“Signore Morandi?” she said.
“Era il portello aperto?”

I lifted both of my hands. “I'm sorry. No—I'm not Signore Morandi.”

“I have an appointment with Signore Morandi,” she snapped, looking around the drawing room as if she expected to see him playing hide-and-go-seek behind one of the sofas. “So who are you? What are you doing in here?”

“I'm a guest of the Cesarettis. They invited me here.”

She stalked up to me and frowned at me fiercely. Her lipstick was orange and she smelled of some very strong perfume. “The
Cesarettis
?”

I took my door key out of my pocket and showed it to her. “That's right. Dr. and Mrs. Cesaretti. They even lent me a key.”

“Impossible,” she retorted. “The Cesarettis, they have not lived here now for more than two years. Dr. Cesaretti, he took up a new appointment in Africa—Dar es Salaam, I think, to a children's hospital.”

“Maybe he did. But he's back. Well, he must be back. I had dinner with the Cesarettis here last night.”

The woman looked at me very seriously, and then she said, “Signore—I think you must leave. I do not want to cause any trouble.”

“All right, fine. I was leaving anyhow. But believe me, the Cesarettis were here. We had calves' liver. We had
baccala montecato
. We played music.”

“Please, to leave,” said the woman. “My client will be here soon.”

“Your client?”

“For rental. Please.”

I was beginning to realize that she thought I was mad. In fact, she was terrified of me. She thought I was some loony who had somehow managed to break into the
palazzetto
, and was wandering around playing the piano and pretending that the Cesarettis still lived here, even though they didn't.

But now I knew that they didn't. In fact, everything was rapidly falling into place.

“Who owns these apartments?” I asked her.

“The owners, they are my clients, of course. I cannot discuss this with you. You must go.”

“If you answer me that one question, I'll leave immediately—
prontissimo
. I promise you.”

The woman hesitated, and then she opened her purse and took out a business card. “Here—” she said. “Speak to my manager, Ettore Gavazzi. He will tell you.”