Lucifer's Shadow Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Praise

  1 - San Michele

  2 - Ascension Day

  3 - A name from the past

  4 - Spritz! Spritz! Spritz!

  5 - A boy’s new home

  6 - An appointment with the Englishman

  7 - Beyond the law

  8 - A mission

  9 - The route to the ghetto

  10 - An awkward interview

  11 - From the past

  12 - The mysterious Levis

  13 - At large in the city

  14 - The taste of mud

  15 - Dust and parchment

  16 - Scacchi’s gold

  17 - The Red Priest

  18 - The Grand Canal

  19 - An evening on the lagoon

  20 - On the Jews

  21 - The third way

  22 - Rebecca receives a gift

  23 - A balance outstanding

  24 - Rousseau’s amour

  25 - Rizzo’s prize

  26 - A fracas in the church

  27 - An acquisition

  28 - The saddest loss

  29 - A forced sale

  30 - Alone on the Arsenale

  31 - An uneasy state of grace

  32 - In the eaves of the ark

  33 - The eel contest

  34 - Questions of authorship

  35 - Encounters

  36 - The dancing lesson

  37 - A concert to remember

  38 - A brief investigation

  39 - Unmasked

  40 - The captain makes progress

  41 - The prison

  42 - A fateful argument

  43 - Music in the dark

  44 - An interview with the Englishman

  45 - Shapes in the mirror

  46 - The Roman magistrate

  47 - Hard questions

  48 - The demon who escaped my grasp

  49 - Sant’ Erasmo

  50 - A hurried return

  51 - An eventful interview

  52 - Striking a bargain

  53 - A refusal and a surprise

  54 - Public relations

  55 - Fugitive from all

  56 - An unexpected bargain

  57 - Marchese’s entrance

  58 - An auspicious première

  59 - Dissonant notes

  60 - Waiting for the call

  61 - View from a window

  62 - The treasure trove

  63 - Report from the watch

  64 - The edge of the lagoon

  65 - Chance encounter

  About the Author

  ALSO BY DAVID HEWSON

  Copyright Page

  For Helen, Catherine, and Thomas, whose music led me here

  Passionate acclaim for David Hewson’s novels

  Lucifer’s Shadow

  “Richly enjoyable . . . Sophisticated and beguiling entertainment.” —Sunday Times (UK)

  “Venice is painted beautifully, both then and now, and this would be a splendid book to read after you have taken the evening air in the Piazza San Marco, or when gliding down the Grand Canal.” —London Times

  “An unusual but beautifully-written interwoven twin story of scams, deception and intrigue in the world of music, of all places, set 250 years apart in Venice.” —Irish News

  “Entertaining [and] fun.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “This intelligent and highly detailed thriller rivals Pérez-Reverte’s The Flanders Panel in historical intricacy, complexity of motive, and multileveled storytelling. Masterfully plotted . . . Prepare for a devilish ride in which beauty masks wickedness, and righteousness is relative.” — Booklist (starred review)

  “Hewson spins a compelling tale while drawing a captivating portrait of Venice that will send readers searching for their passports.” — Mystery Lovers Bookstore News

  A Season for the Dead

  “A Season for the Dead, like The Da Vinci Code, is a thriller that takes an unflattering look at the Catholic Church, but is better written and more sophisticated than Dan Brown’s phenomenal bestseller. . . . The books differ, too, in that Hewson, far more than Brown or most thriller writers, has a serious concern for character. . . . Intelligent entertainment.” —Washington Post

  “Hewson’s suspenseful, fascinating mystery has an appealing detective and many complex characters on both sides of the law. Twisting and turning through Italian history and art, Nic Costa’s first case gives the serial murder mystery a new look.” —Dallas Morning News

  “Hewson’s absorbing series debut features a memorable cast of fully human characters, imagines the distorted mind of a serial killer and takes a chilling glimpse into the Vatican’s less-than-godly dealings with the secular world.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “A complicated and engrossing mystery so compelling that it begs for a one-night reading.” —Chattanooga Times Free Press

  “Boasts finely researched Vatican locations, delves into political maneuvering in the church hierarchy and has a connection to religious art . . . Fast-moving, smart and filled with gruesome killings and well-drawn characters.” —Flint Journal

  “Hewson has very effectively developed his own version of the serial killer. . . . The action is well paced, the plot nicely twisted, the characters often chameleon-like, and the setting is definitely fascinating for many readers. . . . A well written mystery with some real surprises.” — Deadly Pleasures

  “A slam-bang beginning with a shoot-out in the Vatican Library, a wonderful tour of Rome, a nifty Italian policeman with a father famous for his Communist activism, corruption or at least conspiracy in the Church, and a series of gruesome crimes seemingly linked to saints and perhaps to Caravaggio get this one rolling. . . . A grand series start for Italian cop Nic Costa.” —Booknews from The Poisoned Pen

  “The first in a promising Italian crime series set in Rome . . . Hewson’s way with the Roman milieu is as cutting-edge as his adroit narrative.” — Publishing News (UK)

  “An oddball detective mistrusted by his bosses, a beautiful woman, the elegant backdrop of Rome and sinister goings-on in the Vatican all add up to a new spin on the serial killer tale. . . . All of this works not simply because of the frenetic plot but because Hewson has two beguiling, fascinating characters to hold our interest. . . . [He] has a lightness of touch, an eye for the macabre and an understanding that you can’t beat the old fatal attraction between an all-too-human cop and a beautiful woman.” — Sunday Mercury (UK)

  “History and travel fans will embrace this book, but it doesn’t let lovers of suspense and political intrigue down either. . . . [Hewson’s] descriptions of Rome in August are so real you can see St. Peter’s Square shimmering in the heat, and the narrow, winding lanes of the old city bring history to life. It may be too gritty a depiction of the underbelly of humanity to suit some sensitive souls, but I’m very keen to read his next novel.” — Cape Times (South Africa)

  “Dark and complex . . . astonishing . . . immerse yourself in this.” —Crime Time (UK)

  “A delicious and compelling view of the public art of Rome and the private intrigues of the Vatican.” —Library Journal

  “Hewson’s extremely intelligent novels at once viscerally entertain and intellectually challenge. . . . Breathtaking . . . The result is a tale that is a dark delight, a story that one is compelled to read at one sitting while simultaneously wishing it will never end.” — Bookreporter.com

  The Villa of Mysteries

  “A novel to savour—imagine the deceptive relaxed atmosphere of Donna Leon’s Brunetti novels mixed with the darkness of Rankin’s Rebus sequence. Excellent. Four stars.” —Ink Magazine (UK)

  “Hewson’s strong suit is his ability t
o blend ancient and modern Rome, a feat that happens naturally if you’re standing at the edge of the Janiculum, but is difficult otherwise. Hewson’s plot, woven with ancient lore, has just the right amount of information and deduction. . . . This is a terrific novel by a fine emerging British talent.” — Toronto Globe and Mail

  “A beautifully structured and absorbing thriller. The characters . . . polish up as individuals, freshly drawn. The city of Rome, her cops, bureaucrats and criminals, shine hard and clear as sunlight bouncing off the Trevi fountain. But they’re a lot less pretty. And this is tasty stuff.” — Crime Time (UK)

  “A riveting tale of revenge brought to life by sharp characterization and powerful dynamics.” —The Good Book Guide (UK)

  “A great book, a great read, edge of the seat stuff—thoroughly recommended.” —Murder and Mayhem Book Club (UK)

  “A genuine page-turner that you never want to end. Hewson is brilliant at conveying mood and atmosphere and wraps the reader in the tense and terrifying pursuit every step of the way. If you missed the first book, A Season for the Dead, buy them both and savour every twist and turn.” — Newbury News (UK)

  1

  San Michele

  HE REMEMBERED TO WEAR BLACK. THE CHEAP, THIN suit from Standa. Shiny office shoes. A pair of fake Ray-Ban Predators stolen from some Japanese tourist straight off the coach at Piazzale Roma.

  Rizzo lit a cigarette and waited by the gatehouse at San Michele. It was the first Sunday in July. The lagoon was entering summer, the change marked by the chittering of swallows above his head and a torpid heat rising from the water. A spirited breeze rippled the cypresses that dotted the cemetery like exclamation marks. In the shade of an alcove to his right, discreetly hidden, was an ordered stack of empty pine coffins. Rizzo watched something move in a beam of sunlight catching the corner of the nearest casket. A small lizard, dots running down its spine, dashed into the patch of gold, paused, then scurried back into the cracked brickwork.

  Some job, Rizzo thought. Getting paid for checking up on a corpse.

  The cemetery supervisor came out of his office and stared at the cigarette until Rizzo stamped it out. The man was short and fat, sweating in his bright white cotton shirt. He looked about forty, with a thick head of greasy hair and a weedy moustache like a comb snapped in half then stuck above a pair of fleshy lips.

  “You got the papers?”

  Rizzo nodded and tried to offer him half a smile. The supervisor wore a sour look, as if he suspected something was wrong. Rizzo was twenty-five but could pass for thirty dressed like this. Still, he guessed he looked a little young to be claiming possession of some stray cadaver, as if it were luggage left to be retrieved from a locker at the station.

  He pulled out the documents the Englishman had given him that morning in the big, palatial apartment behind the Guggenheim Gallery. Massiter said they’d work. They’d cost enough.

  “You’re a relative?” the supervisor asked, staring at the lines of fine type on the page.

  “Cousin,” Rizzo replied.

  “No other family?”

  “All gone.”

  “Huh.” The man folded up the papers and stuffed them in his pocket. “You could have waited another four weeks, you know. Ten years, they get. To the day. Seen plenty of people coming here late. Not seen many turn up early.”

  “Commitments.”

  The supervisor grimaced. “Sure. The dead got to fit themselves in to your calendar. Not the other way round. Still...”He favoured Rizzo with a professional glance that might have harboured a grain of sympathy in it. “Least you’re here. You’d be amazed how many of those poor things just never get claimed at all. Run up their decade in the ground and then we just take ’em to the public ossuary. No choice, you see. No room.”

  Everyone in Venice knew the score, Rizzo thought. If you wanted to be buried in San Michele, you had to follow the rules. The little island that sat between Murano and the northern shore of the city was full. The big names the tourists came to see could lie secure in their graves. Everyone else was on a temporary permit that lasted precisely ten years. Once the lease on that little plot of ground ran out, it was up to the relatives to take the bones elsewhere or leave the city to do the job for them.

  The Englishman knew all about it too. For reasons Rizzo did not wish to know, he had fixed the disinterment papers early so he was the first to know what was in the box. Maybe there was someone else interested in this rotting corpse, someone who would stick to the ten-year deadline. Maybe not. Rizzo still didn’t see the point. Was this to check there really was a body inside the casket? That had to be it. In truth, he didn’t care. If the guy was willing to pay him two million lire just to flutter a couple of pages of forged paperwork around, he was more than happy. It made a change from lifting wallets in the crowds milling around San Marco.

  “We have ways of doing this,” the man said. “We like to do things nice and proper.”

  Rizzo followed him, past the tidy collection of shiny new coffins, out into the beating sun. They walked through the first section of the cemetery, where the dead had long-term residency, then on to an outlying area used for the relentless cycle of temporary burials. Green tarpaulins marked the areas where the current crop of bodies was being harvested. Each tiny headstone carried a photograph: young and old, frozen in a moment of time, looking at the camera as if they believed they would never die at all. They stopped by Recinto 1, Campo B, amid a fragrant ocean of flowers. The supervisor pointed to the headstone. On it was her name, reversed like all those in the cemetery: Gianni Susanna. Just turned eighteen when she died. The grave was empty, the earth freshly dug.

  Her portrait sat in an oval frame attached to the marble headstone. Rizzo couldn’t take his eyes off it. Susanna Gianni was as beautiful a girl as any he’d ever seen. The photograph must have been taken outside, on a sunny day, perhaps close to the time of her death. She didn’t appear sick. She wore a purple T-shirt. Her long, dark hair fell to her shoulders. Her face and neck were tanned, her mouth set in a natural, open smile. She looked like a kid about to graduate from university, innocent, but with an expression in her gaze that said she’d been places, she knew a few tricks too. Rizzo closed his eyes behind the dark glasses and tried to still his thoughts. It was crazy, he knew, but he could feel himself hardening at the sight of this unknown girl who had died, of what he couldn’t begin to guess, almost a decade before.

  “You want the headstone?” The supervisor’s voice cut through this sudden, half-scary, half-delicious reverie. “If you want it, you can take it away with the casket. I guess you organised a boat, huh?”

  Rizzo didn’t answer the questions. He pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his cheap jacket and held them in front of him, wondering if the man had noticed.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “Send the boatmen round. They know where to come.”

  “Where is she?” Rizzo repeated. The Englishman had been specific about what he wanted.

  “We got a place.” The supervisor said this with a sigh, as if he knew what was coming next.

  “Show me.”

  Without a word, the man turned and headed for a deserted corner in the northern part of the cemetery. One of the big ferries destined for Burano and Torcello passed on the right. Gulls hung in the choppy air. A scattering of figures moved through the headstones, some with bouquets in their hands. Rizzo had been here only once before, with an old girlfriend, going to see her grandmama. The place spooked him. When he went, he wanted to go out in a puff of flame, a sudden fire inside the municipal crematorium on the mainland. Not lie around beneath the dry San Michele earth, waiting to be dug up a decade later.

  They walked to a small, low building with a single tiny window. The supervisor fished a keychain out of his pocket and opened the door. Rizzo took off his sunglasses and followed him inside. Then he waited as the man threw the light switch, waited as his eyes adjusted to the abrupt transition from the piercing sunlight into t
he dark and then back into the thinner glare of the one fluorescent tube in the ceiling.

  The coffin sat on a trestle in the middle of the room. The wood was a lifeless, flat grey colour. It was as if the thing, and what it contained, had been desiccated over the few years it had rested beneath the surface.

  “Like I said,” the man repeated, “send your men here. They’ll know what to do. You don’t want to watch. Believe me.”

  The Englishman had given his instructions.

  “Open it.”

  The supervisor swore softly, folded his arms, and glowered into the dark corner beyond the casket. “No can do,” he murmured. “What kind of game are you playing, kid?”

  Rizzo reached into his pocket and pulled out two hundred euro notes. Massiter had known there might be incidentals along the way.

  “Listen,” he said. “The Giannis are a real close family. Just let me see my sweet little cousin one more time and then I’m on my way, OK?”

  “Shit,” the man said, then pocketed the notes and picked up a crowbar leaning against the wall. “You want me to take the lid off? Or do you feel so close to her you want to do that too?”

  What Rizzo felt like was a cigarette. The tiny room was airless. A smell, musty and pervasive, was coming from the coffin. “Do it,” he said, and nodded at the casket.

  The man grunted, lifted the crowbar, and jammed it beneath the cover of the coffin. He barely looked at what he was doing. He’d popped these things a million times, Rizzo guessed. It was like working in a slaughterhouse or a morgue. After a while you never even thought about what was going on.

  The iron worked its way around the wooden box slowly, lifting it just a few centimetres at a time, exposing the bent, rusty nails that held the thing together. The man completed a circle of the casket, then looked at Rizzo one final time.

  “You sure about this, kid? A lot of you guys are real brave out there in the light of day, but it doesn’t seem such a good idea when you’re in here and it’s time.”

  Rizzo didn’t like being called “kid.” Again he said, “Do it.”

  The supervisor carefully eased the bar beneath the cover, then pushed down, levering it open. The wood shattered into two pieces with a sudden, piercing crack. Rizzo jumped, in spite of himself. Dust and particles filled the air. Behind them came a persistent, noisome smell that was identifiably human in origin. Just one look, he thought. That was all the Englishman asked for.