Death in a Strange Country cgb-2

by Donna Leon

  ‘Thanks, Anita,’ he said and picked up one of the pears. He plucked out the stem and bit into the pear, ripe and perfect. In five quick bites, it was gone, and he reached for the second one. A bit less ripe, it was still sweet and soft. Juggling the two damp cores in his left hand, he took the third pear, thanked her again, and went out of the office, now fortified for the ride to Piazzale Roma and his meeting with Doctor Peters. Captain Peters.

  * * * *

  4

  He got to the Carabinieri station at Piazzale Roma at twenty minutes before seven, leaving Monetti in the launch to wait for him to come back aboard with the doctor. He realized, although it no doubt made a statement about his prejudices, that he found it more comfortable to think of her as a doctor than as a captain. He had called ahead, so the Carabinieri knew he was coming. It was the usual bunch, most of them Southerners, who seemed never to leave the smoke-filled station, the purpose of which Brunetti could never understand. Carabinieri had nothing to do with traffic, but traffic was all there was at Piazzale Roma: cars, campers, taxis, and, especially during the summer, endless rows of buses parked there just long enough to disgorge their heavy cargoes of tourists. Just this last summer there had been added to them a new sort of vehicle, the diesel-burning, fume-spewing buses that lumbered there overnight from a newly freed Eastern Europe and from which emerged, dazed with travel and lack of sleep, scores of thousands of very polite, very poor, very stocky tourists, who spent a single day in Venice and left it dazzled by the beauty they had seen in that one day. Here they had their first taste of capitalism triumphant, and they were too thrilled by it to realize that much of it was no more than papier-mâché masks from Taiwan and lace woven in Korea.

  He went into the station and exchanged friendly greetings with the two officers on duty. ‘No sign of her yet, La Capitana,’ one of them said, then added a scornful chuckle at the idea that a woman could be an officer. At the sound of it, Brunetti determined to address her, at least It’she came anywhere within hearing of these two, by her rank and to give her every sign of the respect to which her rank entitled her. Not for the first time, he cringed when he saw his own prejudices manifest in other people.

  He engaged in a few desultory remarks with the Carabinieri. What chance did Napott have of winning this Weekend? Would Maradona ever play again? Would the government fall? He stood looking out of the glass door and watched the waves of traffic flow into the Piazzale. Pedestrians danced and wove their way through the cars and buses. No one paid the least attention to the zebra crossing or to the white lines that were meant to indicate the separation of lanes. And yet the traffic flowed smoothly and quickly.

  A light green sedan cut across the bus lane and drew up behind the two blue and white Carabinieri vehicles. It was an almost anonymous rectangle, devoid of markings or rooftop light, its only distinguishing mark a number plate which read ‘AFI Official’. The driver’s door opened, and a uniformed soldier emerged. He bent and opened the door behind him and held it while a young woman in a dark-green uniform got out. As soon as she stood clear of the car, she put on her uniform cap and looked around her, then over towards the Carabinieri station.

  Without bothering to say goodbye to the men inside, Brunetti left the station and went towards the car. ‘Doctor Peters?’ he said as he approached.

  She looked up at the sound of her name and took a step towards him. As he came up, she held out her hand and shook his briefly. She appeared to be in her late twenties, with curly dark-brown hair that pushed back against the pressure of her hat. Her eyes were chestnut, her skin still brown from a summer tan. Had she smiled, she would have been even prettier. Instead, she looked at him directly, mouth pulled into a tense straight line, and asked, ‘Are you the police inspector?’

  ‘Commissario Brunetti. I have a boat here. It will take us out to San Michele.’ Seeing her confusion, he explained, ‘The cemetery island. The body’s been taken there.’

  Without waiting for her reply, he pointed in the direction of the mooring and led the way across the road. She paused long enough to say something to the driver and then followed him. At the water’s edge, he pointed to the blue and white police boat moored to the embankment. ‘If you’ll come this way, Doctor,’ he said, stepping from the pavement and onto the deck of the boat. She came up close behind him and accepted his hand. The skirt of her uniform fell just a few inches below her knees. Her legs were good, tanned and muscular, the ankles slim. With no hesitation, she gripped his hand and allowed herself to be helped on board the boat. As soon as they were down in the cabin and seated, Monetti backed out of the mooring and turned the boat up the Grand Canal. He took them quickly past the railway station, blue light turning, and turned left into the Canale della Misericordia, beyond the outlet of which lay the cemetery island.

  Usually, when he had to take people foreign to Venice on a police launch, Brunetti busied himself by pointing out sights and points of interest along the way. This time, however, he contented himself with the most formal of openings. ‘I hope you had no trouble in getting here, Doctor.’

  She looked down at the strip of green carpeting on the floor between them and muttered something he took to be a ‘no’ but said nothing further. He noticed that she occasionally took a deep breath in an effort to calm herself, a strange response in someone who was, after all, a doctor.

  As It’she had read his thoughts, she glanced up at him, smiled a very pretty smile, and said, ‘It’s different, when you know the person. In medical school, they’re strangers, so it’s easy to keep a professional distance.’ She paused for a long time. ‘And people my age don’t usually die.’

  That was certainly true enough. ‘Did you work together for a long time?’ Brunetti asked.

  She nodded and began to answer, but before she could say anything, the boat gave a sudden lurch. She grabbed the front of her seat with both hands and shot him a frightened glance.

  ‘We’ve moved out into the laguna, into open water. Don’t worry, it’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  ‘I’m not a good sailor. I was born in North Dakota, and there’s not a lot of water there. I never even learned how to swim.’ Her smile was weak, but it was back in place.

  ‘Did you and Mr Foster work together for a long time?’

  ‘Sergeant,’ she corrected him automatically. ‘Yes, ever since I got to Vicenza, about seven months ago. He really runs everything. They just need an officer to be in charge. And to sign papers.’

  ‘To take the blame?’ he asked with a smile.

  ‘Yes, yes, I suppose you could say that. But nothing’s ever gone wrong. Not with Mike. He’s very good at his job.’ Her voice was warm. Praise? Affection?

  Below them, the engine slowed to an even purr, and then there came the heavy thump as they slid into the dock at the cemetery. He stood and went up the narrow stairway to the open deck, pausing at the top to hold one side of the swinging door open to allow the doctor to pass through it. Monetti was busy wrapping the mooring lines around one of the wooden pilings that stuck up at a crazy angle from the waters of the laguna,

  Brunetti stepped ashore and held out his arm. She placed her hand on it, then leaned heavily on it as she leaped to the shore beside him. He noticed that she carried neither handbag nor briefcase, perhaps having left it in the car or in the boat.

  The cemetery closed at four, so Brunetti had to ring the bell that stood to the right of the large wooden doors. After a few minutes, the door on the right side was pulled open by a man in a dark blue uniform, and Brunetti gave his name. The man held the door open, then closed it after them. Brunetti led their way through the main entrance and paused at the watchman’s window, where he announced himself and showed his warrant card. The watchman signalled for them to continue down tine open arcade to the right. Brunetti nodded. He knew the way.

  When they stepped through the door and into the building that held the morgue, Brunetti felt the sudden drop in temperature. Doctor Peters apparently did as well, for sh
e brought her arms together across her chest and lowered her head. A white-uniformed attendant sat at a plain wooden desk at the end of a long corridor. He got to his feet as they approached, careful to place his book face down in front of him. ‘Commissario Brunetti?’ he asked.

  Brunetti nodded. ‘This is the doctor from the American base,’ he added, nodding to the young woman at his side. To one who had looked so frequently upon the face of death, the sight of a young woman in a military uniform was hardly worthy of notice, so the attendant passed quickly in front of them and opened the heavy wooden door that stood to his left.

  ‘I knew you were coming, so I brought him out,’ he said as he led them towards a metal gurney that stood on one side of the room. All three of them recognized what was under the white cloth. When they drew up next to the body, the young man looked at Doctor Peters. She nodded. When he pulled the cloth back, she looked at the face of the dead man, and Brunetti looked at hers. For the first few moments, her own remained absolutely still and expressionless, then she closed her eyes and pulled her upper lip between her teeth. It’she was trying to bite back tears, she failed, for they welled up and seeped out of her eyes. ‘Mike, Mike,’ she whispered and turned away from the body.

  Brunetti nodded to the attendant, and he drew the cloth back across the young man’s face.

  Brunetti felt her hand on his arm, her grip surprisingly strong. ‘What killed him?’

  He stepped back, intending to turn and lead her from the room, but her grip tightened and she repeated, voice insistent, ‘What killed him?’

  Brunetti placed his hand on top of hers and said, ‘Come outside.’

  Before he had any idea what she was doing, she pushed past him and grabbed at the cloth that covered the body of the young man, ripping it away to expose his body to the waist. The giant incision of the autopsy, running from navel to neck, was sewn together with large stitches. Unsewn and seeming quite harmless when compared to the enormous incision of the autopsy was the small horizontal line that had killed him.

  Her voice came out as a low moan, and she repeated the name, ‘Mike, Mike,’ drawing the sound out in a long, keening wail. She stood beside the body, curiously straight and rigid, and the noise continued to come from her.

  The attendant stepped quickly in front of her and fastidiously replaced the cloth, covering both wounds and then the face.

  She turned to face Brunetti, and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears, but he saw something else in them that looked like nothing so much as terror, sheer animal terror.

  ‘Are you all right, Doctor?’ he asked, voice low, careful not to touch her or approach her in any way.

  She nodded, and the look of whatever it was passed from her eyes. Abruptly she turned and headed back towards the door of the mortuary. A few feet from it, she stopped suddenly, looked around her as It’surprised to find herself where she was, and ran towards a sink that stood against the far wall. She was violently sick into it, retched repeatedly until she stood at the sink, arms braced to support herself, leaning down above it, panting.

  The attendant suddenly appeared beside her and handed her a white cotton towel. She took it with a nod and wiped at her face with it. With strange gentleness, the man took her arm and led her to another sink a few metres down the same wall. He turned on the hot-water tap, then the cold, and placed his hand under the water until it reached a temperature suitable for him. When it did, he reached out and held the towel white Doctor Peters washed her face and rinsed her mouth with a handful of water, and then another. When she was done, he handed her the towel again, shut off both laps, and left the room by the door on the other side.

  She folded the towel and draped it over the edge of the sink. Making her way back to Brunetti, she avoided looking to her left, where the body still lay on me gurney, covered now.

  When she got near, he turned and led the way to the door, held it open for her as they passed into the warmer evening air. As they walked down under the long arcade, she said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why that happened. I’ve certainly seen autopsies. I’ve even done autopsies.’ She shook her head a few times as they walked. He half saw the gesture from his greater height beside her.

  If only to complete the formality, he asked, ‘Is that Sergeant Foster?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she answered with no hesitation, but he sensed that she was struggling to keep her voice calm and level. Even her walk was more rigid than it had been when they went in, as It’she had let the uniform take over and direct her motions.

  When they passed through the gate of the cemetery, Brunetti led her over to where Monetti had moored the boat. He sat inside the cabin, reading his newspaper. When he saw them approach, he folded it and moved to the stern, where he pulled on the mooring rope to bring the boat close enough for them to be able to climb on board easily.

  This time she stepped onto the boat and went immediately down the stairs into the cabin. Pausing only long enough to whisper to Monetti, ‘Take as much time as you can going back,’ he followed her down into the cabin.

  She sat farther forward this time, turned to face out of the front windows. The sun had already set, and the afterglow provided very little light by which to see the skyline of the city, off to their left. He took his place opposite her, noticing how straight and stiff she sat.

  ‘There will be a lot of formalities, but I imagine we can release the body tomorrow.’

  She nodded to acknowledge that she heard him.

  ‘What will the Army do?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ she said.

  ‘What will the Army do in a case like this?’ he repeated.

  ‘Well send the body home, to his family.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean about the body. I mean about the investigation.’

  At that, she turned and looked him in the eyes. Her confusion, he believed, was feigned. ‘I don’t understand. What investigation?’

  ‘To find out why he was killed.’

  ‘But I thought it was robbery,’ She said, asking for confirmation of that belief.

  ‘It might have been,’ he said, ‘bat I doubt it.’

  She looked away from him when he said that and stared out of the window, but the panorama of Venice had been swallowed by the night, and all she saw there was her own reflection.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that,’ she said, voice insistent.

  To Brunetti, it sounded as It’she believed she could make this be true, if only she repeated it often and insistently enough. ‘What kind of man was he?’ he asked.

  For a moment, she didn’t answer, but when she did, Brunetti found her answer strange, ‘Honest. He was an honest man.’ It was a strange thing to say about a man so young.

  He waited to see It’she would say anything more. When she didn’t, he asked, ‘How well did you know him?’

  He watched, not her face, but its reflection in the window of the boat. She was no longer crying, but a fixed sadness had settled on her features. She took a deep breath and answered, ‘I knew him very well.’ But then her voice changed, grew more casual and offhand. ‘We worked together for seven months.’ And that was all she said.

  ‘What sort of work did he do? Captain Duncan said he was the Public Health Inspector, but I’m not sure I have any idea what that means.’

  She noticed that their eyes met in the window, so she turned to face him directly. ‘He had to inspect the apartments where we live. We Americans, that is. Or if there were any complaints about tenants by their landlords, he had to go and investigate them.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘He had to go to the embassies serviced by our hospital. In Egypt, Poland, Yugoslavia, and inspect the kitchens, see that they were clean.’

  ‘So he travelled a lot?’

  ‘A fair amount, yes.’

  ‘Did he like his work?’

  Without hesitation and with great emphasis, she said, ‘Yes, he did. He thought it was very important.’

  ‘And you were his sup
erior officer?’

  Her smile was very small. ‘You could say that, I suppose. I’m really a paediatrician; they just gave me the job in public health so that they’d have an officer’s signature, and a doctor’s, in the right places. Mike ran the office almost completely by himself. Occasionally, he’d give me something to sign, or he’d ask me to write a request for supplies. Things get done faster if an officer asks for them.’

  ‘Did you ever go on any of these trips, these trips to the embassies, together?’

  It’she found that a strange question, he had no way of telling, for she turned away from him and again stared out of the window. ‘No, Mike always went alone.’ Without warning, she stood and went towards the steps at the back of the cabin. ‘Does your driver, or whatever he is, know the way? It seems like it’s taking us an awful long time to get back.’ She pushed open one of the doors and looked carefully to either side of them, but the buildings that lined the canal were anonymous to her.

  ‘Yes, it takes longer to get back,’ Brunetti lied easily. ‘Many of the canals are one way, so we have to go all the way around the station to get to Piazzale Roma.’ He saw that they were just entering the Canale di Cannaregio. In five minutes, perhaps less, they would be there.

  She pushed her way outside and stood on deck. A sudden gust of wind pulled at her cap, and she crushed it to her head with one hand, then removed it and held it at her side. With its stiffness removed, she was revealed as more than pretty.

  He came up the steps and stood beside her. They made the right turn into the Grand Canal. ‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said. Then, changing her tone, she asked, ‘Why do you speak English so well?’