Death in a Strange Country cgb-2

by Donna Leon

  ‘The Vice-Questore is.’

  ‘And you are not? Why is that, Commissario?’

  ‘Because he wasn’t the killer.’

  ‘You sound very certain of that fact.’

  ‘I am very certain of that fact.’

  Viscardi tried another smile, a very narrow one. ‘I’m afraid, Dottore, that I’d be far more pleased if you could be equally certain that you’d find my paintings.’

  ‘You may be certain I will, Signor Viscardi.’

  ‘That’s very encouraging, Commissario.’ He pushed back his cuff, glanced fleetingly at his watch, and said, ‘But I’m afraid you must excuse me. I’m expecting friends for lunch. And then I have a business appointment and really must get to the station.’

  ‘Your appointment isn’t in Venice?’ Brunetti asked.

  A smile of pure delight bubbled up into Viscardi’s eyes. He tried to suppress it but failed. ‘No, Commissario. It’s not in Venice. It’s in Vicenza.’

  Brunetti took his rage home with him, and it sat between him and his family as they ate. He tried to respond to their questions, tried to pay attention to what they said, but in the midst of Chiara’s account of something that happened in class that morning, he saw Viscardi’s sly smile of gleeful triumph; when Raffi smiled at something his mother said, Brunetti remembered only Ruffolo’s goofy, apologetic smile, two years ago, when he had taken the scissors from his mother’s upraised hand and begged her to understand that the Commissario was only doing his job.

  Ruffolo’s body, he knew, would be turned over to her this afternoon, when the autopsy was completed and the cause of death determined. Brunetti was in no doubt as to what that would be: the marks of the blow to Ruffolo’s head would match exactly the configuration of the rock found beside his body on the small beach; who to determine whether the blow was struck in a fall or in some other way? And who, since Ruffolo’s death resolved everything so neatly, to care? Perhaps, as in the case of Doctor Peters, signs of alcohol would be found in Ruffolo’s blood, and that surely would account even more for the fall. Brunetti’s case was solved. Both, in fact, were solved, for the murderer of the American had turned out to be, most fortuitously, the thief of Viscardi’s paintings. With that thought, he pushed his chair back from the table, ignoring the six eyes that followed his progress from the room. Giving no explanation, he left the house and started towards the Civil Hospital, where he knew Ruffolo’s body would be.

  When he got to Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, familiar, too familiar, with where he had to go, he walked towards the back part of the hospital, not really seeing the people around him. When he passed the radiology department and started down the narrow corridor that led to pathology, he could no longer ignore the people, so many seemed crowded into the narrow hallway. They weren’t going anywhere, just standing around in small groups, heads together, talking. Some, clearly patients, wore pyjamas and dressing-gowns; others wore suits; some the white jackets of orderlies. Just outside the door to the pathology department, he saw a uniform he was more familiar with: Rossi stood in front of the closed door, one hand held up in a gesture meant to keep the crowd from coming any closer.

  ‘What is it, Rossi?’ Brunetti asked, pushing himself through the front row of bystanders.

  ‘I’m not sure, sir. We got a call about half an hour ago. Whoever called said one of the old women from the rest home next door had gone mad and was breaking up the place. I came over here with Vianello and Miotti. They went inside, and I stayed out here to try to keep these people from going in.’

  Brunetti moved around Rossi and pushed open the door to the pathology department. Inside, the scene was remarkably like that outside: people stood in small groups and talked, heads close together. All of these people, however, were dressed in the white jackets of the hospital staff. Words and phrases floated across the room to him. ‘Impazzita’, ‘terribile’, ‘che paura’, ‘vecchiaccia’. That certainly corresponded with what Rossi had said, but it didn’t give Brunetti any idea of what had gone on.

  He started towards the door that led back into the examining rooms. Seeing this, one of the orderlies broke away from the people he was talking to and moved in front of him. ‘You can’t go in there. The police are here.’

  ‘I’m police,’ Brunetti said and moved around him.

  ‘Not until you show me some identification,’ the man said, putting a restraining hand on Brunetti’s chest.

  The man’s opposition reignited all of the rage Brunetti had felt at Viscardi; he pulled his hand back, fingers closing in an involuntary fist. The man moved back a step from him, and this slight motion was enough to bring Brunetti back to his senses. He forced his fingers open, reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, and showed his warrant card to the orderly. The man was just doing his job.

  ‘I’m just doing my job, sir,’ he said and turned to open the door for Brunetti.

  ‘Thank you,’ Brunetti told him as he walked past, but without meeting his eyes,

  Inside, he saw Vianello and Miotti on the other side of the room. They were both leaning over a short man who was sitting on a chair, holding a white towel to his head. Vianello had his notebook in his hand and appeared to be questioning him. When Brunetti approached, all three looked at him. He recognized the third man then, Doctor Ottavio Bonaventura, Rizzardi’s assistant. The young doctor nodded in greeting, then closed his eyes and leaned his head back, pressing the towel to his forehead.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out, sir,’ Vianello answered, nodding down at Bonaventura. ‘We got a call about half an hour ago, from the nurse at the desk out there,’ he said, apparently meaning the outer office. ‘She said that a mad-woman had attacked one of the doctors, so we came over here as fast as we could. Apparently, the orderlies couldn’t restrain her, even though there were two of them.’

  ‘Three,’ Bonaventura said, eyes still closed.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We don’t know, sir. That’s what we’re trying to find out. She was gone by the time we got here, but we don’t know if the orderlies took her away. We don’t know anything,’ he said, making no attempt to disguise his exasperation. Three men and they couldn’t restrain a woman.

  ‘Dottor Bonaventura,’ Brunetti said, ‘could you tell us what happened here? Are you all right?’

  Bonaventura gave a small nod. He pulled the towel away from his head, and Brunetti saw a deep, bloody gouge that ran from his eyebrow and disappeared into his hairline just above his ear. The doctor turned the towel to expose a fresh clean place and pressed it against the wound.

  ‘I was at the desk over there,’ he began, not bothering to point to the only desk in the room, ‘doing some paperwork, and suddenly this old woman was in the room, screaming, out of her mind. She came at me with something in her hand. I don’t know what it was; it might just have been her purse. She was screaming, but I don’t know what she said. I couldn’t understand her, or maybe I was too surprised. Or frightened.’ He turned the towel again; the bleeding refused to stop.

  ‘She came up to the desk, and she hit me, then she started tearing at all the papers on the desk. That was when the orderlies came in, but she was wild, hysterical. She knocked one of them down, and then another one of them tripped over him. I don’t know what happened then because I had blood in my eye. But when I wiped it away, she was gone. Two of the orderlies were still here, on the floor, but she was gone.’

  Brunetti looked at Vianello, who answered, ‘No, sir. She’s not outside. She just disappeared. I spoke to two of the orderlies, but they don’t know what happened to her. We called over to the Casa di Riposo to see if any of their patients are missing, but they said no. It was lunch time, so it was easy for them to count them all.’

  Brunetti turned his attention back to Bonaventura. ‘Do you have any idea who she might be, Dottore?’

  ‘No. None. I’d never seen her before. I don’t have any idea how she got
in here.’

  ‘Were you seeing patients?’

  ‘No, I told you, I was doing paperwork, writing up my notes. And I don’t think she came in from the waiting room. I think she came in from there,’ he said, pointing to the door at the dither side of the room.

  ‘What’s back there?’

  ‘The mortuary. I’d finished in there about half an hour before and was writing up my notes.’

  In the confusion of Bonaventura’s story, Brunetti had forgotten his rage. Now he was suddenly cold, chilled to the bone, but the emotion was not rage.

  ‘What did she look like, Dottore?’

  ‘Just a little fat old lady, all in black.’

  ‘What notes were you writing up, Dottore?’

  ‘I told you, from the autopsy.’

  ‘Which autopsy?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew there was no need for the question.

  ‘What was his name? That young man they brought in last night. Rigetti? Ribelli?’

  ‘No, Dottore. Ruffolo.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. I’d just finished. He’s all sewn up. The family was supposed to come and get him at two, but I finished a little bit early, and I was trying to write up the notes before I began the next one.’

  ‘Can you remember anything she said, Dottore?’

  ‘I told you. I couldn’t understand her.’

  ‘Please try to think, Dottore,’ Brunetti said, voice straining for calm. ‘It might be important. Any words? Phrases.’ Bonaventura said nothing so Brunetti prompted, ‘Did she speak Italian, Dottore?’

  ‘Sort of. Some of the words were Italian, but the rest was dialect, worst I’ve ever heard.’ There were no more clean places on Bonaventura’s towel. ‘I think I’d like to go and get this taken care of,’ he said.

  ‘In just a moment, Dottore. Did you understand any words?’

  ‘Well, of course, she was screaming, “Bambino, bambino”, but that young man wasn’t her bambino. She must be too old.’ She wasn’t, but Brunetti saw no reason to tell him this.

  ‘Is there anything else you understood, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked again.

  Bonaventura closed his eyes with the combined weight of pain and memory. ‘She said, “assassino”, but that’s what she was calling me, I think. She threatened to kill me, but all she did was hit me. None of it made any sense. No words or anything, just noise, like an animal. I think that’s when the orderlies came in.’

  Turning away from him and nodding towards the door to the mortuary, Brunetti asked, ‘Is the body in there?’

  ‘Yes, I told you. The family was told to come and get it at two.’

  Brunetti went over to the door and pushed it open. Inside, only a few metres into the room, the body of Ruffolo lay, naked and exposed, on a metal gurney. The sheet that had covered his body lay crumpled on the floor, as though it had been torn off and flung there.

  Brunetti took a few steps into the room and looked across at the young man. The body lay with the head turned away, so Brunetti could see the ragged line that ran through the hair, showing where the crown of the head had been severed so that Bonaventura could examine the damage to the brain. The front of the body bore the long butterfly incision, the same horrible line that had run down the strong young body of the American. Like a line drawn with a compass, the circle of death had been drawn just and true, bringing Brunetti back to where he had begun.

  He backed away from what had been Ruffolo into the office. Another man in a white jacket was bending down over Bonaventura, fingering delicately at the edges of the wound. Brunetti nodded to Vianello and Miotti, but before either man could move, Bonaventura looked across at Brunetti and said, ‘There’s one strange thing.’

  ‘What is that, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘She thought I was from Milan.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’

  ‘When she said she’d kill me, she called me ‘milanese traditore’, but all she did was hit me. She kept screaming she’d kill me, kept calling me ‘milanese traditore’. It doesn’t make any sense to me.’

  Suddenly it made sense to Brunetti. ‘Vianello, have you got a boat?’

  ‘Yes, sir, It’s outside.’

  ‘Miotti, call the Questura and have them send the Squadra Mobile, right now, to Viscardi’s palazzo. Come on, Vianello.’

  The police launch was tied up at the left of the hospital, engine idling. Brunetti leapt down onto the deck, Vianello close behind him. ‘Bonsuan,’ Brunetti said, glad to find him at the wheel, ‘over near San Stae, that new palazzo, by Palazzo Duodo.’

  There was no need for Bonsuan to ask for more: Brunetti’s fear was contagious. He hit the switch for the two-pitched siren, shoved the throttle forward, and swung the boat out into the canal. At the end, he turned into Rio San Giovanni Crisostomo, siren wailing, and towards the Grand Canal. Minutes later, the boat shot out into the broad waters of the Grand Canal, narrowly missing a taxi and sending out on either side a violent wake that slapped at boats and buildings. They sped past a vaporetto that was just docking at San Stae, their wake slamming it into the imbarcadero and causing more than one tourist to dance about, footing temporarily lost.

  Just beyond Palazzo Duodo, Bonsuan pulled the boat to the riva, and Brunetti and Vianello leapt ashore, leaving it to the pilot to moor the boat. Brunetti ran up the narrow calle, paused for a moment to orient himself to this unexpected arrival from the waterside, and then turned towards the left and the palazzo.

  When he saw the heavy wooden door to the courtyard standing open, he knew it would be too late: too late for Viscardi, and too late for Signora Concetta. He found her there, at the bottom of the steps that led up from the courtyard, her arms held behind her back by two of Viscardi’s luncheon guests, one of them, Brunetti noticed, still with his napkin stuffed into the neck of his shirt.

  They were both very large men, Signor Viscardi’s guests, and it seemed to Brunetti that it was not necessary for them toehold Signora Concetta’s arms like that, pulled roughly behind her back. For one thing, it was too late, and for another, she offered them no resistance, was content, one would almost say happy, to look down at what lay at her feet in the courtyard. Viscardi had fallen on his face, so the gaping holes the shotgun had blasted in his chest were hidden, though the blood could not be stopped from seeping out across the granite paving stones. Beside his body, but closer to Signora Concetta, the shotgun lay where she had dropped it. Her late husband’s lupara had served its purpose and avenged the family honour.

  Brunetti approached the woman. She looked up at him, recognized him, but did not smile: her face could have been made of steel. Brunetti spoke to the men. ‘Let her go.’ They did nothing, so he repeated, voice still neutral, ‘Let her go.’ This time, they obeyed him and released her arms, both careful to step away from her as they did so.

  ‘Signora Concetta,’ Brunetti said, ‘how did you know?’ To ask her why she had done it was unnecessary.

  Awkwardly, as though it hurt her to move them, she brought her arms forward and crossed them over her chest. ‘My Peppino told me everything.’

  ‘What did he tell you, Signora?’

  ‘That this time he would make enough money for us to go home. To go home. It’s been so long since I’ve been home.’

  ‘What else did he tell you, Signora? Did he tell you about the pictures?’

  The man with the napkin in his shirt interrupted him, speaking in a high-pitched, insistent voice. ‘Whoever you are, I want to warn you that I am Signor Viscardi’s lawyer. And I warn you that you are giving information to this woman. I’m a witness to this crime, and she is not to be spoken to until the police arrive.’

  Brunetti glanced at him briefly and then down at Viscardi. ‘He doesn’t need a lawyer any more.’ He turned his attention back to Signora Concetta. ‘What did Peppino tell you, Signora?’

  She struggled to speak clearly, forcing herself away from dialect. These, after all, were the police. ‘I knew everything. The pictures. Everything
. I knew my Peppino was going to meet you. He was very frightened, my Peppino. He was afraid of that man,’ she said pointing down to Viscardi. ‘He found something that made him have much fear.’ She looked away from Viscardi and up at Brunetti. ‘Can I go away from here now, Dottore? My work is finished.’

  The man with the napkin spoke again. ‘You are asking leading questions of this woman, and I’m a witness to that fact.’

  Brunetti put out his hand and placed it under Signora Concetta’s elbow. ‘Come with me, Signora.’ He nodded to Vianello, who was quickly beside him. ‘Go with this man, Signora. He has a boat, and he’ll take you to the Questura.’

  ‘Not on a boat,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid of the water.’

  ‘It’s a very safe boat, Signora,’ Vianello offered.

  She turned to Brunetti. ‘Will you come with us, Dottore?’