A Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

  She shook her head but still didn’t speak.

  ‘By now I suppose it’s common knowledge that they were murdered,’ he began and waited.

  ‘I know,’ she finally said.

  ‘But what people don’t know is that it was a particularly vicious crime, especially what was done to Marco.’

  She nodded at this, to acknowledge either that she had heard him or that even this detail was now known to the people of Pellestrina.

  ‘And so we need to learn as much about them as possible so that we can begin to get an idea of who would want to do this.’ When she didn’t respond, he asked, ‘Do you understand, Signora?’

  She looked up and met his eyes. Her mouth remained frozen in the smile the surgeons had given her, but Brunetti could not mistake the sadness in her eyes. ‘No one would want to do Marco any harm. He was a good boy.’

  She stopped here and glanced away from him, towards the empty back of the store.

  ‘And his father?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you anything,’ she said in a tight voice. ‘Nothing.’

  Something in Brunetti responded to the nervousness in her voice. ‘Nothing you tell me will be repeated, Signora.’

  The immobility of her features made her expression impossible to read, but he thought he sensed her relax.

  ‘They couldn’t have wanted to kill Marco,’ she said.

  ‘They?’ he asked.

  The nervousness swept back. ‘Whoever it was,’ she said.

  ‘What sort of man was he, Giulio?’ Brunetti asked.

  Her sculpted chin moved back and forth in absolute denial of any further information.

  ‘But, Signora . . .’ Brunetti began but was interrupted by the sound of the bell. He saw her eyes shoot in the direction of the door. She stepped back from the counter and said, ‘As I’ve told you, Signore, you’ll have to buy matches at the tobacco shop. I don’t sell them.’

  ‘Sorry, Signora. When I saw the candles you sold the old lady, I thought you’d be selling them, too,’ he answered seamlessly, paying no attention to the sound of footsteps behind him.

  Brunetti turned away from the woman and moved towards the door. As is the custom in small villages, he nodded in acknowledgement of the presence of the two men who stood there and, while paying no evident attention to them, registered every detail of their appearance. As he approached the door, they stepped to either side of it, a motion that filled Brunetti with a vague sense of menace, though the men made it clear that they took as little interest in him as he did in them.

  The little bell tinkled as he opened the door, and when he stepped into the sunlight, his back gave an answering shiver as he heard the door close gently behind him.

  He turned to the right, his mind absorbing the faces and forms of the two men. Though he recognized neither, Brunetti knew too well the type of men they were. They might have been related, so similar were the red, roughened complexions of their faces and so similar their thick, hardened bodies. But both of these things might just as easily have come from years of heavy work outside. The younger man had a narrow face, and dark hair slicked back with some sort of oily pomade. The older wore his in the same fashion, but as it was much thinner, it ended up looking as if it had been painted on to his skull, though a few greasy locks managed to dangle limply on the collar of his shirt. Both wore jeans that gave signs of heavy wear and the thick boots common to men who did heavy work.

  The men had studied Brunetti with eyes framed by a multitude of small lines, the lines that came with years of life in the sun, and both had given him the sort of attention that is usually given to prey: motionless, watchful, eager to make a move. It was this sense of contained aggression that had set off alarms in Brunetti’s body, regardless of the fact that the Signora was there as a witness, regardless of the fact that the men probably knew he was a policeman.

  He walked down the narrow street and into the tobacco shop. It was as dim and grimy as Signora Follini’s store, another place where failure had come to nest.

  The man behind the counter raised his attention from the magazine he was reading and looked at him from behind thick glasses. ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d like some matches,’ Brunetti said, maintaining Signora Follini’s story.

  The man pulled open a drawer beneath the counter and asked, ‘Box or booklet?’

  ‘Box, please,’ Brunetti said, reaching into his pocket for some small change.

  The man set a small box of matches in front of Brunetti and asked for two hundred lire. As Brunetti placed the coins on the counter, the man asked, ‘Cigarettes?’

  ‘No,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I’m trying to stop. But I like to have matches in case I can’t stand it any more and ask someone to give me one.’

  The man smiled at that. ‘Lot of people trying to stop,’ he said. ‘They don’t want to, not really, most of them, but they think it’s good for them, so they try.’

  ‘And do they succeed?’

  ‘Beh,’ the man exclaimed in disgust. ‘They manage it for a week or two, or a month, but sooner or later they’re all back in here, buying cigarettes.’

  ‘Doesn’t say much for people’s willpower, does it?’ Brunetti asked.

  The man picked up the coins and dropped them one by one into the wooden cash drawer. ‘People are going to do what they want to do, no matter what you tell them and no matter how bad they know it is for them to do it. Nothing can stop them; not fear or law or promises.’ He saw Brunetti’s expression and added, ‘You spend a lifetime selling cigarettes, and that’s one thing you learn. Nothing will ever stop them, not if they want to badly enough.’

  11

  THE TOBACCONIST’S WORDS lingered with Brunetti as he walked towards the restaurant: he wondered if they would some day apply to Vianello and the clams or whether the sergeant would turn out to be one of those rare men who have the strength of character to stop themselves from doing what they want to do. As for himself, Brunetti believed he was not particularly strong-willed and knew he often manipulated situations so that he could avoid having to make the decision to do something he didn’t want to do.

  Two years ago, when Paola had finally nagged him into having a complete physical exam, he had told the doctor not to bother with the tests for cholesterol and diabetes, leaving it to the doctor to infer that the tests were not necessary because he’d recently had them done. In truth, Brunetti had not wanted to know the results because he had not wanted to have to do whatever he would have to do if the results were bad. Whenever he thought of his deceit and the possible consequences to his family, he told himself he had never felt healthier in his life and to stop worrying about it.

  And three years ago, when an Albanian suspect had been arrested for having beaten the two eleven-year-old prostitutes who helped to support him, Brunetti had done nothing to prevent his being assigned for questioning to a detective who had a daughter the same age and another whose fifteen-year-old daughter had been assaulted by another Albanian. Nor had he ever enquired as to just what happened during the examination, though the suspect had quickly confessed to the crimes.

  Before he could examine his conscience further, he reached the restaurant and went in. From behind the counter, where he was making coffee for a few men standing at the bar, the owner acknowledged his arrival with a nod. ‘Your officer is in the back,’ he said. All of the men at the counter turned to look at Brunetti, and he felt the same intense stare he’d been given by the two men in the store. Ignoring it, he moved to the curtained doorway, pushed aside the strips of plastic, and went into the dining room.

  Vianello sat at the same table, a bottle of mineral water and a half-litre of white wine in front of him. As Brunetti pulled out the chair opposite him, Vianello leaned forward and poured some water, then some wine, into the glasses at Brunetti’s place.

  Brunetti drank down the glass of water, surprised at how thirsty he was, curious as to whether it could be a delayed response to the fear – he admit
ted that it was fear – he had felt when he turned his back on the two men. Looking across at Vianello, he asked, ‘Well?’

  ‘The waiter, Lorenzo Scarpa, hasn’t been back to work since we were here. The boss says he called and said he had to go and take care of a friend, but he didn’t say where the friend lived, and he didn’t give any idea of how long he’d be gone.’ Brunetti asked nothing about this, so Vianello continued. ‘I went to his place – the boss gave me his address – but his neighbours can’t remember seeing him for a few days, say they don’t have any idea where he is.’

  ‘And the brother, Sandro?’

  ‘Surprisingly enough, he’s still here. Well, he’s been here. His boat is still out, left before dawn this morning and still isn’t back.’

  ‘What could that mean?’

  ‘Anything, really,’ Vianello said. ‘That the fish are running and he doesn’t want to stop or that he’s had engine trouble. The boss here seemed to think it’s nothing more than a run of good luck, lots of fish.’

  Vianello sipped at his wine, then went on. ‘Signora Bottin died of cancer five years ago. Her relatives have had nothing to do with Giulio or Marco since she died.’

  ‘Why?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘That house on Murano. They disputed her will, but as it had been left to her by her parents and Bottin agreed that it should go to the son entirely, there was really no case they could make for it.’

  ‘And since then?’

  ‘There’s been no contact between them, it seems.’

  ‘Where’d you learn this?’

  ‘The owner of the bar. He seemed to think it was innocent enough to tell me at least this much.’

  Brunetti wondered what new dispute would now result about ownership but asked, instead, ‘And this Giacomini the waiter told us about?’

  Vianello pulled out his notebook and flipped it open. ‘Paolo Giacomini, another fisherman. The owner says he lives in Malamocco, but for some reason he keeps his boat here. He’s known as a troublemaker, someone who likes to cause bad blood between people.’

  ‘And the trouble between Scarpa and Bottin?’

  ‘No one would tell me anything about it except that there was some sort of run-in between them a year or so ago. Either they collided or came close and got their nets tangled. Whatever it was, there’s been bad feeling between them ever since.’

  ‘We can try the police in Chioggia,’ Brunetti suggested.

  ‘Probably the best thing, if it happened there,’ Vianello agreed. ‘If that’s where the denuncia was made, perhaps they can tell us something. I get the feeling that these people take care of things in their own way. And they’ve all taken a vow of silence where Bottin is concerned. No one can remember anything about him; certainly no one has a bad word to say about him.’

  ‘Yet Signora Follini told me that, whatever happened, it happened because of him, not because of the son.’

  ‘So now what do we do?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘First we have lunch,’ Brunetti answered, ‘then we go and see if we can find this Giacomini.’

  The meal passed off pleasantly enough, in part because Brunetti made no comment upon Vianello’s choices and in part because he restrained himself from having clams, though he did eat an enormous platter of coda di rospo which the owner assured him had been caught that morning. The owner had not succeeded in replacing Lorenzo Scarpa and had to wait on tables himself, so the meal took a long time to arrive, a situation worsened by the entrance of a string of Japanese tourists just as Brunetti and Vianello ordered.

  Their guide seated them at two long tables against the walls, where they seemed quite happy to wait for their meal while smiling and bowing to one another, the guide, Brunetti and Vianello, and the owner. Their behaviour was so exquisitely restrained and polite that Brunetti was amazed that anyone should ever speak badly of them. When he and Vianello were finished, they paid their bill, again in cash, received no receipt and got to their feet. Automatically, Brunetti bowed in the direction of the Japanese, waited for Vianello to do the same and for the Japanese to respond, then led his sergeant out to the bar section, where they had coffee but refused grappa.

  It had grown still warmer while they were inside, and they rejoiced in the heat of the day. It brought back the sense of boyish freedom they’d experienced when they set out that morning. Back at the police launch, they found no sign of Montisi, though a string of fish was hanging in the water from a stanchion on the other side of the boat.

  Neither of them much minded having to wait, and they were happy enough to sit on a wooden bench that looked across the waters in the general direction of Venice, though all they could see was the water of the laguna, a few boats moving across it, and the topless, endless sky.

  ‘Where do you think he’s gone?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Montisi or Scarpa?’

  ‘Montisi.’

  ‘He’s probably in some bar, learning more in five minutes than we have in two days.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me in the least,’ Brunetti said, removing his jacket and turning his face up to the sun. Vianello was prevented from doing the same only by the fact that he was wearing uniform.

  After about ten minutes, Brunetti was awakened from a semi-doze by Vianello’s voice, saying, ‘Here he comes.’

  He opened his eyes, looked to the right, and saw Montisi, wearing his dark uniform slacks and a white shirt with a large black stain on one shoulder, walking in their direction. When the pilot reached them, Brunetti moved to the left, making a space for him on the bench between them.

  ‘And?’ he asked when Montisi sat down.

  ‘I decided to have trouble with the engine,’ the pilot answered.

  ‘Decided?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘That way I’d have to ask someone for help.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I sawed through one of the distributor wires with a file and left it hanging, then tried to start up. Couldn’t. So I opened the engine again, saw what was wrong, and went into the village to see if someone would give me a piece of wire.’

  ‘And?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘And I found a man I know from the Army, when I did my military service. His son has a boat out here, and my friend takes care of the engines for him. He came along with me, saw the wire, went back to his workshop and found me a piece, then came back and helped me change it.’

  ‘Did he realize what you’d done?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘Probably. I was hoping to get someone who didn’t know much about engines, well, as much as I do. But Fidele probably saw what I’d done. Doesn’t matter. I took him down to the bar to thank him and he was willing to tell me about them.’

  ‘The Bottins?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Brunetti found it interesting, the way Montisi distanced himself from the information he’d managed to obtain. It was what Brunetti wanted or what Vianello wanted. It was probably no more than Montisi’s way of remaining loyal to the other fisherman, the tribe he was so soon going to rejoin.

  ‘Anything you’re looking for, it was the father,’ Montisi finally explained.

  ‘Who told you that?’ Vianello asked.

  At the same time Brunetti asked, ‘What did he do?’

  Montisi answered both questions with the same shrug, then said, ‘No one told me anything exact, but it was clear that no one liked him. Usually they pretend they do, at least they do when they’re talking to foreigners like me. But not with Bottin. I figure it’s something he did, but that’s just a feeling. I don’t have any idea what it could have been, but it was as if they didn’t consider him one of them any more.’

  ‘Because of the way he treated his wife?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No,’ Montisi said with a sudden shake of his head. ‘She was from Murano, so she didn’t count,’ and with that, he dismissed her humanity as easily as the possibility.

  There was a long silence. Three cormorants came whi
zzing past them and splashed down a good distance from shore. They swam around for a while, seemed to confer among themselves as to where the fish might be, then, so smoothly as hardly to disturb the surface of the water, disappeared below it, leaving no trace. Automatically, curious, Brunetti began to hold his breath when he saw them slip under the water, but he was forced to expel it and take three long breaths before the first of them popped up, corklike, quickly followed by the other two.

  ‘Let’s go over to Malamocco,’ he said, getting to his feet.

  The engine of the launch sprang instantly to life. Vianello cast off, and Montisi swung them out from the pier and in a broad circle back the way they had come. Hugging the narrow peninsula on his right, he headed towards Malamocco. As they approached the canal that led out into the Adriatic, Brunetti leaned forward to tap Montisi on the shoulder. The pilot turned to him, and Brunetti pointed off to the left, where he saw smoke billowing up in the far distance. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  Covering his eyes with his left hand, Montisi followed Brunetti’s gesture and said, ‘Marghera.’

  Seeing nothing of interest, Montisi turned his attention back to the waters ahead. Suddenly, he switched the engine into neutral and then just as quickly into reverse, forcing the boat to glide to a halt. Brunetti, who had been trying to distinguish the source of the smoke, turned when he felt the abrupt change in the motor’s rhythm.

  ‘Maria Vergine,’ escaped his lips as he saw an enormous ship looming, endlessly high, endlessly threatening, to their right. ‘What is it?’ he asked Montisi. Though they were a few hundred metres away, his perspective was still at an upward slant, and all he could see was the side of the hull, the Plimsoll line, and the left side of the glassed-in control deck, soaring as distant and high as a church tower.