Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

She squealed. There is no more delicate word: she squealed in delighted horror and backed up against the rail of the boat. The monster approached, and as he reached her, his hands moved past her head, careful not to touch her hair, and Carlo's smiling mouth came down softly on her own, lingering there until his uncle shouted from the tiller, 'She's not a fish, Carlo. Get back to work.'

  But today, here on the beach, there was no thought of work. His hand tightened on her arm; a gull squawked and took flight as he pulled her, not roughly but not gently, towards him. Their kiss was long and their bodies grew, if possible, closer together. He pulled away from her, moved his hand up and placed it gently on the back of her head, pressing her face into the angle of his shoulder. His hand moved and began gently running up and down, up and down her back then stopped, fingers splayed, at her belt.

  Elettra made a sound, part sigh, like a soprano about to begin an important aria. The tips, only the tips, of his last two fingers slipped below her belt. Her mouth opened and she pressed it against his collarbone, then suddenly she bit at it through the heavy wool of his sweater.

  She moved back from him then, grabbed blindly for his hand, and moved off, quickly, leading him down the beach and towards the entrance to the cave in the jetty.

  20

  Brunetti, less troubled by his passions, but still smarting from being called Silvia, considered the lies he had just told Signorina Elettra. There was no information he wanted from the Guardia di Finanza, and it was true that Vianello had indeed arrived at a point where he could summon up a remarkable amount of information from the computer. The name of the Finanza stuck in his mind, however, reminding him of something else he'd read or been told about them; as always, it had been something unpleasant.

  He got up and stood by his window, his attention drawn down into Campo San Lorenzo, where someone - perhaps the old men who lived in the nursing home there - had constructed multi-storeyed shelters for the stray cats who had haunted the campo for years. He wondered what generation of cat he looked at today, how they were descended from the cats who'd been there when he'd first come to the Questura, more than a decade ago.

  The name crept into his mind with all the grace and limberness of one of those cats: Vittorio Spadini, the man said to be Luisa Follini's lover. He'd had his boat confiscated by the Finanza, when was it, two years ago? Spadini lived on Burano; it was a fine spring day, a perfect day to go out to Burano for lunch. Brunetti left word with the guard at the door that, if anyone asked for him, he was to say that the Commissario had a dental appointment and would be back after lunch.

  He got off the vaporetto at Mazzorbo and turned to his left, eager for the walk to the centre of Burano, already anticipating lunch at da Romano, where he hadn't eaten for years. The sun warmed him and his stride lengthened, his body happy to be in the sun, breathing in the iodine-laden air. Dogs romped on the new grass, and old ladies sat in the sun, glad for the added chance at life that springtime promised them. An enormous black dog rose up from beside his master, who sat calmly reading the Gazzettino, and lumbered towards Brunetti. He bent down and offered the back of his hand, which the dog licked happily. Then, tired of Brunetti, he loped back and flopped down again beside his owner.

  Even before he reached the Burano boat station, Brunetti had begun to notice the presence of people, far more than seemed normal for a weekday morning in late spring. When he got to the first of the stalls selling 'original Burano lace', most of which he had always thought was imported from Indonesia, he found his way forward blocked by pastel-coloured bodies. He began to skirt around them, confused by how unaware they seemed that other people wanted to walk to actual destinations rather than mill around and regroup idly in the middle of the pavement.

  He turned from the piazza into Via Galuppi and headed for da Romano; he was sure he could reserve a place for one o'clock: a single person was always welcome in a restaurant. At worst, he might have to wait a quarter-hour, but on a day like this it would be a joy to sit at a table in one of the bars that lined the street, sip a prosecco, perhaps read the paper.

  The small tables in front of the restaurant were all occupied; at many of them, three people sat at tables designed for two. He passed through the door and into the restaurant, but before he could speak, one of the waiters, hurrying past with a platter of seafood antipasto, saw him and called out, 'Siamo al complete.'

  For a moment, it occurred to Brunetti to argue and try to find a place, but when he glanced around inside he abandoned the idea and left. Two other restaurants were similarly full, though it was just after twelve, far too early for a civilized person to want to eat.

  Brunetti had lunch in a bar, standing at the counter and eating toast filled with flabby ham and a slice of cheese that tasted as if it had spent most of its life in plastic. The prosecco was bitter and almost completely flat; even the coffee was bad. Disgusted with his meal and angered by the disappointment of his hopes, he walked dispiritedly down to a small park, bent on sitting in the sun to allow his mood to lighten. He sat on the first bench he saw, put his head back and turned his face to the sun. After a few minutes, his attention was drawn by a furious barking, and he opened his eyes to see again the enormous black dog, which he now recognized as a Newfoundland.

  The dog dashed madly across the grass, aiming at a small blonde girl who stood at the foot of the ladder of a long children's slide. Seeing the dog approaching, the little girl grabbed the sides of the ladder and began to scramble up. The dog's owner stood at the other side of the park, its leash hanging helplessly from his hand, calling after the dog.

  Barking wildly, the dog reached the slide. The girl, at the top, screamed in terror, her voice high and piercing. Suddenly the dog launched itself up the ladder, astonishing Brunetti, who watched helplessly as it reached the top. The girl dropped on to the top of the metal slide and sailed down; the dog plunged after her, front legs stiff.

  The little girl sprawled into the sand at the bottom of the slide, and Brunetti leaped to his feet and started to run in her direction, his hand reaching helplessly for the gun he had, again, forgotten to wear. He closed his right hand into a fist and ran on.

  The dog landed just to the left of the little girl, who opened her arms and embraced its enormous head. Its barks were drowned by her shrill laughter, and then all noise stopped as the dog set itself to trying to lick her face off.

  Brunetti stopped, almost pitching headlong on to the grass. He looked across at the dog's owner, who waved once and started towards him. The little girl got to her feet and ran around to the ladder, the dog following joyously in her wake. Again he followed her up to the top and then down the slide, and at the bottom they fell into the same pink-tongued tableau. Before the owner could reach him, Brunetti turned and walked away, heading for Campo Vigner, the address the phone book listed for Vittorio Spadini.

  The house on the right of Spadini's was bright red, the one to the left as bright a blue. The Spadini house, however, was a pale pink, bleached clean by years of rain and sun. Brunetti noticed other signs: a curtain falling from the rod at one of the windows, the right side of a shutter all but eaten through by rot. The Buranesi were, if nothing else, a houseproud people, and so it surprised him to see such patent signs of neglect.

  He rang the bell, waited a moment, and rang it again. No one answered, so after a time he went to the red house and rang the bell there. It was opened by a round woman, or at least his first glance suggested that she was round. Short, even shorter than Chiara, she must have weighed more than a hundred kilos, most of which had decided to settle between her breasts and her knees. Her head was round and her face was round; even her little eyes, squeezed tight by the flesh surrounding them, were round.

  'Good afternoon, Signora,' he said. 'I'm looking for Signor Spadini.'

  'So are a lot of people,' she said with a laugh that set most of her body shaking loosely.

  'I beg your pardon.'

  'His wife's looking for him, and his sons are looking for him, an
d I suppose, if my husband thought there was any chance of getting the money he lent him back, he'd be looking for him, too.' Again, she laughed and again she shook.

  Brunetti, unsettled by the strange dissonance between what she had to say and the way she chose to say it, asked, 'When was the last time anyone saw him?'

  'Oh, last week some time.' Then, explaining the casualness with which she said this, she explained, 'He does this all the time, disappears and doesn't come home until he's spent all his money and has to go to work again.'

  'As a fisherman?'

  'Of course,' she said, this time not laughing; in fact, her face expressed confusion that this stranger at her door could think there was anything else a man from Burano could do to earn his living. 'And his wife?'

  'She works’ the woman explained. Then, seeing that Brunetti was about to ask for an explanation, added, 'a cleaner at the elementary school'.

  As if it had suddenly occurred to her that this man, clearly not a Buranesi, though he did speak Veneziano, had not explained the reason for his curiosity, she asked, 'Why do you want to see him?'

  Brunetti smiled easily and, he hoped, wryly. 'I suppose I'm in the same position as your husband, Signora. I lent him some money.' He sighed, shook his head, and spread his hands in a display of mingled disappointment and resignation. 'Any idea where I might find him?'

  She laughed again, this time at the absurdity of his errand. 'No, not until he decides to come back. He's a forest bird, Vittorio: he arrives and disappears when he wants to, and there's no catching him, no matter how much you might want to.'

  For a moment, Brunetti toyed with the idea of giving her his home number and asking her to call if Spadini returned, but he thought better of it, thanked her for her help, and added, ‘I hope your husband has better luck.'

  All of her shook again at the unlikeliness of this; she smiled, and closed the door, leaving Brunetti to make his way through the milling crowds towards the vaporetto and back to Venice.

  Back at the Questura, he was astonished to find Pucetti, in uniform, standing outside the Ufficio Straniero, keeping an eye on the people who stood in line, waiting for their papers to be processed.

  'What are you doing here?' he asked the equally surprised officer.

  ‘I called in this morning and asked for you, sir,' Pucetti said, ignoring the people who stood behind him. 'But I was put through to Lieutenant Scarpa. I think he'd left orders that he was to speak to me whenever I called. He said he had direct orders from the Vice-Questore that I was to report here instantly, in uniform. I tried to tell him I was on a special assignment, but he said it would be grounds for dismissal if I refused to obey.' Pucetti had the courage not to look away and spoke directly to Brunetti. 'I didn't think I could refuse a direct order, sir. So I came back.'

  'Have you seen him?' Brunetti asked, keeping a tight rein on his anger.

  'Scarpa?'

  'Yes,' Brunetti answered, refusing to correct Pucetti for omitting the lieutenant's title. 'What did he say?'

  'He asked me where I'd been, and I told him I'd been ordered not to speak about it to anyone.'

  'Did he ask who gave you the order?'

  'Yes, sir.' Pucetti's voice was calm. ‘I told him you did, and he said he'd speak to you about it.'

  'Anything else?'

  'No, sir. That's all he said.'

  Though Brunetti had himself considered summoning Pucetti back to Venice, he could not stand the fact that Scarpa had gone over his head.

  'I'm sorry sir,' Pucetti said, then turned away for a moment to stare at a heavily bearded man whose voice was raised in protest at the man behind him in the line. A look from Pucetti sufficed to quiet them both, and he turned back to Brunetti.

  'Did you have the chance to speak to Signorina Elettra?' Brunetti asked casually.

  'Once or twice, sir, when she came in for a coffee, but there were always people there, so we just played our roles and talked about the weather or the fishing.'

  "That young man,' Brunetti began. 'Do you have any idea who he is?' It didn't occur to Brunetti that he left it to Pucetti to infer which man he meant, nor did he consider the significance of the fact that Pucetti knew exactly whom he intended.

  'He's the nephew of one of the fishermen out there.'

  'What's his name?'

  'Who, the man or his uncle?'

  "The man. What's his name?' Brunetti realized how eager he sounded, so he slipped one hand into the pocket of his jacket and shifted his weight, to stand in a more relaxed posture. 'If you know, that is,' he added lamely.

  'Targhetta,' Pucetti answered, with no indication that he found Brunetti's interest at all out of the ordinary. 'Carlo.'

  Brunetti was about to ask more about the young man and what he was doing on Pellestrina when he sensed Pucetti's increasing curiosity as to his interest in Signorina Elettra's personal life. 'Good, thank you, Pucetti. You can put yourself back on the usual duty roster,' he said, quite forgetting that they had been using the same roster for two weeks now in the absence of Signorina Elettra to oversee the rotation of staff.

  Back in his office, he did allow for her absence and phoned the office of the Guardia di Finanza himself, asking for Maresciallo Resto.

  The Maresciallo, he was told, was momentarily out of the office, and would he like to speak to someone else? His refusal was instantaneous and automatic, and when he hung up he was assailed by the full significance of his response. Even in something like this, an ordinary phone call from one agency of the state to another, he was unwilling to reveal the reason for his call to anyone, regardless of their rank or position, unless that person were vouched for by someone he knew and trusted. What saddened him was not so much the fact that the people he dealt with might be in the pay of the Mafia or unreliable for some other reason, as the fact that distrust was an instinct, one so strong as to preclude a priori any chance of cooperation among the fragmented forces of public order. And Maresciallo

  Resto, he realized, had earned his trust only by having earned Signorina Elettra's. This reflection brought him back to Pellestrina, the now-identified young man, and thoughts of Signorina Elettra. He dwelt upon those for a quarter of an hour and then called the Finanza again.

  'Resto,' a light voice answered.

  'Maresciallo,' Brunetti began, 'this is Commissario Guido Brunetti, at the Questura. I'm calling to ask you for some information.'

  'Are you Elettra's boss?' the man asked, surprising Brunetti not by the question but by the casual use of her first name.

  'Yes.'

  'Good. Then ask anything.' Brunetti waited, though he waited in vain, for the usual encomia to Signorina Elettra's many virtues.

  'I'm curious about a case you handled two years ago. A fishing boat was sequestered from a fisherman on Burano, Vittorio Spadini.' He waited for Resto to comment, but the other man was silent, and so Brunetti went on. 'I'd like to know whatever you can tell me about the case, or about him.'

  'Is this about the murders?' Resto asked, surprising him with the question.

  'Why do you ask?'

  Resto gave a small laugh. 'There've been three deaths on Pellestrina in the last ten days, two of them fishermen, and now the police call and ask me about a fisherman. I'd have to be a Carabiniere not to wonder about the connection.'

  It was said as a joke, but it was not a joke.

  'He's said to have been involved with one of the victims,' Brunetti offered by way of explanation.

  'Have you questioned him?'

  "There's no sign of him. A neighbour says he's not around.'

  Resto paused, then said, 'Wait a minute while I get the file.' He was gone for a short time, then came back, picked up the phone, and said, "The file's down in the archive. I'll call you back,' and hung up.

  So Resto also wanted to be sure who he was talking to, Brunetti realized, suspecting that the Maresciallo had the file in his hand but thought it wisest to call the Questura and ask for Brunetti.

  When the phone rang a mome
nt later, he answered with his name and, as nothing was to be gained by provoking the man, resisted the temptation to ask Resto if he were sure now with whom he was dealing.

  Brunetti heard pages being turned, and then Resto said, 'We started the investigation in June, two years ago. We put a flag up at his bank and put a tap on his phone and his accountant's phone and fax. We kept track of how much he sold at the fish market, then checked to see how much of that he declared.'

  'What else?' Brunetti prodded.

  'And we ran the usual checks on him.'

  'Which are?' Brunetti asked.

  'I'd rather not say,' Resto answered. 'But we eventually realized he was selling clams and fish for a value of almost a billion lire a year and declaring an income of less than a hundred million.'

  'And?' Brunetti asked into the next silence. 'And we kept an eye on him for a few months. And then we landed him.' 'Like a fish?'

  'Exactly. Like a fish. But he turned into a clam once we had him. Nothing. No money, no idea where he's got it. If he's got it.'

  'How long do you think he was earning this much?'

  'No way of knowing. Could have been five years. Or more.'

  'And you've no idea where he's got it hidden?'

  'He could have spent it.'

  Brunetti, who had seen the state of Spadini's house, doubted that, but he didn't offer this information. He considered what he'd heard, then asked, 'What put you on to him?'

  'One-one-seven.'

  'Excuse me?' Brunetti said.

  'The number, the one for anonymous denuncie.'

  Brunetti had heard, for years, about this number, 117, set up to allow citizens to make anonymous accusations of tax evasion. Though he had heard the story, he had never quite believed in it and had persisted in thinking of 117 as yet another urban myth. But here was a maresciallo of the very Finanza itself, telling him it was true: the number existed and it had been used to launch the investigation of Vittorio Spadini, one that led to the loss of his boat.

  'What sort of record is kept of these calls?'

  'I'm afraid I can't discuss that with you, Commissario,' Resto said, neither regret nor reluctance audible in his voice.