Transient Desires

by Donna Leon

  ‘I should be there before two.’

  ‘Good. Anything else, Signore?’

  In his mildest voice, Brunetti said, ‘Both of them grew up in the city.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she answered, accepting his entirely informal, and equally illegal, request that she check and see what might be available in the prohibited records of juvenile offenders about the earlier behaviour of these two young men.

  ‘Would you tell them both that I’m on my way?’ he asked, knowing it was unnecessary to specify the names of Vianello and Pucetti, ‘and to call me if there’s any trouble.’

  ‘Of course, Commissario,’ she answered.

  Brunetti thanked Signorina Elettra and ended the call. He remembered then that he had failed to phone Paola and tell her he would not be home for lunch. Hoping he had not troubled or upset her by not calling earlier, he put in their home number. Perhaps he could speak to her before she started cooking.

  The phone was picked up after four rings and, a moment later, a voice he did not recognize said, ‘Ristorante Falier. I’m sorry to tell you that the restaurant is not open for business today. Please call another time. Thank you for your understanding.’ The phone was replaced.

  As a form of penance, Brunetti chose to have two tramezzini in one of the bars lined up on the Riva degli Schiavoni; he could bring himself to eat only a bite of each, and could not drink the wine. Telling himself not to grumble, he turned off the Riva and continued until he reached the bar at the Ponte dei Greci, said hello to Sergio, the owner, and asked for an asparagus and egg and a tuna and tomato. He stood while he ate them, drinking a glass of Pinot Grigio, then had a coffee. Thus lunch for the working man, he told himself as he walked down to the Questura. Next he’d be stopping to eat a slice of pizza or buying a paper box filled with spaghetti to eat while walking. ‘Or while sitting on the Rialto’ he muttered to himself, surprising an elderly woman whom he passed on his way back.

  He entered the building, raised a hand in response to the salute of the man at the door, and went up to Signorina Elettra’s office. He had not seen her before he left to go to the Carabinieri station and, when he reached her office, found her at her desk, partially dressed for autumn or dressed for part of autumn. Brown sweater, beige trousers, brown shoes. There was no reference to the red and yellow of autumn leaves, no sign of the glorious orange of ripe persimmons. Nor were there traces of pomegranates dressed in their imperial scarlet. The sight of those three sober colours left Brunetti feeling somehow cheated. Not even the vase of red chrysanthemums sufficed to appease his colour-deprived eyes.

  He smiled and asked, ‘Any news?’

  When she swivelled on her chair as he approached her desk, Brunetti caught a glimpse of the arm of the jacket hanging from the back: theatre red velvet, the sort of colour one of the wildly mad emperors would have liked: Heliogabalus, perhaps. It cheered him and restored his faith in he wasn’t quite sure what.

  ‘Foa called to say he’d be back in,’ – she paused and looked at her watch – ‘. . . in about ten minutes.’

  ‘What rooms are free?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Two and Four,’ she said, naming the least comfortable of the interrogation rooms, both painted an unfriendly green, each with a cheap plastic table and four plastic chairs. Although there were ‘No Smoking’ signs on the outside and inside of the doors, both rooms stank of cigarettes, the floors covered with flicked-away ash that was no sooner removed than again flicked to the floor by the next person to be questioned. People had complained about the smell for years, both among those questioned and those asking the questions, but the fact that granting a suspect the right to smoke sometimes led to a loosening of their resolve not to speak legitimized the custom, and so suspects were sometimes permitted to smoke, and sometimes it soothed them into the truth. And sometimes it did not.

  Brunetti took out his telefonino and called Griffoni. When she picked up, he asked, ‘You’ve heard we’ve found them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One of them will be here in ten minutes. Would you like to . . .’

  ‘Sì,’ she said, so loud as to force him to hold his phone away from his ear. There was noise, then a loud slam, followed by a metallic rattle, after which he heard what must have been footsteps.

  He stepped out into the hallway and went down towards the stairwell. Just as he arrived, Griffoni, left hand on the railing, swung herself around into the stairs leading down to the next floor. When she saw him, she raised her hand from the bannister and slowed her pace.

  ‘They aren’t here yet,’ Brunetti called up to her. Griffoni reached the bottom step and walked towards him. ‘Tell me,’ she said. The flush of colour on her face, left tanned by the summer sun, made the contrast with her blonde hair and green eyes even more startling. It also made it more difficult to believe she was from the South.

  ‘The Carabinieri on the Giudecca recognized them,’ Brunetti said. ‘Neither of them has a record.’

  ‘You aren’t bringing the two of them in together, are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Claudia,’ Brunetti said slowly, nothing more.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ She backed up a step, saying, her voice suddenly tight and nervous, ‘I saw the girl today.’

  ‘The one in Mestre?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, looking at the floor.

  Brunetti waited and, in the face of her continued silence, finally asked, ‘And?’

  Griffoni raised a hand and brushed at the side of her mouth, something she did when she was nervous. She looked down at her feet again and shook her head. ‘Guido,’ she said, ‘she’s nineteen years old.’ She looked back at him and went on, ‘She hasn’t regained consciousness, and they can’t operate until she does.’

  Before she could say anything else, they heard voices from below. There was a man’s voice, loud with fear, and the lower, calm voice of Pucetti. ‘If you’d come with . . .’ Pucetti began, but his voice became inaudible, no doubt as he turned towards the back of the building and the interrogation rooms. The louder voice said, ‘I don’t know what you’re . . .’ but then it too softened and disappeared as the person who must be Vio followed Pucetti.

  Knowing he had only moments to explain things to Griffoni, Brunetti said, nodding his chin in the direction of the disappearing footsteps on the floor below, ‘This one works as a boatman, and his friend who was with him is the son of a lawyer and works in his father’s office. All I learned is that the boatman is a “person of interest” to the Carabinieri on the Giudecca. There are rumours that he’s been smuggling cigarettes and clams.’

  She made a puffing noise to comment on the irrelevance of this.

  ‘And perhaps other things,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Only rumours?’ she interrupted to ask.

  Suddenly Pucetti appeared at the bottom of the steps and called up, ‘Commissari, I put him in Room Four.’

  ‘Thanks, Pucetti,’ Brunetti said, starting down the stairs towards the young officer. It had been some time since Pucetti had worked with him, so he suggested, ‘Would you like to stand in with us?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Pucetti said, perhaps too enthusiastically.

  ‘Claudia?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘By all means,’ she said. ‘Come along, Pucetti. We’ll see what he knows about boats.’

  Inside the room, the young man wearing the sunglasses in the photo Brunetti had seen stood behind a chair, hands gripped on its back, as if poised there for a moment, sure that he was soon to be on his way. He wore faded jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt, sleeves turned back to show thick forearms, one encircled by a tattooed band. He had a round face, a turned-up nose, and wore his hair in the current fashion, shaved close on the sides long on top, but even with these signs of youth, he looked older than in the photo Captain Nieddu had shown Brunetti, with dark circles under his eyes and a face drawn tight as
though with pain. His skin was dry and pale beneath the remnants of his summer tan, and Brunetti thought he could hear his breathing.

  ‘Have a seat, Signor Vio,’ Brunetti said as he approached the table. He waited for Vio to pull back the chair and sit. When he did not, Brunetti sat and reached towards a switch on the top of the table, flipped it to the right, and said, ‘Our conversation will be recorded, Signor Vio. This way there will be no doubt about what we discussed. I hope that’s all right with you.’ Brunetti added this last in a way that made it clear he neither hoped nor cared whether it was all right with Signor Vio.

  Vio pulled out the chair and lowered himself into it gingerly, one hand on the back of the chair, a motion which Brunetti translated into the visual equivalent of Argumentum ad Misericordiam, the appeal to pity. Brunetti pulled himself back from the thought of the young woman in the hospital, still unconscious, warning himself not to fall into the same error by assuming this man’s guilt because of what the girl had suffered. Vio sat, upright as a Victorian maiden, back not touching that of the chair, and made no attempt to hide his nervousness as his eyes shifted around the room. He had a two-day-old beard behind which Brunetti could see the perfect teeth of his generation. His breathing was shallow and quick.

  Brunetti had brought no papers with him. Sometimes people were disconcerted when he seemed to remember details about them, facts, without having to consult a document. He sat opposite Vio; Griffoni had taken the chair to Brunetti’s left; Pucetti stood to the right, leaning against the wall, arms at his sides, playing the role of the uniformed officer ready to leap across the table and restrain the person being questioned at the first sight of misconduct.

  ‘Could you tell me where you work, Signor Vio?’ Brunetti started in a neutral tone.

  ‘Work?’ Vio repeated, as if asking the meaning of the word. He coughed a few times and put his right hand to his mouth.

  ‘Your job, Signor Vio. You have a job, don’t you?’

  Vio sought a more comfortable position, seemed to wince at the motion, and returned to his stiff, upright position. ‘Yes. I do. Work, that is. For my uncle.’ Any Venetian hearing him speak would know he came from Giudecca and from a family of workers, probably generations of workers; further, they would not be surprised to learn he had left school early.

  ‘And what do you do for your uncle?’ Griffoni asked.

  Vio’s eyes snapped towards the sound of her voice, as if women were not meant to have one. He gave her question some thought and answered, speaking to Brunetti, not to her, ‘I load and unload what my uncle has to transport in the city. Sometimes I’m in charge of the boat; sometimes not.’ He breathed, Brunetti thought, like an old person: how could he make a living hauling heavy objects? How indulgent must his uncle be?

  ‘Do you mean that sometimes you drive the boat?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have a licence, Signor Vio?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said and swivelled to the left. As he reached for his pocket, he winced and froze, then moved cautiously back to his position looking across at Brunetti.

  ‘That’s all right, Signor Vio,’ Brunetti said. ‘We can easily check.’

  Vio’s eyes opened in surprise, but he said nothing.

  ‘What sort of boat do you drive for your uncle?’ Griffoni asked.

  ‘Sort? It’s a transport boat. He has three different sizes,’ Vio started to explain, but he was cut short by a cough. When it stopped, Vio continued. ‘I can handle them all.’

  ‘I see,’ Griffoni said, ‘And is your licence good for all three sizes of boat?’

  Vio nodded and she said, not unkindly, ‘You have to say something, Signor Vio.’

  The young man cleared his throat before he asked, ‘What do I have to say?’ To Brunetti, it looked as though Vio tried to take a deep breath to calm himself but failed at that and settled for a few quick breaths.

  Brunetti smiled across at him and explained, making himself sound almost avuncular, ‘We’re recording the conversation, so you have to answer the question with words.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Vio muttered and stared across at the switch. ‘Thank you. Yes, the licence. Mine is valid for all of the boats.’

  ‘Do you have a boat of your own?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I have a pupparin,’ Vio answered, ‘but I don’t need a licence for that.’

  ‘I had one when I was your age,’ Brunetti offered with every semblance of truth. ‘But I never wanted a motor for it.’

  ‘Me neither, Signore.’

  ‘Then what do you do for Redentore?’ Brunetti asked, sounding both curious and concerned. Didn’t he have his own boat, big enough for a group of friends to go out into the bacino to see the fireworks? What sort of Venetian would miss the chance to do that?

  The young man’s face relaxed a bit. ‘My uncle lets me take one of his boats.’

  ‘Oh, that’s very kind of him,’ Griffoni broke in to say. ‘It must be nice for you that he trusts you so much.’

  ‘Well, he knows I’m a good pilot,’ Vio said, obviously proud to be able to say it. He coughed again. This time he pulled out a not very clean white handkerchief and wiped at his mouth when the coughing stopped.

  Behind him, Brunetti heard Pucetti shift his feet. He considered the differences between these two young men, so similar in age, yet one so bright and one so naive.

  ‘It must be nice to be able to take your friends out into the laguna,’ Griffoni said admiringly, quite as though it was her dream in life to go out on the water in a boat with friends.

  ‘Yes, it is, Signora,’ Vio answered.

  This was too easy, Brunetti thought, reluctant to drop the net over the boy’s empty head. And why, he asked himself, did he think of Vio as a boy?

  ‘Do you do that?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Do what, Signore?’ Vio asked.

  Brunetti smiled before he answered. ‘Take friends out into the laguna.’

  Because he was opposite Vio, Brunetti could see on his face the moment the question registered. The young man had apparently thought that the slight warming of tone on the part of his two interlocutors was a sign of their goodwill, that he had managed to impress them as a good employee and thus a good person who, obviously, was there by mistake. Brunetti’s question put an end to that dream and brought Vio back to the cruel reality that he was in the Questura, and the police were interrogating him.

  ‘Oh,’ Vio said, his hands grasping at one another, ‘that doesn’t happen very often. Redentore.’ He looked at his hands, stopped their embrace, and placed them palms down in front of him, where he could keep a close eye on them.

  ‘Redentore was months ago,’ Brunetti reminded him. ‘Have you been out with friends since then?’

  ‘No!’ Vio’s answer came too fast and too loud. ‘I work on the weekends. I don’t have time.’ Any other defence was cut off by a short bark of a cough and then another series of quick breaths.

  ‘Really?’ Griffoni asked when he stopped, quite as though she were in possession of different information. She twisted her mouth and raised her eyebrows, glanced aside at Brunetti and asked, ‘That’s not what you heard, is it, Commissario?’

  ‘Well,’ Brunetti answered, stretching the word for as long as possible. ‘Maybe there’s been some mistake.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Griffoni said, sounding unpersuaded.

  Vio’s head moved back and forth, as if he thought he might understand what was going on if he managed to keep his eyes on Brunetti and Griffoni all the time they spoke.

  Brunetti returned his attention to Vio, saying, ‘We’d like to ask you some questions about Saturday night, Signor Vio.’

  Vio’s mouth fell open and he stared, speechless, at Brunetti, then at Griffoni. He sat still – prey – waiting, too frightened to move.

  Brunetti smiled again, amiability itself. ‘
Could you give us an idea of what you did on Saturday night, Signor Vio?’

  ‘I . . .’ he began, and they could see him trying to remember what Saturday was, and when he had that figured out, when Saturday was. ‘I went for a walk.’

  ‘Were you at home when you decided to go for your walk?’ Griffoni asked. Then she smiled to suggest that she was merely trying to pass the time.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where is home, if I might ask?’

  ‘Near Sant’Eufemia.’

  She allowed her smile to soften and said, ‘You have to be patient with me, Signor Vio: I’m not Venetian, so I don’t know where that is.’

  For a moment, it seemed that Signor Vio didn’t know, either, but then he burst into speech, saying, ‘It’s down at the end of the canal before you get to Harry’s Dolci. Number 630.’ He raised an arm, as if to point towards his home, but the gesture was cut off by a deep wince of pain and a single, barked cough. Out came the handkerchief, and he wiped at his mouth again.

  ‘Thank you, Signor Vio,’ Griffoni said.

  Brunetti interrupted to add, ‘There’s not much to do there on a Saturday night, I’d say.’ Then, thinking he should make it clear to Vio that he knew the place he was talking about, he added, ‘Even Palanca closes at ten.’

  ‘No, not there,’ Vio said.

  ‘Oh, where did you go?’ Griffoni chirped, suggesting that he had but to name the beautiful Venetian location where he’d decided to go and she’d be out of the room and on her way to see it the instant he stopped speaking.

  Brunetti and Griffoni had developed a symbiotic ability to delude and deceive suspects or, indeed, any people they interviewed together. They took turns being the good cop or the bad cop; sometimes they even switched roles during an interrogation. They had never discussed this, did not plan before speaking to someone: they simply looked for weakness and dived towards it, no more thoughtful than sharks.

  ‘On the other side,’ Vio said, grudgingly.