Deep and Silent Waters (6 page)

‘Hi, guys! How’re you all doing? I can see you’re a few drinks ahead. Let me catch up – the drinks are on me.’

‘Don’t waste your money, fella,’ Sidney told him kindly. ‘None of us are talking to the press today.’

‘Don’t be so suspicious,’ Frank Wiltshire reproached him. ‘What story do you think I’m after? And I thought we were buddies.’

‘You’ve never had any buddies, Frank. You know that. You only have victims and targets, and we don’t intend to be either so stop trying to con us.’

Frank glanced up at the TV over the bar. ‘You been watching that?’ His eyes skimmed back to catch any betraying expression on their faces, but nobody answered or even looked at him.

Unsurprised, he went on, ‘I’ve always wondered how much fire there was behind all that smoke. Did Sebastian have an affair with the girl? Did Clea find out about it? How
did
Clea die, exactly? The inquest just skated over the surface, didn’t it? All the real questions never even got asked, let alone answered.’

Sidney slid off the bar stool. ‘Got to go.
Ciao
.’

The others said, in a confused mutter, ‘
Ciao
,’ and wandered away without looking back. Frank Wiltshire ordered another drink and sat alone for a while, contemplating just how to write the story.

Across the water, in the old city, others saw the news item too. In a high-raftered room on the first floor, a man in grubby dungarees and an old rust-coloured T-shirt turned, a small, delicate chisel in one hand, a matching-sized hammer in the other, to glance at the TV screen through the protective goggles he wore.

As the newscast ended, a door creaked open behind him and a woman walked in. She paused to look at the television, which was now showing a series of adverts. Chuckling children lifted spoonfuls of cereal to their mouths while a mother beamed approvingly behind them; then a cartoon mouse began to caper across the screen. The woman walked over, feet scrunching on flakes of chipped stone, and switched off the TV.

‘You saw?’

‘Sebastian on the news? Yes. Well, we knew he’d been nominated, didn’t we? It was on the cards he would come. He was bound to come back here one day. I’m surprised it wasn’t sooner.’ The man turned back to his work, the muscles in his arm rippling visibly as he tapped the hammer against the chisel. ‘Who’s this Laura Erskine? Her face seemed familiar. Actress?’

‘You know as much about her as I do – you heard what that girl on TV said. She was in one of his films. There were rumours that they’d had an affair, not long before his wife killed herself. Maybe that was why. She had to have a reason for throwing herself out of that window – or getting pushed out.’

The man frowned behind his goggles. ‘You can’t really suspect Sebastian of murder?’

‘It’s in his blood, treachery and cruelty.’ The woman walked to the window, which ran from ceiling to floor and could be closed off with ancient, cracking wooden shutters from which the paint had long since peeled, stared out at the blue sky, her back to her son. Watching her, he thought how depressing it was always to see her in black. Didn’t she ever yearn to wear something else? The world was so full of colour and yet she shut it all out, quite deliberately. It was an affront to God, rejecting the wonderful gift he had given the world.

‘Oh, everyone is capable of cruelty. Even you, Mamma.’

She picked up the coldness in his tone, turned and stared at him. ‘Don’t say such things, even as a joke, Nico.’

His blows on the stone in front of him were light, quick, carefully controlled; he knew precisely what he was doing, what effect his chisel would have, where to strike, with what force, and what would happen in consequence. Sculpting was a science as much as an art: you had to understand stone to work with it, and he had chisels and hammers of every size and shape, lined up with great precision on a table behind him. As far as his tools were concerned, he had a passion for order.

A shape was emerging from the block: where once there had been simply a featureless square of stone you could now see a long, thin nose, angled cheekbones, hollowed eye sockets.

He stood back and pushed up his goggles to get a clearer view of what he had just done, blinking at the reflection of blue water rippling along the walls in dancing patterns of light. The sky outside was turning almost purple in the heat.

‘It wasn’t a joke, Mamma,’ he said, absently. ‘All human beings are capable of anything. That doesn’t mean we’ll do what we’re capable of, merely that the potential exists inside us.’

A long silence followed. Then his mother said, ‘That girl, the actress, her hair … did you notice? The same colour as his mother’s.’

‘Titian red. Of course I noticed. Gina had wonderful hair – I’ve never forgotten it, like fire in sunshine. The girl’s bone structure is similar, too.’

Standing back, his head on one side, he ran a hand tenderly over the face he was carving, watching the way the strange light from the water flickered over it, making it look as if the mouth moved in a smile. He had read somewhere that Phidias, the Greek sculptor, had been able to carve stone so that it looked alive, real flesh that you could swear would move under your fingers. God, to be able to get that effect! ‘Strange, what happens inside our heads, isn’t it?’ he thought aloud.

‘What are you talking about now?’ His mother watched him, frowning, her olive skin pale.

‘I think we should invite Sebastian here while he’s in Venice.’

‘No!’ The word came in a high sound, like the shriek of one of the gulls outside in the sky.

He pulled down the goggles over his eyes and lifted his chisel and hammer again. ‘Of course we must. Don’t be silly, Mamma. Will you ring his hotel? While you’re at it, invite that girl, too.’

‘I won’t have either of them under my roof!’

‘
Your
roof, Mamma? My roof, you mean. I want them both here, especially that girl. I want
her
here especially.’

‘Nico, please … don’t …’ Her hands twisted together and she watched him with a fixed, anxious gaze.

‘Don’t keep arguing. Go and ring Sebastian now. You don’t want to make me angry, do you?’

Laura spent ten minutes unpacking, hanging up her clothes, filling drawers, but only after she had sat Jancy, the doll she had had all her life and was never parted from, on the end of the bed. She had been given her for Christmas when she was four and Jancy had sat at the end of her bed ever since. Eighteen inches high, soft-bodied, with a smooth, pink porcelain face, delicately modelled little hands and feet in the same material, curly blonde hair and blue eyes that shut if you laid her down and snapped open again when you sat her up, Jancy had always worn the same knee-length pleated blue dress, with pearl buttons from her waist up to a rounded collar. Now and then Laura took her clothes off and washed them, the dress, the white slip, the lacy panties and the white shoes.

Melanie always teased her about Jancy. ‘Aren’t you too old to be carrying a doll around with you everywhere? I’ve heard of people who still keep their teddy bears – but a doll, for heaven’s sake!’

‘Call her my mascot. She’s company for me when I’m alone in a strange hotel room.’

‘Get a man!’

‘Jancy’s far less trouble.’

‘That depends on the man. You choose the wrong ones.’

‘So do you!’

Melanie couldn’t argue with that and, anyway, Laura didn’t care what she thought. Wherever she went in the world Jancy went, too, a constant reminder of her home, her family, a silent reassurance that she was still the same person. When your life changed as much as Laura’s had over the past few years you needed that. There were so many temptations placed in your way that you had to build your own protective shell against the world’s attack, and Jancy was part of hers.

It would have been easy to take drugs instead – they were always around: a joint of cannabis between sessions, cocaine cut on compact mirrors, at some parties, with tiny coloured straws to sniff it through, a dozen different pills if you were tiring and the photographer wanted to go on for another hour. Easy to let drugs take the strain of that life, but Laura never had.

She had had a lot to prove to the world, to her family, herself – she saw too many other girls going down the drain and it wasn’t going to happen to her. So she clung to Jancy and photographs of her parents, her sister, her home, to keep her sane and above the dark waters of oblivion into which others sank.

At four o’clock that afternoon, she and Melanie took the hotel launch over to Venice, watching the well-known fabulous skyline appear through the heat haze, the lace-like white fretted stone of the Doge’s palace, the spire-topped pink marble Campanile, the crumbling, pastel-painted façades of houses and hotels along the canal. Melanie began a travelogue in Laura’s ear, a guidebook open in her hand.

‘That must be the part of Venice called the Dorsoduro …’

‘The what?’

‘It means backbone, it says here. Venice’s backbone, I suppose. Most of Venice is built up on wooden stilts but the Dorsoduro had a solid subsoil, it says. Anyway, that’s where the Grand Canal begins. And that’s the Dogana di Mare, the old customs house. The figure on top is Fortune standing on top of a golden ball and—’

‘Mel, stop it, will you? If I wanted to read a guidebook I’d buy one.’

‘How are you to know where you are if you don’t have a guidebook? Look, that must be Santa Maria della Salute, that big church. It was built to celebrate the ending of some plague or other, and when ships came home from sea that was the first thing they saw, the dome of the Salute.’

Against the blue sky the dove-grey dome was massive, yet seemed to float, insubstantial as a dream, above a huge baroque church, ornamented with white stone statues, pediments and little cupolas. Beyond it, incongruously, Laura saw a dredger sucking sludge out of the canal. A speedboat whizzed past, making the hotel launch rock dangerously as it nosed into the landing-stage at San Marco.

Melanie swore furiously, brushing water spots off her aubergine linen pants and matching shirt. ‘Look at that! I didn’t bring many clothes with me. This outfit will have to be cleaned before I can wear it again!’

Laura considered the barely visible stain. ‘Never mind, Mel, you can get it done at the hotel, and you know you’re going to spend all your time buying new clothes here.’

Melanie eyed her pale green cotton skirt and T-shirt with disfavour. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to buy some good gear. That is hardly chic, darling.’

Laura’s eyes were invisible behind her dark glasses. ‘I want to be anonymous, not chic. I don’t want anyone recognising me.’

‘Nobody will in that tat, honey.’ A wistful look came into Melanie’s eyes. ‘I’ve had more calls from the press about you this afternoon than I’ve had for months – but all they want to talk about is Sebastian Ferrese and the way his wife died. It kills me to turn down all that PR but, just for once, it really wouldn’t be good exposure. I don’t want you tagged as the girl Ferrese killed his wife for.’

‘I couldn’t agree more. I am not talking to anyone about Sebastian.’

Melanie bit her finger thoughtfully. ‘Although, mind you, that’s a great shout-line – the girl he killed his wife for. A good PR firm could do something with that.’

‘No, Mel! Don’t even think about it.’

‘I was only kidding!’

Laura wasn’t so sure.

A moment later, Laura and Melanie were sucked into the enormous swirling crowds moving around the great square among the flocks of pigeons and stalls selling souvenirs. Laura did not know which way to look – there was too much to see.

‘Napoleon said St Mark’s Square was the drawing room of Europe,’ Melarie read out, her guidebook held in front of her as she walked.

‘Who?’

‘Napoleon.’

‘Who was he?’

Melanie did a double-take, realised she was being teased and snapped, ‘Oh, very funny!’

Laura grinned at her. ‘Well, stop reading me this stuff. I’m going to look at the basilica. Coming?’

‘I’ve seen it, and the Doge’s palace, when I was here on honeymoon.’

‘How many years ago was that?’

‘Never you mind!’

‘And if you were on honeymoon I don’t suppose you took too much notice of anything you saw, knowing you.’

Melanie gave a delighted, sensual smile. ‘It was a great honeymoon – we had terrific sex in between eating three marvellous meals every day. That was pretty much all we did – fuck and eat. It was when we got back home that the rot set in. Turned out that was all he was good for – sex and food. But I’m not here to do any sightseeing – I want to shop until I drop this afternoon. I’ll see you back here in half an hour, okay?’

Laura joined the throng of tourists slowly filtering into the Basilica San Marco and walked slowly around, staring up at the mosaic of Christ in Glory decorating the central dome. The whole enormous building was darkly mysterious, the ceiling and floors gilded, covered in elaborate mosaics.

Staring into the face of Christ in a Byzantine icon, Laura was shocked to find herself thinking of Sebastian – but; then, didn’t most things remind her of him? She found herself thinking of him at the strangest times in the strangest places.

Yet this was different. There was a distinct resemblance to him in Christ’s dark eyes, the bone structure of jaw and cheeks, the angle of the head, the curling dark hair – and it was not simply a physical likeness. The longer she gazed, the more she realised that there was something in the soul behind those dark eyes that spoke to her of Sebastian, a remoteness, a spirituality, another dimension that was god-like, and yet a gentleness and tenderness that was warmly human. It bewildered her that, at one and the same time, she could admit the possibility that Sebastian might have killed his wife and yet still see him in the body and soul of Christ.

To a believer that would be pure blasphemy, she thought. If she spoke her thoughts aloud people would think she was crazy, and they wouldn’t be far wrong. There was, after all, madness in love; every poet said so. She knew so little about Sebastian – she couldn’t even be sure that it had not been him who had sent her that scary little note.