The Lizard's Bite by David Hewson Read Free Book Online

really departed. The room where Angelo took his last breath was still empty. She swept it every day, making the bed, changing the pressed white sheets once a week, because that was what Michele wanted, how the
capo
said matters should stand. A photograph of their mother, an attractive, worn-looking woman, stood over the head, by a small crucifix. She had died when Raffaella was tiny. For her daughter she always remained somehow unreal, a person who never quite existed, except, perhaps, as a comment on those who survived her, a question mark asking why they were enjoying the gift of life when the woman who gave them it was gone.
    They hadn’t thought about the grave, not in a long time. There’d been so many other dark, pressing issues to worry about. And now the blackness had arrived on the back of the night sirocco and taken two souls with such sudden brutal cruelty.
    There was a sound at the door. Michele bustled in, followed, as always, by Gabriele, and Raffaella found, to her surprise, that she now saw both of them differently. Michele was twelve years older than she. In a way, he’d always been an adult and now he looked his age, more so than she’d ever noticed before. Uriel’s death had made her conscious of the Arcangeli’s shared mortality, something they’d all sought to hide over the years. It was as if the event had drawn away a veil that had stood between them, and in doing so revealed distance, not the closeness she would have hoped for.
    A minor stroke had creased the right side of Michele’s face. Now, with his greying hair slicked back and pomaded, leaving a silver widow’s peak in the middle, he looked like a man entering the final part of the journey of existence, sooner than he should. He was less than medium height, with a slight build, an unimpressive man to look at, she thought, until he spoke, and in that voice, a powerful monotone, switching from Veneto to Italian, French to English or German, lay an authority none could mistake. And now he was old. Old and bewildered and angry.
    He sat down at the polished table, banged a fist on the surface, hard enough to send the china briefly flying, then, without another word, gulped at the coffee she’d provided before tearing at a
cornetto
.
    Gabriele joined him and reached for some coffee and pastries too.
    Raffaella wiped her face with the sleeve of her old cotton shirt, took one last look at the lagoon, then made her way to the seat opposite them, facing both across the bright, gleaming wood. The Arcangeli ate together. They always would.
    She waited. After he’d done with the coffee and the pastries, Michele fixed her with his one good eye.
    “More police will be here soon. They’ll want to talk to everyone again. Same damn questions. Poking their long, sharp noses in where no one wants them.”
    “Michele…” she said softly, hoping her voice did not sound as if she wished to contradict him. “The police have to be involved. What do you expect? Uriel. Poor Bella…”
    “Poor Bella!” he barked back at her, spitting flakes of
cornetto
. “That woman’s been nothing but trouble since she came here. One more mouth to feed and nothing in return.
Poor Bella
! What about us?”
    Gabriele, two years younger than Michele, though the gap seemed larger, stared at his plate and gently tore his food into strips, silent, unwilling to become involved.
    “They’re dead,” Raffaella answered quietly. “Both of them. Whatever happened they deserve some respect.”
    Michele put down his coffee cup and glared at her. She was unable to stop herself from stealing a glance at the portrait above them. Michele was their father sometimes. It was hard to separate the two of them.
    “We all
know
what happened,” he said bluntly. “The sooner it’s put down in black and white on paper, the sooner we return to what matters. The business.”
    “Michele…”
    Just the look on his face silenced her. There’d never been physical contact within the