Death in a Strange Country

by Donna Leon

  Ambrogiani was quick to sense Brunetti’s waning interest. ‘I say this because it explains how the Americans see us here. Their boys, and girls, I suppose, all volunteer. It’s a career for them. They like it. They get paid for it, paid enough to live. And many of them take pride in it. And here, what do they see? Boys who would rather be playing soccer or going to the cinema, but who have to do work they despise instead, and who therefore do it badly. So they assume that we’re all lazy.’

  ‘And so?’ Brunetti asked, cutting him short.

  ‘And so,’ Ambrogiani repeated, ‘they don’t understand us and therefore think badly of us for reasons that we can’t understand.’

  ‘You ought to be able to understand them. You’re a military man,’ Brunetti said.

  Ambrogiani shrugged, as if to suggest that, first and foremost, he was an Italian.

  ‘Is it unusual, that they wouldn’t show you a file if they had one?’

  ‘No. They tend not to help us much in things like this.’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean by “things like this”, Maggiore.’

  ‘Crimes that they get involved in away from the base.’

  Certainly this could be said to apply to the young man lying dead in Venice, but Brunetti found the wording strange. ‘Are they frequent?’

  ‘No, not really. A few years ago, some Americans were involved in a murder. An African. They beat him to death with wooden boards. They were drunk. The African danced with a white woman.’

  ‘Protecting their woman?’ Brunetti asked, making no attempt to disguise his sarcasm.

  ‘No,’ Ambrogiani said. ‘They were black. The men who killed him were black.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘Two of them got twelve years. One of them was found innocent and released.’

  ‘Who tried them, them or us?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Luckily for them, we did.’

  ‘Why luckily?’

  ‘Because they were tried in a civil court. The sentences are much lighter. And the charge was manslaughter. He provoked them, beat on their car and shouted at them. So the judges ruled that they had been responding to a threat.’

  ‘How many of them were there?’

  ‘Three soldiers and a civilian.’

  ‘Some threat,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘The judges ruled that it was. And took it into consideration. The Americans would have sent them away for twenty, thirty years. Military justice is nothing to joke with. Besides, they were black.’

  ‘Does that still matter?’

  A shrug. A raised eyebrow. Another shrug. ‘The Americans will tell you it doesn’t.’ Ambrogiani took another sip of water. ‘How long will you be here?’

  ‘Today. Tomorrow. Are there other things like this?’

  ‘Occasionally. Usually they handle crime on the base, handle it themselves, unless it gets too big or it breaks an Italian law. Then we get a part of it.’

  ‘Like the principal?’ Brunetti asked, remembering a case that had made national headlines a few years ago, something about the principal of their grammar school being accused and convicted of child abuse, the details of which were very cloudy in his memory.

  ‘Yes, like him. But usually they handle things themselves.’

  ‘Not this time,’ Brunetti said simply.

  ‘No, not this time. Since he was killed in Venice, he’s yours, it’s all yours. But they’ll want to keep their hand in.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Public relations,’ Ambrogiani said, using the English words. ‘And things are changing. They probably suspect they aren’t going to be here much longer, not here, and not anywhere in Europe, so they don’t want anything to happen that might make their stay even shorter. They don’t want any bad publicity.’

  ‘It looks like a mugging,’ Brunetti said.

  Ambrogiani gave Brunetti a long, level stare. ‘When was the last time someone was killed in a mugging in Venice?’

  If Ambrogiani could ask the question like that, he knew the answer.

  ‘Honour?’ Brunetti suggested as a motive.

  Ambrogiani smiled again. ‘If you kill someone for honour, you don’t do it a hundred kilometres from home. You do it in the bedroom, or the bar, but you don’t go to Venice to do it. If it had happened here, it could have been sex or money. But it didn’t happen here, so it seems that the reason has to be something else.’

  ‘A murder out of place?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, out of place,’ Ambrogiani repeated, obviously liking the phrase. ‘And therefore more interesting.’

  7

  The Maggiore pushed the slim file towards Brunetti with the tip of his blunt finger and poured himself another glass of mineral water. ‘Here’s what they gave us. There’s a translation if you need it.’

  Brunetti shook his head and opened the file. On the front cover, in red letters, was printed, ‘Foster, Michael, b. 09/28/64, SSN 651 34 1054’. He opened it and saw, clipped to the inside of the front cover, a Xerox copy of a photograph. The dead man was unrecognizable. These sharp contours of black and white had nothing to do with the yellowing face of death that Brunetti had seen on the bank of the canal yesterday. Inside the folder were two typewritten pages stating that Sergeant Foster worked for the Office of Public Health, that he had once been given a ticket for going through a STOP sign on the base, that he had been promoted to the rank of Sergeant one year ago, and that his family lived in Biddeford Pool, Maine.

  The second page contained the summary of an interview conducted with an Italian civilian who worked in the Office of Public Health and who attested that Foster got on well with his colleagues, worked very hard at his job, and was polite and friendly with the Italian civilians who worked in the office.

  ‘Not very much, is there?’ Brunetti asked, closing the file and pushing it back towards the Maggiore. ‘The perfect soldier. Hardworking. Obedient. Friendly.’

  ‘But someone put a knife in his ribs.’

  Brunetti remembered Doctor Peters and asked, ‘No woman?’

  ‘Not that we know of,’ Ambrogiani answered. ‘But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t. He was young, spoke passable Italian. So it’s possible.’ Ambrogiani paused for a moment and added, ‘Unless he used what’s for sale in front of the train station.’

  ‘Is that where they are?’

  Ambrogiani nodded. ‘What about Venice?’

  Brunetti shook his head. ‘Not since the government closed the brothels. There are a few, but they work the hotels and don’t cause us any trouble.’

  ‘Here we have them in front of the station, but I think times are bad for some of them. There are too many women today who are willing to give it away,’ Ambrogiani volunteered, then added, ‘for love.’

  Brunetti’s daughter had just turned thirteen, so he didn’t want to think about what young women would give away for love. ‘Can I talk to the Americans?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Ambrogiani answered then reached for the phone. ‘We’ll tell them you’re the Chief of Police for Venice. They’ll like that rank, so they’ll talk to you.’ He dialled a number with easy familiarity and, while he waited for a response, pulled the file back towards him. Rather fussily, he lined up the few papers in the file and placed it squarely in front of him.

  He spoke into the telephone in heavily-accented, but correct, English. ‘Good afternoon, Tiffany. This is Major Ambrogiani. Is the Major there? What? Yes, I’ll wait.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece and held the phone away from his ear. ‘He’s in conference. Americans seem to live in conference.’

  ‘Could it be …’ Brunetti began but stopped when Ambrogiani pulled his hand away.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Good morning, Major Butterworth.’ The name had been in the file, but when Ambrogiani said it, it sounded like ‘Budderword’.

  ‘Yes, Major. I have the Chief of the Venice police here with me now. Yes, we brought him out by helicopter for the day.’ A long pause followed. ‘No, he can spare us on
ly today.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘In twenty minutes? Yes, he’ll be there. No, I’m sorry, but I can’t, Major. I have to be in conference. Yes, thank you.’ He set the phone down, placed his pencil in a neat diagonal across the cover of the file, and said, ‘He’ll see you in twenty minutes.’

  ‘And your conference?’ Brunetti asked.

  Ambrogiani dismissed the idea with a wave of the hand. ‘It’ll just be a waste of time. If they do know anything, they won’t tell you, and if they don’t know anything, then they can’t. So there’s no reason I should waste my time by going.’ Changing the topic, he asked, ‘How’s your English?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good, that’ll make it much easier.’

  ‘Who is he, this major?’

  Ambrogiani repeated the name, again gliding over all of the sharper consonants. ‘He’s their liaison officer. Or, as they say, he “liaises”’ – he used the English word – ‘between them and us.’ Both grinned at the ease with which English allowed its speakers to turn a noun into a verb, a familiarity which Italian would certainly not permit.

  ‘Of what does this “liaising” consist?’

  ‘Oh, if we have problems, he comes to us, or he goes the other way, if they have problems.’

  ‘What sort of problems?’

  ‘If anyone tries to get in at the gate without the proper identification. Or if we break their traffic rules. Or if they ask a Carabiniere why he’s buying ten kilos of beef at their supermarket. Things like that.’

  ‘Supermarket?’ Brunetti asked with real surprise.

  ‘Yes, supermarket. And bowling alley’ – he used the English word – ‘and cinema, and even a Burger King’ – the name was said without a trace of an accent.

  Fascinated, Brunetti repeated the words ‘Burger King’ with the same tone with which a child might say ‘pony’ if promised one.

  Hearing him, Ambrogiani laughed. ‘It’s remarkable, isn’t it? There’s a whole little world here, one that has nothing to do with Italy.’ He gestured out of his window. ‘Out there lies America, Commissario. It’s what we’re all going to become, I think.’ After a short pause, he repeated, ‘America.’

  That was precisely what awaited Brunetti a quarter of an hour later, when he opened the doors of the NATO command headquarters and walked up the three steps to the lobby. The walls held posters of unnamed cities which, because of the height and homogeneity of their skyscrapers, had to be American. That nation was loudly proclaimed, too, in the many signs which forbade smoking and in the notices which covered the bulletin boards along the walls. The marble floor was the only Italianate touch. As he had been directed, Brunetti climbed the steps in front of him, turned right at the top, and went into the second office on the left. The room into which he walked was divided by head-high partitions, and the walls, like those on the floor below, were covered with bulletin boards and printed notices. Backed up against one of them were two armchairs covered in what appeared to be thick grey plastic. At a desk just inside the door, to the right, sat a young woman who could only be American. She had blonde hair which was cut off in a short fringe above her blue eyes but hung down almost to her waist at the back. A rash of freckles ran across her nose, and her teeth had that perfection common to most Americans and to the wealthiest Italians. She turned to him with a bright smile; her mouth turned up at the corners, but her eyes remained curiously expressionless and flat.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, smiling back. ‘My name’s Brunetti. I think the Major is expecting me.’

  She came out from behind the desk, revealing a body as perfect as her teeth, and walked through an opening in the partition, though she could just as easily have phoned or called over the top. From the other side of the partition, he heard her voice answered by a deeper one. After a few seconds, she appeared at the opening and signalled to Brunetti, ‘In here, please, sir.’

  Behind the desk sat a blond young man who appeared to be barely into his twenties. Brunetti looked at him and as quickly away, for the man seemed to glow, glisten. When he looked back, Brunetti saw that it was not radiance but only youth, health, and someone else to care for his uniforms.

  ‘Chief Brunetti?’ he said and rose to his feet behind his desk. To Brunetti, he looked like he had just come from a shower or bath: his skin was taut, shining, as though he had set down his razor in order to take Brunetti’s hand. While they shook hands, Brunetti noticed his eyes, a clear, translucent blue, the colour the laguna had been twenty years ago.

  ‘I’m very glad you could come out from Venice to speak to us, Chief Brunetti, or is it Questore?’

  ‘Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said, giving himself a promotion in the hopes that it would assure him greater access to information. He noticed that Major Butterworth’s desk held In and Out boxes; the In was empty, the Out full.

  ‘Please have a seat,’ Butterworth said and waited for Brunetti to sit before taking his own seat. The American pulled a file from his front drawer, this one just minimally thicker than the one Ambrogiani had. ‘You’re here about Sergeant Foster, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is it you’d like to know?’

  ‘I’d like to know who killed him,’ Brunetti said impassively.

  Butterworth hesitated a moment, not knowing how to take the remark, then decided to treat it as a joke. ‘Yes,’ he said, with a small laugh that barely passed his lips, ‘we’d all like to know that. But I’m not sure we have any information that might help us find out who it was.’

  ‘What information do you have?’

  He slid the file towards Brunetti. Even though he knew it would contain the same material he had just seen, Brunetti opened it and read through the pages again. This file contained a different photograph from the one he had seen in the other. For the first time, though he had seen his dead face and naked body, Brunetti got a clear idea of what the young man looked like. More handsome in this photo, Foster here had a short moustache that he had shaved off sometime before he was killed.

  ‘When was this photo taken?’

  ‘Probably when he entered the service.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Seven years.’

  ‘How long has he been here in Italy?’

  ‘Four years. ln fact, he just reupped in order to stay here.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Re-enlisted. For another three years.’

  ‘And he would have remained here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Remembering something he had read in the file, Brunetti asked, ‘How did he learn Italian?’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Butterworth said.

  ‘If he had a full time job here, that wouldn’t leave him a lot of time to learn a new language,’ Brunetti explained.

  ‘Tanti di noi parliamo Italiano,’ Butterworth answered in heavily accented but understandable Italian.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Brunetti said and smiled, as he guessed he was expected to do, at the Major’s ability to speak Italian. ‘Did he live here? There are barracks here, aren’t there?’

  ‘Yes, there are,’ Butterworth answered. ‘But Sergeant Foster had his own apartment in Vicenza.’

  Brunetti knew the apartment would have been searched, so he didn’t bother to ask if it had been. ‘Did you find anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would it be possible for me to have a look at it?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s necessary,’ Butterworth said quickly.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s necessary, either,’ Brunetti said with a small smile. ‘But I’d like to see where he lived.’

  ‘It’s not regular procedure, for you to see it.’

  ‘I didn’t realize there was a regular procedure here,’ Brunetti said. He knew that either the Carabinieri or the Vicenza police could easily authorize his inspection of the apartment, but he wanted, at least at this point of the investigation, to remain as agreeable as possible with all of the authorities concerned
.

  ‘I suppose it could be arranged,’ Butterworth conceded. ‘When would you like to do it?’

  ‘There’s no hurry. This afternoon. Tomorrow.’

  ‘I didn’t realize you were planning to return tomorrow, Vice-Questore.’

  ‘Only if I don’t finish everything today, Major.’

  ‘What else was it you wanted to do?’

  ‘I’d like to talk to some of the people who knew him, who worked with him.’ Brunetti had noticed, among the papers in the file, that the dead man had attended university classes at the base. Like the Romans, these new empire builders carried their schools with them. ‘Perhaps to people he went to university with.’

  ‘I suppose something can be arranged, though I admit I don’t see the reason for it. We’ll handle this end of the investigation.’ He paused, as if waiting for Brunetti to challenge him. When Brunetti said nothing, Butterworth asked, ‘When would you prefer to see his apartment?’

  Brunetti glanced down at his watch. It was almost noon. ‘Perhaps sometime this afternoon. If you could tell me where the apartment is, then I could have my driver take me there on my way back to the railway station?’

  ‘Would you like me to go along with you, Vice-Questore?’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Major, but I don’t think that will be necessary. If you’d just give me the address.’

  Major Butterworth pulled a pad towards him and, without having to open the file to find it, wrote an address and handed it to Brunetti. ‘It’s not far from here. I’m sure your driver won’t have any trouble finding it.’

  ‘Thank you, Major,’ Brunetti said and stood. ‘Would you have any objection if I spent some time here on the base?’

  ‘Post,’ Butterworth responded immediately. ‘This is a post. The Air Force has bases. We have posts in the Army.’

  ‘Ah, I see. In Italian, they’re both bases. Would it be all right for me to remain here for a while?’