Stone Virgin (40 page)

‘Are you having another?’ Raikes said. ‘I’m going to.’

‘Yes. Double gin please. Think of it cosmically. Think of the dangers to stone in the atmosphere, even without the interference of man. Think of the dissolved gases and ions concentrated in the dust, impalpable, invisible to the naked eye, the influence of oceans and desert flats on the sulphate and chlorate content, the continuous mixing of the air masses by winds and vertical updraughts …’

It was clear by now that Slingsby was talking himself into a state of nervous agitation. Threads of saliva stretched at the corners of his mouth. His little blue eyes stared affrightedly. ‘I can hardly stand to think about it,’ he said.

Raikes stirred and spoke with an effort. ‘I thought it was only in literature that the Americans had an Apocalyptic School,’ he said, attempting a smile. ‘There is something I was wondering about, I’m afraid it is changing the subject … Do you by any chance know how many casts a sculptor is allowed to make of a particular work?’

Slingsby blinked and moved his bulky shoulders, as if emerging from some dream. ‘Casts?’ he said. ‘We are talking about metal sculptures then?’

‘Yes.’

‘As many as he wants, I guess. So long as he doesn’t call them originals. He wouldn’t want to make copies, depreciates the currency. Normally speaking he would scrap the moulds after the first casting.’

‘Yes, quite. No, I meant originals.’

‘I’m not sure,’ Slingsby said. ‘I think I read somewhere that the US Bureau of Customs currently recognizes the first four as originals, no, maybe it is six. I don’t know about the British.’

‘Probably much the same with us.’ Raikes finished his drink and stood up. ‘I’ll have to rush off, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Various things to see to – rather pressing.’

He was in such haste to get away before Slingsby offered to accompany him that he almost forgot the carrier bag.

8

HE WALKED BACK
towards the Miracoli canal, moving quickly at first, slowing down when he was out of sight of Slingsby. It was almost six o’clock. He had eaten little that day but he was not hungry. He was feeling the effects of the two brandies taken on an empty stomach and he stopped on the way home to drink some coffee. Back at his apartment he washed and tried to rest for a while; but he could not rid his mind of questions, dared not try; he held consciously now to his perplexity, tried to creep farther in, as if it were a cave of refuge, as if he could hide in this twilight from the appalling certainties massing at the mouth.

He was on the point of leaving again when Signora Sapori came up to say that there was a phone call for him,
un signor Lattimer
.

Standing in the narrow hall, Raikes held the receiver in silence for some moments while he controlled his breathing. ‘Hullo,’ he said at last. ‘Raikes here.’

‘Simon? I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon.’ Lattimer’s voice was impatient, slightly hectoring as always. ‘This is terrible news,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just heard about it. I’ve been away on business these last few days. You found him, didn’t you? It must have been –’

‘When did you go?’ Raikes said.

‘What?’

‘When did you leave Venice?’

There was a short silence. The line crackled faintly. Raikes could sense the creature at the other end, processing this question, computing the nature of the seeming irrelevance.

‘That same evening poor Paul was drowned,’ Lattimer said at last. ‘Luigi drove me to the airport. Flights were delayed, though, because of the fog. Simon, I haven’t got much time, there’s a lot to do, as you can imagine. He left no will, you know. Chiara has asked me to see to things.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I believe she asked you to pick up Paul’s things from the police.’

‘Yes.’

‘Quite unnecessary. I’m sorry you had to go through that.’

‘I didn’t mind so much.’ Lattimer could not have known about this, not until his return. Chiara must have told him. An unpleasant surprise. What had
he
told
her
? Did she know, he wondered suddenly, about that long, windowless shed in Lattimer’s garden?

‘Everything in order, was it?’ Lattimer’s voice was normal, casually brisk.

‘Everything the police had in their possession was handed over to me,’ Raikes said deliberately. In the pause that followed, he sensed once again that his words were being processed, felt over for what they would yield, by a mind that was isolated and tenacious and beyond responsibility somehow. He listened for perhaps six seconds to the low crackling on the line, pictured the staring composure of the other’s face. The certainty that Lattimer had killed Litsov came over him like a wave. He felt a chill of fear, not of the man himself but of his knowledge, his alacrity to grasp the evil. ‘She doesn’t want them,’ he said, striving to keep his voice steady.

‘Well, that’s the point, that’s partly why I’m ringing, the fact is that she does want them after all … She’s in a state of shock still, you know.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘She was rather expecting you this evening, I gather.’

‘Yes … I may not be able to make it now.’

‘In that case, I wonder if I could send Luigi round to pick up the things?’

‘Of course,’ Raikes said. ‘I’ll leave them with the landlady. I probably won’t be at home myself.’

The arrangement once made, Lattimer rang off fairly abruptly. Replacing the phone, Raikes became aware that he was sweating. What code or bond had kept him reticent, had kept them talking like that, within these conventional limits?

It was quite impossible to remain at home any longer. The brown carrier bag he left in the care of Signora Sapori, its contents complete save only for the cufflink – this he took with him. He had no particular idea of a destination. Once in the street he turned on impulse towards the northern part of the city, crossing the Misericordia and Sensa canals, coming out finally on the wide rectilinear expanse of the Sacca, that great square bite in the northern shore of Venice. Here, below the bridge, he found a quiet place to sit, facing out towards the Lagoon, with the long façade of the Pallazzo Contarini opposite and the white walls of San Michele just across the water.

Behind him, out of sight, the sun was setting. The wide expanse of the Lagoon opened out beyond the mouth of the Sacca, pale and luminous, with a straight track of red across it. From moment to moment, as he watched, this faded and spread, as if bleeding into the water. I could still go, he thought. A few minutes’ walk would take me on to the Fondamenta Nuova, right alongside the Burano boat stage. I could phone from Burano, she would come for me …

She had phoned from Burano herself, that night. She had phoned to say she was not coming back. So Litsov had no reason to hang about in his suit near the water. Litsov, whom I hardly knew, whom I did not want to know or think about because I was falling in love with his wife; Litsov the pompous Platonist, with his shyness, his irritable vanity, blankly noble brows, not a likeable man. With that talent for making shapes of metal. Turned into a mere drowned shape himself. Because you see, Raikes told himself carefully, that is what was done to Litsov. He had not been dressed up for drowning at all,
he had been drowned because he was dressed up
, because he was intending to go to the mainland, because he would no longer stay in the prison of the island, laying the golden eggs. That is why she did not go back that night, not because of the fog, not because it was difficult or dangerous, but because she did not want to return with the boat. She made sure he would not get off the island. And then of course, from Burano, she had phoned Lattimer …

Raikes stirred and sighed. It was the only possible explanation. Otherwise how could Lattimer have known what Litsov intended to do, what coincidence could have brought him out through the fog and the darkness of that evening? They must have been cheating Litsov for a long time, perhaps since they first installed him on the island. Something to do with the casting, making extra casts from his moulds probably, selling them as originals. Easy to do, on an international market. And at the prices Litsov was beginning to command … Lattimer would have all the necessary connections. It was a perfect set-up.
Litsov is something of a recluse, you know
. Then they had gone too far, he had become suspicious. But why had they held back his work like that, at the end? It had been only a matter of time, surely, before he found out. Had they taken this into account,
foreseen
it? And the phenobarbitone – presumably there had been no traces in his system. The fact that Litsov had been prescribed the same drug, by the same doctor, had made a deep impression on Raikes. Had Litsov refused, like himself, to cloud his visions? But no, Vittorini would have made a statement to the police. Litsov must have been in the habit of taking the drug, otherwise they would not have been so ready to see his death as misadventure. So it must have been kept from him somehow, or reduced, not just on that day, but
before
. Was that why they were holding his work back? Prices would rise after his death, for a while at least. In that case, sooner or later, one night or another, dressed up or not …

His mind flinched away from this. Who would answer such questions now? Who would even ask them? Not himself, certainly – he had decided that already. It was still possible to believe that she had not wanted or intended the death. In a sense it didn’t matter. It was enough for him that she had
known
, from the moment of making the phone call, all through the night they had spent together. She had been feverish, restless, unable to sleep. He had supposed, he had allowed himself to believe, this was because of him … I must go to her, he thought, talk to her, a few words would be enough. This is in
me
, I am fabricating evil. My mind the host to it. No words even, a smile, a look from her eyes.

But as he watched the flushed water fade slowly, saw the zones of the surface marked off by varying depths, Raikes knew he would not go. In moments not consciously registered but quite irrevocable, between the red and grey of this evening, some complex blend of logic, self-abnegation, an instinct of retreat, had corrupted his love for ever. This corruption was the truth now, beyond question. She had used him for her pleasure as she had used him for her safety. It was the thought of this pleasure now that he found least endurable. Had she wanted distraction, or had what she knew excited her further? She had been in heat, and her mind all the time cool, self-regarding, planning her safety. The sense of this mystery visited him like nausea, and for some moments he felt he might be physically sick. This, or something like it, must be the truth, his mind insisted. Everything he knew, everything he could remember, confirmed it. While they sat at dinner, while she gave him those precise instructions, Lattimer had been crossing the shrouded Lagoon towards the island, making his way across this very water, clear now and luminous to the horizon. Perhaps at the moment she cried out and shuddered in his arms, Litsov, who carried her picture in his wallet, had been choking his last.

Out in the Lagoon groups of black stakes marked the entrance to the deep-water channel. The surface was darker around them, as if they were somehow staining the water. Dark objects darken in this light, pale ones increase their pallor, Raikes told himself, attempting by just observation to lessen the horror of his thoughts. If we had known each other longer, long enough for me to understand, or make an attempt at understanding, or to have acquired some intimate knowledge of wrongs done to her or harm suffered. But there had not been long enough for more than this pain of betrayal. Once more he remembered that gesture of hers, which he had thought so out of character, that stroking of the hand down the arm, at once self-protective and self-loving. It was money she had wanted. With money you can ensure your safety with your pleasure. What had she said that day?
I want to be eternal
…

He took the cufflink from his pocket and looked at it closely: a disc of black stone, basalt probably, about the size of a man’s thumbnail, with a thin rim of silver; the part that went through the buttonhole was a thin oval, also of silver. Lattimer it was who had spoken about the importance of things, of material objects. Who would have thought that such a very small thing as this, an insignificant artefact of stone and silver, of no particular value or beauty, could have revealed so much? Because of course, Raikes told himself in that same careful way, this object, which is not proof of anything at all, carries certainty with it. It was as if everything, the whole story, had been there, just behind, waiting to form.

There were random elements, of course. Chiara had acted on impulse, seized the occasion of his visit, the pretext of the fog; she had risked something – perhaps not much – to have someone to sleep with that night; she had taken a chance on his being willing to lie about it, implicate himself. Lattimer too, though the impulse was of a different kind: he could have waited, he could have had the pick of Litsov’s possessions; but he had needed to despoil the body freshly killed, needed a trophy to add to the others in that windowless shed in the garden. And he himself, was he not the worst, who had improvised the story, imprisoned himself in it, with no more to go on than this object in the palm of his hand, scattered memories, a process of deduction flawed by his own self-contempt? How could he have thought she might love him?
Non si sa mai
. Strange creatures …
who knows what ideas they will get into their heads?

This echo frightened Raikes and he got up to go. Darkness was not far off now. To the west the first lights of Mestre had come on. The water was pale gold across the whole surface of the Lagoon, covered with very faint corrugations. Suddenly the harmony of this vast rippled platter was disturbed by the passage of a
motoscafo
out towards San Michele. By the time the wake had died away the gold had gone, sea and sky were a uniform pale violet. Raikes stood for some moments longer, looking northwards across the water. Out there in the gathering darkness was the speck of land that contained her. A luminous point he had thought it once. His throat tightened. Another kind of man was needed. Not me, he thought. Nor the police either. I have been here before, this is not the first time, I have taken this path before.