A Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

  15

  BRUNETTI, LEFT BEHIND while Signorina Elettra disported herself in the sun and walked on the beach, without learning anything at all about the murders, was having as little success as she. He had called Luisa Follini’s number again, but a man answered, and this time it was Brunetti who hung up without speaking. It was instinct that had made him call her, some atavistic response to the menace radiating from the two men who had come into the store, and it was this same instinct that made him decide to send Vianello to stop in and have a word with her after he made another attempt to find Giacomini.

  Following Brunetti’s orders, Vianello went out to Malamocco again, where he managed to find Enrico Giacomini without difficulty. The fisherman recalled the fight between Scarpa and Bottin and said it had been provoked by Scarpa, who had accused Bottin of having a big mouth. Vianello pressed Giacomini and asked if he knew what Scarpa had been talking about, but the fisherman said he could think of nothing, but he said it in such a way as to give the sergeant, no mean judge of situations for all his apparent stolidity, a sense that here he was treading on some Pellestrina secret. Even as he asked the other man if he were sure he had no idea what Scarpa had intended, Vianello was overcome with a sense of the absurdity of his attempt to unearth information from one fisherman about another. Their definition of loyalty was not one that encompassed the police; in fact, it probably failed to encompass all of humanity aside from the small part of it fishing in the waters of the laguna and the Adriatic.

  Both irritated at Giacomini’s obvious evasions and curious to learn more about what had taken place between Bottin and Scarpa, Vianello asked Montisi to take him down to Pellestrina. Leaving Montisi with the boat, he went first to Signora Follini’s shop – but it was lunchtime, and the shop was closed. Brunetti had warned him not to call attention to Signora Follini, so Vianello walked past it without paying any apparent attention.

  He turned left and towards the address he had been given for Sandro Scarpa, the originator of the remark that had triggered Bottin’s anger. But Scarpa, who was not at all happy to be pulled away from his lunch by the police, said the fight with Bottin had been provoked by the dead man, and anyone who said anything else was lying. No, he couldn’t remember exactly what it was Bottin had said, nor could he recall why it had so angered him. Besides, he added, it hadn’t been much of a fight, not really. These things happened, he implied, when it was late at night and men had been drinking: they meant nothing, and no one ever thought about them again.

  With no warning, Vianello asked him if he knew where his brother was; Scarpa said he thought he’d gone to Vicenza to see a friend about something. He did not ask Vianello to leave, only his lunch was growing cold in the kitchen and there was nothing more to say about Bottin. Vianello saw no reason to prolong this conversation and so went to the restaurant to have a glass of wine in the bar.

  When he walked in, he was briefly disoriented and wondered if he was somehow already back at the Questura, for behind the bar he saw Pucetti, and sitting at a table to the left, reading Il Gazzettino with the attention he had previously known her to devote only to Vogue, sat Signorina Elettra. Both glanced up when he came in. Both reacted to the sight of his uniform, and he hoped the men standing at the bar saw how they did: even the faces of men he’d repeatedly arrested had seldom shown such suspicion and dislike.

  After a long pause, Pucetti drifted over, asked him what he wanted and then was a long time bringing the glass of prosecco. When he did bring it, it was sour and warm. Vianello took a sip, set the glass sharply on the counter, paid, and left.

  After another few minutes, seeing the sports page approach once again, Signorina Elettra folded the newspaper, paid for her coffee, nodded to a few of the men at the bar, and went out into the sun. She had gone only a few metres when she heard, from behind her, a voice she recognized instantly. ‘Going back to your cousin’s house?’ he asked.

  She turned and saw him, hesitated a moment, then returned the smile he offered her. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ When she saw his confusion, she explained, ‘She took the kids up to the Lido to buy shoes for the summer, and they won’t be back until after lunch.’

  ‘So you have the chance to eat in peace for a change?’ he asked with another, broader smile.

  ‘No, they’re really very good. And besides, they do have first right to the house and to Bruna.’

  ‘So you’re free,’ he asked, more interested in that than in discussing the behavior of the children.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she answered, then, realizing how very ungracious that sounded, changed it to, ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Good. I hoped to talk you into a picnic on the beach. There’s a place on the jetty where the tide has pulled away some of the boulders, so there’s no wind at all.’

  ‘Picnic?’ she asked, seeing that his hands were empty.

  He raised them and hooked his thumbs into what she had thought were braces. ‘In here,’ he said, turning halfway round and showing her a small black backpack, just large enough to hold a picnic lunch for two.

  Her smile was involuntary. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘What did you pack?’

  ‘Surprises,’ he answered, and this time she noticed the way his smile always began at his mouth and then crept up into his eyes.

  ‘Good. I just hope one of them is mortadella.’

  ‘Mortadella?’ he asked. ‘How did you know? I love it, but I never think anyone else does, so I never bring any. It’s such peasant food: I can’t imagine anyone like you eating it.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ she said with real enthusiasm, ignoring his compliment, at least for the moment. ‘It’s true, isn’t it? no one feels comfortable eating it any more. They want, oh, I don’t know, caviare or lobster tails, or . . .’

  ‘When what they’re really lusting for,’ he broke in, ‘is a panino with mortadella and so much mayonnaise it drips out of the sandwich and down their face.’ Casually, as though picnics were a habit between them, he linked his arm in hers and turned away towards the sea wall and the beach.

  When they reached the jetty, Carlo jumped up on to the first of the giant boulders, then turned and reached down to help her up. When she was beside him, he took her arm in his, and she was pleased to notice that he didn’t point to every uneven rock or surface as though she were incapable of seeing them. More than halfway along, he paused, leaned down, and studied the rocks below. He told her to wait, then jumped down on to an enormous boulder that jutted out at a perilous angle. He stretched out his hand, and she jumped down beside him. There was an immense hole in the side of the jetty where some of the boulders had been ripped away by a storm: the resulting cave was just large enough for the two of them. It was empty of cigarette ends or discarded food wrappings, proof that it was effectively hidden from detection by the Pellestrinotti.

  The floor of the cave was a carpet of white sand, and some quirk of tide or pressure had left a flat-topped block jutting from the back wall. It served perfectly as a table; quickly Carlo covered it with the things he pulled from his pack. Like Indians, they sat cross-legged on the sandy floor to eat, the sun slanting, the waves slapping on the rocks below.

  Even without mortadella, the picnic was perfect, Elettra judged. Not only because of the thick sandwiches of prosciutto, each slice of bread heavily buttered, and the chilled bottle of Chardonnay, and not because of the strawberries that followed, each to be dipped in mascarpone in open defiance of all dietary sanity. She judged the picnic to be perfect because of the company: Carlo listened to her as though they were old friends, talked to her as though he’d known her for years, and all of those happy ones.

  He asked what she did, and she said she worked in a bank: very boring, but a safe job to have in times like these, with unemployment skyrocketing all about them. When she asked, he said he was a fisherman and left it at that. It was only by careful questioning that she got him to tell her that he had abandoned his studies when his father died two years ago, returning to Burano to be with his mother
. She liked the way he spoke about it, as if entirely unconscious of how naturally he had assumed the responsibility for his mother.

  As they spoke about their families and their hopes, Elettra slowly became conscious of a growing undercurrent of excitement, though nothing either of them said or did could be judged to have produced it. The more she listened to him, the more she felt that this was a voice she’d listened to before and, she became aware, would very much like to hear again.

  When the sandwiches were finished, the wine drunk, the last of the mascarpone licked from greedy fingers, she noticed that he carefully picked up the empty wrappings and the napkins they’d used in place of plates and stuffed them in the empty backpack. He saw her watching what he was doing and said, grinning, ‘I hate it when the beaches are covered with junk.’ With a self-conscious shrug he pulled up one side of his mouth in a grimace she had already come to recognize and like. ‘I suppose it’s stupid to bother, but it seems little enough effort.’

  She leaned forward and put her napkin into the pack on top of his. As she did so, her breast brushed against his arm, and she was shocked by the power of her response, one that had nothing at all to do with remembered pleasures but stunned her with the promise of future ones. He shot her a look almost stupid with surprise, but when she pretended to have been unconscious of the contact, he turned his attention to the backpack and pulled the strings tight.

  After this, though she pretended to be interested in a large boat on the horizon that was visible from the opening in the rocks, she was conscious of his watching her. She sensed, rather than saw, his self-critical grimace, and then he asked, ‘Coffee?’

  She smiled and nodded, but she was never to know whether his question filled her with relief or disappointment.

  16

  BRUNETTI, FAR FROM sitting by the waves and dipping fresh strawberries into mascarpone, found himself trapped in his office and buried under the waves of paper generated by the organs of the state. He had thought that, during Patta’s absence and Marotta’s withdrawal, it would fall to him to make decisions that would affect the way justice was pursued in Venice. Even if he could see to nothing more than assigning incompetent officers to work on minor cases such as complaints about over-loud televisions, thus freeing the better ones to work on more serious crimes, he would at least be working for the general good. But he had no time for things even as simple as this. In the absence of what he now realized must be the daily filtering done by Signorina Elettra, papers flooded into his office and soaked up all of his working hours. It seemed that the Ministry of the Interior was capable of producing volumes of regulations and announcements every day, making determinations on subjects as diverse as the necessity of providing a translator when foreign suspects were questioned or the height of the heels on the shoes of female officers. His eyes passed over them all; it would be untrue to say he read them, for that act implies at least a minimum of comprehension, and Brunetti quickly passed beyond that possibility into a numbed state where he read words and words and set the pages aside with no idea of what those words signified.

  He could not stop his imagination from drifting off to Pellestrina. He found time to speak to Vianello but was disappointed to hear how little the other man had learned. He was intrigued, however, when Vianello mentioned the strong sense he’d had when speaking to the people on Pellestrina that they all considered Bottin not to be one of them, for this confirmed a suspicion Brunetti had formed, he no longer remembered why. When Brunetti gave Vianello’s remarks further thought, he found it even stranger. It was unusual in his experience for members of a community as tightly closed as that of Pellestrina to voice collective disapproval of one of their own. The secret of their survival had always lain in maintaining a united front against strangers, and no force was as alien as the police. He was struck by the repeated disparity between what was said about Giulio and what was said about Marco. Everyone mourned the boy’s death, but no one on Pellestrina seemed to shed any tears for Giulio Bottin. What was even stranger was how careless they had been in making this known.

  The rising tide of paper swept these thoughts from Brunetti’s mind for the next two days. On Friday he had a call from Marotta, who told him he’d be back from Turin on Monday. Brunetti did not ask if he had testified in the trial; he cared only that the other commissario take his turn at dealing with the papers.

  He and Paola were invited to dinner with friends on Saturday evening, so when the phone rang just before eight, just as he was knotting his tie, he was tempted not to answer it.

  Paola called down the hallway, ‘Shall I get it?’

  ‘No, I will,’ he said, but he said it reluctantly, wishing one of the children were there to answer it for him, lie, say they’d just gone out. Or say their father had decided to move to Patagonia and herd sheep.

  ‘Brunetti,’ he answered.

  ‘It’s Pucetti, sir,’ the young officer said. ‘I’m in a phone booth by the dock. A boat just came in. A body’s been fished up.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘No idea, sir.’

  ‘Man or woman?’ he asked, heart cold at the thought of Signorina Elettra.

  ‘I don’t know that either, sir. One of the fishermen came in a minute ago and told the men at the bar what happened, so we all came out here to get a look.’ Brunetti heard noises in the distance, and then the receiver was replaced.

  He put his own phone down and went back towards the bedroom. Paola, glancing up, saw the expression on his face. She wore a black dress, tight around the hips and cut very low at the back, a dress he thought he’d never seen before. She was just putting on her second earring but let her hands fall to her sides when she saw him. ‘Well, I didn’t much want to go, anyway,’ she said, tossing the earring back into the drawer of their dresser, the top one, the one she used to hold jewellery and, for some reason he had never fathomed, the bottles of vitamins she took. Casually, like someone asking for a half-dozen eggs, she said, ‘I’ll call Mariella.’

  He knew men who kept secrets from their wives. He knew one married man who kept two mistresses and had kept them for more than a decade. He knew men who had managed to lose their businesses and homes before their wives had any idea they gambled. For a moment he contemplated the possibility that Paola had sold her soul to the devil in exchange for the mystic power to read his mind. No, she was too smart to make that bad a bargain.

  ‘Or do you want to call the Questura first?’ she asked.

  He started to explain what it was but stopped himself, as if silence would keep Signorina Elettra safe. ‘I’ll use the telefonino,’ he said and took it from the dresser where he had left it in anticipation of a peaceful evening with friends. Paola went down to the living room to make her call, and he punched in the familiar number of the Questura. He asked that a boat collect him and take him out to Pellestrina. He pushed the little blue button, dialled Vianello’s number and, careful to remember the instructions he’d been given when issued the phone, pushed the blue button again.

  Vianello’s wife answered. When she heard who it was she made no attempt at pleasantry, but said she’d get Lorenzo. The radar of policemen’s wives knew when an evening was ruined: some were gracious, others were not.

  ‘Yes, sir?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Pucetti just called. From a public phone. They’ve fished up a body.’

  ‘I’ll be at the Giardini stop,’ Vianello said and hung up.

  He was there fifteen minutes later, but he was not in uniform, nor did he do more than raise his hand in acknowledgement to Brunetti when the boat slowed without stopping to allow him to step on board. Vianello assumed he’d been told everything Brunetti knew, so he didn’t waste time asking questions, nor did he voice Signorina Elettra’s name.

  ‘Nadia?’ Brunetti asked in the shorthand of long association.

  ‘Her parents were taking us to dinner.’

  ‘Anything special?’

  ‘Our anniversary,’ Vianello answered.

&
nbsp; Instead of apologizing, Brunetti asked, ‘How many?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  The launch swung to the right, taking them down towards Malamocco and Pellestrina. ‘I called for a scene of crime team to come out,’ Brunetti said. ‘But the pilot’ll have to go around and collect them, so I doubt they’ll be out any time soon.’

  ‘How do we explain getting there so quickly?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘I can say someone called us.’

  ‘I hope no one saw Pucetti making the call, then.’

  Brunetti, who almost never remembered to carry his, asked, ‘Why wasn’t he given a telefonino?’

  ‘Most of the young ones have their own, sir.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I suppose not, if he called you from a public phone.’

  ‘Stupid thing to do,’ Brunetti said, aware as he spoke that he was transforming the fear he felt for Signorina Elettra into anger at the young officer for provoking his fear in the first place.

  Brunetti’s telefonino rang. When he answered it, the operator at the Questura said that a call had just come in, a man saying that a woman’s body had been pulled up in the nets of a boat and had been taken to the dock at Pellestrina.

  ‘Did he give his name?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Did he say he’d found the body?’

  ‘No, sir. All he said was that a boat had come in with a body, not that he’d had anything to do with it.’

  Brunetti thanked him and hung up. He turned to Vianello. ‘It’s a woman.’ The sergeant didn’t say anything, so Brunetti asked, ‘If all those boats have radios and phones, why didn’t they call us?’

  ‘Most people don’t much want to get involved with us.’