Death in a Strange Country (6 page)

‘Aside from Argenti, is
there anyone else in the neighbourhood?’
         
                     
                     
     

‘He seems to have been
the principal one. There’s never been much drug traffic in that part of the
city. I know the rubbish man, Noe, and he’s never complained of finding
syringes on the street in the morning, not like San Maurizio,’ he said, naming
a part of the city notorious for drug use.

‘What about Rossi? He
find anything?’

‘Pretty much the same,
sir. It’s a quiet neighbourhood. Occasionally, there’s a robbery or a break-in,
but there’s never been much in the way of drugs, and there’s never been any
violence,’ he said, then added, ‘before this.’

‘What about the people in
those houses? Did they hear or see anything?’

‘No, sir. We spoke to all
the people who were in the
campo
this morning, but no one heard or saw
anything suspicious. And the same thing for the people in the houses.’ He
anticipated Brunetti’s next question. ‘Puccetti said the same thing, sir.’

‘Where’s Rossi?’

With no hesitation,
whatsoever, Luciani answered, ‘He’s gone out to get a coffee, sir. Ought to be
back in a few minutes if you want to talk to him.’

‘What about the divers?’

‘They were in there for
more than an hour. But they didn’t bring up anything that could be a weapon.
The usual mess: bottles, cups, even a refrigerator, and a screw driver, but
there’s nothing that even comes close.’

‘What about Bonsuan? Did
anyone talk to him about the tides?’

‘No, sir. Not yet. We don’t
have a time of death yet.’

‘About midnight.’ Brunetti
supplied.

Luciani flipped open a
logbook that lay on his desk and ran one thick finger down a column of names, ‘He’s
taking a boat to the station right now. Delivering two prisoners to the Milan
train. Want me to have him go up to your office when he gets back?’

Brunetti nodded, and then
they were interrupted by the return of Rossi. His story was just as Luciani had
said: no one in the
campo
that morning nor in the houses facing it had
seen or heard anything at all unusual.

In any other city in
Italy, the fact that no one had seen or heard anything would be no more than an
indication of their distrust of the police and a general unwillingness to help
them. Here, however, where the people were generally law-abiding and most of
the police themselves Venetians, it meant no more than that they had seen or
heard nothing. If there were any serious involvement with drugs in that
neighbourhood, sooner or later they would hear about it. Someone would have a
cousin or a boyfriend or a mother-in-law who would make a phone call to a
friend who just happened to have a cousin or a boyfriend or a mother-in-law who
worked for the police, and so the word would reach him. Until that time, he
would have to take it as given that there was little traffic in drugs in that
part of the city, that it was not the place where a person would go to take or
buy drugs, especially not a foreigner. All of that would seem to rule out drugs
as having played a part in the crime, at least if it were related in any way to
that neighbourhood.

‘Send Bonsuan up to see
me when he gets back, please,’ he told them and went back to his office,
careful to use the stairs in the rear of the building that avoided taking him
anywhere near Patta’s office. The longer he could avoid talking to his
superior, the happier he would be.

In his office, he finally
remembered to call Paola. He had forgotten to tell her that he wouldn’t be home
for lunch, but it was years since she was surprised or bothered by that.
Instead of conversation, she read a book during the meal, unless the children
were there. In fact, he had begun to suspect that she enjoyed her quiet lunches
alone with the authors she taught at the university, for she never objected if
he was delayed or kept from coming.

She answered on the third
ring.
‘Pronto.’

‘Ciao,
Paola. It’s me.’

‘I thought it might be.
How are things?’ She never asked a direct question about his work or about what
kept him from meals. It was not that sire took no interest, only that she found
it better to wait for him to talk about it. Eventually, she came to learn it
all, anyway.

‘I’m sorry about lunch,
but I was making phone calls.’

‘That’s all right. I
spent it with William Faulkner. Very interesting man.’ Over the course of the
years, they’d come to treat her lunchtime visitors as real guests, had evolved
jokes about the table manners of Doctor Johnson (shocking), the conversation of
Melville (scurrilous), and the amount Jane Austen drank (stunning).

‘I’ll be back for dinner,
though. All I have to do is talk to a few people here and wait for a call from
Vicenza.’ When she said nothing, he added, ‘From the American military base
there.’

‘Oh, it’s like that, is
it?’ she asked, telling him, with the question, that she had already learned
about the crime and the probable identity of the victim. The barman told the
postman, who told the woman on the second floor, who called her sister, and,
first thing, everyone in the city knew about what had happened, long before a
word appeared in the newspapers or on the evening news.

‘Yes, it’s like that,’ he
agreed.

‘What time do you think
you’ll be back?’

‘Before seven.’

‘All right. I’ll get off
the phone now, in case your call comes.’ He loved Paola for many reasons, not
the least of which was the fact that he knew this to be her real motive for
getting off the phone. There was no secret message, no hidden agenda in what
she said; she merely wanted to free the line so that his work would be easier
and he would be home sooner.

‘Thanks, Paola. I’ll see
you about seven.’

‘Ciao,
Guido,’ and she was gone,
back to William Faulkner, leaving him free to work and equally free of guilt
about the demands of that work.

It was almost five and
still the Americans hadn’t called back. For a moment, he was tempted to call
them, but he resisted the impulse. If one of their soldiers was missing, they’d
have to contact him. After all, to put it bluntly, he had the body.

He searched through the
personnel reports that still lay in front of him until he found those of
Luciani and Rossi. In both of them, he added a note that they had behaved far
beyond the ordinary in going into the canal to pull the body out. They could
have waited for a boat or could have used poles, but they had done something he
didn’t know if he would have had the courage, or the will, to do and had gone
into that water to pull him ashore.

The phone rang. ‘Brunetti.’

‘This is Captain Duncan.
We’ve cheeked all the duty stations, and we have one man who didn’t show up for
work today. He meets your description. I sent someone to check his apartment,
but there’s no sign of him, so I’d like to send someone to take a look at the
body.’

‘When, Captain?’

‘Tonight, if possible.’

‘Certainly. How will you
send him?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’d like to know how you’ll
send him, by train or by car, so that I can send someone to meet him.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Duncan
answered. ‘By car.’

‘Then I’ll send someone
to Piazzale Roma. There’s a Carabinieri station there, to the right as you
enter the Piazzale.’

‘All right. The car will
be here in about fifteen minutes, so they ought to be there in a bit less than
an hour, about quarter to seven.’

‘We’ll have a launch
waiting. Hell have to go out to the cemetery to identify the body. Will it be
someone who knew the man, Captain?’ Brunetti knew from long experience how
difficult it was to recognize the dead from a photograph.

‘Yes, it’s his commanding
officer at the hospital.’

‘The hospital?’

‘The man who’s missing is
our Public Health Inspector, Sergeant Foster.’

‘Could you give me the
name of the man who’s coming?’

‘Captain Peters. Terry
Peters. And Commissario,’ Duncan added, ‘the Captain is a woman.’ There was
more than a trace of smugness in his voice as he added, ‘And Captain Peters is
also Doctor Peters.’

What was he meant to do,
Brunetti wondered, fall over on his side because the Americans allowed women
into their army? Or because they also allowed them to be doctors? Instead, he
decided to out-Herod Herod and become the classic Italian who couldn’t resist
the lure of anything, so long as it came in a skirt, even the skirt of a
military uniform. ‘Very good, Captain. In that case, I’ll go myself to meet
Captain Peters. Doctor Peters.’

Duncan took a few seconds
to answer, but all he said was, ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Mr Brunetti. I’ll
tell the Captain to ask for you.’

‘Yes. Do,’ Brunetti said
and hung up without waiting for the other man to say goodbye. His tone, he
realized without regret, had been too strong; as often happened with him, he
had allowed himself to be sucked into resentment by what he thought lay between
the lines of what he heard. In the past, both during Interpol seminars that had
included Americans and during three months of training in Washington, he had
often come up against this national sense of moral superiority, this belief so
common among Americans that it had somehow been given to them to serve as a
glistening moral light in a world dark with error. Perhaps that was not the
case here; perhaps he was misinterpreting Duncan’s tone, and the captain had
meant to do no more than help Brunetti avoid embarrassment. It’so, then his
response had certainly done everything possible to confirm any cliché about
hot-blooded, thin-skinned Italians.

Shaking his head in
chagrin, he dialled an outside line and then his home number.

‘Pronto,’
Paola responded after
three rings.

‘This time I called,’ he
said without introduction.

‘Which means you’ll be
late.’

‘I’ve got to go to
Piazzale Roma to meet an American captain who’s coming from Vicenza to identify
the body. I shouldn’t be too late, not much past nine. She’s supposed to get
here by seven.’

‘She?’

‘Yes,
she,’
Brunetti
said. ‘My reaction was the same. She’s also a doctor.’

‘It is a world of miracles
in which we live,’ Paola said. ‘Both a captain and a doctor. She had better be
very good at both because she’s making you miss polenta and liver.’ It was one
of his favourites, and she had probably made it because he had missed lunch.

‘I’ll eat when I get
back.’

‘All right, I’ll feed the
kids and wait for you.’

‘Thanks, Paola. I won’t
be late.’

‘I’ll wait,’ she said and
replaced the receiver.

As soon as the line was
clear, he called down to the second floor and asked if Bonsuan had come back
yet. The pilot was just coming in, and Brunetti asked that he come up to his
office.

A few minutes later,
Danilo Bonsuan came into Brunetti’s office. Rough-hewn and robust, he looked
like a man who lived on the water but who would never think of drinking the stuff.
Brunetti pointed to the chair in front of his desk. Bonsuan lowered himself
into the chair, stiff-jointed after decades on board and around boats. Brunetti
knew better than to expect him to volunteer information, not because he was
reluctant but simply because he didn’t have the habit of speaking unless there
was some practical purpose to be served by doing so.