Venetian Gothic

by Philip Gwynne Jones

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Mystery

Synopsis

It is November 2nd, 2017. All Souls Day. On the Day of the Dead, the citizens of Venice make their way to the cemetery island of San Michele to pay their respects to the departed. When an empty coffin is unearthed in the English section of the graveyard, a day of quiet reflection for Nathan Sutherland becomes a journey into the dark past of a noble Venetian family.

A British journalist, investigating the events of forty years previously, disappears. A young tourist – with an unhealthy interest in Venice's abandoned islands – is found drowned in the icy lagoon.

A terrible secret is about to be brought to light, and a deadly reckoning awaits on Venice's Isle of the Dead.

Release date: April 2, 2020

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 368

Sample

Sergio Cardazzo bowed his head and muttered a few words under his breath, as he bent over Paolo Magri’s grave. To his left, Lorenzo Bonzio, taller and thinner, leaned on his cane for support and reached out with his other hand to pat his friend on the shoulder.

Sergio spoke again, audibly this time. ‘Ciao, compagno.’ Then he bent to adjust the wreath, in the shape of the hammer and sickle, that was leaning against the headstone. I wondered if, somewhere in Venice, there was a left-wing florist that specialised in revolutionary funeral wreaths. If there were such a place, I thought, Sergio would be sure to know of it.

The three of us stood in silence for a moment. I gazed at the inscription. Paolo Magri. Journalist. 1950–2014.

The wind was chilly, and whipped at my coat, as a fine rain blew across the cemetery. Again, Sergio’s lips moved silently; then he dabbed at his eyes, blew his nose and clapped Lorenzo on the back, as much for his own comfort, I thought, as for his friend’s.

‘I think he’d have liked this,’ I said. ‘All of us being here.’

‘Maybe so,’ said Sergio. ‘But he’d have liked it even more if he was standing here with us.’

We turned and made our way back through the cemetery, our feet crunching on the gravel. Two little girls in bright red coats half ran, half skipped towards us, chattering excitedly and clutching flowers in their hands. I jumped to one side to let them pass, but one of them bumped into Lorenzo, who stumbled before Sergio’s hand reached out to grab his elbow.

‘Arianna! Lucia! Be careful! And show some respect!’ The speaker was a young man, arm in arm with a woman of similar age. He shook his head as they made their way along the path towards us. ‘I’m sorry.’

Lorenzo smiled, and doffed his hat. ‘No problem.’

The young woman smiled, although her eyes were red. ‘It’s their first time here. To see Nonno and Nonna. We told them they could carry the flowers, and so they feel very grown-up. But they don’t understand. Not really.’

Lorenzo smiled again. ‘I think perhaps we should envy them. How lovely to hear the sound of laughter here. I think that would make Nonno and Nonna very happy.’ She laughed. ‘See, now you’re doing it. And that would make them happy as well.’

‘That’s kind of you. Thank you.’

We stepped aside to let them pass, and then walked further along the path into the saddest part of the cemetery island of San Michele. The space reserved for children. An old couple stood, heads bowed, in front of a tombstone. Marco Vianello. June 1st 1968–April 23rd 1975. Requiescat in Pace Ultima. Rest in final peace. There was something terrible about that final. I looked at the fading, sepia-coloured photograph on the headstone. A young boy, painfully thin, stared back at me with a beaming, gap-toothed smile. The old woman’s shoulders shook, as her husband hugged her. Over forty years ago, and the pain still as fresh as yesterday.

‘God.’ I whispered under my breath, and shuddered. Sergio caught my eye, and shook his head, before crossing himself.

‘Come on, Nathan, let’s go.’ He rarely used my first name, preferring the jokey investigatore, his little pet name for me from the time when we’d first met. From when Paolo Magri had been murdered.

The cemetery was becoming busy now, as young and old made their way through the paths to the monuments where their loved ones lay. Lorenzo wasn’t quite as light on his feet as he once had been, and so we took our time meandering back against the flow of the crowd.

November 2nd, 2017. The feast of i morti. All Souls’ Day. The Day of the Dead, when Venetians made their way to the island of San Michele to lay flowers and pay their respects at the graves of their ancestors.

I cleared my throat. ‘Back there, Sergio. By the grave of that little boy. Did I see you crossing yourself?’

‘Maybe I did,’ he grumbled, ‘it’s just good to show respect, you know?’

‘And back at Paolo’s monument,’ I continued, trying to keep my voice light. ‘Were you praying there?’

‘Praying? Nonsense.’ He mumbled under his breath. ‘Anyway, what if I was?’

‘Oh, nothing. I was just surprised. You being a Marxist, and all.’

Lorenzo chuckled. ‘Sergio’s always had a certain amount of time for Liberation Theology. You know about Liberation Theology?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, it’s a fascinating movement in Latin American Roman Catholicism which—’

‘Which we’re not going to talk about now,’ said Sergio. His voice was gruff, as always, but I could see he was trying not to smile. Conversation between the three of us frequently worked this way, when we were trying to cheer each other up. ‘Come on. Back to Giudecca. Back to the bar. And we’ll have a jug of bad red wine and play a few hands of scopa for Paolo.’

I sighed. ‘Great. So we celebrate Paolo’s life by you stealing money off me?’

‘Not stealing, investigatore, winning.’

‘If that’s what we’re calling it.’

‘It is.’ He checked his watch. ‘Come on, there’s a boat in five minutes.’ We stepped it out as best we could, Sergio slipping a hand under Lorenzo’s elbow to support him.

The area around the vaporetto pontoon was crowded with carabinieri, all immaculate in striped red trousers, with boots and the peaks of their caps polished to a mirror finish. Amongst them stood a group of Catholic priests, and a couple of journalists that I vaguely knew from La Nuova and Il Gazzettino. In the middle of the clergy stood a tall, thin man robed completely in red, a heavy gold crucifix about his neck. His face was lean and ascetic, yet not without kindness. The Patriarch of Venice. He smiled as best he could as the photographers snapped away, whilst simultaneously giving the impression that he found this sort of thing just a little bit awkward. I caught his gaze and he nodded and smiled at me, his expression quizzical as if he was trying to recall when and where – not to mention if – we’d met.

Sergio elbowed me in the ribs. ‘Friends in high places?’

‘Not exactly a friend. But we’ve met a few times.’

‘Still. Useful person to know, I imagine. Somebody to put in a good word when the time comes.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Never had much time for priests myself. But this one I like. He’s on the side of the workers. He stood on a picket line at a factory once.’

I looked back at the thin figure in red, and found it hard to imagine. Still, Sergio was usually right about these things.

The next vaporetto was pulling up to the pontoon. ACTV ran a free service to San Michele for the day of i morti, a ‘DE’ for defunti on the side of the boat marking out its special nature. I had taken to calling it the ‘Death Line’, something Federica had pleaded with me not to use in company.

We waited for the passengers to disembark and were about to step on, when I felt myself being grabbed by my collar and gently, but firmly, pulled backwards. I turned around as best I could, assuming I had accidentally jumped the queue and someone had taken exception to it.

Father Michael Rayner, the Tall Priest, Anglican Chaplain to St George’s Church, Venice, glared down at me from under the bushiest eyebrows in Christendom.

‘Padre?’

‘Nathan. Good morning.’

‘What’s all this about?’ I heard the clang of the gate on the vaporetto slamming shut, and the marinaio calling to the captain to cast off. ‘Hey, wait a minute,’ I shouted. Sergio and Lorenzo looked back at me in confusion. ‘Get a round in, I’ll see you there,’ I called after them as the boat set off.

I turned back to Rayner and managed to shake his hand from my collar. ‘What do you think you’re doing? I’m supposed to be on that boat. I’ve got money to lose in a card game.’

‘Time for that later, Nathan. Right now, I need you to help me.’

Rayner paused to exchange a few words in his fractured Italian with the Patriarch, who smiled and nodded politely. Then, without even checking to see if I was following, he strode off in the direction of the Reparto Evangelico, the Protestant section of the cemetery.

‘I don’t suppose you could tell me what this is about?’ I puffed, as I laboured to keep up with him.

He reached into his coat, without breaking his stride, and passed a sheet of paper back to me. ‘Just be so good as to read this, would you?’

I took a quick glance at it. Revelation 21. God shall wipe away all tears.

‘Read it now?’ I said.

He stopped, and turned. ‘Not now, you bloody fool. During the service.’

‘Oh. Why?’

He sighed. ‘Nathan, on All Souls’ Day we get, shall we say, a small but exclusive group of attendees.’ He looked up at the steadily falling rain, and shuddered. ‘To be honest, who can blame them? Anyway, I’m fed up asking the same old faces to read every year. When I saw you on the pontoon, I thought you’d be ideal.’

‘I see. Wouldn’t you rather have somebody who believes in God?’

‘Plenty of time for all that. Anyway, think how much it’ll mean to the regulars. They come out here on a cold, wintry day. Most of them don’t even have relatives here. And then they see the Honorary Consul himself contributing. It’ll mean a lot to them.’

‘I’m flattered.’ Then a suspicion struck me, and I frowned. ‘Hang on, this means they’ll be expecting me to do this every year, doesn’t it?’

Rayner grinned. ‘That’s about the shape of it.’ His expression changed and became serious, concerned even. ‘I’m sorry, I never asked you. What brings you here?’

We were approaching Magri’s grave again, and I nodded at it. Rayner did a double-take as he saw the hammer-and-sickle wreath.

‘Good God!’

‘Paolo Magri moved in comradely circles. Sorry, there was no offence meant.’

‘None taken.’ He looked at me. ‘Was he a friend of yours?’

I paused. ‘I’m not sure. I think so. Or at least I hope that he might have become one.’

‘I see. I’m sorry.’ It was his turn to pause. ‘Do you want to add him to the list?’

‘The list?’

‘Of the departed. We read their names as part of the act of remembrance.’

‘Oh, I see. That’s kind of you. Yes, thank you.’

‘Good man.’ He smiled again. ‘You can read that out as well.’

***

We made our way through the cemetery until we reached the iron gate that separated the Catholic area from the Protestant. The difference between the two was immediately obvious. Unlike the regimented rows of tombs that marked the Roman section, this one was ramshackle, with the air of a long-neglected English churchyard. There were few grand funerary monuments here, just simple stone crosses and cracked headstones, many of which had collapsed. Cypress and bay trees, aided by the low-lying fog, conferred an appropriately funereal atmosphere. The graveyard was surrounded by walls on all four sides, with the exception of a gate at the far end that had once led directly on to the lagoon. The Reparto, I knew, had long been in need of funds for restoration. And every year, with an ever-declining number of people with family resting there, money became more difficult to find.

Rayner made his way over to a great stone slab in the middle of the grounds. Twelve red roses lay atop the monument, with its simple inscription ‘Ezra Pound’. He picked up one of the blooms, and turned it in his hand before replacing it with the lightest of touches. ‘Someone leaves these every year, you know,’ he murmured. ‘Pound must have meant a lot to them, whoever they are.’

I bit my tongue. The blooms, I knew, were left by a fascist group who, for various reasons, looked up to the long-dead poet as a source of inspiration. Rayner, evidently, had yet to learn this. It didn’t seem like the right time to tell him.

He looked up at the rain once more. ‘It’s a short service, you know, but it’s too wet for us all to stand around in the open. Some of my flock are not in the first flush of youth. Wouldn’t care for them to come to pay their respects and remain to share them.’

I looked around. ‘Where? There’s no shelter to speak of.’

‘No. Never a nice cosy mausoleum when you could do with one, is there?’ I assumed he was joking, but it was always a bit hard to tell with Father Rayner. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the Trentinaglia chapel, a three-arched Gothic structure supported by scaffolding on the southern wall, the property of a family of Italian Protestants. ‘Come on, there’ll at least be a bit of cover over there. Although I see we’ve been beaten to it.’

Two men in woolly hats stood with their backs against the cemetery wall, smoking away. A look of annoyance flashed across Rayner’s face, but then his gaze softened. After all, everyone was welcome in the Reparto Evangelico on All Saints’ Day, whether they were smokers or not.

I had thought they were wearing identical grey waterproofs, but, as we drew closer, I could see they were in uniform. The grey lapel badges with a green, orange and blue flash indicated they were from Veritas, the organisation responsible for refuse collection, plumbing and general city maintenance.

‘What are they doing here?’ said Rayner, under his breath.

‘No idea. Strange though. I wouldn’t expect anyone from Veritas to be working out here on a public holiday.’

I walked over to them. ‘Signori.’

One of them dropped his roll-up to the earth and ground it underfoot, before wiping his hand on his lapel and offering it to me to shake. ‘Buongiorno.’

‘I don’t suppose you could tell me what’s going on here?’ I said. ‘I mean, no offence, but we have a service here in,’ I checked my watch, ‘twenty minutes’ time.’

He looked me up and down. ‘Are you the padre?’

‘No. I just wear too many black clothes.’ We both chuckled. ‘He is,’ I said, indicating Rayner.

‘Buongiorno padre.’

‘Buongiorno.’

The workman smiled and chattered away in Italian. Rayner gave me a pained look. ‘I’m sorry, Nathan, could you—?’

‘Translate?’

‘Please.’

‘Sure.’ I paused. ‘How long have you been here now?’

‘Three years.’

‘How’s the Italian coming on?’

‘Slowly. I have churchwardens and an army of well-meaning parishioners for that sort of thing.’

‘I see. It would help, you know?’

‘I know.’ He looked embarrassed.

I turned back to the workmen. ‘I don’t think anyone was expecting to see you here today?’

‘Nossignore. Nobody told us there’d be a service in this part. We didn’t expect it.’

‘It’s the Day of the Dead.’

‘Sissignore. But, you know …’ He looked around, gesturing at the dilapidated monuments that surrounded us. ‘We didn’t think people came here so often.’

‘There are going to be people here in twenty minutes.’ I turned back to Rayner. ‘How many?’ I asked, in English.

‘Perhaps ten.’

I turned back to the workmen. ‘At least forty or fifty,’ I said. Then a thought struck me. ‘Hang on a minute, it’s a public holiday. Why are you working?’

He grinned, and rubbed a thumb and two fingers together. ‘More money today.’

‘Fair enough. Erm, can I ask what you’re doing? And can it wait? Maybe an hour?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s the gravestones, signore. Take a look. Nobody takes care of them and the ground—’ He dug his heel into the earth, with a squelching sound. ‘The ground here is like a sponge. Every year, some of the tombstones collapse. It can be dangerous for visitors. And so Enzo and myself are here to make it safe.’ He patted his colleague on the back. ‘Isn’t that right, Enzo?’

Enzo nodded and lit another roll-up.

He gestured towards their work. A heavy gravestone tilted at an impossible angle. ‘We need to move that.’ Next to it, a white coffin had been disinterred and the tombstone laid flat upon the earth.

Rayner bristled. ‘You’re exhuming graves? Why wasn’t I told?’

I translated, and the workmen shrugged as one. ‘We don’t know, padre. That’s the business of the comune.’

Rayner turned to me, helplessly. ‘Nathan?’

I sighed. ‘They don’t know. To be fair, it’s not really their business.’ I turned back to them. ‘What needs to be done, then?’

‘Today, all we do is lay this headstone flat.’ He pointed at the heavier one, thick with moss, and the inscription almost illegible with age.

‘Fine. And the other one?’ I pointed at the more recent headstone and the coffin. ‘Why did you have to exhume that one?’

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a map, and traced around the edges with a nicotine-stained finger. ‘All these in this area here. The ground floods easily. They all need to be moved over to the south wall.’ He looked over at Rayner, who was taking shelter from the rain in the shade of the walls of the Trentinaglia chapel, and shook his head. ‘Nossignore! Very dangerous. Come away please.’ Rayner muttered something under his breath and moved away, a look of disappointment on his face as he looked up at the ceaseless rain. ‘The chapel is not safe. Especially in the rain, when the ground is wet. One slip and,’ he swept his hands apart, ‘wuuumph!’

I looked down at the headstone. Gabriele Loredan. 26th May 1968–24th August 1980. Another Italian name. ‘Okay, can you just move the coffin out of the way in the meantime? And maybe the headstone, if you can. At least cover them with something. People are coming, it might be upsetting for them, you understand?’

‘Sure we understand, signore. It won’t take long. Come on, Enzo.’

Enzo dropped his cigarette, and nodded. He moved to take the rounded end of the headstone, his friend the other. It must have been some weight, even for two of them, and they struggled to move it into position.

‘Okay, Enzo. We’ve got it. Now just put it down slowly, okay?’

The two of them moved to lower the slab to the ground but, just as they were doing so, Enzo slipped on a patch of wet leaves. For a dreadful moment, I felt sure the slab was going to hit him square in the head, but he managed to roll aside, sending the headstone crashing through the lid of the adjacent white coffin, which splintered into pieces.

‘Shit. Oh shit,’ his companion swore.

I looked at Rayner. ‘Oh bloody hell.’

The four of us stood in silence. Rayner looked back over his shoulder to the entrance. Nobody, as yet, had arrived, but it wouldn’t be long now. ‘Okay. There’s nothing much we can do about it now. We’ll move the coffin, and cover it up; and afterwards … Well, I’ll have a think about what to do afterwards.’

The two workmen nodded, but gave no sign of moving. Rayner sighed. ‘I’m in a cassock. My friend here is wearing his best coat—’

I coughed, gently. ‘Actually it’s my only coat, padre.’

‘As I said, his best coat. So given you two are proofed up against the elements, would you be so good as to move it for us?’ The two of them looked blankly at me, until I realised they were waiting for me to translate. Then they nodded as one and set to work.

Enzo looked down at the smashed lid of the coffin, and crossed himself. He looked over at Rayner as if seeking approval. The padre gave him an encouraging smile.

The two of them bent to lift the headstone and drag it into position but the coffin, following decades in the sodden earth, collapsed in on itself as soon as the weight was removed.

‘Oh bloody hell,’ I repeated. Then I looked closer. ‘Hang on, something’s not right.’ I took a step forward. Rayner laid a hand upon my arm, but I shook it off. ‘Something’s wrong.’

I dropped to my knees, right next to the remains of the coffin. The lid had splintered into two pieces, and I could just about see inside. I reached my hand across to shift the upper part, the wood feeling spongy and rotten in my fingers. I slid it away, and let it fall on to the wet grass.

‘Padre. Come and look.’

‘Nathan, for the love of God come away and let’s just cover this poor fellow up until we can get someone out here.’

‘There’s no one to cover up, padre. No one at all.’

I pushed the remaining piece of the lid away, and got to my feet. The four of us stared down at the splintered remains of a small, white coffin.

A small, white and empty coffin.

It was late afternoon by the time I got back to the Street of the Assassins, the wet streets shining in the warm glow from the Magical Brazilian Café. It was tempting to go in for a drink but Federica, I knew, would be cross if she realised I’d been without her.

I went upstairs to the flat, aware that my right boot had started to leak. Never mind. Warm socks awaited.

Gramsci came to meet me, woken up by the sound of my keys rattling in the lock. He gave a little mewl of recognition, then yawned, stretched and made his way into the living room where Federica lay asleep on the sofa, the adjacent coffee table covered with books and papers from her latest project. He leapt on to the back of the couch and miaowed at me once more. Then he looked down at Federica, jumped on to her chest and rubbed his face against her cheek.

She opened one eye. ‘Hello, friendly cat. Does this mean Nathan is back?’

‘He most certainly is. Ciao, cara.’

‘Ciao, caro.’ She sat up, scratching Gramsci behind his ears. ‘Why do you think he’s started doing this?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Being nice.’

‘Oh, that. He’s just happy, that’s all. Nathan’s home again. He wants you to join in the excitement.’

We looked at the coffee table, where Gramsci was now sitting on top of Federica’s papers, purring away. ‘Happy’ and ‘excitement’ were words that had never been linked with him before.

‘I’ll try to contain myself. So, how was it?’

‘Okay, I guess. Nice to see the boys.’ She smiled at my use of ‘boys’ to denote two men who probably had a hundred and fifty years between them.

She looked at her watch. ‘I must have slept longer than I thought. You’re back late.’

‘Yes, sorry. I was helping out the padre. Father Michael, that is. And then … well, we had a bit of a thing …’

‘A thing?’

‘Yes. We exhumed a body.’

She sat up. ‘You what?’

‘We accidentally exhumed a body. Or rather we didn’t. Veritas were doing a bit of work. Making safe some of the crumblier monuments. They dropped a headstone on a coffin and the thing smashed into pieces.’

She shuddered. ‘God. How horrible. Are you all right?’

‘Oh fine. This is the thing, though – it was empty.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean actually empty. No body, no clothing, no shroud.’ I paused. ‘Do they still use shrouds? Anyway, there was nothing at all.’

‘What, had the body just rotted away to nothing? Is that even possible?’

‘I think that only happens in films. Anyway, the grave was less than forty years old.’

‘So, what did you do?’

‘What could we do? Father Michael had a memorial service coming up, so we covered it over with a tarpaulin as best we could, and herded his flock over to the opposite side of the cemetery.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘We called the police. We couldn’t think what else to do.’ I sat down on the edge of the sofa. ‘It was a kid’s grave. That seems to make it worse somehow. I don’t know why, but it does.’

She nodded. ‘I understand. What do you think had happened?’

‘I don’t know. Do people actually rob graves any more?’

She shrugged. ‘It seems hard to imagine, but possibly. Think about it. The Protestant section is the least visited section. It would be quiet if you wanted to – do – something.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not so sure about that. People go there to see Ezra Pound and Joseph Brodsky.’

‘Okay. After hours then. That section used to open out on to the lagoon, before they built the extension. It would be safe enough to moor a boat outside and then go and do whatever you wanted to do. Whoever did it must have thought there’d be s. . .