Transient Desires

by Donna Leon

  ‘Of the Giudecca Canal?’ Griffoni asked, as if she believed there could be some other canal to cross from the Giudecca.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where did you go?’

  Vio opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Brunetti interrupted to ask, ‘Did you see anyone you know?’

  Vio’s mouth slammed shut, almost involuntarily, and they both watched him retracing his steps through the city on Saturday night. And they saw him meet someone, at least open his eyes with surprise and look about him, as if in search of that person. His breathing became more agitated, and his nervousness seemed to prevent him from taking in enough oxygen.

  Vio nodded and waved a hand, unable to speak.

  After waiting some time for him to get his breath back, Brunetti asked, with a complete absence of friendliness, ‘Who did you meet?’

  ‘Someone from work.’

  ‘Who?’ Brunetti continued.

  Vio remained silent for a while and then said, ‘My uncle’s secretary,’ and Brunetti disguised his pleasure at this answer: a woman was more likely to tell the truth when asked if, and where, she had seen him. No, he told his ever-constant eavesdropper: not because women were more honest – though he believed they were – but because they were more afraid of having trouble with authority.

  ‘And where did you go?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Campo Santa Margherita,’ Vio answered. ‘That’s where I saw her.’

  ‘Oh, did you walk all that way?’ Griffoni asked, with great display of sympathy, as if she suspected that the walk to anywhere in the city from any of the stops the Number Two vaporetto made on its arrival from the Giudecca was the same distance as Venice to Rome.

  ‘No,’ Vio said, almost inaudibly.

  ‘Oh,’ she all but chirped, ‘Did you take a boat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Proudly, the foreigner showing off her familiarity with the vaporetto, she asked, ‘Numero Due?’ Brunetti hoped she would not overdo this fey demonstration of familiarity with the routes of the vaporetti and ask if he’d gone all the way to Santa Marta before getting off.

  Vio sat alone on his side of the long table. The chair on his left was empty, and Pucetti, still silent, stood almost two metres from him. Yet Vio looked uncomfortable, as if people were crowding in at him from every side. He looked, in a word, trapped.

  He lowered his head and spoke to the top of the table.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Griffoni said pleasantly. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t hear you.’

  The young man mumbled something.

  She gave a small laugh and said, ‘Sorry, I still didn’t hear what you said.’

  He looked up and across the table at her, there beside the stolid Brunetti. He pulled his lips inside his mouth and made a soft humming sound. His fingers tightened until they became two fists resting on the table.

  He closed his eyes, opened them, closed them again and kept them closed while the humming noise grew louder.

  Vio opened his eyes again and turned to Brunetti. He opened his hands and pressed them against the table, as if to give himself strength. ‘I took . . .’ he began, then pushed himself suddenly to his feet and turned as if to flee the room. His foot blundered into the leg of the chair and, trying to free himself, he twisted his body sharply; once, twice, unaware of what trapped him and wanting only to escape it. When his foot finally pulled free, his entire upper body twisted again to the right.

  He moaned, then moaned again as though the other people in the room had suddenly pressed sharp objects against his skin. He collapsed against the table, tried to find something to cling to, failed, and started to sink to the floor, his moaning louder.

  Suddenly, as though there had not been shock enough, he was racked by coughing and a tiny thread of blood-mottled saliva came from his mouth, paralysing the others until his body fell to the floor.

  7

  The first to react was Pucetti, who braced his hands on the surface of the table and leaped over to land beside Vio, who was reduced to whimpers and savage coughing. The young officer tore Vio’s shirt partly open and reached to put his palms on his chest, but one of his fingers caught on the shirt and pulled it entirely open. His hands, one palm above the other, rose above Vio’s chest, ready to press down to re-start the beating of his heart, when Griffoni, who had come around the table, pushed Pucetti so hard that he fell away from Vio and crashed into the wall.

  Brunetti knelt on the other side of Vio and saw what she had seen.

  ‘Look at him, look at him,’ Griffoni said in a rough voice, pointing down at Vio’s chest.

  He was a man who worked all day, heaving and hauling and shifting heavy weights from one place to another, and he had the torso of every body-builder’s dreams. The ribs on his left side could be counted, as clearly defined as the slats in a wall. But the ribs on the right side had relaxed into the body and could not be discerned. The entire right side was bruised almost black in a streak as wide as an iPad that ran from collarbone to waist.

  Vio moved, moaned, moved again, and then his entire body was shaken as he gasped in air, fish-like, and then again and then again. He expelled it all at once, along with another trickle of blood-threaded saliva. There followed a racking cough that shook his entire body and brought forth more saliva.

  Brunetti pulled out his phone and dialled 118, gave his name and rank and told them to send an ambulance to the Questura immediately and to send a doctor with the ambulance. He cut off the call, knowing he was unable to explain the situation but wanting to leave the line open should the hospital try to contact him.

  Brunetti looked back at Vio and saw that the coughing had slowed and grown weaker. Griffoni had somehow managed to find a blanket and was stretching it over the young man’s body: Pucetti had disappeared. Brunetti dared not touch the young man for fear of adding to the damage so clearly etched on his body. He got to his feet, helpless in the face of damage he could not estimate, suffering he could not relieve.

  He stood there, surrounded by the latest products of technology, promising to help him call up aid from the entire country – from the entire world – if he chose. A man lay at his feet, twisted in pain, bleeding, barely able to breathe, and Brunetti had no idea what to do. Except to wait for the arrival of those who knew more about saving lives or resolving the mysteries of the human body.

  Brunetti had been present at the birth of both of his children, if to be standing in the hall outside the delivery room – there by virtue of his brother’s connections at the hospital – was to be present. There, too, he had heard the laboured gasps of pain, with no specific idea of what was causing them, although he knew full well what would stop them. And did.

  The sound of the approaching siren pulled him back to this room, these groans, this suffering man. The siren stopped. He put his hand on Griffoni’s shoulder and lifted his chin towards the other side of the room. Together they moved there. A moment later, a white-jacketed woman came quickly into the room, followed closely by one of the emergency crew carrying a canister of oxygen and a mask.

  The woman looked at the man on the floor and then glanced around the room. Seeing Griffoni and Brunetti, she said, sounding inappropriately calm, ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Brunetti chose to speak. ‘We’re police officers and were questioning him. He coughed a lot and seemed to have trouble breathing. With no warning, he stood, twisted his body to one side, and collapsed.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  Brunetti looked at his watch. ‘Sixteen minutes ago,’ he said.

  She nodded and turned to the man behind her, reaching for the oxygen mask. She knelt and slipped it over Vio’s nose and mouth, felt his pulse, looking at the bruise.

  The doctor took a stethoscope from the pocket of her jacket and placed it on Vio’s chest. She studied his face while she listened, moving the stethoscope to the compass p
oints of his chest. Then she put the stethoscope in her pocket and leaned down over Vio.

  Two more men came into the room: one carried a rolled-up stretcher.

  ‘Signore,’ the doctor said, bending down over Vio, ‘can you hear me?’

  Vio made a noise.

  ‘We have to move you,’ she said. As she spoke, both men moved closer, and the one with the stretcher unrolled it.

  ‘It’s going to hurt, Signore,’ the doctor said, shifting closer to Vio and taking his hand. ‘But I want you to try not to move. I think your rib has punctured your lung, and it should – if you can stand it – remain where it is for as long as it can while we take you to the hospital. If it moves, it might do you more damage.’

  Vio made no sound, and she asked, ‘Do you understand?’

  This time a grunt.

  She ran her hands across the sides of her trousers to warm them and leaned towards him again. ‘I’m going to touch you now. Don’t be afraid.’

  Vio did not acknowledge what she said. After a moment she placed first one hand, and then the other, on the sides of his chest and moved them around, her fingers pressing lightly. Vio groaned but did not move. The doctor shifted her fingers on to the bruised flesh, and the groan became a bit louder.

  She removed her hands and pulled a small bag towards her, opened it, and turned back to Vio. ‘I’m going to give you something for the pain, Signore. It will help, but you will still feel pain. Please, please try not to move while my colleagues put you on the stretcher.’ Silence. ‘Do you understand?’

  In response, Vio coughed but managed to say, ‘Sì,’ nothing more. She removed a small phial of clear liquid and a plastic-wrapped syringe. Quickly, efficiently, she injected the liquid and patted his hand a few times, as if hoping to comfort him or prepare him for what was coming.

  The doctor got to her feet and stood beside the doorway; the attendants drew closer to Vio. Brunetti and Griffoni passed into the hallway, moving a metre down the hall. They heard scuffling, a click of metal on tile, a sigh, a muffled groan, and then one of the men came into the corridor, then the other, a white-faced Vio lying on the stretcher they held. The third man followed, holding the oxygen and staying close to the stretcher.

  Brunetti and Griffoni pressed back against the wall and watched as the attendants disappeared down the corridor. After a moment, the doctor emerged, holding her bag. She nodded to them and said only, ‘We’ll take him to the Ospedale Civile.’

  Brunetti and Griffoni trailed them across the entrance hall and out the main entrance. An ambulance was moored at the dock, motor running. The attendants started towards it, and at that moment, Brunetti heard the approach of another boat. He turned in the direction of the entrance to the canal and saw the police launch, Foa at the wheel, Vianello beside him, to his left a young man with dark hair tousled by the wind.

  Foa pulled up nose to nose with the ambulance; Vianello pushed past the young man and jumped to the riva, his face blank with shock. ‘What’s wrong?’ he called to Brunetti.

  Before Brunetti could answer, the young man leaped from the deck and ran to the stretcher, which the attendants had set down while waiting for the confusion of boats to be sorted out. Blind to the people standing near the stretcher, he knelt and bent over Vio. ‘Marcello, Marcello,’ he said, panic searing his voice.

  Brunetti took a step towards them, but Griffoni grabbed his arm and locked her fingers around it, pulling him so hard as to set him back on his heels.

  Vio opened his eyes and said something, then moved his hand towards the other man. Duso – who else could it be? – covered it with both of his but said no more.

  The doctor drew up beside Duso and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘All right, stop that now. We’re taking him to the hospital.’ She turned to the three attendants and said, ‘Put him on the boat.’

  They did as they were told and lifted the stretcher, pulling Vio’s hand free from Duso’s. They climbed aboard and slipped the stretcher through the doors, and then the doctor climbed in after them. Duso raised a hand towards the ambulance as the doors slammed shut and the motor roared. The third man went to stand by the pilot. Duso remained kneeling on the pavement, too surprised to react, capable only of watching the ambulance disappear, first from sight, then from sound.

  Brunetti pulled his arm free from Griffoni’s grip and walked over to Duso. He reached down to the young man, who took his hand and pulled himself to his feet.

  Brunetti saw the tears on the young man’s cheeks before he succeeded in wiping them away. Voice choked, Duso asked, ‘What happened?’

  ‘He fainted when we were talking to him,’ Brunetti explained. ‘The doctor who came thinks he broke a rib, and it’s punctured his lung.’

  Before Duso could speak, Brunetti went on, making up the story he thought the young man needed to hear. ‘She didn’t seem very worried about him, but they need to take X-rays to be sure.’ He saw that Duso was responding as much to his calm tone as to the story he was telling.

  Brunetti gestured to the door of the Questura and said, ‘Would you come this way? It won’t take long.’ Once inside, he stayed close to Duso’s side as Griffoni led them both towards the back of the building, to the interrogation room next to the one where Vio had collapsed.

  There, everything was orderly: two desk lamps on the long table, chairs on both sides, even a carafe of water and four glasses.

  Brunetti waved to a seat on the opposite side of the table, farther from the door, and waited while Duso pulled out the chair and sat: the chair was directly opposite a double electrical socket, half of which was in fact the lens of a camera that projected the top half of the person being questioned on to a television screen in the next room. The larger desk lamp took care of the audio.

  Brunetti and Griffoni sat on the other side of the table, Brunetti directly opposite Duso. Brunetti found comfort in the certainty that Vianello was observing Duso: his friend’s bat-like sensitivity to voices doubled his ability to understand what was meant, not only what was said: where some heard defiance, Vianello sensed fear. Where others heard submission Vianello sensed deceit.

  Brunetti turned his attention to the young lawyer.

  Questioning a lawyer was never easy, both Brunetti and Griffoni knew. Believing themselves the only true interpreters of the law, lawyers often further assume that the police have little knowledge of the law’s many twists and turns, its seeming contradictions, nor of the multiplicity of interpretation it offered to its followers. This lawyer at the start of his career, and thus less experienced than his older colleagues, might not pause to consider that the two people with whom he was soon to speak had studied law and could have been, had they chosen to be, lawyers. It might also have surprised him to learn that their joint years of experience of the law probably exceeded that of his father or any of the lawyers in his office.

  Youth often thinks in images, rather than words, so it was also possible that Avvocato Duso sometimes saw himself as a slayer of dragons, capable of charging through the defences of any who stood in his way. He worked but a moment’s walk from the Gallerie dell’ Accademia, where, had he visited the collection with any regularity, surely he would have seen Mantegna’s small wooden panel of San Giorgio in full armour, the saint glancing to his left and thus drawing the viewer’s gaze away from what lay behind his feet. There lay the dragon, head thrust in front of the frame in a triumph of trompe-l’oeil, just as the sliver of spear protruding from its jaw was proof of the saint’s triumph.

  Griffoni’s touch on his arm interrupted Brunetti’s reverie; he turned his attention to the young lawyer. ‘Avvocato Duso,’ he said formally, ‘let me introduce myself: Brunetti, Commissario di Polizia.’ He turned towards Griffoni, who nodded. ‘This is my colleague, Commissario Claudia Griffoni.’

  That done, Brunetti continued with the legal formalities. ‘We’ve asked you to come to speak to us about cer
tain matters. I inform you that this conversation is being recorded.’ He glanced across at Duso, and asked, ‘Is that clear?’

  Filiberto Duso was a handsome young man in a country where this is the norm; thus, he seemed not at all aware of it. His cheekbones were high and well defined, his nose thin and straight. His summer tan lingered, setting in contrast his blue eyes. He was clean-shaven and had two dimples on either side of his mouth: they creased when he smiled. His hair was in need of cutting.

  ‘Filiberto Duso,’ he finally said, making no attempt to extend his hand across the table.

  ‘Signor Duso, thank you for coming to speak to us,’ Brunetti began by saying, curious how Duso would deal with a remark that cried out for a sarcastic response.

  The young man had obviously had time to recover at least a bit from the shock of seeing his friend being carried to an ambulance. His smile was easy and assured, but not warm, when he said, ‘Because I’m a lawyer, it is my obligation, as well as my pleasure, to be of help to the police.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Brunetti said simply and turned aside to Griffoni. Perhaps she could succeed in provoking him?

  ‘It’s about the events of Saturday night that we’d like to speak to you, Signor Duso,’ she said.

  ‘Which events?’ Duso asked.

  As if he’d not spoken, Griffoni went on. ‘We’re curious about your movements that night. We’d like to learn if your memory is similar to that of Signor Vio.’

  If either Brunetti or Griffoni had thought the mention of Vio’s name would affect Duso, they were mistaken, for he answered calmly, ‘I had dinner with my parents at eight, and I was with them until at least ten.’

  ‘And then?’ she asked mildly.

  ‘Then I went back to my own apartment.’

  ‘Could you tell us where that is?’

  ‘Dorsoduro,’ he answered, then added, before she could ask, ‘950. Along the canal, just around the corner from Nico’s.’

  She nodded, as if she knew exactly where that was.