Death in a Strange Country cgb-2

by Donna Leon

  ‘Oh, fine, and how’s he going to like that?’ Vianello lowered his eyes in the direction of Patta’s office. ‘How’s he going to like our arresting his friend, Signor Politically Important Viscardi?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Vianello, you know what he’ll do. Once Viscardi’s behind bars and the case looks strong enough, Patta’ll talk about the way he was suspicious from the very beginning but remained friendly with Viscardi, the better to lead him into the trap that he himself had devised.’ Both of them knew from long experience that this was true.

  Further ruminations on the behaviour of their superior were cut short by Vianello’s phone. He answered it with his name, listened for a moment, then handed it to Brunetti. ‘For you, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, then felt a rush of excitement when he recognized Ambrogiani’s voice.

  ‘He’s still here. One of my men followed him to his home; It’s in Grisignano, about twenty minutes from the base.’

  ‘The train stops there, doesn’t it?’ Brunetti asked, already planning.

  ‘Only the local. When do you want to see him?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Hold on a minute; I’ve got the schedule here.’ While Brunetti waited, he heard the phone being set down for a moment, then Ambrogiani’s voice. ‘There’s one that leaves Venice at eight; gets into Grisignano at eight-forty-three.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘Six-twenty-four.’

  ‘Can you have someone meet that?’

  ‘Guido, that gets in at seven-thirty,’ Ambrogiani said, voice almost pleading.

  ‘I want to speak to him at his house, and I don’t want him to leave before I get a chance to talk to him.’

  ‘Guido, you can’t go barging in on people’s homes at seven-thirty in the morning, even if they are Americans.’

  ‘If you give me the address, maybe I can get a car here.’ Even as he said it, he knew it was impossible; news of the request was bound to get back to Patta, and that was bound to cause nothing but trouble.

  ‘You’re a stubborn devil, aren’t you?’ Ambrogiani asked, but with more respect than anger in his voice. ‘All right, I’ll meet the train. I’ll bring my own car; that way we can park near his house and not have the entire neighbourhood wondering what we’re doing there.’ Brunetti, to whom cars were alien, strange things, hadn’t stopped to consider this, how a car that clearly belonged either to the Carabinieri or the police was bound to cause a stir in any small neighbourhood.

  ‘Thanks, Giancarlo. I appreciate it.’

  ‘I would certainly hope so. Seven-thirty on Saturday morning,’ Ambrogiani said with disbelief and replaced the receiver before Brunetti could say anything else. Well, at least he didn’t have to carry a dozen red carnations.

  The next morning, he managed to get to the station on time to have a coffee before the train left, so he was reasonably civil to Ambrogiani when he met him at the tiny station of Grisignano. The Maggiore looked surprisingly fresh and alert, as though he had been up for hours, something that Brunetti found, in his current mood, faintly annoying. Opposite the station, they stopped at a bar, and each had a coffee and a brioche, the Maggiore signalling to the barman with his chin that he wanted a dash of grappa added to his coffee. ‘It’s not far from here,’ Ambrogiani said. ‘A few kilometres. They live in a semi-detached house. On the other side there’s the landlord and his family.’ Seeing Brunetti’s inquisitive gaze, he explained. ‘I had someone come out and ask a few questions. Not much to say. Three kids. They’ve lived there for more than three years, always pay their rent on time, get on well with the landlord. His wife’s Italian, so that helps things in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘He’s here, back from the hospital in Germany.’

  ‘And how is he?’

  ‘He began school in September. Nothing seems to be wrong with him, but one of the neighbours says he has a nasty scar on his arm. Like he was burned.’

  Brunetti finished his coffee, put the cup down on the counter, and said, ‘Let’s go out to their house, and I’ll tell you what I know.’

  As they drove though the sleepy lanes and tree-lined roads, Brunetti explained to Ambrogiani what he had learned from the books he read, told him about the Xerox copy of the medical report on Kayman’s son, and about the article in the medical journal.

  ‘It sounds like she, or Foster, put it together. But that still doesn’t explain why they were both killed.’

  ‘You think they were, too?’ Brunetti asked.

  Ambrogiani turned his attention from the road and looked at Brunetti. ‘I never believed Foster was killed in a robbery, and I don’t believe in an overdose. No matter how good both of them were made to look.’

  Ambrogiani turned into an even smaller road and pulled up a hundred metres before a white cement house that stood back from the road, surrounded by a metal fence. The double entry doors to the semi-detached house opened from a porch raised above the doors of twin garages. In the driveway two bicycles lay, one beside the other, with the complete abandon that only bicycles could achieve.

  ‘Tell me more about these chemicals,’ Ambrogiani said when he turned off the engine. ‘I tried to find out something about them last night, but no one I asked seemed to know anything precise about them, except that they were dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t know that I learned much more from what I read,’ Brunetti admitted. ‘There’s a whole spectrum of them, a real death cocktail. It’s easy to produce them, and most factories seem to need some of them, or create them doing whatever it is they do, but the trouble comes in getting rid of them. It used to be possible to dump them just about anywhere, but now it’s harder. Too many people complained about having them in their backyards.’

  ‘Wasn’t there something in the paper a few years ago, about a ship, Karen B or something like that, that got as far as Africa and got turned around, ended up in Genoa?’

  When Ambrogiani mentioned it, Brunetti remembered it and remembered the headlines about the ‘Ship of Poisons’, a freighter that had tried to unload its cargo in some African port but was refused permission to dock. So the boat sailed around in the Mediterranean for what seemed like weeks, the Press as fond of it as it was of those crazy porpoises who tried to swim up the Tiber every couple of years. Finally, the Karen B had docked at Genoa, and that had been the end of it. As efficiently as if she had gone down in the waters of the Mediterranean, the Karen B sank off the pages of the newspapers and from the screens of Italian television. And the poisons she had been carrying, an entire boatload of lethal substances, had just as completely disappeared, no one to know or ask how. Or where.

  ‘Yes. But I don’t remember what her cargo was,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘We’ve never had a case of it out here,’ Ambrogiani said, not feeling it necessary to explain that ‘we’ were the Carabinieri and ‘it’ illegal dumping. ‘I don’t even know if it’s our job to look for it or arrest for it.’

  Neither of them wanted to be the first to break the silence that thought led to. Finally, Brunetti said, ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’

  ‘That no one seems responsible to enforce the law? If there are laws?’ Ambrogiani asked.

  ‘Yes,’

  Before they could follow this up, the front door on the left side of the house they were watching opened and a man stepped out onto the porch. He walked down the steps, pulled open the garage door, then bent to move both bicycles to the grass at the side of the driveway. When he disappeared back into the garage, both Brunetti and Ambrogiani got out of the car and started to walk towards the house.

  Just as they got to the gate in the fence, a car came backing slowly out of the garage. It backed towards the gate, and the man got out, leaving the engine running, and moved to the gate to open it. Either he didn’t see the two men there or he chose to ignore them. He unlatched the gate, shoved it open, and then headed back towards the open door of his car.

  ‘Sergeant Kayman?’ Brunetti cal
led over the sound of the engine.

  At the sound of his name, the man turned and looked at them. Both policemen stepped forward but stopped at the gate, careful not to pass onto the man’s property uninvited. Seeing this, the man waved them ahead with his hand and bent into the car to switch off the engine.

  He was a tall blond man with a slight stoop that might once have been intended to disguise his height but which had now become habitual. He moved with that loose-limbed ease so common to Americans, the ease that made them look so good in casual clothing, so awkward in formal dress. He walked towards them, face open and quizzical, not smiling but certainly not suspicious.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked in English. ‘You guys looking for me?’

  ‘Sergeant Edward Kayman?’ Ambrogiani asked.

  ‘Yeah. What can I do for you? Sort of early, isn’t it?’

  Brunetti stepped forward and extended his hand. ‘Good morning, Sergeant. I’m Guido Brunetti, from the Venice police.’

  The American shook Brunetti’s hand, his grasp firm and strong. ‘Long way from home, aren’t you, Mr Brunetti?’ he asked, turning the last two consonants into ’D’s.

  It was meant as a pleasantry, so Brunetti smiled at him. ‘I suppose I am. But there are a few things I wanted to ask you, Sergeant.’ Ambrogiani smiled and nodded but made no attempt to introduce himself, leaving the conversation to Brunetti.

  ‘Well, ask away,’ said the American, then added, ‘sorry I can’t invite you gentlemen into the house for a cup of coffee, but the wife’s still asleep, and she’d kill me if I woke the kids up. Saturday’s her only morning to sleep in.’

  ‘I understand,’ Brunetti said. ‘Same thing at my house. I had to sneak out like a burglar myself this morning.’ They shared a grin at the unreasonable tyranny of sleeping women, and Brunetti began, ‘I’d like to ask you about your son.’

  ‘Daniel?’ the American asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ Brunetti remarked.

  Before he answered, the soldier moved over and leaned back against his car, bracing his weight against it. Brunetti took this opportunity to turn to Ambrogiani and asked in Italian, ‘Are you following what we say?’ The Carabiniere nodded.

  The American crossed his feet at the ankles and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket He held the pack towards the Italians, but both shook their heads. He lit a cigarette with a lighter, careful to cup it between both hands from the nonexistent breeze, then slipped both packet and lighter back into his pocket.

  ‘It’s about this doctor business, isn’t it?’ he asked, putting his head back and blowing a stream of smoke up into the air.

  ‘What makes you say that, Sergeant?’

  ‘Doesn’t take much figuring, does it? She was Danny’s doctor, and she sure as heck was all upset when his arm got so bad. Kept asking him what happened, and then that boyfriend of hers, the one that got himself killed in Venice, then he started bein’ all over me with questions.’

  ‘You knew he was her boyfriend?’ Brunetti asked, honestly surprised.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t until after he was killed that anyone said anything, but I suspect a fair number of people must have known before. I didn’t, for one, but I didn’t work with them. Heck, there aren’t but a few thousand of us, all living and working cheek by jowl. Nobody gets to keep any secrets, leastways not for very long.’

  ‘What sort of questions did he ask you?’

  ‘About where it was that Danny had been walking that day. And what else we saw there. Stuff like that.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him I didn’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. We were up above Aviano that day, up near Lake Barcis, but we stopped at another place on the way back down from the mountains; that’s where we had our picnic. Danny went off for a while into the woods by himself, but he couldn’t remember where it was he fell down, which place it was. I told Foster, tried to describe where it was, but I couldn’t remember real clear where we parked the car that day. With three kids and a dog to keep an eye on, you don’t pay much attention to things like that.’

  ‘What did he do when you said you couldn’t remember?’

  ‘Heck, he wanted me to go up there with him, drive all the way up there with him some Saturday and look for the place, see if I could remember where it was we parked the car.’

  ‘And did you go back with him.’

  ‘Not on your life. I’ve got three kids, a wife, and, if I’m lucky, one day off a week. I’m not going to go spend one of them running around the mountains, looking for some place I once had a picnic in. Besides, that was the time when Danny was in the hospital, and I wasn’t about to leave my wife alone all day, just to go on some wild-goose chase.’

  ‘How did he behave when you told him?’

  ‘Well, I could see that he was pretty angry, but I just told him I couldn’t do it, and he seemed to quiet down He stopped asking me to go with him, but I think he went up there, looking, by himself, or maybe with Doctor Peters.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, he went and talked to a friend of mine who works in the dental clinic. He’s the X-ray technician, and he told me that, one Friday afternoon, Foster went into the lab and asked him to lend him his tab for the weekend.’

  ‘His what?’

  ‘His tab. At least that’s what he calls it. You know, that little card thing they all have to wear, the people who work with X-rays. You get overexposed, it turns a different colour. I don’t know what you call it.’ Brunetti nodded his head, knowing what it was. ‘Well, this guy lent it to him for the weekend, and he had it back to him on Monday morning, in time for work. Good as his word.’

  ‘And the sensor?’

  ‘Wasn’t changed at all. Same colour it was when he gave it to him.’

  ‘Why do you think that was why he borrowed it?’

  ‘You didn’t know him, did you?’ he asked Brunetti, who shook his head. ‘He was a funny guy. Real serious. Real serious about his work, well, about just about everything. I think he was religious, too, but not like those crazy born-agains. When he decided that something was right, there was no stopping him from doing it. And he had it in his head that...’ He paused here. ‘I’m not sure what he had in his head, but he wanted to find out where it was Danny touched that stuff he’s allergic to.’

  ‘Is that what it was? An allergy?’

  ‘That’s what they told me when he came down from Germany. His arm’s an awful mess, but the doctors up there said it would heal up pretty good. Might take a year or so, but the scar’ll go away, or at least it’ll fade a fair bit.’

  Ambrogiani spoke for the first time. ‘Did they tell you what he was allergic to?’

  ‘No, they couldn’t find out. Said it was probably sap from some sort of tree that grows up in those mountains. They did all sorts of tests on the boy.’ Here his face softened and his eyes lit up with real pride. ‘Never complained, not once, that boy. Got the makings of a real man. I’m not half proud of him.’

  ‘But they didn’t tell you what he was allergic to?’ the Carabiniere repeated.

  ‘Nope. And then the dang fools went and lost Danny’s medical records, leastwise the records from Germany.’

  At this, Brunetti and Ambrogiani exchanged a look, and Brunetti asked, ‘Do you know if Foster ever found the place?’

  ‘Couldn’t say. He got killed two weeks after he borrowed that sensor thing, and I never had occasion to talk to him again. So I don’t know. I’m sorry that happened to him. He was an OK guy, and I’m sorry his doctor friend had to take it so hard. I didn’t know they were that. . .’ Here he failed to find the right word, so he stopped.

  ‘Is that what people here believe, that Doctor Peters gave herself that overdose because of Foster?’

  This time, it was the soldier who was surprised. ‘Doesn’t make sense any other w
ay, does it? She was a doctor, wasn’t she? If anybody knew how much of that stuff to put in a needle, it should have been her.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Brunetti said, feeling his disloyalty even as he spoke.

  ‘Funny thing, though,’ began the American. ‘If I hadn’t ’ve been so bothered with worryin’ about Danny, I maybe would have thought of something to tell Foster. Might have helped him find the place he was looking for.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Brunetti asked, making the question casual.

  ‘While we were up there that day, I saw two of the trucks that come here, saw them turning into a dirt road off down the hill a ways from where we were. Just didn’t think of it when Foster asked me. Wish I had. Could have saved him a lot of trouble. All he’d have to do is go ask Mr Gamberetto where his trucks were that day, and he would have found the place.’