Death in a Strange Country (43 page)

‘When did you get here?’

‘This morning, on the
early plane.’ He smiled and, reaching into his pocket, pulled out a small blue
card. ‘Ah, how very fortunate, I still have the boarding pass with me.’ He held
it towards Brunetti. ‘Would you like to inspect it, Commissario?’

Brunetti ignored the
gesture. ‘We found that young man who was in the photo,’ Brunetti said.

‘The young man?’ Viscardi
asked, paused, and then let remembrance play across his face. ‘Ah yes, the
young criminal your sergeant showed me the picture of. Has Vice-Questore Patta
told you that I think I might remember him now?’ Brunetti ignored the question
so Viscardi continued, ‘Does this mean you’ve arrested him? If this means you’ll
be getting my pictures back, my wife will be thrilled.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Viscardi asked,
letting one brow arch in surprise. ‘How unfortunate. Was it a natural death?’
he asked, then paused as if weighing his next question. ‘A drug overdose,
perhaps? I’m told that accidents like that happen, especially with young
people.’

‘No, it wasn’t a drug
overdose. He was murdered.’

‘Oh, I am sorry to hear
that, but there does seem to be an awful lot of that going around, doesn’t
there?’ He smiled at his little joke and asked, ‘And was he, after all,
responsible for the robbery here?’

‘There is evidence that
connects him to it.’

Viscardi contracted his
eyes, no doubt intending to display dawning realization. ‘Then it really was
him I saw that night?’
 
             

‘Yes, you saw him.’

‘Does that mean I’ll be
getting the pictures back soon?’

‘No.’

‘Ah, too bad. My wife
will be so disappointed.’

“We
found evidence that he
was connected to another crime.’
               
                     
                   

‘Really? What crime?’

‘The murder of the
American soldier.’

‘You and Vice-Questore
Patta must be pleased, to be able to solve that crime, as well.’

‘The Vice-Questore is.’

‘And you are not? Why is
that, Commissario?’

‘Because he wasn’t the
killer.’

‘You sound very certain
of that fact.’

‘I am very certain of
that fact.’

Viscardi tried another
smile, a very narrow one. ‘I’m afraid, Dottore, that I’d be far more pleased if
you could be equally certain that you’d find my paintings.’

‘You may be certain I
will, Signor Viscardi.’

‘That’s very encouraging,
Commissario.’ He pushed back his cuff, glanced fleetingly at his watch, and
said, ‘But I’m afraid you must excuse me. I’m expecting friends for lunch. And
then I have a business appointment and really must get to the station.’

‘Your appointment isn’t
in Venice?’ Brunetti asked.

A smile of pure delight
bubbled up into Viscardi’s eyes. He tried to suppress it but failed. ‘No,
Commissario. It’s not in Venice. It’s in Vicenza.’

Brunetti took his rage
home with him, and it sat between him and his family as they ate. He tried to
respond to their questions, tried to pay attention to what they said, but in
the midst of Chiara’s account of something that happened in class that morning,
he saw Viscardi’s sly smile of gleeful triumph; when Raffi smiled at something
his mother said, Brunetti remembered only Ruffolo’s goofy, apologetic smile,
two years ago, when he had taken the scissors from his mother’s upraised hand
and begged her to understand that the Commissario was only doing his job.

Ruffolo’s body, he knew,
would be turned over to her this afternoon, when the autopsy was completed and
the cause of death determined. Brunetti was in no doubt as to what that would
be: the marks of the blow to Ruffolo’s head would match exactly the
configuration of the rock found beside his body on the small beach; who to
determine whether the blow was struck in a fall or in some other way? And who,
since Ruffolo’s death resolved everything so neatly, to care? Perhaps, as in
the case of Doctor Peters, signs of alcohol would be found in Ruffolo’s blood,
and that surely would account even more for the fall. Brunetti’s case was
solved. Both, in fact, were solved, for the murderer of the American had turned
out to be, most fortuitously, the thief of Viscardi’s paintings. With that
thought, he pushed his chair back from the table, ignoring the six eyes that
followed his progress from the room. Giving no explanation, he left the house
and started towards the Civil Hospital, where he knew Ruffolo’s body would be.

When he got to Campo
Santi Giovanni e Paolo, familiar, too familiar, with where he had to go, he
walked towards the back part of the hospital, not really seeing the people
around him. When he passed the radiology department and started down the narrow
corridor that led to pathology, he could no longer ignore the people, so many
seemed crowded into the narrow hallway. They weren’t going anywhere, just
standing around in small groups, heads together, talking. Some, clearly
patients, wore pyjamas and dressing-gowns; others wore suits; some the white
jackets of orderlies. Just outside the door to the pathology department, he saw
a uniform he was more familiar with: Rossi stood in front of the closed door,
one hand held up in a gesture meant to keep the crowd from coming any closer.

‘What is it, Rossi?’
Brunetti asked, pushing himself through the front row of bystanders.

‘I’m not sure, sir. We
got a call about half an hour ago. Whoever called said one of the old women
from the rest home next door had gone mad and was breaking up the place. I came
over here with Vianello and Miotti. They went inside, and I stayed out here to
try to keep these people from going in.’

Brunetti moved around
Rossi and pushed open the door to the pathology department. Inside, the scene
was remarkably like that outside: people stood in small groups and talked,
heads close together. All of these people, however, were dressed in the white
jackets of the hospital staff. Words and phrases floated across the room to
him.
‘Impazzita’, ‘terribile’, ‘che paura’, ‘vecchiaccia’.
That
certainly corresponded with what Rossi had said, but it didn’t give Brunetti
any idea of what had gone on.

He started towards the
door that led back into the examining rooms. Seeing this, one of the orderlies
broke away from the people he was talking to and moved in front of him. ‘You
can’t go in there. The police are here.’

‘I’m police,’ Brunetti
said and moved around him.

‘Not until you show me
some identification,’ the man said, putting a restraining hand on Brunetti’s
chest.

The man’s opposition
reignited all of the rage Brunetti had felt at Viscardi; he pulled his hand
back, fingers closing in an involuntary fist. The man moved back a step from
him, and this slight motion was enough to bring Brunetti back to his senses. He
forced his fingers open, reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, and
showed his warrant card to the orderly. The man was just doing his job.

‘I’m just doing my job,
sir,’ he said and turned to open the door for Brunetti.

‘Thank you,’ Brunetti
told him as he walked past, but without meeting his eyes,

Inside, he saw Vianello
and Miotti on the other side of the room. They were both leaning over a short
man who was sitting on a chair, holding a white towel to his head. Vianello had
his notebook in his hand and appeared to be questioning him. When Brunetti
approached, all three looked at him. He recognized the third man then, Doctor
Ottavio Bonaventura, Rizzardi’s assistant. The young doctor nodded in greeting,
then closed his eyes and leaned his head back, pressing the towel to his
forehead.

‘What’s going on?’
Brunetti asked.
  
                  

‘That’s what we’re trying
to find out, sir,’ Vianello answered, nodding down at Bonaventura. ‘We got a
call about half an hour ago, from the nurse at the desk out there,’ he said,
apparently meaning the outer office. ‘She said that a mad-woman had attacked
one of the doctors, so we came over here as fast as we could. Apparently, the orderlies
couldn’t restrain her, even though there were two of them.’
     
                     
                     
       

‘Three,’ Bonaventura
said, eyes still closed.
 
             

‘What happened?’
     
                     
                     
   

‘We don’t know, sir. That’s
what we’re trying to find out. She was gone by the time we got here, but we don’t
know if the orderlies took her away. We don’t know anything,’ he said, making
no attempt to disguise his exasperation. Three men and they couldn’t restrain a
woman.

‘Dottor Bonaventura,’
Brunetti said, ‘could you tell us what happened here? Are you all right?’

Bonaventura gave a small
nod. He pulled the towel away from his head, and Brunetti saw a deep, bloody
gouge that ran from his eyebrow and disappeared into his hairline just above
his ear.
The doctor turned the towel to expose a fresh clean place and
pressed it against the wound.

‘I was at the desk over
there,’ he began, not bothering to point to the only desk in the room, ‘doing
some paperwork, and suddenly this old woman was in the room, screaming, out of
her mind. She came at me with something in her hand. I don’t know what it was;
it might just have been her purse. She was screaming, but I don’t know what she
said. I couldn’t understand her, or maybe I was too surprised. Or frightened.’
He turned the towel again; the bleeding refused to stop.

‘She came up to the desk,
and she hit me, then she started tearing at all the papers on the desk. That
was when the orderlies came in, but she was wild, hysterical. She knocked one
of them down, and then another one of them tripped over him. I don’t know what
happened then because I had blood in my eye. But when I wiped it away, she was
gone. Two of the orderlies were still here, on the floor, but she was gone.’

Brunetti looked at
Vianello, who answered, ‘No, sir. She’s not outside. She just disappeared. I
spoke to two of the orderlies, but they don’t know what happened to her. We
called over to the
Casa di Riposo
to see if any of their patients are
missing, but they said no. It was lunch time, so it was easy for them to count
them all.’

Brunetti turned his
attention back to Bonaventura. ‘Do you have any idea who she might be, Dottore?’

‘No. None. I’d never seen
her before. I don’t have any idea how she got in here.’

‘Were you seeing
patients?’

‘No, I told you, I was
doing paperwork, writing up my notes. And I don’t think she came in from the
waiting room. I think she came in from there,’ he said, pointing to the door at
the dither side of the room.

‘What’s back there?’

‘The mortuary. I’d
finished in there about half an hour before and was writing up my notes.’

In the confusion of
Bonaventura’s story, Brunetti had forgotten his rage. Now he was suddenly cold,
chilled to the bone, but the emotion was not rage.

‘What did she look like,
Dottore?’

‘Just a little fat old
lady, all in black.’

‘What notes were you
writing up, Dottore?’

‘I told you, from the
autopsy.’

‘Which autopsy?’ Brunetti
asked, though he knew there was no need for the question.

‘What was his name? That
young man they brought in last night. Rigetti? Ribelli?’

‘No, Dottore. Ruffolo.’