Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

  Luciano suddenly slipped over on to his stomach and paddled like a dog, a motion strangely awkward in such a powerful swimmer, to the edge of the embankment. He reached the ladder nailed to the wooden embankment wall, and started to pull himself up the rungs.

  The crowd parted in front of the ladder and at just that instant the sun emerged from the waters of the Adriatic. Its first rays, rising above the sea wall and cutting across the narrow peninsula, caught Luciano as he paused at the top of the ladder, transforming this fisherman's son into a godlike presence that had arisen gleaming from the waters. There was a collective intake of breath, as in the presence of the numinous.

  Luciano shook his head, and water spattered to both sides. Then, looking at his father, he said, 'They're both in the cabin.'

  3

  The boy's announcement caused little surprise among the people standing at the side of the pier. Someone not of that place might have responded differently to the revelation that two people were lying dead in the waters below them, but the people of Pellestrina had known Giulio Bottin for fifty-three years; many of them had known his father; still others had known his grandfather. The men of the Bottin family had, and had always, been hard, merciless men, whose characters had perhaps been formed, surely influenced, by the brutality of the sea. If violence befell Giulio, there were few who would be surprised to learn of it.

  Some had noticed a difference in Marco, perhaps caused by the fact that he was the only one of the Bottin who had ever remained in school more than a few years or who had ever learned from books more than to read a few words or set down a crabbed signature. There had also been the influence of his mother, dead now for five years. Originally from Murano, she had been a soft, loving woman who had married Giulio twenty years ago, some said because she had been involved with her cousin Maurizio, who had left her to go to Argentina, others because her father, a gambler, had borrowed heavily from Giulio and had repaid the loan by giving away his daughter in marriage. The events leading to their marriage had never been made clear, or perhaps there simply was no story to tell. But what had always been evident to everyone in the village was the almost total lack of love or sympathy between husband and wife, so perhaps the stories were merely a way of making sense of that absence of feeling.

  Regardless of how she may have felt about her husband, Bianca had adored her son, and people, always quick to gossip, had said that this was the reason for Giulio's behaviour towards him: cold, hard, unforgiving, but completely in the tradition of the Bottin men towards their sons. At this point in the story, most people threw up their hands and said those two should never have married, but then someone else was sure to say that then there would have been no Marco and remember how happy he had made Bianca, and just one look at him and you'd know what a good boy he is.

  No one would say that in the present tense again, not now, not with Marco lying dead at the bottom of the harbour in the burnt-out wreckage of his father's boat.

  Gradually, as there came to be more light, there came to be fewer people, as they slipped back to their homes. Soon most of them had disappeared, but then the men returned and were seen briefly crossing the square towards their boats. Bottin and his son were dead, but that was no reason to miss a day's clam harvest. The season was already short enough, what with the laws controlling what they could do, and where, and when.

  Within half an hour, the only boat remaining at the pier was the one to the left of the sunken Squallus: the gas tank had exploded with such force that a metal stanchion had been blown through the side of the Anna Maria, about a metre above the waterline. The captain, Ottavio Rusponi, had at first thought he would risk it and follow the other boats to the clam beds, but when he studied the clouds and held his left hand up to sense the wind, he decided not to, not with the rising wind from the east.

  It wasn't until eight that morning, when Captain Rusponi called his insurance agent to report the damage to his boat, that anyone thought of calling the police, and it was the agent, not the captain, who did so. Later, those questioned about their failure to notify the authorities would claim that they thought someone else had done it. The failure to report the deaths of the two Bottin men would be taken by many as a suggestion of the esteem in which the family was held by the rest of the citizens of Pellestrina.

  The Carabinieri were slow in getting there, coming down in a launch from their station on the Lido. There obviously had been some confusion when the deaths were reported, for the Carabinieri who came were in uniform, and no provision had been made to bring along anyone who could dive down to the wreckage, for no one had explained to them where the bodies were. The subsequent discussion was juridical as well as jurisdictional, no one being quite sure which arm of the law was meant to deal with a suspicious death in water. At last it was decided that the city police should be summoned to investigate, along with divers from the Vigili del Fuoco. Not the least of the reasons for this decision was the fact that the two Carabinieri who worked as divers were that day engaged in the illegal underwater collection of pottery shards from a newly discovered dumping ground behind Murano, a place where unsuccessful or badly fired pottery had been dumped during the sixteenth century. The passage of centuries had transformed junk into potsherds; by the same alchemy, the worthless had been rendered valuable. The site had been discovered two months before and reported to the Sopraitendenza ai I Beni Culturali, which had added it to the list of sites of archaeological value where diving was prohibited. By night, watch was meant to be kept on it, as well as on the other places in the laguna where the waters covered relics of the past. By day, however, it was not unknown for a boat bearing the markings of some agency of the law to anchor in the area. And who would question the presence of the industrious divers who gave every appearance of being there on official business?

  The Carabinieri returned in their boat to the Lido, and after more than an hour, a police launch pulled into the waters behind the fleet of Pellestrina, now all safely berthed along the pier and all the captains home.

  The pilot of the launch slowed as he approached a boat with the markings of the Fire Department that was already anchored and bobbing in the water just behind the only empty space in the long line of docked boats. He slipped his engine into reverse for an instant, to bring the boat to a stop. Sergeant Lorenzo Vianello walked to the side of the boat and looked down into the waters that filled the empty space, but the sun glistened brightly and all he could see were the tilted masts sticking out of the surface. 'Is that it?' he called to the two black-suited divers who stood on the deck of the Fire Department launch.

  One of the divers called across something Vianello couldn't make out and then went back to the business of pulling on his left flipper.

  Danilo Bonsuan, the police pilot, came out of the small cabin at the front of the police launch and glanced down at the sunken boat. He raised a protective hand to cut the sun's glare and looked down to where Vianello was pointing. 'That's got to be it’ he said. 'The man who called said it caught fire and sank.' He looked at the boats on either side of the empty space, and saw that their sides and decks were scarred and blackened by flames.

  Beside them, the two divers fiddled with their masks, pulling tight the straps that held their oxygen canisters to their backs. They slipped the mouthpieces in, took a few exploratory breaths, and walked to the side of their boat. Vianello, tall and broad shouldered, stood beside his shorter colleague, still looking down into the water.

  Indicating the two divers, he asked Bonsuan, 'Would you go into that water?'

  The pilot shrugged. 'It's not too bad out here. Besides, they're covered,' he said, nodding with his chin towards the black-suited divers.

  The first diver stepped over the side of the boat and, facing outward, the back of his rubber fins placed carefully on the rungs of the exterior ladder, walked down into the water, followed immediately by the other.

  'Aren't they supposed to jump in backwards?' Vianello asked.

  'That's only
on Jacques Cousteau,' Bonsuan said and went back into the cabin. He came out a moment later, a cigarette cupped in one hand. 'What else did they tell you?' he asked the sergeant.

  'A call came in from the Carabinieri on the Lido’ Vianello began. Bonsuan interrupted him with an antiphonal, 'sons of bitches', but the sergeant pretended not to hear and continued, 'They said there were two bodies in a sunken boat and we should get some divers out here to have a look.'

  'Nothing else?' Bonsuan asked.

  Vianello shrugged, as if to ask whether much more could be expected from Carabinieri.

  Silently, they watched the bubbles burst on the surface in front of their boat. Gradually, the tide pulled the boat backwards; Bonsuan let it drift for a few minutes but then went back into the cabin, fired the engine to life, and pulled the boat back into place directly behind the gap in the line of boats. He cut the engine and came back out on deck. He reached down and picked up a rope. Effortlessly, he tossed it towards the Fire Department boat, looping it around a stanchion the first time, and tied their own boat to the other. Below them, they could see motion, but it was no more than gleams and flashes, and they could make no sense of it. Bonsuan finished his cigarette and tossed the butt overboard, like most Venetians utterly careless about what he threw into the water. The two men watched the filter float, then dance, in the fizzing bubbles before freeing itself and drifting away.

  After about five minutes, the divers surfaced and pulled back their masks. Graziano, the more senior, called up to the men on the police boat, 'There's two of them down there.'

  'What happened?' Vianello asked.

  Graziano shook his head. 'No idea. It looks like they drowned when the boat went down.'

  'They're fishermen,' Bonsuan said in disbelief. 'They wouldn't get trapped in a sinking boat.'

  Graziano's business was to dive into the water, not to speculate on what he found there, so he said nothing. When Bonsuan remained silent, the man bobbing on the surface beside Graziano asked, 'Do you want us to bring them up?'

  Vianello and Bonsuan exchanged a glance. Neither of them had any idea of what had happened to take the two men down with their boat, but neither of them wanted to make a decision of this sort and thus run the risk of destroying whatever evidence might be down there with them.

  Finally Graziano said, 'The crabs are there already.'

  'OK, get them out,' Vianello said.

  Graziano and his partner pulled on their masks, slipped the mouthpieces into place, and, like a pair of eider ducks, upended themselves and disappeared. The pilot went down the cabin steps, pulled open one of the seats along the side, and took out some complicated rigging from the end of which hung a double canvas sling. He came up the steps and back to Vianello's side. He raised the rope, slung it over the side of the boat, and lowered it into the water.

  A minute later Graziano and his partner bobbed to the surface, the body of a third man dangling limp between them. With motions so practised it made Vianello uneasy to watch them, they eased the arms of the dead man into the sling Bonsuan tossed down; one of them dived under the water to run a rope between the man's legs, then attached it to a hook on the front of the sling.

  He waved to Bonsuan and the pilot and Vianello hauled the dead man up, amazed at how heavy he was. Vianello caught himself thinking that this was why it was called dead weight, but he forced himself, embarrassed, away from that thought. Slowly the body lifted out of the water, and the two men had to lean out from the deck to prevent it from banging against the side. They were not entirely successful, but finally they dragged him over the railing and laid him on the deck, his sightless eyes staring up at the sky.

  Before they could take a closer look, they heard splashing below them. Quickly, they loosened the sling and threw it over the side again. Even more careful this time to keep the second body from the side of the boat, they hauled it up on to the deck and stretched it out beside the other.

  Two crabs still clung to the hair of the first corpse, but Vianello was too horrified by the sight to do anything except stare. Bonsuan reached down and pulled them off, casually tossing them over the side of the boat into the water.

  The divers climbed up the ladder on the side of the police boat and stepped over the gunwale and on to the deck. They unhooked their oxygen tanks and set them carefully down, pulled off their masks, then the black rubber hoods that covered their heads.

  On the deck of the police launch, the four men looked at the bodies that lay at their feet. Vianello went into the cabin, and when he emerged he had two woollen blankets in his hands. He stuffed one under his elbow, signalled to Bonsuan, and shook out the first one. The pilot caught the other end, and together they lowered it over the body of the older man. Vianello took the second blanket, and together they repeated the process with the son.

  It was only then, when they were fully covered and hidden from sight, that Graziano's partner, the youngest living person on the boat, said, 'No crab did that to his face.'

  4

  Vianello had seen the crushed fragments of bone showing through the bloodless wound on the older man's head, though his quick glance had discerned no sign of violence on the son's body. Nodding in acknowledgement of the diver's remark, he took out his telefonino, called the Questura, and asked to speak to his immediate superior, Commissario Guido Brunetti. While he waited, he watched the two divers climb on to their own boat. Brunetti finally answered, and the sergeant said, 'I'm out here on Pellestrina, sir. It looks like one of them was killed.' Then, to avoid any ambiguity, given the fact that the men had died in what appeared to be an accident, he continued, 'That is, murdered.' 'How?' Brunetti asked.

  'The older one was hit on the head, hard enough to do a lot of damage. I don't know about the other one, the son.'

  'Are you sure who they are?' his superior asked.

  Vianello had been expecting the question. 'No, sir. That is, no one's given us a positive identification, but the man who called the Carabinieri said they were the owners of the boat, Giulio Bottin and his son, so we just assumed that's who they were.'

  'See if you can get someone to confirm that.'

  'Yes, sir. Anything else?'

  'Just the usual. Ask around, see what people say and what they volunteer about them.' Before Vianello could ask, Brunetti added, 'Don't act as though it's anything more than an accident. And talk to the divers, tell them they aren't to say anything.'

  'How long do you think that will last?' Vianello asked, looking across to the deck of the other boat, where the two divers, now stripped of their diving gear, were putting on their normal uniforms.

  'Ten minutes, I'd guess,' Brunetti said, with a soft explosion of breath that, in other circumstances, might have been a laugh.

  'I'll send them back to the Lido, then,' Vianello said. 'That will at least slow things down.' Before Brunetti could comment, the sergeant asked, 'What do you want to do, sir?'

  'I want to keep this quiet as long as we can, that they were killed. Start asking around, but gently, and I'll come out. If there's a boat free, I should be there in an hour, maybe less.'

  Vianello was relieved. 'Good, sir. Do you want Bonsuan to take the bodies to the hospital?'

  'Yes, as soon as you get an identification. I'll call and tell them he's coming in.' Suddenly there was nothing more to be said or ordered. Repeating that he'd be there as soon as he could, Brunetti hung up.

  He looked at his watch again, and saw that it was past eleven: surely his superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, should be in his office by now. He walked downstairs without bothering to call ahead and went into the small anteroom that led to the Vice-Questore's much larger office.

  Patta's secretary, Signorina Elettra Zorzi, sat at her desk, a book open in front of her. He was surprised to see her reading a book in the office, accustomed as he was to seeing her with magazines and newspapers. Because she had her chin propped on her cupped palms and her fingers pressed over her ears, it was not until she sensed his presence and sat u
p that he noticed she had cut her hair. It was shorter than usual, and if the roundness of her face and the vermilion of her lips had not declared her femininity, he would have judged the cut severe, almost masculine.

  He didn't know how to acknowledge her new hairstyle and, like everyone else in a city where it had not rained for three months, he was tired of asking when it would rain, so he asked, nodding towards the book, 'Something more serious than usual?'

  'Veblen,' she answered, 'The Theory of the Leisure Class.' He was flattered that she didn't bother to ask if he was familiar with the book.

  'Isn't that a bit heavy?'

  She agreed, then said, ‘I used not to be able to get any serious reading done here, what with the constant interruptions.' She pursed her lips as her eyes travelled round her office in an arc that encompassed phone, computer, and the door to Patta's office. 'But things have improved, so I can start to make better use of my time.'

  "That's good to know,' Brunetti said. Looking at the book, he added, ‘I was fascinated by his view of lawns.'

  She smiled up at him. 'Yes, and sports.'

  He couldn't resist, 'And next, when you finish that?'

  ‘I haven't decided.' A smile blossomed. 'Perhaps I could ask the Vice-Questore's advice.'

  'Indeed,' Brunetti replied. ‘I came to ask about him. Is he in?'

  'No, not yet. He called about an hour ago and said he was at a meeting and would probably not be in until after lunch.'

  'Ah,' Brunetti said, surprised not at the message but at the fact that Patta had bothered to call to leave it. 'When he comes in, please tell him I've gone to Pellestrina.'