Death in a Strange Country

‘Yes, beautiful. What are we, tourists?’

‘I suppose so. Pity we can’t stay here and look at the lake all day, isn’t it?’

It unsettled Brunetti not to know if the other man was serious or not But, yes it would be nice. He found himself hoping that the two young Americans had been able to spend the weekend up here, regardless of the reason for their trip. If they were in love, this would be a beautiful place to be. Himself his own editor, he corrected that to read, if they were in love, anywhere would be beautiful.

Brunetti summoned the waiter and paid him. They had decided on the ride up not to call attention to themselves by asking questions about trucks with red stripes turning onto side roads. They were tourists, even if they were in tie and jacket, and tourists certainly had the right to pull off at a picnic site on the way down and look at the mountains as the traffic sped past them. Because he didn’t know how long they would be, he stopped at the counter inside and asked if the barman could make a few sandwiches to take with them. The best he could do was prosciutto and cheese. Ambrogiani nodded, told him to make four and to put in a bottle of red wine and two plastic cups.

With this in hand, they returned to Ambrogiani’s car and drove down the hill, back in the direction of Pordenone. About two kilometres from Barcis, they saw a broad parking area on the right-hand side and pulled into it. Ambrogiani swung the car around so that they could see the road, not the mountains, killed the engine and said, ‘Here we are.’

‘It wasn’t my idea of how I’d spend my Saturday,’ Brunetti admitted.

‘I’ve had worse,’ Ambrogiani said and then talked about a time when he had been assigned to look for a kidnap victim in Aspromonte and had spent three days up in the hills, lying on the ground, watching through a pair of field glasses as people went into and out of a shepherd’s hut.

‘What happened?’Brunetti asked.

‘Oh, we got them.’ And then he laughed. ‘But it was someone else, not the one we were looking for. This girl’s family had never called us, never reported it. They were willing to pay the ransom, only we got there before they had the chance to pay a lira.’

‘What happened to the other one? The one you were looking for?’

‘They killed him. We found him a week after we found the girl. They’d cut his throat. The smell led us to him. And the birds.’

‘Why did they do it?’

‘Probably because we found the girl. We warned her family, when we took her back to them, not to say anything. But someone called the papers, and it was all over the front pages. You know, “Joyous Liberation”, complete, with pictures of her with her mother, eating her first dish of pasta in two months. They must have read about it and figured we were looking for them, getting dose. So they killed him.’

‘Why not just let him go?’ Then, because it had not been said, Brunetti asked, ‘How old was he?’

‘Twelve.’ There followed a long pause, then Ambrogiani answered the first question. ‘Letting him go would be bad business. It would let other people know that if we got close enough, there might be a chance for them. By killing him, they made the message clear: we mean business, and if you don’t pay, we kill.’

Ambrogiani opened the bottle of wine and poured some into the plastic cups. They each ate a sandwich, then, because there was nothing else to do, another. During all of this, Brunetti had kept himself from looking at his watch, knowing that it would be later, the longer he waited. Unable to resist, he looked. Noon. The hours stretched ahead. He rolled down the window, looked over at the mountains for a long time. When he glanced back, Ambrogiani was asleep, head canted to the left, resting against the window. Brunetti watched the traffic going down and coming up the steep gradient. All of the cars looked pretty much the same to him, different only in colour and, if they were moving slowly enough, in number plate.

After an hour, the traffic began to taper off, everyone had stopped to eat. Soon after he noticed this, he heard the sharp exhalation of air from the brakes of a truck and looked up to see a large truck with a red stripe along the side pass down the hill.

He poked Ambrogiani in the arm. The Carabiniere was instantly awake, his hand turning the key. He pulled onto the road and followed the truck. About two kilometres from where they had been parked, the truck signalled and then turned off to the right, disappearing down a narrow dirt-covered road. They drove past, continuing down the hill, but Brunetti saw Ambrogiani reach out to the dashboard and push the button that moved the mileometer back to zero. After he had gone a full kilometre, he pulled off the road and cut the engine.

‘What was the number plate?’

‘Vicenza,’ Brunetti said and pulled out his notebook to write the numbers down while they were still fresh in his memory. ‘What do you think?’

‘We stay here until the truck passes us on the way down or we wait half an hour and go back.’

After half an hour, the truck had not passed the place where they were parked, so Ambrogiani drove back up towards the road the truck had turned into. They passed it and he pulled off to the right a bit beyond it, angling the car in between two cement road markers.

Ambrogiani got out and went around to the boot of the car. He opened it and reached in. Slipped in next to the tyre was a large calibre pistol, which he pushed into the waistband of his trousers. ‘You have one?’ he asked.

Brunetti shook his head. ‘I didn’t bring it today.’

‘I’ve got another one in here. Want it?’

Brunetti shook his head again.

Ambrogiani slammed the boot closed and together they walked across the road and onto the dirt path that led off towards the mountains.

Trucks had worn a double groove into the dirt of the path; with the first heavy rain, the dirt would turn to mud, and the road would be impassable to vehicles the size of the truck they had seen turn into it. After a few hundred metres, the path widened minimally and curved to run alongside a stream that had to be coming down from the lake. Soon the path branched off to the left, leaving the stream and now following a long line of trees. Ahead, the path took another sharp turn to the left and up a sharp incline, where it seemed to come to an end. With no warning, Ambrogiani stepped behind one of the trees and pulled Brunetti after him. With a single motion, the Carabiniere reached inside his jacket and pulled out his gun with one hand and, with the other, gave Brunetti a brutal push in the centre of his back that sent him spinning away, completely off-balance.

Brunetti flailed at the air with his arms, unable to stop his forward motion. For an instant, he hung between motion and collapse, but then the ground sloped away under him and he knew he was going to fall. As he did, he turned his head and saw Ambrogiani coming directly after him, gun in hand. His heart contracted in sudden terror. He had trusted this man, never stopping to think that the person at the American base who had learned about Foster’s curiosity and who had learned about Doctor Peters’ affair with him could just as easily be an Italian as an American. And he had even offered Brunetti a gun.

He crashed forward onto the ground, stunned, wind knocked from him. He tried to push himself to his knees, he thought of Paola, and he was conscious of the blaze of sunlight all around him. Ambrogiani crashed to the ground beside him, threw an arm over his back, and pushed him back down to the ground. ‘Stay down. Keep your head down,’ he said into Brunetti’s ear, lying beside him, arm across his back.

Brunetti lay on the earth, digging his hands into the grass beneath him, eyes closed, conscious only of the weight of Ambrogiani’s arm and of the sweat that covered his entire body. Through the torrent of his pulse, he heard the sound of a truck coming towards them from what had seemed the end of the road. As he listened, its motor drummed past them then grew dimmer as it made its way back towards the main road. When it was gone, Ambrogiani pushed himself heavily to his knees and started to brush off his doming. ‘Sorry,’ he said, smiling down at Brunetti and extending his hand. ‘I just did it, didn’t have time to think. You all right?’

Brunetti took his hand, pulled himself up, and stood beside the other man, knees trembling uncontrollably. ‘Sure, fine,’ he said, and bent to swipe the worst of the dust off his trousers. His underclothing stuck to his body, glued there by the sudden wave of animal terror that had overcome him.

Ambrogiani turned and went back towards the path, either in complete ignorance of Brunetti’s fear or in an exquisite gesture of feigned ignorance. Brunetti finished dusting himself off, took a few deep breaths, and followed Ambrogiani down the path to where it started to rise. It did not end but, instead, twisted suddenly to the right and stopped abruptly at the edge of a small bluff. Together, the two men walked up to the edge and looked down over it. Below them spread an area about half the size of a soccer field, most of it covered with creeping vines that could easily have grown up that same summer. The end nearest them, spreading out from the rise of land they stood on, contained about a hundred metal barrels that must once have contained kerosene. Mixed in with them were large black plastic bags, industrial strength, sealed closed at one end. At some point, a bulldozer must have been used, for the barrels at the far end disappeared under a heap of vine-covered earth that had been piled over them. There was no telling how far back the covered barrels extended, no hope of counting them.

‘Well; it seems like we’ve found what the American was looking for,’ Ambrogiani said.

‘I’d guess he found it, too.’

Ambrogiani nodded. ‘No need to kill him if he didn’t. What do you think he did, confront Gamberetto directly?’

‘I don’t know,’ Brunetti said. It didn’t make sense, so severe a response. What was the worst that could have happened to Gamberetto? A fine? Surely, he’d blame the drivers, even pay one of them to say he did it on his own. He would hardly lose a contract to build a hospital if something like this was discovered; Italian law treated it as little more than a misdemeanour. He would be in more serious danger if he were caught driving an unregistered car. That, after all, deprived the government directly of income; this merely poisoned the earth.

‘Do you think we can get down there?’ he asked.

Ambrogiani stared at him. ‘You want to go and look at that stuff?’

‘I’d like to see what’s written on the barrels.’

‘Maybe if we cut down to the left, over there,’ Ambrogiani said, pointing off in that direction to a narrow path that led down towards the dumping ground. Together, they walked down the sharp incline, occasionally sliding in the dust, grabbing at one another to stop their skidding descent. Finally, at the bottom, they found themselves only a few metres from the first of the barrels.

Brunetti looked down at the earth. The dust was dry and loose here, on the outskirts of the dump; inside, it seemed to thicken and turn to paste. He walked towards the barrels, careful where he placed his feet. Nothing was written on the top or sides; no labels, no stickers, no identification of any sort. Moving along the outskirts of the dump, careful not to step too close to them, he studied the tops and visible sides of the barrels that stood there. They came almost to his hip, each with a metal cap hammered tightly into place on the top. Whoever had placed them there had at least been careful enough to place them upright.

When he reached the end of the rows of exposed barrels without seeing any identification, he looked back along the row he had walked beside, searching for a place where enough room stood between them to allow him to move about among them. He went back a few metres and found a place that would allow him to slip between them. The stuff under his feet was more than paste now; it had turned to a thin layer of oily mud that came up the sides of the soles of his shoes. He moved deeper into the standing barrels, bending down now and again to search for any sign of identification. His foot came up against one of the black plastic bags. The barrel it rested against had a flap of paper hanging from it. Taking his handkerchief, Brunetti reached out and turned the paper over. ‘US Air Force. Ramst...’ Part of the last word was missing, but, ever since the Italian Air Force flying squad had hurled their planes madly into one another, raining death on the hundreds of German and American civilians below them, everyone in Italy knew that the largest American military air base in Germany was at Ramstein.

He kicked at the bag. It shifted over on its side, and, from the shapes that protruded inside the plastic, it seemed to be filled with cans. He took his keys from his pocket and slashed at the bag, ripping it open all down one side. Cans and cardboard boxes spilled out. As a can rolled towards him, he stepped back involuntarily.

From behind him, Ambrogiani called out, ‘What is it?’

Brunetti waved his arm above his head to signal that he was all right and bent to examine the writing on the cans and boxes. ‘Government issue. Not for resale or private use’, was written on some of them, in English. A few of the boxes had labels in German. Most of them had the skull and crossbones that warned of poison or other danger. He lifted his foot and prodded at a can with his foot. The label, also in English, read, ‘If found, contact your NBC officer. Do not touch.’

Brunetti turned and walked delicately towards the edge of the dumping ground, even more cautious now where he placed his feet. A few metres from the edge, he dropped his handkerchief to the earth and left it there. When he emerged from the barrels, Ambrogiani came up to him.

‘Well?’ the Carabiniere asked.

‘The labels are in English and German. Some of them come from one of their air force bases in Germany. I have no idea where the rest of it comes from.’ They started to walk away from the dump. ‘What’s an NBC officer?’ Brunetti asked, hoping that Ambrogiani would know.

‘Nuclear, biological, and chemical.’

‘Mother of God,’ Brunetti whispered.

There was no need for Foster to have gone to Gamberetto to put himself in jeopardy. He was a young man who kept books like Christian Life in an Age of Doubt on his shelf. He probably would have done what any innocent young soldier would have done - reported it to his superior officer. American waste. American military waste. Shipped to Italy so that it could be dumped there. Secretly.

They walked back along the path, meeting no trucks on the way. When they got to the car, Brunetti sat on the seat, feet still outside the car. With two quick motions, he kicked his shoes off and far into the grass at the side of the road. Careful to hold them by the top, he peeled off his socks and hurled them after the shoes. Turning to Ambrogiani, he said, ‘Do you think we could stop at a shoe shop on the way to the station?’

* * * *

21

On the drive back to Mestre train station, Ambrogiani gave Brunetti an idea of how the dumping would be possible. Though the Italian customs police had the right to inspect every truck that came down from Germany to the American base, there were so many that some did not get inspected, and what inspection was given was often cursory, at best. As to planes, don’t even speak; they flew in and out of the military airports at Villafranca and Aviano at will, loading and unloading whatever they chose. When Brunetti asked why there were so many deliveries, Ambrogiani explained the extent to which America saw that its soldiers and airmen, their wives and children, were kept happy. Ice cream, frozen pizza, spaghetti sauce, crisps, spirits, California wines, beer: all of this, and more, was flown in to stock the shelves of the supermarket, and this was to make no mention of the shops that sold stereo equipment, televisions, racing bicycles, potting soil, underwear. Then there were the transports that brought in heavy equipment, tanks, Jeeps. He remembered the navy base at Naples and the base at Livorno; anything could be brought in by ship.

‘It sounds like they’d have no trouble doing it,’ Brunetti said.

‘But why bring it down here?’ Ambrogiani asked.

It seemed pretty simple to Brunetti. ‘The Germans are more careful about this sort of thing. The environmentalists are a real power there. If anyone got wind of something like this in Germany, there’d be a scandal. Now that they’re united, someone would start to talk about throwing the Americans out, not just waiting for them to leave on their own. But here in Italy, no one cares what gets dumped, anywhere, so all they have to do is remove the identification. Then, if what they dump is found, it can’t be tied to anyone, everyone can deny all knowledge, and no one will care enough to find out. And no one here is going to talk about throwing the Americans out.’

‘But they haven’t removed all identification,’ Ambrogiani corrected.

‘Maybe they thought they’d get it covered before anyone found it. It’s easy enough to bring in a bulldozer and finish piling the dirt over it. It looked like they were running out of room there, anyway.’

‘Why not just ship it back to America?’

Brunetti gave him a long look. Surely, he couldn’t be this innocent. ‘We try to unload ours on Third World countries, Giancarlo. To the Americans, maybe we’re a Third World country. Or maybe all countries that aren’t America are Third World.’

Ambrogiani muttered something under his breath.

Up ahead of them, the traffic slowed at the toll booms at the end of the autostrada. Brunetti pulled out his wallet and handed Ambrogiani ten thousand lire, pocketed the change, and put his wallet back in his pocket. At the third exit, Ambrogiani pulled to the right and down into the chaotic Saturday afternoon traffic. They crawled towards Mestre train station, battling the aggression of various cars. Ambrogiani pulled up across from it, ignoring the No Parking sign and the angry honk from a car that wanted to pull in behind him. ‘Well?’ he asked, looking over at Brunetti.

‘See what you can find but about Gamberetto, and I’ll speak to a few people here.’

‘Should I call you?’

‘Not from the base.’ Brunetti scribbled his home number on a piece of paper and handed it to the other man. ‘This is my own number. You can get me there early in the morning or at night. Call from a phone booth, I think.’

‘Yes,’ Ambrogiani agreed, voice sombre, as if this small suggestion had suddenly warned him of the magnitude of what they were involved with.

Brunetti opened the door and got out of the car. He came around to the other side and leaned down towards the open window. ‘Thanks, Giancarlo.’

They shook hands through the open window, saying nothing more, and Brunetti crossed the road to the station while Ambrogiani drove away.

By the time he got to his house, his feet hurt from the new shoes that Ambrogiani had bought for him in a place on the motorway. A hundred and sixty thousand lire and they hurt his feet! As soon as he got inside the door, he kicked them off, then walked towards the bathroom, peeling off his clothing as he walked, dropping it carelessly behind him. He stood in the shower for a long time, soaping his body repeatedly, rubbing at his feet and between his toes with a cloth, rinsing and washing them again and again. He dried himself and sat on the edge of the tub to examine his feet closely. Though they were red from the hot water and scrubbing, he saw no sign of rash or burning on them; they felt like feet, though he wasn’t at all sure how feet were supposed to feel.

He wrapped a second towel around himself and went towards the bedroom. As he did, he heard Paola call from the kitchen, ‘This place doesn’t come with maid service, Guido’ Her voice was raised over the rush of water into the washing-machine.

He ignored her, went to the closet and got dressed, sitting on the bed while he pulled on a new pair of socks, again examining his feet. They still looked like feet. He pulled a pair of brown shoes from the bottom of the closet, tied them, and walked down towards the kitchen. As soon as she heard him coming, she continued, ‘How do you expect me to get the kids to pick up after themselves if you drop things anywhere you want?’

When he walked into the kitchen, he found her kneeling in front of the washing-machine, thumb poised over the button that turned it on and off. Through the clear glass window, he could see a sodden heap of clothes being swirled first one way, then another.

‘What’s the matter with that thing?’ he asked.

She didn’t look up at him as she answered, kept her mesmerized stare on the swirling clothing. ‘It’s unbalanced somehow. If I put towels in it, anything that absorbs a lot of water, the weight of the initial spin tilts it out of balance, and it blows out all of the electricity in the house. So I’ve got to wait for it to start, see that it doesn’t happen. If it does, then I’ve got to turn it off before it happens and wring the clothes out.’

‘Paola, do you have to do this every time you do a wash?’

‘No. Only if there are towels or those flannel sheets from Chiara’s bed,’ She stopped talking here, raised her thumb over the button as the machine made a click. Suddenly, it jolted into sudden motion and the clothing inside began to spin around, pressed against the side of the swirling drum. Paola got to her feet, smiled, and said, ‘Well, no trouble that time.’

‘How long has it been like that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Couple of years.’

‘And you have to do that every time you do a wash?’

‘If I wash towels. I told you.’ She smiled, irritation forgotten. ‘Where have you been since the crack of dawn? Did you have anything to eat?’

‘Up at Lake Barcis.’

‘Doing what, playing army? Your clothes were filthy. It looks like you’ve been rolling around in the dirt.’

‘I have been rolling around in the dirt,’ he began and told her about his day with Ambrogiani. It took a long time because he had to keep going back to explain about Kayman, his son, the way the boy’s medical records had been lost, the medical journal that he had received in the post. And, finally, he told her about the drugs that had been hidden in Foster’s apartment.

When he finished, Paola asked, ‘And they told those people that their son was allergic to something from a tree? That everything was all right?’ He nodded and she exploded. ‘Bastards! And what happens when the boy develops other symptoms? What do they tell the parents then?’

‘Maybe he won’t develop other symptoms.’

‘And maybe he will, Guido. What happens then? What do they tell him then, that he’s got something they can’t figure out? Do they lose his medical records again?’

Brunetti wanted to tell her that none of this was his fault, but that seemed too feeble a protest, so he said nothing.

After her outburst, Paola realized how futile it was and turned to more practical things. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ He paused, then said, ‘I want to talk to your father.’

‘To Papà? Why?’ Her surprise was real.

Brunetti knew how inflammatory his answer would be, but he said it anyway, knowing it was true. ‘Because he’d know about this.’

She attacked before she thought. ‘What do you mean, know about it? How could he? What do you think my father is, some sort of international criminal?’

In the face of Brunetti’s silence, she stopped. Behind them, the washing-machine stopped spinning and clicked itself off. The room was silent save for the echo of her question. She turned and bent to empty it, filling her arms with damp clothing. Saying nothing, she passed in front of him and went onto the terrace, where she dumped the washing onto a chair, then pegged it to the clothesline piece by piece. When she came back inside, all she said was, ‘Well, It’s possible that he might know people who might know something about it. Do you want to call him or do you want me to?’

‘I think I’d better do it,’

‘Better do it now, Guido. My mother said they’re going to Capri for a week, leaving tomorrow.’

‘All right,’ Brunetti said and went into the living room, where the phone was.

He dialled the number from memory, having no idea why this number, that he might call twice a year, was one he never forgot. His mother-in-law answered and, if she was surprised to hear Brunetti’s voice, gave no sign of it. She said Count Qrazio was home, asked no questions, and said she would call her husband to the phone.

‘Yes, Guido,’ the Count said when he picked up the phone.

‘I wonder if you have some time free this afternoon,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’d like to speak to you about something that’’s come up-’

‘Viscardi?’ the Count asked, surprising Brunetti that he knew about that case.

‘No, not about that,’ Brunetti answered, thinking only then of how much easier it would have been to have asked his father-in-law, instead, of Fosco, about Viscardi, and perhaps how much more accurate. ‘It’s about something else I’m working on.’

The Count was far too polite to ask what but said, instead, ‘We’re invited to dinner, but if you could come over now, we would have an hour or so free. Is that convenient, Guido?’

‘Yes, it is. I’ll come over now. And thank you.’

‘Well?’ Paola asked when he went back into the kitchen, where another load of washing was busily swimming about in a sea of white suds.

‘I’m going over there now. Would you like to come along and see your mother?’

By way of answer, she pointed with her chin to the washing-machine.

‘All right. I’ll go now. They have to go to dinner, so I imagine I’ll be back before eight. Would you like to go out to dinner tonight?’

She smiled at him, nodding.

‘All right. You choose the place and call for a reservation. Any place you like.’

‘Al Covo?’

Manfully, he did not wince at what he knew that would cost. First, the shoes, and now dinner at Al Covo. The food was glorious; to hell with what it cost. He smiled. ‘Reserve for eight-thirty. And ask the kids if they want to come.’ After all, he was a man who had been given back his life that afternoon. Why not celebrate?

When he got to the Faliers’ palazzo, Brunetti was faced with the decision that always awaited him there, whether to use the immense iron ring that hung from the wooden door, dropping it against the metal plate beneath and sending the message of his arrival booming across the open courtyard, or to use the more prosaic doorbell. He chose the second, and a moment later a voice spoke through the intercom, asking who it was. After he gave his name, the door jolted open. He pushed it back, slammed it closed behind him, and walked across the courtyard towards the part of the palazzo that fronted onto the Grand Canal. From an upstairs window, a uniformed maid looked out, checking to see who had come in. Apparently satisfied that Brunetti was not a malefactor, she pulled her head inside the window and disappeared. The Count was waiting at the top of the outside staircase that led into the part of the palazzo where he and his wife lived.

Though Brunetti knew that the Count would soon be seventy, it was hard, seeing him, to think that he was Paola’s father. Older brother, perhaps, or the youngest of her uncles, but certainly not a man almost thirty years older than she. The thinning hair, cut short around the shining oval of his head, suggested his age, but that impression was dispelled by the taut skin of his face and the clear intelligence shining from his eyes. ‘How nice to see you, Guido. You’re looking well. We’ll go into the study, shall we?’ the Count said, turning and leading Brunetti back towards the front of the house. They passed through a few rooms until they finally arrived at the glass-fronted study that looked out over the Grand Canal as it curved up towards the Accademia Bridge. ‘Would you like a drink?’ the Count asked, going to the sideboard where a bottle of Dom Perignon stood, already open, in a silver bucket filled with ice.

Brunetti knew the Count well enough to know that there was absolutely no affectation in this. If the Count had preferred to drink Coca-Cola, he would have kept a litre-and-a-half plastic bottle in the same ice bucket and offered it in the same manner to his guests. The Count had been born having no one he needed to impress.

‘Yes, thanks,’ Brunetti answered. This way, he could set the tone for an evening at Al Covo. If the Count turned his back, perhaps he could get away with the ice bucket and thus pay for that dinner.

The Count poured champagne into a fresh glass, added some to his own, and handed the first glass to Brunetti. ‘Shall we sit, Guido?’ he asked, leading him towards two easy chairs that were turned to face out over the water.

When they were both seated and Brunetti had tasted his wine, the Count asked, ‘In what way can I be of service?’

‘I’d like to ask you for some information, but I’m not sure just what questions I have to ask,’ Brunetti began, deciding to tell the truth. He couldn’t ask the Count not to repeat what he told him; an insult like that would be difficult for the Count to forgive, even of the father of his only grandchildren. ‘I’d like to know whatever you could tell me about a Signor Gamberetto, of Vicenza, who has both a hauling company and, apparently, a construction company. I don’t know anything more about him other than his name. And that he might be involved in something illegal.’

The Count nodded, suggesting that the name was familiar but that he preferred to wait until he knew what else his son-in-law wanted to know before saying anything.

‘And then I’d like to know about the involvement of the American military, first with Signor Gamberetto, and second with the illegal dumping of toxic substances that seems to be taking place in this country.’ He sipped at his wine. ‘Anything you can tell me, I’ll be very grateful for.’

The Count finished his wine and placed the empty glass on an inlaid table at his side. He crossed his long legs, exposing an expanse of black silk sock, and brought his fingers together in a pyramid under his chin. ‘Signor Gamberetto is a particularly nasty, and particularly well-connected, businessman. Not only does he have the two companies you refer to, Guido, but he is also the owner of a large chain of hotels, travel agencies, and resorts, many of which are not in this country. He is also believed to have recently branched out into armaments and munitions, buying into partnership with one of the most important arms manufacturers in Lombardy. Many of these companies are owned by his wife; therefore, his name is not anywhere present in the papers that deal with them, nor does it appear in the contracts made by those businesses. I believe the construction business is under his uncle’s name, but I could be wrong there.

‘Like many of our new businessmen,’ the Count continued, ‘he is strangely invisible. He happens, however, to be more powerfully connected than are most. He has influential friends in both the Socialist and Christian Democratic party, no mean feat, so he is very well-protected.’

The Count got up and walked over to the sideboard, came back and filled both their glasses, then went and replaced the bottle in the ice bucket. When he was comfortable in his chair again, he continued. ‘Signor Gamberetto is from the South, and his father was, if memory serves, a janitor in a public school. Consequently, there are not many social occasions when we are likely to meet. I know nothing about his personal life.’

He sipped. ‘As to your second question, about the Americans, I’d like to know what prompts your curiosity in this matter,’ When Brunetti didn’t answer, the Count added, ‘There exists a great deal of rumour,’ Brunetti could do no more than speculate about the dizzy heights at which such filings were rumoured, but still he said nothing.

The Count twirled file stem of his glass between his thin fingers. When it became evident that Brunetti intended to say nothing, he continued, ‘I know that certain extraordinary rights have been extended to them, rights which are not stipulated in the treaty we signed with them at the end of the war. Various of our many short-lived and variously incompetent governments have seen fit to offer them preferential treatment of one sort or another. This, you realize, extends not only to things like allowing them to peppercorn our hills with missile silos, information to be had from any resident of the province of Vicenza, but to allowing them to bring into this country just about anything they wish.’

‘Including toxic substances?’ Brunetti asked directly.

The Count bowed his head. ‘It is rumoured.’

‘But why? We’d have to be insane to accept them.’

‘Guido, it is not the business of a government to be sane; it is their business only to be successful.’ Dismissing what he must have perceived as a pedantic tone, the Count became more direct and particular. ‘The rumours say that, in the past, the cargoes were merely transshipped through Italy. That they came down from the bases in Germany, were unloaded here, and immediately loaded onto Italian vessels that took them off to Africa or South America, where no questions were asked about what got dropped into the middle of the jungle or the forest or the lake. But since many of these countries have experienced radical changes of government in recent years, these outlets have been cut off, and they refuse any longer to accept our deadly rubbish. Or they are willing to accept it, but now the price they put upon doing so has become exorbitant. At any rate, those who receive the ongoing shipments at this end are unwilling to cease doing so - and thus cease to profit from them - merely because they can no longer dispose of them in other places, on other continents. So they continue to arrive, and room is found for them here.’

‘You know all of this?’ Brunetti asked, making no attempt to hide his surprise, or was it something stronger?

‘Guido, this much - or this little - is common knowledge, at least at the level of rumour. You could easily discover it in a few hours on the phone. But no one knows it except the people who are directly involved, and they are not the sort of people who talk about these things. Nor, I might add, are they the sort of people one talks to.’

‘Snubbing them at cocktail parties can hardly be enough to make them stop,’ Brunetti snapped. ‘Nor will it make the things they’ve already dumped suddenly disappear.’

‘Your sarcasm is not lost on me, Guido, but I’m afraid that this is a situation in which one is helpless.’

‘Who is “one”?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Those who know about the government and what it does but are not part of it, not in any active sense. There is also the not inconsiderable fact that it is not only our own government which is involved, but that of America, as well.’

‘To make no mention of the gentlemen from the South?’

‘Ah, yes, the Mafia,’ the Count said with a tired sigh. ‘It would seem that this is a web woven by all three of them, and, because of that, triply strong and, if I might add as a note of warning, triply dangerous.’ He looked over at Brunetti and asked, ‘How closely are you involved in this, Guido?’ His concern was audible.

‘Do you remember that American who was murdered here over a week ago?’

‘Ah, yes, during a robbery. Most unfortunate.’ Then, tiring of his pose, the Count added, soberly, ‘You’ve discovered some connection between him and this Signor Gamberetto, I assume.’

‘Yes.’

‘There was another strange death among the Americans, a doctor at the Vicenza hospital. Is that correct?’

‘Yes. She was his lover.’

‘It was an overdose, as I recall.’

‘It was a murder,’ Brunetti corrected but offered no explanation.

The Count sought none and remained silent for a long time, sitting and staring at the boats that travelled up and down the canal. Finally he asked, ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Brunetti answered and then asked in his turn, bringing himself close to the reason for his coming, ‘Is this something over which you have any influence?’

The Count considered this question for a long time. ‘I’m not sure what you mean by that, Guido,’ he finally said.

Brunetti, to whom the question was sufficiently clear, ignored the Count’s remark and provided him, instead, with more information. ‘There’s a dumping site up near Lake Barcis. The barrels and cans are from the Americans’ base in Ramstein, in Germany; the labels are in English and German.’

‘Did those two Americans find this place?’

‘I think so.’

‘And they died after they found it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does anyone else know about this?’

‘A Carabiniere officer who works at the American base.’ There was no need to bring Ambrogiani’s name into this, nor did Brunetti see fit to tell the Count that the only other person who knew anything about this was his only child.

‘Can he be trusted?’

‘To do what?’

‘Don’t be intentionally ignorant, Guido,’ the Count said. ‘I’m trying to help you here.’ Not without difficulty, the Count gained control of himself and asked, ‘Can he be trusted to keep his mouth shut?’

‘Until what?’

‘Until something is done about this.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that I’ll call some people this evening and see what can be done.’

‘Done about what?’

‘About seeing that this dump is cleared up, that the things are taken away.’

‘And moved where?’ Brunetti asked, voice sharp.

‘Moved away from where they are, Guido.’

‘To some other part of Italy?’

Brunetti watched as the Count considered whether to lie to him or not. Finally, deciding against it, Brunetti would never understand why, the Count said, ‘Perhaps. But more likely out of the country.’ Before Brunetti could ask any more questions, the Count held up his hand to stop him. ‘Guido, please try to understand. I can’t promise you any more than I just have. I think that this dump can be disposed of, but, beyond that, I would be afraid to move.’

‘Do you mean that literally, afraid?’

The Count’s voice was ice. ‘Literally. Afraid.’

‘Why?’

‘I would prefer not to explain that, Guido.’

Brunetti thought he would try one more tack. ‘The reason they found out about the dump was that a little boy fell into it and burned his arm on the things leaking from those barrels. It could have been any child. It could have been Chiara.’

The Count’s glance was cool. ‘Please, Guido, now you’re being mawkishly sentimental.’

It was true, Brunetti knew it. ‘Don’t you care about any of this?’ he asked, unable to keep the passion from his voice.

The Count dipped his finger into the trace of wine left in his glass and began to run the tip of his moistened finger around the rim. As his finger moved ever faster, a high-pitched whining emerged from the crystal and filled the room. Suddenly, he lifted his finger from the glass, but the sound continued, hanging in the room, just as did their conversation. He looked from the glass to Brunetti. ‘Yes, I care about it, Guido, but not in the same way you do. You have managed to retain remnants of optimism, even in the midst of the work you do. I have none. Not for myself, nor for my future, and not for this country or its future.’

He looked down at the glass again. ‘I care that these things happen, that we poison ourselves and our progeny, that we knowingly destroy our future, but I do not believe mat there is anything - and I repeat, anything - that can be done to prevent it. We are a nation of egoists. It is our glory, but it will be our destruction, for none of us can be made to concern ourselves about something as abstract as “the common good”. The best of us can rise to feeling concern for our families, but as a nation we are incapable of more.’

‘I refuse to believe that.’ Brunetti said.

‘Your refusal to believe it,’ the Count said with a smile that was almost tender, ‘makes it no less true, Guido.’

‘Your daughter doesn’t believe it,’ Brunetti added.

‘And for that grace I give daily thanks,’ the Count said in a soft voice. ‘That is perhaps the finest thing I’ve achieved in my life, that my daughter does not share my beliefs.’

Brunetti sought irony or sarcasm in the Count’s tone, but found only pained truth.

‘You said you’d do this, see that this dump is cleared up, taken away. Why can’t you do more?’

Again, the Count bestowed that same smile upon his son-in-law. ‘I believe this is the first time we’ve talked to one another in all these years, Guido.’ Then, changing his voice, he added, ‘Because there are too many dumps and too many men like Gamberetto.’

‘Can you do anything about him?’

‘Ah, there I can do nothing.’

‘Can or will do nothing?’

‘From some positions, Guido, can and will are the same.’

‘That’s sophistry,’ Brunetti shot back.

The Count laughed outright ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? Then let me say it like this: I prefer to do nothing else about this matter save what I’ve told you I will do.’

‘And why is that?’Brunetti asked.

‘Because,’ the Count replied, ‘I can bring myself to care for nothing beyond, my family,’ The tone of his voice was terminal; Brunetti would get no explanation beyond that.

‘May I ask you one more question?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes.’

‘When I called and asked if I could talk to you, you asked if I wanted to talk about Viscardi. Why was that?’

The Count looked at him in involuntary surprise, then returned his attention to the boats on the canal. When a few had gone past, he answered, ‘Signor Viscardi and I have common business interests.’

‘What is mat supposed to mean?’

‘Precisely what I said, that we have interests in common.’

‘And may I ask what those interests are?’

The Count faced him before he answered, ‘Guido, my business interests are a subject I do not discuss, except with those who are involved in them directly.’

Before Brunetti could protest, the Count added, ‘Upon my death, interest in those matters will pass beyond my control. Many will pass to your wife,’ he paused here, then added, ‘and to you. But until that time, I will discuss them only with those people who are concerned with them.’

Brunetti wanted to ask the Count if his dealings with Signor Viscardi were legitimate dealings, but he didn’t know how to ask this without offending him. Worse, Brunetti feared he didn’t himself any longer know what the word ‘legitimate’ meant.

‘Can you tell me anything about Signor Viscardi?’

The Count’s answer was a long time in coming. ‘He has business interests in common with a number of other people. Many of them are very powerful people.’

Brunetti heard the warning in the Count’s voice, but he also saw the connection that lurked there, as well.

‘Have we just been talking about one of them?’

The Count said nothing.

‘Have we just been talking about one of them?’ he repeated.

The Count nodded.

‘Will you tell me about the interests they have in common?’

‘I can - I will - tell you no more man that you should have nothing to do with either one of them.’

‘And if I choose to do so?’

‘I would prefer that you didn’t.’

Brunetti couldn’t resist saying, ‘And I prefer that you tell me about their business interests.’

‘Then we seem to be at an impasse, don’t we?’ the Count asked in a voice that was artificially light and conversational. Before Brunetti could answer, they heard a noise behind them and both turned to see the Countess come into the room. She hurried quickly over to Brunetti, high heels tapping out a happy message on the parquet. Both men stood. ‘Guido, how nice to see you,’ she said, leaning up to kiss him on both cheeks.

‘Ah, my dearest,’ the Count said, bending over her hand. Married for forty years, Brunetti thought, and still he kisses her hand when she comes into the room. At least he doesn’t click his heels.

‘We were just talking about Chiara,’ the Count said, smiling benignly at his wife.

‘Yes,’ agreed Brunetti, ‘we were just saying how lucky Paola and I are that both of the children are so healthy.’ The Count shot him a look over his wife’s head, but she smiled up at both of them, saying, ‘Yes, thank God for that. We’re so lucky we live in a healthy country like Italy.’

‘Indeed,’ agreed the Count

‘What can I bring her from Capri?’ asked the Countess.

‘Only your safe-return,’ Brunetti said gallantly. ‘You know what it’s like down there in the South.’

She smiled up at him. ‘Oh, Guido, all that talk about the Mafia can’t be true. It’s just stories. All my friends say it is.’ She turned to her husband for confirmation.

‘If your friends say so, my dear, then I’m certain it is,’ the Count said. To Brunetti, ‘I’ll take care of those things for you, Guido. I’ll make the calls tonight. And please speak to your friend at Vicenza, There’s no need for either one of you to preoccupy yourself with this.’

His wife gave him a questioning look. ‘Nothing, my dearest,’ he said. ‘Just some business Guido asked me to look into for him. Nothing important. Just some paperwork that I might be able to get through more quickly than he can.’

‘How kind of you, Orazio. And Guido,’ she said, positively aglow with this vision of happy families, ‘I’m so glad you’d think to ask.’

The Count put his hand under her arm and said, ‘We might think about leaving now, dearest. Is the launch here?’

‘Oh, yes, that’s what I came to tell you. But I forgot about it with all this talk of business.’ She turned to Brunetti. ‘Give my love to Paola and kiss the children for me. I’ll call when we get to Capri. Or is it Ischia? Orazio, which is it?’

‘Capri, my dearest.’

‘I’ll call, then. Goodbye, Guido,’ she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him again.

The Count and Brunetti shook hands. All three of them walked down into the courtyard together. The Count and Countess turned and walked through the water gate and stepped into the launch that waited for them at the landing stage of the palazzo. Brunetti let himself out of the main door, careful to slam it closed behind him.

* * * *

22

Monday was a normal day at the Questura: three North Africans were brought in for selling purses and sunglasses on the street without a licence; two break-ins were reported in various parts of the city; four summonses were given to boats caught without the proper safety equipment aboard; and two known drug addicts were brought in for threatening a doctor who refused to write them prescriptions. Patta appeared at eleven, called up to Brunetti to learn if there was any progress on the Viscardi case, made no attempt to disguise his irritation that there had not been, and went to lunch half an hour later, not to return until well past three.

Vianello came up to report to Brunetti that the car had not shown up on Saturday, and he had been left waiting at Piazzale Roma for an hour, standing at the number five bus stop with a bouquet of red carnations in his arms. He had finally given up and gone home and given his wife the flowers. Keeping his part of the bargain, even if the criminals couldn’t be depended on, Brunetti changed the duty roster to give Vianello the following Friday and Saturday free, asking him to get in touch with the boy on Burano to see what had gone wrong and why Ruffolo’s friends had not shown up for the meeting.

He had bought all of the major papers on the way to his office and passed the better part of the morning reading through them, searching for any reference to the dump near Lake Barcis, Gamberetto, or anything that had to do with the deaths of the two Americans. History, however, refused to concern itself with any of these topics, so he ended up reading the soccer news and calling it work.

He bought the papers again the next morning and began to read through them carefully. Riots in Albania, the Kurds, a volcano, Indians killing one another, this time for politics, instead of religion, but there was no mention of the finding of toxic waste near Lake Barcis.

Knowing it was foolish but unable to stop himself from doing it, he went down to the switchboard and asked the operator for the number of the American base. If Ambrogiani had been able to find out anything about Gamberetto, Brunetti wanted to know what it was and found himself incapable of waiting for the other man to call. The operator gave him both the central number and that of the Carabinieri office. Brunetti had to walk to Riva degli Schiavoni before he found a public phone that would take a magnetic phone card. He dialled the number of the Carabinieri station and asked for Maggiore Ambrogiani. The Maggiore was not at his desk at the moment. Who was calling, please? ‘Signor Rossi, from the Generan Insurance Company. I’ll call back this afternoon.’

Ambrogiani’s absence could mean nothing. Or anything.

As he did whenever he was overcome by nervousness, Brunetti walked. He turned left and walked along the water until he came to the bridge that took him to Sant’ Elena, crossed it, and walked around this farthest part of the dry, finding it no more interesting than he ever had in the past. He cut back through Castello, along the wall of the Arsenate, and back towards Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where all of this had begun. Intentionally, he avoided the campo, refusing to look at the place where Foster’s body had been pulled out of the water. He cut directly towards the Fondamente Nuove and followed the water until he had to turn away from it and head back into the city. He passed the Madonna dell’ Orto, noticed that work was still being done on the hotel, and suddenly found himself in Campo del Ghetto. He sat on a bench and watched the people going past him. They had no idea, none at all. They distrusted the government, feared the Mafia, resented the Americans, but they were all generalized, unfocused ideas. They sensed conspiracy, as Italians always have, but they lacked the details, the proofs. They had learned enough, from long centuries of experience, to know that the proof was there, amply, but those same brutal centuries had also taught the people that whatever government happened to be in power would always succeed in hiding any and all proof of its evildoing from its citizens.

He closed his eyes, sank lower on the bench, glad of the sun. When he opened them, he saw the two Mariani sisters walking across the campo. They must be in their seventies now, both of them, with their shoulder-length hair, high heels, and bright carmined lips. No one any longer remembered the facts, but everyone remembered the story. During the war, the Christian husband of one of them had denounced her to the police, and both of them were taken away to one of the camps. No one remembered which it had been, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau; the name hardly mattered. After the war, they had returned to the city, having survived no one knew what horrors, and here they were, almost fifty years later, walking across the Campo del Ghetto, arm in arm, each with a bright yellow ribbon in her hair. For the Mariani sisters, there had been conspiracy, and certainly they had seen the proof of human evil, and yet here they walked in the rich sunshine of a peaceful afternoon in Venice, sun dappled on their flowered dresses.

Brunetti knew that he was being unnecessarily sentimental. He was tempted to go home directly, but he went back to the Questura instead, walking slowly, in no hurry to get there.

When he arrived, he found a note on his desk, ‘See me about Ruffolo. V, and went down immediately to Vianello.

The officer was at his desk, talking to a young man who sat in a chair facing him. When Brunetti approached, Vianello said to the young man, ‘This is Commissario Brunetti. He can answer your questions better than I can.’

The young man stood but made no attempt to shake hands. ‘Good afternoon, Dottore,’ he said. ‘I came because he called me,’ leaving it to Brunetti to figure out who the ‘he’ was. The boy was short, stocky, and had hands that were a few sizes too big for his body, already red and swollen, even though he couldn’t have been more than seventeen. If his hands were not enough to show that he was a fisherman, his accent, the rugged undulance of Burano, was. On Burano, you either fished or made lace; the boy’s hands excluded the second possibility.

‘Sit down, please,’ Brunetti said, drawing up a second chair for himself. Obviously the boy’s mother had trained him well, for he continued to stand until both men were seated, then took his place, sitting up straight, hands wrapped around the sides of the seat of his chair.

When he began to speak in the rough dialect of the outer islands, no Italian not born in Venice could have understood him. Brunetti wondered if the boy could, in fact, speak Italian at all. But his curiosity about dialect was soon lost when the boy continued, ‘Ruffolo called my friend again, and my friend called me, and since I told the Sergeant here that I would tell him if I heard from my friend again, I came in to tell him.’

‘What did your friend say?’

‘Ruffolo wants to talk to someone. He’s frightened.’ He stopped at that and looked sharply up at the two policemen to see if they had noticed his slip. It seemed that they had not, so he continued, ‘I mean my friend said that he sounded frightened, but all he, this friend of mine, would say is that Peppino wanted to talk to someone, but he said that a sergeant isn’t enough. He wants to talk to someone high up.’

‘Did your friend say why Ruffolo wants to do this?’

‘No, sir, he didn’t. But I think his mother told him to do it.’

‘Do you know Ruffolo?’

The boy shrugged.

‘What would frighten him?’

This time, the shrug was probably meant to mean that the boy didn’t know. ‘He thinks he’s smart. Ruffolo. He always talks big, talks about the people he met inside and about his important friends. When he called, he told me,’ the boy said, forgetting about the existence of the imaginary friend, the supposed intermediary in all of this, ‘that he wanted to give himself up but that he had some things to trade. He said that you’d be glad to get them, that it was a good trade.’

‘Did he say what that was?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, hut he said to tell you that there are three of them, that you’d understand that.’

Brunetti did. Guardi, Monet, and Gauguin. ‘And where does he want this person to meet him?’

As if he suddenly realized that the imaginary friend was no longer there to serve as a buffer between himself and the forces of authority, the boy stopped and looked around the room, but the friend was gone; not a sign of him remained.

‘You know that catwalk that goes along the front of the Arsenale?’ the boy asked.

Both Brunetti and Vianello nodded. At least half a kilometre long, the elevated cement walkway led from the shipyards within the Arsenale to the Celestia vaporetto stop, running about two metres above the waters of the laguna.

‘He said he’d be there, at the part where there’s that little beach, the one on the Arsenale side of the bridge. At midnight, tomorrow night.’ Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a glance over the boy’s lowered head, and Vianello mouthed the word ‘Hollywood’.

‘And who does he want to meet him there?’

‘Somebody important. He said that’s why he didn’t show up on Saturday, not for just a sergeant.’ Vianello, it appeared, took this with good grace.

Brunetti allowed himself a moment’s fantasy, picturing Patta, complete with onyx cigarette holder and walking stick and, because these late nights were foggy, his Burberry raincoat, collar artfully raised, waiting on the Arsenale catwalk as the bells of San Marco boomed out midnight. Because it was his fantasy, Brunetti had Patta meet, not Ruffolo, who spoke Italian, but this simple boy from Burano, and the fantasy petered out amidst the garbled sound of the boy’s heavy dialect and Patta’s slurred Sicilian pronunciation, both whipped away from their mouths by the midnight winds from the laguna.

‘‘Will a Commissario be important enough?’ Brunetti asked.

The boy looked up at that, not certain how to take it. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, deciding to take it seriously.

‘At midnight tomorrow night?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did Ruffolo say, did he tell your friend, that he’d bring those things with him?’

‘No, sir, he didn’t say. He just said he’d be on the catwalk at midnight, near the bridge. By the little beach.’ It wasn’t really a beach, Brunetti remembered, more a place where the tides had driven enough sand and gravel up against one of the walls of the Arsenate to allow a place where plastic bottles and old boots could wash up and be covered with slimy seaweed.

‘If your friend speaks to Ruffolo again, tell him I’ll be there.’

Satisfied that he had done what he came for, the boy got to his feet, nodded his head awkwardly to both men, and left the office.

‘Probably going to go and look for a phone so he can call Ruffolo and tell him the deal’s on,’ Vianello said.

‘I hope so. I don’t want to spend an hour standing out there waiting for him if he doesn’t show up.

‘Would you like me to come along, sir?’ Vianello volunteered.

‘Yes, I think I would,’ Brunetti said, realizing he was not the stuff of heroes. But then he added, more practically, ‘But It’s probably a bad idea. He’ll have friends planted at either end of the catwalk, and there’s no place at either end where you could be without being seen. Besides, there’s no meanness in Ruffolo. He’s never been violent.’

‘I could go down there and ask if I could stay in one of the houses.’

‘No, I don’t think it’s a good idea. He’d think of that, and his friends will probably be wandering around there, watching out for just that.’ Brunetti tried for a moment to form a mental image of the area around the Celestia stop, but all he could remember were anonymous blocks of public housing, an area almost completely devoid of shops or bars. In fact, if it were not for the presence of the laguna, there would be no telling it was in Venice, all of the apartments were so new, utterly without character or individuality. Might as well be in Mestre or Marghera.

‘What about the other two?’ Vianello asked, meaning the other two men involved in the robbery.

‘I imagine they want a part of Ruffolo’s deal. Or else he’s a lot smarter now man he was two years ago, and he managed to get tine paintings away from them.’

‘Maybe they got the jewellery,’ Vianello suggested.

‘Possibly. But it’s more likely that Ruffolo’s the spokesman for all three.’

‘Doesn’t make any sense, does it?’ Vianello asked. ‘I mean, they got away with it, they’ve got the paintings and the jewellery. What’s the advantage to them, if they just give up, give it all back?’

‘Maybe the paintings are too hard to sell.’

‘Come on, sir. You know the market as well as I do. You look hard enough, you can find a buyer for anything, no matter how hot it is. I could sell the Pieta if I could get it out of Saint Peter’s.’

Vianello was right. It didn’t make any sense. Ruffolo was hardly the type to reform, and there was always a market for paintings, no matter where they came from. The moon had just turned full, he remembered, and he thought of what a clear target he would be, dark jacket outlined against the pale wall of the Arsenate. He dismissed the idea as ridiculous.

‘Well, I’ll go along and see what Ruffolo has to offer,’ he said, sounding to himself like one of those nitwit heroes in a British film.

‘If you change your mind, sir, let me know tomorrow. I’ll be home tomorrow night. All you have to do is call.’

‘Thanks, Vianello. But! think it will be all right. I appreciate it, really I do.’

Vianello waved his hand and went back to the papers on his desk.

If he had to be a midnight hero, even if it was a day away, Brunetti saw no reason to stay in his office any longer.

When he got home, Paola told him that she had spoken to her parents that afternoon. They were well, enjoying what her mother persisted in believing was Ischia. Her father’s only message to Brunetti was that he had begun to take care of that matter for him and that it ought to be fully resolved by the end of the week. Though Brunetti was convinced it was a matter that would never be fully resolved, he thanked Paola for the information and told her to extend his greetings to her parents the next time they called.

Dinner was a strangely tranquil meal, chiefly because of Raffaele’s behaviour. He seemed, though Brunetti was astonished when he found himself thinking the word, he seemed cleaner, though it had never occurred to Brunetti that he might have been dirty. His hair had been recently cut, and the jeans he wore had a discernible crease down the front of both legs. He listened to what his parents said without objecting and, very strangely, did not fight Chiara for the last helping of pasta. When the meal was over, he protested at being told it was his turn to do the dishes, which reassured Brunetti, but then he did them without sighs and grumbles of dissatisfaction, and that silence caused Brunetti to ask Paola, ‘Is anything wrong with Raffi?’ They were sitting on the sofa in the living room, and the silence that came in from the kitchen filled the entire room.

She smiled. ‘Strange, isn’t it? I felt like it was the calm before the storm.’

‘Do you think we should lock our door at night?’ he asked. They both laughed but neither was sure if it was at the remark or at the possibility that it might be over. For them, as for the parents of all adolescents, ‘it’ needed no clarification: that awful, brooding cloud of resentment and righteous indignation that drifted into their lives with certain hormonal levels and remained there until those levels changed.

‘He asked me if I’d read over an essay he had to write for his English class,’ Paola said. Seeing his surprise, she added, ‘Brace yourself. He also asked if he could have a new jacket for the autumn.’

‘New, like you buy it in a shop?’Brunetti asked, amazed. This from the boy who had, two weeks ago, delivered a ringing condemnation of the capitalist system and its creation of false consumer needs, that had invented the idea of fashion just to create the unending demand for new clothing.

Paola nodded. ‘New. From a shop.’

‘I don’t know if I’m ready for this,’ Brunetti said. ‘Are we going to lose our rough-mannered anarchist?’

‘I think so, Guido. The jacket he said he wanted is in the window of Duca d’Aosta and costs four hundred thousand lire.’

‘Well, tell him Carl Marx never went shopping at Duca D’Aosta. Let him go to Benetton with the rest of the proletariat.’ Four hundred thousand lire; he’d won almost ten times that at the Casinò. In a family of four, Raffi’s fair share? No, not for a jacket. This must be it, the first crack in the ice, the beginning of the end of adolescence. And adolescence over, that meant the next step his son would take was into young manhood. Manhood.

‘Do you have any idea why this is happening?’ he asked her. If it occurred to Paola to say that he would be a better person to understand the phenomenon of male adolescence, she didn’t say it, and instead, answered, ‘Signora Pizzutti spoke to me on the stairs today.’

He gave her a puzzled stare, and then it registered. ‘Sara’s mother.’

Paola nodded. ‘Sara’s mother.’

‘Oh my God! No!’

‘Yes, Guido, and she’s a nice girl.’

‘He’s only sixteen, Paola.’ He heard the bleat in his voice, but he couldn’t stop it.

Paola put her hand on his arm, then up to her mouth, and then burst into loud peals of laughter. ‘Oh, Guido, you should hear yourself. “He’s only sixteen.” No, I don’t believe it.’ She continued to laugh, had to lean back against the arm of the sofa, so helpless did her mirth render her.

What was he supposed to do, he wondered, grin and tell dirty jokes? Raffaele was his only son, and he didn’t know anything about what was out there: AIDS, prostitutes, girls who got pregnant and made you marry them. And then, suddenly, he saw it through Paola’s eyes, and he laughed until tears came into his.

Raffaele came in then to ask his mother to help him with his Greek homework and, finding them like that, he wondered what all this talk about adulthood was.

* * * *

23

Neither that night nor the following day did Ambrogiani call, and Brunetti had to fight the constant temptation to call the American base and try to get in touch with him. He called Fosco in Milan and got only his answering machine. Peeling not a little foolish at being reduced to talking to a machine, he told Riccardo what Ambrogiani had told him about Gamberetto, asked him to see what else he could find out, and asked him to call. Beyond this, he could mink of little to do, so he read and commented on reports, read the newspapers, and found himself constantly distracted by the thought of that night’s meeting with Ruffolo.

Just as he was preparing to leave to go home for lunch, the intercom rang. ‘Yes, Vice-Questore,’ he answered automatically, too preoccupied to be able to savour Patta’s inevitable moment of unease when he was recognized before he identified himself.

‘Brunetti,’ he began, ‘I’d like you to step down to my office for a moment.’

‘Immediately, sir,’ Brunetti answered, pulling yet another report towards him, opening it, and beginning to read.

‘I’d like you to come now, not “immediately”, Commissario,’ Patta said, so sternly that Brunetti realized he must have someone, someone important, in his office with him.

‘Yes, sir. This instant,’ he answered and turned the page he was reading face down, the better to resume his place when he came back. After lunch, he thought, and went to the window to see if it still looked like rain. The sky above San Lorenzo was grey and ominous, and the leaves of the trees Hi the small campo flipped over with the force of the wind that swirled around them. He went over to the cupboard to hunt for an umbrella: he hadn’t bothered to bring one with him this morning. He pulled open the door and looked inside. There was the usual jumble of abandoned objects: a single yellow boot, a shopping bag filled with old newspapers, two large, padded envelopes, and a pink umbrella. Pink. Chiara’s, left there months ago. If he remembered correctly, it had large, happy elephants on it, but he didn’t want to open it to find out. Pink was bad enough. He looked deeper, shifting things aside delicately with his toe, but there was no second umbrella.

He took the umbrella from the closet and went back to his desk. If he rolled La Repubblica the long way, he could wrap it around most of the umbrella, leaving only the handle exposed, the handle and a handsbreadth of pink. He did this to his satisfaction, left his office, and took the steps down to Patta’s. He knocked, waited until he was sure he heard his superior call ‘Avanti’, and went in.

Usually, when Brunetti entered, he found Patta behind his desk - ‘enthroned’ was the word that sprang most easily to mind - but today he was seated in one of the smaller chairs that sat in front of the desk, seated to the right of a dark-haired man who sat entirely at his ease, legs crossed at the knees, one hand dangling from the arm of the chair, cigarette held between the first two fingers. Neither man bothered to stand when Brunetti came in, though the visitor did uncross his legs and lean forward to stab out his cigarette in the malachite ashtray.

‘Ah, Brunetti,’ Patta said. Had he been expecting someone else? He gestured to the man beside him. ‘This is Signor Viscardi. He’s in Venice for the day and stopped by to bring me an invitation to the gala dinner at Palazzo Pisani Moretta next week, and I asked him to stay. I thought he might like to have a word wife you.’

Viscardi got to his feet then and approached Brunetti, hand extended. ‘I’d like to thank you, Commissario, for your attention to this case.’ As Rossi had noted, the man spoke wife the elided R of Milan, the consonant slithering unpronounced from his tongue. He was a tall man with dark brown eyes, soft and peaceful eyes, and an easy, relaxed smile. The skin under his left eye was slightly discoloured and appeared to be covered with something, perhaps make-up.

Brunetti shook his hand and returned his smile.

Patta interrupted here. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t much progress, Augusto, but we hope to have some information about your paintings soon.’ He used the familiar ‘tu’ with Viscardi, an intimacy Brunetti assumed he was meant to register. And respect.

‘I certainly hope so. My wife is very attached to those paintings, especially the Monet.’ He made it sound like the enthusiasm children had for their toys. He turned his attention, and his charm, to Brunetti. ‘Perhaps you could tell me if you have had any, I think they’re called “leads”, Commissario. I’d like to be able to take good news back to my wife.’

‘Unfortunately, we have very little to report, Signor Viscardi. We’ve passed the descriptions you gave us of the men you saw to our officers, and we’ve sent copies of your photos of the paintings to the Art Fraud Police. But beyond that, nothing.’ Signor Viscardi smiled when he heard this, and Brunetti knew he didn’t want him to learn about Ruffolo’s attempt to speak to the police.

‘But haven’t you,’ Patta interrupted, ‘got a suspect? I remember reading something in your report about Vianello, that he was going to talk to him last weekend. What happened?’

‘A suspect?’ Viscardi asked, eyes bright with interest.

‘It turned out to be nothing, sir,’ Brunetti said, addressing Patta. ‘A false lead.’

‘I thought it was that man in the photograph,’ Patta insisted. ‘I read his name in the report, but I forget it.’

‘Would that be the same man your sergeant showed me a picture of?’ Viscardi asked.

‘It seems it was a false lead,’ Brunetti said, smiling apologetically. ‘It turns out he couldn’t have had anything to do with it. At least we’re convinced that he couldn’t have.’

‘It seems you were right, Augusto,’ Patta said, insistent upon the repetition of his first name. He turned to Brunetti and made his voice firm. ‘What have you got on the two men whose descriptions you do have?’

‘Unfortunately, nothing, sir.’

‘Have you checked...’ Patta began, and Brunetti gave him his undivided attention, waiting to see what concrete suggestions would follow. ‘Have you checked the usual sources?’ Underlings knew details.

‘Oh, yes, sir. It was the first thing we did.’

Viscardi shot back his starched cuff, glanced down at a gleaming fleck of gold, and said, turning to Patta, ‘I don’t want to keep you from your lunch appointment, Pippo.’ As soon as Brunetti heard the nickname, he found himself turning it in his mind like a mantra: Pippo Patta, Pippo Patta, Pippo Patta.

‘Perhaps you’ll join us, Augusto,’ he asked, ignoring Brunetti.

‘No, no, I’ve got to get to the airport. My wife expects me for cocktails, and then, as I told you, we have guests for dinner.’ He must have told Patta the names of these guests, as well, for the mere reminder of their magic power was enough to cause Patta to smile broadly and clasp his hands together, as if in vicarious enjoyment of their presence, here in his office.

Patta glanced at his own watch, and Brunetti was witness to his agony, having to leave one rich and powerful man to go and dine with others. ‘Yes, I really must go. Can’t keep the minister waiting,’ He didn’t bother to waste the minister’s name on Brunetti and Brunetti wondered if it was because Patta assumed he wouldn’t be impressed or because he wouldn’t recognize it. Little matter, he was not to learn it.

Patta went to the fifteenth-century Tuscan armadio that stood beside the door and took his Burberry from it. He slipped it on, then helped Viscardi into his coat. ‘Are you leaving now?’ Viscardi asked Brunetti, who answered that he was. ‘The Vice-Questore is going to Corte Sconta for lunch, but I’m going up towards San Marco, where I can get a boat to the airport. Are you walking that way, by any chance?’

‘Why, yes, I am, Signer Viscardi,’ Brunetti lied.

Patta walked ahead with Viscardi until they got to the front door of the Questura. There, the two men shook hands, and Patta said something about seeing Brunetti after lunch. Outside, Patta turned up the collar of his raincoat and hurried off to the left. Viscardi turned right, waited a moment for Brunetti to position himself beside him, and started towards Ponte dei Greci and, beyond it, San Marco,

‘I certainly hope this case can be quickly ended,’ Viscardi said by way of beginning.

‘Yes, so do I,’ Brunetti agreed.

‘I had hoped to find a safer city here, after Milan.’

‘It certainly was an unusual crime.’ Brunetti offered.

Viscardi paused for a moment, glanced sideways at Brunetti, then continued walking. ‘Before I moved here, I had believed that all crime would be unusual in Venice.’

‘It’s certainly less common here than in other cities, but we do have crime,’ Brunetti explained, and then added, ‘and we have criminals.’

‘Could I offer you a drink, Commissario. What do you Venetians call it, “un’ ombra”?’

‘Yes, “un’ ombra”, and yes, I’d like one.’ Together, they turned into a bar they were passing, and Viscardi ordered them two glasses of white wine. When they came, he handed one to Brunetti and lifted his own. He tilted up his glass and said, ‘Cin, cin.’ Brunetti responded with a nod.

The wine was sharp, not good at all. Had he been alone, Brunetti would have left it. Instead, he took another sip, met Viscardi’s glance, and smiled.

‘I spoke to your father-in-law last week,’ Viscardi said.

Brunetti had wondered how long it would take him to get around to this. He took another sip. ‘Yes?’

‘There were a number of matters we had to discuss.’

‘Yes?’

‘When we finished with our discussion of business, the Count mentioned his relationship with you. I admit that I was at first surprised.’ Viscardi’s tone suggested that his surprise was the result of his discovery that the Count would have allowed his daughter to marry a policeman, especially this one. ‘By the coincidence, you understand,’ Viscardi added, just a beat too late, and smiled again.

‘Of course.’

‘I was, quite frankly, encouraged to learn that you were related to the Count.’ Brunetti gave him an inquiring look. ‘I mean, that offered me the possibility of speaking frankly to you. That is, if I might.’

‘Please, Signore.’

‘Then I must admit that a number of things about this investigation are upsetting to me.’

‘In what way, Signor Viscardi?’

‘Not the least,’ he began, turning to Brunetti with a smile of candid friendliness, ‘are my feelings about the way I was treated by your policemen.’ He paused, sipped at his wine, tried another smile, this time a consciously tentative one. ‘I may speak frankly, I hope, Commissario.’

‘Certainly, Signer Viscardi. I desire nothing else.’

‘Then, let me say that I felt, at the time, as if your policemen were treating me more as a suspect than as a victim.’ When Brunetti said nothing to this, Viscardi added, ‘That is, two of them came to the hospital, and both of them asked questions that had little bearing on the crime.’

‘And what is it that they asked you?’ Brunetti enquired.

‘One asked how I knew what the paintings were. As if I wouldn’t recognize them. And the second asked me if I recognized that young man in the photo and seemed sceptical when I said that I did not.’

‘Well, that’s been sorted out,’ Brunetti said. ‘He had nothing to do with it.’

‘But you’ve got no new suspects?’

‘Unfortunately not,’ Brunetti answered, wondering why it was that Viscardi was willing so quickly to abandon interest in the young man in the photo. ‘You said that there were a number of things that bothered you, Signor Viscardi. That is only one. Might I ask what the others are?’

Viscardi raised his glass towards his lips, then lowered it without drinking and said, ‘I’ve learned that certain questions have been asked about me and about my affairs.’

Brunetti opened his eyes in feigned surprise. ‘I hope you don’t suspect that I would pry into your private life, Signor Viscardi.’

Viscardi suddenly set his glass, still almost completely full, back onto the counter and said, quite clearly, ‘Swill.’ When he saw Brunetti’s surprise, he added, ‘The wine, of course. I’m afraid we haven’t chosen the right place to have a drink.’

‘No, it isn’t very good, is it?’ Brunetti agreed, setting his empty glass down on the counter beside Viscardi’s.

‘I repeat, Commissario, that questions have been asked about my business dealings. No good can come of asking those questions. I’m afraid that any further invasion of my privacy will force me to seek the aid of certain friends of mine.’

‘And what friends are those, Signor Viscardi?’

‘It would be presumptuous of me to mention their names. But they are sufficiently well-placed to see that I am not the victim of bureaucratic persecution. Should that be the case, I am sure they would step in to see that it was stopped.’

‘That sounds very much like a threat, Signor Viscardi.’

‘Don’t be melodramatic, Dottor Brunetti. It would be better to call it a suggestion. Further, it is a suggestion in which your father-in-law joins me. I know I speak for him when I say that you would be wise not to ask those questions. I repeat, no good will come to anyone who asks them.’

‘I’m not sure that I would expect much good at all to come of anything that has to do with your business dealings, Signor Viscardi.’

Viscardi suddenly pulled some loose bills from his pocket and threw them onto the counter, not bothering to ask how much the wine cost. Saying nothing to Brunetti, he turned and walked to the door of the bar. Brunetti followed him. Outside, it had begun to rain, the wind-shoved sheets of autumn. Viscardi paused at the door but only long enough to pull up the collar of his coat. Saying nothing, not bothering to glance back at Brunetti, he stepped out into the rain and quickly disappeared around a corner.

Brunetti stood in the doorway for a moment. Finally, seeing no other way, he reached down and unwrapped La Repubblica from around the umbrella, exposing its full length. He refolded the newspaper into a more easily handled shape and stepped out into the rain. He pressed the release and slid the umbrella open, looked up and saw it extend its plastic protection over him. Elephants, happy, dancing pink elephants. With the taste of the sour wine in his mouth, he hurried towards home and lunch.

* * * *

24

Brunetti went back to the Questura in the afternoon after first demanding his black umbrella from Paola. He answered correspondence for an hour or so but left early, saying he had a meeting, even though the meeting was with Ruffolo and was more than six hours away. When he got home, he told Paola about the midnight meeting, and she, who remembered talk of Ruffolo from the past, joined Brunetti in treating it as a lark, a stab at melodrama clearly brought on by Ruffolo’s having watched too much television during his last imprisonment. He hadn’t seen Ruffolo since the last time he had testified against him and imagined that he would find him much the same: good-tempered, flap-eared, and careless, in far too great a hurry to get on with the business of his life.

At eleven, he went out onto the balcony, looked up at the sky, and saw the stars. Half an hour later, he left the house, assuring Paola that he would probably be home by one and telling her not to bother waiting up for him. If Ruffolo gave himself up, they would have to go down to the Questura, and then there would be the business of writing up a statement and having Ruffolo sign it, and that could take hours. He said he would try to call her if this happened, but he knew she was so accustomed to his being out at odd hours that she would probably sleep through the call, and he didn’t want to wake the children.

The number five stopped running at nine, so he had no choice but to walk. He didn’t mind, especially on this splendid moonlit night. As so often happened, he gave no conscious thought to where he was going, simply allowed his feet, made wise by decades of walking, to take him there the shortest way. He crossed Rialto, passed through Santa Marina and. down towards San Francesco della Vigna. As always at this hour, the city was virtually deserted; he passed a night watchman, slipping little orange paper rectangles into the gratings in front of shops, proof that he had gone by in the night. He passed a restaurant and glanced in to see the white-jacketed staff crowded around a table, having a last drink before going home. And cats. Sitting, lying, serpentining themselves around fountains, padding. No hunting for these cats, though rats there were in plenty. They ignored him, knowing the precise hours of the people who came to feed them, certain that this stranger was not one of them.

He passed along the right side of the church of San Francesco della Vigna, then cut to the left and back to the Celestia vaporetto stop. Clearly outlined ahead of him he saw the metal-railed walkway and the steps leading up to it. He climbed them and when he got to the beginning of the walkway, he looked ahead at the bridge that rose up, like the hump on a camel, over the opening in the Arsenale wall that let the number five boat cut through the middle of the island and come out in the Bacino of San Marco.

The top of the bridge, he could see clearly, was empty. Not even Ruffolo would be so foolish as to make himself visible to any passing boat, not when the police were looking for him. He had probably jumped down onto the small beach on the other side of the bridge. Brunetti started towards the bridge, allowing himself a flash of irritation that he found himself here, walking around in the evening chill when any sensible person would be at home in bed. Why did crazy Ruffolo have to see an important person? He wants to see an important person, let him come into the Questura and talk to Patta.

He passed the first of the small beaches, no more than a few metres long, and glanced down onto it, looking for Ruffolo. In the ensilvering light of the moon, he could see that it was empty, but he could also see that its surface was covered with fragments of discarded bricks, shards of broken bottles, all covered with a layer of slimy green seaweed. Signorino Ruffolo had another thought coming if he believed that Brunetti was going to jump down onto that other filth-covered beach to have a little chat with him. He’d already lost one pair of shoes this week, and it wasn’t going to happen again. If Ruffolo wanted to talk, he could climb back up onto the walkway or he could stay down there and see that he spoke loud enough for Brunetti to hear.

He climbed the stairs on his side of the cement bridge, stood on the top for a moment, then walked down the stairs on the other side. Ahead of him, he saw the small beach, its far side hidden by a curve in the massive brick wall of the Arsenale that rose up ten metres above Brunetti’s head on his right.

A few metres from the island, he stopped and called in a low voice, ‘Ruffolo. It’s Brunetti.’ There was no answer. ‘Peppino, It’s Brunetti.’ Still no answer. The moonlight was so strong that it actually cast a shadow, hiding the part of the little island that lay under the walkway. But the foot was visible, one foot, wearing a brown leather shoe, and above it a leg. Brunetti leaned over the railing, but all he could see was the foot and the part of the leg that disappeared into the shadow under the walkway. He climbed over the railing, dropped to the stones below, slipped as he landed in seaweed, and broke his fall with both hands. When he stood, he could see the body more clearly, though fee head and shoulders rested in the shadows. That didn’t matter at all; he knew who it was. One arm lay flung out beyond the body, hand just at the edge of the water, tiny waves lapping at it delicately. The other arm was crumpled under the body. Brunetti bent down and felt at the wrist, but he could find no pulse. The flesh was cold, damp with the moisture that had risen up from the laguna. He moved a step closer, slipping into the shadow, and placed his hand at the base of the boy’s neck. There was no pulse. When he stepped back into the moonlight, Brunetti saw that there was blood on his fingers. He stooped down at the edge of the water and waved his hand back and forth quickly in the water of the laguna, water so filthy that the thought of it usually disgusted him

Standing, he dried his hand on his handkerchief, then took a small pencil flash from his pocket and bent back under the walkway. The blood came from a large open wound on the left side of Ruffolo’s head. Not far from him there lay a conveniently-placed rock. Just think of that; it looked precisely like he had jumped from the walkway, slipped on the slick rocks, and fallen backwards to smash his head in the fall. Brunetti had little doubt that there would be blood on the rock, Ruffolo’s blood.

Above him, he heard a soft footfall, and he ducked instinctively under the walkway. Even as he did, the stones and bricks shifted around under his feet, sending off a noise that deafened him. He crouched low, back placed tip against the seaweed-covered sea wall of the Arsenate. Again, he heard the footsteps, now directly above his head. He drew his pistol.

‘Commissario Brunetti?’

His panic receded, pushed back by that familiar voice. ‘Vianello,’ Brunetti said, coming out from under me walkway, ‘what the Devil are you doing here?’

Vianello’s head appeared above him, leaning over the railing and looking down to where Brunetti stood on the rubble that covered the surf ace of the beach.

‘I’ve been behind you, sir,’ since you went past the church, about fifteen minutes ago.’ Brunetti had heard and seen nothing, even though he had believed all his senses fully alert.

‘Did you see anyone?’

‘No, sir. I’ve been down there, reading the timetable at the boat stop, trying to look like I missed the last boat and couldn’t understand when the next one came. I mean, I had to have some excuse to be here at this time of night.’ Vianello suddenly stopped speaking, and Brunetti knew he had seen the leg sticking out from under the walkway.

‘That Ruffolo?’ he asked, surprised. This was too much like those Hollywood movies.

‘Yes.’ Brunetti moved away from the body and a stood directly under Vianello.

‘What happened, sir?’

‘He’s dead. It looks like he fell.’ Brunetti grimaced at the precision of the words. That’s exactly what it looked like.

The policeman knelt and stretched his hand out to Brunetti. ‘You want a hand up, sir?’

Brunetti glanced up at him and then down at Ruffolo’s leg. ‘No, Vianello, I’ll stay here with him. There’s a phone down at the Celestia stop. Go and call for a boat.’

Vianello moved off quickly, amazing Brunetti with the racket his feet made, echoing all through the space under the walkway. How silently he must have come, if Brunetti hadn’t heard him until he was directly overhead.

Left alone, Brunetti took his flashlight out of his pocket again and bent back over Ruffolo’s body. He wore a heavy sweater, no jacket, so the only pockets were those in his jeans. In his back pocket, he had a wallet. It held the usual things: identity card (Ruffolo was only twenty-six), driver’s licence (not a Venetian, he had one), twenty thousand lire, and the usual assortment of plastic cards and scraps of paper with phone numbers scribbled on them. He’d look at them later. He wore a watch, but there was no change in his pockets. Brunetti slipped the wallet back into Ruffolo’s pocket and turned away from the body. He looked out over the shimmering water, off to where the lights of Murano and Burano were visible in the distance. The moonlight lay softly upon the waters of the laguna, and no boats moved upon it to disturb its peace. A single glimmering sheet of silver connected the mainland with the outer islands. It reminded him of something Paola had read to him once, the night she told him she was pregnant with Raffaele, something about gold being beaten to a fine thinness. No, not fine, airy; that was the way they loved one another. He hadn’t really understood it then, too excited with the news to try to understand the English. But the image struck him now, as the moonlight lay upon the laguna like silver beaten to airy thinness. And Ruffolo, poor, stupid Ruffolo, lay dead at his feet.

The boat was audible a long way off, and then it came shooting out of the Rio di Santa Giustina, blue light twirling around on the forward cabin. He turned on his flashlight and pointed it in their direction, giving them a beacon for approaching the beach. They got as close as they could, and then two policemen had to put on high waders and walk in the low water up to the island. They brought Brunetti a third pair, and he slipped them on over his shoes and trousers. He waited on the small beach while the others came, trapped there with Ruffolo, the presence of death, and the smell of rotting seaweed.

By the time they took photos of the body, removed it, and went back to the Questura to make out a full report, it was three in the morning. Brunetti was preparing to go home when Vianello came in and put a neatly typewritten sheet of paper on his desk. ‘If you’d be kind enough to sign this, sir,’ he said, ‘I’ll see that it gets where it’s supposed to go.’

Brunetti looked down at the paper and saw that it was a full report of his plan to meet Ruffolo, but it was phrased in the future tense. He looked at the top of the sheet and saw that it bore yesterday’s date and was addressed to Vice-Questore Patta.

One of the rules that Patta had introduced to the Questura when he took up his command there some years ago was one that ordered the three commissaries to have on his desk, before seven-thirty in the evening, a complete report of what they had accomplished that day and a projected idea of what they would do the following day. Since Patta was never to be seen in the Questura that late, and was certainly not to be seen before ten in the morning, it would have been an easy thing to slip it on his desk, were it not for the fact that there were only two keys to Patta’s office. He kept one on a gold key chain attached to the bottom buttonhole of the vests of the three-piece British suits he affected. The other was in the charge of Lieutenant Scarpa, a leather-faced Sicilian whom Patta had brought up with him from Palermo and who was fiercely loyal to his superior. It was Scarpa who locked the office at seven-thirty and unlocked it at eight-thirty each morning; He also checked to see what was on his superior’s desk when he unlocked the office.

‘I appreciate it, Vianello,’ Brunetti said when he read the first two paragraphs of the report, which explained in detail what he intended to do in meeting Ruffolo and why he thought it important that Patta be kept informed. He smiled tiredly and held it out without bothering to read the rest. ‘But I think there’s no way to keep him from finding out that I did this on my own, that I had no intention of telling him about it.’

Vianello didn’t move. ‘If you’d just sign the report, sir, I’ll take care of it.’

‘Vianello, what are you going to do with this?’

Ignoring the question, Vianello said, ‘He kept me on burglary for two years, didn’t he, sir? Even when I asked for a transfer.’ He tapped the back of the papers. ‘If you’ll just sign it, sir, it’ll be on his desk tomorrow morning.’

Brunetti signed the paper and handed it back to Vianello. ‘Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll tell my wife to call you if she ever locks herself out of the apartment.’

‘Nothing easier. Good night, sir.’

* * * *

25

Even though he didn’t get to sleep until after four, Brunetti still managed to arrive at the Questura at ten. He found notes on his desk telling him that the autopsy on Ruffolo was scheduled for that afternoon, that his mother had been informed of her son’s death, and that Vice-Questore Patta would like Brunetti to see him in his office when he came in.

Patta here before ten. Let angelic hosts proclaim it. When he went into Patta’s office, the Cavaliere looked up and, Brunetti blamed it on his own lack of sleep, seemed to smile at him. ‘Good morning, Brunetti. Please have a seat. You really didn’t have to get here this early, not after your exploits of last night.’ Exploits?

‘Thank you, sir. It’s nice to see you here so early.’

Patta ignored the remark and continued to smile. ‘You did very well with this Ruffolo thing. I’m glad you finally came to see it the same way I did.’

Brunetti had no idea what he was talking about, so he chose the course of greatest wisdom. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘That just about ties it up, doesn’t it? I mean, we don’t have a confession, but I think the Procuratore will see the case the way we do and believe that Ruffolo was on his way to try to make a deal. He was foolish to bring the evidence with him, but I’m sure he thought all you were going to do was talk.’

None of the paintings had been on that tiny beach; Brunetti was sure of that. But he might have had some of Signora Viscardi’s jewellery hidden somewhere on him. All Brunetti had done was check his pockets, so it was possible.

‘Where was it?’ he asked.

‘In his wallet, Brunetti. Don’t tell me you didn’t see it. It was in the list of the things he had on him when we found his body. Didn’t you stay long enough to make out the list?’

‘Sergeant Vianello took care of that, sir.’

‘I see.’ At the first sign of what was an oversight on Brunetti’s part, Patta’s mood grew even sweeter. ‘Then you didn’t see it?’

‘No, sir. I’m sorry, but I must have overlooked it. The light was very bad out there last night.’ This was beginning to make no sense. There had been no jewellery in Ruffolo’s wallet, not unless he had sold one of the pieces for twenty thousand lire.

‘The Americans are sending someone here to take a look at it today, but I don’t think there’s any doubt. Foster’s name is on it, and Rossi tells me the photo looks like him.’

‘His passport?’

Patta’s smile was broad. ‘His military identification card.’ Of course. The plastic cards that were in Ruffolo’s wallet, that he had stuffed back inside without bothering to examine. Patta continued. ‘It’s sure proof that Ruffolo was the one who killed him. The American probably made some sort of false move. Foolish thing to do when a man has a knife. And Ruffolo would have panicked, so soon out of prison.’ Patta shook his head at the rashness of animals.

‘Coincidentally, Signor Viscardi called me yesterday afternoon to tell me that it’s possible the young man in the photograph might have been there that night. He said he was too surprised at the time to think clearly.’ Patta pursed his lips in disapproval as he added, ‘And I’m sure the treatment he received at the hands of your officers didn’t help him remember.’ His expression changed, the smile reblossomed. ‘But that’s all in the past, and he certainly seems to bear no ill will. So it seems those Belgian people were right, and Ruffolo was there. I assume he didn’t get much money from the American and thought he’d try to arrange a more profitable robbery.’

Patta was expansive. ‘I’ve already spoken to the Press about this, explaining that we were in no doubt from the very beginning. The murder of the American had to be a random thing. And how, thank God, that’s proved.’ As he listened to Patta so blandly lay Foster’s murder at Ruffolo’s door, Brunetti saw that Doctor Peters’ death would never be seen as anything other than an accidental overdose.

He had no choice but to hurl himself under the juggernaut of Patta’s certainty. ‘But why would he take the chance of carrying the American’s card? That doesn’t make any sense.’

Patta rolled right over him. ‘He could outrun you easily, Commissario, so there was no chance he would be found with it. Or perhaps he forgot about it.’

‘People don’t often forget about evidence that links them to murder, sir.’

Patta ignored him. ‘I’ve told the Press we had reason to suspect him in the killing of the American from the very beginning, that this was why you wanted to talk to him. He was probably afraid we were onto him and thought he could make a deal with us about a lesser crime. Or perhaps he was going to try to blame someone else for the American’s death. The fact that he had the American’s card with him leaves no doubt that he killed him.’ Well, Brunetti was sure of that: it surely would remove all doubt. ‘That, after all, is why you went to meet him, isn’t it? About the American?’ When Brunetti didn’t answer, Patta repeated his question, ‘Isn’t it, Commissario?’

Brunetti brushed aside the question with a motion of his head and asked, ‘Have you said any of this to the Procuratore, sir?’

‘Of course I have. What do you think I’ve been doing all morning? Like me, he believes it’s an open-and-shut case. Ruffolo killed the American in a robbery attempt, then tried to make more money by robbing the Viscardi palazzo.’

Brunetti tried one last time to interject some sense into this. ‘They’re very different sorts of crime, a mugging and the theft of paintings.’

Patta’s voice grew louder. ‘There’s evidence that he was involved in both crimes, Commissario. There’s the identification card, and there are your Belgian witnesses. You were willing enough to believe in them before, that they saw Ruffolo the night of the robbery. And now Signor Viscardi thinks he remembers Ruffolo. He’s asked to take another look at the photo, and if he recognizes him, there will be no doubt. There’s more than enough evidence for me, and more than enough to convince the Procuratore.’

Brunetti pushed his chair back abruptly and stood. ‘Will that be all, sir?’

‘I thought you’d be more pleased, Brunetti,’ Patta said with real surprise. ‘This closes the case of the American, but it will make it harder to find Signor Viscardi’s paintings and see that they’re returned to him. You’re not exactly a hero, since you didn’t bring Ruffolo in. But I’m sure you would have, if only he hadn’t fallen from the walkway. I’ve mentioned your name to the Press.’

That was probably harder for Patta to do than it would be for him to give Brunetti his own firstborn son. Take the gift as given. ‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Of course, I made it clear that you were following my suggestions, mind you, that I’d been suspicious of Ruffolo from the very first. After all, he was let out of prison only a week before he killed the American.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Patta grew expansive. ‘It’s unfortunate that we haven’t found Signor Viscardi’s paintings. I’ll try to stop by to see him sometime today to tell him about this myself.’

‘He’s here?’

‘Yes, when I spoke to him yesterday, he mentioned he would be coming to Venice today. He said he was willing to stop by and take another look at that photograph. As I told you, that would remove all doubts.’

‘Do you think he’ll be bothered that we didn’t get the paintings back?’

‘Oh,’ Patta said, dearly having considered this. ‘Of course he will be. A person who has a collection feels that way about their paintings. Art comes alive to some people.’

‘I suppose that’s the way Paola feels about that Canaletto.’

‘That what?’ Patta asked.

‘Canaletto. He was a Venetian painter. Paola’s uncle gave us one of his paintings as a wedding present. Not a very big one, sir. But she seems very attached to it. I keep telling her to put it in the living room, but she likes to keep it in the kitchen.’ As revenge, it wasn’t much, but it was something.

Patta’s voice was strangled. ‘In the kitchen?’

‘Yes, I’m glad you think It’s a strange place to keep it, sir. I’ll tell her you think so, too. I think I’ll go down and see what Vianello’s done. He had a few things he has to take care of for me.’

‘Fine, Brunetti. I wanted to compliment you on a job well done. Signor Viscardi was very pleased.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Brunetti said, moving towards the door.

‘He’s a friend of the mayor’s, you know.’

‘Ah,’ Brunetti said, ‘no, I didn’t know that, sir.’ But he should have.

Downstairs, Vianello was at his desk. He looked up when Brunetti came in and smiled. ‘I hear you’re a hero this morning.’

‘What else was in that paper I signed last night?’ Brunetti asked with no prelude.

‘It said that you thought Ruffolo was involved with the death of the American.’

‘That’s ridiculous. You know what Ruffolo was like. He would have cut and run if anyone had so little as yelled at him.’

‘He’d just done two years inside, sir. It’s possible he changed.’

‘Do you really think that?’

‘It’s possible, sir.’

‘That’s not what I asked you, Vianello. I asked you if you believed he did it.’

‘If he didn’t, then how did the American’s identity card get into his wallet?’

‘You believe it, then?’

‘Yes. At least I think it’s possible. Why don’t you believe it, sir?’

Because of the Count’s warning - Brunetti could only now see it as the warning it had been - about the connection between Gamberetto and Viscardi. He saw now, as well, that Viscardi’s threat had had nothing to do with Brunetti’s investigation of the robbery at the palazzo. It was his investigation into the murders of the two Americans that Viscardi had warned him away from, murders with which poor, stupid Ruffolo had nothing to do, murders which he knew, now, would go forever unpunished.

His thoughts turned from the two dead Americans to Ruffolo, finally hitting what he thought was the big time, boasting to his mother about his important friends. He had robbed the palazzo, even done what the important man told him to do, roughed him up a little, though that was not at all like Ruffolo. When had Ruffolo learned that Signor Viscardi was involved in far more than stealing his own paintings? He had mentioned three things that would interest Brunetti - they must have been the paintings — yet, in his wallet, there had been only one. Who had put it there? Had Ruffolo somehow come into possession of the identity card and kept it to use as a bargaining chip in his conversation with Brunetti? Worse, had he tried to threaten Viscardi with his knowledge of it and what it meant? Or had he merely been an innocent, ignorant pawn, one of the countless little players in the game, like Foster and Peters, used for a while and then tossed away when they learned something that would threaten the major players? Had the card been slipped into his wallet by the same person who had used the rock to kill him?

Vianello still sat at his desk, looking at him strangely, but there was no answer Brunetti could give him, none that he would believe. Because he was almost a hero, he went back upstairs, closed the door to his office, and looked out of the window for an hour. A few workers had finally appeared on the scaffolding of San Lorenzo, but there was no way of telling what they were doing. None of them ever went as high as the roof, so the tiles remained untouched. Nor did they appear to be carrying tools of any sort. They walked along the various layers of scaffolding, climbed up and down between them on the several ladders that connected them, came together and spoke to one another, then separated and went back to climbing the ladders. It was very much like watching the busy activity of ants: it appeared to have a purpose, if only because they were so energetic, but no human was capable of understanding that purpose.

His phone rang, and he turned away from the window to answer it. ‘Brunetti.’

‘Commissario Brunetti. This is Maggiore Ambrogiani at the American base in Vicenza. We met some time ago in regard to the death of that soldier in Venice.’

‘Ah yes, Maggiore,’ Brunetti said after a pause long enough to suggest to whoever was listening in that he recalled the Maggiore only with difficulty. ‘How can I help you?’

‘You’ve already done that, Signer Brunetti, at least for my American colleagues, by finding the murderer of that young man. I’ve called to give you my personal thanks and extend those of the American authorities here at the base.’

‘Ah, that’s most kind of you, Maggiore. I do appreciate it. Of course, anything we can do to be of assistance to America, especially the agencies of its government, is gladly done.’

‘How nicely put, Signer Brunetti. I’ll be sure to convey your exact words to them.’

‘Yes, do that, Maggiore. Is there anything else I can do for you?’

‘Wish me good luck, I suppose,’ Ambrogiani said with an artificial laugh.

‘Gladly, Maggiore, but why?’

‘I’ve been given a new assignment.’

‘Where?’

‘Sicily.’ Ambrogiani’s voice was absolutely level and without emotion when he pronounced the name.

‘Ah, how very nice for you, Maggiore. I’m told it has an excellent climate. When will you be going?’

‘This weekend.’

‘Ah, as soon as that? When will your family be joining you?’

‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. I’ve been given command of a small unit in the mountains, and it’s not possible for us to bring our families with us.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Maggiore.’

‘Well, ifs all in the nature of the service, I suppose.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is. Anything else we can do for you here, Maggiore?’

‘No, Commissario. Again, I extend my thanks and those of my American colleagues.’

‘Thank you, Maggiore. And good luck,’ Brunetti said, the only honest words he had said in the conversation. He hung up and went back to examining the scaffolding. The men were no longer on it. Had they, he wondered, been sent to Sicily, as well? How long does one survive in Sicily? A month? Two? He forgot how long Ambrogiani had said he had until he could retire. Brunetti hoped he made it that long.

He thought again of those three young people, all gone to their violent deaths, pawns tossed aside by a brutal hand. Until now, that hand could have been Viscardi’s alone, but Ambrogiani’s transfer meant that other, more powerful, players were involved, players to whom both he and Ambrogiani could just as easily be swept from the board. He recalled the lettering on one of those death-filled plastic bags, ‘Property of US Government’. He shivered.

He had no need to check the file for the address. He left the Questura and walked towards the Rialto, seeing nothing, insensible to what he passed. At Rialto, suddenly overcome with weariness at the thought of walking any further, he waited for the number one vaporetto and got off at the second stop, San Stae. Though he had never been there, his feet guided him to the door; Vianello had told him — it seemed months ago -where it was. He rang the bell, gave his name, and the door snapped open.

The courtyard was small, devoid of plants, the steps leading up from it a dull grey. Brunetti reached the top of the stairs and raised his hand to knock on the wooden door, but Viscardi opened it before he could do so.

The mark under his eye was lighter, the bruising almost entirely gone. The smile, however, was the same. ‘What a pleasant surprise to see you, Commissario. Do come in.’ He held out his hand, but when Brunetti ignored it, he lowered it as if naturally and used it to pull back the door.

Brunetti stepped into the entrance hall and allowed Viscardi to close the door behind him. He felt a compelling desire to strike this man, to do some sort of physical violence to him, hurt him somehow. Instead, he followed Viscardi into a large, airy salon that looked out across what must be a back garden.

‘What may I do for you, Commissario?’ Viscardi asked, still maintaining his politeness, but not to the point of offering Brunetti either a seat or a drink.

‘Where were you last night, Signor Viscardi?’

Viscardi smiled, letting his eyes grow soft and warm. The question surprised him not in the least. ‘I was where any decent man is at night, Dottore: I was at home with my wife and children.’

‘Here?’

‘No, I was in Milan. And if I might anticipate your next question, there were other people there, two guests and three servants.’

‘When did you get here?’

‘This morning, on the early plane.’ He smiled and, reaching into his pocket, pulled out a small blue card. ‘Ah, how very fortunate, I still have the boarding pass with me.’ He held it towards Brunetti. ‘Would you like to inspect it, Commissario?’

Brunetti ignored the gesture. ‘We found that young man who was in the photo,’ Brunetti said.

‘The young man?’ Viscardi asked, paused, and then let remembrance play across his face. ‘Ah yes, the young criminal your sergeant showed me the picture of. Has Vice-Questore Patta told you that I think I might remember him now?’ Brunetti ignored the question so Viscardi continued, ‘Does this mean you’ve arrested him? If this means you’ll be getting my pictures back, my wife will be thrilled.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Viscardi asked, letting one brow arch in surprise. ‘How unfortunate. Was it a natural death?’ he asked, then paused as if weighing his next question. ‘A drug overdose, perhaps? I’m told that accidents like that happen, especially with young people.’

‘No, it wasn’t a drug overdose. He was murdered.’

‘Oh, I am sorry to hear that, but there does seem to be an awful lot of that going around, doesn’t there?’ He smiled at his little joke and asked, ‘And was he, after all, responsible for the robbery here?’

‘There is evidence that connects him to it.’

Viscardi contracted his eyes, no doubt intending to display dawning realization. ‘Then it really was him I saw that night?’

‘Yes, you saw him.’

‘Does that mean I’ll be getting the pictures back soon?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, too bad. My wife will be so disappointed.’

“We found evidence that he was connected to another crime.’

‘Really? What crime?’

‘The murder of the American soldier.’

‘You and Vice-Questore Patta must be pleased, to be able to solve that crime, as well.’

‘The Vice-Questore is.’

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

‘Because he wasn’t the killer.’

‘You sound very certain of that fact.’

‘I am very certain of that fact.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What’s going on?’ Brunetti asked.

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

‘Three,’ Bonaventura said, eyes still closed.

‘What happened?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Were you seeing patients?’

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

‘What’s back there?’

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

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

‘What did she look like, Dottore?’

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

‘What notes were you writing up, Dottore?’

‘I told you, from the autopsy.’

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

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

‘No, Dottore. Ruffolo.’

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

‘Can you remember anything she said, Dottore?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What is that, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked.

‘She thought I was from Milan.’

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

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

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

‘Yes, sir, It’s outside.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What did he tell you, Signora?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, Signora, I must stay here.’

She pointed to Vianello, spoke to Brunetti. ‘Can I trust him?’

‘Yes, Signora, you can trust him.’

‘You swear?’

‘Yes, Signora. I swear.’

‘Va bene, we go in the boat.’

She started to walk away, led by Vianello, who had to bend down to keep his hand under her elbow. She took two steps, stopped, and turned back to Brunetti. ‘Dottore?’

‘Yes, Signora Concetta?’

‘The paintings are at my house.’ She turned away and continued towards the door with Vianello.

Later, Brunetti was to discover that, after twenty years in Venice, she had never been on a boat: like many people from the mountains of Sicily, she had a deadly fear of the water, and in twenty years, she had never overcome it. But before that he was to learn what she had done with the paintings. When the police got to her apartment that afternoon, they found the three paintings, the Monet, the Gauguin, and the Guardi, hacked to pieces with the same scissors with which she had tried to attack Brunetti, years ago. This time, there had been no Peppino to stop her, and she had destroyed them utterly, leaving only jagged tatters of canvas and colour in the wake of her grief. It came as no surprise to Brunetti to learn that many people considered this the sure proof of her madness: anyone could kill a man; only a madwoman would destroy a Guardi.

Two nights later, after dinner, Paola answered the ringing phone. He could tell from the warmth of her voice and the frequent laughter with which she greeted what she heard that it was her parents. After a long time, almost half an hour, she came out onto the terrace and said, ‘Guido, my father would like to speak to you for a moment.’

He went back into the living room and picked up the phone. ‘Good evening,’ he said.

‘Good evening, Guido,’ the Count said. ‘I’ve got some news for you.’

‘About the dump?’

‘Dump?’ the Count repeated, managing to sound confused.

‘The dump by Lake Barcis.’

‘Ah, you mean the building site. A private hauling contractor was up there earlier this week. The whole site has been cleaned up, everything removed, earth bulldozed over it.’

‘Building site?’

‘Yes, the Army has decided to conduct tests on radon emissions in the area. So they’re going to close off the area and build some sort of testing facility there. Unmanned, of course.’

‘Whose army, theirs or ours?’

‘Why ours, of course.’

‘Where was the material taken?’

‘I believe the trucks went to Genoa. But the friend who told me about it wasn’t too clear.’

‘You knew Viscardi was involved in this, didn’t you?’

‘Guido, I don’t like your accusatory tone,’ the Count said sharply. Brunetti didn’t apologize and the Count continued, ‘I knew a great deal about Signor Viscardi, Guido, but he was beyond my reach.’

‘He’s beyond everyone’s reach now,’ Brunetti said, but he took no satisfaction in being able to say it.

‘I attempted to tell you.’

‘I didn’t realize he was so powerful.’

‘He was. And his uncle,’ the Count named a cabinet minister, ‘remains even more so. Do you understand?’

He understood more than he wanted to. ‘I have another favour.’

‘I’ve done a lot for you this week, Guido. Much of it has been against my own best interests.’

‘It’s not for me.’

‘Guido, favours are always for ourselves. Especially when we ask for things for other people.’

Brunetti said nothing for so long that the Count finally asked, ‘What is it?’

‘There’s a Carabiniere officer, Ambrogiani. He’s just been reassigned to Sicily. Can you see that nothing happens to him while he’s there?’

‘Ambrogiani?’ the Count asked, as if interested in knowing no more than the name.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll see what I can do, Guido.’

‘I’d be very grateful.’

‘So, I imagine, will Maggiore Ambrogiani.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome, Guido. We’ll be home next week.’

‘Good. Have a nice holiday.’

‘Yes, I shall. Good night, Guido.’

‘Goodnight.’

As he replaced the phone, a detail of the conversation came flashing into Brunetti’s mind, and he stood frozen in place, staring down at his hand, unable to pry it loose from the receiver. The Count had known Ambrogiani’s rank. He had called him an officer, but the Count had called him ‘Maggiore Ambrogiani’. The Count knew about Gamberetto. He had business dealings with Viscardi. And now he knew Ambrogiani’s rank. What else did the Count know? And in what else was he involved?

Paola had replaced him on the terrace. He opened the door and went out to stand beside her, putting his arm over her shoulder. ‘The sky in the West gave off the last glimmerings of light; it would soon be dark.’

‘The days are getting shorter, aren’t they?’ she asked.

He tightened his hold on her and nodded.

They stood together like that. The bells started to ring, first the light bells of San Polo and then, from across the city, the canals, the centuries, they heard the magisterial boom of San Marco.

‘Guido, I think Raffi’s in love,’ she said, hoping this was the right moment.

Brunetti stood beside the mother of his only son, thinking of parents and the way they love their children. He said nothing for so long that she turned and looked up at him. ‘Guido, why are you crying?’