Death in a Strange Country (13 page)

‘I’m very glad you could
come out from Venice to speak to us, Chief Brunetti, or is it Questore?’

‘Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti
said, giving himself a promotion in the hopes that it would assure him greater
access to information. He noticed that Major Butterworth’s desk held In and Out
boxes; the In was empty, the Out full.

‘Please have a seat,’
Butterworth said and waited for Brunetti to sit before taking his own seat. The
American pulled a file from his front drawer, this one just minimally thicker
than the one Ambrogiani had. ‘You’re here about Sergeant Foster, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’
     
                     

‘What is it you’d like to
know?’

‘I’d like to know who
killed him,’ Brunetti said impassively.

Butterworth hesitated a
moment, not knowing how to take the remark, then decided to treat it as a joke.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a small laugh that barely passed his lips, ‘we’d all like
to know that. But I’m not sure we have any information that might help us find
out who it was.’

‘What information do you
have?’

He slid the file towards
Brunetti. Even though he knew it would contain the same material he had just
seen, Brunetti opened it and read through the pages again. This file contained
a different photograph from the one he had seen in the other. For the first
time, though he had seen his dead face and naked body, Brunetti got a clear
idea of what the young man looked like. More handsome in this photo, Foster
here had a short moustache that he had shaved off sometime before he was
killed.

‘When was ibis photo
taken?’

‘Probably when he entered
the service.’

‘How long ago was that?’

‘Seven years.’

‘How long has he been
here in Italy?’

‘Four years. In fact, he
just re-upped in order to stay here.’

‘Excuse me,’ Brunetti
said.

‘Re-enlisted. For another
three years.’

‘And he would have
remained here?’

‘Yes.’

Remembering something he
had read in the file, Brunetti asked, ‘How did he learn Italian?’

‘I beg your pardon,’
Butterworth said.

‘If he had a full time
job here, that wouldn’t leave him a lot of time to learn a new language,’
Brunetti explained.

‘Tanti di noi parliamo
Italiano,’
Butterworth
answered in heavily accented but understandable Italian.

‘Yes, of course,’
Brunetti said and smiled, as he guessed he was expected to do, at the Major’s
ability to speak Italian. ‘Did he live here? There are barracks here, aren’t
there?’

‘Yes, there are,’
Butterworth answered. ‘But Sergeant Foster had his own apartment in Vicenza.’

Brunetti knew the apartment
would have been searched, so he didn’t bother to ask if it had been. ‘Did you
find anything?’

‘No.’

‘Would it be possible for
me to have a look at it?’

‘I’m not sure that’s
necessary,’ Butterworth said quickly.

‘I’m not sure it’s
necessary, either,’ Brunetti said with a small smile. ‘But I’d like to see
where he lived.’

‘It’s not regular
procedure, for you to see it.’

‘I didn’t realize there
was a regular procedure here,’ Brunetti said. He knew that either the
Carabinieri or the Vicenza police could easily authorize his inspection of the
apartment, but he wanted, at least at this point of the investigation, to
remain as agreeable as possible with all of the authorities concerned.

‘I suppose it could be
arranged,’ Butterworth conceded. ‘When would you like to do it?’

‘There’s no hurry. This
afternoon. Tomorrow.’

‘I
didn’t realize you were
planning to return tomorrow, Vice-Questore.’

‘Only if I don’t finish
everything today, Major.’

‘What else was it you
wanted to do?’

‘I’d like to talk to some
of the people who knew him, who worked with him.’ Brunetti had noticed, among
the papers in the file, that the dead man had attended university classes at
the base. Like the Romans, these new empire builders carried their schools with
them. ‘Perhaps to people he went to university with.’

‘I suppose something can
be arranged, though I admit I don’t see the reason for it. We’ll handle this
end of the investigation.’ He paused, as if waiting for Brunetti to challenge
him. When Brunetti said nothing, Butterworth asked, ‘When would you prefer to
see his apartment?’

Brunetti glanced down at
his watch. It was almost noon. ‘Perhaps sometime this afternoon. If you could
tell me where the apartment is, then I could have my driver take me mere on my
way back to the railway station?’

‘Would you like me to go
along with you, Vice-Questore?’

‘That’s very kind of you,
Major, but I don’t think that will be necessary. If you’d just give me the
address.’

Major Butterworth pulled
a pad towards him and, without having to open the file to find it, wrote an
address and handed it to Brunetti. ‘It’s not far from here. I’m sure your
driver won’t have any trouble finding it.’

‘Thank you, Major,’
Brunetti said and stood. ‘Would you have any objection if I spent some time
here on the base?’

‘Post,’ Butterworth
responded immediately. ‘This is a post. The Air Force has bases. We have posts
in me Army.’

‘Ah, I see. In Italian,
they’re both bases. Would it be all right for me to remain here for a while?’

After no more than a
moment’s hesitation, Butterworth said, ‘I don’t see any problem with that.’

‘And the apartment,
Major? How will I get in?’

Major Butterworth got to
his feet and started around his desk. ‘We’ve got two men there. I’ll call them
and let them know you’re coming.’

‘Thank you, Major,’
Brunetti said, standing and extending his hand.

‘It’s nothing. Glad to be
of help in this.’ Butterworth’s grip was strong, forceful. But, Brunetti noted
as they shook hands, the American hadn’t asked to be told what he might discover
about the dead man.

The blonde was no longer
at her desk in the outer office. Her computer screen glimmered to one side of
her desk, as blank as her expression had been.

‘Where to, sir?’ asked
the driver when Brunetti got back into the car.

Brunetti gave him the
sheet of paper with Foster’s address on it. ‘Do you know where that is?’

‘Borgo Casale? Yes, sir.
It’s just behind the soccer stadium.’

‘Is that the way we came?’

‘Yes, sir. We passed
right alongside it on the way. Would you like to go there now?’

‘No, not yet. I’d like to
get something to eat first.’

‘Never been here before,
sir?’

‘No, I haven’t. Have you
been here long?’

‘Six years. But I’m lucky
to have been posted here. My family’s from Schio,’ he explained, naming a town
about half an hour away.

‘It’s very strange, isn’t
it?’ Brunetti asked, waving a hand at the buildings around them.

The driver nodded.

‘What else is here,
except for the offices? Maggiore Ambrogiani mentioned a supermarket.’

‘And a cinema and a swimming-pool,
a library, schools. It’s a whole city. They even have their own hospital.’

‘How many Americans are
here?’ Brunetti asked.

I’m not sure. About five
thousand, but that would be with wives and children, I think.’

‘Do you like them?’Brunetti
asked.

The driver shrugged. ‘What’s
not to like? They’re friendly.’ It hardly sounded like an enthusiastic
recommendation. Changing the subject, the driver asked, ‘What about lunch, sir?
Would you like to eat here or off-base?’

‘What do you suggest?’

‘The Italian
mensa
is
the best place. You can get food there. Hearing this, Brunetti wondered what
the Americans served in their own dining-halls. Rivets? ‘But ifs closed today.
Strike.’ Well, there was proof that it was really Italian, even on an American
military installation.

‘Is there anywhere else?’

Without answering, the
driver slipped the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. Suddenly, he
swung around in a sharp U-turn and headed back towards the main road that
bisected the post. He made a series of turns around buildings and behind cars,
none of which made any sense to Brunetti, and soon pulled up in front of yet
another low cement building.

Brunetti looked out of
the back window of the car and saw that they were stopped diagonally in front
of the right angle made by two shop fronts. Above one glass door, he saw ‘Food
Mall’. Wasn’t that what lions did to their prey? The other sign read ‘Baskin
Robbins’. Not at all optimistic, Brunetti asked, ‘Coffee?’

The driver nodded at the
second door, clearly eager for Brunetti to get out. When he did, the driver
leaned back across the seat and said, ‘I’ll be back in ten minutes,’ then shut
the door and pulled away sharply, leaving Brunetti on the curb, feeling
strangely abandoned and alien. To the right of the second door he could now see
a sign which read, ‘Capucino Bar’, the sign-maker apparently an American.

Inside, he asked the
woman behind the counter for a coffee then, knowing there would be no chance of
lunch, asked for a brioche. It looked like pastry, felt like pastry, but tasted
like cardboard. He placed three thousand-lire bills on the counter. The woman
looked at the notes, looked up at him, took them, then placed on the counter
the same coins he had found in the pockets of the dead man. For an instant,
Brunetti wondered if she was attempting to give him some private signal, but a
closer look at her face showed him that all she was doing was giving him the
proper change.

He left the place and
went to stand outside, content to get a sense of the post while waiting for his
driver to return. He sat on a bench in front of the shops and watched the
people walking past.

A few glanced at him as
he sat there, dressed in suit and tie and clearly out of place among them. Many
of the people who walked past him, men and women alike, wore uniform. Most of
the others wore shorts and tennis shoes, and many of the women, too often those
who shouldn’t have, wore halter tops. They appeared to be dressed either for
war or for the beach. Most of the men were fit and powerful; many of the women
were enormously, terrifyingly fat.

Cars drove by slowly,
their drivers searching for parking spaces: big cars, Japanese cars, cars with that
same AFI number plate. Most had the windows raised, while from the
air-conditioned interiors blared rock music in varying degrees of loudness.

They strolled by, amiable
and friendly, greeting one another and exchanging pleasant words, thoroughly at
home in their little American village here in Italy.

Ten minutes later, the
driver pulled up in front of him. Brunetti got into the back seat. ‘Would you
like to go to that address now, sir?’ the driver asked.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, a
little tired of America.