A Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

  ‘A tanker,’ Montisi answered. He might as well have said, ‘A rapist’ or ‘An arsonist’, so fierce was his tone.

  Their own engine silent, they were enveloped in the roar that issued from the tanker. The universe became noise, a force that battered against them as fiercely as the shock waves from an explosion. Involuntarily, all of them pressed their hands to their ears and kept them there until the tanker had passed them and was continuing up the Canale dei Petroli towards the factories on the mainland. The waves from its wake hit them then, and they were forced to grab at the railings to keep their balance as the launch bobbed up and down and back and forth, the three of them dancing like fools on the deck.

  Both hands clenched on the railing in front of him, Brunetti leaned forward and took a deep breath. His gaze fell to the waters below them, and he saw small, button-sized blobs on the surface. There were only a few, and he could not be sure that they had not been there before he saw the ship.

  Montisi switched the engine back into life. Silent, they continued towards Malamocco.

  12

  THE TRIP PROVED useless, as there was no sign of Giacomini at the address the owner of the restaurant had provided. It was too late in the day to continue to Chioggia, so Brunetti decided to contact the police by phone and told Montisi to take them back to the Questura.

  Whether it was the sight of the tanker or the small dark blobs they had seen on the water, something had darkened their spirits, and they said little on the way back. The light continued to single out the myriad beauties of the city, especially to those who approached it, as people were meant to do, from the sea. It was late afternoon, and the sun still bore down on them; Vianello said something about having forgotten to put on sun screen. Brunetti ignored him.

  As they pulled up to the Questura, Brunetti saw that Pucetti was on guard duty that afternoon, and the sight of the young officer gave him the idea. Pucetti saluted as they stepped off the boat. Brunetti told Vianello to call the Chioggia police to see if they had any details on the incident between Scarpa and Bottin and said he’d wait for him in his office but wanted to have a word with Pucetti first.

  ‘Pucetti,’ Brunetti began, ‘how long are you assigned to guard duty?’

  ‘All this week, sir. Then next week I have night patrol.’

  ‘Would you be interested in a special assignment?’

  The young man’s face lit up. ‘Oh, yes, sir.’

  Brunetti appreciated his not complaining about guard duty: having to stand there all day with little to do but open the door or break up the occasional altercation between people waiting in long lines outside the various offices.

  ‘Good, let me go and check the schedules,’ Brunetti said and started to walk away. He had taken only two steps when he turned back towards Pucetti. ‘Did you ever work as a waiter?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he answered. ‘My brother-in-law has a pizzeria in Castello, and I work there sometimes on the weekends.’ Again Pucetti pleased him by asking no questions.

  ‘Good. I’ll be back.’

  He went immediately to Signorina Elettra’s office, where he found her arranging a spray of forsythia in a blue Venini vase. ‘Is that yours?’ he asked, pointing to the vase.

  ‘No, sir. It belongs to the Questura. The other one, the one I used to use, was stolen last week, so I had to replace it.’

  ‘Stolen?’ he asked. ‘From the Questura?’

  ‘Yes. One of the janitors left it in the washroom after he washed it out, and it disappeared.’

  ‘From the Questura?’

  ‘I’ll be more careful with this one,’ she said, slipping a curved branch into place. Brunetti had a friend who worked for Venini and so knew the cost of such a vase: no less than three million.

  ‘How is it that the Questura came to buy this one?’ he asked, careful of his phrasing.

  ‘Office equipment,’ she answered. She put the last branch in place and stepped aside to allow him to lift it for her. With a languid hand, she pointed to a spot on the windowsill, and Brunetti set it gently down just where she indicated.

  ‘Is Pucetti smart enough for you?’ he asked.

  ‘That sweet young man with the moustache?’ she asked in a voice that ignored the fact that Pucetti was probably no more than five years younger than she. ‘The one with the Russian girlfriend?’ she added.

  ‘Yes. Is he bright enough for you?’

  ‘To do what with?’ she asked.

  ‘To be out on Pellestrina.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Working in a restaurant but keeping an eye on you.’

  ‘May I ask how you are going to bring this about?’

  ‘The waiter who gave us the first information about Bottin has disappeared. He called the owner and gave him some story about having to go and take care of a sick friend, and there’s been no sign of him since then. So they need a waiter.’

  ‘What does Pucetti have to say about this?’ she asked, sitting down behind her desk.

  ‘I haven’t asked him yet. I wanted to ask you first.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, sir.’

  ‘He’d be there to protect you, so I wanted to be sure you thought he was capable of doing that.’

  She considered this for a moment and said, ‘Yes, I think he’d be a good choice.’ She glanced at the forsythia, then back at Brunetti. ‘Shall I take care of scheduling him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered but then couldn’t resist the temptation to ask, ‘How will you do it?’

  ‘He’ll be put on something I think I’ll call “Ancillary Duty”.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means anything I want it to mean.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said and then asked, ‘What about Marotta? Isn’t he in charge next week? Isn’t it his decision?’

  ‘Ah, Marotta,’ she said with barely disguised contempt. ‘He never wears a tie to work.’ So much, thought Brunetti, for Marotta’s chances of permanent promotion at the Venice Questura.

  ‘While you’re here, sir,’ she said, pulling open a drawer and taking from it a few sheets of paper, ‘let me give you this. It’s everything I could find out about those people. And the autopsy report.’

  He took the papers, and went back to his office. The autopsy, performed by a pathologist at the hospital whose name Brunetti did not recognize, stated that Giulio Bottin had died as the result of any one of three blows to his forehead and skull, the pattern of bone shattering consistent with the use of a cylindrical object of some sort, a metal pipe or pole, perhaps. His son had bled to death, the blade having sunk so deep as to nick the abdominal aorta. The absence of water in their lungs and the fact that Giulio Bottin would have taken some time to die made it unlikely that they had been killed soon before the sinking of the boat.

  Brunetti had just finished reading the autopsy report when Vianello knocked and came in. ‘I called Chioggia, sir,’ the sergeant said, not bothering to sit down, ‘but they had no details whatsoever.’

  Brunetti set the papers aside. ‘As you said, they don’t seem to be the sort of people who expect the police to solve their problems for them.’

  He half expected Vianello to ask if anyone did, any more, but the sergeant made no reply. Brunetti took this opportunity to tell Vianello about his plan to send Pucetti to Pellestrina.

  ‘What about recommendations?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘Pucetti said he worked in his brother-in-law’s pizzeria. He can call the place in Pellestrina and say he’s heard they’re looking for a waiter, then recommend Pucetti. All in the family.’

  ‘What if someone recognizes him?’ Vianello asked, echoing Brunetti’s own fear.

  ‘Not likely to happen, is it?’ Brunetti asked by way of response, conscious as he did of how much he sounded like Signorina Elettra.

  Reading the signs of Brunetti’s reluctance, Vianello didn’t object; excusing himself without asking for new orders, he went downstairs.

  Brunetti returned to the pa
pers Signorina Elettra had given him. If the Alessandro Scarpa Brunetti was curious about was in his thirties – which distinguished him from the other Alessandro Scarpa who lived on Pellestrina, who was eighty-seven – then he had been arrested three years before for threatening a man with a knife. The other man had, the next day, changed his story and retracted the accusation, so there was nothing in the police files against Scarpa, though the Maresciallo of Carabinieri on the Lido said that Scarpa was known to cause trouble when he drank.

  No information could be gathered about anyone with the surname Giacomini.

  Signora Follini, it turned out, was a horse of a different colour. Follini was not her married name, for Signora Follini, though she had often enjoyed the company of men, had yet to do so under benefit of clergy. Her given name was Luisa, and she had been born on Pellestrina fifty-two years before.

  Her familiarity with the police, or perhaps it would be more exact to say theirs with her, began when she was nineteen, when she was arrested for soliciting. A first offender, she had been reprimanded and released, only to be arrested for the same offence at least three times during the next year. There was a long gap then, suggesting either that Luisa Follini had come to some accommodation with the local police or had moved from the area. She did not reappear in Pellestrina until twelve years ago, when she had been arrested under the still-stringent drug laws for possession, use and attempted sale of heroin as well as for prostitution.

  Luckily for her, she had been accepted at a drug rehabilitation centre near Bologna, where she had spent three years, returning to Pellestrina, it seemed, cured of both her addiction to heroin and her occupation. Her parents had died during her absence, and she had taken over the small store they owned in the village, where she had remained until the present time.

  Reading the report, Brunetti remembered that her dress had had long sleeves, and he wondered where the money for her surgery had come from and when she had had the operations done. Who had paid for them? The small store he had seen could in no way provide for the work evident in her face; nor, for that fact, could casual prostitution or the sale of heroin in a place as small as Pellestrina.

  He thought back to the two occasions he had spoken with her. The first time, she had been flirtatious and wryly theatrical about the limitations of living in a place like Pellestrina. With the history she trailed behind her, she would surely know the full cost of that, he reflected. But she had given no sign of the nervous energy of the addict. Nor had her nervousness the second time seemed related to drugs: it had been the nervousness of fear, and it had peaked with the entrance of those two men.

  He had no idea how late she would keep her store open. He pulled out the phone book and checked the listings for Pellestrina. Follini, Luisa was given. He dialled the number, and the phone was picked up on the third ring. She answered, giving her name.

  ‘Signora,’ he began, ‘this is Commissario Brunetti. I spoke to you earlier.’ He heard a soft click as the receiver was replaced.

  He put the phone book back in the drawer, put the file to the left of his desk, and went downstairs to talk to Pucetti.

  13

  PUCETTI COULD BARELY contain his delight at the assignment. At the mention of Signorina Elettra’s name he smiled, and at Brunetti’s explanation that it would be his chief duty to protect her, he seemed almost to glow. When the young officer asked whose idea it was to send her there, Brunetti hedged and answered, instead, that he hoped Pucetti’s girlfriend would have no objection to the special assignment, that is, Ancillary Duty.

  That night after dinner he told Paola about Pucetti, hoping she would agree that this would, if not assure, then at least increase Signorina Elettra’s safety.

  ‘What an odd couple they are,’ Paola said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Signorina Elettra and Pucetti.’

  ‘They’re hardly a couple,’ Brunetti protested.

  ‘No, I know that. But I mean, as people; it’s so odd that people like that, so bright, should be working for the police.’

  Not a little indignant, Brunetti said, ‘I work for the police, as well. I hope you haven’t forgotten that.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a thin-skinned baby, Guido,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm. ‘You know exactly what I mean. You’re a professional, with a law degree, and you joined the police when things were different, when it was a respectable thing to do with your life.’

  ‘Does that mean it isn’t any more?’

  ‘No, I suppose it’s still respectable,’ she began, then, seeing his expression, hastily said, ‘I mean of course it’s a respectable choice; you know I mean that. But it’s just that the best people, people like you, aren’t joining it any more. In ten years, it will be filled with Pattas and Alvises, the ambition-maddened and the hopelessly stupid.’

  ‘Which is which?’ Brunetti asked.

  She laughed at that. ‘Well might you ask.’ They were drinking verbena tisane out on the terrace, the children safely returned to their books. Four very plump clouds, pink with the reflected light of evening, formed a distant backdrop to the campanile of San Polo; the rest of the sky was clear and promised another day of glory.

  She returned to the subject. ‘Why do you think it is that so few really worthwhile people join now?’

  Instead of answering, he asked a question. ‘It’s the same for you, isn’t it? What sort of new colleagues are you getting at the university?’

  ‘God, we sound like Pliny the Elder, don’t we, sitting around and grumbling about how disrespectful youth is and how everything is going to hell?’

  ‘People have always said that. It’s one of the few constants in the histories I read: every age sees the one before it as the golden age when men were virtuous, women pure, and children obedient.’

  ‘Don’t forget “respectful”,’ Paola suggested.

  ‘The children or the women?’

  ‘Both, I suppose.’

  Neither of them spoke for a long time, not until the clouds had drifted to the south and served to frame the campanile of San Marco.

  Brunetti broke the silence by asking, ‘Who’d join now?’ He let the question lie, and when Paola didn’t bother to answer, he went on, ‘It happens too often: we work to arrest them, then when we do, the lawyers get their hands on the case, or the judges, and they end up getting off. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, and I’m seeing it happen more and more often. There’s that woman who got married in Bologna last week. Two years ago she stabbed and killed her husband. Sentenced to nine years. But she’s out on appeal after three months in jail, and now she’s married again.’

  Ordinarily, Paola would have made some ironic comment on the bravery of the new husband, but she waited to see if he was finished. When he went on, what he said shocked her. ‘I could retire, you know.’ Still she didn’t say anything. ‘I’ve got the years in service. Well, almost. I suppose what I mean is I could retire in two years.’

  Paola asked, ‘Is that what you want to do?’

  He sipped at his tisane and found it had grown cold. He tipped the cold tea out into the large terracotta tub that held the oleander, poured a fresh cup, added honey, and said, ‘Probably not. Not really. But it costs so much at times to watch what happens and not be able to do anything to stop it.’ Brunetti leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him, his cup held between both hands. ‘I’m over-reacting, I know, to this thing with the woman getting married, but every once in a while I read something or something happens, and I just can’t stand it.’

  ‘Didn’t the papers say he beat her?’ Paola asked.

  ‘I know someone in Bologna. He did the original questioning. She said nothing about that until she spoke to a lawyer. She’d been having an affair with the guy she married.’

  ‘None of that was in the papers, so I suppose none of it was mentioned at her trial,’ Paola said.

  ‘No, there was no proof of the affair. But she killed the husband, maybe during an a
rgument, as she said, and now she’s married to the other guy, and nothing will happen to her.’

  ‘Happily ever after?’ Paola suggested.

  ‘That’s only a small case,’ he began but instantly corrected himself, ‘No, no one’s murder is small. I mean it was a single case, and maybe there’d been an argument. But it happens all the time: men kill ten, twenty people, and then some clever lawyer, or more often, some incompetent judge, gets them out. And they don’t hesitate a minute till they go back to doing what they do best, killing people.’

  Paola, who had long experience of listening to him in these moments, had never heard Brunetti so distressed or angry about the conditions under which he worked.

  ‘What would you do if you retired?’

  ‘That’s just it: I have no idea. It’s too late to try to take the law exams; I’d probably have to go back to university and start all over again.’

  ‘If there is one thing I recommend you don’t do,’ she interrupted, ‘it is to think about going back to university.’ Her shudder of horror at the thought was no less real for being consciously manufactured.

  They considered the question for a while, but neither came up with anything. Finally Paola said, ‘Didn’t the noble Romans always go back to their farms and devote themselves to the improvement of the land and the writing of letters to friends in the city, lamenting the state of the Empire?’

  ‘Umm,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘But I’m afraid I’m not noble.’

  ‘And thank God you’re not a Roman,’ Paola added.

  ‘Nor do we have a farm.’

  ‘I suppose that means you can’t retire,’ she concluded and asked for another cup of tisane.

  The weekend passed quietly. Brunetti had no clear idea of when Signorina Elettra planned to go out to Pellestrina. He thought of calling her at home, even looked up her number in the phone book, something he’d never done before. He found the listing, a low number in Castello that would put her home, he calculated, somewhere near Santa Maria Formosa. While he had the page open, he checked for other Zorzis and found at least two who lived within a few numbers of her address: family?