by Donna Leon
‘And you kept them? I mean, your son kept them?’
‘Of course he did,’ Brunetti said. ‘If I’d sent them back, Giulio would have sulked for the rest of the year.’
Griffoni and he resumed walking, amiable together, she silent for a moment, considering this. Finally she said, ‘Well, he is Neapolitan.’
‘So?’
‘How else would he respond to an insult like that?’
Brunetti stopped and turned to face her. ‘Do you know him?’
‘Who?’
‘Giulio. Giulio D’Alessio. My friend.’
After a moment’s hesitation, Griffoni asked, ‘Is his father Filippo?’
Brunetti stared at her, working at keeping his mouth closed. After a moment, he said, ‘Yes.’
‘My father knows him. The father, that is.’
Brunetti put his hands to his ears and began to walk around in a tight circle, saying, ‘My God. It’s a plot. I’m surrounded by them.’
‘Neapolitans?’ she asked, putting her hand on his arm to stop him.
Brunetti paused, then moved to face her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Friends.’
Griffoni put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him away, saying, ‘You really are a fool, Guido.’ Brunetti was astonished by how much she sounded like Paola, who used the same word to reprove him for his worst flights of fancy. He knew enough, however, not to make this comparison to Griffoni.
He returned to his business-as-usual voice and asked, ‘While we’re walking, tell me what else you’ve found out.’
From her bag, she took a dark brown silk scarf and wrapped it around her neck. ‘I don’t know how you stand this weather,’ she said, suggesting that Brunetti had wished it on both of them. Then, as though the sentences were related, she added, ‘They were seen in Campo Santa Margherita on Saturday night. The girl who called to say she saw them remembered them because, when one of them said her name was Lucy, she remembered that her mother always sang a song with that name in it.’
‘Is that all?’ Brunetti asked. Surely, he thought, someone else must have seen them. They had to be in a hotel, a B&B, staying with friends: someone must have noticed their absence or found that they hadn’t slept in their beds.
‘This girl who called said she thought they started to talk to two men. But then she saw some classmates and went over to talk to them and forgot about the Americans until this morning, when she saw the name, “Lucy” in the headline on the Gazzettino.’ He had seen it, too: ‘Lucy and Jojo. Who are they?’
Brunetti was just about to ask if Griffoni had any news about the young woman in the hospital in Mestre, but then they turned left into Barbaria delle Tole: the Ospedale was only a few minutes away.
The lateral wall of the Basilica appeared on their right, and then they were in the campo. The façade of the Ospedale looked down upon them, and as they moved diagonally towards the entrance, the façade of the Basilica slid into view. Griffoni’s steps slowed and her head turned from building to building, as though she’d been asked to give a prize to one of them and couldn’t decide. Most days the Basilica – its majesty unmatched in the city – was Brunetti’s favourite church; some days, for reasons he couldn’t understand, it was San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, and for a long time, when he had known a girl who lived near it, Brunetti had most liked the Miracoli. But he’d grown bored with the girl, and then with the church.
He stopped himself from asking Griffoni if she wanted him to go in with her: it was probably better if she spoke to a woman, especially given the fact that it was two men who had abandoned them at the hospital. He wished Griffoni good luck, said goodbye, and started home.
No one was there yet, so Brunetti pulled out a glass container of olives and dumped half of them on to a plate. He took a bottle of Falanghina from the refrigerator and poured himself a glass. He went into the living room and set the plate and the glass on the table, then sat and took a sip of wine.
From the hospital’s video, enlarged photos of the faces of the two men had been sent to all of the offices of the police in Venice, as well as to the Guardia Costiera, the Carabinieri, and the Guardia di Finanza. As he recalled their faces, Brunetti guessed them to be in their early twenties. Nothing else about them was visible from the photos.
Their boat, riding low in the water, had been invisible because the Ospedale’s video camera was placed at the height of the superstructure of the ambulances, for how else would a person arrive there but in an ambulance? Thus, the much lower boat that had brought the human cargo could not have been seen, only the two men and the burdens, quickly delivered and just as quickly abandoned.
He took another sip of wine, ate a few olives and set the pits on the edge of the plate. He leaned back and had another small sip, then set the glass on the table in front of him. He tapped his thumbs against one another, then tried to remember some of the finger games he and his brother had known as kids. There was one where hands were turned into a church with doors that could open: that was easy to recall. Then there was another where careful manipulation would allow him to appear to detach the first digit of his thumb. He had driven the kids wild with delight with this trick when they were younger, but now, no matter how he fitted his fingers together, he couldn’t remember how to do it. He folded his hands and kept them still.
Campo Santa Margherita. Saturday evening. So long as it didn’t rain, there were always scores – in the summer, hundreds – of students in the campo at night. Chatting, drinking, moving from one group to another, meeting friends or making friends. It was the same thing he had done when he was a student. Well, minus the drugs and the quantity of alcohol.
The two young women had been seen chatting with two men, and some hours later, two men had taken them to the hospital and left them there. There was no sign of sexual activity, nor was there any evidence that either girl had attempted to defend herself from an attack.
‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ Brunetti muttered to himself. He thought of a book Paola had told him for years he had to read, Three Men in a Boat. He had, and he’d hated it. These were only two men in a boat, but who were they, and why were they in a boat at three o’clock in the morning? And how was it they knew where to take the young women, or drop them off or get rid of them, depending on which opinion he wanted to convey of their behaviour? If they had a boat, they’d be familiar with the laguna, although not necessarily be Venetian. To know the dock of the Ospedale, they’d be Venetian. To have met the girls in Campo Santa Margherita, they might be students. If they’d succeeded in speaking to the girls, they’d have known some English, which suggested, but did not confirm, that they were indeed students.
He thought of the way the men had delivered – he decided to remain with that verb – the two Americans to the dock: one climbed gingerly up the stairs to the dock and moored the boat, then stood and watched the other lift them from the boat one after the other and put them on to the dock. Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to return to the boat and help lift the unconscious young women to the dock? What had they said to one another on the dock? What’s wrong with this picture?
He sipped again and ate a few more olives. Then he took his phone and called Griffoni.
‘You still in the Ospedale?’
‘Sì.’
‘You with the American?’
‘Sì.’
‘Does she remember anything?’
‘Wait a moment,’ Griffoni said, and he thought he could hear a chair being pushed across the floor. Then she covered the mouthpiece and said something. There was a long pause; he thought he heard steps. ‘They were in a campo with lots of students,’ Griffoni began. ‘The girl thinks it was called Santa Margherita. They met two guys who offered to take them for a ride.’
‘Ride?’
‘They had a boat, and she said they seemed like nice guys, so they agreed to go with them.’ Griffoni paused
but Brunetti decided to let her tell the story without his prodding.
‘It was parked – as she said – near a bridge.’
There was a bridge at the end of Campo Santa Margherita, he knew, with a long riva on the other side.
‘She said the ride was exciting at first. They went into a big canal, with big houses on both sides. And then they went past some churches and all of a sudden, she saw that they were in open water.’
‘And then?’
‘She said it was creepy because it was absolutely dark once they got away from the city: the only lights were far off, and they had no idea what they were. And then the boat speeded up, with its front bouncing all over the place, and the guys shouting and laughing.’ Griffoni paused a moment, then added, ‘She said that’s when she started to be really frightened. She had to hold on to the seat because the boat was bumping so much.’ Griffoni stopped.
‘And then what happened?’
‘And then she doesn’t remember anything else. Before that, all she remembers is shouting at them to slow down and thinking she was going to be sick. And then she was in the hospital, but she doesn’t have any idea of how she got there.’
‘And the men?’ Brunetti asked.
‘They told them they were Venetian. One of them did, that is. She said he spoke English pretty well. The other one didn’t say much, only spoke Italian.’
‘Did she learn their names?’
‘The one who spoke English said to call him Phil, and the other one had a name that began with M. Mario, Michele, she doesn’t remember.’
‘Anything else?’
‘All she said was that one of them had some sort of tattoo on his left wrist: black and geometric, like a bracelet.’
‘He and a thousand other people,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Does she remember being in the water?’
Griffoni sighed. ‘She really doesn’t remember anything else, Guido.’
‘What do the doctors think?’
‘That maybe things will come back, but slowly. Or maybe they won’t. They couldn’t find any sign that she hurt her head, so they think it’s just shock and cold and the pain from her broken arm and having been so frightened.’
Before Brunetti could ask anything else, Griffoni said, ‘They’re calling me. I’ve got to go back,’ and then she was gone.
That left Brunetti with olive pits, an empty glass, and still no clear understanding of what had happened on Saturday night. He thought of the young woman whose face had been so distorted: how was it that a surgeon who had never seen her could reconstruct her face? Make her look like she did before?
He pulled his thoughts back from useless speculation and directed them at more practical concerns. They were Venetian, had access to a boat, perhaps even worked around or on them. Brunetti had no idea of the number of men and women in the city whose work was tied to the water in some way: it would be many hundreds, perhaps far more. As it had been from the times when La Serenissima had ruled the surrounding seas, the work often remained within certain families for generations and created among the workers a unity and loyalty common in men whose work put their lives at risk.
Brunetti picked up the dish with the olive pits and carried it back to the kitchen, placed it and his glass to the side of the sink. Then he went back to Paola’s study to find something he wanted to read while he waited for the rest of the family to come home for dinner.
5
When Brunetti checked his computer the next morning, he found a mail from the Carabinieri, forwarded by Signorina Elettra, identifying the two men who had left the young women on the dock of the hospital. Marcello Vio was resident on the Giudecca, and Filiberto Duso in Dorsoduro. The name ‘Duso’ triggered a vague, positive response in Brunetti’s memory, but he left it alone and continued reading.
They had been identified by the Carabinieri at the Ponte dei Lavraneri station on the Giudecca, who had also added that they considered Vio a ‘person of interest’, although they failed to explain why.
This was enough to prompt Brunetti to find the web page – and when had police stations begun to have web pages? especially on the Giudecca, he asked himself – and dial the number. He identified himself, said he’d received a message that someone there had recognized the two men whose photos the Questura had sent, and asked to speak to the person in charge.
There followed some clicking noises, and then a light contralto voice, whether male or female Brunetti could not judge, saying: ‘Nieddu. How can I be of help?’
‘This is Brunetti. Commissario, over at San Lorenzo.’
‘Ah,’ Nieddu said, ‘I’ve heard about you.’
An involuntary burst of air escaped Brunetti’s lips, which he followed by saying, ‘That’ll stop a conversation.’ He paused, but there was no reply, so he added, ‘Acceptable things, I hope.’
The laugh that came through the line was unmistakably female, the voice that followed it still low-pitched and pleasant. ‘Yes, of course. Or else I wouldn’t have mentioned it.’
‘Probably wise, that,’ Brunetti said, then added, ‘As a rule, caution is.’
She let some time pass before she asked, ‘You’re calling about the two men in the photos, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered, ‘I’d be grateful for anything you can tell me about them.’
‘And I’d be grateful if you’d tell me why you would be,’ she answered easily.
‘Ah,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Is this a stand-off?’
‘No, Commissario, not at all,’ she answered, managing to sound both amused and offended at the same time. Whether she was speaking seriously or jokingly, her voice remained a deep contralto that reminded him of the sound of a cello.
‘I’m not sure of your rank,’ Brunetti said, ‘so please forgive me if I didn’t use it when I first spoke.’
‘Captain,’ she said. Nothing more.
‘Then, Captain, is this a bargaining session?’
‘In a way, yes.’
‘Such things are better done in person, don’t you think?’
‘Definitely,’ she answered in a friendlier voice.
Brunetti was about to respond to her warmth with a joke and ask, ‘Your place or mine?’ when he was reined up short by the new rules about sexual harassment that had been imposed by the ministry in Rome and that were already ending careers and altering the rules of conversation. Thinking ahead, he saw that claiming he’d been led on by the beauty of her voice was unlikely to serve as an excuse in today’s atmosphere, so he erased warmth and tried to sound like a bureaucrat.
‘Since I’m the person asking for the information, I should be the one to travel.’
‘If you consider it travel to come to the Giudecca.’
‘Captain,’ Brunetti said, ‘For me, going to the Giudecca is like going on an Arctic expedition.’
In response to her laugh, he told her he could be there in an hour; she said that would be fine, then asked if he knew where the commissariato was.
‘Down at the end, in Sacca Fisola, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. When you cross the bridge, give your name, and the man on duty will let you pass.’
‘All right, thanks.’
‘My rank is Captain,’ she said. ‘But my name is Laura.’
‘Mine’s Guido,’ Brunetti answered, and then, ‘Ciao,’ accepting the amiability of her voice and stepping across the grammatical bridge of cordiality.
Brunetti refrained from checking the police records for the two men, thinking it might be better to have no preconceptions about them when he spoke to the Captain, the better to assess the reasons why one of them was a ‘person of interest’ to the Carabinieri. He took the Number Two to Sacca Fisola, paying little attention to the glory on offer on both sides of the canal, and walked along the riva for a few minutes, then cut to the left and back towards the far
corner of the island, where he remembered the Carabinieri station had been for years. The area confirmed his feelings about Giudecca: bleak cement buildings, crudely rectangular, devoid of any attempt at embellishment or adornment: cubes for living in, worsened – at least in his eyes – by the view: across the sullen waters of the laguna sprawled the petrochemical horror of Marghera, staggered rows of brick smokestacks from which spewed, day and night . . . Brunetti’s thoughts stopped there, for he had, like the other residents of Venice, little idea of what rose up in thick clouds from those stacks and even less reason to believe what he was told it was.
Night patrol police boats too often found fishermen there, boats filled with clams scraped up from the bottom of the laguna by nets weighted to drag along the sea bed, the better to dredge up everything, leaving desolation where they passed. The clams they caught were growing fat on what they found to eat down there, in the residue of the liquids that had, for generations, seeped out into the laguna from the tanks that held the petrochemicals.
Brunetti and his family did not eat clams, or mussels or, in fact, any sort of shellfish that came from local waters. Chiara could, and did, attribute this to her vegetarianism, which excluded fish of any sort. He could still remember her, when she was twelve, pushing away a plate of spaghetti alle vongole, saying, ‘They were alive once.’ She still refused to eat them, but now her reason had grown more informed, and she spurned them, saying, ‘They’re deadly.’ Her family, accepting that she had the family trait of verbal excess, appeared to pay little heed to her opinion, but still they did not eat shellfish.
Brunetti reached the bridge of the Lavraneri, crossed it and approached the guard house. As he drew near, the carabiniere inside slid back the window and said, ‘Sì, Signore?’
