‘Go on.’
‘According to Bianca, the two women were having a lovers’ tiff. V was telling the girlfriend off for eating in the shop, and the girlfriend was pissed off because V was buying a pretty bracelet for the “angliskaya suka”, and she couldn’t understand why.’
‘You’re sure? For the “English bitch”?’
‘That’s what Bianca said.’
‘So you speak fluent Italian? You might have told me.’
‘You didn’t ask. But that’s not all. The shop assistants all assumed that we were here to investigate some rich Ukrainian guy who’s gone missing.’
‘We don’t know anything about that, do we?’
‘First I’ve heard of it.’
‘Do we have a name?’
‘No.’
Eve looks out at the rain-blurred expanse of the piazza. ‘Just suppose,’ she says, licking the last of the sugar-powder from her fingers, ‘that V was in Venice at the same time that this unnamed Ukrainian went missing . . .’
‘I’m already supposing it.’
‘I owe you an apology, Lance. Really, I’m—’
‘Forget it. Let’s ask the staff here if they remember two Russian women buying pastries a month ago, which they won’t, and then let’s get out of here. I need a smoke.’
Outside, the air is vaporous and the sky bruise-dark. As they cross the piazza, Eve feels a creeping discontent, which seems to relate to the two women buying the bracelet together. Who was that other woman, the one who called her a bitch, and what was her role in all this? Was she really V’s lover?
Eve feels a flush of shame. It couldn’t really be jealousy she’s feeling, could it? She’s embarrassed to even ask herself the question. She loves Niko and misses him. He loves her.
To be gazed at while you slept, though.
The bracelet.
The sheer, dazzling effrontery of it.
The questura, or central police station, of Venice is in Santa Croce, on the Ponte della Libertà. It has a river entrance, with blue-painted police launches moored at its jetty, and a rather less picturesque street entrance, fortified by steel security barriers and guarded by agents of the Polizia di Stato.
It’s 5.30 p.m., and Eve and Lance are sitting in the waiting area, waiting to speak to the questore, the local chief of police. To arrange this has taken numerous phone calls, and now that they have an appointment, it turns out that Questore Armando Trevisan is ‘in conference’. Hunching forward on the slatted wooden bench, Eve stares through the armoured glass of the entrance doors at the traffic. The rain stopped at midday, but she can still feel the dampness in the air.
A lean figure in a dark suit appears from a corridor, his purposeful air disrupting the somnolent atmosphere of the place. Introducing himself in English as Questore Trevisan, he leads them to his office, a monochrome space dominated by filing cabinets.
‘Please, Mrs Polastri and Mr . . .’
‘Edmonds,’ says Lance. ‘Noel Edmonds.’
They seat themselves opposite his desk. Trevisan opens a folder, removes a photocopied head-shot, and hands it to Eve.
‘You want to know about our vanished Ukrainian? Well, so do we. His name is Rinat Yevtukh, and last month he was staying at the Danieli Hotel with a young woman named Katerina Goraya and several bodyguards. We were alerted to his presence, and details of his background, by colleagues in AISE, our external security agency.’
‘He was known to them, then?’ Eve asks.
‘Very much so. Based in Odessa, where he was the head of a gang involved in drugs, prostitution, people-smuggling and the usual related activities. Very wealthy, very powerfully connected.’
From the folder Trevisan takes a second document. His movements are economical, and there’s an alertness about him that tells Eve that this is a fellow spirit, an ally. A man who will only be satisfied by the truth. ‘Here’s the timeline of Yevtukh’s stay here in Venice. The usual tourist activities, as you can see, and always accompanied by Miss Goraya. A gondola tour, a visit to Murano, shopping in San Marco, etcetera. And then, on this morning here, and without the knowledge of Miss Goraya, he leaves in a motoscafo, a motor launch, with a woman whom he had met in the hotel bar the evening before.’
Eve and Lance exchange glances.
‘According to the waiter the woman ordered the drinks in Italian but spoke English to Yevtukh. Both fluently. She looked, according to the waiter, like a film star.’
‘Any particular film star?’
‘I think he meant more in a general way, but he did help us create an e-fit.’
Trevisan slides another photocopy across his desk. Eve forces herself not to grab it, but the image is wholly unrevealing. The heart-shaped face, shoulder-length hair and wide-set eyes have a blank, generic look. The subject could be any age between twenty and forty.
‘We made this portrait three days after the waiter served her in the bar. It’s the best he could manage. Yevtukh’s bodyguards saw her briefly on the morning of his disappearance, but they were even less help. She was wearing large sunglasses, apparently, and they couldn’t even agree on the colour of her hair.’
‘Witnesses,’ says Lance.
‘Indeed, Mr Edmonds, witnesses. To continue, this woman meets Yevtukh at the river entrance to the hotel the next morning, and they leave together in the motoscafo. When Yevtukh doesn’t reappear that night the bodyguards think their boss is enjoying a romantic assignment, and say nothing to Miss Goraya, but the following morning she goes to see the hotel manager and makes a big furore and the manager calls us. At that point the bodyguards agree to tell the truth.’
Initially, Trevisan tells them, Yevtukh was considered a low-risk disappearance, and the investigation a formality. And then someone at the questura matched the description of a motoscafo stolen from a marina in Isola Sant’Elena with the bodyguards’ description of the vessel they had seen outside the hotel, and a full-scale search was set in motion. A helicopter overflight of the lagoon revealed the motoscafo sunk in the Poveglia Canal, but of Yevtukh, not a trace. And there the enquiry stalled.
‘So what do you think happened?’ asks Eve.
‘Initially, I thought
