A Sea of Troubles cgb-10

by Donna Leon

  Vittorio loosened his grip and the wind tore the hair away. He pulled his arm to his stomach, turned towards his nephew as though he meant to do him violence, but what he saw behind

  Carlo made him turn to the front of the boat and run to the prow. He didn't hesitate an instant but leaped forward into the water, cradling his arm to himself as best he could. The wave broke across them, knocking Carlo first to the deck and then up against the listing side of the boat. Its retreat sucked him towards the back, but Elettra's body blocked him, and they ended in a tangled mass, half in and half out of the cabin doorway, bodies entwined in a grotesque parody of the past.

  Again, instinct prevailed and he tried to get to his feet, succeeding only when Elettra knelt beside him and pried him from the deck. Speech rendered futile by noise, he grabbed her upper arm and started towards the prow, slowed by pain. Pushing, pulling, they hauled themselves to the pointed prow. He pushed her over, without a moment's thought. The searchlights provided enough light to allow him to see her sink, then come bobbing up in the water directly in front of him. He jumped after her, sinking into water that came above his head. When he surfaced, he screamed her name - and felt fingers grab at his hair and tug at him, though he had lost all sense, all thought, all direction. His arms floated limp at his side, and he found that he could not kick his feet, lacked the strength to do anything but float in the wake of whatever hand it was that pulled at him. Something hit against his feet, and he felt mild irritation at the sensation. He was comforted by weightlessness, which removed the pain in his side; he didn't want to have to swim or stand, when floating was so much easier, so painless.

  But the hand pulled at him, and he was powerless to resist it. When his feet touched bottom for an instant, the pain took this as a sign that it was safe to return. Stabbing, jabbing, cutting, it filled his side, bending him over until his feet floated free and his face plunged into the water. But the hand, relentless, grabbed at his hair again, jerking him sideways and forward, away from the pleasant safety of the deep water, the ease and weightless comfort it offered. He allowed himself to be pulled a metre forward through the water and then another, and then suddenly he could go no farther. Quite reasonably, he thought, he reached to place his right hand on the fingers that still tugged at him. He patted them once, twice, and then in his most reasonable voice, he said, 'Thank you, but that's enough.' Like the tree in the uninhabited forest, his words went unheard, and then an enormous wave rolled across him.

  25

  Like a beached whale, Brunetti lay on the sand, unable to move. He'd swallowed a great deal of water, and fierce coughing had exhausted him. He lay in the rain as waves came and flirted with his feet and legs, as if to suggest he stop lying there on the sand and come in and have a proper swim. Their solicitations went unheeded. Occasionally, and entirely without conscious thought, he clawed and pushed himself forward a few centimetres, away from the frolicsome waves.

  His panic diminished, then slowly left him as he lay there. The howling of the wind was no less fierce, the lash of the rain no less severe, but somehow the solidity beneath him, the safety of beach, sand, mother earth, lulled him into a sense of protected calm. His mind began to drift, and he found himself thinking that his jacket would have to be taken to the cleaners, was perhaps ruined entirely, and he minded that, for it was his best jacket, one he'd treated himself to when sent to Milan last year to testify, finally, in a court case concerning a murder that had been committed twelve years before. The thought passed through his mind that these were indeed strange thoughts to be entertaining in his present circumstances, and then he reflected upon his own ability to find these particular thoughts strange. How proud Paola, who always accused him of having a simple mind, would be when he told her of how very convoluted his thoughts had become, becalmed on a beach somewhere beyond Pellestrina. She'd mind about the jacket, too, he was sure; she'd always said it was the nicest one he had.

  He lay prone in the rain and thought of his wife, and after a time that thought led him to pull one knee, and then the other, under him, and then it helped prod him to his feet. He looked around and saw nothing; his hearing was still dulled by the wind and rain. He turned in the direction from which he thought he must have come, searching for some sign of the boat or the single spotlight that had still been ablaze when he leaped from the deck, but darkness was everywhere.

  He put his head back and yelled into the tempest, 'Bonsuan, Bonsuan!' When only the wind replied, he called again, 'Danilo, Danilo!' but still he heard no answer. He walked ahead a few steps, his hands stretched out in front of him like a blind man's calling as he went. After a few moments, his left hand hit against something: a flat surface rising up in front of him. This must be the wall of the abandoned fort of Ca' Roman, known to him only as a mark and a name on a map.

  He moved closer until his chest touched the wall, then he spread his arms to explore outwards on both sides. Sticking close to the wall, he moved slowly to the right, turning to the side so that he could use both hands to feel ahead of him.

  He heard a noise behind him and stopped, surprised, not by the noise itself so much as by the fact that he could hear it. He tried to empty his mind and listened afresh to the sound of the storm; after a time he grew certain that its sound was diminishing. Clearly, there, he heard what must be the crashing of a wave, the thunderous pelting of water on hard sand. As he listened, it seemed that the wind became still milder; as it decreased in intensity, he grew colder, though that might be nothing more than the passing of the dullness of shock. He untied the life jacket and let it fall to the ground.

  He took a few more steps, reaching ahead of him, fingers delicate as a snail's antennae. Suddenly the surface disappeared beneath his left hand, and when he reached into the nothingness, he could feel the hard rectangularity surrounding a lintel or passageway. He outlined it, still unseeing, with the fingers of both hands and then placed a tentative foot into its centre, hunting for a step or stairway, either up or down.

  A low step carried his foot down. Propping both hands on what seemed to be the sides of a narrow passageway, he went down one, two, three steps until he felt a wider area beneath his carefully exploring foot.

  In the silence, cut off from the sound of the wind, his other senses sprang to life, and he was overwhelmed by the stink of urine and mould and he knew not what else. Inside, away from the buffeting wind, he should have grown warmer, but if anything, he now felt far colder than he had outside, as though the silence gave penetrating force to both cold and humidity.

  He stood there, listening, focusing ahead of him on wherever this void would lead him, and backwards, up the steps and out into the diminishing storm. He moved to the right until he touched a wall, then turned and braced his back against it, comforted by stability. He stood like that for a long time until, glancing in what he thought was the direction of the opening, he saw light filtering in from the outside. He walked towards it, and when he stood in the glow it cast, he held his watch up to his face. Astonished to see that it was still only early evening, he moved closer to the now-illumined steps, drawn by the promise of light and by the silence that spilled down the steps.

  He emerged into splendour: to the west, the sun made its languorous way towards the horizon, dipping behind the scattered clouds the passing storm had forgotten to sweep away and dappling the still waters of the laguna with their reflection. He turned to the east and, not far removed from the coast, saw the rear edge of the storm, thrashing its way towards what was left of Yugoslavia, as if eager to see what sort of new damage it could take there.

  Brunetti was racked with a sudden chill as hunger, stress and the slow drop in temperature had their way with his body. He wrapped his arms around himself and moved forward. Again, he called Bonsuan's name, and again he heard nothing in response. From what he could see, the land around him was surrounded on three sides by water with a thin trail of narrow beach leading off to the north. His recent study of the map of the laguna told his memor
y that this must be the sanctuary of Ca' Roman, though whatever wildlife was meant to be protected here was nowhere in evidence, no doubt battered into flight or cover by the recent storm.

  He turned and saw the ruined fort behind him. He went back to it: perhaps there were other doors or other entrances in which the pilot might have taken shelter. To the left of the doorway he'd used there was another one, leading up. He climbed up a single flight of stairs, hoping that the movement would bring some relief to his chilling body, but he found neither warmth nor Bonsuan. He went back outside and returned to where he had started, seeing nothing. Still farther along to the left, he found another door, also leading down.

  At the entrance he called the pilot's name. A noise, perhaps a voice, answered him, and he went down the steps. Bonsuan sat against the wall just at the bottom, his head leaning back against it, his huddled body illuminated by the sun that cascaded down the steps. When he reached the older man, Brunetti could make out the paleness of his face, but he could see that the cut on his head had stopped bleeding. Bonsuan, too, had discarded his life jacket.

  'Come on, Bonsuan,' he said, making himself sound hearty and in charge. 'Let's get out of here and back to Pellestrina.'

  Bonsuan smiled agreement and started to get to his feet. Brunetti helped him up; once he was upright, the older man seemed fairly steady.

  'How are you?' Brunetti asked.

  'Got a terrible headache,' the pilot said, smiling, 'but at least I've still got a head to ache.' He freed himself from Brunetti's arm and started up the stairs. At the top, he turned and called back down, 'God, what a storm. Nothing like it since 1927.'

  Because the shadow cast by Bonsuan's body fell down the stairway, blocking the light, Brunetti looked down at the first step to see where to set his foot. When he looked up, he saw that Bonsuan had sprouted a branch. Even before he registered the impossibility of this, the panic he'd felt during the storm leaped at him.

  Men don't grow branches; pieces of wood do not grow out of the chests of men. Not unless they have been pushed in from the other side.

  His mind was still processing this information when his body moved. It pushed aside reflection, cause-effect reasoning, and the ability to draw a conclusion, all those things which are said to define humanity. His body pounded up the stairs, he opened his mouth and emitted an animal roar of bare-fanged aggression. Bonsuan turned, very gently and slowly, like a groom about to kiss his bride, and fell down the steps towards Brunetti. He twisted as he fell, his weight so heavy that Brunetti had no hope of supporting him as he crashed past him. The piece of wood jutting from his chest, a thick sliver that could at one time have been an oar, or a sharp piece of tree limb, dragged across Brunetti's legs, snagging the wool of his trousers and leaving a red welt on his thighs.

  Instinct registered that Bonsuan was beyond help and propelled Brunetti up the stairs and into the fading light of a tranquil spring evening. In front of him stood a short, barrel-chested man, one of the men he'd seen in Signora Follini's store, his hands raised in a wrestler's expectant grasp. He'd been momentarily stunned by Brunetti's shout and now by his sudden appearance, but now he recovered and moved towards Brunetti on wide-spread legs, his thick body compressed with menace. His left hand glowed red in the light of the setting sun.

  Brunetti was unarmed. As an adult, words and wit had always served him as sufficient weaponry, and he had seldom, since becoming a policeman, been called upon to defend himself. But he had been raised a Venetian, in a poor family, with a father given to violence and drink. He had learned early how to defend himself, not only against his father but against anyone who mocked him for his father's behaviour. Civilization dropped from him, and he kicked the man between the legs.

  Spadini crumpled, collapsed to the ground with a howl, his hands helplessly clutching at himself. He lay there, moaning and sobbing, paralysed with pain. Brunetti ran down the steps and turned Bonsuan gently on to his back; the pilot looked back at him with surprised eyes. Brunetti flipped Bonsuan's jacket open and pulled his clasp knife from the right pocket of his uniform trousers, where he'd seen the pilot put it a hundred times, a thousand times, for more years than Chiara had been alive. Brunetti ran back up the stairs.

  The man still lay on the ground; his moans had not decreased. Looking around him, Brunetti saw a plastic shopping bag lying on the ground; he picked it up and, using Bonsuan's knife, sliced it into strips. He yanked the man's hands away from his body and pulled them behind him. Roughly, wanting to hurt him, Brunetti tied his wrists together, then found another bag and repeated the process, careless of how tightly he drew the strips. He tested them by trying to pull the man's arms apart, but they held fast. He found a third bag, cut it into more strips, and tied the man's ankles together. Then, remembering something he'd once read in a report from Amnesty International, he threaded a strip between the wrists and the ankles and yanked the man's legs up until he was anchored in a backward curve that Brunetti hoped was even more painful than it looked.

  More slowly this time, he went back down the steps and over to Bonsuan. Knowing that the bodies of murder victims must not be touched until the medical examiner has declared them dead, he nevertheless bent down over Bonsuan and pressed his eyes closed, keeping his fingers pressed against the lids for long seconds. When he took his hands away, the eyes remained shut. He searched the pockets of Bonsuan's jacket, then of his thermal vest, bloody now, until he found the pilot's telefonino.

  He went back outside and dialled 112. The phone rang fifteen times before it was answered. Too tired to comment, he gave his name and rank and explained where he was. He gave a brief account of the situation and asked that either a launch or a helicopter be sent immediately.

  'This is the Carabinieri, Commissario,' the young officer explained. 'Perhaps it would be better if you called your own commander with your request'

  The chill that had worked itself into Brunetti's bones washed into his voice. 'Officer, it is now 6.37. If your phone log doesn't show you placed a call for a launch or helicopter within the next two minutes, you will regret it.' As he spoke, he began to spin wild plans: to find out this man's name, to have Paola's father use his position to threaten his commander into dismissing him, tell the other pilots who had refused to help Bonsuan.

  Before he got to the end of the list, the man answered, 'Yes, sir,' and hung up.

  From memory, he dialled Vianello's number.

  'Vianello,' he answered on the third ring.

  'It's me, Lorenzo,' Brunetti said.

  'What's wrong?'

  'Bonsuan's dead. I'm at Ca' Roman, by the fort.' He waited for Vianello to say something, but the sergeant remained silent, waiting.

  'I've got the man who did it. He's here.' The man lay at his feet, his face flushed crimson as he strained at the strips holding him in that painful, helpless curve. Brunetti looked down at him, and the man opened his mouth, either to protest or to implore.

  Brunetti kicked him. He didn't aim for any particular place, not for his head and not for his face. He just lashed out with his right foot, and as chance had it, he caught the man on the top of his shoulder, just where it joined his neck. He groaned and went silent.

  Brunetti turned his attention back to Vianello. 'I called and told them to send a launch or a helicopter.'

  'Who'd you call?' Vianello asked.

  'I dialled 112.'

  'They're hopeless’ Vianello decreed. 'I'll call Massimo and get out there in half an hour. Where are you, exactly?'

  'By the fort’ Brunetti said, not at all concerned to know who Massimo was or just what Vianello would do.

  'I'll be there’ Vianello said and hung up.

  Brunetti put the telefonino into the pocket of his jacket, forgetting to switch it off. Without so much as a glance at the man on the ground, he went and sat on an immense stone by the wall of the fort. He leaned back against the wall and stared off to the west, his face warmed by the fading rays of the sun. He took his hands from his armpits and
held the palms out towards the sun, as a chilled man would towards a fire. He thought of removing his jacket but decided it would take too much effort to do so, even though he knew he'd be warmer if he could free himself of its sodden weight.

  He waited for something to happen. Nothing much did. The man on the ground moaned and moved around but Brunetti bothered to look at him only occasionally and then only to assure himself that his ankles and hands were still securely tied. At one point, he found himself thinking that, if he were to pick up one of the stones that lay nearby and hit the man on the front of the head with it, he could claim the man had attacked him after killing Bonsuan and he'd died during the ensuing struggle. It troubled Brunetti to find himself thinking this, but it troubled him even more to realize he was dissuaded from action, at least in part, by his realization that the marks of the ligatures on the man's wrists and ankles would show what had really happened.

  Slowly, taking the warmth of the day with it, the sun surrendered itself to the grey flatness of the coastline. To the north, the light faded, erasing the jagged ramparts and jutting spires of that horror, Marghera. He heard a fly buzz. Listening intently, he realized it was not a fly but the sound of a motor, sharp and high and approaching at great speed. A launch from the Questura? Vianello and the heroic Massimo? Brunetti had no idea which of his possible saviours it might be; it could just as easily be a passing taxi or some waterborne commuter hurrying home, now that the storm was over and peace restored. He thought for a moment of what a comfort it would be to see Vianello, tough and bear-like Vianello, and then he remembered that Vianello was Bonsuan's greatest friend on the force.

  He had three daughters, Bonsuan: a doctor, an architect and a lawyer, and it had all been done on the salary of a police pilot. Yet Bonsuan had always been the first to insist on paying for a round of coffees or drinks; police rumour had it that he and his wife helped support a young Bosnian woman who had studied law with their youngest daughter and needed to pass only two more exams before graduation. Brunetti had no idea if this were true, and now he'd probably never know. It hardly mattered, though.