A Sea of Troubles cgb-10

by Donna Leon

  'Was it that bastard, Giacomini? Just tell me that? Was it him?'

  Again apparently unable to disguise his surprise at the name, Vianello shot the waiter a quick glance, almost as if to warn him to stop. But beyond caring about caution, the waiter went on, 'He wasn't even here, Giacomini. He just wanted to cause Sandro trouble, the bastard. And he knew there was bad blood between them because of that time off Chioggia. But he's lying; he's always been a liar.' The waiter pushed himself back from the table and got to his feet, as if to stop himself from saying anything more. Suddenly formal, all thought of his brother abandoned, he asked, 'Would you like another grappa?'

  Brunetti shook his head, then got to his feet, the sergeant quickly following him. 'Thank you’ Brunetti said, leaving it unclear if he meant for the service or for the information. He paused a moment, making it obvious that Vianello had no choice but to precede his superior from the room.

  Outside, Brunetti walked for a few minutes until they stood at the edge of the water, where they were safely away from the restaurant and all of the houses. Looking in the general direction of Venice, he put one foot up on the sea wall and reached down to flick a pebble from inside the sole of his shoe.

  'Well?' he asked.

  'All news to me’ Vianello said with a small smile. 'No one was willing to tell me a thing.'

  "That's what I assumed’ Brunetti said then added, knowing that Vianello would be pleased to hear it, 'You played that very well.'

  'It wasn't very hard, was it?' the sergeant asked by way of answer.

  'I'd like to know how bad their fight was, especially as he was so eager to convince us it was nothing.' Brunetti continued to gaze off towards the invisible city, but it was clear his remarks were meant for Vianello.

  'He was pretty insistent, wasn't he, sir?'

  Brunetti had thought so at the time, but now he began to wonder if perhaps the waiter had been smarter than he'd thought and had dropped Giacomini's name and the story of the fight with Bottin in order to deflect them from something else. 'You think he was trying to lead us away from something, Sergeant?'

  'No, I think he was genuinely worried’ Vianello answered, as if he'd already considered and dismissed the same possibility. Then, with a scorn typical of those born on the major Venetian islands, he added, 'Pellestrinotti aren't bright enough for something like that, anyway.'

  'We're not allowed to say things like that any more, Sergeant,' Brunetti said mildly.

  'Regardless of whether they're true?' the sergeant asked.

  'Because they're true,' Brunetti answered.

  Vianello reflected for a moment upon this and then asked, 'What now, sir?'

  'I think we go and see what else we can learn about the fight between Sandro Scarpa and Giulio Bottin.' Brunetti turned away from the laguna and back towards the rows of low houses.

  Vianello fell into step beside him, saying, 'There's a kind of general store behind the restaurant. The sign said it opened at three, and someone told me that Signora Follini always opens on time.' He led the way to the left of the restaurant and into a sandy courtyard lined on two sides by doors and on the other left open to provide a long view towards the sea wall and, beyond it, the Adriatic. Because of the height of the distant sea wall, they could not see the water on that side of the island, but there was a sharp scent of iodine in the air and a general moistness that spoke of the presence of the sea.

  Brunetti had not been out here for years, perhaps for more than a decade, not since the kids were smaller and he and Paola and his brother Sergio and his family used to crowd together into Sergio's boat on Sunday afternoons, saying they wanted to explore the islands but knowing themselves to be, all the while, in search of good restaurants and fresh fish. He remembered sunburnt, cranky children, asleep in the bottom of the boat like puppies, drugged by too much sun and the endless tedium of adult conversation. He remembered Sergio erupting from the water and hurling himself over the side of the boat, both legs lashed red by an enormous jellyfish that had trailed up against him in the clear waters. And he remembered, with a surge of recalled joy, making love with Paola in the bottom of the boat one August afternoon when Sergio had taken all the children to pick blackberries on one of the smaller islands.

  A bell pealed out as Vianello opened the door to the small shop. They went in, uniformed officer first to announce the reason for their visit.

  From another room a woman's voice called out, 'Un momento,' followed by the sound of a closing door and then a sharper, smaller sound, something being set down on a hard surface. After that, silence. Brunetti took a look around the shop and saw dusty rows of boxes of rice, double packs of flypaper, an object that looked like an umbrella stand filled with brooms and mops, and a low shelf upon which lay four copies of yesterday's Gazzettino. Everything smelled faintly of old paper and dried legumes.

  After the promised moment, a woman emerged, pushing aside the white cotton curtain that separated the shop from the rooms behind it. She wore a short green dress with a scooped neck, and shoes with heels uncomfortably high for a woman who stood behind a counter all day. 'Buon giorno,' she said in their direction, stopping just in front of the curtain. She stood silently for a moment, and Brunetti saw that she was a woman in the most recent flower of her youth, though its apparent blossoming had been much repeated, no doubt at ever shorter intervals.

  Her hair was dandelion blonde, though it seemed brighter still because of the deep tan of her skin. Brunetti had once taken a three-day seminar in advanced methods of suspect identification, two hours of which had concerned the means criminals use to disguise their appearance. He had been, quite frankly and perhaps because he spent so much of his life observing women, fascinated by the varieties of plastic surgery by which a face could be transformed and identity disguised. He noted some of those techniques on display here, and it occurred to him that the police could have used this woman's face as an exhibit, for the signs of the work done were so easily detectable.

  Her eyes had a faint Oriental cast to them, and she was doomed forever to respond to life with a small smile that parted her lips in perpetual happy anticipation. A butcher could have sharpened his knives on the long line of her jaw. Her nose, pert and upturned, would have done wonders for the face of a woman thirty years her junior. On hers, it struck a note of visual dissonance, placed as it was over a broad, thick-lipped mouth. Brunetti judged her to be a few years older than himself.

  'May I help you?' she asked, moving behind the low counter.

  'Yes, Signora Follini’ Brunetti answered, stepping forward. 'I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti. I'm here to investigate the accident that took place this morning.' He started to reach for his wallet to show her his warrant card, but she waved him away impatiently.

  She glanced at Vianello then returned her attention to Brunetti.

  'Accident?' she asked neutrally.

  Brunetti shrugged. 'Until we have reason to believe it was something else, that's how it's being treated,' he answered.

  She nodded but offered nothing further.

  'Did you know them, Signora?'

  'Bottin and Marco?' she asked unnecessarily.

  'Yes.'

  'They came in here,' she said, as if that were enough.

  'As customers, you mean?' he asked, though in a place as small as Pellestrina, eventually everyone would be her customer.

  'Yes.'

  'And beyond that? Were they friends of yours?'

  She paused and thought for a moment. 'Perhaps you could say Marco was a friend.' She put special emphasis on the word 'friend', as if to suggest the interesting possibility that they had been more than that, then added, 'But definitely not his father.'

  'And why was that?' Brunetti asked.

  This time it was her turn to shrug. 'We didn't get along.'

  'About anything in particular?'

  'About everything in particular,' she said, smiling at the speed of her own response. Her smile, which exposed perfect teeth and permitted the app
earance of only two small wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, gave Brunetti a suggestion of what she might have been had she not decided to devote her middle years to the reacquisition of her earlier ones.

  'And why was that?' he asked.

  'Our fathers had a fight when they were young men, about fifty years ago,' she said, her delivery this time so deadpan that Brunetti had no idea if she was being serious or making fun of the way things were supposed to be in small villages.

  ‘I doubt that either you or Giulio could have been much affected,' Brunetti said, then added, 'You couldn't even have been born at the time.'

  He had spoken with the excessive sincerity of flattery. Her smile this time created pairs of wrinkles, though very small ones. Paola had taught a class in the sonnet last year, and Brunetti remembered one - he thought it was

  English - that said something about the denial of age, a form of deceit that had always seemed particularly pathetic to Brunetti.

  'But didn't you have to deal with him, the older Bottin?' Brunetti asked. 'After all, this is a small village: people here must see one another every day.'

  She actually put the back of her hand to her forehead when she answered, 'Don't tell me about that. I know, I know. From long experience, I know what people in small villages are like. All they need is the tiniest thing, and they invent lies about everyone.' Her studied performance of this lament raised in Brunetti's mind a certain curiosity as to the whereabouts, or the actual existence, of Signor Follini. She glanced at Vianello and opened her mouth to continue.

  'And Signor Bottin?' Brunetti cut her off by asking. 'Did they invent lies about him, as well?'

  Seemingly unoffended by Brunetti's interruption, she said with some asperity, 'The truth would have sufficed.'

  'The truth about what?'

  Her expression showed him just how eager she was to tell him, but then he saw the precise moment when the discretion that is learned from life in small villages returned to her.

  'Oh, the usual things,' she said with an airy wave of the hand, and Brunetti knew it was useless to try to get anything more from her.

  Nevertheless, he asked, 'What things?'

  After a long pause which she clearly was using to choose examples as meaningless as she could make them, she said, That he was unkind to his wife and harsh with his son.'

  'I would guess those things could be said about most men.'

  'I doubt they're said about you, officer,' she said, leaning forward over the counter suggestively.

  Vianello chose this moment to interrupt. The pilot said we had to get back, sir,' he said in a quiet voice, though loud enough for her to hear.

  'Yes, of course, Sergeant,' Brunetti answered in his most official tone. Turning back to Signora Follini and giving her a brief smile, he said, 'I'm afraid that's all for now, Signora. If we have any further questions, someone will come out again.'

  'Not you?' she asked, attempting to sound disappointed.

  'Perhaps’ Brunetti answered, 'if it's necessary.'

  He thanked her for her time and, Vianello preceding, they left the store. Vianello turned left and then right, already familiar with the few streets that made up the centre of Pellestrina.

  'And not a moment too soon, Sergeant’ Brunetti said with a laugh.

  'I thought it best to try to get us out by means of cunning, sir.'

  'And if that hadn't worked?'

  ‘I had my gun’ Vianello answered, patting his holster.

  Ahead of them loomed the sea wall, and on impulse Brunetti crossed the narrow road that led down to the end of the peninsula and started up the steps cut into the side of the wall. At the top, he moved aside to make room for Vianello on the narrow cement walkway that ran off in both directions.

  Beyond them stretched the quietly moving waters of the Adriatic; dotted in the middle distance were tankers and cargo ships. And beyond those lay the open wound of the former Yugoslavia.

  'It's strange, isn't it, sir, the way women like that seem absurd if they have "un lifting" but when they're richer or more famous, they don't?'

  Brunetti considered two friends of his wife's known for their frequent disappearances to Rome and for their subsequent transformations. Because they were wealthy, the work was better done than it had been on the face of Signora Follini, so the results were less obvious and thus more successful. To him, however, the desire that prompted them was the same and no less pathetic.

  He made a noncommittal noise and asked, 'What did the people you spoke to tell you? Anything about her?'

  'No, sir. You know how it is in places like this: no one is willing to say anything that might be repeated to the person they said it about.'

  'So much for police secrecy,' Brunetti said with a wry shake of his head.

  'But you can understand it, can't you, sir? If it ever gets to trial, we have to say how we got a name in the first place or why we began to investigate a particular person. The trial goes on and what happens, happens. But they still have to live here, among people who see them as informers.'

  Brunetti knew better than to give Vianello his standard lecture about civic duty and the responsibility of the citizen to help the authorities in their investigation of crime. The fact that this was a murder, a double murder, would make not the least bit of difference to anyone who lived here: the highest civic duty was to live in peace and not be harassed by the state. A person was much safer trusting family and neighbours. Beyond that ring of safety lay the dangers of bureaucracy and officialdom and the inevitable consequences of being embroiled with either.

  Leaving Vianello to his own reflections, Brunetti stood a while longer, looking out at the sea. The ships were a bit further along in their journeys towards their destinations. They were alone in that, it seemed to him.

  6

  Reflecting that his distaste for what Vianello had just told him in no way altered its truth, Brunetti decided there was little purpose in their remaining in Pellestrina any longer, so he suggested they start back to Venice. Vianello displayed no surprise at this and they turned back down the steps, across the road, and through the narrow village until they were once again on the side facing Venice, where the police boat awaited them. On the trip across the laguna, Vianello gave him the names of the people he had questioned and a quick summary of the banalities they had given him. Bottin's brother, he had learned, lived in Murano, where he worked in a glass factory; the only other people related to him, the family of his late wife, lived on that island as well, though no one had seemed able to tell him what they did there.

  The people to whom Vianello had spoken had not been uncooperative in any way: they had all answered whatever questions he put to them. But no one had volunteered any information beyond that contained in the simplest, most direct response. There had been no extraneous detail, no release of the tide of gossip in which all social life swims. They had been clever enough not to answer in bare monosyllables and managed to suggest that they were doing everything they could to recall whatever might be of use to the police. And all the while, Vianello had known what they were doing, and it was likely that they knew he knew.

  The launch turned left into the main canal leading back towards San Marco just as Vianello finished giving his account, and spread before them was the sight that had welcomed most arriving eyes ever since the great centuries of the Serenissima. Bell towers, domes, cupolas - all disported themselves for the eyes of the passengers and crew of the arriving boat, each one seeming to jostle the others aside, in the manner of small children, the better to catch the attention of the approaching visitors. The only difference between what the two policemen saw and what would have been visible to those who followed the same channel five hundred years ago was the flock of construction cranes which loomed above the city and, on top of every building, television antennae of every height and configuration.

  Seeing the cranes, stark and angular,, Brunetti was struck by how seldom he ever saw them in motion. Two of them still towered above the ho
llow shell of the opera theatre, as motionless as all attempts to rebuild it. Thinking of the proud boast blazoned across the front page of II Gazzettmo the day after the fire, that the theatre would be rebuilt where it was and as it was, within two years, Brunetti didn't know whether to laugh or weep, a decision he had had far more than two years to consider. Popular belief, itself interchangeable with truth, had it that the motionless cranes cost the city ten million lire a day, and popular imagination had long since abandoned any attempt to calculate the final cost of restoration. Years passed, the money seeped away, and yet the cranes stood motionless, rising silently above the endless yammering and legal squabbling about who would get to perform the reconstruction.

  Both of them stopped talking and watched the city draw near. No city is more self-regarding than Venice: cheap and vulgar self-portraits lined the sides of many streets; almost every kiosk peddled garish plastic gondolas; hacks whose berets falsely proclaimed them to be artists sold horrible pastels at every turn. At every step she pandered to the worst and flashed out the meretricious. Added to this was the terrible aftermath of all of these dry weeks: narrow calli that stank of urine, both dog and human; a thin layer of dust that was forever underfoot, no matter how many times the streets were swept. And yet her beauty remained unblemished, just as it remained supreme.

  The pilot cut to the right and drew up in front of the Questura. Brunetti waved his thanks and jumped on to the embankment, quickly followed by Vianello.

  'And now, sir?' the sergeant asked as they passed through the tall glass doors.

  'Call the hospital and check when they're going to do the autopsies. I'll set Signorina Elettra to work on the Bottins.' Before Vianello could ask, he added, 'And on Sandro Scarpa, and while she's at it, Signora Follini.'

  At the top of the first flight of steps, Brunetti turned off towards Patta's office, and Vianello went down to the uniformed men's office.

  'Still thrashing it out with Veblen?' Brunetti asked as he came into Signorina Elettra's small office.