Another Death in Venice by Reginald Hill

Author:Reginald Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2019-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

Sarah appeared as he was finishing his coffee and contented herself with a peach. She ate a lot of peaches in Italy, perhaps because she could be certain they did not come from South Africa or Spain. Thank God Portugal was for the moment all right.

‘Shall we explore?’ he asked.

‘No. It’s too hot for me. I just want to rest for an hour. You go on, though.’

He shrugged, not understanding how anyone could rest with all this outside the door.

‘All right,’ he said.

‘Don’t overdo it,’ she called after him. He paused and looked back at her. Was she laughing to herself?

Outside he followed the drift of tourists till he reached St Mark’s Square. For a long time he just stood and let the pictures scald his mind. The square was like a giraffe – absurd, impossible, and beautiful beyond computation, as if Michaelangelo, Christopher Wren, Walt Disney and God had sat in committee to build it.

He turned slowly in a full circle, then once more, and once more. The square was crowded, but the other people were to him mere faceless extras, paid to wander aimlessly round and round.

Then he stopped with his back to St Mark’s. To his right, strolling along in the cool shadow of the arcade of the Procuratie Vecchie, he glimpsed a figure in a bright red shirt. The square was full of garish colours; this was a place for them; there was no sense here of historical incongruity. But this single red shirt glimpsed distantly and intermittently as its wearer moved along behind the arcade’s columns caught and held his eye. He was instantly and completely convinced it was the boy from Rimini. The irrationality of this was so great that he felt it simultaneously, but with no diminution of conviction. And when he set out in pursuit, it was not to test a theory but to confront a foe. Forcing a way through the crowds was difficult. Gaps opened, then closed as he pressed towards them. Family groups in solid phalanx made him divert. A young Italian taking photographs shouted at him as he bumped into his tripod, and two Japanese girls with handfuls of bird-food set a screen of whirring pigeon wings between him and his prey. The extras were being directed by Hitchcock, he told himself. Then with a masterly timing, he was permitted through, ahead was an almost empty expanse of square and, disappearing through one of the archways of the Napoleonic wing, was the red-shirted boy.

Michael broke into a trot, but the boy was not in sight when he reached the welcome shadow of the arcade. He hesitated a moment. The entrance to the Correr Museum was here. Could the boy have gone in there or would he have continued straight ahead through the rather gloomy passage which must lead to the streets beyond the piazza? He made a quick decision and went forward, turning left, then right. The crowds were here again and he began to feel his task was hopeless.

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