5 May 2012
He looked a lot less dead than I thought he would. He was almost peaceful; well as peaceful as you can be when you’ve been thrown down a flight of stairs so hard your cranium had exploded like a melon. Yep. Just another day with my dad. He’s a detective you see. Used to be in the police, one of their best investigators. Now, well I still don’t know why he left, but he’s a P.I. now. So when the call came from the Vitarellis to find their spoilt brat who was kidnapped here in Venice - although I still have a suspicion they just lost him in one of their mansions - Dad had said “Why not make a holiday out of it?”. Sure dad, why not make a holiday out of staring at corpses with some vague hope of finding his royal lostness?. I step back from the corpse to look around the rest of the crime scene. We hadn’t even been to the hotel yet and my shoulders winced with the weight of Raymond Chandler in my backpack. I climb the blood spattered stairs and enter a dark, cool chamber. There’s nothing in here but an old wooden chair and some frayed rope in the centre of the room. Soon it will be swamped with forensics. This is where he was held - the kid - He’s gone now. The man down the stairs, he was one of the kidnappers. A job this big, there must have been more. He was just a goon. The others must have fled with the kid. Why? Well I-they still don’t know. They found this place last night after the old lady next door heard arguing and a scuffle. Officers turned up and found Mr half-a-brain down there, he had been wanted as a suspect, so they knew this must be linked. We came straight here from the airport. I taste blood in my mouth... again. One of my bad habits I’m afraid. I have this thing about chewing into the skin lining my mouth. Speaking of blood, what’s that? I take a closer look. It hasn’t dried completely yet, so it’s from roughly the same time as the accident downstairs. It's funny how sons normally pick up their father's experience in work. I’ve got this friend back in London. David. His father’s a jeweler. My watch broke at school one day, he told me he'd take a look at it. Next day he gave it back to me good as new. Jeweler's son. His exam results are crap but his dad gave the Head a Rolex to let him stay. I’m the same, instead of fixing watches I can determine which type of tobacco comes from a aged stain on a hunting jacket. Detective's son. But why would he have been bleeding upstairs. I mean they could have been fighting upstairs first but... That’s when I see the burger behind the door. It’s covered in the same red substance as what’s on the floor. Ketchup. Great job Luca That’s my name by the way, it’s Italian. Part of the reason dad took this gig was because he wanted me to “discover my Italian heritage”. Well if that entails kidnapping and guys with their heads smashed like pinãtas I think I’ve done enough discovering for one day. I wonder if he had known in one way or another that by the end of the night he would be dead. Death has always troubled me - since Mamma - but at the same time it’s made me tougher. I hear Dad’s shout, it’s time to go. I take one last look around the grim room and out the window down to the tight canal below. As I am walking out of the Palazzo, I spot something I hadn’t noticed on my way in: a frayed rope floating on the water in the canal. I’m guessing it was holding a boat - some Venetians with means use motorboats to get around. But the canal is too narrow here for one, it was more likely something smaller. And then I hear the song of the gondolier. Of course.
The door slams with a thud and I can still hear my father’s thunderous footsteps as he storms down the corridor. Shouts are exchanged between him and the German man in the room next to us. Well at least our row was concise this time, and loud apparently. His shouts and mine seem to linger in the atmosphere, even though you could hear a pin drop now. I just sit on my bed, clutching “Farewell My Lovely” and biting into my mouth. He’s lost his touch. At one point in his life he could pull together the most amazing theory from a few pieces of evidence. Now instead of making the theory suit the facts, he makes the facts suit the theory. And most of the time now, his theories are ridiculous. I try to help him, to tell him when he’s slipped up, but he ignores me. It’s infuriating, how even though I’m with him for nearly all of his cases, he rarely seems to treat me like an adult. I’m sixteen! I stare down at my book in frustration and an idea comes to mind. Phillip Marlowe as my witness, I will find this brat!
I wake early. Shower and get dressed quickly, grab my bag, nick some food from the mini-bar; I’m sure the Vitarellis won’t mind. Dad’s deep asleep. He had mentioned yesterday he was going to visit the family today. Find out as much as he could about the case. As much as that could help me, I need to do this alone. I need an alternative. Unfortunately, the Vitarellis managed to keep the press from knowing the majority of the story. This means I need to talk to somebody who knows what’s going on in this town. I step out of the elevator on the ground floor of the hotel to see the concierge, Alvise, grinning his white teeth. Perfect. I make polite small talk, I learned as much from my old man, and then get to it. I first ask him what he knows about the Vitarellis. “As much as the next man” Comes his reply “They’re dirty southerners who made their money in the properties in the Lido and around the Lagoon” I inquire if they have enemies. “Of course. I mean they are much disliked by much people” Alvise explains in simple English “But I think they had a might with The Wolf over some land around Marco Polo” “You mean a fight? They had a fight?” I can feel the heat from the light bulb that has just illuminated above my head. There's motive. “Yes, with the Wolf.” He goes on to explain that The Wolf is a violent, nationalist gang who have roots in a particular piece of land that the Vitarellis were trying to obtain. A quick google search provides me with what I need. There’s the thug from last night. I try to memorize as many faces as I can, they might be useful later. I see a few members of the gang have been seen boating in the direction of Poveglia. I gulp. If my knowledge serves me correctly, and it does, Poveglia is the infamous haunted island between Venice and the Lido. I put my face to my palm and sigh while I accept that I will have to pop in for a visit.
Nobody would take me. In the end I had to pay a man fifty euros just to hire his rowboat with my word I would drop it back to him by morning. As much as I hate it, I know this has to be done by night. Poveglia is forbidden from visitors by the government. But if those Wolf idiots can get in, so can I. But I can't exactly knock on the front door. I must have paddled around the island for an hour now. I go around to the other side, out of the view of Venezia, just to make sure I'm not seen entering. I look up at the Venetian moon. I think of the sailors who have seen this same sight. My face and hands glow. My hands. My freezing cold hands. I rub and blow on them but it doesn't seem to do the trick. I leave the boat hidden as much as I can under some branches and tie it to a post. And then I take my first few steps into the woods of the Island. Somehow it feels like an abyss. Poveglia is notoriously known as a quarantine area and mass grave for plague victims in Roman and Medieval times. More recently it was the site of a lunatic asylum; there are stories of a doctor who was just as mad as those he "treated"; he tortured them and apparently butchered many before eventually succumbing to his own demons and leaping off the bell tower. The same tower that I can see not far away from me now. According to the tale though, he survived the fall and was strangled by the mist instead. Hopefully not the same mist that surrounds me. Anyway the whole place is supposedly haunted. They would use a supernatural island as their hideout. When I get to the main buildings, I see a boat moored next to what I think was the Mental Hospital. I clamber in through a window. I have never really been one for ghost stories, but I have to tell you I'm quite scared right now. But I force myself on, stealthily sneaking up the back stairs of the ruins. Grow up Luca. There is no such thing as ghosts. And then I hear them. They have gathered in the lobby next to the main staircase. It appears to be a meeting. There is the mastermind. I would crack a joke about his moustache right now but I'm too scared that the doctor is about to tap on my shoulder. I bite my lip and grip the wall. The Maestro’s bushy moustache emphasises his frown. He is surrounded by thugs like the man from last night. But where’s the kid? Is he being held somewhere else? The Maestro is furious. He's pacing now. Shouting at them. Trouble with this - and I didn’t think this far ahead - is that I do not understand a word they are saying. And then I hear those golden words. I remember very little of what Mamma taught me as a child, but these words seem to stick out. "Dov'è il ragazzo?" The thugs stare at the ground like guilty school boys. The man had asked where the boy was! So they don't have him either. This is why they haven't made a ransom yet. But how were they separated? And where is he now? Ok, I've got what I needed, now to escape. I creep back along the corridor. And then... silence. I freeze. They must have heard a ghost... or the creaking floor. The odds are in my favour and the Maestro goes back to the bollocking.
As I row back to civilisation, I think about where the boy could be. If he managed to escape, wouldn't he have gone home, or at least found help? I can think of two possible explanations. He's in even worse hands, or he's in a bad way. The gondola. Yes! In the fight he must have managed to escape out the window… but miscalculated the fall and landed in
A Guide to Venice and the Veneto for Teen Detectives and Kidnappers • Opuss № I