Death in a Strange Country (40 page)

‘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.