Death in a Strange Country (41 page)

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?’