Death in a Strange Country cgb-2

by Donna Leon

  He read the article again, then again. He looked through the newspaper he had, but Il Manifesto had made no mention of it

  ‘Is this possible, Guido?’

  He shook his head. No, an overdose was impossible, but she was dead; the paper gave proof of that.

  ‘What will you do?’

  He looked off towards the bell tower of San Polo, the closest church. He had no idea. Patta would see this as an unrelated event or, if related, either an unfortunate accident or, at worst, a suicide. Since only Brunetti knew she had destroyed the postcard from Cairo, and only he had seen her reaction to the body of her lover, there was nothing to link the two of them together as anything other than colleagues, and that surely was no reason for suicide. Drugs and alcohol, and a woman living alone; that was enough to tell how the Press would treat this one - unless, unless the same sort of call that Brunetti was sure had been made to Patta were to be made to editors’ offices. In that case, the story would die a quick death, as many stories did. As Doctor Peters had.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, finally answering Paola’s question. ‘Patta’s warned me off, told me not to go back to Vicenza.’

  ‘But certainly this changes things.’

  ‘Not for Patta. It’s an overdose. The Carabinieri and the American military police will handle it. They’ll do an autopsy, then they’ll send her body back to America.’

  ‘Just like the other one,’ Paola said, giving voice to his thoughts. ‘Why kill them both?’

  Brunetti shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’ But he knew. She had been silenced. Her casual remark that she wasn’t interested in drugs had not been a lie: the idea of an overdose was ludicrous. She’d been killed because of whatever she knew about Foster, because of whatever it was that had sent her careening across the room, away from her lover’s body. Killed by drugs. He wondered if that was meant to be a message to him but dismissed the idea as vainglorious. Whoever had killed her hadn’t had enough time to arrange an accident, and a second murder would have been too obvious, a suicide unexplained and therefore suspicious. So an accidental overdose was the perfect solution: she did it to herself, nowhere else to look, another dead end. And Brunetti didn’t even know if it was she who had called to say, ‘Basta’.

  Paola came closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Guido. Sorry for her.’

  ‘She couldn’t have been thirty yet,’ he said. ‘All those years in school, all that work.’ It seemed to him that her death would have been less unfair if she had had time for more fun. ‘I hope her family doesn’t believe it.’

  Paola spoke his thoughts. ‘If the police and the Army tell you something, you’re likely to believe it. And I’m sure it looked very real, very convincing.’

  ‘Poor people,’ he said.

  ‘Could you...’ she broke off, remembering that Patta had told him to stay clear of this.

  ‘If I can. It’s bad enough that she’s dead. They don’t need to believe this.’

  ‘That she was murdered isn’t going to be any better,’ Paola said.

  ‘At least she didn’t do that.’

  Both of them stayed there in the late autumn sunshine, thinking about parents and being a parent, and what parents want and need to know about their children. He had no idea which would be better, worse. At least, if you knew that your child had been murdered, your life would have the grim hope of someday being able to kill the person who had done it, but that hardly seemed any sort of consolation.

  ‘I should have called her.’

  ‘Guido,’ she said, voice growing firm. ‘Don’t start that. Because all it means is that you should have been a mind-reader. And you’re not. So don’t even start thinking that.’ He was surprised by the real anger in her voice.

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. They remained like that, without speaking, until the bells of San Marco boomed out ten o’clock.

  ‘What are you going to do? Will you go to Vicenza?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’m going to wait.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Whatever they knew, they knew because of where they worked. It’s the link they had. There have got to be other people who know or suspect or have access to what they learned. So I’m going to wait.’

  ‘Guido, now you’re asking other people to be mind-readers. How are they going to know to come to you?’

  ‘I’ll go out there, but not for a week, and then I’ll make myself conspicuous. Speak to that major, to the sergeant who worked with them, to other doctors. It’s a small world there. People will talk to one another; they’ll know something.’ And to hell with Patta.

  ‘Let’s forget Burano, all right, Guido?’

  He nodded then got to his feet. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk. I’ll be back for lunch,’ He squeezed her arm. ‘I just need to walk.’ He glanced out over the rooftops of the city. How strange; the glory of the day was undiminished. Sparrows swooped and played tag with one another almost within his grasp, chirping for the joy of flight. And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.

  * * * *

  16

  On Monday morning, he went into his office at the regular time and stood looking at the façade of the church of San Lorenzo for more than an hour. During that entire time, he saw no sign of motion or activity, neither on the scaffolding nor on the roof, which was stacked with neat rows of terracotta tiles. Twice he heard people come into his office, but when they didn’t speak to him, he didn’t bother to turn around, and they left, presumably after having placed things on his desk.

  At ten-thirty, his phone rang, and he turned away from the window to answer it.

  ‘Good morning, Commissario. This is Maggiore Ambrogiani.’

  ‘Good morning, Maggiore. I’m glad you called. In fact, I was going to call you this afternoon.’

  ‘They did it this morning.’ Ambrogiani said with no prelude.

  ‘And?’ Brunetti asked, knowing what he meant.

  ‘It was an overdose of heroin, enough to kill someone twice her size.’

  ‘Who did the autopsy?’

  ‘Doctor Franceso Urbani. One of ours.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here at the hospital in Vicenza.

  ‘Were any of the Americans present?’

  ‘They sent one of their doctors. Sent him down from Germany. A colonel, this doctor.’

  ‘Did he assist or only observe?’

  ‘He merely observed the autopsy.’

  ‘Who’s Urbani?’

  ‘Our pathologist.’

  ‘Reliable?’

  ‘Very.’

  Aware of the potential ambiguity of the last question, Brunetti rephrased it. ‘Believable?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that means it was really an overdose?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it does.’

  ‘What else did he find?’

  ‘Urbani?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There were no signs of violence in the apartment. There were no sign of prior drug use, but there was a bruise on her upper right arm and one on her left wrist. It was suggested to Doctor Urbani that these bruises were consistent with a fall.’

  ‘Who made that suggestion?’

  The length of the pause before Ambrogiani answered was probably meant as a reproach to Brunetti’s even having to ask. ‘The American doctor. The colonel.’

  ‘And what was Doctor Urbani’s opinion?’

  ‘That the marks are not inconsistent with a fall.’

  ‘Any other needle marks?’

  ‘No, none.’

  ‘So she overdosed the first time she did it?’

  ‘Strange coincidence, isn’t it?’ Ambrogiani asked.

  ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. But one of my men works with an American policeman whose son was her patient. He said she was very
good with the little boy. He broke his arm last year and got bad treatment at the beginning. Doctors and nurses rushed, too busy to tell him what they were doing; you know the story, so he was afraid of doctors, afraid they’d hurt him again. She was very kind with him, spent a lot of time. It seems she always made sure to schedule a double appointment for the boy, so she wouldn’t have to rush him.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she didn’t use drugs, Maggiore,’ Brunetti said, trying to make it sound like he believed it.

  ‘No, it doesn’t, does it?’ Ambrogiani agreed.

  ‘What else did the report say?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen a copy of it.’

  ‘Then how do you know what you’ve told me?’

  ‘I called Urbani.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dottor Brunetti. An American soldier was murdered in Venice. Less than a week later, his commanding officer dies under mysterious circumstances. I’d be a fool if I didn’t suspect some sort of connection between the two events.’

  ‘When will you have a copy of the autopsy report?’

  ‘Probably this afternoon. Would you like me to call you?’

  ‘Yes. I’d appreciate that, Maggiore.’

  ‘Is there anything you think I should know?’ Ambrogiani asked.

  Ambrogiani was there, in daily contact with the Americans. Anything Brunetti told him was sure to become a fair trade. ‘They were lovers, and she was very frightened when she saw his body.’

  ‘Saw his body?’

  ‘Yes. She was sent to identify his body.’

  Ambrogiani’s silence suggested that he, too, saw this as a particularly subtle touch. ‘Did you speak to her after it?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Yes and no. I came back to the city on the boat with her, but she didn’t want to talk about it. It seemed to me at the time that she was afraid of something. She had the same reaction when I saw her out there.’

  ‘Was that when you came out here?’ Ambrogiani asked.

  ‘Yes. Friday.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what she was afraid of?’

  ‘No. None. She might have tried to call me here on Friday night. There was a phone message here at the Questura, from a woman who didn’t speak Italian. The operator who took the call doesn’t speak English and all he could understand was that she said, ‘Basta.’

  ‘Do you think it was she?’

  ‘It could have been. I’ve no idea. But the message makes no sense.’ Brunetti thought of Patta’s order and asked, ‘What’s going to happen out there?’

  ‘Their military police are going to try to find out where she got the heroin. There were other signs of drugs found with her, the ends of marijuana cigarettes, some hashish. And the autopsy showed that she had been drinking.’

  ‘They certainly didn’t leave any doubt, did they?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘There’s no sign that she was forced to take the injection.’

  ‘Those bruises?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘She fell.’

  ‘So it looks like she did it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Neither of them spoke for a while, then Ambrogiani asked, ‘Are you going to come out here?’

  ‘I’ve been told not to bother the Americans.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘The Vice-Questore here in Venice.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll wait a few days, a week, then I’d like to come out there and speak to you. Do your men have contact with the Americans?’

  ‘Not much. We each keep to ourselves. But I’ll see what I can find out about her.’

  ‘Did any Italians work with them?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But both of them, especially Foster, had to travel for his job, going back and forth to places like Egypt.’

  ‘Drugs?’ Ambrogiani asked.

  ‘Could be. Or it could be something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Drugs don’t feel right, somehow.’

  ‘What does feel right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He looked up and saw Vianello at the door to his office. ‘Look, Maggiore, I’ve got someone here now. I’ll call you in a few days. We can decide then when I can go out there.’

  ‘All right. I’ll see what I can find out here.’

  Brunetti hung up and waved Vianello into the office. ‘Anything on Ruffolo?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. Those people who live below his girlfriend said he was there last week. They saw him a few times on the steps, but they haven’t seen him for three or four days. Do you want me to speak to her, sir?’

  ‘Yes, maybe you’d better. Tell her that it’s different from the other times. Viscardi has been assaulted, so that changes everything, especially for her if she’s hiding him or knows where he is.’

  ‘You think it will work?’

  ‘On Ivana?’ Brunetti asked sarcastically.

  ‘Well, no, I suppose it won’t,’ Vianello agreed. ‘But I’ll try it anyway. Besides, I’d rather talk to her than to the mother. At least I can understand what she says, even though every word of it is a lie.’

  When Vianello had left to go and try to interview Ivana, Brunetti went back to the window, but after a few minutes he found that unsatisfactory and went to sit at his desk. Ignoring the files that had been placed there during the morning, he sat and considered the various possibilities. The first one, that it had been an overdose, he dismissed out of hand. Suicide, too, was impossible. In the past, he had seen distraught lovers who saw no possibility of a future life without the other person, but she was not one of them. Those two possibilities excluded, the only one that remained was murder.

  To accomplish it, however, would have taken some planning, for he ruled out luck in these things. There were those bruises - not for a second did he believe in a fall - someone could have held her while she was given the injection. The autopsy showed that she had been drinking; how much did a person have to drink to be so deeply asleep as not to feel a needle or to be so fuddled as not to be able to resist it? More importantly, who would she have drunk with, who would she have felt so comfortable with? Not a lover; hers had just been killed. A friend, then, and who were the friends of Americans abroad? Who did they trust if not other Americans? And all of that pointed back to the base and her job, for Brunetti was certain that the answer, whatever it was, lay there.

  * * * *

  17

  Three days passed during which Brunetti did almost nothing. At the Questura, he went through the motions of his job: looking at papers, signing them, filling out a staffing projection for the next year without giving a thought to the fact that Patta was supposed to do it. At home, he talked to Paola and the children, who were all too busy with the start of the new school year to realize how inattentive he was. Even the search for Ruffolo didn’t interest him much at all, certain as he was that someone so foolish and rash was sure soon to make a mistake that would put him in the hands of the police yet again.

  He did not call Ambrogiani, and in his meetings with Patta, he made no mention of the murders, one that had so quickly been forgotten by the Press, and one that had never been called a murder, or of the base in Vicenza. So frequently as to be almost obsessive, he played over scenes with the young doctor, caught flashes of her in his memory: stepping up out of the boat and giving him her hand; arms braced against the sink in the morgue, body racked by the spasms of her shock; smiling when she told him that, in six months, she would begin her life.

  It was the nature of police work that he never knew the victims whose deaths he investigated. Much as he came to know them intimately, to know about them in work, in bed, and in death, he had never known any of them in this life, and so he felt a special link to Doctor Peters and, because of that link, a special responsibility to find her murderer.

  On Thursday morning, he checked with Vianello and Rossi when he got to the Questura, but there had still been no sign of Ruffolo. Viscardi had go
ne back to Milan, after giving written descriptions of the two men, one very tall and one with a beard, to both the insurance company and the police. It appeared that they had forced their way into the palazzo, for the locks on the side door had been picked, the padlock that held a metal grating in place filed through. Though Brunetti had not spoken to Viscardi, his talks with Vianello and Fosco had been enough to persuade him that there had been no robbery, well, not a robbery of anything other than the insurance company’s money.