Malefic, page 21
part #2 of Sinister Series
“Please, signorina, allow me to ask the questions.”
Sofia shrugged. “In part, yes.”
“You were suspended from your job, yes?”
Sofia hesitated, rubbing at the pressure in her skull. “Yes.”
“Why is that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why you were suspended?”
Her heart was throbbing once more. “I really don’t understand—”
“Signorina, prego, please, answer my question.”
The tide had left Sofia’s mouth, leaving nothing but dry words in its wake. “I really don’t want to talk about it right now,” she said, using both hands to push strands of hair behind her ears.
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh, well thatsa no problem, signorina. I can arrange for you to answer my questions at police station at a better time for you if you wish.”
Sofia glared at him. “Something happened.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody died.”
“A passenger, yes? A passenger that you were responsible for, corretto?”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“No. But you make it simple, no? You just send your boss letter and no go back. Boh,” the man shrugged. “I wish I could send letter to my boss, and he, Verrastro, he wish he can send letter to me every day, no?”
He glanced up at the officer who was allowing himself a fleeting smile.
“He just says, I am tired of Puglisi bullshit, I send him emaila or letter and that it!” The man swiped his hands together as if washing them and pulled a face. “Bimma, bamma, no more work.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“No?”
“No.”
“What about what happen to your neighbour?” the man said suddenly and seriously. Sofia’s eyes widened.
“Daniele?”
“No. Not your neighbour here, signorina, but your neighbour in Inghilterra. Dead, no?”
Lucy.
“Please—”
“Your other neighbour across de street, he also very unlucky. Dead.”
Sofia could feel pressure building behind her eyes and closed them.
“Then more neighbours, they lose baby…”
Her stomach churned and she clutched at it.
“Gone!”
“Please. I’m not feeling well,” she groaned.
“No? I understand. Mamma mia… I not feel well either if all this death happen around me, Signorina Sofia. Phew, eh?”
The floor stretched up and she thought she was going to topple onto it, but, mercifully, it receded once more as Puglisi continued his verbal assault. “Then, your best friend and her husband. Same day you run away and come in Venezia. Dead. And then, you here not even one week and Signore Daniele dead. Ma, signorina, you must understand how this look. It is una grande coincidenza, no?”
“W…what did you say?” Sofia asked, eyes bulging and head swirling as a ball of bile slithered up her throat.
“Coincidence, no? That not how you say it?” the man pressed.
“No, before. About my friend and her husband.”
Puglisi observed her for the longest time as if trying to read the truth in her eyes. “Why you leave England so suddenly, signorina?”
“What?”
“What make you run from your country to come and live in a place where you can’t speak the language?”
“I told you,” she groaned, desperate to get her answer. “I inherited this place. I didn’t run away.”
“No?”
“No! Now tell me about my friend!”
Puglisi didn’t respond. He simply nodded and then stood. “Allora, please, signorina, I must ask you make no more sudden journeys withouta speaking to me first, you understand?”
“What? Why?”
“Otherwise, I will have no choice but to take your passaport. Capisci?”
“No, I don’t bloody capisci! You have no right to keep me here. I haven’t done anything wrong,” Sofia protested.
“You should know your own police in England, they already make a warrant for your arrest. If you don’t wish me to do the same, you do as I ask.”
“No! Wait! What?” Sofia cried. She jumped up from her chair but as she did so, the room began to spin. “Wait!” She swallowed back the lump in her throat and closed her eyes as she was overwhelmed with queasiness.
The inspector paused and turned to her.
“P…please,” she mumbled. “Wait… My friend and her husband… You didn’t tell me what happened to them.”
But Puglisi offered no reaction.
“WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM?” she screamed.
The man scrutinized her for several seconds before announcing, “They’re dead, signorina. In fire. But you say you know nothing about this either, corretto?”
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Sofia felt her legs buckle beneath her and she collapsed back onto the sofa as someone started hammering on the balcony doors. Each impact was so powerful it rattled the glass, threatening to shatter it.
Sofia yelped and shrank back into her seat while the officer instinctively crouched and drew his weapon. Puglisi froze and all eyes turned to the giant doors.
Daylight had been devoured by darkness. It was as if an eclipse that nobody had known was coming was taking place.
The housekeeper rushed in clutching the obligatory kitchen towel but stopped abruptly in front of the view outside. Then, she slowly backed away, crossing herself, when she realised what was happening.
BANG! SHAKE! BANG! SHAKE! BANG! SHAKE!
The officer warily moved forward, weapon raised in his outstretched hand, and yet he’d barely reached beyond the sofa when it happened.
Suddenly.
Loudly.
Violently.
The glass on both giant balcony doors imploded. A shower of jagged fragments was catapulted into the house along with a clutch of tennis-ball-sized hailstones, smashing onto the floor and skidding to various corners of the room.
Then silence.
The wind that had aggravated Sofia just moments earlier had calmed, along with the sound of the rest of the world, until a distant scream pierced the quiet. Then another and another.
Puglisi slowly emerged from behind the corner of the sofa while the officer, who had thrown himself over Sofia as a protective barrier, slowly lifted himself from on top of her. Glass slid from him and tinkled to the floor.
“Tutto bene? Okay?” he asked, his brown eyes full of concern as he looked down at her. Sofia could only nod.
He slowly peeled himself off and winced. He was wounded, with a series of small shards embedded in his jacket. Yet he paused to offer Sofia his hand and help her sit up.
“Attenzione!” he said abruptly, but then qualified it with a gentle, “Careful, glass.”
He looked over to his boss. “Apposto?” he asked, but he only received a distracted nod from the man who was focussed on something behind the officer. Both he and Sofia followed his line of sight.
The housekeeper was still standing with her back to them. She couldn’t be certain, but it sounded as if the woman was mumbling something. It was hard to tell since the sound was mostly hisses and esses, now being upstaged by the wailing and screaming that was taking place beyond what was left of the balcony doors.
“Signora? Eh! Signora!” It was Verrastro again who, despite his own wounds, stepped forward to assist the housekeeper. He stopped in his tracks when the woman slowly turned around. Sofia heard a horrified shriek escape from her own mouth.
The woman was no longer recognisable. Her face was streaked in the blood that was dribbling down it, off her chin and to the floor. Large angry shards protruded from her eyes, cheeks, and chest, while her pleas for help were reduced to nothing more than a gagged gargle by the chunk of glass pinning her top lip and chin together.
Outside, and all over Venice, hundreds of boats and gondolas had been damaged, as if they had been stoned, and were sinking into the canals which were now stained crimson with the blood of passengers. High above, the sky had been transformed into a peculiar and ominous shelf of rageful blackness. A patchwork quilt of grey mammatus clouds hung from it in giant pouches and pockets, like boils from necrotic skin.
The time was nigh.
20
LIES
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
Sofia had spent the rest of the afternoon lying. The worst part about it was that she had been raised with the strict moral principle that peace could only be found in truthfulness. Yes, it was ironic that, as it turned out, the person who had brought her up that way had lied to her for her entire life. Still, a talent for deceit must run in the family, she thought, for she was surprised to find that she was quite adept at it.
First, she lied to the police by telling them that she was fine after her housekeeper had become a pincushion for shards of flying glass. She wasn’t though. Far from it. How could anyone who wasn’t made of stone be fine after witnessing something so horrific?
Yet she told the police that she was okay, that all she needed was to get some clothes on and visit her friend at the hospital. Reluctantly, Puglisi released her from his charge but only on the understanding that she would not make any significant journeys either around or out of the country while the investigation was ongoing.
That is when she told them her second lie.
After, she spent an hour or so in front of a cold latte at one of the bars overlooking the Grand Canal. She watched as a steady stream of damaged boats of all sizes buzzed sadly in front of her like battle weary soldiers.
Though the sky was calmer now, the hailstorm of her own mind was torrential. Her thoughts churned in her brain like the wake behind those vessels, but just like them, they eventually fizzled out to nothing. She still had no real answers to any of it.
What about Victoria? Had she somehow misheard? She wanted to hope so but knew she hadn’t, and not only because of what the policeman had told her. Now that she thought about it, she remembered the look on Janay’s face the night she had arrived. She had started to tell her something about Victoria but then they were interrupted. She didn’t notice it at the time, but now it all made perfect sense.
The disgusting truth was that she didn’t feel anything. She was numb, as if she was totally unaffected by it. How was that even possible? She would have expected a few tears, at least. Those things seemed to be with her in abundance lately. And yet nothing.
She told herself it was because she was in shock still. She hadn’t allowed herself time to absorb the information which she had received in the midst of so many other horrors. Yes, of course, that was the reason. That was why she was feeling like all those years they had spent together as inseparable friends had never happened.
But no matter how much she tried to deny it to herself, when she paused, cleared her mind, and allowed it to stray deeper, behind the façade of social decencies, she knew that it was the truth. That somehow, however it had happened, the fate that had befallen her old friend was right and proper.
Right and proper?
Those were the words that formed in her mind like a metastasizing cancer. She didn’t even use the expression and yet there it was, ringing around her head. It was the most peculiar sense of detachment, like Victoria had barely been a passing acquaintance.
How strange it was. Yet this was nonetheless how she felt.
Something had changed in her. She didn’t know when or how exactly. Maybe it was sometime back in England. Maybe it was the moment her father died. Or perhaps when she discovered the truth about her parents. It could have been the housekeeper’s coldness or even the moment she’d caught Daniele snickering at the hospital. She didn’t know when, but all of it did feel right and proper.
Now, as she stood at the stern of the vaporetto and travelled under a dark sky that seemed ambivalent to the carnage it had caused, Sofia DaTerra reached a decision. If that involved telling more lies, so be it.
She arrived at the hospital to discover that the police had already taken Janay’s statement. If Sofia’s visit was anything to go by, she wouldn’t have given them much. As soon as she strayed remotely close to the topic of what happened in that bedroom, there was a visible shift in her friend’s demeanour, her body stiffening, her eyes widening.
So, Sofia kept the focus of the conversation on more cheerful subjects, such as Damon. Janay had spoken to her son and explained that she’d had an accident, that it was nothing serious and she would be home soon.
This led conveniently to Sofia’s next series of lies. She omitted the real events of the morning and instead told her that she had spoken to police and that they were investigating what had happened and were hoping for a breakthrough soon. She then apologised to her friend as if she had been personally responsible for her pain.
They cried together.
After that, Sofia implemented the next part of her plan. She told Janay that she’d spoken to the lawyer in England about getting the palazzo sold as soon as possible and that she was going to use the money to buy herself a nice place back home. And, although there was no commitment and she wasn’t expecting her to make any decisions right away, she would be happy to look at buying somewhere big enough for the three of them. But only if she wanted to, of course. There was no pressure.
When Janay looked at her with more tears welling in her eyes, Sofia simply hugged her friend tightly and told her to think about it, in her own time. She would always be there, if ever and whenever she was ready.
Sofia also told her friend that she’d spoken to the doctor, and, after another night’s observation, he couldn’t see any reason why she shouldn’t be discharged in the morning. She would book her a ticket home shortly after.
When Janay grabbed her hand, Sofia quickly told her next lie. “Not to worry. I’ll be right behind you. As soon as I settle everything with the house.”
It was kind of true. She hadn’t talked to Roger Mitchell, the lawyer, yet, and she had no idea if anything could be done. The lawyer had been quite specific on the subject of selling Palazzo Rosso, but this didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try.
Lying to her friend was a necessary evil to get her to leave the city without her. Otherwise, all they’d do is argue about it, and Sofia couldn’t have that. Her priority was to get Janay home to her son and safety. Nothing else mattered.
After promising to collect her first thing in the morning, Sofia made her way back, but not to Palazzo Rosso. No, first, she had decided, she needed answers.
21
The star of the morning
WEDNESDAY. LATE AFTERNOON.
1
The thunderous sky glowered as Sofia made her way across the city, the square, through the pools of light in the courtyard, and then into the place she had called work for less than a week.
The beauty of her surroundings still wasn’t lost on her, although she was busy pondering other matters now, which superseded everything else. When she finally found Cameron giving a guided tour to a group of tourists in the splendour of the Council Chamber, she barely paused to look.
“…Two branches of power met in this very room: one that dealt with all maritime matters relating to the Venetian empire, and the other that dealt with all mainland affairs. They were called the Savi and the Signoria. This artwork was designed and commissioned after the great fire of 1574 and—”
“Cameron.”
“Sofia? What are you doing here?”
“I need to speak to you.”
“I’m… um… just in the middle of a—”
“Now,” Sofia insisted through gritted teeth beneath a fake smile for the sightseers.
“Okay. Right, so…” Cameron turned his attention back to the group. “Why don’t you all take a wee look around and I’ll be right with ya for any questions,” he said brightly before turning to Sofia and stepping out of earshot. “I thought you weren’t coming in today.”
“I’m not. I haven’t.”
“Well, you probably shouldn’t. Raffaella’s seriously got it in for you. She’s already spoken to Bacciabella.”
“I don’t care about that. Something else has happened, Cam.”
“What? With Janay?”
“No. Something else. Listen, I need you to tell me everything you know about the palace.” The guide frowned, so Sofia added an explanation, “No. Not this one. Palazzo Rosso… what? What is it?” She had noticed how the guide’s eyes flicked away from her. There was something there. Something in that action. “Cameron? Tell me.”
“Sofia,” he said, taking a step back to make a space between them. “You told me you were gonnae push me in the canal the last time I tried to tell you anything. What’s changed?”
“It doesn’t matter. I just want you to tell me what you know.”
“Sofia—”
“I need to know,” she insisted forcefully. She had spoken so loudly that a couple of curious tourists loitering nearby turned their way. They obviously suspected some kind of domestic drama and were lingering.
“Sofia, I cannae tell ya.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll hate me, that’s why.”
“Well, I’m going to hate you if you don’t, so you may as well spill it.”
He led her further away from the eavesdropping tourists before dropping his voice to little more than a whisper when he spoke. “You know this stuff doesn’t mean anything, right? It’s just urban legend, fables passed down through the years. People like to tell stories, that’s all, and the scarier the better.”
“Right. So, you do know something then?”
The Scot glanced away.
“Cam?” Sofia prompted. His trepidation told her that what she was about to hear could be much worse than she had anticipated, and now she definitely needed to know.
The guide still hesitated, looked around, and then continued in his hushed tone. “Put it this way, the Palazzo Rosso name has nothing to do with the colour of its walls and everything to do with what went on there.”
