Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

  He had to put his mouth close to Bonsuan's ear to shout, 'What was it?'

  'I don't know. Something from the water.' Brunetti glanced down at it but it was nothing more than a bottle-sized piece of rotten wood. He flipped it out of the way with an impatient foot, but no sooner had he done so than a sudden gust of wind rolled it back towards him. Rain flooded through the broken window, soaking Bonsuan and lowering the temperature of the cabin even more.

  'Oh Dio, oh Dio,' he heard Bonsuan begin to mutter. The pilot suddenly swung the wheel to the left and then as quickly to the right, but not before both of them felt a heavy thud against the port side of the boat.

  Brunetti froze, waiting to see if the boat began to founder or sink lower in the water. Realizing that Bonsuan could have no clearer idea than he of what had happened, he didn't bother him with a question. There were two smaller thumps, but the boat continued to move forward, though the wind seemed to grow more intense, always pounding at them from the right.

  Out of nowhere, a shape loomed up on the left, and Bonsuan almost fell on to the wheel, trying to put his whole weight into pulling it to the right. The shape moved out of sight, but then, from behind them, there was an enormous, pounding crash, as powerful as the thunder had been, and the boat spun off, but heavily, as though it were suddenly as sodden as Brunetti's clothing.

  Bonsuan swung the tiller to the left, and even Brunetti could sense how slow the boat was to respond. 'What happened?'

  'We hit something. I think it was a boat’ Bonsuan answered, still pulling at the wheel. He pushed the throttle forward, and Brunetti heard the engine respond, though the boat seemed to move no faster.

  'What are you doing?'

  'I've got to run us in’ Bonsuan said, leaning forward, straining to see what was in front of them.

  'Where?'

  'Ca' Roman, I hope’ Bonsuan said. 'I don't think we've passed it.'

  'If we have?' Brunetti asked.

  By way of answer, all Bonsuan did was shake his head, but Brunetti didn't know if this was to deny the possibility or the consequences.

  Bonsuan hit the throttle again, and though this increased the sound of the engine, it had no effect on their speed. A wave crashed over the side of their bow, and over the deck, hurling water up the wall of the cabin. Through the broken window it poured in over both of them.

  'There, there, there!' Bonsuan shouted. Brunetti bent forward to stare out of the windscreen but could see nothing but an unbroken grey wall in front of them. Bonsuan turned to look at him for a second. 'Don't go outside until we hit. When we do, climb up on the deck. Don't go over the side. Get to the front and jump as far forward as you can. If you land in water, keep going forward, and when you get out of the water, keep going.'

  'Where are we?' Brunetti demanded, though the answer would not mean anything to him.

  There was a tremendous crash. The boat stopped as though it had run headlong into a wall, and both men were thrown to the floor. The boat tilted over on its right side, and water flooded in through the shattered window. Brunetti pushed himself to his feet and grabbed at Bonsuan, who had a long gash on the side of his head and responded slowly, moving like a man under water. Another wave broke through the window and poured down on them.

  Brunetti reached down to help the pilot, who was already pushing himself upright, though this was hard to do on the steeply slanting deck. 'I'm all right,' Bonsuan said.

  One side of the cabin door hung from a single hinge, and Brunetti had to kick it open. When he pulled Bonsuan outside, water surged at them from everywhere. Remembering what Bonsuan had told him, he pulled and pushed the pilot up on to the raised deck in front of the cabin, then hauled himself up afterwards.

  Pushing Bonsuan in front of him, Brunetti held him steady with one hand as waves raged at the stricken boat, rocking the deck back and forth under their feet. Step by step they moved drunkenly towards the prow and the single searchlight that cut the darkness in front of them. They reached the railing, and Bonsuan, without an instant's hesitation or a backward glance, leaped heavily from the prow of the boat, disappearing into the greyness.

  A wave knocked Brunetti to his knees; he grabbed the base of the spotlight to hold himself steady as another and stronger wave battered at him from behind, sending him sprawling. He pulled himself to his knees, then to his feet, and moved again to the point of the prow. At the moment when he shifted his balance to spring forward, an enormous wave swept up from behind him, catapulting him, head over heels, into the howling darkness.

  24

  Had Bonsuan and Brunetti approached Pellestrina earlier, as they passed the dock of San Pietro in Volta they would have seen a glowing Signorina Elettra, dressed in navy blue linen slacks, standing on the deck of a large fishing boat, waiting impatiently to set off, while Carlo and the man she had always heard called Zio Vittorio waited as the double fuel tanks were filled. She was vaguely conscious, to the degree that she could be conscious of anything other than Carlo when she was with him, of a low bank of clouds lying off behind the dimly seen towers of the distant city. But when she turned towards the waters of the Adriatic, invisible beyond the low houses of Pellestrina and the sea wall that protected them from those waters, she saw only fluffy, careless clouds and a sky of such transparent blue as to add to her already considerable joy. When Vittorio pulled his boat away from the gas station just above San Vito, the police launch was already moored to the dock in Pellestrina, and by the time the fishing boat passed the launch, heading south, Brunetti was already inside the bar, having his first sip of wine.

  It would be an exaggeration to say that Signorina Elettra was afraid of Zio Vittorio, but it would also be less than true to say that she was comfortable in his presence. Her response to him was somewhere in between, but because he was Carlo's uncle, she usually managed to ignore the uneasiness he created in her. Zio Vittorio had always been perfectly friendly with her, always seemed glad to find her in Carlo's house and at his table. Perhaps it would come close to explaining her feelings to say that, when she spoke to Vittorio, she was always left with the suspicion that he was secretly enjoying the thought of where else in Carlo's house she had been.

  He was not a tall man, Zio Vittorio, hardly taller than she, and had the same muscular frame as his nephew. Because he had spent most of his life at sea, his face was tanned mahogany, making the grey eyes which were said to resemble those of his sister, Carlo's mother, seem all the lighter in contrast. He wore his thinning hair slicked straight back from his face, long at the base of his head, and kept it in place with a pomade that smelled of cinnamon and metal filings. His teeth were perfect: one night after dinner he had cracked open walnuts with them, smiling at her when she failed to disguise her shock at this.

  He must have been sixty, an age which, to Elettra, automatically consigned him to a genderless void in which any sort of expressed interest in sex was embarrassing, even worse than that. Yet the consciousness of sex and sexual activity always seemed to lurk behind even his most innocent remarks, as though he were incapable of conceiving a universe in which men and women could relate to one another in any other way. Somewhere, beneath the tremor that still filled her when she thought of Carlo, this vague unease lurked, though she had become adept at ignoring it, especially on a day like this, when the sky to the east boded so well.

  The heavy boat pulled out into the channel and started to move south, back past Pellestrina and towards the narrow opening of the Porto di Chioggia, through which they would pass into the open sea. There was no thought of fishing that day: his uncle had told Carlo he wanted to take the boat to sea to test a rebuilt motor that had just been installed. It had sounded perfectly fine when they set out, but just as the boat grew level with the Ottagono di Caroman, Vittorio called back to them that something was wrong. Only seconds later both Carlo and Elettra felt a sudden change in the rhythm of the motor: it began to hiccup, and the boat jerked reluctantly ahead instead of proceeding steadily.

  Carlo walked
forward, saying, 'What is it?'

  The older man flicked the starter switch off, then on, then off again. In the momentary calm, he answered, 'Dirt in the fuel line, I'd say.' He switched on the motor again, and this time it jumped to life and throbbed with the steady rhythm they were accustomed to.

  'Sounds fine to me,' Carlo said.

  'Hmm,' his uncle murmured, seeming to listen to Carlo but really intent on the sound of the engine. He placed the palm of his left hand flat on the control panel and shoved the throttle forward with his right. The volume increased, but suddenly the engine gave a single dyspeptic burp and then a series of choking noises until it stopped entirely.

  Carlo, as he knew to his cost, was neither a real fisherman nor a mechanic, though he had learned to do much of the work of the first. In a case like this, he deferred absolutely to his uncle's greater experience and wisdom and so waited to be told what to do. The boat slowed, then stopped dead in the water.

  Vittorio told Carlo to stay where he was and turn the engine on when he told him to, then went to the centre of the back deck and disappeared down the hatchway to the engine room. After a few minutes, he shouted up to Carlo, telling him to switch on the engine. The starter gave a dry click and failed to engage, so he turned it off and waited. Minutes passed.

  Signorina Elettra came to the door to ask what was wrong, but he smiled at her and said everything was fine, then waved her to the back of the boat, out of the way.

  Vittorio called out again, and this time when Carlo turned on the engine it caught on the first try and responded to each small increase or decrease of the throttle. Vittorio came out of the hatchway and back into the cabin, saying, 'Fuel line, like I thought. All I had to do was . ..' but he was interrupted by the sound of his telefonino. As he reached for it, he signalled for Carlo to leave the cabin.

  Carlo backed out, careful not to let the doors slam shut, and went towards the back of the boat, where he saw Elettra standing with her hands braced on the back railing, her face raised in the direction of the sun. The engine was still rumbling loudly, covering the sound of his approach, but when he came silently up behind her and put both of his hands on the hollows of her back just above her hips, she gave no sign of being surprised. Indeed, she leaned backwards slightly and into his body. He bent down and kissed the top of her head and buried his face in the explosion of curls. His eyes shut, he stood like that, rocking against her in a steady rhythm. He heard a low rumbling that had nothing to do with the motor and opened his eyes. Off to his left, the towers of the city, distantly visible that morning, had disappeared, blocked out by a low bank of clouds that had already enveloped Pellestrina and were now scuttling towards their boat.

  'Oh, Dio,' he said, and at the shock in his voice she opened her eyes to see a dark wall tumbling towards them. Instinctively, he put his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. He turned his head back towards the cabin: his uncle was still talking on the phone, eyes intent on the two of them and, beyond them, at the storm that approached with such savage speed.

  Vittorio said something else, flipped the phone shut, and put it back into the pocket of his jacket. Stiff armed, he pushed the door open and shouted to Carlo to come into the cabin.

  He moved away from Elettra and towards his uncle, and as he did, he felt the back of the boat rise up under his feet, as though some giant hand had lifted it from the water, helping him forward. He looked back and saw her, both hands firmly grasped to the railing.

  He pulled open the door. 'What is it?'

  Rather than answer, his uncle reached out both hands and grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, pulling his face down closer to his own. ‘I told you she was trouble,' he said. Once, twice, he jerked savagely at Carlo's collar, and when the younger man tried to pull away, he yanked him even lower, closer. 'Her boss is there, in the bar. They know about Bottin and they know about the phone call.'

  Utterly confused, Carlo demanded, 'Who knows? The Finanza? They've always known. Why do you think they threw me out?'

  'No, not the Finanza, you fool,' Vittorio shouted back at him, his voice raised against the wind that had begun to sweep from behind them, pushing the boat forward. "The police. Her boss, that commissario; he had the tape with him. He played it in the bar, and that drunk Pavanello told him it was Bottin you talked to.' He released his hold on Carlo's collar and swatted him away with the back of his hand, shouting, 'They'd have to be idiots not to realize I killed them.'

  Ever since Carlo had told his family why he'd been dismissed from the Finanza, he'd half feared and half known his uncle would take some sort of revenge, but Vittorio's bold-faced admission still shocked him. 'Don't say that,' he protested. ‘I don't want to know.' Behind him, the cabin door banged open and shut repeatedly, and he felt rain on his shoulders.

  Vittorio waved towards the back of the boat. 'What did you tell her?'

  'Nothing,' Carlo shouted.

  The wind and the pounding door erased some of Vittorio's words, but still the rage propelling them was enough to alarm Carlo. 'You knew where she worked. Her stupid cousin told everyone. I told you to stay away from her, but you knew better. What are we going to do about her now?'

  The wind raged at them, sweeping all thought and memory up into a whirlwind and tearing them away from Carlo and out to sea, leaving him with only the thought of Elettra. He wheeled out of the cabin and fought his way to the back of the boat; he put his arms around a shivering Elettra as the skies erupted and a sheet of rain washed across them.

  He staggered, freed one arm and grabbed at the railing. Unconscious of moving or of any decision to move, he tightened his left arm around her and half pulled, half steered her towards the cabin door. He shouldered it open, and together they crashed inside, then into the left side as a wave slammed into them from the right.

  Another wave hit the boat, knocking Elettra against Vittorio, but he did no more than flick her aside with his elbow and turn back to the tiller, both hands locked to the wheel. Carlo looked through the windscreen; the wipers slapped uselessly against the sheets of water that washed across it. In the darkness that had descended on them, the three searchlights were helpless, and he could make out nothing except the rain and the white menace of waves and spray.

  The noise pounded at them from every side, and suddenly the wind picked up volume, drowning out everything else. Carlo felt the small hairs at the back of his neck bristle, but he was aware of the sensation and aware of a cramp of fear even before he realized that the sudden increase in the sound of the wind was caused by the silence of the motor.

  He saw, but could not hear, Vittorio ramming his thumb on to the starter, his other palm flat against the panel to feel the vibrations if the motor came to life again. Repeatedly he pressed, released, pressed, and only once did Carlo feel a faint rhythmic throb under his feet. But it was momentary and gone almost before he was aware of it. Again, he watched that blunt thumb press and release and press again, and then his feet felt the motor come alive, churning out a staggered beat below them.

  Vittorio took his hand from the starter and put it back on the wheel. He rose on his toes for leverage and then brought all of his weight down to swing the wheel to the left. At one point, the wheel fought back and carried him half off the floor. Carlo pushed past a frozen Elettra and, placing both hands on one of the sprouting handles of the wheel, added his weight to his uncle's. The boat responded, and he felt their weight shift as it followed the command of the rudder, turning heavily to the left.

  Carlo had no idea where they were or what his uncle intended to do. The young man gave no thought to the map, to Ca' Roman or to the Porto di Chioggia, an open slip of water that would pull them out to the Adriatic and into its deadly waves. He braced his feet on either side of the wheel and together they pulled the boat even farther to the left. Vittorio removed his right hand from the wheel and shoved the throttle full forward. Through his feet, Carlo felt the throbbing of the motor increase, but his awareness of the world outs
ide the boat was so confused that he could detect no alteration in the boat's movements. Then, at the same instant he felt the motor die, the boat thundered to a stop, hurling him against one of the spokes of the tiller and his uncle on top of him. He looked up in time to see Elettra, who had been knocked against the wall by the original impact, ricochet backwards and through the cabin doors, out on to the deck. Then there was a shuddering crash, and the boat was suddenly still.

  Carlo shoved his uncle aside and lifted himself to his feet. Aware of pain in his left side, he was concerned only to follow Elettra. Again, when he moved forward, he felt the pain, but he ignored it as he pushed through the doors of the cabin. Outside, he found crashes of thunder, the groans of roaring wind and rain. In the light that spilled out from the cabin, he saw Elettra kneeling on the deck, already pulling herself to her feet. A wave broke over the back of the boat and swept forward, slapping her down again and swirling her up the deck until she banged against Carlo's feet. He started to lean down to help her, but as he moved the pain caught inside him, and he froze in place, suddenly fearful for himself and, because of that, for her.

  As he looked down at her, helpless, time stopped. Elettra raised herself to one knee and, glancing up, saw him. With her left hand, she pushed her fingers through her hair, trying to sweep the tangle from her face, but it was sodden with rain and sea water, and she could do no more than shift it to one side. He remembered how, once, he had watched her sleep, her face half covered by her hair in much the same way - and then the cabin doors exploded against his back as Vittorio burst on to the deck.

  It happened so quickly that Carlo could not have stopped him even if he had not been frozen by the pain in his side and the fear of the greater pain he knew motion would bring. Vittorio swept down over Elettra, screaming at her, screaming words none of them could hear. He grabbed her tangled hair with his left hand, yanking her to one side, screaming down at her all the while. His right hand slipped inside his jacket and emerged, clasped around his gutting knife. He cocked his arm back across his body and, knuckles upwards, swiped at her, aiming for her face or her neck.