Death in a Strange Country cgb-2

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti could see only the width of the wound; he had no idea of the path it would have followed within the body. ‘Could it have been anything else? I mean, other than a knife?’

  ‘I can’t be sure until I get a closer look at the tissue inside, but I doubt it.’

  ‘What about drowning? If it didn’t get his heart, could he still have drowned?’

  Rizzardi sat back on his heels, careful to pull the folds of his raincoat under him to keep them from the water below. ‘No, I doubt it. If it missed the heart, there wouldn’t have been enough damage to keep him from pulling himself out of the water. Just look at how pale he is. I think that’s what happened. One blow. The right angle. Death would have been almost immediate.’ He pushed himself to his feet and delivered the closest thing the young man was to get to a prayer that morning. ‘Poor devil. He’s a handsome young man, and he’s in excellent physical shape. I’d say he was an athlete or at least someone who took very good care of himself.’ He bent back over the body and, with a gesture that seemed curiously paternal, he moved his hand down across his eyes, trying to force them closed. One refused to move. The other closed for a moment, then slowly slid open and stared again at the sky. Rizzardi muttered something to himself, took a handkerchief from his breast pocket, and placed it across the face of the young man.

  ‘Cover his face. He died young,’ muttered Brunetti.

  ‘What?’

  Brunetti shrugged. ‘Nothing. Something Paola says.’ He looked away from the face of the young man and studied, for the briefest of instants, the façade of the basilica and allowed himself to be calmed by its symmetry. ‘When can you tell me something exact, Ettore?’

  Rizzardi gave a quick look at his watch. ‘If your boys can take him out to the cemetery now, I can get to him later this morning. Give me a call after lunch, and I’ll be able to tell you exactly. But I don’t think there’s any doubt, Guido.’ The doctor hesitated, not liking to have to tell Brunetti how to do his job. ‘Aren’t you going to check his pockets?’

  Though he had done it many times in his career, Brunetti hated this first invasion of the privacy of the dead, this first awful imposition of the power of the State on the peace of the departed. He disliked having to go through their diaries and drawers, to page through their letters, finger their clothing.

  But since the body had already been moved from where it had been found, there was no reason to leave it untouched until the photographer could record where it lay in the precise posture of death. He squatted beside the young man and reached a hand into his trouser pocket. At the bottom he found a few coins and placed them beside the body. In the other there was a plain metal ring with four keys attached. Unasked, Rizzardi bent down to help shift the body to its side so that Brunetti could reach into the back pockets. One held a sodden yellow rectangle, clearly a train ticket, and the other a paper napkin, equally sodden. He nodded to Rizzardi, and they lowered the body back to the ground.

  He picked up one of the coins and held it out to the doctor.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Rizzardi.

  ‘American. Twenty-five cents.’ It seemed a strange thing to find in the pocket of a dead man in Venice.

  ‘Ah, that could be it,’ the doctor said. ‘An American.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why he’s in such good shape,’ Rizzardi answered, entirely unconscious of the bitter incongruity of the tense. ‘That might explain it. They’re always so fit, so healthy.’ Together, they looked at the body, at the narrow waist that showed under the still-open shirt.

  ‘If he is,’ Rizzardi said, ‘the teeth will tell me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of the dental work. They use different techniques, better materials. If he’s had any dental work done, I’ll be able to tell you this afternoon if he’s American.’

  Had Brunetti been a different man, he might have asked Rizzardi to take a look now, but he saw no need to hurry, nor did he want to disturb that young face again. ‘Thanks, Ettore. I’ll send a photographer out to take some pictures. Do you think you can get his eyes closed?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll have him looking as much like himself as I can. But you’ll want his eyes open for the pictures, won’t you?’

  Just by a breath, Brunetti stopped himself from saying he never wanted those eyes open again and, instead, answered, ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘And send someone to take the fingerprints, Guido’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right. Then call me about three.’ They shook hands briefly, and Doctor Rizzardi picked up his bag. Without saying goodbye, he walked across the open space towards the monumental open portal of the hospital, two hours early for work.

  More officers had arrived while they were examining the body, and now there must have been eight of them, formed in an outward-facing arc about three metres from the body. ‘Sergeant Vianello,’ Brunetti called, and one of them stepped back from the line and came to join him beside the body.

  ‘Get two of your men to take him to the launch, then take him out to the cemetery.’

  While this was being done, Brunetti returned to his examination of the front of the basilica, letting his eyes flow up and around its soaring spires. His eyes shifted across the campo to the statue of Colleoni, perhaps a witness to the crime.

  Vianello came up beside him. ‘I’ve sent him out to the cemetery, sir. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. Is there a bar around here?’

  ‘Over there, sir, behind the statue. It opens at six.’

  ‘Good. I need a coffee.’ As they walked towards the bar, Brunetti began to give orders. ‘We’ll need divers, a pair of them. Get them busy in the water where the body was found. I want them to bring up anything that could be a weapon: a knife, blade about three centimetres wide. But it might have been something else, even a piece of metal, so have them bring up anything that might have made a wound like that. Tools, anything.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Vianello said, trying to write this in his notebook while walking.

  ‘Doctor Rizzardi will give us a time of death this afternoon. As soon as we have it, I want to see Bonsuan.’

  ‘For the tides, sir?’ Vianello asked, understanding immediately.

  ‘Yes. And start calling the hotels. See if anyone is missing from his room, especially Americans.’ He knew the men disliked this, the endless calls to the hotels, pages and pages of them on the police list. And after they’d called the hotels, there remained the pensions and hostels, more pages of names and numbers.

  The steamy warmth of the bar was comforting and familiar, as were the smells of coffee and pastry. A man and woman standing at the counter glanced at the uniformed man, then went back to their conversation. Brunetti asked for espresso, Vianello for caffè corretto, black coffee with a substantial splash of grappa. When the barman put their coffees in front of them, both spooned in two sugars and cradled the warm cups in their hands for a moment.

  Vianello downed his coffee in one gulp, set the cup back on the counter, and asked, ‘Anything else, sir?’

  ‘See about drug dealing in the neighbourhood. Who does it, and where? See if there’s anyone in the neighbourhood with a record of drug arrests or street crimes: selling, using, stealing, anything. And find out where they go to shoot up, any of those calle that dead-end into the canal, if there’s a place where syringes turn up in the morning.’

  ‘You think it’s a drug crime, sir?’

  Brunetti finished his coffee and nodded to the barman for another. Without being asked, Vianello’ shook his head in a quick negative. ‘I don’t know. It’s possible. So let’s check that first.’

  Vianello nodded and wrote in his notebook. Finished, he slipped it into his breast pocket and began to reach for his wallet.

  ‘No, no,’ Brunetti insisted. ‘I’ll get it. Go back to the boat and call about the divers. And have your men set up barricades. Get the entrances to the canal blocked off while the divers work.’

  Vianello nodded his
thanks for the coffee and left. Through the steamy windows of the bar, Brunetti saw the ebb and flow of people across the campo. He watched as they came down from the main bridge that led to the hospital, noticed the police at their right, and asked the people standing around what was going on. Usually, they paused, looking from the dark uniforms that still milled around to the police launch that bobbed at the side of the canal. Then, seeing nothing at all out of the ordinary beyond that, they continued about their business. The old man, he saw, still leaned against the iron railing. Even after all his years of police work, he could not understand how people could so willingly place themselves near the death of their own kind. It was a mystery he had never been able to penetrate, that awful fascination with the termination of life, especially when it was violent, as this had been.

  He turned back to his second coffee and drank it quickly. ‘How much?’ he asked.

  ‘Five thousand lire.’

  He paid with a ten and waited for his change. When he handed it to Brunetti, the barman asked, ‘Something bad, sir?’

  ‘Yes, something bad,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Something very bad.’

  * * * *

  2

  Because the Questura was so near, it was easier for Brunetti to walk to his office than go back on the launch with the uniformed men. He went the back way, passing the Evangelical church and coming up on the Questura from the right side of the building. The uniformed man at the front entrance opened the heavy glass door as soon as he saw Brunetti, who headed for the stairway that would take him to his office on the fourth floor, passing beside the line of foreigners seeking residence and work permits, a line that extended halfway across the lobby.

  His desk, when he reached his office, was just as he had left it the day before, covered with papers and files sprawled across it in no particular order. The ones nearest to hand contained personnel reports, all of which he had to read and comment upon as part of the Byzantine process of promotion through which all State employees had to go. The second pile dealt with the last murder in the city, the brutal, crazed beating to death of a young man that had taken place a month ago on the embankment of the Zattere. So savagely had he been beaten that the police were at first sure it was the work of a gang. Instead, after only a day, they had discovered that the killer was a frail wisp of a boy of sixteen. The victim was homosexual, and the killer’s father a known Fascist who had instilled in his son the doctrines that Communists and gays were vermin who deserved only death. So, at five one bright summer morning, these two young men had come together in a deadly trajectory beside the waters of the Giudecca Canal. No one knew what had passed between them, but the victim had been reduced to such a state that the family had been denied the right to see his body, which had been consigned to them in a sealed coffin. The piece of wood which had been used to beat and stab him to death sat in a plastic box inside a filing cabinet on the second floor of the Questura. Little remained to be done, save to see that the psychiatric treatment of the killer continued and he was not allowed to leave the city. The State made no provision for psychiatric treatment for the family of the victim.

  Instead of sitting at his desk, Brunetti reached into one of the side drawers and pulled out an electric razor. He stood at his window to shave, staring out at the facade of the church of San Lorenzo, still covered, as it had been for the last five years, with the scaffolding behind which extensive restoration was said to be taking place. He had no proof that this was happening, for nothing had changed in all these years, and the front doors of the church remained forever closed.

  His phone rang, the direct line from outside. He glanced at his watch. Nine-thirty. That would be the vultures. He switched off the razor and walked over to his desk to answer the phone.

  ‘Brunetti.’

  ‘Buon giorno, Commissario. This is Carlon,’ a deep voice said and went on, quite unnecessarily, to identify himself as the Crime Reporter for the Gazzettino.

  ‘Buon giorno, Signor Carlon.’ Brunetti knew what Carlon wanted; let him ask.

  ‘Tell me about that American you pulled out of the Rio dei Mendicanti this morning.’

  ‘It was officer Luciani who pulled him out, and we have no evidence that he was American.’

  ‘I stand corrected, Dottore,’ Carlon said with a sarcasm that turned apology to insult. When Brunetti didn’t respond, he asked, ‘He was murdered, wasn’t he?’ making little attempt to disguise his pleasure at the possibility.

  ‘It would appear so.’

  ‘Stabbed?’

  How did they learn so much, and so quickly? ‘Yes.’

  ‘Murdered?’ Carlon repeated, voice heavy with feigned patience.

  ‘We won’t have any final word until we get the results of the autopsy that Doctor Rizzardi is conducting this afternoon.’

  ‘Was there a stab wound?’

  ‘Yes, there was.’

  ‘But you’re not sure the stab wound was the cause of death?’ Carlon’s question ended with an incredulous snort

  ‘No, we’re not,’ Brunetti replied blandly. ‘As I explained to you, nothing will be certain until we have the results of the autopsy.’

  ‘Other signs of violence?’ Carlon asked, displeased at how little information he was getting.

  ‘Not until after the autopsy,’ Brunetti repeated.

  ‘Next, are you going to suggest he might have drowned, Commissario?’

  ‘Signor Carlon,’ Brunetti said, deciding that he had had enough, ‘as you well know, if he was in the water of one of our canals for any length of time, then it is far more likely that disease would have killed him than that he would have drowned.’ From the other end, only silence. ‘If you’ll be kind enough to call me this afternoon, about four, I’ll be glad to give you more accurate information.’ It was Carlon whose reporting had caused the story of the last murder to become an exposé of the private life of the victim, and Brunetti still felt enormous rancour because of it.

  ‘Thank you, Commissario. I’ll certainly do that. One thing - what was the name of that officer again?’

  ‘Luciani, Mario Luciani, an exemplary officer.’ As all of them were when Brunetti mentioned them to the Press.

  ‘Thank you, Commissario. I’ll make a note of that. And I’ll be sure to mention your cooperation in my article.’ With no further ado, Carton hung up.

  In the past, Brunetti’s dealings with the Press had been relatively friendly, at times more than that, and at times he had even used the Press to solicit information about a crime. But in recent years, the ever-strengthening wave of sensationalistic journalism had prevented any dealings with reporters that were more than purely formal; every speculation he might voice would be sure to appear the following day as an almost direct accusation of guilt. So Brunetti had become cautious, providing information that was severely limited, however accurate and true reporters might know it to be.

  He realized that, until he heard from the lab about the ticket in the man’s pocket or until he got the report on the autopsy, there was very little hecould do. The men in the lower offices would be calling the hotels now, and they would inform him if they turned up something. Consequently, there was nothing for him to do but continue to read and sign the personnel reports.

  An hour later, just before eleven, the buzzer on his intercom sounded. He picked up the receiver, knowing too well who it would be. ‘Yes, Vice-Questore?’

  Momentarily surprised at being directly addressed, having hoped, perhaps, to have found Brunetti absent or asleep, his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, took a moment to respond. ‘What’s all this about the dead American, Brunetti? Why wasn’t I called? Have you any idea of what this will do to tourism?’ Brunetti suspected that the third question was the only one in which Patta took any real interest

  ‘What American, sir?’ Brunetti asked, voice filled with feigned curiosity.

  ‘The American you pulled out of the water this morning.’

  ‘Oh,’ Brunetti said, this time with polite surprise.
‘Is the report back so soon? He was American, then?’

  ‘Don’t be cute with me, Brunetti,’ Patta said angrily. ‘The report isn’t back yet, but he had American coins in his pocket, so he’s got to be an American.’

  ‘Or a numismatist,’ Brunetti suggested amiably.

  There followed a long pause which told Brunetti the Vice-Questore didn’t know the meaning of the word.

  ‘I told you not to be smart, Brunetti. We’re going to work on the assumption that he’s an American. We can’t have Americans being murdered in this city, not with the state of tourism this year. Do you understand that?’

  Brunetti fought back the impulse to ask if it would be all right to kill people of other nationalities - Albanians, perhaps? - but, instead, said only, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what, sir?’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Divers are searching the canal where he was found. When we find out when he died, we’ll have them search the places from where he might have drifted, assuming he was killed somewhere else. Vianello is checking for drug use or dealing in the neighbourhood, and the lab is working on the things we found in his pockets.’

  ‘Those coins?’

  ‘I’m not sure we need the lab to tell us they’re American, sir.’

  After a long silence that said it would not be wise to bait Patta any further, his superior asked, ‘What about Rizzardi?’

  ‘He said he’d have the report to me this afternoon.’

  ‘See that I’m sent a copy of it,’ he ordered.

  ‘Yes, sir. Will there be anything else?’

  ‘No, that’s all.’ Patta replaced his phone without saying anything else, and Brunetti went back to reading the reports.

  When he finished with them, it was after one. Because he didn’t know when Rizzardi would call, and because he wanted to get the report as quickly as possible, he decided not to go home for lunch, nor spend the time going to a restaurant, though he was hungry after the long morning. He decided to go down to the bar at the foot of Ponte dei Greci and make do with a few tramezzini.