Death in a Strange Country (3 page)

‘What?’

‘Why he’s in such good
shape,’ Rizzardi answered, entirely unconscious of the bitter incongruity of
the tense. ‘That might explain it. They’re always so fit, so healthy.’
Together, they looked at the body, at the narrow waist that showed under the
still-open shirt.

‘If he is,’ Rizzardi
said, ‘the teeth will tell me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the dental
work. They use different techniques, better materials. If he’s had any dental
work done, I’ll be able to tell you this afternoon if he’s American.’

Had Brunetti been a
different man, he might have asked Rizzardi to take a look now, but he saw no
need to hurry, nor did he want to disturb that young face again. ‘Thanks, Ettore.
I’ll send a photographer out to take some pictures. Do you think you can get
his eyes closed?’

‘Of course. I’ll have him
looking as much like himself as I can. But you’ll want his eyes open for the
pictures, won’t you?’

Just by a breath,
Brunetti stopped himself from saying he never wanted those eyes open again and,
instead, answered, ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘And send someone to take
the fingerprints, Guido’

‘Yes.’

‘All right. Then call me
about three.’ They shook hands briefly, and Doctor Rizzardi picked up his bag.
Without saying goodbye, he walked across the open space towards the monumental
open portal of the hospital, two hours early for work.

More officers had arrived
while they were examining the body, and now there must have been eight of them,
formed in an outward-facing arc about three metres from the body. ‘Sergeant
Vianello,’ Brunetti called, and one of them stepped back from the line and came
to join him beside the body.

‘Get two of your men to take
him to the launch, then take him out to the cemetery.’

While this was being
done, Brunetti returned to his examination of the front of the basilica,
letting his eyes flow up and around its soaring spires. His eyes shifted across
the
campo
to the statue of Colleoni, perhaps a witness to the crime.

Vianello came up beside
him. ‘I’ve sent him out to the cemetery, sir. Anything else?’

‘Yes. Is there a bar
around here?’

‘Over there, sir, behind
the statue. It opens at six.’

‘Good. I need a coffee.’
As they walked towards the bar, Brunetti began to give orders. ‘We’ll need
divers, a pair of them. Get them busy in the water where the body was found. I
want them to bring up anything that could be a weapon: a knife, blade about
three centimetres wide. But it might have been something else, even a piece of
metal, so have them bring up anything that might have made a wound like that.
Tools, anything.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Vianello
said, trying to write this in his notebook while walking.

‘Doctor Rizzardi will
give us a time of death this afternoon. As soon as we have it, I want to see
Bonsuan.’

‘For the tides, sir?’
Vianello asked, understanding immediately.

‘Yes. And start calling
the hotels. See if anyone is missing from his room, especially Americans.’ He
knew the men disliked this, the endless calls to the hotels, pages and pages of
them on the police list. And after they’d called the hotels, there remained the
pensions and hostels, more pages of names and numbers.

The steamy warmth of the
bar was comforting and familiar, as were the smells of coffee and pastry. A man
and woman standing at the counter glanced at the uniformed man, then went back
to their conversation. Brunetti asked for espresso, Vianello for
caff
è
corretto,
black coffee with a
substantial splash of grappa. When the barman put their coffees in front of
them, both spooned in two sugars and cradled the warm cups in their hands for a
moment.

Vianello downed his
coffee in one gulp, set the cup back on the counter, and asked, ‘Anything else,
sir?’

‘See about drug dealing
in the neighbourhood. Who does it, and where? See if there’s anyone in the
neighbourhood with a record of drug arrests or street crimes: selling, using,
stealing, anything. And find out where they go to shoot up, any of those
calle
that dead-end into the canal, if there’s a place where syringes turn up in
the morning.’

‘You think it’s a drug
crime, sir?’

Brunetti finished his
coffee and nodded to the barman for another. Without being asked, Vianello’
shook his head in a quick negative. ‘I don’t know. It’s possible. So let’s
check that first.’

Vianello nodded and wrote
in his notebook. Finished, he slipped it into his breast pocket and began to
reach for his wallet.

‘No, no,’ Brunetti
insisted. ‘I’ll get it. Go back to the boat and call about the divers. And have
your men set up barricades. Get the entrances to the canal blocked off while
the divers work.’

Vianello nodded his
thanks for the coffee and left. Through the steamy windows of the bar, Brunetti
saw the ebb and flow of people across the
campo.
He watched as they came
down from the main bridge that led to the hospital, noticed the police at their
right, and asked the people standing around what was going on. Usually, they
paused, looking from the dark uniforms that still milled around to the police
launch that bobbed at the side of the canal. Then, seeing nothing at all out of
the ordinary beyond that, they continued about their business. The old man, he
saw, still leaned against the iron railing. Even after all his years of police
work, he could not understand how people could so willingly place themselves
near the death of their own kind. It was a mystery he had never been able to
penetrate, that awful fascination with the termination of life, especially when
it was violent, as this had been.

He turned back to his
second coffee and drank it quickly. ‘How much?’ he asked.

‘Five thousand lire.’

He paid with a ten and
waited for his change. When he handed it to Brunetti, the barman asked, ‘Something
bad, sir?’

‘Yes, something bad,’
Brunetti answered. ‘Something very bad.’

* *
* *

2

Because the Questura was so near, it was easier for
Brunetti to walk to his office than go back on the launch with the uniformed
men. He went the back way, passing the Evangelical church and coming up on the
Questura from the right side of the building. The uniformed man at the front
entrance opened the heavy glass door as soon as he saw Brunetti, who headed for
the stairway that would take him to his office on the fourth floor, passing
beside the line of foreigners seeking residence and work permits, a line that
extended halfway across the lobby.

His desk, when he reached
his office, was just as he had left it the day before, covered with papers and
files sprawled across it in no particular order. The ones nearest to hand
contained personnel reports, all of which he had to read and comment upon as
part of the Byzantine process of promotion through which all State employees
had to go. The second pile dealt with the last murder in the city, the brutal,
crazed beating to death of a young man that had taken place a month ago on the
embankment of the Zattere. So savagely had he been beaten that the police were
at first sure it was the work of a gang. Instead, after only a day, they had
discovered that the killer was a frail wisp of a boy of sixteen. The victim was
homosexual, and the killer’s father a known Fascist who had instilled in his
son the doctrines that Communists and gays were vermin who deserved only death.
So, at five one bright summer morning, these two young men had come together in
a deadly trajectory beside the waters of the Giudecca Canal. No one knew what
had passed between them, but the victim had been reduced to such a state that
the family had been denied the right to see his body, which had been consigned
to them in a sealed coffin. The piece of wood which had been used to beat and
stab him to death sat in a plastic box inside a filing cabinet on the second
floor of the Questura. Little remained to be done, save to see that the psychiatric
treatment of the killer continued and he was not allowed to leave the city. The
State made no provision for psychiatric treatment for the family of the victim.

Instead of sitting at his
desk, Brunetti reached into one of the side drawers and pulled out an electric
razor. He stood at his window to shave, staring out at the facade of the church
of San Lorenzo, still covered, as it had been for the last five years, with the
scaffolding behind which extensive restoration was said to be taking place. He had
no proof that this was happening, for nothing had changed in all these years,
and the front doors of the church remained forever closed.

His phone rang, the
direct line from outside. He glanced at his watch. Nine-thirty. That would be
the vultures. He switched off the razor and walked over to his desk to answer
the phone.

‘Brunetti.’

‘Buon giorno,
Commissario.
This
is Carlon,’ a deep voice said and went on, quite unnecessarily, to identify
himself as the Crime Reporter for the
Gazzettino.

‘Buon giorno,
Signor Carlon.’ Brunetti
knew what Carlon wanted; let him ask.

‘Tell me about that
American you pulled out of the Rio dei Mendicanti this morning.’

‘It was officer Luciani
who pulled him out, and we have no evidence that he was American.’

‘I stand corrected,
Dottore,’ Carlon said with a sarcasm that turned apology to insult. When
Brunetti didn’t respond, he asked, ‘He was murdered, wasn’t he?’ making little
attempt to disguise his pleasure at the possibility.

‘It would appear so.’

‘Stabbed?’

How did they learn so
much, and so quickly? ‘Yes.’

‘Murdered?’ Carlon
repeated, voice heavy with feigned patience.

‘We won’t have any final
word until we get the results of the autopsy that Doctor Rizzardi is conducting
this afternoon.’

‘Was there a stab wound?’

‘Yes, there was.’

‘But you’re not sure the
stab wound was the cause of death?’ Carlon’s question ended with an incredulous
snort

‘No, we’re not,’ Brunetti
replied blandly. ‘As I explained to you, nothing will be certain until we have
the results of the autopsy.’

‘Other signs of violence?’
Carlon asked, displeased at how little information he was getting.

‘Not until after the
autopsy,’ Brunetti repeated.

‘Next, are you going to
suggest he might have drowned, Commissario?’

‘Signor Carlon,’ Brunetti
said, deciding that he had had enough, ‘as you well know, if he was in the
water of one of our canals for any length of time, then it is far more likely
that disease would have killed him than that he would have drowned.’ From the
other end, only silence. ‘If you’ll be kind enough to call me this afternoon,
about four, I’ll be glad to give you more accurate information.’ It was Carlon
whose reporting had caused the story of the last murder to become an expos
é
of the private life of the victim,
and Brunetti still felt enormous rancour because of it.
         
                     
                   

‘Thank you, Commissario. I’ll
certainly do that. One thing - what was the name of that officer again?’

‘Luciani, Mario Luciani,
an exemplary officer.’ As all of them were when Brunetti mentioned them to the
Press.

‘Thank you, Commissario.
I’ll make a note of that. And I’ll be sure to mention your cooperation in my
article.’ With no further ado, Carton hung up.

In the past, Brunetti’s
dealings with the Press had been relatively friendly, at times more than that,
and at times he had even used the Press to solicit information about a crime.
But in recent years, the ever-strengthening wave of sensationalistic journalism
had prevented any dealings with reporters that were more than purely formal;
every speculation he might voice would be sure to appear the following day as
an almost direct accusation of guilt. So Brunetti had become cautious,
providing information that was severely limited, however accurate and true
reporters might know it to be.