Deep and Silent Waters

‘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!’