A Sea of Troubles

At the bar, which occupied the ground floor of someone's house, she asked for a mineral water and a coffee, drank the water greedily, and sipped at her coffee. The man behind the bar, who was in his sixties, remembered her from other visits and asked when she had arrived. They fell into easy conversation, and soon he was talking about the recent murders, events in which she appeared to take little interest.

'Cut open, gutted like a fish,' he said. 'Pity. He was a nice boy. Amazing, really, when you think about his father.' Not enough time had passed for people to start to tell the whole truth about Bottin, she realized: he was still close enough to life to make people cautious about what they had to say of him.

‘I didn't know them,' she said and glanced idly at the front page of ‘‘ Gazzettino that lay folded on the top of the counter.

'Marco went to school with my granddaughter,' he said.

Elettra paid for the water and the coffee, said how wonderful it was to be out here again, and left. She used the sea wall to walk the entire way back to Pellestrina, and by the time she got there she was thirsty again, so she went into the front part of the restaurant for a glass of prosecco. And who should serve her but Pucetti himself, who paid her no more attention than he would any other attractive woman a few years older than he.

As she drank it, she listened to the men clustered at the bar. They too paid little attention to her, having slotted her into place as Bruna's cousin, the one who came out every summer, and thus a sort of honorary native.

The murders were mentioned, but only in passing, as just another example of the bad luck that afflicts all fishermen. More important, they discussed what to do about those bastards from

Chioggia who were coming over into their waters at night and ripping up the clam beds. One man suggested they tell the police; no one bothered to respond to a suggestion so patently stupid.

She went to the cash register and paid. The owner also remembered her as Bruna's cousin and welcomed her back. They chatted idly for a while, and when he too mentioned the recent murders, she said she was on vacation and didn't want to hear about such things, suggesting by her tone that people from the big city didn't really take much interest in the doings of provincials, however sanguinary they might be.

The rest of the day, and the next, passed quietly enough. She heard nothing new but was still careful to call Brunetti again and tell him that much, or that little. Remaining strong in her refusal to discuss the recent murders, she quickly adapted to the rhythm of Pellestrina, a village that led life at its own pace. The bulk of the population sailed off to work while it was still dark and returned only in the late morning or early afternoon. Many people went to bed not long after nightfall. She soon fell into a routine. Bruna took care of her grandchildren every day, while their mother taught in the local elementary school. To avoid the confusion brought into the house by the presence of two young children, Elettra spent most of her days outside, walking on the beach, occasionally taking the boat over to Chioggia for a few hours. But she always ended up having a coffee in the bar of the restaurant just at the time the men from the boats began to drift in.

Within days, she was an attractive fixture, and one that responded to any mention of the Bottins or their murder with silence. She realized from the first that they all disliked Giulio; only as time passed did she begin to sense that the objection to him went far beyond his penchant for violence. After all, these were men who made their living by killing, and though their victims were only fish, the job had rendered many of them casual about blood and gore and the taking of life. The savagery of Giulio's disposal seemed not to trouble them in the least; in fact, if they mentioned it at all, it was with something like grudging admiration. What they seemed to object to was his refusal to put the good of the hunting pack of Pellestrinotti ahead of all else. Any act of aggression or betrayal, so long as it was directed against the fishermen of Chioggia was completely justified, even praiseworthy. Giulio Bottin, however, had seemed capable of behaving in the same way towards his own kind, if it would work to his advantage, and this was something they would not forgive, not even after death, and not even after a death as horrible as his had been.

On the Wednesday afternoon, as she sat at a table in the front part of the bar, reading through Il Gazzettino and paying no attention, none at all, to the conversations around her, she was conscious of the arrival of someone new. She didn't look up until she had read a few more pages, and when she did, she saw a man a few years older than herself, the casual elegance of whose appearance made him stand out among the fishermen at the bar. He wore a pair of dark grey slacks and a pale yellow V-neck sweater over a shirt that went with his slacks perfectly. She was immediately intrigued by the colour of his sweater and by the fact that he appeared to be completely at ease with and accepted by these men. Most of them, she was sure, would die before they would wear yellow on anything other than a rain slicker.

He had dark hair and, from what she could see of his profile, dark eyes and brows. His skin was tanned or naturally bronzed; she couldn't tell which. He was taller than most of the other men, an impression heightened by the grace with which he carried himself. Any traditional idea of masculinity, especially in the company of these wind-hardened fishermen, would have been compromised, if not by the sweater, then by the way he inclined his head to listen to the men around him. In him, however, the total effect was of a masculinity so certain of itself as not to be bothered by such trifles of dress or behaviour.

Elettra consciously returned her eyes to the newspaper and her attention to the man. He was, it turned out, somehow related to one of the fishermen. More drinks were ordered, and Elettra found herself approaching the sports pages, something not even her devotion to duty could cause her to read. She closed the paper and got to her feet. As she walked towards the cash register, one of the men, a relative - she had no idea how - of Bruna's husband, called her over to meet the new arrival.

'Elettra, this is Carlo; he's a fisherman, one of us.' With two thick fingers, the man plucked at the fine wool of Carlo's sweater and asked, 'He doesn't look it, does he?' The general laughter which greeted this was easy and comfortable, and Carlo joined in with good grace.

Carlo turned to her and smiled, held out his hand and took hers.

'Another stranger?' he asked.

She smiled at the idea. 'If you're not born here, I suppose you're always a stranger,' she answered.

His chin tilted to one side and he glanced at her more closely. 'Do I know you?' he asked.

‘I don't think so,' she answered, momentarily confused into thinking that perhaps she knew him, as well. But she was sure she would have remembered him.

'No, I haven't met you,' he said with a smile that was even warmer than the one he'd given on taking her hand. ‘I would have remembered.'

This echo of her own thought disconcerted her. She nodded to him and then to the other men at the bar, muttered something about going back to her cousin's, paid for her coffee, and escaped into the sunlight.

Her doctor had been handsome; as she walked home, she confessed to herself that she had a weakness for male beauty. This Carlo was not only handsome, but, from the little she had seen of him, simpatico as well. She told herself sternly that she was out here on police business. Though he didn't live on Pellestrina, there was nothing that excluded Carlo from possible connection with the murder of Giulio and Marco Bottin. She smiled at that; soon she'd be like the members of the uniformed branch, seeing everyone, everywhere, as a probable suspect, even before there was any evidence that a crime had been committed.

She put all thought of the handsome Carlo behind her and went back towards Bruna's home. On the way, she used her telefonino to call Commissario Brunetti at the Questura and tell him that she had nothing to report save that it was the general opinion among the fishermen that, with the change of moon, the anchovies would start to run.

15

Brunetti, left behind while Signorina Elettra disported herself in the sun and walked on the beach, without learning anything at all about the murders, was having as little success as she. He had called Luisa Follini's number again, but a man answered, and this time it was Brunetti who hung up without speaking. It was instinct that had made him call her, some atavistic response to the menace radiating from the two men who had come into the store, and it was this same instinct that made him decide to send Vianello to stop in and have a word with her after he made another attempt to find Giacomini.

Following Brunetti's orders, Vianello went out to Malamocco again, where he managed to find Enrico Giacomini without difficulty. The fisherman recalled the fight between Scarpa and Bottin and said it had been provoked by Scarpa, who had accused Bottin of having a big mouth. Vianello pressed Giacomini and asked if he knew what Scarpa had been talking about, but the fisherman said he could think of nothing, but he said it in such a way as to give the sergeant, no mean judge of situations for all his apparent stolidity, a sense that here he was treading on some Pellestrina secret. Even as he asked the other man if he were sure he had no idea what Scarpa had intended, Vianello was overcome with a sense of the absurdity of his attempt to unearth information from one fisherman about another. Their definition of loyalty was not one that encompassed the police; in fact, it probably failed to encompass all of humanity aside from the small part of it fishing in the waters of the laguna and the Adriatic.

Both irritated at Giacomini's obvious evasions and curious to learn more about what had taken place between Bottin and Scarpa, Vianello asked Bonsuan to take him down to Pellestrina. Leaving Bonsuan with the boat, he went first to Signora Follini's shop - but it was lunch time, and the shop was closed. Brunetti had warned him not to call attention to Signora Follini, so Vianello walked past it without paying any apparent attention.

He turned left and towards the address he had been given for Sandro Scarpa, the originator of the remark that had triggered Bottin's anger.

But Scarpa, who was not at all happy to be pulled away from his lunch by the police, said the fight with Bottin had been provoked by the dead man, and anyone who said anything else was lying. No, he couldn't remember exactly what it was Bottin had said, nor could he recall why it had so angered him. Besides, he added, it hadn't been much of a fight, not really. These things happened, he implied, when it was late at night and men had been drinking: they meant nothing, and no one ever thought about them again.

With no warning, Vianello asked him if he knew where his brother was; Scarpa said he thought he'd gone to Vicenza to see a friend about something. He did not ask Vianello to leave, only his lunch was growing cold in the kitchen and there was nothing more to say about Bottin. Vianello saw no reason to prolong this conversation and so went to the restaurant to have a glass of wine in the bar.

When he walked in, he was briefly disoriented and wondered if he was somehow already back at the Questura, for behind the bar he saw Pucetti, and sitting at a table to the left, reading ‘‘ Gazzettino with the attention he had previously known her to devote only to Vogue, sat Signorina Elettra. Both glanced up when he came in. Both reacted to the sight of his uniform, and he hoped the men standing at the bar saw how they did: even the faces of men he'd repeatedly arrested had seldom shown such suspicion and dislike.

After a long pause, Pucetti drifted over, asked him what he wanted and then was a long time bringing the glass of prosecco. When he did bring it, it was sour and warm. Vianello took a sip, set the glass sharply on the counter, paid, and left.

After another few minutes, seeing the sports page approach once again, Signorina Elettra folded the newspaper, paid for her coffee, nodded to a few of the men at the bar, and went out into the sun. She had gone only a few metres when she heard, from behind her, a voice she recognized instantly. 'Going back to your cousin's house?' he asked.

She turned and saw him, hesitated a moment, then returned the smile he offered her. 'Yes, I suppose so.' When she saw his confusion, she explained, 'She took the kids up to the Lido to buy shoes for the summer, and they won't be back until after lunch.'

'So you have the chance to eat in peace for a change?' he asked with another, broader smile.

'No, they're really very good. And besides, they do have first right to the house and to Bruna.'

'So you're free,' he asked, more interested in that than in discussing the behavior of the children.

'I suppose so,' she answered, then, realizing how very ungracious that sounded, changed it to, 'Yes, I am.'

'Good. I hoped to talk you into a picnic on the beach. There's a place on the jetty where the tide has pulled away some of the boulders, so there's no wind at all.'

'Picnic?' she asked, seeing that his hands were empty.

He raised them and hooked his thumbs into what she had thought were braces. 'In here,' he said, turning halfway round and showing her a small black backpack, just large enough to hold a picnic lunch for two.

Her smile was involuntary. 'Good,' she said. 'What did you pack?'

'Surprises,' he answered, and this time she noticed the way his smile always began at his mouth and then crept up into his eyes.

'Good. I just hope one of them is mortadella.'

'Mortadella?' he asked. 'How did you know? I love it, but I never think anyone else does, so I never bring any. It's such peasant food: I can't imagine anyone like you eating it.'

'Oh, but I do,' she said with real enthusiasm, ignoring his compliment, at least for the moment. 'It's true, isn't it? no one feels comfortable eating it any more. They want, oh, I don't know, caviare or lobster tails, or ...'

'When what they're really lusting for,' he broke in, 'is a panino with mortadella and so much mayonnaise it drips out of the sandwich and down their face.' Casually, as though picnics were a habit between them, he linked his arm in hers and turned away towards the sea wall and the beach.

When they reached the jetty, Carlo jumped up on to the first of the giant boulders, then turned and reached down to help her up. When she was beside him, he took her arm in his, and she was pleased to notice that he didn't point to every uneven rock or surface as though she were incapable of seeing them. More than halfway along, he paused, leaned down, and studied the rocks below. He told her to wait, then jumped down on to an enormous boulder that jutted out at a perilous angle. He stretched out his hand, and she jumped down beside him. There was an immense hole in the side of the jetty where some of the boulders had been ripped away by a storm: the resulting cave was just large enough for the two of them. It was empty of cigarette ends or discarded food wrappings, proof that it was effectively hidden from detection by the Pellestrinotti.

The floor of the cave was a carpet of white sand, and some quirk of tide or pressure had left a flat-topped block jutting from the back wall. It served perfectly as a table; quickly Carlo covered it with the things he pulled from his pack. Like Indians, they sat cross-legged on the sandy floor to eat, the sun slanting, the waves slapping on the rocks below.

Even without mortadella, the picnic was perfect, Elettra judged. Not only because of the thick sandwiches of prosciutto, each slice of bread heavily buttered, and the chilled bottle of Chardonnay, and not because of the strawberries that followed, each to be dipped in mascarpone in open defiance of all dietary sanity. She judged the picnic to be perfect because of the company: Carlo listened to her as though they were old friends, talked to her as though he'd known her for years, and all of those happy ones.

He asked what she did, and she said she worked in a bank: very boring, but a safe job to have in times like these, with unemployment skyrocketing all about them. When she asked, he said he was a fisherman and left it at that. It was only by careful questioning that she got him to tell her that he had abandoned his studies when his father died two years ago, returning to Burano to be with his mother. She liked the way he spoke about it, as if entirely unconscious of how naturally he had assumed the responsibility for his mother.

As they spoke about their families and their hopes, Elettra slowly became conscious of a growing undercurrent of excitement, though nothing either of them said or did could be judged to have produced it. The more she listened to him, the more she felt that this was a voice she'd listened to before and, she became aware, would very much like to hear again.

When the sandwiches were finished, the wine drunk, the last of the mascarpone licked from greedy fingers, she noticed that he carefully picked up the empty wrappings and the napkins they'd used in place of plates and stuffed them in the empty backpack. He saw her watching what he was doing and said, grinning, ‘I hate it when the beaches are covered with junk.' With a self-conscious shrug he pulled up one side of his mouth in a grimace she had already come to recognize and like. 'I suppose it's stupid to bother, but it seems little enough effort.'

She leaned forward and put her napkin into the pack on top of his. As she did so, her breast brushed against his arm, and she was shocked by the power of her response, one that had nothing at all to do with remembered pleasures but stunned her with the promise of future ones. He shot her a look almost stupid with surprise, but when she pretended to have been unconscious of the contact, he turned his attention to the backpack and pulled the strings tight.

After this, though she pretended to be interested in a large boat on the horizon that was visible from the opening in the rocks, she was conscious of his watching her. She sensed, rather than saw, his self-critical grimace, and then he asked, 'Coffee?'

She smiled and nodded, but she was never to know whether his question filled her with relief or disappointment.

16

Brunetti, far from sitting by the waves and dipping fresh strawberries into mascarpone, found himself trapped in his office and buried under the waves of paper generated by the organs of the state. He had thought that, during Patta's absence and Marotta's withdrawal, it would fall to him to make decisions that would affect the way justice was pursued in Venice. Even if he could see to nothing more than assigning incompetent officers to work on minor cases such as complaints about over-loud televisions, thus freeing the better ones to work on more serious crimes, he would at least be working for the general good. But he had no time for things even as simple as this. In the absence of what he now realized must be the

daily filtering done by Signorina Elettra, papers flooded into his office and soaked up all of his working hours. It seemed that the Ministry of the Interior was capable of producing volumes of regulations and announcements every day, making determinations on subjects as diverse as the necessity of providing a translator when foreign suspects were questioned or the height of the heels on the shoes of female officers. His eyes passed over them all; it would be untrue to say he read them, for that act implies at least a minimum of comprehension, and Brunetti quickly passed beyond that possibility into a numbed state where he read words and words and set the pages aside with no idea of what those words signified.

He could not stop his imagination from drifting off to Pellestrina. He found time to speak to Vianello but was disappointed to hear how little the other man had learned. He was intrigued, however, when Vianello mentioned the strong sense he'd had when speaking to the people on Pellestrina that they all considered Bottin not to be one of them, for this confirmed a suspicion Brunetti had formed, he no longer remembered why. When Brunetti gave Vianello's remarks further thought, he found it even stranger. It was unusual in his experience for members of a community as tightly closed as that of Pellestrina to voice collective disapproval of one of their own. The secret of their survival had always lain in maintaining a united front against strangers, and no force was as alien as the police. He was struck by the repeated disparity between what was said about Giulio and what was said about Marco. Everyone mourned the boy's death, but no one on Pellestrina seemed to shed any tears for Giulio Bottin. What was even stranger was how careless they had been in making this known.

The rising tide of paper swept these thoughts from Brunetti's mind for the next two days. On Friday he had a call from Marotta, who told him he'd be back from Turin on Monday. Brunetti did not ask if he had testified in the trial; he cared only that the other commissario take his turn at dealing with the papers.

He and Paola were invited to dinner with friends on Saturday evening, so when the phone rang just before eight, just as he was knotting his tie, he was tempted not to answer it.

Paola called down the hallway, 'Shall I get it?'

'No, I will,' he said, but he said it reluctantly, wishing one of the children were there to answer it for him, lie, say they'd just gone out. Or say their father had decided to move to Patagonia and herd sheep.

'Brunetti,' he answered.

'It's Pucetti, sir,' the young officer said. 'I'm in a phone booth by the dock. A boat just came in. A body's been fished up.'

'Who is it?'

'No idea, sir.'

'Man or woman?' he asked, heart cold at the thought of Signorina Elettra.

'I don't know that either, sir. One of the fishermen came in a minute ago and told the men at the bar what happened, so we all came out here to get a look.' Brunetti heard noises in the distance, and then the receiver was replaced.

He put his own phone down and went back towards the bedroom. Paola, glancing up, saw the expression on his face. She wore a black dress, tight around the hips and cut very low at the back, a dress he thought he'd never seen before. She was just putting on her second earring but let her hands fall to her sides when she saw him. 'Well, I didn't much want to go, anyway,' she said, tossing the earring back into the drawer of their dresser, the top one, the one she used to hold jewellery and, for some reason he had never fathomed, the bottles of vitamins she took. Casually, like someone asking for a half-dozen eggs, she said, 'I'll call Mariella.'

He knew men who kept secrets from their wives. He knew one married man who kept two mistresses and had kept them for more than a decade. He knew men who had managed to lose their businesses and homes before their wives had any idea they gambled. For a moment he contemplated the possibility that Paola had sold her soul to the devil in exchange for the mystic power to read his mind. No, she was too smart to make that bad a bargain.

'Or do you want to call the Questura first?' she asked.

He started to explain what it was but stopped himself, as if silence would keep Signorina Elettra safe. 'I'll use the telefonino,' he said and took it from the dresser where he had left it in anticipation of a peaceful evening with friends. Paola went down to the living room to make her call, and he punched in the familiar number of the Questura. He asked that a boat collect him and take him out to Pellestrina. He pushed the little blue button, dialled Vianello's number and, careful to remember the instructions he'd been given when issued the phone, pushed the blue button again.

Vianello's wife answered. When she heard who it was she made no attempt at pleasantry, but said she'd get Lorenzo. The radar of policemen's wives knew when an evening was ruined: some were gracious, others were not.

'Yes, sir?' the sergeant asked.

'Pucetti just called. From a public phone. They've fished up a body.'

'I'll be at the Giardini stop,' Vianello said and hung up.

He was there fifteen minutes later, but he was not in uniform, nor did he do more than raise his hand in acknowledgement to Brunetti when the boat slowed without stopping to allow him to step on board. Vianello assumed he'd been told everything Brunetti knew, so he didn't waste time asking questions, nor did he voice Signorina Elettra's name.

'Nadia?' Brunetti asked in the shorthand of long association.

'Her parents were taking us to dinner.'

'Anything special?' 'Our anniversary’ Vianello answered. Instead of apologizing, Brunetti asked, 'How many?' 'Fifteen.'

The launch swung to the right, taking them down towards Malamocco and Pellestrina. 'I called for a scene of crime team to come out’ Brunetti said. 'But the pilot'll have to go around and collect them, so I doubt they'll be out any time soon.'

'How do we explain getting there so quickly?' Vianello asked.

‘I can say someone called us.'

‘I hope no one saw Pucetti making the call, then.'

Brunetti, who almost never remembered to carry his, asked, 'Why wasn't he given a telefonino?’

'Most of the young ones have their own, sir.' 'Does he?'

'I don't know. But I suppose not, if he called you from a public phone.'

'Stupid thing to do’ Brunetti said, aware as he spoke that he was transforming the fear he felt for Signorina Elettra into anger at the young officer for provoking his fear in the first place.

Brunetti's telefonino rang. When he answered it, the operator at the Questura said that a call had just come in, a man saying that a woman's body had been pulled up in the nets of a boat and had been taken to the dock at Pellestrina.

'Did he give his name?' Brunetti asked. 'No, sir.'

'Did he say he'd found the body?'

'No, sir. All he said was that a boat had come in with a body, not that he'd had anything to do with it’

Brunetti thanked him and hung up. He turned to Vianello. 'It's a woman.' The sergeant didn't say anything, so Brunetti asked, 'If all those boats have radios and phones, why didn't they call us?'

'Most people don't much want to get involved with us.'

'If they've got a woman's body in their fishing nets, it doesn't seem to me there's any way they can help getting involved with us’ Brunetti said, transferring a bit of his anger to Vianello.

'People don't think of those things, I'm afraid. Perhaps most of all when they've got a woman's body in their nets.'

Knowing the sergeant was right and sorry he'd spoken so sharply, Brunetti said, 'Of course, of course.'

The lights of Malamocco swept by, then the Alberoni, and then there was nothing but the long straight sweep towards Pellestrina. Soon, ahead of them they saw the scattered lights of the houses and the straight line of lights on the dock along which the town was built. Strangely enough, there was no evidence that anything extraordinary had taken place, for there were only a few people visible on the riva. Surely, even the Pellestrinotti could not have been so quickly hardened to death.

The pilot, who had not been out to Pellestrina during this investigation, started to pull the launch into the empty place in the line of fishing boats. Brunetti jumped up the steps and put a hand on his shoulder, saying, 'No, not here. Down at the end.'

Instantly, the pilot reversed the engines, and the boat slowed, then started to pull back from the riva. 'Over there, to the right,' Brunetti told him, and the pilot brought the boat gently up to the dock. Vianello tossed the mooring rope to a man who approached them, and as soon as he had tied it round the metal stanchion, Brunetti and Vianello jumped from the boat.

'Where is she?' Brunetti asked, leaving it to the boat's markings to explain who they were.

'Over here,' the man said, turning back towards the small group of people who stood in the dim light cast by the street lamps. As Brunetti and Vianello approached, the group separated, creating a passage towards what lay on the pavement.

Her feet lay in a pool of light, her head in darkness, but when Brunetti saw the blonde hair, he knew who it was. Fighting down a surge of relief, he drew closer. At first he thought her eyes were closed, that some gentle soul had pressed them closed for her, but then he saw that they were gone. He remembered that one of the policemen had explained the decision to bring up the bodies of the Bottins because there were crabs down below. He had read books in which the stomachs of people in situations like this were said to heave, but what Brunetti felt registered in his heart, which pounded wildly for a few seconds and did not grow steady until he looked away from the woman's face, out over the calm waters of the laguna.

Vianello had the presence of mind to ask, 'Who found her?'

A short, stocky man stepped forward from the shadows. 'I did,' he said, careful to keep his eyes on Vianello rather than on the silent woman over whom all of this was being said.

'Where did you find her? And when?' Vianello asked.

The man pointed in the general direction of the mainland, off to the north. 'Out there, about two hundred metres offshore, right at the mouth of the Canale di Ca' Roman.'

When he failed to answer Vianello's second question, Brunetti repeated it. 'When?'

The man glanced down at his watch. 'About an hour ago. I brought her up in my net, but it took me a long time to get her alongside the boat.' He looked back and forth between Brunetti and Vianello, as if searching to see which of them would be more likely to believe what he said. 'I was alone in my sandolo, and I was afraid I'd capsize if I pulled her in.' He stopped.

'So what did you do?'

'I towed her,' he said, obviously troubled by having to confess this. 'It was the only way to get her here.'

'Did you recognize her?' Brunetti asked.

He nodded.

Glad not to have to look at Signora Follini, Brunetti let his eyes rove around the faces of the people above her, but Signorina Elettra was not among them. If they looked down at the body, their faces disappeared in the shadows cast by the overhead lights, but most of them preferred not to. 'When did any of you see her last?' he asked.

No one answered.

He caught the eye of the one woman standing in the group. 'You, Signora,' he said, keeping his voice soft, merely inquisitive, no trace of authority in it. 'Can you remember when you last saw Signora Follini?'

The woman stared back at him with frightened eyes, then glanced to right and left. Finally she said, all in a rush, 'A week ago. Maybe five days. I went to the store for toilet paper.' Suddenly aware of what she had said in front of all these men, she covered her mouth with her hand, looked down, then quickly up again.

'Perhaps we could move away from here,' Brunetti suggested, moving back towards the bright windows of the houses. A man approached from the direction of the village carrying a blanket. As he drew close to the body, Brunetti forced himself to say, 'You'd better not do that. The body shouldn't be touched.'

'It's for respect, sir,' the man insisted, though he didn't look down at her. 'She shouldn't be left like that.' He held the blanket draped over one arm, a gesture that conveyed a curious sense of formality.

'I'm sorry, but I think it's better,' Brunetti said, giving no hint of how deeply he sympathized with the man's desire. His refusal to let the man cover Signora Follini lost him whatever sympathy he might have gained by moving the crowd away from the body.

Sensing this, Vianello moved a few steps further towards the village, put his hand lightly on the arm of the woman, and said, 'Is your husband here, Signora? Perhaps he could take you home.'

The woman shook her head, freed her arm from his hand, but slowly and with no hint of having taken or wanting to give offence, and walked away towards the houses, leaving the matter to the men.

Vianello moved closer to the man who had stood next to the woman. 'Can you remember when you saw Signora Follini last, Signore?'

'Some time this week, perhaps Wednesday. My wife sent me to get mineral water.'

'Do you remember who else might have been in the store when you were there?'

The man hesitated a moment before he answered. Both Brunetti and Vianello noticed this; neither gave any sign that they had.

'No.'

Vianello didn't ask for an explanation.

Instead, he turned back to the crowd. 'Can anyone else tell me when they saw her?'

One man said, 'Tuesday. In the morning. She was opening the store. I was on my way to the bar.'

Another volunteered, 'My wife bought the newspaper on Wednesday.'

When no one else spoke, Vianello asked, 'Does anyone remember seeing her after Wednesday?' None of them answered. Vianello pulled his notebook from his back pocket, opened it, and said, 'Could I ask you to give me your names?'

'What for?' demanded the man with the blanket.

'We're going to have to speak to everyone in the village,' Vianello began reasonably, as if taking no notice of the question or the tone in which it had been asked, 'so if I can get your names, we won't have to bother any of you again.'

Though not fully persuaded by this, the men nevertheless gave him their names and, when asked, their addresses. Then they filed slowly away, moving in and out of the circles of light, leaving the pavement to the two policemen and, at a distance, to the woman who lay silent, her blank eyes raised to the stars.

17

Before he spoke, Brunetti moved even farther away from the body of the dead woman. 'When I was in the store with her last week, two men came in. It was obvious they made her nervous. When I called her, I think it was Monday, she hung up as soon as she heard my name. When I called again, later in the week, a man answered, and I hung up without saying anything. Probably stupid.' He thought of what he'd learned about her, that she had been an addict for so many years and had stopped, come home, and gone to work in her parents' store. 'I liked her. She had a sense of humour. And she was tough.' The subject of these observations lay behind them, deaf now to the opinion of others.

'Sounds like you mean that as a compliment’ Vianello said.

Without hesitation, Brunetti answered, 'I do.'

After a pause, Vianello asked, 'And she didn't have any illusions about life in Pellestrina, did she?'

Brunetti looked over at the low houses of the village. A light went out in a downstairs window of one of them, and then in another. Was it because the residents of Pellestrina hoped to get what sleep they could before the fishing fleet set sail or was it to darken their rooms, the better to enable them to see what was going on outside? 'I don't think any of them have any illusions about living here.'

If either of them thought about going to the bar to have a drink while they waited for the scene of crime team, neither suggested it. Brunetti glanced back at the police launch and saw the pilot, sitting in a pool of light on the mushroom-shaped top of the metal stanchion, smoking a cigarette, but he didn't move off in that direction. It seemed little enough to remain with Signora Follini until the others arrived to transform her into a crime victim, a statistic.

The second police launch brought not only the four men of the team but a young doctor from the hospital who worked as a substitute when neither Rizzardi nor Guerriero was available. Brunetti had been at two crime scenes when he had been sent to declare the victim dead, and both times the doctor had behaved in a way that Brunetti did not like, dismissive of the solemnity of the moment. Only five years out of medical school, Dottor Venturi had apparently spent his time acquiring the arrogance, rather than the compassion, of his profession. He had also carefully copied the meticulous dress of his superior, Rizzardi, though the result always seemed slightly ridiculous on his short, stubby body.

The boat pulled in and moored beside theirs; the doctor jumped heavily down and walked towards the forms he knew to be Brunetti and Vianello, but he made no acknowledgement of their presence. He wore a dark charcoal grey suit with just the faintest of dark vertical stripes, a pattern which emphasized, rather than disguised, his rotundity.

He looked down at Signora Follini's body for a moment, then pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and dropped it on the wet pavement beside her before kneeling carefully on it. He picked up her hand without bothering to look at her face, felt her wrist, then let it slap wetly back on the pavement. 'She's dead,' he said to no one in particular. He glanced up at Brunetti and Vianello to see how they would respond.

When neither of them spoke, Venturi repeated, ‘I said she was dead.'

Brunetti looked away from the laguna then and glanced down at the young doctor. He wanted to know the cause of her death, but he did not want to watch this young man touch her again, so he simply nodded in acknowledgement and turned back to his contemplation of the distant lights visible on the water.

Vianello signalled to the men who had drawn up behind the doctor as he knelt over the body. Venturi started to get to his feet, but the toe of his right foot slipped on the wet pavement and he stopped himself from falling prone only by putting both palms flat down in front of him. Quickly he scrambled to his feet. He moved away from the body, careful to keep his dirty hands away from his sides, turned to one of the photographers, and said, 'Would you get me my handkerchief?'

The photographer, a man of about Brunetti's age, was busy setting up his tripod. He pulled one of the legs out, screwed it in place, looked over at the doctor and said, ‘I didn't drop it,' and turned his attention to the second leg.

Venturi opened his mouth to reprimand the technician, thought better of it, and headed off in the direction of the launch, leaving his handkerchief on the ground beside the body. Brunetti watched as he walked away, hands held horizontal, and was struck by how much like a penguin he looked. The empty boat bobbed out in the water, at least a metre from the edge of the pier. Neither of the pilots was anywhere to be seen. Rather than haul the boat closer by means of its mooring rope or attempt the broad leap from the pier to the deck, Venturi walked along the pier and sat on a wooden park bench. Brunetti suddenly noticed the heavy evening mist that had settled in, and was glad of it.

He walked back to Signora Follini and knelt beside her, welcoming the momentary distraction of the dampness that began to soak into the knees of his trousers. She wore a low-cut angora sweater, the pile of the fabric swirled into chaotic ridges and whirls by the water in which she had floated. Though he was no pathologist, Brunetti was familiar with the signs of violent death, but he saw none here. The skin of her throat was untouched, as was the fabric of her sweater. With the fingers of his right hand, he lifted the hem of her sweater, exposing her stomach. Seeing nothing but the stretch marks of age, he turned his eyes away and covered her again.

The various technicians busied themselves while Vianello and Brunetti waited. As they stood there idly, Brunetti saw the man with the blanket approach again. He went up to Vianello and said, nodding in the direction of the technicians, 'When they're finished, can you cover her?'

Vianello agreed and took the blanket the man offered.

'I don't need it back, so don't worry about that,' the man said, then walked away from the pier and disappeared into the darkness at the mouth of a small alley that ran between the houses. Time passed. Occasionally, the darkness was punctured by flashes from the technician's camera. Vianello waited until the crime team had finished and started to assemble their equipment, then he walked over to Signora Follini, flung the blanket open in the air and let it fall over her, careful to cover her face and her eyes.

'Rizzardi would have told us something,' Vianello said as he rejoined Brunetti.

'Rizzardi would have picked up his own handkerchief,' Brunetti answered.

'Does it matter that we won't know what killed her until the autopsy?' Vianello asked.

Brunetti tilted his chin in the direction of the houses of Pellestrina, most of them fully dark by now. 'Do you think any of them is going to help us, even when we do know?'

'It seems some of them liked her,' Vianello said with cautious optimism.

"They liked Marco Bottin, too,' was Brunetti's rejoinder.

Because of the presence in the village of Sigriorina Elettra and Pucetti, Brunetti judged it better to delay until the next day the questioning that would have to be done. That might give the two of them, moving casually among the residents, the opportunity to hear things which would be forgotten or ignored by the time the police began the formal inquiry into the death of Signora Follini.

Brunetti signalled to the technicians and they unrolled a stretcher. The blanket barely shifted as they lifted Signora Follini and carried her over to the launch.

On the way back to Venice, Brunetti stood on deck, thinking of the jokes he and Vianello had made about Signora Follini, though at the time neither of them had had any idea of how practised her attentions had been. He took some comfort in the thought that, had she heard their jokes, she might have been amused by them, but the realization that she was now far beyond any possibility of sensing his regret merely added to his remorse.

He was home long after midnight but found Paola, as he had hoped, waiting for him. She was sitting in bed, reading, but she closed the book and set it on the table then removed her glasses before she spoke. 'What happened?'

Brunetti hung his jacket in the closet, pulled off his tie and draped it over the back of a chair. 'Signora Follini. Someone pulled her out of the laguna’ he said as he started to unbutton his shirt. He sat, more tired than he had realized, on the chair beside the bed and bent down to untie his shoes. 'Someone tossed her in the water and left her to drown, I think.'

'Because of the other killings?' she asked.

'It would have to be.'

'Is she still out there?' Paola asked. For a moment, Brunetti thought she must mean Luisa Follini, whose body was by now lying in the chill company of the other dead at the Ospedale Civile, but then he realized she must mean Signorina Elettra.

'I'll tell her to come back,' he said. Before Paola could comment, he padded down to the bathroom, where he was careful to avoid looking at himself in the mirror as he brushed his teeth.

Some time later, when he slipped under the covers beside her, Paola picked up just where things had been left. 'Will she listen to you?'

'She always listens to me.'

'So does Chiara’ Paola said but left it at that.

He turned towards her and draped his arm over her stomach. He felt her move, and the light in the room went out. She shifted and slipped her arm around him until his head rested comfortably in the hollow just under her shoulder. He lay in the arms of his wife and thought of another woman, but because he told himself he was thinking of her safety, he made no effort to resist the thought.

After a long time, so long that both of them should have been asleep, Paola said, 'You better do something about this.'

He made a noise, and then more time passed, and then they both slept.

The next morning, even before he left home, he called the morgue and asked the attendant who had been assigned to do the autopsy on the woman brought in from Pellestrina the night before.

'Dottor Rizzardi.'

'Good. When?'

There was a pause, and Brunetti heard the sound of a page being turned. 'There were two people who died in Castello. Probably fumes from their water heater. But I can put her up first. He should be done by eleven.'

'Thanks,' said Brunetti. 'Tell him I'll call, would you?'

'Certainly, Commissario,' the attendant said and put the phone down.

Brunetti was keen to know when Signora Follini had died, and only Rizzardi could tell him that. Some time after Wednesday, unless he found someone who said they'd seen her later than that.

And where? He found the map of the laguna and studied the narrow length of Pellestrina. At the southern end was the mouth of the canal where she had been found, about three kilometres from the village, just beyond the protected area of the Riserva of Ca' Roman. He folded the map and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Only one of the pilots could tell him what he wanted to know about tides and currents and the way things drifted in the water.

At the Questura, he went first to the room used by the officers and there found Bonsuan, who often opted to work the quieter Sunday shift. The pilot was sitting in the strangely empty officers' room, looking idly at a ragged copy of Gazzetta dello Sport in a manner that suggested he would be just as interested in staring at the wall. Brunetti spread the map on top of the newspaper, repeated what the fisherman said about where he found Signora Follini, and asked the pilot to explain what could have happened to have brought her there.

After studying the map for a while, Bonsuan asked, 'How bad was she?'

She was dead, Brunetti thought. How much worse could things be for her? 'I don't understand.'

'You saw her body, didn't you?' the pilot asked patiently. 'Yes.'

'How much damage had been done?' 'Her eyes were gone.'

Bonsuan nodded, as if he'd expected this. 'How about her arms and legs? Did it look like she'd been dragged on the bottom?'

Brunetti, with some reluctance, cast his memory back to the last he'd seen of Signora Follini. 'She was wearing a sweater and slacks, so I couldn't see her arms or legs. But I didn't notice any damage to her hands or face. Aside from the eyes.'

Bonsuan grunted and bent over the map. "They brought her in about eight, didn't they?'

"That's when the call reached me.' Brunetti was surprised to realize that, even with the pilot, he didn't mention that the call had come from Pucetti. Perhaps this was the beginning of real paranoia.

'You don't have any idea of when she went in?' 'No.'

Bonsuan pushed himself up from the desk and went over to a glass-fronted bookcase, a relic from former days. He pulled open the door and took down a thin, paper-covered book, flipped it open, ran his forefinger down a page, turned it, did the same with the next, and then the next. He found what he was searching for, studied it, then shut the book and put it back in the case.

When he returned to the desk, he said, 'I need to know how long she was in the water. She could have drifted out there from just about anywhere: Chioggia, Pellestrina, even from one of the other channels if she was dumped over the side.' He paused, then added, 'The tide was running strong last night because of the full moon, and it was running out when they found her, so she was headed out to sea. That would make it more unlikely that she'd be found.'

'I won't know when she died until later this morning, after I talk to Rizzardi,' Brunetti said.

Bonsuan indicated that he had heard. 'If she was in the water for a long time, then whoever did it probably just tossed her in, not planning much of anything. But if she wasn't dead a long time, then they threw her in some place where they knew the tide would pull her out into the Adriatic. If she got caught in the bottom of the channel, then there wouldn't have been much of her left when she got there: the tides are strong, and she'd be moving quickly. A lot of her would have been pulled off by the stones down there.'

Bonsuan saw the look his superior gave him. 'It's not my doing, sir. It's just the way the tides work.'

Brunetti thanked him for the information, made no comment on Bonsuan's casual assumption that she had been murdered, and went back up to his own office to wait for it to be time to call Rizzardi.

The doctor, however, called him first to tell him that the cause of death was simple drowning, in salt water.

'Could someone have drowned her?' he asked.

Rizzardi's answer took a moment to come. 'Possibly. All they'd have to do is push her in from a boat or take her into the water and hold her down. There were no recent signs that she had been tied up.'

Before Brunetti could ask about that, the pathologist added, 'From a gynaecological point of view, she was interesting.'

'Why?'

"There are signs that, at one time or another, she'd had most of the major venereal diseases, and there are signs of at least one abortion.'

'She was an addict for years,' Brunetti said. Rizzardi grunted, as though that fact were so obvious as barely to merit mention. 'And, it seems, a prostitute.'

'That's what I would have guessed,' Rizzardi observed with a neutrality that reminded Brunetti of how much he liked the doctor, and why.

Brunetti went back to the question he had not been able to ask. 'You said there were no recent signs that she had been tied up. What does that mean?'

There was a long hesitation but at last the pathologist said, 'There are signs of binding on the upper arms and ankles. So I'd guess that whoever she was with most recently, if she had a steady man, was interested in rough stuff.'

'What do you mean, "rough stuff?" Rape?'

'No,' Rizzardi's answer was immediate.

'Then what else? What else can it be?'

'If sex is rough, it's not necessarily rape,' Rizzardi said with sufficient asperity to leave Brunetti waiting for a terse, 'Commissario' at the end of the sentence.

"Then what's rape?' Brunetti asked.

'If either partner is unwilling, then it's rape.'

'Either?'

Rizzardi's voice softened, 'We live in different times, Guido. The days are gone when rape was something that happened only between a violent man and an innocent woman.'

Brunetti, father of a teenage daughter, was curious to hear what Dottor Rizzardi had to say on the subject, but he couldn't see how this would advance his investigation and so he let it go and asked, 'When did it happen?'

'I'd guess it was two days ago, some time Friday night.'

'Why?'

'Just believe me, Guido. This isn't television, where I have to talk about the contents of her stomach or the amount of oxygen in her blood. Two days ago,' he repeated, 'probably in the evening, after ten or so. Just believe me and believe it will stand up in court.'

'If it ever gets to court,' Brunetti said absently, a remark not necessarily intended for the pathologist.

'Well, that's your job. I just tell you what the physical evidence tells me. You've got to figure out why and how and who.'

'Would that it were so easy,' Brunetti said.

Rizzardi chose not to discuss the relative demands of their separate professions and ended the call, leaving Brunetti to go out to Pellestrina to begin to try to answer those questions.

18

Even though it was Sunday, Brunetti saw no reason why he and Vianello should not go out to Pellestrina in the hope of discovering something that might contribute to an understanding of Signora Follini's death. Bonsuan was not at all unwilling to take them out, insisting that the news in the paper bored him; since he didn't like soccer much he would just as soon not waste his time reading about the day's matches.

As they stood on the deck of the launch at the Giardini stop, motor idling, waiting for Vianello to show up, Brunetti returned to Bonsuan's remark and asked, 'What sports do you like, then?'

'Me?' Bonsuan asked, a delaying tactic Brunetti recognized from long familiarity with witnesses who found a question uncomfortable. 'Yes.'

'Do you mean to play or to watch, sir?' Bonsuan asked evasively.

By now more curious about the reason for Bonsuan's reluctance than to know the answer to the question, Brunetti said, 'Either.'

'Well, I don't play sports, not at my age,' Bonsuan said in a manner that suggested no further information would be forthcoming.

'But to watch?' Brunetti asked.

Bonsuan looked off down the long, tree-lined viale that led to Corso Garibaldi, eager for a sign of Vianello. Brunetti watched the people walking by. After a long time, Bonsuan said, 'Well, sir, it's not like I know anything about it or I go to any special trouble to watch it, but I like to look at the sheepdog trials, on television. From Scotland, you know.' When Brunetti said nothing, Bonsuan added, 'And New Zealand.'

'Not much coverage in the Gazzettino, I'd imagine,' Brunetti observed.

'No,' the pilot answered, then, looking off towards the arch at the end of the viale, said, 'There's Vianello,' relief audible in his voice.

The sergeant, today in uniform, waved as he approached and then jumped on deck. Bonsuan pulled away from the riva and headed towards the now familiar canal that led towards Pellestrina's peaceful observance of the Lord's Day.

The fact that religion is a thing of the past and no longer exerts any real influence on the behaviour of the people of Italy has in no way affected their churchgoing habits, especially in the smaller villages. In fact, some sort of algebraic equation might well be made to connect the smallness of a parish and the proportion of people who attend Mass. It is those gross heathens, the Romans and the Milanese, who do not attend, the millions among whom they live keeping them safe from the eye and tongue of local comment. The Pellestrinotti, however, are conscientious in their attendance at Mass, regular attendance allowing them to keep track of the doings of their neighbours without seeming to pry, for anything that has happened, especially anything that could call into question either virtue or honesty, is sure to be discussed on the steps of the church on Sunday morning.

It was there that Brunetti and Vianello awaited them, and awaited events, just before twelve, as the eleven o'clock Mass was ending and the villagers of Pellestrina were enjoined one final time to 'go in peace'.

Religion, Brunetti reflected, as he stood on the steps, though he had never realized this until Paola had pointed it out to him, always made him uncomfortable. Paola had had what he considered the good fortune to be raised, more or less, entirely free of religion, as neither of her parents had ever bothered attending church functions, at least not those where religious observance of any sort was the reason for attendance. Their social position often required them to attend ceremonies such as the investiture of bishops or cardinals, even the coronation, if that is the proper noun, of the current Pope. But these were ceremonies which had to do not with faith but with power, which quality Paola had always insisted was the real business of the Church.

Because she was as devoid of faith as she was of the habit of religious observance, she had no grudge against religion, not at all, and viewed the peculiar ways in which people chose to observe its rules with anthropological distance. Brunetti, on the other hand, had been raised by a mother who believed, and though he had ceased to do so well before his adolescence, he nonetheless carried within him the memory of faith, though faith deceived. He knew his attitude to religion was adversarial, if not antagonistic; however much he tried to fight this, he could not escape it or the guilt it caused him. As Paola never ceased to remind him, 'I'd rather be a pagan suckled on a creed outworn...'

All of this crowded into his head as he stood on the steps of the church, waiting to see who would emerge and what new information they would bring him. An organ pealed out, the purity of its tone speaking more to the quality of the sound system inside the church than to the talent of the organist. The doors swung open, the music swelled and cascaded down the steps, quickly followed by the first members of the congregation. Seeing them, Brunetti was struck, not for the first time, by how haunted the faces of people emerging from church were.

Had they been a herd of animals, a flock of sheep jumping over a low stile into a new field, their sudden apprehension of a foreign presence could not have been more evident, nor could the wave of uneasiness that rippled from the front to the back of the group as each new member became aware of the potential threat that awaited them on the steps. Had Vianello not been in uniform, Brunetti had no doubt that many of them would have pretended not to have seen the two men. As it was, some of them still made a great business of not noticing them, though Vianello's white uniform hat was as glaringly evident as the halo on any of the saints left behind them in the church.

Brunetti, making an attempt not to appear to be doing so, studied the faces of the people who walked past him. At first, he thought he was noticing the effect of their conscious efforts to look both innocent and ignorant, but then he realized that what he was seeing were the effects of a restrictive geography: many of them looked alike. The men were all short, their heads round, eyes close together. Their generally muscular build he attributed to the work most of them did, as must be the case with the sun-scored and deeply lined faces of all of them, even the youngest. The women showed more diversity of feature, though a common thickness seemed to have settled on the bodies of any of them over the age of thirty.

This morning no one paused on the steps of the church to talk to their neighbours. Instead, the entire congregation responded to some common, urgent summons to their homes. To say they fled is to exaggerate. To say they moved away quickly and nervously is not.

As the last of them moved off, Brunetti turned to Vianello, hoping to lighten his sense of discomfiture by asking if they should blame their failure on the sergeant's uniform. Before he could speak, however, he saw Signorina Elettra emerge from the bar that stood to the left of the church. That is, he saw her emerge from the bar briefly and then step partly back inside. She came out again, more slowly this time, and as she walked away from the door, he saw the reason for the delay: a young man held her hand and stood in the doorway, calling back to someone inside the bar. Whatever it was he said, it caused a shout of laughter from more than one voice, at which Signorina Elettra yanked his arm, finally pulling him from the doorway.

The young man stepped towards her and with what seemed the ease of long familiarity put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. There was an utter lack of coquettishness in the way she responded, wrapping her left arm around his waist and falling into step beside him, moving towards the two policemen they had not yet seen. Considerably taller than she, the man leaned his head down and said something; Elettra glanced up at his face and answered with a smile Brunetti had never seen her use before. The man bent and kissed the top of her head, causing them to stop for an instant. When he lifted his head, he saw Brunetti and Vianello on the steps of the church and came to a sudden halt.

Signorina Elettra, surprised, looked up at the young man's face, then followed the path of his eyes. The exclamation that emerged from her open mouth was drowned by the first peal of the church bells above them. She recovered her composure long before the twelfth bell struck, by which time she had redirected her attention, momentarily distracted by the unexpected sight of a policeman on the steps of the church, to the serious business of lunch with her new friend.

After an hour of attempting to interview the people of Pellestrina, Brunetti decided it would be futile until they had all finished their lunch. He and Vianello therefore retreated to the restaurant and had a sober meal which neither of them enjoyed, despite the freshness of the food and the crispness of the wine. They decided to split up, hoping that the sympathy Vianello had established when he spoke to people would be sufficient to overcome the inevitable response to his uniform.

At the first two houses, Brunetti was told that they did not know Signora Follini at all well, one of me men even going so far as to say that he took his wife down to the Lido in the car once a week: at the local store the prices were far too high and many of the items on sale no longer fresh. The man was an embarrassingly bad liar, a fact which his wife tried to ignore by carefully arranging and rearranging four porcelain figurines which bore a vague resemblance to dachshunds. Brunetti thanked them both, and left.

No one answered the door at the next two houses; the response might as easily have been the result of choice as absence. The third door, however, was opened almost before he finished knocking, presenting Brunetti with every policeman's dream: the watchful neighbour. He knew her from a single glance at her tight lips, recognized the type in her eager eyes and forward-leaning posture. The fact that she did not rub her palms together did not detract from the overall impression of satisfaction conveyed by her avid smile: here at last was someone who would share her shock and horror at the terrible deeds, commissions and omissions of which her neighbours were guilty.

Her hair was coiled in a thin bun at the back of her head, recalcitrant wisps held down by a scented greasy pomade. Though her face was thin, her body was rounded, with no visible waist. Over a black dress that was slowly turning green with age and repeated washing, she wore a soiled apron which, years ago, might once have been covered with flowers.

'Good afternoon, Signora,' he began, but before he could give his name, she interrupted him.

'I know who you are and why you're here. It's about time you came to talk to me.' She tried to express disapproval, but it was impossible for her to suppress her satisfaction at his arrival.

'I'm sorry, Signora,' he began, 'but I wanted to see what the others had to say before talking to you.'

'Come in, come in,' she said, turning and leading him towards the back of the house. He followed her down a long, damp hallway, at the end of which light came from an open doorway into the kitchen. Here there was no change in temperature, no comforting warmth to compensate for the seaside dankness of the corridor, and no pleasant scents of cooking to cut through the oppressive smell of mould, wool, and something feral and animal he couldn't recognize.

She directed him to a seat at the table and, without offering him anything to drink, sat down opposite.

Brunetti took a small notebook from the side pocket of his jacket, opened it, and uncapped his pen. 'Your name, Signora?' he asked, careful to speak Italian and not Veneziano, knowing that the more formal and official this interview could be made to seem, the greater would be her pleasure and sense of gratification at finally having made the authorities aware of the many things she had nursed to her bosom all these thankless years.

'Boscarini,' she said. 'Clemenza.' He made no comment and wrote silently.

'And you've lived here how long, Signora Boscarini?'

'All my life’ she answered, equally careful to speak Italian but not finding it at all easy. 'Sixty-three years.'

Emotions or experiences he couldn't imagine made her look at least ten years older than that, but Brunetti did nothing more than make another note. 'Your husband, Signora?' Brunetti asked, knowing that she would be complimented by the assumption that she must have one, insulted to be asked if she did.

'Dead. Thirty-four years ago. In a storm.' Brunetti made a note of the importance of this fact. He looked up again and decided not to ask about children.

'Have you had the same neighbours all this time, Signora?'

'Yes. Except for the Rugolettos three doors down’ she said, giving an angry toss of her chin to the left. 'They moved in twelve years ago, from Burano, when her grandfather died and left them the house. She's dirty, the wife’ she said in dismissive contempt and then, to make sure he understood why, added, 'Buranesi.'

Brunetti grunted in acknowledgement, then, wasting no time, asked, 'Did you know Signora Follini?'

She smiled at this, hardly able to contain her pleasure, then quickly smothered the expression. Brunetti heard a small noise and glanced across at her. It took him an instant to realize that she was actually licking her lips repeatedly, as if freeing them at last to tell the awful truth. 'Yes’ she finally said. ‘I knew her, and I knew her parents. Good people, hard working. She killed them. Killed them as if she'd taken a knife and driven it into her poor mother's heart.'

Brunetti, looking down at his notebook to hide his face, made encouraging noises and continued to write.

Again she paused, made the licking noise, then went on. 'She was a whore and a drug addict and brought disease and disgrace on her family. I'm not surprised that she's dead or that she died the way she did. I'm just surprised that it took so long.' She was silent for a moment, and then added, in a voice so unctuous Brunetti closed his eyes, 'God have mercy on her soul.'

Allowing the deity sufficient time to register the request, Brunetti then asked, 'You said she was a prostitute, Signora? While she was here? Was she still?'

'She was a whore when she was a child and a young woman. Once a woman does that sort of thing, she's defiled, and she never loses the taste for it.' Her voice reflected both certainty and disgust. 'So she must have been doing it now. That's obvious.'

Brunetti turned a page, mastered his expression, and looked up with an encouraging smile. 'Do you know anyone who might have been her client?' He saw her begin to answer, then think of the consequences of false accusation and close her mouth.

'Or suspect anyone, Signora?' When she still hesitated, he shut the notebook, placed it on the table, capped his pen and placed it on top. 'It's often just as important for us, Signora, to have a sense of what's going on, even if we don't have proof. It's enough to start us on the right road, to know where to begin to look.' She said nothing, so he went on, 'And it's only the most courageous and virtuous citizens who can help us, Signora, especially in an age when most people are all too willing to close their eyes to immorality and the sort of behaviour that corrupts society by destroying the unity of the family.' He had been tempted to refer to 'sacred unity', but thought it might be excessive and so contented himself with the lesser nonsense. It sufficed, however, for Signora Boscarini.

'Stefano Silvestri.' The name slithered off her lips: the man who had been so careful to explain that he took his wife to the larger stores on the Lido once a week. 'He was always in the store, like a dog sniffing at a bitch to see if she was ready for him.'

Brunetti received this information with his accepting noise but made no motion towards his notebook. As if encouraged by that act of discretion, she went on: 'She tried to make it look like she wasn't interested, made fun of him whenever anyone was around, but I know what she was up to. We all did. She led him on.' Brunetti listened calmly, trying to recall if this woman had been on the steps of the church and wondering what going to Mass might mean for someone like her.

'Can you think of any other man or men who might have been involved with her?' he asked.

'There was talk’ she began, all too eager to let him know. 'Another married man’ she began, lips wet and eager. 'A fisherman.' For a moment, he thought she was going to name him, but he saw her consider the consequences, and she said only, 'I'm sure there were many more.' When Brunetti remained silent in the face of this slander, she said, 'It's because she provoked them.'

'Of course’ he permitted himself to say. Which would be worse, he wondered: death at sea or another thirty-four years with this woman? He sensed that she was willing to tell him nothing more, assuming that what she had given him was information and not mere spite and jealousy, he got to his feet and picked up his notebook and pen. Slipping them into his pocket, he said, 'Thank you for your help, Signora. I assure you that everything you've said will be kept in the strictest confidence. And, speaking personally, I would like to remark that it is rare for a witness to be so willing to give us this sort of information.' It was a small shot, and it seemed to pass her by, but it was still a shot and it made him feel better. With every expression of politeness, he took his leave, glad to escape from her house, her words, and the sound of that flicking, reptilian tongue.

As they had agreed, he and Vianello met at the bar at five. Each ordered coffee, and when the barman moved off after setting the small cups down in front of them, Brunetti asked, 'Well?'

'There was someone. A man’ Vianello said.

Brunetti tore open two packets of sugar and poured them into his coffee, stirred it and drank it in one long sip. 'Who?' Vianello, he noticed, still drank his coffee without sugar, a habit his own grandmother had believed 'thinned the blood', whatever that meant.

'No idea. And it was only one man who said anything, something about the way Signora Follini was always up before dawn, even though the store didn't open until eight. It wasn't actually what he said so much as the way he said it, and the look his wife gave him when he did.'

That was all Vianello had, and it didn't seem like very much. It could have been Stefano Silvestri, though Brunetti hardly thought his wife was the sort who would allow her husband to be anywhere before dawn other than lying beside her or working his nets.

‘I saw Signorina Elettra’ Vianello added.

Brunetti forced himself to pause before asking, 'Where?'

'Walking towards the beach.'

Brunetti refused to ask and after what seemed a long time, Vianello added, 'She was with the same man.'

'Do you know who he is?'

Vianello shook his head. ‘I suppose the best way to find out would be to ask Bonsuan to ask his friend.'

Brunetti didn't like the idea, didn't like the chance of doing anything that would call attention to Signorina Elettra in any way. 'No, better to ask Pucetti.'

'If he ever comes back to work,' Vianello said, casting his eyes towards the far end of the bar, where the owner was deep in conversation with two men.

'Where's he living?'

'In one of the houses. Cousin of the owner or something.'

'Can we get in touch with him?'

'No. He didn't want to bring his telefonino; said he was afraid someone might call and leave a message that would compromise him.'

'We could have issued him one, then none of his friends would know the number,' Brunetti said with undisguised irritation.

'Didn't want that, either. Said you never know.'

'Never know what?' Brunetti demanded.

'He didn't say. But I imagine he thinks someone at the Questura might mention that he'd been issued a phone for use on some special assignment, or someone might make a call to it, or someone might be listening to all of our calls.'

'Isn't that a bit paranoid?' Brunetti asked, though he had himself, more than once, contemplated the third possibility.

'I think it's always safer to assume that everything you say is overheard.'

'That's no way to live,' Brunetti said hotly, believing this.

Vianello shrugged. 'So what shall we do?'

Brunetti remembered Rizzardi's comments about 'rough sex'. 'I'd like to find out who she was seeing.' He caught Vianello's glance and added, 'Signora Follini, that is.'

'I still think the best way is to ask Bonsuan to ask his friend. These people aren't going to tell us anything, at least not directly.'

'I had a woman tell me that Signora Follini was still tempting the local men to sin,' Brunetti said, disgust mingled with amusement.

'Presumably one of the ones who was tempted was either her husband or the man next door.'

'Two doors down.'

'Same thing.'

Brunetti decided to return to the boat to ask Bonsuan to speak to his friend. That proved unnecessary, as the pilot, whom they ran into upon leaving the bar, had been invited to the man's home for lunch, and then they had spent the rest of the afternoon sipping grappa and talking about their old days in the Army. After they'd relived the Albanian campaign and toasted the three Venetians who had not returned with them, their talk turned to their current lives. Bonsuan had been very careful to set the record straight about where his loyalties might lie, declaring his intention of retiring from the police as soon as he could.

As the three policemen walked slowly towards the boat, Bonsuan explained that it had proven relatively straightforward, and he had emerged, the bottle of grappa almost finished, with the name of Luisa Follini's lover.

'Vittorio Spadini’ he said, not without pride in his achievement. 'He's from Burano. A fisherman. Married, three children, the sons are fishermen and the daughter's married to one.'

'And?' Brunetti asked.

Perhaps as a result of the grappa or perhaps because of the recent talk of retiring, Bonsuan answered, 'And that's probably more than you and Vianello would get if you stayed here a week.' Surprised to hear himself speak like this, he added, 'Sir', but the time between the answer and the title had been prolonged.

Silence fell, broken only when Bonsuan added, 'But he's not fishing much any more. He lost his boat about two years ago.'

Brunetti thought of Signora Boscarini's husband and asked, 'In a storm?'

Bonsuan dismissed the idea with a quick shake of his head. 'No, worse. Taxes.' Before Brunetti could ask how taxes could be worse than a storm, Bonsuan explained. "The Guardia di Finanza hit him with a bill for three years' false declarations of what he earned. He tried to fight it for a year, but in the end he lost. You always do. They took his boat.'

Vianello broke in to ask, 'Why is that worse than a storm?'

'Insurance,' Bonsuan answered. 'Nothing can insure you against those bastards from the Finanza.'

'How much was it worth?' Brunetti asked, again made aware of just how little he knew about this world of boats and the men who went to sea in them.

'They wanted five hundred million. That was fines and what they calculated he owed them, but no one has that much cash, so he had to sell the boat.'

'My God, are they worth that much?' Brunetti asked.

Bonsuan gave him a puzzled glance. 'If they're as big as his was, they're worth much more; they can cost a billion.'

Vianello broke in. 'If they wanted five hundred million for three years, that probably means he cheated them out of twice that, three times.'

'Easily,' Bonsuan agreed, not without a hint of pride at the cleverness of the men who fished the laguna. 'Ezio told me Spadini thought he'd win. His lawyer told him to fight the case, but he probably did that just to make his own bill bigger. In the end, Spadini had no choice: they came and took it. If he had come up with enough cash to pay the fine, too many questions would have been asked,' he said, leaving the others to assume that the money was there, hidden in secret investments or accounts, like so much of the wealth of Italy. He glanced at Vianello and added, 'Someone told me that the judge was one of the Greens.'

Vianello shot him a glance but said nothing.

Bonsuan went on, 'That he had a grudge against all of the vongolari because of what they do to the laguna.'

At this, Vianello finally said, his voice dangerously tight, 'Danilo, cases like this, about taxes, don't come up before judges.' Before Bonsuan could answer, he added, 'Whether they belong to the Greens or not.' Then, turning to Brunetti but obviously aiming his remarks at Bonsuan, Vianello added, 'Next we're probably going to be told about the way the Greens take vipers up in helicopters and drop them in the mountains to repopulate the species.' Then to Bonsuan he said, his voice more aggressive than Brunetti could ever remember it, 'Come on, Danilo, aren't you going to tell us how friends of yours have found dead vipers in bottles up in the mountains or how they've seen people tossing them out of helicopters?'

Bonsuan looked at the sergeant but didn't bother to answer, his silence resonant with his conviction of the futility of attempting to reason with fanatics. Brunetti had, over the course of the years, heard many people speak of these mysterious, malevolent helicopters, piloted by mad ecologists bent on restoring some perverted idea of 'nature', but it had never occurred to him that anyone could actually believe in them.

They had reached, not just an impasse, but the boat. Bonsuan turned away from them and busied himself with the mooring ropes. Vianello, perhaps in an attempt to soften the effect of his remarks, went to the back and began to untie the second rope. Brunetti left them to it, busy with calculations of the surprising sums that had just been referred to. When Bonsuan had the rope coiled, Brunetti followed him aboard and called to him as the pilot went up the steps towards the wheel, 'You'd have to catch a lot of fish to afford a boat like that.'.

'Clams,' Bonsuan instantly corrected him. "That's where the money is. No one's going to take a shot at you over fish, but if they catch you digging up their clams and ruining their beds, then there's no telling what they'll do.'

'Is that what he did, ruin the beds?' Brunetti asked.

‘I told you it's what they all do,' Bonsuan answered. "They'll dig anywhere, and every year there are fewer clams. So the price goes up.' He looked from Brunetti to Vianello, who was standing on the dock, listening. With a brusque beckoning gesture, the pilot waved towards the sergeant and said, 'Come on, Lorenzo.' Vianello tossed his end of the rope around one of the stanchions on the side of the boat and jumped on board.

'But if he's lost his boat’ Brunetti said, pretending to ignore the successful conclusion of peace negotiations, and bringing the conversation back from the general to the particular, 'what does he do now?'

'Fidele said he's working for one of his sons, runs one of his boats for him’ Bonsuan said, pulling out dials on the panel in front of him. 'It's a much smaller boat, and there's only two of them on it.'

'Must be difficult for him’ Vianello interrupted, 'not being the owner any more.'

Bonsuan shrugged. 'Depends on the son, I suppose.'

'And Signora Follini?' Brunetti asked, again bringing the conversation back to his immediate concern.

'It had been going on for about two years,' Bonsuan said. 'Ever since he lost the boat' Feeling that this wasn't sufficient explanation, Bonsuan went on. 'He doesn't have to get to sea so early any more, only when he wants to.'

'And the wife?' Vianello asked.

All of Italy and all of its history and culture went into the shrug with which Bonsuan dismissed this question. 'She's got a home, and he pays the rent. They've got three children, all married and on their own. What has she got to complain about?'Anything else he might have said was lost in the sound of the engine, which sprang to life at his command.

Not wanting to discuss this, Brunetti was content that they should return to the city, to their own homes and to their own children.

19

Brunetti had been in his office for less than an hour the following morning when he answered the phone to hear Signorina Elettra's voice.

'Where are you?' he asked brusquely, then moderated his tone and added, ‘I mean how are you?'

Her long silence suggested how she felt about being questioned in this manner. When she did answer, however, there was no sign of resentment in her voice. 'I'm on the beach. And I'm fine.'

The far-off cries of the gulls spoke to the truth of the first, the lightness in her voice to the second.

'Signorina,' he began with little preparation and less thought, 'you've been there more than a week now. I think it's time you began to think about coming back.'

'Oh, no, sir, I don't think that's a good idea at all.'

'But I do,' he insisted. ‘I think you should say your farewells to your family and report for work tomorrow.'

'It's the beginning of the week, sir. I'd planned to stay until at least the weekend.'

'Well, I think it would be better if you came back. There's a lot of work that's piled up since you left.'

'Please, sir. I'm sure it's nothing one of the other secretaries couldn't handle.'

'I need to get some information,' Brunetti said, realizing how close his voice came to pleading. 'Things I don't want the secretaries to know about.'

'Vianello can handle the computer well enough now to get you what you want.'

'It's the Guardia di Finanza,' Brunetti said, playing what he thought would be a trump card. ‘I need information from them and I doubt that Vianello would be able to get it.'

'What sort of information, sir?' He heard noises in the background: gulls, a horn of some sort, a car engine starting, and he remembered how narrow the beach of Pellestrina was and how close to the road.

‘I need to know about tax evasion.'

'Read the newspaper, sir,' she said, laughing at her own joke. When there was no response, she said, the laughter gone and her voice less rich for that, 'You can call their main office and ask. There's a maresciallo there, Resto, who can tell you everything you need to know. Just tell him I told you to call.'

He had known her long enough to recognize the polite inflexibility he was dealing with. ‘I think it would be better if you handled it, Signorina.'

All pleasantness dropped from her voice as she said, 'If you keep this up, sir, I'll be forced to take a week of real vacation, and I'd rather not do that because it would take a lot of time to adjust the timetables.'

He wanted to cut it short and simply ask her who the man was he had seen her with yesterday, but their relationship had ill prepared him for such a question, especially in the tone he knew he would be incapable of preventing himself from using. He was her superior, but that hardly gave him the authority to act in loco parentis. Because the difference in their positions precluded the intimacy of friendship, he could not ask her to tell him what was going on between her and the handsome young man he had seen her with. He could not think of a way to express concern that would not sound like jealousy, and he could not explain, even to himself, which it was he actually felt.

"Then tell me if you've learned anything,' he said in a voice he forced himself to make less stern, hoping that this would be viewed as compromise rather than the defeat it so clearly was.

'I've learned to tell un sandolo from un puparin, and I've learned to spot a school of fish on a sonar screen’ she said.

He avoided the lure of sarcasm and asked, voice bland, 'And about the murders?'

'Nothing’ she admitted. 'I'm not from here, so no one talks about them in front of me, at least not to say more than the sort of things people say.' She sounded wistful at the confession that the Pellestrinotti did not treat her like one of their own, and he wondered about the lure of the place, or the people, that could cause this response. Yet he would not ask.

'What about Pucetti? Has he learned anything?'

'Not that I know, sir. I see him in the bar when he makes me a coffee, but he's given no sign that he has anything to tell me. I don't see that there's any sense in keeping him out here any longer.'

She was not alone in that sentiment: Brunetti had already had three questions about Pucetti from Lieutenant Scarpa, Patta's assistant, who had noticed the absence of the young officer's name from the regular duty roster. With the ease of long habit, Brunetti had lied and told Scarpa that he had assigned the young officer to the investigation of suspected drug shipments at the airport. There was no reason for his lie beyond his instinctive suspicion of the lieutenant and his desire that no one at all should learn of Pucetti's presence, nor that of Signorina Elettra, on Pellestrina.

'The same goes for you, Signorina’ he said, aiming at lightness and humour. 'When are you coming back?'

‘I told you, sir. I want to stay a bit longer.'

Above the cries of the gulls, a man's voice called out, 'Elettra.' He heard her sudden intake of breath, and then she said into the phone, 'Ti chiamero. Ciao Silvia,' and then she was gone, leaving Brunetti strangely unsettled that, in order finally to use the familiar tu with him, she had had to call him Silvia.

Signorina Elettra had no trouble whatsoever in addressing Carlo as tu. In fact, there were times when she thought that the grammatical intimacy did little justice to the sense of ease and familiarity she felt with him. Not only had something about him seemed familiar when they first met; it had continued to grow as she listened to him talk and came to know him better. They both loved mortadella, but they also loved, of all improbable things, Asterix and Bracio di Ferro, sugarless coffee and Bambi, and both confessed that they had cried when they learned of the death of Moana Pozzi, going on to say they'd never felt so proud to be Italian as when they saw the spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for the death of a porno star.

They'd spent hours talking during this week, and it had pained her, in the face of his openness, to maintain the lie that she was working for a bank. He'd expanded on his brief history of his life and told her he'd studied economics in Milano before abandoning his studies and returning home when his father died two years ago. There was, as neither of them needed to be told, no suitable work for a man who still had to pass two exams before finishing his degree in economics. She admired his honesty in telling her that he had no choice but to become a fisherman, and she delighted in hearing the pride with which he spoke of his gratitude to his uncle for having offered him a job.

The work on the boat was so heavy and exhausting that he had twice fallen asleep in her company, once while they sat in their cave on the beach and once as he sat beside her in the bar. She didn't mind either time, as it gave her the chance to study the small hollow just in front of his ear and the way his face relaxed and grew younger as he slept. She often told him he was too thin, and he replied that it was the work that did it. Though he ate like a wolf, and she had seen proof of this at every meal, she saw no trace of fat on his body. When he moved, he seemed to be composed of flexing lines and muscles; the sight of his bronzed forearm had once brought her close to tears, so beautiful did she find it.

When she gave it thought, she reminded herself that she was out on Pellestrina in order to listen to what people had to say about murder, not to fall into the orbit of a young man, no matter how beautiful he might be. She was there in the hope of picking up some piece of information that might be of use to the police, not to find herself enmeshed by a man who, if only by virtue of his occupation, could well be one of the people she should be gathering information about.

All of this fled her mind as Carlo's arm found its already familiar place on her shoulder, his left hand curving around behind her to come to rest on her arm. She'd already grown accustomed to the way his hand registered his emotions, fingers tightening on her arm when he wanted to emphasize something he said or tapping out a quick rhythm whenever he was preparing to make a joke. Though a number of men had touched her arm, few had managed to touch her heart the way he did. One night, when she'd gone out on the boat with him and his uncle, she'd seen his hands glistening in the light of the full moon, covered with fish guts, scales and blood, his face distant and intense with the need to shovel them from the nets into the refrigerated hold below decks. He'd looked up and seen her watching him and had immediately turned himself into Frankenstein's monster, arms raised in front of him, fingers quivering menacingly as he tromped, stiff-kneed, towards her.

She squealed. There is no more delicate word: she squealed in delighted horror and backed up against the rail of the boat. The monster approached, and as he reached her, his hands moved past her head, careful not to touch her hair, and Carlo's smiling mouth came down softly on her own, lingering there until his uncle shouted from the tiller, 'She's not a fish, Carlo. Get back to work.'

But today, here on the beach, there was no thought of work. His hand tightened on her arm; a gull squawked and took flight as he pulled her, not roughly but not gently, towards him. Their kiss was long and their bodies grew, if possible, closer together. He pulled away from her, moved his hand up and placed it gently on the back of her head, pressing her face into the angle of his shoulder. His hand moved and began gently running up and down, up and down her back then stopped, fingers splayed, at her belt.

Elettra made a sound, part sigh, like a soprano about to begin an important aria. The tips, only the tips, of his last two fingers slipped below her belt. Her mouth opened and she pressed it against his collarbone, then suddenly she bit at it through the heavy wool of his sweater.

She moved back from him then, grabbed blindly for his hand, and moved off, quickly, leading him down the beach and towards the entrance to the cave in the jetty.

20

Brunetti, less troubled by his passions, but still smarting from being called Silvia, considered the lies he had just told Signorina Elettra. There was no information he wanted from the Guardia di Finanza, and it was true that Vianello had indeed arrived at a point where he could summon up a remarkable amount of information from the computer. The name of the Finanza stuck in his mind, however, reminding him of something else he'd read or been told about them; as always, it had been something unpleasant.

He got up and stood by his window, his attention drawn down into Campo San Lorenzo, where someone - perhaps the old men who lived in the nursing home there - had constructed multi-storeyed shelters for the stray cats who had haunted the campo for years. He wondered what generation of cat he looked at today, how they were descended from the cats who'd been there when he'd first come to the Questura, more than a decade ago.

The name crept into his mind with all the grace and limberness of one of those cats: Vittorio Spadini, the man said to be Luisa Follini's lover. He'd had his boat confiscated by the Finanza, when was it, two years ago? Spadini lived on Burano; it was a fine spring day, a perfect day to go out to Burano for lunch. Brunetti left word with the guard at the door that, if anyone asked for him, he was to say that the Commissario had a dental appointment and would be back after lunch.

He got off the vaporetto at Mazzorbo and turned to his left, eager for the walk to the centre of Burano, already anticipating lunch at da Romano, where he hadn't eaten for years. The sun warmed him and his stride lengthened, his body happy to be in the sun, breathing in the iodine-laden air. Dogs romped on the new grass, and old ladies sat in the sun, glad for the added chance at life that springtime promised them. An enormous black dog rose up from beside his master, who sat calmly reading the Gazzettino, and lumbered towards Brunetti. He bent down and offered the back of his hand, which the dog licked happily. Then, tired of Brunetti, he loped back and flopped down again beside his owner.

Even before he reached the Burano boat station, Brunetti had begun to notice the presence of people, far more than seemed normal for a weekday morning in late spring. When he got to the first of the stalls selling 'original Burano lace', most of which he had always thought was imported from Indonesia, he found his way forward blocked by pastel-coloured bodies. He began to skirt around them, confused by how unaware they seemed that other people wanted to walk to actual destinations rather than mill around and regroup idly in the middle of the pavement.

He turned from the piazza into Via Galuppi and headed for da Romano; he was sure he could reserve a place for one o'clock: a single person was always welcome in a restaurant. At worst, he might have to wait a quarter-hour, but on a day like this it would be a joy to sit at a table in one of the bars that lined the street, sip a prosecco, perhaps read the paper.

The small tables in front of the restaurant were all occupied; at many of them, three people sat at tables designed for two. He passed through the door and into the restaurant, but before he could speak, one of the waiters, hurrying past with a platter of seafood antipasto, saw him and called out, 'Siamo al complete.'

For a moment, it occurred to Brunetti to argue and try to find a place, but when he glanced around inside he abandoned the idea and left. Two other restaurants were similarly full, though it was just after twelve, far too early for a civilized person to want to eat.

Brunetti had lunch in a bar, standing at the counter and eating toast filled with flabby ham and a slice of cheese that tasted as if it had spent most of its life in plastic. The prosecco was bitter and almost completely flat; even the coffee was bad. Disgusted with his meal and angered by the disappointment of his hopes, he walked dispiritedly down to a small park, bent on sitting in the sun to allow his mood to lighten. He sat on the first bench he saw, put his head back and turned his face to the sun. After a few minutes, his attention was drawn by a furious barking, and he opened his eyes to see again the enormous black dog, which he now recognized as a Newfoundland.

The dog dashed madly across the grass, aiming at a small blonde girl who stood at the foot of the ladder of a long children's slide. Seeing the dog approaching, the little girl grabbed the sides of the ladder and began to scramble up. The dog's owner stood at the other side of the park, its leash hanging helplessly from his hand, calling after the dog.

Barking wildly, the dog reached the slide. The girl, at the top, screamed in terror, her voice high and piercing. Suddenly the dog launched itself up the ladder, astonishing Brunetti, who watched helplessly as it reached the top. The girl dropped on to the top of the metal slide and sailed down; the dog plunged after her, front legs stiff.

The little girl sprawled into the sand at the bottom of the slide, and Brunetti leaped to his feet and started to run in her direction, his hand reaching helplessly for the gun he had, again, forgotten to wear. He closed his right hand into a fist and ran on.

The dog landed just to the left of the little girl, who opened her arms and embraced its enormous head. Its barks were drowned by her shrill laughter, and then all noise stopped as the dog set itself to trying to lick her face off.

Brunetti stopped, almost pitching headlong on to the grass. He looked across at the dog's owner, who waved once and started towards him. The little girl got to her feet and ran around to the ladder, the dog following joyously in her wake. Again he followed her up to the top and then down the slide, and at the bottom they fell into the same pink-tongued tableau. Before the owner could reach him, Brunetti turned and walked away, heading for Campo Vigner, the address the phone book listed for Vittorio Spadini.

The house on the right of Spadini's was bright red, the one to the left as bright a blue. The Spadini house, however, was a pale pink, bleached clean by years of rain and sun. Brunetti noticed other signs: a curtain falling from the rod at one of the windows, the right side of a shutter all but eaten through by rot. The Buranesi were, if nothing else, a houseproud people, and so it surprised him to see such patent signs of neglect.

He rang the bell, waited a moment, and rang it again. No one answered, so after a time he went to the red house and rang the bell there. It was opened by a round woman, or at least his first glance suggested that she was round. Short, even shorter than Chiara, she must have weighed more than a hundred kilos, most of which had decided to settle between her breasts and her knees. Her head was round and her face was round; even her little eyes, squeezed tight by the flesh surrounding them, were round.

'Good afternoon, Signora,' he said. 'I'm looking for Signor Spadini.'

'So are a lot of people,' she said with a laugh that set most of her body shaking loosely.

'I beg your pardon.'

'His wife's looking for him, and his sons are looking for him, and I suppose, if my husband thought there was any chance of getting the money he lent him back, he'd be looking for him, too.' Again, she laughed and again she shook.

Brunetti, unsettled by the strange dissonance between what she had to say and the way she chose to say it, asked, 'When was the last time anyone saw him?'

'Oh, last week some time.' Then, explaining the casualness with which she said this, she explained, 'He does this all the time, disappears and doesn't come home until he's spent all his money and has to go to work again.'

'As a fisherman?'

'Of course,' she said, this time not laughing; in fact, her face expressed confusion that this stranger at her door could think there was anything else a man from Burano could do to earn his living. 'And his wife?'

'She works’ the woman explained. Then, seeing that Brunetti was about to ask for an explanation, added, 'a cleaner at the elementary school'.

As if it had suddenly occurred to her that this man, clearly not a Buranesi, though he did speak Veneziano, had not explained the reason for his curiosity, she asked, 'Why do you want to see him?'

Brunetti smiled easily and, he hoped, wryly. 'I suppose I'm in the same position as your husband, Signora. I lent him some money.' He sighed, shook his head, and spread his hands in a display of mingled disappointment and resignation. 'Any idea where I might find him?'

She laughed again, this time at the absurdity of his errand. 'No, not until he decides to come back. He's a forest bird, Vittorio: he arrives and disappears when he wants to, and there's no catching him, no matter how much you might want to.'

For a moment, Brunetti toyed with the idea of giving her his home number and asking her to call if Spadini returned, but he thought better of it, thanked her for her help, and added, ‘I hope your husband has better luck.'

All of her shook again at the unlikeliness of this; she smiled, and closed the door, leaving Brunetti to make his way through the milling crowds towards the vaporetto and back to Venice.

Back at the Questura, he was astonished to find Pucetti, in uniform, standing outside the Ufficio Straniero, keeping an eye on the people who stood in line, waiting for their papers to be processed.

'What are you doing here?' he asked the equally surprised officer.

‘I called in this morning and asked for you, sir,' Pucetti said, ignoring the people who stood behind him. 'But I was put through to Lieutenant Scarpa. I think he'd left orders that he was to speak to me whenever I called. He said he had direct orders from the Vice-Questore that I was to report here instantly, in uniform. I tried to tell him I was on a special assignment, but he said it would be grounds for dismissal if I refused to obey.' Pucetti had the courage not to look away and spoke directly to Brunetti. 'I didn't think I could refuse a direct order, sir. So I came back.'

'Have you seen him?' Brunetti asked, keeping a tight rein on his anger.

'Scarpa?'

'Yes,' Brunetti answered, refusing to correct Pucetti for omitting the lieutenant's title. 'What did he say?'

'He asked me where I'd been, and I told him I'd been ordered not to speak about it to anyone.'

'Did he ask who gave you the order?'

'Yes, sir.' Pucetti's voice was calm. ‘I told him you did, and he said he'd speak to you about it.'

'Anything else?'

'No, sir. That's all he said.'

Though Brunetti had himself considered summoning Pucetti back to Venice, he could not stand the fact that Scarpa had gone over his head.

'I'm sorry sir,' Pucetti said, then turned away for a moment to stare at a heavily bearded man whose voice was raised in protest at the man behind him in the line. A look from Pucetti sufficed to quiet them both, and he turned back to Brunetti.

'Did you have the chance to speak to Signorina Elettra?' Brunetti asked casually.

'Once or twice, sir, when she came in for a coffee, but there were always people there, so we just played our roles and talked about the weather or the fishing.'

"That young man,' Brunetti began. 'Do you have any idea who he is?' It didn't occur to Brunetti that he left it to Pucetti to infer which man he meant, nor did he consider the significance of the fact that Pucetti knew exactly whom he intended.

'He's the nephew of one of the fishermen out there.'

'What's his name?'

'Who, the man or his uncle?'

"The man. What's his name?' Brunetti realized how eager he sounded, so he slipped one hand into the pocket of his jacket and shifted his weight, to stand in a more relaxed posture. 'If you know, that is,' he added lamely.

'Targhetta,' Pucetti answered, with no indication that he found Brunetti's interest at all out of the ordinary. 'Carlo.'

Brunetti was about to ask more about the young man and what he was doing on Pellestrina when he sensed Pucetti's increasing curiosity as to his interest in Signorina Elettra's personal life. 'Good, thank you, Pucetti. You can put yourself back on the usual duty roster,' he said, quite forgetting that they had been using the same roster for two weeks now in the absence of Signorina Elettra to oversee the rotation of staff.

Back in his office, he did allow for her absence and phoned the office of the Guardia di Finanza himself, asking for Maresciallo Resto.

The Maresciallo, he was told, was momentarily out of the office, and would he like to speak to someone else? His refusal was instantaneous and automatic, and when he hung up he was assailed by the full significance of his response. Even in something like this, an ordinary phone call from one agency of the state to another, he was unwilling to reveal the reason for his call to anyone, regardless of their rank or position, unless that person were vouched for by someone he knew and trusted. What saddened him was not so much the fact that the people he dealt with might be in the pay of the Mafia or unreliable for some other reason, as the fact that distrust was an instinct, one so strong as to preclude a priori any chance of cooperation among the fragmented forces of public order. And Maresciallo

Resto, he realized, had earned his trust only by having earned Signorina Elettra's. This reflection brought him back to Pellestrina, the now-identified young man, and thoughts of Signorina Elettra. He dwelt upon those for a quarter of an hour and then called the Finanza again.

'Resto,' a light voice answered.

'Maresciallo,' Brunetti began, 'this is Commissario Guido Brunetti, at the Questura. I'm calling to ask you for some information.'

'Are you Elettra's boss?' the man asked, surprising Brunetti not by the question but by the casual use of her first name.

'Yes.'

'Good. Then ask anything.' Brunetti waited, though he waited in vain, for the usual encomia to Signorina Elettra's many virtues.

'I'm curious about a case you handled two years ago. A fishing boat was sequestered from a fisherman on Burano, Vittorio Spadini.' He waited for Resto to comment, but the other man was silent, and so Brunetti went on. 'I'd like to know whatever you can tell me about the case, or about him.'

'Is this about the murders?' Resto asked, surprising him with the question.

'Why do you ask?'

Resto gave a small laugh. 'There've been three deaths on Pellestrina in the last ten days, two of them fishermen, and now the police call and ask me about a fisherman. I'd have to be a Carabiniere not to wonder about the connection.'

It was said as a joke, but it was not a joke.

'He's said to have been involved with one of the victims,' Brunetti offered by way of explanation.

'Have you questioned him?'

"There's no sign of him. A neighbour says he's not around.'

Resto paused, then said, 'Wait a minute while I get the file.' He was gone for a short time, then came back, picked up the phone, and said, "The file's down in the archive. I'll call you back,' and hung up.

So Resto also wanted to be sure who he was talking to, Brunetti realized, suspecting that the Maresciallo had the file in his hand but thought it wisest to call the Questura and ask for Brunetti.

When the phone rang a moment later, he answered with his name and, as nothing was to be gained by provoking the man, resisted the temptation to ask Resto if he were sure now with whom he was dealing.

Brunetti heard pages being turned, and then Resto said, 'We started the investigation in June, two years ago. We put a flag up at his bank and put a tap on his phone and his accountant's phone and fax. We kept track of how much he sold at the fish market, then checked to see how much of that he declared.'

'What else?' Brunetti prodded.

'And we ran the usual checks on him.'

'Which are?' Brunetti asked.

'I'd rather not say,' Resto answered. 'But we eventually realized he was selling clams and fish for a value of almost a billion lire a year and declaring an income of less than a hundred million.'

'And?' Brunetti asked into the next silence. 'And we kept an eye on him for a few months. And then we landed him.' 'Like a fish?'

'Exactly. Like a fish. But he turned into a clam once we had him. Nothing. No money, no idea where he's got it. If he's got it.'

'How long do you think he was earning this much?'

'No way of knowing. Could have been five years. Or more.'

'And you've no idea where he's got it hidden?'

'He could have spent it.'

Brunetti, who had seen the state of Spadini's house, doubted that, but he didn't offer this information. He considered what he'd heard, then asked, 'What put you on to him?'

'One-one-seven.'

'Excuse me?' Brunetti said.

'The number, the one for anonymous denuncie.'

Brunetti had heard, for years, about this number, 117, set up to allow citizens to make anonymous accusations of tax evasion. Though he had heard the story, he had never quite believed in it and had persisted in thinking of 117 as yet another urban myth. But here was a maresciallo of the very Finanza itself, telling him it was true: the number existed and it had been used to launch the investigation of Vittorio Spadini, one that led to the loss of his boat.

'What sort of record is kept of these calls?'

'I'm afraid I can't discuss that with you, Commissario,' Resto said, neither regret nor reluctance audible in his voice.

‘I see,' Brunetti answered. 'Were criminal charges pressed against him at the time?'

'No. It was judged better to fine him.'

'How much was the fine?'

'Five hundred million lire,' Resto said. 'At the end, that is. It was higher at the beginning, but then it was reduced.'

'Why?'

'We examined his assets, and all he had was the boat and two small bank accounts.'

'Yet you knew he was making half a billion a year?'

'We had reason to believe that, yes. But it was decided that, in the absence of equity on his part, we would settle for the lesser sum.'

'Which represented?'

'His boat, and the money in both of those accounts.'

'And his house?'

'The house is his wife's. She brought it to the marriage, and so we had no right to it.'

'Have you any idea where the money's gone?'

'None. But there are rumours that he gambles.'

'Unluckily, it would seem,' Brunetti observed. 'Everyone who gambles gambles unluckily.' Brunetti gave this the laugh it deserved, then asked, 'And since then?'

'I've no idea,' Resto answered. 'He's not been reported to us since then, so there's nothing else I can tell you about him.'

Brunetti asked, 'Did you meet him?'

'Yes.'

'And?'

Without hesitation, Resto said, 'And he's a very unpleasant man. Not because of what he did. Everyone cheats. We expect that. But there was a kind of frenzy in his resistance to us I've rarely seen before. I don't think it had anything to do with the money he lost, though I could be wrong.'

'If not the money, then what?'

'Losing. Or being defeated,' Resto suggested. 'I've never seen a man so angry at having been caught, though it was impossible we wouldn't catch him, he'd been so stupid.' It sounded as though it was Spadini's carelessness he disapproved of, not his dishonesty.

'Would you say he's violent?' Brunetti asked.

'Does that mean do I think he's capable of those murders?'

'Yes.'

‘I don't know. I suppose many people are, though they don't realize it until they get into the right situation. Or the wrong one,' Resto added quickly. 'Maybe. Maybe not.' When Brunetti said nothing, Resto said, 'I'm sorry not to be able to answer that for you, but I just don't know.'

'That's all right,' Brunetti said. 'Thank you for what you could tell me.'

'Let me know what happens, will you?' Resto said, surprising Brunetti with his request.

'Of course. Why?'

'Oh, just curious,' Resto said, disguising something, though Brunetti couldn't tell what. With a mutual exchange of pleasantries, the two men took their leave of each other.

21

Brunetti found his family seated around the table when he came in, almost-empty dishes of lasagne before them. Chiara got up and kissed him, Raffi said, 'Qiao, Papa' before returning to his pasta, and Paola smiled in his direction. She went to the stove, bent and opened the oven, pulled from it a plate with a large rectangle of lasagne in the centre, and set it at his place.

He went to the bathroom, washed his hands, and came back, aware of how hungry he was and how happy to be home with them.

'You look like you were in the sun today,' Paola said, pouring him a glass of Cabernet.

He took a sip. 'Is this the stuff that student of yours makes?' he asked, raising the glass and studying the colour.

'Yes. Do you like it?'

'Yes. How much did we buy?'

'Two cases.'

'Good,' he said and started to eat his pasta.

'You look like you were in the sun today,' Paola repeated.

Chewing, he swallowed, and said, ‘I was out on Burano.'

'Papa, can I go out with you the next time you go?' Chiara interrupted.

'Chiara, I'm talking to your father,' Paola said.

'Can't I talk to him at the same time?' she asked with every evidence of offended pride. 'When I'm finished.'

'But we're talking about the same thing, aren't we?' Chiara asked, smart enough to remove any sound of resentment from her voice.

Paola looked at her plate then set her fork very carefully beside her unfinished lasagne.

‘I asked your father,' she began, and Brunetti was aware of her referring to him as 'your father'. Beneath that linguistic distance, he suspected, lay some other.

Chiara started to speak, but Raffi gave her a sharp kick under the table, and her head swung towards him. He pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes at her, and she stopped.

Silence fell, then lay, on the table. 'Yes,' Brunetti said, clearing his throat and then continuing. ‘I went out to Burano to talk to someone, but he wasn't there. I tried to eat at da Romano, but there were no tables.' He finished his lasagne and looked across at Paola. 'Is there any more? It's delicious’ he added.

'What else is there, Mamma?' Chiara demanded, appetite overcoming Raffi's warning.

'Beef stew with peppers’ Paola said.

"The one with potatoes?' Raffi asked, his voice rich with feigned enthusiasm.

'Yes’ Paola said, getting to her feet and starting to stack the plates. The lasagne, to Brunetti's diappointment, proved to be much like the Messiah: there was no second coming.

With Paola busy at the stove, Chiara waved a hand to get Brunetti's attention, then tilted her head to one side, gaped her mouth open and stuck out her tongue. She crossed her eyes and tilted her head to the other side, then turned it into a metronome, shaking it quickly back and forth, her tongue lolling slackly from her mouth.

From her place at the stove, where she was busy serving the stew, Paola said, 'If you think this beef will give you Mad Cow Disease, Chiara, perhaps you'd prefer not to eat any.'

Instantly, Chiara's head was motionless, her hands folded neatly in front of her. 'Oh, no, Mamma,' she said with oily piety, 'I'm very hungry, and you know it's one of my favourites.'

'Everything's your favourite’ Raffi said.

She stuck her tongue out again, but this time her head remained motionless.

Paola turned back to the table, placing a dish in front of Chiara, then Raffi. She set another in front of Brunetti and then served herself. She sat down.

'What did you do at school today?' Brunetti asked the children jointly, hoping that one of them would answer. As he ate, his attention drifted from the chunks of stewed beef to the cubes of carrot, the small slices of onion. Raffi was saying something about his Greek instructor. When he paused, Brunetti looked across at Paola and asked, 'Did you put Barbera in this?'

She nodded, and he smiled, pleased he'd got it right. 'Wonderful,' he said, spearing another piece of beef. Raffi concluded his story about the Greek teacher, and Chiara cleared the table. 'Little plates,' Paola told her when she was done.

Paola went to the counter and removed the round top from the porcelain cake dish she had inherited from her Great-Aunt Ugolina in Parma. Inside it, as Brunetti had hardly dared hope, was her apple cake, the one with lemon and orange juice and enough Grand Marnier to permeate the whole thing and linger on the tongue for ever.

'Your mother is a saint,' he said to the children.

'A saint,' repeated Raffi.

'A saint,' intoned Chiara as an investment towards a second helping.

After dinner, Brunetti took a bottle of Calvados, intent on maintaining the apple theme introduced by the cake, and went out on to the terrace. He set the bottle down, then went back into the kitchen for two glasses and, he hoped, his wife. When he suggested to Chiara that she do the dishes, she made no objection.

'Come on’ he said to Paola and returned to the terrace.

He poured the two glasses, sat, put his feet up on the railing, and looked off at the clouds drifting in the far distance. When Paola sat down in the other chair, he nodded towards the clouds and asked, 'You think it'll rain?'

‘I hope so. I read today that there are fires in the mountains up above Belluno.'

'Arson?' he asked.

'Probably’ she answered. 'How else can they build on it?' It was a peculiarity of the law that undeveloped land upon which the construction of houses was forbidden lost that protection as soon as the trees on it ceased to exist. And what more efficient means of removing trees than fire?

Neither of them much wanted to follow up this subject, and so Brunetti asked, 'What's wrong?'

One of the things Brunetti had always loved about Paola was what he persisted, in the face of all her objections to the term, in thinking of as the masculinity of her mind, and so she did not bother to feign confusion. Instead, she said, ‘I find your interest in Elettra strange. And I suppose if I were to think about it a bit longer, I'd probably find it offensive.'

It was Brunetti who echoed, innocently, 'Offensive?'

'Only if I thought about it much longer. At the moment, I find it only strange, worthy of comment, unusual.'

'Why?' he asked, setting his glass on the table and pouring some more Calvados.

She turned and looked at him, her face a study in open confusion. But she did not repeat his question; she attempted to answer it. 'Because you have thought about little except her for the last week, and because I assume your trip to Burano today had something to do with her.'

Other qualities he had always admired in Paola were the fact that she was not a snoop and that jealousy was not part of her makeup. 'Are you jealous?' he asked before he had time to think.

Her mouth dropped open and she stared at him with eyes that might as well have been stuck out on stalks, so absolute was her attention. She turned away from him and said, addressing her remarks to the campanile of San Polo, 'He wants to know if I'm jealous.' When the campanile did not respond, she turned her eyes in the direction of San Marco.

As they sat, the silence lengthening between them, the tension of the scene drifted away as if the mere mention of the word 'jealousy' had sufficed to chase it off.

The half-hour struck, and Brunetti finally said, "There's no need for it, you know, Paola. There's nothing I want from her.'

'You want her safety.'

"That's for her, not from her,' he insisted.

She turned towards him then and asked, without any trace of her usual fierceness, 'You really believe this, don't you, that you don't want anything from her?'

'Of course,' he insisted.

She turned away from him again, studying the clouds, higher now and moving off towards the mainland.

'What's wrong?' he finally asked into her expanding silence.

'Nothing's really wrong. It's just that we're at one of those points where the difference between men and women becomes evident.'

'What difference?' he asked.

'The capacity of self-deceit,' she said, but corrected herself and said, 'Or rather, the things about which we choose to deceive ourselves.'

'Like what?' he asked, striving for neutrality.

'Men deceive themselves about what they do themselves, but women choose to deceive themselves about what other people do.'

'Men, presumably?' he asked.

'Yes.'

If she had been a chemist reading the periodic table of the elements, she could not have sounded more certain.

He finished his Calvados but did not pour any more. A long time passed in silence, during which he considered what she had said. 'Sounds like men get a better deal,' he finally replied.

'When don't they?'

By the next morning, Brunetti had transformed Paola's observation that he had thought about little except Signorina Elettra during the last week, which was true, into an assertion that she had reason for jealousy, which was hardly the same thing. Fully persuaded that Paola had no cause for jealousy, his concern for Signorina Elettra continued uppermost in his mind, blunting his ordinary instinct to be suspicious of and curious about everyone involved in a case. Odd tinglings, if they could be called that, thus went unanswered, and some of the finer threads leading out from the investigation remained unfollowed.

Marotta returned and took over the handling of the Questura. Because murder was such a rare occurrence in Venice, and because Marotta was an ambitious man, he asked for the files on the Bottin murders and, after having read them, said he would take charge of the case himself.

When he failed to find the number of Signorina Elettra's telefonino, Brunetti spent a half-hour at the computer, attempting to get into the records at TELECOM, only to give up and ask Vianello if he could obtain the number. When he had it, he thanked the sergeant and went up to his own office to make the call. It rang eight times, then a voice came on, telling him the user of the phone had turned it off but he could, if he chose, leave a voice message. He was about to give his name when he remembered the look she'd given the young man for whom he now had a name and, instead, calling her Elettra and using the intimate tu, said it was Guido and asked her to call him at work.

He called down to Vianello and asked him to have another look with the computer, this time for anything he could find out about a certain Carlo Targhetta, perhaps resident on Pellestrina. Vianello's voice was a study in neutrality as he repeated the name, which made it clear to Brunetti that the sergeant had spoken to Pucetti and knew full well who the young man was.

He took a blank piece of paper from his drawer and wrote the name Bottin in the centre, then the name Follini off on the left. Spadini's name was next, at the bottom. He drew a line connecting Spadini and Follini. To the right of Spadini's name, he wrote that of Sandro Scarpa, the waiter's brother, said to have had a fight with Bottin, whose name he connected to Scarpa's. Below that he wrote the name of the missing waiter. And then he sat and looked at these names, as if waiting for them to move around on the paper or for new lines to point out interesting connections among them. Nothing appeared. He picked up the pen again and wrote Carlo Targhetta's name, sticking it into an inconspicuous corner and conscious that he wrote it in smaller letters than those he'd used for the other names.

Still nothing happened. He opened the front drawer, slipped the paper inside, and went downstairs to see what Vianello had discovered.

Vianello, in the meantime, had been larking around in the files of the various agencies of government in an attempt to see if Carlo

Targhetta had done his military service or if he had ever had any trouble with the police. Quite the opposite, it seemed, or so he told Brunetti when he came into Signorina Elettra's office, where the sergeant was using the computer.

'He was in the Guardia di Finanza,' Vianello said, surprised at the news.

'And now he's a fisherman,' Brunetti added.

'And probably earning a hell of a lot more doing that,' remarked Vianello.

Though this was hardly in question, it did seem a strange career change, and both of them wondered what could have prompted it. 'When did he stop?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello pressed a few keys, studied the screen, pressed some more, and then said, 'About two years ago.'

Both of them thought of it, but Brunetti was the first to mention the coincidence. 'About the same time that Spadini lost his boat.'

'Uh huh,' Vianello agreed and hit a key that wiped the screen clean. 'I'll see if I can find out why he left,' he said and summoned up a fresh screenful of information. For a number of seconds, new letters and numbers flashed across the screen, chasing one another into and out of existence. After what seemed like an inordinately long time, Vianello said, 'They're not saying, sir.'

Brunetti leaned down over the screen and started to read. Much of it was numbers and incomprehensible symbols, but near the bottom he read, 'Internal use only, see relevant file,' after which there followed a long string of numbers and letters, presumably the file in which the reason for Carlo Targhetta's departure was to be found.

Vianello tapped his finger on the final phrase and asked, 'You think this means something, sir?'

'Everything has to mean something, doesn't it, really?' Brunetti offered by way of response, though he was curious as to just what this might mean. 'You know anyone?' he asked Vianello, using the centuries-old Venetian shorthand: friend? relative? old classmate? someone who owes a favour?

'Nadia's godmother, sir,' Vianello said after a moment's reflection. 'She's married to a man who used to be a colonel.'

"They weren't invited to your anniversary dinner, were they?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello smiled at the reminder of the favour Brunetti now owed him. 'No, they weren't. He retired about three years ago, but he'd still have access to anything he wanted.'

'Is Nadia very close to them?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello's smile was sharklike. 'Like a daughter, sir.' He reached for the phone. 'I'll see what he can find out.'

Brunetti assumed from the brevity of Vianello's opening salvo that he had reached the retired Colonel directly. He heard him explain his request. When Vianello, after a short pause, said only 'June two years ago,' Brunetti assumed that the Colonel had not bothered to ask why the sergeant wanted the information. When Brunetti heard Vianello say, 'Good, then I'll call you tomorrow morning,' he left and went back to his own office.

22

The following morning, Brunetti left for work before Paola was awake, thus avoiding the need to answer any questions about the progress of the investigation. Because Signorina Elettra had not answered his call or at least had not phoned him at the Questura the day before, he could allow himself to think she had obeyed him and returned from Pellestrina. Consequently, he toyed with the idea, as he walked to work, that he might arrive at the Questura to find her at her. desk, dressed for spring, happy to be back and even happier to see him.

His thought, however, was not father to her deed, and there was no sign of her in her office. Her computer sat silent, its screen blank, but he went upstairs before that could be made to serve as an omen of any sort.

Stopping in the officers' room on the way up, he found Vianello at his desk, a disassembled pistol spread in a mess in front of him. The metal parts lay scattered on an open copy of Gazzetta dello Sport, their dull menace in sharp contrast to the pink paper, like a ballet dancer wearing brass knuckles.

'What's going on?' Brunetti asked.

The sergeant looked up and smiled. 'It's Alvise's, sir. He started to take it apart to clean it this morning, but he couldn't remember how to put it back together.'

'Where is he?' Brunetti asked, looking around.

'He went to get a coffee.'

'And left it here?'

'Yes.'

'What are you doing?'

'I thought I'd put it back together for him, sir, and just leave it on his desk.'

Brunetti gave this the thought it deserved and said, 'Yes, I think that's best.'

Ignoring the gun, Vianello said, 'The Colonel called back.'

'And?'

'And he's not saying.' 'Which means?'

'It probably means he'd say if they'd told him but they won't tell him.'

'Why do you say that?'

Vianello considered how best to begin, finally saying, 'He was a colonel, so he's used to being obeyed by almost everybody. I think what happened is that they refused to tell him why

Targhetta left, but he's ashamed to admit that, so he says that he's not allowed to reveal the information.' He paused, then added, 'It's his way of saving face, makes it sound like it's his decision.' 'You sure?'

'No,' the sergeant answered, 'but it's the explanation that makes most sense.' There was another long pause and he added, 'Besides, he owes me a number of favours. He'd do it if he could.'

Brunetti considered this for some time then, realizing that Vianello must have been thinking about it for even longer, asked, 'What do you think?'

'I'd guess they caught Targhetta at something but couldn't prove it or didn't want to risk the consequences of arresting him or charging him. So they just quietly let him go.'

'And put that in his file?'

'Uh huh,' Vianello agreed, turning his attention to the pistol. Quickly, with expert fingers, he began to pick up the scattered parts and slip them into place. Within seconds, the pistol was reassembled, returned to cold lethality.

Setting it aside, Vianello said, 'I wish she were here.'

'Who?'

'Signorina Elettra,' Vianello answered. For some reason, it pleased Brunetti that he did not speak of her familiarly.

'Yes, that would be useful, wouldn't it?' Stymied, suddenly aware of how practically dependent upon her he had become in recent years, Brunetti asked, 'Is there anyone else?'

'I've been thinking about that since he called,' Vianello said. "There's only one person I can think of who might be able to do it.'

'Who?'

'You're not going to like it, sir,' the sergeant said.

To Brunetti, that could mean only one thing; that is, one person. 'I told you I'd prefer not to have anything to do with Galardi,' Brunetti said. Stefano Galardi, the owner and president of a software company, had gone to school with Vianello, but he had long since left behind him all memory of having grown up in Castello in a house with no heat and no hot water and had soared off into the empyrean reaches of cyber-wealth. He had scaled the social and monetary ladder and was accepted, indeed welcomed, at every table in the city, except perhaps at the table of Guido Brunetti, where he had, six years before, made very obvious and very drunken advances to Paola until told to leave by her very angry and very sober husband.

Because Galardi was persuaded that Vianello had, almost twenty years ago, saved him from drowning after a particularly riotous Redentore party, he had served, before the advent of Signorina Elettra, as a means to obtain certain kinds of electronic information. Not the least of Brunetti's pleasures in Signorina Elettra's prowess was the fact that it freed him of any obligation to Galardi.

Neither of them said anything for a long time, until Brunetti said, 'All right. Call him.' He left the room, not wanting to be present when Vianello did.

His curiosity was satisfied two hours later, when Vianello came in and, unasked, took the seat opposite his superior. 'It took him this long to find the right way in,' he said.

'And?'

'My guess was right. They caught him tampering with evidence in a case and threw him out.'

'What evidence? And what case?'

Vianello began with the first question. "The only thing he could give me was the translation of the code.' He saw Brunetti's confusion and said, 'Remember that list of numbers and letters at the bottom of the report?'

'Yes.'

'He found out what that means.' Vianello went ahead without forcing Brunetti to ask him. 'They use it, he told me, in any case where a member of the Finanza either overlooks or hides evidence or in some way attempts to affect the outcome of an investigation.'

'By doing what?' Brunetti asked.

'The same things we do,' answered a shameless Vianello. 'Look the other way when we see our grocer not giving a ricevuta fiscale. Not remember seeing the start of any fight between a police officer and a civilian. Things like that.'

Ignoring Vianello's second example, Brunetti asked, 'In his case, what did he do? Specifically.'

'He couldn't find out. It's not in the file.' Vianello allowed Brunetti a moment to digest the significance of this and then added, 'But the case was Spadini's. The name's not there, but the code number for one of the cases Targhetta was working on then is the same as the one listed for Spadini.'

Brunetti considered this. Life had taught him to be profoundly suspicious of coincidence, and it had similarly taught him to view any seemingly random conjunction of events or persons as coincidence and thus be suspicious of that, as well. 'Pucetti?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello shook his head. 'I asked him, sir, but he knows nothing at all about Targhetta, just saw him a few times in the bar.'

'With Elettra?'

'He didn't say, sir.' Brunetti didn't notice how evasive Vianello's answer was.

Brunetti considered various possibilities, including going out to Pellestrina himself. After a time he asked Vianello, 'Do you think Bonsuan's friend would tell him anything if he called?'

'Only way to know is to ask Bonsuan,' Vianello said with a smile. 'He's off duty today. You could call him at home.'

This was quickly done, and Bonsuan agreed to speak to his friend. He called back ten minutes later to say his friend wasn't home and wouldn't be back until that evening.

That left Brunetti and Vianello nothing to do but stew and worry. The sergeant, preferring to worry in his own office, went downstairs.

Brunetti thought of the favours he owed and was owed in return as a pack of playing cards grown greasy and torn with much use. You tell me this, and I'll tell you that; you give me this, and I'll pay you back with that. You write a letter of recommendation for my cousin, and I'll see that your application for a mooring for your boat is put on the pile for consideration this week. Sitting at his desk, staring off into space, he mentally pulled out the deck and began to rifle through the cards. He found one, set it aside, and went on. He shuffled through some more, considered selecting another one, but put it back and continued through till the end. Then he went back to the original card and contemplated it, trying to remember when he had last touched it. He hadn't, but Paola had, devoting a few days to coaching the man's daughter before her final literature exams at the university. The girl had passed, with honours, certainly more than enough justification for Brunetti to play the card.

Her father, Aurelio Costantini, had been quietly retired from the Guardia di Finanza a decade ago after being acquitted of charges of association with the Mafia. The charges were true, but the proofs were inadequate, and so the General had quietly been put out to pasture on full pension, there to reap the benefit of his many years of dutiful - and double - service.

Brunetti called him at home and explained the situation. In a manner graceful yet direct, he added that it had nothing to do with the Mafia. The General, mindful perhaps that his daughter had applied to Ca' Foscari for a teaching position, could not have been more eager to help and said he'd call Brunetti before lunch.

A man of his word, the General called back well before noon, saying that he was on his way to meet a friend who still worked for the Finanza, and if Brunetti would meet him for a drink in about an hour, he'd give him a copy of Targhetta's entire internal dossier.

Brunetti dialled his home number and, relieved to be able to speak to the answering machine, left a message saying he wouldn't be home for lunch but would return at the normal time that evening. The General was a courtly, white-haired man with the upright carriage of a cavalry officer and the elided R so common to the upper classes and those who aspired to them. He sipped at a prosecco while Brunetti, who had seen the size of the folder the General laid on the counter in front of them, quickly ate two sandwiches by way of lunch. They discussed, as people in the city had for the last three months, the weather, both expressing intense hope for rain; nothing else would dean the Augean stables that the narrowest calli had become.

On his way back to the Questura, Brunetti mused upon the oddness of his own behaviour regarding the two men who had supplied him with the evidence he carried under his arm: Galardi had done nothing but behave in the way drunks are in the habit of behaving, and Brunetti would have nothing to do with him; General Costantini, about whose guilt no doubt existed, had corrupted the state by selling its secrets to the Mafia, yet Brunetti would meet him in public, smile, ask him for favours, and never think of questioning him about the ties he might still have to the Guardia di Finanza.

The instant he was back in his office, opening the file, all such Jesuitical thoughts disappeared as he dedicated himself to an examination of the personnel file of Carlo Targhetta. Thirty-two, Targhetta had been a member of the Finanza for ten years before 'deciding to leave', as the file put it. Venetian.by birth, he had done service in Catania, Bari and Genoa before being stationed in Venice three years ago, a year before the incident that led to his departure. His file was full of praise from all of his commanding officers, who spoke of his 'devotion to duty' and 'intense loyalty'.

From what Brunetti could make of the euphemistic language in the file, at the time of his resignation,Targhetta had been serving as an operator assigned to answering anonymous calls that came in to report cases of tax evasion. He had made an error in reporting one of the calls: the Finanza maintained it was one of commission, while Targhetta insisted it had been one of omission. The Guardia di Finanza had eliminated the necessity of deciding which by offering Targhetta the opportunity to leave the service, an offer he had accepted, though he left without a pension.

Enclosed was a cassette tape, labelled with a date that Brunetti took to be the day of the call that had precipitated events. Stapled to the inside of the folder was a pile of papers headed with the same date: a glance suggested it was a transcript of the calls. He took the tape down to one of the rooms where recordings were made of interrogations. He slipped the tape into the recorder and pushed 'Play'. He opened the file.

There followed a long call, transcribed on the first page, in which a woman said she wanted to report her husband, a butcher, for not fully declaring his income. Her accent was pure Giudecca, and the way she spoke of her husband suggested decades of resentment. All doubt of her motivation disappeared when she lost control and began screaming that this would settle him and 'quella puttana di Lucia Mazotti'. Some of her wilder accusations were noted only by a modest line of asterisks.

The next calls were from old women who said they had not been given ricevute fiscali by their newsagents, only to be told, with great patience on Targhetta's part, Brunetti had to admit, that newsagents didn't have to give receipts. Targhetta was careful to thank both of them for doing their civic duty, though the weariness with which he did so was clear, at least to Brunetti.

'Guardia di Finanza,' Brunetti listened to Targhetta's by now familiar voice say.

'Is this the right number to call?' a man's voice asked in heavy Veneziano.

Brunetti had noticed, in the previous calls, that Targhetta always answered in Italian, but if his caller spoke in Veneziano, he slipped into dialect to make them feel more comfortable. He did so now, asking, 'What did you want to call about, sir?'

'About someone who isn't paying taxes.'

'Yes, this is the right number.'

'Good, then I want you to take his name.'

'Yes, sir?' Targetta asked and paused for the response.

'Spadini, Vittorio Spadini. From Burano.'

There was a longer pause, then Targhetta said, without any trace of a Venetian accent, his voice far more formal and official, 'Could you tell me more about this, sir?'

'That bastard Spadini's fishing up millions every day’ the man said, voice tight with malice or anger. 'And he never pays a lira in taxes. It's all black, so it's never taxed. Everything he earns is black.'

In the past, Targhetta had asked for more information about the person being accused: where they lived, what sort of business they had. This time, instead, he asked, 'Could you give me your name, sir?' He had never done that before.

‘I thought this line was supposed to be anonymous?' the caller said, immediately suspicious.

'It usually is, sir, but in a case of something like this - you did talk of millions, didn't you? -we prefer to be a bit more certain about just who is making the denuncia.'

'Well, I'm not going to give you my name,' the man said hotly. 'But you better take down that bastard's name. All you've got to do is go to the fish warehouse in Chioggia when he unloads, and you'll see how much he's caught, and you'll see who's buying it.'

'I'm afraid we can't do that unless I have your name, sir.'

'You don't need my name, you bastard. It's Spadini you should be after.' With that, the man slammed down the phone.

There was a brief silence, and then he heard Targhetta say, 'Guardia di Finanza'.

Brunetti switched off the tape recorder and looked down at the transcript. There, clearly typed out in the manner of a play script, were all of the calls, the characters' names given as 'Finanziere Targhetta' and 'Cittadino.'

He flipped through the remaining pages and saw that there were three more calls. He switched the tape back on and, following the script, listened to all of them, through to the end of both transcript and tape.

He read the last page again and turned it over, expecting to find the blank inside cover of the file. Instead he found, written by hand, a small group of separate sheets held together by a paper clip. Each had spaces at the top for date, time, name of the accused, and at the bottom a small space for the initials of the officer taking the call. He counted them and found only six. He read the name of the butcher, of the two newsagents, and the names given during the three final calls, but there was no record of the call about Spadini. Seven calls on the tape and seven calls in the transcript, but only six calls listed on the separate invoices, each of them carefully initialled 'CF at the bottom.

He pushed 'REWIND' and, starting and stopping, eventually found the beginning of the call that did not appear on the transcript. He played it through, listening attentively to the voice of the caller. His mother would have identified the accent instantly; if it had been from anywhere on the main island, she probably could have told him which sestiere the man came from. The best Brunetti could determine was that it came from one of the islands, perhaps from Pellestrina. He played the tape again and listened to the surprise in Targhetta's voice when he heard Spadini's name. He had been unable to disguise it, and it was then that he had begun to discourage the caller: there was no other way to describe his manner on the tape. The more the caller attempted to provide information, the more insistently did Targhetta tell him that he was obliged to give his name, a demand that was sure to drive off any witness, especially one dealing with the Guardia di Finanza.

He realized how wise the Finanza was to record the calls. So this was how the watchers were watched. Targhetta, unaware that the call was being recorded, would only have to neglect to fill out the form to believe that he had removed all trace of the call. When confronted with the recording of the missing call, if that was the way the Finanza did things, all he would have to do is say the form must have been lost. Obviously, they had not believed him, for how else could his sudden departure from the service after ten years be explained?

But could someone who had worked for the Finanza for a decade have been so stupid as not to realize that the calls were recorded? Brunetti knew, from long experience, that even when phone calls were recorded, they were not necessarily listened to again. Targhetta may well have put his trust in bureaucratic incompetence and hoped that his lapse would pass unnoticed, or, from the sound of his voice, he may have been so surprised that he had responded instinctively and tried to silence the caller without any thought of the consequences.

There remained only one piece of the puzzle or, thought Brunetti as he pulled out the paper on which he'd drawn lines between the names of the people involved, only one line to draw: the one connecting Targhetta and Spadini. That was easy: geometry had long ago taught him that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points. But that did not get him any closer to understanding the connection: that would depend upon his penetrating the silence of the Pellestrinotti.

23

As soon as he decided that he needed to speak to Targhetta, Brunetti spent some time debating whether to call Paola and tell her he was going out to Pellestrina. He didn't want her to question his motives, nor was he much inclined to examine them himself. Better, then, just to have Bonsuan take him out and have done with it.

He didn't want to take Vianello, though he did not bother to analyse his motives for that decision. He did, however, rewind the tape, stick it in his pocket, and stop in the officers' room to borrow a small battery-powered tape recorder, just on the off chance that he might find someone on Pellestrina who would be willing to listen to it and perhaps identify the voice of the caller.

The day had turned cooler, and there were dark clouds to the north, enough to give him reason to hope that rain might finally be on the way. He remained below deck in the cabin on the way out, reading through yesterday's newspaper and a boating magazine one of the pilots had left behind. By the time they reached Pellestrina, he had learned a great deal about 55 horsepower motors, but nothing further about Carlo Targhetta or Vittorio Spadini.

As they were pulling in, he went upstairs and joined Bonsuan in the cabin.

Glancing back towards the city, Bonsuan said, ‘I don't like this.'

'What, coming out here?' Brunetti asked.

'No, the feel of the day.'

'What does that mean?' Brunetti asked, suddenly impatient with sailors and their lore.

'The way the air feels. And the wind. It feels like bora.'

The newspaper had forecast fair weather and rising temperatures. Brunetti told him this but Bonsuan snorted in disgust. 'Just feel it,' he insisted. 'That's bora. We shouldn't be out here.'

Brunetti looked ahead of them and saw bright sun dancing on still water. He stepped out of the cabin as the boat pulled up to the dock. The air was still, and when Bonsuan killed the motor, not a sound disturbed the peaceful silence of the day.

Brunetti jumped off and moored the boat, feeling quite proud of being able to do so. He left Bonsuan to find other old sailors to discuss the weather with and went to the village and the restaurant where his investigation had begun.

When he entered, there was a moment's pause in the conversation, but then it jump-started itself as everyone attempted to fill the silence created by the arrival of a commissario of police. Brunetti went to the counter and asked for a glass of white wine, looking around him while he waited for it, not smiling but not looking as if he had any particular reason to be there.

He nodded to the barman when he brought the wine and held up a hand to prevent his turning away. 'Do you know Carlo Targhetta?' he asked, deciding to waste no more time in futile attempts to outwit the Pellestrinotti.

The barman tilted his chin to one side to give every indication that he was considering the question, then said, 'No, sir. Never heard of him.'

Before Brunetti could turn to the old man standing beside him at the counter, the barman announced, in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room, 'Anyone here know someone called Carlo Targhetta?'

A chorus repeated the same response, 'No, sir. Never heard of him.' With that, normal conversation resumed, though Brunetti registered the quick exchange of complicit smiles.

He directed his attention to his wine and reached idly for that day's Gazzettino, lying folded on the bar. He flipped it to the front page and started to read the headlines. Gradually, he felt the room's attention wander away from him, especially at the entrance of a beefy-faced man who came in saying that it had started to rain.

He spread the paper on the bar. With his left hand, he pulled the tape recorder from his pocket and slipped it under the newspaper. He'd run the tape back to the place where the caller had accused Spadini directly of a crime and his voice had grown heated and loud. He lifted the corner to look at the recorder. He thumbed the VOLUME dial, set his right forefinger on the PLAY button, and let the paper fall back into place. Keeping his finger on the button, he raised his glass and took a sip, his attention seemingly devoted entirely to the newspaper.

Three men went outside to see about the rain, and the men left in the bar grew quiet, waiting for them to come back and report.

Brunetti pressed PLAY. 'That bastard Spadini's fishing up millions every day. And he never pays a lira in taxes. It's all black. Everything he earns is black.'

The glass of wine fell from the hand of the old man standing beside him and shattered on the floor. 'Maria Santissima’ he exclaimed. 'It's Bottin. He's not dead.'

His voice drowned out the next exchange on the tape, but the entire bar heard Targhetta say, '... we prefer to be a bit more certain about just who is making the denuncia.'

'Oh, Dio,' said the old man, reaching a feeble hand towards the counter and propping his weight on it. 'It's Carlo.'

Brunetti slipped his hand under the newspaper and pushed the STOP button. The loud click rang out in the silence, wounding it but not altering it. The old man was silent, though his lips continued to move in muttered prayer or protest.

The door opened and the three men came back, their shoulders dark and their heads wet with the rain. Joyously, like children let out of school early, they cried out, 'It's raining, it's raining,' then fell silent when they sensed the charged atmosphere in the room.

'What's wrong?' one of them asked, putting the question to no one in particular.

Brunetti said, in an entirely normal voice, 'They told me about Bottin and Spadini.'

The man he addressed looked around the bar for confirmation and found it in the averted eyes and continuing silence. He shook his arms, spraying water around him, then went to the bar and said, 'Give me a grappa, Piero.'

The barman set it down in front of him without speaking.

Talk gradually resumed, but quietly. Brunetti signalled to the waiter and pointed to the old man beside him. He brought a glass of white wine for the old man, who took it and drank it down like water, replacing the glass loudly on the bar. Brunetti nodded, and the waiter refilled it. Turning to face him, Brunetti asked, 'Targhetta?'

'His nephew’ the old man said and swallowed the second glass. 'Spadini's?'

The man looked at Brunetti and held his glass out to the waiter, who filled it again. Instead of drinking it, the old man set it on the bar and stared into it. He had the rheumy eyes of the habitual drinker, the man who woke up to wine and went to sleep with it on his tongue.

'Where's Targhetta now?' Brunetti asked, folding the paper, as if this were the least interesting question he could think of.

'Fishing, probably, with his uncle. I saw them at the dock a half-hour ago.' His lips puckered in a fisherman's disapproval, and Brunetti waited for him, like Bonsuan, to say something about the bora and not liking the feel of the air, but instead he said, 'Probably took that woman again. Bad luck, having a woman on a boat'

Brunetti's hand tightened on the paper. 'What woman?' he forced himself to ask in a neutral voice.

"That one he's been fucking. The one from Venice.'

'Ah,' Brunetti said, forcing his hand to release the paper and pick up his glass of wine. He took a sip, nodded his approval at the old man and then at the waiter. He made himself look at the newspaper again, as if utterly uninterested in this woman from Venice and what Carlo was doing to her, concerned only with yesterday's soccer results.

Light flashed at the windows, and after a moment thunder followed, so loud as to set the bottles at the back of the bar rattling. The door opened and another man slipped in, wet as an otter. When he paused at the open door, all sound inside the bar was drowned by the sound of the rain, battering down, exploding from the gutters. Another flash of light streamed in, and everyone in the bar braced themselves for the explosion that must follow. When it came it lingered for long seconds and, just as it began to roll away, was replaced by the fierce shriek of the bora, sweeping down from the north. Even inside the bar, they were aware of the sudden drop in temperature.

'Where would they be?' Brunetti asked the old man.

He drank the wine and gave Brunetti an inquisitive look. Brunetti nodded at the waiter, and again the glass was filled. Before he touched it, the old man said, 'They haven't been out long. Probably try to get away from this.' With his chin, he indicated the door and, beyond it, the lightning, wind and rain that had turned the day to chaos.

'How?' Brunetti asked, reining in his rising fear and careful to make it sound as if he was only mildly curious about the ways of the laguna and the men who fished upon its waters.

The old man turned his attention to the man to his right, the first to come in from the rain. 'Marco,' he asked, 'where would Vittorio go?'

Brunetti was conscious of the strained silence as all of the fishermen waited to see who would be the next to follow the old man in breaking ranks by talking to the policeman.

The man questioned looked down into his glass, and some instinct prevented Brunetti from signalling the waiter to fill it. Instead, he stood quietly and waited for an answer.

The man addressed as Marco looked at the old man. After all, it was he who had asked the question. If the policeman heard the answer, it wasn't his fault, ‘I think he'd try for Chioggia.'

A man at a far table said, in quite an ordinary voice ’He'd never make it, not with the bora, and not with the tide behind it. If he went anywhere near the Porto di Chioggia, he'd be taken out to sea.' No one objected, no one spoke; the only sounds were of the rain and wind, now a single, overwhelming noise.

From another table, a man's voice said, 'Vittorio's a bastard, but he'll know what to do.'

Another half-rose to his feet and flung out his hand in the direction of the door. 'No one knows what to do in that.' His angry tones were immediately answered by another bolt of lightning, closer now, swiftly followed by a cascade of thunder.

When the sound diminished to the mere pounding of rain, a man near the door said, 'If it gets worse, he'd probably try to run ashore down at the Riserva.' Brunetti had spent a good deal of time studying the map, having things on it pointed out to him by Bonsuan, so he knew this had to be the Riserva di Ca' Roman, a barren oblong of sandy soil that hung like a pendant drop from the southern end of the long, thin finger of Pellestrina.

'Run aground?' Brunetti asked him.

The man began to answer, but his voice was lost in a tremendous crash of thunder that seemed to shake the entire building. When silence finally returned, he tried again. 'There's no place to dock, but he could probably run his boat up on to the beach.'

'Why not come back here?'

The old man shook his head wearily, either at the impossibility of such a feat in weather like this or at the ignorance of a person who would have to ask it. 'No chance. If he tried to turn in the canal, the wind and tide could turn him over. Only thing he can do is try to run on to Ca' Roman. Back in '27’ he began, making it sound as though he'd seen that storm, too, 'that's what happened to Elio Magrini. Flipped him over like a turtle. They never found him, and what was left of the boat wasn't worth salvaging.' He raised his glass, perhaps to the memory of Elio Magrini, and emptied it in a single long swallow.

During all of this, Brunetti had been considering possibilities: with the wind coming from the north-west and the retreating tide pushed along by it, the narrow spit of land that led down to Ca' Roman would be awash, perhaps already completely under water. He and Bonsuan could get there only by boat, and if what the old man said was true, that would mean running the police launch aground.

'You really think she's gone out with him? In this?' Brunetti asked in his best man of the world voice.

The puff of wind the old man shot out of his compressed lips expressed disgust, not only at the foolishness of Signorina Elettra, but at that of all women. Adding nothing, the old man pushed himself away from the bar and went to sit at one of the tables.

Brunetti placed a few thousand lire on the bar, put the tape recorder back in his pocket, and started for the door. Just before he reached it, it banged open from outside, but no one came in: only wind and rain battered it repeatedly against the wall. Brunetti stepped out into the rain, careful to pull the door shut behind him.

He was instantly wet; it happened so quickly that he had no time to worry about it or to think about protecting himself from the rain. One moment he was dry, the next soaked through, his shoes filled with water, as though he'd stepped into a lake. He set off back towards the pier and, perhaps, Bonsuan. After a few seconds he had to raise a hand above his eyes to block the power of the wind that drove rain into them, blinding him. His progress was slowed by the added weight of water that bore him down, pulling at his shoes and jacket.

Once he stepped out from the shelter of the buildings that lined the laguna side of the road, the wind pounded at him, as if trying to batter him to the ground. Luckily, a row of street lights ran along the pier, and in the dim light they managed to cast through the sudden darkness of the day, he made his way towards the launch. He moved ahead slowly, or he might have fallen when his foot hit the metal stanchion to which the boat was moored.

He grabbed at its mushroom top with both hands, leaned towards the vague shape he thought was the boat, and called Bonsuan's name. When there was no response, he bent and felt for the mooring line, but when he found it, it was slack in his grasp, for the wind had driven the boat tight against the side of the pier. He stepped on to the boat and, blinded by a sudden gust of rain, stumbled against the door of the cabin.

Bonsuan opened the door, popped his head outside, and seeing that it was Brunetti, pulled him in. There, sheltered from the rain, Brunetti realized that the noise of it crashing into the pavement and on to the water had deafened him to all other sounds. It took him a moment to adjust to the relative silence of the cabin.

'Can you move in this?' he called to Bonsuan, his voice raised unnecessarily against the sound of the rain.

'What do you mean, "move"?' the pilot asked, unwilling to believe the obvious.

'Down towards Ca' Roman.'

'That's crazy. We can't go out in this.' As if to prove him right, a sheet of rain pounded against the starboard windows of the cabin, drowning out voices and thought. 'We have to wait until it's over to go back.' The wind had risen, so Bonsuan had to shout.

'I'm not talking about going back.'

Bonsuan, afraid he'd misunderstood, asked, 'What?'

'Elettra's with them. On Spadini's boat. Someone said they were going out fishing.'

Bonsuan's face grew stiff with surprise, or fear. ‘I saw them. At least I saw a boat, a fishing boat. It went past about twenty minutes ago. Two men, and someone leaning over the other side, pulling a rope up from the water. You think it's her?'

Brunetti nodded: it was easier than speech.

'They're crazy to go out in this,' Bonsuan said.

'Someone said they'd head towards Ca' Roman and try to run ashore there.'

"That's crazy, too,' Bonsuan shouted. Then, 'Who told you this?'

'One of the fishermen.'

'From here?'

'Yes.'

Bonsuan closed his eyes as if to study the map of the land and the channels running beside it. Farther down, the land was bisected by the Porto di Chioggia, a kilometre wide, but still narrow enough to allow fierce rip tides to run through, especially when there were heavy winds to drive them. On a day like this, it would be suicide to try to cross it in a boat as light as the police launch. Even a fishing boat the size of the one he'd seen would have trouble. Before the Porto, however, there was the last point of land, home to nesting birds and the crumbling ruins of a fort. Yet even if someone were to run aground there, waves might still pull the boat off, swirling it into the water to be swept around the tip of the island and out to sea.

Bonsuan opened his eyes and looked at Brunetti. 'Are you sure?'

'What? That she's on board?'

This was Bonsuan, gruff, often irascible Bonsuan, asking the question.

'I'm not sure. A man in the bar said she was on the pier with them.'

'It couldn't be anyone else,' Bonsuan said, more to himself than to Brunetti. He pushed past Brunetti and opened the door to the cabin. He stepped outside for a moment, closed his eyes and held his palms up in front of him, like an Indian listening for the voice of one of his gods. Eyes still closed, he turned his head to one side, then the other, searching for something Brunetti couldn't hear.

He stepped back into the cabin and commanded, 'Go out and get two life jackets.' Brunetti sprang to obey. He was back with the jackets in an instant, no wetter than before. He watched Bonsuan to see how he tied it around his body and then did the same.

'All right,' Bonsuan said. 'There's going to be a pause in the wind, and then it will get worse.' Brunetti had no idea how Bonsuan knew this, but it never occurred to him that it was less than pure truth. His voice raised, Bonsuan went on,

'I'm going to take us down there. If we run aground in the channel, I should be able to back us off, at least until the wind gets worse. When we get down to Ca' Roman, you'll have to use the spotlight to look for them or for the boat. If they've run aground, I'll try to take us in next to them.'

'And if they're not there?' Brunetti asked. "Then I'll try to bring us round and get us back here.'

For a moment, remembering the story of Elio Magrini, Brunetti was tempted to ask the pilot if they should risk this, but he stopped himself and, instead, ran his cupped hands over his face and head to stop the water from dripping into his eyes.

Bonsuan switched the motor into life, turned on the lights and the windscreen wipers, neither of which seemed to make much difference against the growing darkness and cascading rain. Remembering in time, Brunetti ran out into the storm to uncoil the mooring rope and loop it loosely around a stanchion on the railing of the boat. He went back into the cabin and stood behind Bonsuan. Idly, he wiped with the sodden sleeve of his jacket at the humidity condensed on the windows of the cabin, but as soon as he wiped them clear, they immediately turned opaque, and he was forced to keep wiping them.

Bonsuan flipped another switch, and a current of air flowed across the inside of the windscreen, removing the film of humidity.

Slowly, he moved the boat away from the pier. The boat lurched to the left as though slapped by an enormous hand, slamming Brunetti against the side of the cabin. Bonsuan tightened his grip on the tiller and leaned his weight to the right, fighting against the force of the wind.

Dirty grey froth banged against the windscreen; the door to the cabin slammed open and then shut. Again and again, the wind forced them to the left. Bonsuan hit another switch, and a powerful spotlight on the prow made a feeble attempt to penetrate the chaotic darkness in front of them. As soon as it punched a hole and they could see a few metres ahead, another wave or spray of foam roared in to wipe out the space.

One side of the cabin door crashed open against Brunetti's back, but the blow was buffeted by his life jacket, and he hardly registered it. Nor was he much aware of the temperature, which continued to drop as the bora roared over them. The boat jumped to the left again, and again Bonsuan pulled it back into what might have been the centre of the channel. From behind them, out on the back deck, they heard an enormous crash, and a piece of wood smashed through the starboard window of the cabin, grazing Brunetti's hand before landing at their feet.

He had to put his mouth close to Bonsuan's ear to shout, 'What was it?'

'I don't know. Something from the water.' Brunetti glanced down at it but it was nothing more than a bottle-sized piece of rotten wood. He flipped it out of the way with an impatient foot, but no sooner had he done so than a sudden gust of wind rolled it back towards him. Rain flooded through the broken window, soaking Bonsuan and lowering the temperature of the cabin even more.

'Oh Dio, oh Dio,' he heard Bonsuan begin to mutter. The pilot suddenly swung the wheel to the left and then as quickly to the right, but not before both of them felt a heavy thud against the port side of the boat.

Brunetti froze, waiting to see if the boat began to founder or sink lower in the water. Realizing that Bonsuan could have no clearer idea than he of what had happened, he didn't bother him with a question. There were two smaller thumps, but the boat continued to move forward, though the wind seemed to grow more intense, always pounding at them from the right.

Out of nowhere, a shape loomed up on the left, and Bonsuan almost fell on to the wheel, trying to put his whole weight into pulling it to the right. The shape moved out of sight, but then, from behind them, there was an enormous, pounding crash, as powerful as the thunder had been, and the boat spun off, but heavily, as though it were suddenly as sodden as Brunetti's clothing.

Bonsuan swung the tiller to the left, and even Brunetti could sense how slow the boat was to respond. 'What happened?'

'We hit something. I think it was a boat’ Bonsuan answered, still pulling at the wheel. He pushed the throttle forward, and Brunetti heard the engine respond, though the boat seemed to move no faster.

'What are you doing?'

'I've got to run us in’ Bonsuan said, leaning forward, straining to see what was in front of them.

'Where?'

'Ca' Roman, I hope’ Bonsuan said. 'I don't think we've passed it.'

'If we have?' Brunetti asked.

By way of answer, all Bonsuan did was shake his head, but Brunetti didn't know if this was to deny the possibility or the consequences.

Bonsuan hit the throttle again, and though this increased the sound of the engine, it had no effect on their speed. A wave crashed over the side of their bow, and over the deck, hurling water up the wall of the cabin. Through the broken window it poured in over both of them.

'There, there, there!' Bonsuan shouted. Brunetti bent forward to stare out of the windscreen but could see nothing but an unbroken grey wall in front of them. Bonsuan turned to look at him for a second. 'Don't go outside until we hit. When we do, climb up on the deck. Don't go over the side. Get to the front and jump as far forward as you can. If you land in water, keep going forward, and when you get out of the water, keep going.'

'Where are we?' Brunetti demanded, though the answer would not mean anything to him.

There was a tremendous crash. The boat stopped as though it had run headlong into a wall, and both men were thrown to the floor. The boat tilted over on its right side, and water flooded in through the shattered window. Brunetti pushed himself to his feet and grabbed at Bonsuan, who had a long gash on the side of his head and responded slowly, moving like a man under water. Another wave broke through the window and poured down on them.

Brunetti reached down to help the pilot, who was already pushing himself upright, though this was hard to do on the steeply slanting deck. 'I'm all right,' Bonsuan said.

One side of the cabin door hung from a single hinge, and Brunetti had to kick it open. When he pulled Bonsuan outside, water surged at them from everywhere. Remembering what Bonsuan had told him, he pulled and pushed the pilot up on to the raised deck in front of the cabin, then hauled himself up afterwards.

Pushing Bonsuan in front of him, Brunetti held him steady with one hand as waves raged at the stricken boat, rocking the deck back and forth under their feet. Step by step they moved drunkenly towards the prow and the single searchlight that cut the darkness in front of them. They reached the railing, and Bonsuan, without an instant's hesitation or a backward glance, leaped heavily from the prow of the boat, disappearing into the greyness.

A wave knocked Brunetti to his knees; he grabbed the base of the spotlight to hold himself steady as another and stronger wave battered at him from behind, sending him sprawling. He pulled himself to his knees, then to his feet, and moved again to the point of the prow. At the moment when he shifted his balance to spring forward, an enormous wave swept up from behind him, catapulting him, head over heels, into the howling darkness.

24

Had Bonsuan and Brunetti approached Pellestrina earlier, as they passed the dock of San Pietro in Volta they would have seen a glowing Signorina Elettra, dressed in navy blue linen slacks, standing on the deck of a large fishing boat, waiting impatiently to set off, while Carlo and the man she had always heard called Zio Vittorio waited as the double fuel tanks were filled. She was vaguely conscious, to the degree that she could be conscious of anything other than Carlo when she was with him, of a low bank of clouds lying off behind the dimly seen towers of the distant city. But when she turned towards the waters of the Adriatic, invisible beyond the low houses of Pellestrina and the sea wall that protected them from those waters, she saw only fluffy, careless clouds and a sky of such transparent blue as to add to her already considerable joy. When Vittorio pulled his boat away from the gas station just above San Vito, the police launch was already moored to the dock in Pellestrina, and by the time the fishing boat passed the launch, heading south, Brunetti was already inside the bar, having his first sip of wine.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Signorina Elettra was afraid of Zio Vittorio, but it would also be less than true to say that she was comfortable in his presence. Her response to him was somewhere in between, but because he was Carlo's uncle, she usually managed to ignore the uneasiness he created in her. Zio Vittorio had always been perfectly friendly with her, always seemed glad to find her in Carlo's house and at his table. Perhaps it would come close to explaining her feelings to say that, when she spoke to Vittorio, she was always left with the suspicion that he was secretly enjoying the thought of where else in Carlo's house she had been.

He was not a tall man, Zio Vittorio, hardly taller than she, and had the same muscular frame as his nephew. Because he had spent most of his life at sea, his face was tanned mahogany, making the grey eyes which were said to resemble those of his sister, Carlo's mother, seem all the lighter in contrast. He wore his thinning hair slicked straight back from his face, long at the base of his head, and kept it in place with a pomade that smelled of cinnamon and metal filings. His teeth were perfect: one night after dinner he had cracked open walnuts with them, smiling at her when she failed to disguise her shock at this.

He must have been sixty, an age which, to Elettra, automatically consigned him to a genderless void in which any sort of expressed interest in sex was embarrassing, even worse than that. Yet the consciousness of sex and sexual activity always seemed to lurk behind even his most innocent remarks, as though he were incapable of conceiving a universe in which men and women could relate to one another in any other way. Somewhere, beneath the tremor that still filled her when she thought of Carlo, this vague unease lurked, though she had become adept at ignoring it, especially on a day like this, when the sky to the east boded so well.

The heavy boat pulled out into the channel and started to move south, back past Pellestrina and towards the narrow opening of the Porto di Chioggia, through which they would pass into the open sea. There was no thought of fishing that day: his uncle had told Carlo he wanted to take the boat to sea to test a rebuilt motor that had just been installed. It had sounded perfectly fine when they set out, but just as the boat grew level with the Ottagono di Caroman, Vittorio called back to them that something was wrong. Only seconds later both Carlo and Elettra felt a sudden change in the rhythm of the motor: it began to hiccup, and the boat jerked reluctantly ahead instead of proceeding steadily.

Carlo walked forward, saying, 'What is it?'

The older man flicked the starter switch off, then on, then off again. In the momentary calm, he answered, 'Dirt in the fuel line, I'd say.' He switched on the motor again, and this time it jumped to life and throbbed with the steady rhythm they were accustomed to.

'Sounds fine to me,' Carlo said.

'Hmm,' his uncle murmured, seeming to listen to Carlo but really intent on the sound of the engine. He placed the palm of his left hand flat on the control panel and shoved the throttle forward with his right. The volume increased, but suddenly the engine gave a single dyspeptic burp and then a series of choking noises until it stopped entirely.

Carlo, as he knew to his cost, was neither a real fisherman nor a mechanic, though he had learned to do much of the work of the first. In a case like this, he deferred absolutely to his uncle's greater experience and wisdom and so waited to be told what to do. The boat slowed, then stopped dead in the water.

Vittorio told Carlo to stay where he was and turn the engine on when he told him to, then went to the centre of the back deck and disappeared down the hatchway to the engine room. After a few minutes, he shouted up to Carlo, telling him to switch on the engine. The starter gave a dry click and failed to engage, so he turned it off and waited. Minutes passed.

Signorina Elettra came to the door to ask what was wrong, but he smiled at her and said everything was fine, then waved her to the back of the boat, out of the way.

Vittorio called out again, and this time when Carlo turned on the engine it caught on the first try and responded to each small increase or decrease of the throttle. Vittorio came out of the hatchway and back into the cabin, saying, 'Fuel line, like I thought. All I had to do was . ..' but he was interrupted by the sound of his telefonino. As he reached for it, he signalled for Carlo to leave the cabin.

Carlo backed out, careful not to let the doors slam shut, and went towards the back of the boat, where he saw Elettra standing with her hands braced on the back railing, her face raised in the direction of the sun. The engine was still rumbling loudly, covering the sound of his approach, but when he came silently up behind her and put both of his hands on the hollows of her back just above her hips, she gave no sign of being surprised. Indeed, she leaned backwards slightly and into his body. He bent down and kissed the top of her head and buried his face in the explosion of curls. His eyes shut, he stood like that, rocking against her in a steady rhythm. He heard a low rumbling that had nothing to do with the motor and opened his eyes. Off to his left, the towers of the city, distantly visible that morning, had disappeared, blocked out by a low bank of clouds that had already enveloped Pellestrina and were now scuttling towards their boat.

'Oh, Dio,' he said, and at the shock in his voice she opened her eyes to see a dark wall tumbling towards them. Instinctively, he put his arms around her and pulled her back against his chest. He turned his head back towards the cabin: his uncle was still talking on the phone, eyes intent on the two of them and, beyond them, at the storm that approached with such savage speed.

Vittorio said something else, flipped the phone shut, and put it back into the pocket of his jacket. Stiff armed, he pushed the door open and shouted to Carlo to come into the cabin.

He moved away from Elettra and towards his uncle, and as he did, he felt the back of the boat rise up under his feet, as though some giant hand had lifted it from the water, helping him forward. He looked back and saw her, both hands firmly grasped to the railing.

He pulled open the door. 'What is it?'

Rather than answer, his uncle reached out both hands and grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, pulling his face down closer to his own. ‘I told you she was trouble,' he said. Once, twice, he jerked savagely at Carlo's collar, and when the younger man tried to pull away, he yanked him even lower, closer. 'Her boss is there, in the bar. They know about Bottin and they know about the phone call.'

Utterly confused, Carlo demanded, 'Who knows? The Finanza? They've always known. Why do you think they threw me out?'

'No, not the Finanza, you fool,' Vittorio shouted back at him, his voice raised against the wind that had begun to sweep from behind them, pushing the boat forward. "The police. Her boss, that commissario; he had the tape with him. He played it in the bar, and that drunk Pavanello told him it was Bottin you talked to.' He released his hold on Carlo's collar and swatted him away with the back of his hand, shouting, 'They'd have to be idiots not to realize I killed them.'

Ever since Carlo had told his family why he'd been dismissed from the Finanza, he'd half feared and half known his uncle would take some sort of revenge, but Vittorio's bold-faced admission still shocked him. 'Don't say that,' he protested. ‘I don't want to know.' Behind him, the cabin door banged open and shut repeatedly, and he felt rain on his shoulders.

Vittorio waved towards the back of the boat. 'What did you tell her?'

'Nothing,' Carlo shouted.

The wind and the pounding door erased some of Vittorio's words, but still the rage propelling them was enough to alarm Carlo. 'You knew where she worked. Her stupid cousin told everyone. I told you to stay away from her, but you knew better. What are we going to do about her now?'

The wind raged at them, sweeping all thought and memory up into a whirlwind and tearing them away from Carlo and out to sea, leaving him with only the thought of Elettra. He wheeled out of the cabin and fought his way to the back of the boat; he put his arms around a shivering Elettra as the skies erupted and a sheet of rain washed across them.

He staggered, freed one arm and grabbed at the railing. Unconscious of moving or of any decision to move, he tightened his left arm around her and half pulled, half steered her towards the cabin door. He shouldered it open, and together they crashed inside, then into the left side as a wave slammed into them from the right.

Another wave hit the boat, knocking Elettra against Vittorio, but he did no more than flick her aside with his elbow and turn back to the tiller, both hands locked to the wheel. Carlo looked through the windscreen; the wipers slapped uselessly against the sheets of water that washed across it. In the darkness that had descended on them, the three searchlights were helpless, and he could make out nothing except the rain and the white menace of waves and spray.

The noise pounded at them from every side, and suddenly the wind picked up volume, drowning out everything else. Carlo felt the small hairs at the back of his neck bristle, but he was aware of the sensation and aware of a cramp of fear even before he realized that the sudden increase in the sound of the wind was caused by the silence of the motor.

He saw, but could not hear, Vittorio ramming his thumb on to the starter, his other palm flat against the panel to feel the vibrations if the motor came to life again. Repeatedly he pressed, released, pressed, and only once did Carlo feel a faint rhythmic throb under his feet. But it was momentary and gone almost before he was aware of it. Again, he watched that blunt thumb press and release and press again, and then his feet felt the motor come alive, churning out a staggered beat below them.

Vittorio took his hand from the starter and put it back on the wheel. He rose on his toes for leverage and then brought all of his weight down to swing the wheel to the left. At one point, the wheel fought back and carried him half off the floor. Carlo pushed past a frozen Elettra and, placing both hands on one of the sprouting handles of the wheel, added his weight to his uncle's. The boat responded, and he felt their weight shift as it followed the command of the rudder, turning heavily to the left.

Carlo had no idea where they were or what his uncle intended to do. The young man gave no thought to the map, to Ca' Roman or to the Porto di Chioggia, an open slip of water that would pull them out to the Adriatic and into its deadly waves. He braced his feet on either side of the wheel and together they pulled the boat even farther to the left. Vittorio removed his right hand from the wheel and shoved the throttle full forward. Through his feet, Carlo felt the throbbing of the motor increase, but his awareness of the world outside the boat was so confused that he could detect no alteration in the boat's movements. Then, at the same instant he felt the motor die, the boat thundered to a stop, hurling him against one of the spokes of the tiller and his uncle on top of him. He looked up in time to see Elettra, who had been knocked against the wall by the original impact, ricochet backwards and through the cabin doors, out on to the deck. Then there was a shuddering crash, and the boat was suddenly still.

Carlo shoved his uncle aside and lifted himself to his feet. Aware of pain in his left side, he was concerned only to follow Elettra. Again, when he moved forward, he felt the pain, but he ignored it as he pushed through the doors of the cabin. Outside, he found crashes of thunder, the groans of roaring wind and rain. In the light that spilled out from the cabin, he saw Elettra kneeling on the deck, already pulling herself to her feet. A wave broke over the back of the boat and swept forward, slapping her down again and swirling her up the deck until she banged against Carlo's feet. He started to lean down to help her, but as he moved the pain caught inside him, and he froze in place, suddenly fearful for himself and, because of that, for her.

As he looked down at her, helpless, time stopped. Elettra raised herself to one knee and, glancing up, saw him. With her left hand, she pushed her fingers through her hair, trying to sweep the tangle from her face, but it was sodden with rain and sea water, and she could do no more than shift it to one side. He remembered how, once, he had watched her sleep, her face half covered by her hair in much the same way - and then the cabin doors exploded against his back as Vittorio burst on to the deck.

It happened so quickly that Carlo could not have stopped him even if he had not been frozen by the pain in his side and the fear of the greater pain he knew motion would bring. Vittorio swept down over Elettra, screaming at her, screaming words none of them could hear. He grabbed her tangled hair with his left hand, yanking her to one side, screaming down at her all the while. His right hand slipped inside his jacket and emerged, clasped around his gutting knife. He cocked his arm back across his body and, knuckles upwards, swiped at her, aiming for her face or her neck.

Carlo moved before he thought. He braced one hand against the railing on the side of the boat and kicked forward, his aim commanded only by instinct. His boot caught his uncle's forearm just as it crossed in front of his face, deflecting it upwards. The knife sliced through the sleeve of Vittorio's jacket, opening his arm to the wrist, and then cut through the hair he still held tight in his other hand, just grazing Elettra's scalp. The wind stole his scream, and the knife flew out of his hand to join it. From his other hand strands of Elettra's hair danced wildly in the wind.

Vittorio loosened his grip and the wind tore the hair away. He pulled his arm to his stomach, turned towards his nephew as though he meant to do him violence, but what he saw behind

Carlo made him turn to the front of the boat and run to the prow. He didn't hesitate an instant but leaped forward into the water, cradling his arm to himself as best he could. The wave broke across them, knocking Carlo first to the deck and then up against the listing side of the boat. Its retreat sucked him towards the back, but Elettra's body blocked him, and they ended in a tangled mass, half in and half out of the cabin doorway, bodies entwined in a grotesque parody of the past.

Again, instinct prevailed and he tried to get to his feet, succeeding only when Elettra knelt beside him and pried him from the deck. Speech rendered futile by noise, he grabbed her upper arm and started towards the prow, slowed by pain. Pushing, pulling, they hauled themselves to the pointed prow. He pushed her over, without a moment's thought. The searchlights provided enough light to allow him to see her sink, then come bobbing up in the water directly in front of him. He jumped after her, sinking into water that came above his head. When he surfaced, he screamed her name - and felt fingers grab at his hair and tug at him, though he had lost all sense, all thought, all direction. His arms floated limp at his side, and he found that he could not kick his feet, lacked the strength to do anything but float in the wake of whatever hand it was that pulled at him. Something hit against his feet, and he felt mild irritation at the sensation. He was comforted by weightlessness, which removed the pain in his side; he didn't want to have to swim or stand, when floating was so much easier, so painless.

But the hand pulled at him, and he was powerless to resist it. When his feet touched bottom for an instant, the pain took this as a sign that it was safe to return. Stabbing, jabbing, cutting, it filled his side, bending him over until his feet floated free and his face plunged into the water. But the hand, relentless, grabbed at his hair again, jerking him sideways and forward, away from the pleasant safety of the deep water, the ease and weightless comfort it offered. He allowed himself to be pulled a metre forward through the water and then another, and then suddenly he could go no farther. Quite reasonably, he thought, he reached to place his right hand on the fingers that still tugged at him. He patted them once, twice, and then in his most reasonable voice, he said, 'Thank you, but that's enough.' Like the tree in the uninhabited forest, his words went unheard, and then an enormous wave rolled across him.

25

Like a beached whale, Brunetti lay on the sand, unable to move. He'd swallowed a great deal of water, and fierce coughing had exhausted him. He lay in the rain as waves came and flirted with his feet and legs, as if to suggest he stop lying there on the sand and come in and have a proper swim. Their solicitations went unheeded. Occasionally, and entirely without conscious thought, he clawed and pushed himself forward a few centimetres, away from the frolicsome waves.

His panic diminished, then slowly left him as he lay there. The howling of the wind was no less fierce, the lash of the rain no less severe, but somehow the solidity beneath him, the safety of beach, sand, mother earth, lulled him into a sense of protected calm. His mind began to drift, and he found himself thinking that his jacket would have to be taken to the cleaners, was perhaps ruined entirely, and he minded that, for it was his best jacket, one he'd treated himself to when sent to Milan last year to testify, finally, in a court case concerning a murder that had been committed twelve years before. The thought passed through his mind that these were indeed strange thoughts to be entertaining in his present circumstances, and then he reflected upon his own ability to find these particular thoughts strange. How proud Paola, who always accused him of having a simple mind, would be when he told her of how very convoluted his thoughts had become, becalmed on a beach somewhere beyond Pellestrina. She'd mind about the jacket, too, he was sure; she'd always said it was the nicest one he had.

He lay prone in the rain and thought of his wife, and after a time that thought led him to pull one knee, and then the other, under him, and then it helped prod him to his feet. He looked around and saw nothing; his hearing was still dulled by the wind and rain. He turned in the direction from which he thought he must have come, searching for some sign of the boat or the single spotlight that had still been ablaze when he leaped from the deck, but darkness was everywhere.

He put his head back and yelled into the tempest, 'Bonsuan, Bonsuan!' When only the wind replied, he called again, 'Danilo, Danilo!' but still he heard no answer. He walked ahead a few steps, his hands stretched out in front of him like a blind man's calling as he went. After a few moments, his left hand hit against something: a flat surface rising up in front of him. This must be the wall of the abandoned fort of Ca' Roman, known to him only as a mark and a name on a map.

He moved closer until his chest touched the wall, then he spread his arms to explore outwards on both sides. Sticking close to the wall, he moved slowly to the right, turning to the side so that he could use both hands to feel ahead of him.

He heard a noise behind him and stopped, surprised, not by the noise itself so much as by the fact that he could hear it. He tried to empty his mind and listened afresh to the sound of the storm; after a time he grew certain that its sound was diminishing. Clearly, there, he heard what must be the crashing of a wave, the thunderous pelting of water on hard sand. As he listened, it seemed that the wind became still milder; as it decreased in intensity, he grew colder, though that might be nothing more than the passing of the dullness of shock. He untied the life jacket and let it fall to the ground.

He took a few more steps, reaching ahead of him, fingers delicate as a snail's antennae. Suddenly the surface disappeared beneath his left hand, and when he reached into the nothingness, he could feel the hard rectangularity surrounding a lintel or passageway. He outlined it, still unseeing, with the fingers of both hands and then placed a tentative foot into its centre, hunting for a step or stairway, either up or down.

A low step carried his foot down. Propping both hands on what seemed to be the sides of a narrow passageway, he went down one, two, three steps until he felt a wider area beneath his carefully exploring foot.

In the silence, cut off from the sound of the wind, his other senses sprang to life, and he was overwhelmed by the stink of urine and mould and he knew not what else. Inside, away from the buffeting wind, he should have grown warmer, but if anything, he now felt far colder than he had outside, as though the silence gave penetrating force to both cold and humidity.

He stood there, listening, focusing ahead of him on wherever this void would lead him, and backwards, up the steps and out into the diminishing storm. He moved to the right until he touched a wall, then turned and braced his back against it, comforted by stability. He stood like that for a long time until, glancing in what he thought was the direction of the opening, he saw light filtering in from the outside. He walked towards it, and when he stood in the glow it cast, he held his watch up to his face. Astonished to see that it was still only early evening, he moved closer to the now-illumined steps, drawn by the promise of light and by the silence that spilled down the steps.

He emerged into splendour: to the west, the sun made its languorous way towards the horizon, dipping behind the scattered clouds the passing storm had forgotten to sweep away and dappling the still waters of the laguna with their reflection. He turned to the east and, not far removed from the coast, saw the rear edge of the storm, thrashing its way towards what was left of Yugoslavia, as if eager to see what sort of new damage it could take there.

Brunetti was racked with a sudden chill as hunger, stress and the slow drop in temperature had their way with his body. He wrapped his arms around himself and moved forward. Again, he called Bonsuan's name, and again he heard nothing in response. From what he could see, the land around him was surrounded on three sides by water with a thin trail of narrow beach leading off to the north. His recent study of the map of the laguna told his memory that this must be the sanctuary of Ca' Roman, though whatever wildlife was meant to be protected here was nowhere in evidence, no doubt battered into flight or cover by the recent storm.