Acqua Alta

by Donna Leon

  His reverie was broken by a knock on the door. ‘Avanti,’ he shouted and closed the window. Time to resume roasting.

  Signorina Elettra came into the room, a notebook in one hand, a file in the other. ‘I found the captain’s name in the file, sir. It’s Carrara, Giulio Carrara. He’s still in Rome, but he was promoted to maggiore last year.’

  ‘How did you find that out, signorina?’

  ‘I called his office in Rome and spoke to his secretary. I asked her to tell him to expect a call from you this afternoon. He’s already gone to lunch and won’t be back until three thirty.’ Brunetti knew what three thirty could mean in Rome.

  He might as well have spoken the thought, for Signorina Elettra answered it. ‘I asked. She said he actually gets back then, so I’m sure you could call him.’

  ‘Thank you, signorina,’ he said and once again gave silent thanks that this marvel had managed to resist the daily assault of Patta’s reign. ‘If I might ask, how did you manage to find his name so quickly?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been familiarizing myself with the files for months. I’ve made some changes because there doesn’t seem to be any inner logic to the system as it is now. I hope no one will mind.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. No one’s ever able to find anything, so I don’t think you can do the system any harm. It’s all supposed to be put on computer.’

  She gave him the look of one who had spent time among the accumulated records; he would not repeat the remark. She came up to his desk and placed the folder on it. He noticed that she was wearing a black woollen dress today, tied with a bold red belt pulled tight around a very narrow waist. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped at her forehead. ‘Is it always so hot in here, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘No, signorina, it’s something that happens for a few weeks in early February. It’s usually over by the end of the month. It doesn’t affect your office.’

  ‘Is it the scirocco?’ It was a sensible enough question. If the hot wind that blew up from Africa could bring acqua alta, there was certainly no reason it couldn’t raise the temperature in his office.

  ‘No, signorina. It’s something in the heating system. No one’s ever been able to figure it out. You’ll get used to it, and it really will be gone by the end of the month.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said, wiping again at her brow. ‘If there’s nothing else, sir, I’ll go to lunch now.’

  Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that it was almost one. ‘Take an umbrella with you when you go out,’ he said. ‘It looks like it’s going to rain again.’

  * * * *

  Brunetti went home for lunch with his family, and Paola kept her promise not to tell Raffi about the syringes and what his father had feared when he found them. She did, however, manage to use her silence to pry from Brunetti a firm promise that he would not only help her carry the table out on to the terrace at the first sign of sun but would also help her use the syringes to inject poison into each of the many holes made by the woodworms as they bored their way out of the legs where they spent their winter lethargy.

  Raffi closed himself in his room after lunch, saying that he had to do his Greek homework, ten pages of Homer to translate for the next morning. Two years ago, when he had fancied himself an anarchist, he had closed himself in his room to think dark thoughts about capitalism, in the doing perhaps to hasten its fall. But this year he had not only found a girlfriend but, apparently, the desire to be accepted at the university. In either case, he disappeared into his room directly after meals, leaving Brunetti to conclude that his wish for solitude had something to do with adolescence, not political orientation.

  Paola threatened dark things to Chiara if she didn’t help with the dishes, and while they were busy there, Brunetti stuck his head into the kitchen and told them he was going back to work.

  When he left the house, the threatened rain was falling, still light but with the promise of much worse to come. He raised his umbrella and turned right into Rugetta, making his way back towards the Rialto Bridge. Within a few minutes, he was glad he had remembered to wear his boots, for large puddles covered the pavement, tempting him to step heavily into them. By the time he got to the other side of the bridge, it was raining more heavily, and by the time he got to the Questura, his trousers were soaked from calf to knee above where they were protected by the boots.

  In his office, he removed his jacket and wished for a moment that he could take off his trousers, too, and hang them to dry above the heater: they’d be dry in minutes. Instead, he held the window open long enough to cool off the office then sat behind his desk, dialled the operator and asked to be connected to the office of the art theft squad at police headquarters in Rome. When he was through, he gave his name and asked for Maggiore Carrara.

  ‘Buon giorno, Commissario.’

  ‘Congratulations, Maggiore.’

  ‘Thanks, and it was about time they did it.’

  ‘You’re still a kid. You’ve got plenty of time to become a general.’

  ‘By the time I’m a general, there won’t be a single painting left in any of the museums in this country,’ he said. Carrara’s laugh, when it came, was delayed just so long that Brunetti was unsure whether the remark was meant to be a joke or not.

  ‘That’s what I’m calling you about, Giulio.’

  ‘What? Paintings?’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, museums, at any rate.’

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ he asked with the sharp curiosity that Brunetti remembered he felt for his work.

  ‘We’ve had a murder here.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Semenzato, at the Palazzo Ducale.’ His voice was neutral.

  ‘You know anything about him, Giulio?’

  ‘Officially or unofficially?’

  ‘Officially.’

  ‘Absolutely not. Nothing. No. Not a thing.’ Before Brunetti could do it, Carrara broke into his own litany and asked, ‘Is that enough to make you ask the next question, Guido?’

  Brunetti smiled into the phone. ‘All right. Unofficially?’

  ‘How strange of you to ask that. In fact, I have a note here on my desk to call you. I didn’t know you were handling the case until I read your name in the papers this morning, so I thought I’d give you a call and suggest a few things. And ask a few favours, as well. I think there are a number of things we might both be interested in.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like his bank statements.’

  ‘Semenzato’s?’

  ‘Isn’t that who we’re talking about?’

  ‘Sorry, Giulio, but I’ve had people telling me all day that I ought not to talk ill of the dead.’

  ‘If we can’t talk ill of the dead, who can we talk ill of?’ Carrara asked with surprising good sense.

  ‘I’ve already got someone working on them. I ought to have them by tomorrow. Anything else?’

  ‘I’d like to have a look at records of his longdistance calls, both from his home and from the office at the museum. Do you think you could get them?’

  ‘This still unofficial?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll have them.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Have you spoken to his widow yet?’

  ‘No, I haven’t, not personally. One of my men has spoken to her. Why?’

  ‘She might have some idea of where he travelled to during the last few months.’

  ‘Why do you want to know that?’ Brunetti asked, honestly curious.

  ‘No special reason, Guido. But we like to know this sort of thing, once a person’s name has come under our noses more than once.’

  ‘And his had?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Nothing specific, if I have to tell the truth.’ Carrara sounded disappointed that he didn’t have a definite accusation to pass on to Brunetti. ‘Two men we arrested at the airport here, more than a year ago, with Chinese jade figurines, said only that they had heard
him named in conversation. They were only carriers; they didn’t know much at all, didn’t even know the value of what they were carrying.’

  ‘And that was?’Brunetti asked.

  ‘Billions. The statues were traced back to the National Museum in Taiwan. They’d disappeared three years before; no one ever learned how.’

  ‘Were those the only things taken?’

  ‘No, but they’re the only things recovered. So far.’

  ‘When else did you hear his name?’

  ‘Oh, from one of the little people we keep on a string down here. We can get him for drugs or for breaking and entering any time we want him, so we let him run loose, and in return he brings us back a piece of information now and again. He said that he had overheard Semenzato’s name mentioned on the phone by one of the men he sells things to.’

  ‘Stolen things?’

  ‘Of course. He has nothing else to sell.’

  ‘Was the man speaking to Semenzato, or about him?’

  ‘About him.’

  ‘Did he tell you what he heard?’

  ‘The man who was speaking said only that the other person should try to speak to Semenzato. At first, we assumed the reference to him was innocent. After all, the man was a museum director. But then we caught the two men at the airport, and then Semenzato turned up dead in his office. So I thought it was time to call and tell you.’ Carrara paused long enough to signal that he was finished with what he had to give, and now it was time to see what he could get. ‘What have you found out about him there?’

  ‘Remember the Chinese exhibition a few years ago?’

  Carrara grunted in assent.

  ‘Some of the pieces that were sent back to China were copies.’

  Carrara’s whistle, either of surprise or admiration for such a feat, came clearly through the line.

  ‘And it seems he was silent partner in a pair of antique shops, one here and one in Milan,’ Brunetti continued.

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Francesco Murino Do you know him?’

  Carrara’s voice was slow, measured. ‘Only in the way we knew Semenzato, unofficially. But his name has turned up more than a few times.’

  ‘Anything definite?’

  ‘No, nothing. It looks like he covers himself very well.’ There was a long pause, and then Carrara added, in a voice suddenly grown more serious, ‘Or someone covers things for him.’

  ‘Like that, is it?’ Brunetti asked. It could mean anything: some branch of the government, Mafia, a foreign government, even the Church.

  ‘Yes. Every lead we get turns to nothing. We hear his name, and then we don’t. The finance police have checked him three times in the last two years, and he’s clean.’

  ‘Has his name ever been linked to Semenzato’s?’

  ‘Not by anyone here. What else have you got?’

  ‘Are you familiar with Dottoressa Lynch?’

  ‘L’americana?’ Carrara asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course I’m familiar with her. I have a degree in art history, Guido, after all.’

  ‘Is she that well known?’

  ‘Her book on Chinese art is the best one around. She’s still in China, isn’t she?’

  ‘No, she’s here.’

  ‘In Venice? What’s she doing there?’

  Brunetti had asked himself the same question. Trying to decide whether to go back to China, whether to stay here because of her lover, or, now, waiting to see if her former lover had been murdered. ‘She came here to talk to Semenzato about the pieces that were sent back to China. Two toughs beat her up last week. Cracked her jaw and broke some ribs. It was in the papers here.’

  Again, Carrara’s whistle came across the line from Rome, but this one somehow managed to convey compassion. ‘There was nothing here,’ he said.

  ‘Her assistant in China, a Japanese woman who came here to oversee the return of the exhibits to China, died in an accident out there.’

  ‘Freud says somewhere that there are no accidents, doesn’t he?’Carrara asked.

  ‘I don’t know if Freud meant to include China when he said that, but, no, it doesn’t sound like it was an accident.’

  Carrara’s grunt could have meant anything. Brunetti chose to interpret it as assent and said, ‘I’m going to talk to Dottoressa Lynch tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to try to convince her to leave the city for a while, and I want to learn more about the pieces that were substituted. What they were, whether they have a market value—’

  Carrara interrupted him. ‘Of course they have a market value.’

  ‘Yes, I understand that, Giulio. But I want to get some idea of what the market would be, whether they could be sold openly.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t understand what you meant, Guido.’ His pause could have been read as an apology, and then he added, ‘If it’s coming out of a dig in China, you can pretty much put any price you want on it.’

  ‘That rare?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘That rare. But what do you want to know about it?’

  ‘Chiefly, I want to know where or how the copies could have been made.’

  Carrara interrupted again, ‘Italy is full of studios that make copies, Guido. Everything: Greek statues, Etruscan jewellery, Ming pottery, Renaissance paintings. You name it, and there’s an Italian artisan who can make you one that will fool the experts.’

  ‘But haven’t you people down there got all sorts of ways to detect them? Surely I’ve read that. Carbon-14 and things like that.’

  Carrara laughed. ‘Talk to Dottoressa Lynch, Guido. She has a whole chapter on it in her book, so I’m sure she can tell you things that will keep you awake on long winter nights.’ Brunetti heard noise from the other end, then silence as Carrara covered the phone with his hand. In a moment, he was back. ‘Sorry, Guido, but I’ve got a call coming in from Vietnam; it’s taken two days to get it through. Call me if you hear anything, and I’ll call you if I do.’ Before Brunetti could agree, Carrara was gone and the line was dead.

  * * * *

  Chapter Fourteen

  Entirely unconscious of how hot his office had become, Brunetti sat at his desk and considered what Carrara had told him. Take a museum director, add guards, labour unions, stir in a bit of the Mafia, and the result was a cocktail strong enough to give the art theft branch a bad hangover. He drew a piece of paper from his drawer and began to make a list of the information he needed to get from Brett. He wanted complete descriptions of the pieces she had discovered to be false. He needed more information about how the switch could have been done and where and how the false pieces could have been made. And he needed a complete account of her every conversation or exchange with Semenzato.

  He stopped writing and allowed his thoughts to veer towards the personal: would she go back? As he thought of her, called up a picture of her as he had last seen her, slamming her hand down on the table and walking angrily from the room, he was struck by a discrepancy he had previously overlooked. Why had she received only a beating while Semenzato had been killed? He had no doubt that the men sent to her had been ordered only to deliver their violent warning that she not keep the meeting. But why would they have bothered with that if Semenzato was going to be killed anyway? Had Flavia’s interference upset the balance of things, or had Semenzato somehow precipitated the violence that led to his death?

  Practical things first. He called down and asked Vianello to come up, and he told him to stop outside Patta’s office to request Signorina Elettra to come up with him. The Interpol report had not arrived, so he thought it was time to begin ferreting about on his own. He went and opened the window while he waited for them to arrive.

  They came in together a few minutes later, Vianello holding the door open to allow her to pass in before him. As soon as they were inside, Brunetti closed the window, and the sergeant, ever gruff and bear-like Vianello, pulled a chair up to Brunetti’s desk and held it while Signorina Elettra took her place on
it. Vianello?

  As she sat down, Signorina Elettra slipped a single sheet of paper on to Brunetti’s desk. ‘This came in from Rome, sir.’ In response to his unspoken question, she added, ‘They’ve traced the fingerprints.’