Deep and Silent Waters (32 page)

A silence, then Sebastian said, ‘No, my assistant was there. Valerie Hyde. What are you getting at? Who have you been talking to? You know what it’s like in any organisation – people get jealous, resentful, envious, they jockey for position, they bitch about each other in private. Valerie has her enemies, just as I do. You don’t want to take any gossip too seriously.’

‘I am only interested in hard evidence, Signore, don’t worry.’

‘Have you talked to Valerie?’

‘Not yet. I will do that tomorrow.’

‘Go easy on her. She’s not a happy woman. She’s alone in the world, she has very few friends. Her work is her life.’

‘You like her very much?’ The man watched him closely and Sebastian wondered what his face was betraying to the policeman’s shrewd, clever eyes. He tried to look as blank as Bertelli did, but he hadn’t had the training for it. The policeman gave almost nothing away; his emotions must be in the deep freeze. Sebastian wished his own were.

He said, ‘I’m sorry for her. And I like her – of course, I do, but if you mean more than that, no. There was a time, years ago, when we had a brief fling, but that was all it was. She isn’t my type. Since then,
niente
, zilch, zero. She works for me. That’s all there is to our relationship. And anyway—’ He broke off.

Bertelli considered him, staring into his eyes. ‘What were you going to say?’

Heavily, Sebastian said, ‘Look, I think I may have to fire her and I feel guilty about it, okay?’

‘Why are you going to fire her?’

Sebastian didn’t want to talk about it: he felt disloyal, discussing Valerie behind her back, but he had opened this can of worms by a slip of the tongue, and he knew Bertelli wasn’t going to let him close it again.

‘She – she’s too … obsessive. She’s on my case day and night. I can’t move without tripping over her. I find it uncomfortable.’

Bertelli listened thoughtfully, scratching his chin. Sebastian sensed that the man knew he had left a good deal unspoken.

‘So, she’s in love with you? When you had this … what did you call it? … fling? What does that mean, I wonder? Just one night, or a little more than that? Hmm? Well, whatever, it meant nothing on your side – but she was more serious? You knew it at the time? That she was in love with you? Or did you realise it later?’

Red in the face now, Sebastian said, ‘Maybe. I don’t know for sure how she feels. Look, it was a long time ago, and it wasn’t even really an affair, just a …’

‘Fling!’ nodded Bertelli. ‘I understand. But she went on working for you afterwards. You say it is years since you slept with her. Why do you suddenly feel you must fire her?’

‘I suppose I feel guilty about her. I’ve come to realise I’m all the life she has and I’ve begun to feel claustrophobic around her.’

‘What sort of woman is she? Beautiful?’

‘No. Too thin for that. She’s energetic, quick in everything she does. Black eyes, dark hair, dresses well, but her face and body are bony, angular. Not very feminine.’

Bertelli smiled. ‘And you like feminine women?’

‘Don’t most men?’ Sebastian looked defiantly at him.

Bertelli shrugged. ‘I suppose. Okay, I’ll have a written statement of what you’ve told us typed up. Read through every word, then, if you accept that the statement is an accurate reflection of what you said, would you sign it at the bottom on the last page?’

‘Are you releasing me?’

‘For the moment, but you must not leave Venice. We may need to talk to you again.’

Urgently, Sebastian asked, ‘Laura … Is she – how is she?’

There was a faint sympathy in the policeman’s eyes now. ‘You are in love with her, aren’t you?’

‘Did I ever deny it? I’ve loved her from the minute I met her.’

‘You were still married then, though?’

‘Yes.’ Sebastian’s face was weary. ‘Oh, yes, to the most beautiful woman in the world, Captain Bertelli. Clea was the biggest star in films, and breathtakingly lovely, even at the end.’

‘Yet you fell in love with Miss Erskine on sight?’

They stared at each other. After a silence, Sebastian said, ‘Laura was shiningly innocent, Captain, a very young girl with eyes as pure as the sea. If you had known my wife you would understand why I found Laura irresistible. And still do. She still has that sweetness and purity, even now. I love her more than life itself. Literally. If she died, I’d want to die too.’

‘She’s in no danger, Signore. She was stabbed several times in the upper arm and shoulder – her attacker was undoubtedly aiming for her heart, but Miss Erskine put up her arm to fend off the knife. That saved her life. Luckily, someone came round the corner before the murderer could stab her again, and the man – if it was a man – ran off. Miss Erskine has had an operation and is heavily sedated, but we were able to talk to her while she was conscious.’

‘Can I visit her?’

‘Not tonight, Signore. Perhaps tomorrow. I’ll send you back to Ca’ d’Angeli in one of our boats now.’

Sebastian looked at the plastic bag and what it held. ‘Are you sure that’s what he wore?’

‘Yes. Forensic has found Miss Erskine’s blood on it.’

‘The bastard …’

‘We’ve taken a lot of other samples from it. We have his DNA. We’ll find him. As you know, we’ve taken your DNA, and we’ll be testing it, and tomorrow we’ll ask every member of the film crew to give us a DNA sample.’

‘You really think it was one of us?’

‘Don’t you?’ Bertelli smiled at Sebastian.

‘It seems pretty likely,’ Sebastian conceded unwillingly, thinking of his friends, colleagues he had worked with for years. Sidney? It couldn’t be. No, not Sidney.

‘Just the men, at first.’

‘At first? You surely don’t think it could be a woman?’

‘It was someone short. And a knife is as much a woman’s weapon as a man’s. And … there are other reasons.’

‘What other reasons?’ Sebastian remembered the questions about Valerie. Surely to God they didn’t suspect her? No. No, he couldn’t believe it.

‘I can’t say. But, please, make sure nobody from the film company leaves Venice until I say they can go.’

The film crew went to bed late that night. They sat about in a gloomy silence all evening in a little bar along the Rio San Barnaba, one of the many canals bisecting the Dorsoduro, the peaceful residential area directly opposite the San Marco district, where the Accademia, Venice’s greatest art gallery, was to be found.

Sidney was staying in a pretty little
pensione
in Campo San Bamaba Square and had become infatuated with this part of Venice. He loved to walk around the tiny narrow streets, called
calle
, or along the canals, absorbing everything he saw. He was fascinated by the houses behind high walls, windows shuttered against prying eyes, an air of mystery hanging around them with the white mists of the lagoon. He was crazy about the great churches, the open, windy squares, the elegant little bridges with their shimmering reflections on the water below their perfect bow shape.

‘What’s it mean?’ asked Carmen, the junior assistant director, her young face pale, her hair loose and tousled, staring a little unsteadily out of the window at dimly lit buildings on the other side of the narrow canal.

‘What’s what mean?’ Sidney asked, looking in the same direction but seeing nothing to explain her question.

‘Dorsowhat’s-it,’ she muttered.

‘Dorsoduro. It means “hard backbone”.’ He leant over, refilled his glass from one of the copper jugs of wine standing along the table at which, much earlier, they had eaten dinner, a simple meal of bean soup followed by
risi e bisi
– the traditional Venetian dish of rice and peas sprinkled with grated Parmesan. They had all skipped dessert and gone on to coffee, but none of them wanted to leave yet.

‘Did you know Venice is made up of over a hundred tiny little islands?’ Sidney asked.

Nobody seemed interested, but he didn’t let that put him off. ‘All built over now, of course, but once, long ago they were islands, made up from soil that washed down from the Dolomites. That’s what Venice started from.’

‘Why did they want to live out here in the middle of the sea?’

‘Protection, I guess. Living on an island made it harder for enemies to get at them and life was dangerous a thousand years ago, especially in the Med, with pirates and bandits roaming around. Fear makes people do the damnedest things. That’s why they built Venice here. It couldn’t have been easy. First, they had to drive wood piles into the lagoon bed, rows and rows of them, all very close together. On top of that, they laid a single row of bricks, then a band of Istrian stone, a sort of marble, and then they made their homes on this platform.’ He paused to drink some of his luscious, glowing red wine.

‘Sidney, Sidney, you’ve been reading books again,’ the Camera Operator mocked him plaintively. ‘How many times d’you have to be told? You’ll go blind. It’s a nasty habit, give it up.’

‘Look, the girl asked me for information, I gave it to her. We don’t all want to talk about football, you know.’

‘You don’t know zilch about football. That’s why you don’t want to talk about it!’

‘Moron!’

‘D’you want a punch in the mouth?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, shut up, all of you!’ Valerie snarled, and everyone in the cramped, smoky little bar turned to look at her.

‘It’s okay, Val, we’re just having fun. We’re all friends, aren’t we, Joe? You look shattered, though. Why don’t you go back to your place and get to bed?’

Sidney’s voice was gentle but she glared at him, her intense, black eyes all pupil, in her white face. The red scar of her mouth made her look like a crazy clown.

‘Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?’

The others looked down into their glasses.

Sidney said, ‘The strain’s getting to you, you won’t be fit for work tomorrow.’

‘Are you so stupid you don’t know this picture is dead in the water now? There won’t be any work to do tomorrow.’

They avoided each others’ eyes. Sidney said flatly, ‘Of course we know – why do you think we’re drinking ourselves stupid? There’s nothing we can do but wait and see what happens.’

‘You’re ostriches, the lot of you!’

‘Go on back to your room, Val, and get some sleep. If the police let Sebastian go, he’ll want to get on with the schedule. We still have to shoot some street scenes.’

‘Don’t you realise? With her out of it, there’s no picture. He won’t recast, he’ll just junk the whole project.’

‘She may recover sooner than you think—’ Carmen began, but Valerie almost screamed at her, ‘She won’t recover. She can’t. She’ll die. She’s probably dead already, she has to be. There was so much blood—’

They all looked at each other, their eyes startled, wide. Valerie got to her feet and blundered out into the dark of the Venetian night.

Carmen whispered, ‘You don’t think …? She’s so fixated on Sebastian. She wouldn’t – It couldn’t be her, could it?’

Sidney looked round the circle of faces. ‘Where was she when Laura got attacked? You were all in the area, around St Mark’s Square, and those shopping streets beyond it. Did any of you see her?’

‘No,’ Carmen said. The others shook their heads one by one.

Sidney got to his feet. ‘She doesn’t strike me as the murderous type. Don’t let your imaginations run riot. Leave the detection to the cops. And now I’m off while I can still just about make it to my
pensione
. I’ll pay the bill – it can go on expenses. In the circumstances, I think it will get through. You lot can stay here and drink – but from now on it’s on you. Night, everyone.’

Sidney paid with his credit card, and tucked it and the receipt carefully into his sheepskin-lined wax jacket, which he zipped up to his throat before walking out of the bar into the chilly night air.

The snow had long stopped falling. The sky was alive with stars, as bright as if they were almost within reach. They and the Victorian-style street-lamps were reflected in the dark water of the canal. The narrow streets were empty, silent, every window shuttered.

‘I’ll walk along with you, Sidney,’ said Carmen, who was also staying at his
pensione
. ‘I think I may be a bit tipsy.’

‘Me, too,’ Sidney said, linking his arm with hers in a friendly way. ‘I hate the middle of the night, don’t you? Three in the morning especially. Depresses me, especially when I’m alone.’

‘Me, too,’ she said, swaying and bumping her shoulder against his.

Sidney looked down at her sleepy young face, wishing he was her age again. ‘You’re gorgeous, Carmen – you know that? Why don’t we share a bed tonight? Keep each other warm and safe.’

‘Fuck off,’ she said, without resentment, but smiled, flattered by the pass. She might not fancy Sidney, but he was almost god-like in her eyes. She had known his name, seen his films while she was still at school, and she couldn’t believe she was here, walking arm in arm with him, talking so easily to him.

‘Okay, fair enough,’ Sidney agreed amiably. A look of relief passed over Carmen’s face at his cheerful acceptance of the brush-off. The last thing she wanted to do was offend him.

He said, ‘Darling, remember, I’m old enough to be your father, but I know a thing or two about women, and how to please them, which is more than most guys your age can say. If you change your mind, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you?’

She put on an American drawl. ‘You just put your lips together and blow.’ And demonstrated but only came up with a faint whisper of sound.

They laughed at each other.

‘Did you think I wouldn’t get that, Sid? I love Bogart and Bacall films.’

‘Who doesn’t? I’ve noticed you’re a movie buff, Carmen. See everything you can, good, bad or indifferent – the more you see the more you’ll learn.’

‘I do, I always have. At home I have a wall full of videos.’ They wandered on and paused outside the
pensione
. ‘Sid …’ she began, and stopped.

‘Uh-huh?’ he encouraged, smiling down at her.

‘Valerie?’

His face changed, froze.

‘Just now,’ she went on. ‘Didn’t you think – well, wasn’t she weird? All that about the blood, I mean. You don’t think? Well, anyone can see she hates Laura. The way she looks at her. Sends a shiver down my spine. And she hangs around Sebastian day and night, tries to keep everyone else away from him. Dead jealous, if you ask me. I know you said she didn’t seem the murderous type, but she is definitely a bit psycho.’