Death in a Strange Country (44 page)

‘Yes, that’s it. I’d just
finished. He’s all sewn up. The family was supposed to come and get him at two,
but I finished a little bit early, and I was trying to write up the notes
before I began the next one.’

‘Can you remember
anything she said, Dottore?’

‘I told you. I couldn’t
understand her.’

‘Please try to think,
Dottore,’ Brunetti said, voice straining for calm. ‘It might be important. Any
words? Phrases.’ Bonaventura said nothing so Brunetti prompted, ‘Did she speak
Italian, Dottore?’

‘Sort of. Some of the
words were Italian, but the rest was dialect, worst I’ve ever heard.’ There
were no more clean places on Bonaventura’s towel. ‘I think I’d like to go and
get this taken care of,’ he said.

‘In just a moment,
Dottore. Did you understand any words?’

‘Well, of course, she was
screaming,
“Bambino, bambino”,
but that young man wasn’t her bambino.
She must be too old.’ She wasn’t, but Brunetti saw no reason to tell him this.

‘Is there anything else
you understood, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked again.

Bonaventura closed his
eyes with the combined weight of pain and memory. ‘She said,
“assassino”,
but
that’s what she was calling me, I think. She threatened to kill me, but all she
did was hit me. None of it made any sense. No words or anything, just noise,
like an animal. I think that’s when the orderlies came in.’

Turning away from him and
nodding towards the door to the mortuary, Brunetti asked, ‘Is the body in
there?’

‘Yes, I told you. The
family was told to come and get it at two.’

Brunetti went over to the
door and pushed it open. Inside, only a few metres into the room, the body of
Ruffolo lay, naked and exposed, on a metal gurney. The sheet that had covered
his body lay crumpled on the floor, as though it had been torn off and flung
there.

Brunetti took a few steps
into the room and looked across at the young man. The body lay with the head
turned away, so Brunetti could see the ragged line that ran through the hair,
showing where the crown of the head had been severed so that Bonaventura could
examine the damage to the brain. The front of the body bore the long butterfly
incision, the same horrible line that had run down the strong young body of the
American. Like a line drawn with a compass, the circle of death had been drawn
just and true, bringing Brunetti back to where he had begun.

He backed away from what
had been Ruffolo into the office. Another man in a white jacket was bending
down over Bonaventura, fingering delicately at the edges of the wound. Brunetti
nodded to Vianello and Miotti, but before either man could move, Bonaventura
looked across at Brunetti and said, ‘There’s one strange thing.’

‘What is that, Dottore?’ Brunetti
asked.

‘She thought I was from
Milan.’

‘I don’t understand. What
do you mean?’

‘When she said she’d kill
me, she called me
‘milanese traditore
’, but all she did was hit me. She
kept screaming she’d kill me, kept calling me
‘milanese traditore’.
It
doesn’t make any sense to me.’

Suddenly it made sense to
Brunetti. ‘Vianello, have you got a boat?’

‘Yes, sir, It’s outside.’

‘Miotti, call the
Questura and have them send the Squadra Mobile, right now, to Viscardi’s
palazzo.
Come on, Vianello.’

The police launch was
tied up at the left of the hospital, engine idling. Brunetti leapt down onto
the deck, Vianello close behind him. ‘Bonsuan,’ Brunetti said, glad to find him
at the wheel, ‘over near San Stae, that new
palazzo,
by Palazzo Duodo.’

There was no need for
Bonsuan to ask for more: Brunetti’s fear was contagious. He hit the switch for
the two-pitched siren, shoved the throttle forward, and swung the boat out into
the canal. At the end, he turned into Rio San Giovanni Crisostomo, siren
wailing, and towards the Grand Canal. Minutes later, the boat shot out into the
broad waters of the Grand Canal, narrowly missing a taxi and sending out on
either side a violent wake that slapped at boats and buildings. They sped past
a vaporetto that was just docking at San Stae, their wake slamming it into the
imbarcadero
and causing more than one tourist to dance about, footing temporarily lost.

Just beyond Palazzo
Duodo, Bonsuan pulled the boat to the
riva,
and Brunetti and Vianello
leapt ashore, leaving it to the pilot to moor the boat. Brunetti ran up the
narrow
calle,
paused for a moment to orient himself to this unexpected
arrival from the waterside, and then turned towards the left and the
palazzo.

When he saw the heavy
wooden door to the courtyard standing open, he knew it would be too late: too
late for Viscardi, and too late for Signora Concetta. He found her there, at
the bottom of the steps that led up from the courtyard, her arms held behind
her back by two of Viscardi’s luncheon guests, one of them, Brunetti noticed,
still with his napkin stuffed into the neck of his shirt.

They were both very large
men, Signor Viscardi’s guests, and it seemed to Brunetti that it was not
necessary for them toehold Signora Concetta’s arms like that, pulled roughly
behind her back. For one thing, it was too late, and for another, she offered
them no resistance, was content, one would almost say happy, to look down at
what lay at her feet in the courtyard. Viscardi had fallen on his face, so the
gaping holes the shotgun had blasted in his chest were hidden, though the blood
could not be stopped from seeping out across the granite paving stones. Beside
his body, but closer to Signora Concetta, the shotgun lay where she had dropped
it. Her late husband’s
lupara
had served its purpose and avenged the
family honour.

Brunetti approached the
woman. She looked up at him, recognized him, but did not smile: her face could
have been made of steel. Brunetti spoke to the men. ‘Let her go.’ They did
nothing, so he repeated, voice still neutral, ‘Let her go.’ This time, they
obeyed him and released her arms, both careful to step away from her as they
did so.

‘Signora Concetta,’
Brunetti said, ‘how did you know?’ To ask her why she had done it was
unnecessary.

Awkwardly, as though it
hurt her to move them, she brought her arms forward and crossed them over her
chest. ‘My Peppino told me everything.’

‘What did he tell you,
Signora?’

‘That this time he would
make enough money for us to go home. To go home. It’s been so long since I’ve
been home.’

‘What else did he tell
you, Signora? Did he tell you about the pictures?’

The man with the napkin
in his shirt interrupted him, speaking in a high-pitched, insistent voice. ‘Whoever
you are, I want to warn you that I am Signor Viscardi’s lawyer. And I warn you
that you are giving information to this woman. I’m a witness to this crime, and
she is not to be spoken to until the police arrive.’

Brunetti glanced at him
briefly and then down at Viscardi. ‘He doesn’t need a lawyer any more.’ He
turned his attention back to Signora Concetta. ‘What did Peppino tell you,
Signora?’

She struggled to speak
clearly, forcing herself away from dialect. These, after all, were the police. ‘I
knew everything. The pictures. Everything. I knew my Peppino was going to meet
you. He was very frightened, my Peppino. He was afraid of that man,’ she said
pointing down to Viscardi. ‘He found something that made him have much fear.’
She looked away from Viscardi and up at Brunetti. ‘Can I go away from here now,
Dottore? My work is finished.’

The man with the napkin
spoke again. ‘You are asking leading questions of this woman, and I’m a witness
to that fact.’

Brunetti put out his hand
and placed it under Signora Concetta’s elbow. ‘Come with me, Signora.’ He
nodded to Vianello, who was quickly beside him. ‘Go with this man, Signora. He
has a boat, and he’ll take you to the Questura.’

‘Not on a boat,’ she
said. ‘I’m afraid of the water.’

‘It’s a very safe boat,
Signora,’ Vianello offered.

She turned to Brunetti. ‘Will
you come with us, Dottore?’

‘No, Signora, I must stay
here.’

She pointed to Vianello,
spoke to Brunetti. ‘Can I trust him?’

‘Yes, Signora, you can
trust him.’

‘You swear?’

‘Yes, Signora. I swear.’

‘
Va bene
, we go in
the boat.’

She started to walk away,
led by Vianello, who had to bend down to keep his hand under her elbow. She
took two steps, stopped, and turned back to Brunetti. ‘Dottore?’

‘Yes, Signora Concetta?’

‘The paintings are at my
house.’ She turned away and continued towards the door with Vianello.

Later, Brunetti was to
discover that, after twenty years in Venice, she had never been on a boat: like
many people from the mountains of Sicily, she had a deadly fear of the water,
and in twenty years, she had never overcome it. But before that he was to learn
what she had done with the paintings. When the police got to her apartment that
afternoon, they found the three paintings, the Monet, the Gauguin, and the
Guardi, hacked to pieces with the same scissors with which she had tried to
attack Brunetti, years ago. This time, there had been no Peppino to stop her,
and she had destroyed them utterly, leaving only jagged tatters of canvas and
colour in the wake of her grief. It came as no surprise to Brunetti to learn
that many people considered this the sure proof of her madness: anyone could
kill a man; only a madwoman would destroy a Guardi.

Two nights later, after
dinner, Paola answered the ringing phone. He could tell from the warmth of her
voice and the frequent laughter with which she greeted what she heard that it
was her parents. After a long time, almost half an hour, she came out onto the
terrace and said, ‘Guido, my father would like to speak to you for a moment.’

He went back into the
living room and picked up the phone. ‘Good evening,’ he said.

‘Good evening, Guido,’
the Count said. ‘I’ve got some news for you.’

‘About the dump?’

‘Dump?’ the Count
repeated, managing to sound confused.

‘The dump by Lake Barcis.’

‘Ah, you mean the
building site. A private hauling contractor was up there earlier this week. The
whole site has been cleaned up, everything removed, earth bulldozed over it.’

‘Building site?’

‘Yes, the Army has
decided to conduct tests on radon emissions in the area. So they’re going to
close off the area and build some sort of testing facility there. Unmanned, of
course.’

‘Whose army, theirs or
ours?’
 
                     
       

‘Why ours, of course.’
     
                     
             

‘Where was the material
taken?’
 
                     
   

‘I believe the trucks
went to Genoa. But the friend who told me about it wasn’t too clear.’

‘You knew Viscardi was
involved in this, didn’t you?’

‘Guido, I don’t like your
accusatory tone,’ the Count said sharply. Brunetti didn’t apologize and the
Count continued, ‘I knew a great deal about Signor Viscardi, Guido, but he was
beyond my reach.’

‘He’s beyond everyone’s
reach now,’ Brunetti said, but he took no satisfaction in being able to say it.

‘I attempted to tell you.’

‘I didn’t realize he was
so powerful.’