Death in a Strange Country (18 page)

Brunetti wondered how
well these opinions were received by both medical and military authorities, but
he thought it best to keep the question to himself. After all, it was not
Doctor Peters’ opinion about the use of drugs that he was interested in; it was
whether Sergeant Foster had used them or not. And, not at all incidentally, why
she had lied about going on a trip with him.

Behind her, the door
opened and a stocky middle-aged man in a green uniform came in. He seemed to be
surprised to see Brunetti there, but he clearly recognized the doctor.

‘Is the meeting over,
Ron?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, paused,
looked up at Brunetti and, not sure who he might be, added, ‘m’am.’

Doctor Peters turned to
Brunetti. ‘This is First Sergeant Wolf,’ she said. ‘Sergeant, this is Commissario
Brunetti, from the Venice police. He’s come out to ask some questions about
Mike.’

After the two men had
shaken hands and exchanged pleasantries, Doctor Peters said, ‘Perhaps Sergeant
Wolf can give you a clearer idea of what Sergeant Foster did, Mr Brunetti. He’s
in charge of all of the contacts that the hospital has off-post.’ She turned
towards the door. ‘I’ll leave you with him and get back to my patients.’
Brunetti nodded in her direction, but she had turned away from them and left
the office quickly.

‘What is it you wanted to
know, Commissario?’ Sergeant Wolf asked, then added, less formally, ‘Would you
like to come back to my office?’

‘Don’t you work here?’

‘No. I’m part of the
administrative staff of the hospital. Our offices are on the other side of the
building.’

‘Then who else works
here?’ he asked, pointing to the three desks.

‘This desk is Mike’s. Was
Mike’s,’ he corrected himself. ‘The other desk is Sergeant Dostie’s, but he’s
in Warsaw. They shared the computer.’

How wide this American
eagle spread its wings. ‘When will he be back?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Sometime next week, I
think,’ Wolf answered.

‘And how long has he been
away?’ Brunetti thought this less direct than asking when he had left.

‘Since before this
happened,’ Wolf responded, effectively answering Brunetti’s question and
eliminating Sergeant Dostie as a suspect.

‘Would you like to come
down to my office?’

Brunetti followed him
from the room and down the halls of the hospital, trying to remember the way
they went. They passed through a set of swinging double doors, down a
spotlessly clean corridor, through another set of doors, and then Wolf stopped
in front of an open door.

‘Not much, but I call it
home,’ he said with surprising warmth. He stepped back to let Brunetti. go into
the office first, then came in and pulled the door closed behind them. ‘Don’t
want us to be disturbed,’ he said and smiled. He walked behind his desk and sat
in an imitation-leather swivel chair. Most of the surface was covered with an
enormous desk calendar, and on that rested files, an In- and Out-tray, and a
telephone. To the right, in a brass frame, was a photo of an Oriental woman and
three young children, apparently the children of this mixed marriage.

‘Your wife?’ Brunetti
asked, taking a seat in front of the desk.

‘Yes, beautiful, isn’t
she?’

‘Very,’ Brunetti
answered.

‘And those are our three
kids. Joshua’s ten, Melissa’s six, and Jessica is only one.’

‘It’s a very handsome
family,’ Brunetti volunteered.

‘Yes, they are. I don’t
know what I’d do if I didn’t have them. I often told Mike that’s what he
needed, to marry and settle down.’

‘Did he need to settle
down?’ Brunetti asked, interested in the fact that it was always married men
with numerous children who wished this on single men.

‘Well, I don’t know,’
Wolf said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his desk. ‘He was
twenty-five, after all. Time to start a family.’

‘Did he have a girlfriend
to start it with?’ Brunetti asked cordially.

Wolf looked across at
him, then down at his desk. ‘Not that I knew about.’

‘Did he like women?’ If
Wolf understood that the corollary of this was whether he liked men, he gave no
sign.

‘I suppose so. I really
didn’t know him all that well Just here at work.’

‘Was anyone here a
special friend?’ When Wolf shook his head, Brunetti added, ‘Doctor Peters was
very upset when she saw the body.’

‘Well, they’d worked
together for a half a year or so. Don’t you think it’s normal she’d be upset to
see him?’

‘Yes, I suppose,’
Brunetti answered, offering no explanation. ‘Anyone else?’

‘No, not that I can think
of.’

‘Perhaps I could ask Mr
Dostie when he gets back.’

‘Sergeant Dostie,’ Wolf
corrected automatically.

‘Did he know Sergeant
Foster well?’

‘I really don’t know,
Commissario.’ It seemed to Brunetti that this man didn’t know very much at all,
not about a man who had worked for him for . . . ‘How long did Sergeant Foster
work for you?’ he asked.

Wolf pushed himself back
in his chair, glanced at the picture, as if his wife would tell him, then
answered, ‘Three years, ever since he got here.’

‘I see. And how long has
Sergeant Dostie been here?’

‘About four years.’

‘What kind of man was he,
Sergeant Wolf?’ Brunetti asked, turning the conversation back to the dead man.

This time, Wolf checked
with his children before he answered, ‘He was an excellent troop. His record
will tell you that. He tended pretty much to keep to himself, but that might be
because he was going to school, and he was very serious about that.’ Wolf
paused, as if looking for something more profound to say. ‘He was a very caring
individual.’

‘I beg your pardon?’
Brunetti asked, utterly lost. Caring? What did Foster care about? ‘I’m afraid I
don’t understand.’

Wolf was glad to explain.
‘You know, what you Italians call
“simpatico”‘.’

‘Oh,’ Brunetti muttered.
What a strange language these people spoke. More directly, he asked, ‘Did you
like him?’

The soldier was clearly
surprised by the question. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I did. I mean, like, we weren’t
friends or anything, but he was a nice guy.’

‘What were his exact
duties?’ Brunetti asked, taking his notebook from his pocket.

‘Well,’ Sergeant Wolf
began, latching his hands behind his head and sitting back more comfortably in
his chair, ‘he had to see about housing, that landlords kept up standards. You
know, enough hot water, enough heat in the winter. And he had to see that, when
we were tenants, we didn’t do any damage to the apartments or the houses. If a
landlord calls us and tells us his tenants are creating a health hazard, we go
out and investigate it.’

‘What sort of a health
hazard?’ Brunetti asked, honestly curious. ‘Oh, lots of things. Not taking the
garbage out, or putting the garbage too near the house. Or not cleaning up
after their animals. There’s a lot of that.’
         
           

‘What do you do?’

‘We have permission to,
no, we have the right to go into their houses.’

‘Even if they object?’

‘Especially if they
object,’ Wolf said with an easy laugh. That’s generally a sure sign the place
will be a mess.’

‘Then what do you do?’

‘We inspect the house to
see if there’s any danger to health.’

‘Does this happen often?’

Wolf started to answer,
then checked himself, and Brunetti realized that the man was weighing up how
much of this he could tell an Italian, what his response would be to such tales
regarding Americans. ‘We get a few,’ he said neutrally.

‘And then?’

‘We tell them to clean it
up, and we report it to their commander, and they’re given a certain time to
clean it up.’

‘And if they don’t?’

‘They get an Article
Fifteen.’

Brunetti smiled that
bland old smile again. ‘An Article Fifteen?’

‘It’s a sort of official
reprimand. It goes into the permanent file, and it can cause someone a lot of
trouble.’

‘Such as?’

‘It can cost them salary,
or demotion, or sometimes it can get them thrown out of the Army.’

‘For having a dirty
house?’ Brunetti asked, unable to restrain his surprise.

‘Mr Brunetti, if you saw
some of these houses, you’d want to throw them out of the country.’ He paused
for a moment, then began again, ‘And he had to go and check out the kitchens in
the embassies, especially if someone got sick there, or, worse, if a lot of
people started getting sick. We had hepatitis in Belgrade last year, and he had
to go and check it out.’

‘Anything else?’Brunetti
asked.

‘No, nothing important.’
     
               

Brunetti smiled. ‘I’m not
sure now what is and isn’t important at this point, Sergeant Wolf, but I’d like
to have a clear idea of his duties.’

Sergeant Wolf returned
his smile. ‘Of course. I understand. He also had to see that the kids at the
school all had the proper vaccinations. You know, against things like measles
and chickenpox. And he had to see that the rays got disposed of, them and some
other stuff that we can’t dispose of in the normal way. And there was a certain
amount of public health information that he was in charge of.’ He looked up,
finished. ‘That’s about it, I think.’

‘Rays?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, the X-rays from the
dental clinic, and even some of them from here in the hospital. They have to be
disposed of specially. We can’t put them in the trash.’

‘How is that done?’

‘Oh, we’ve got a contract
with an Italian haulier who comes in once a month and takes them away. Mike had
to see to that, check to see that the containers got picked up.’ Wolf smiled. ‘That’s
about it.’

Brunetti returned his
smile and stood. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Wolf. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘Well, I hope it does
some good. We all liked Mike here, and we certainly want to see you get the
person who did this.’

‘Yes. Certainly,’ Brunetti
said, extending his hand. ‘I don’t want to keep you from your work, Sergeant.’

The American stood to
shake Brunetti’s hand. His grasp was firm, confident. ‘Glad to be of help, sir.
If you have any more questions, please come and ask.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant. I
just might.’

When he was back in the
corridor, he traced his way back to the Public Health Office and knocked on the
door again. He waited a few seconds and, hearing nothing, let himself into the
office. As he had expected, the Blue Mosque and the Colosseum were still there.
The Pyramids were gone.

* *
* *

11

Back in the hall, he asked the first person passing by,
a young black woman in a nurse’s uniform, where he might find Doctor Peters.
She told him that she was going to Ward B, where Doctor Peters worked, and said
she would take him there. This time, they branched off in the opposite
direction, through still another set of double doors, but this time the people
coming towards him wore white uniforms or light-green scrub suits, not the darker
green of military uniforms. They passed a room with a sign that said it was a
recovery room, then off to his right he heard the squalling of babies. He
glanced down at the nurse, who smiled and nodded her head. ‘Three, all born
this week.’