Sea of Troubles (19 page)

She smiled at this, hardly able to contain her pleasure, then quickly smothered the expression. Brunetti heard a small noise and glanced across at her. It took him an instant to realize that she was actually licking her lips repeatedly, as if freeing them at last to tell the awful truth. 'Yes
’
she finally said.
‘I
knew her, and I knew her parents. Good people, hard working. She killed them. Killed them as if she'd taken a knife and driven it into her poor mother's heart.'

Brunetti, looking down at his notebook to hide his face, made encouraging noises and continued to write.

Again she paused, made the licking noise, then went on. 'She was a whore and a drug addict and brought disease and disgrace on her family. I'm not surprised that she's dead or that she died the way she did. I'm just surprised that it took so long.' She was silent for a moment, and then added, in a voice so unctuous Brunetti closed his eyes, 'God have mercy on her soul.'

Allowing the deity sufficient time to register the request, Brunetti then asked, 'You said she was a prostitute, Signora? While she was here? Was she still?'

'She was a whore when she was a child and a young woman. Once a woman does that sort of thing, she's defiled, and she never loses the taste for it.' Her voice reflected both certainty and disgust. 'So she must have been doing it now. That's obvious.'

Brunetti turned a page, mastered his expression, and looked up with an encouraging smile. 'Do you know anyone who might have been her client?' He saw her begin to answer, then think of the consequences of false accusation and close her mouth.

'Or suspect anyone, Signora?' When she still hesitated, he shut the notebook, placed it on the table, capped his pen and placed it on top. 'It's often just as important for us, Signora, to have a sense of what's going on, even if we don't have proof. It's enough to start us on the right road, to know where to begin to look.' She said nothing, so he went on, 'And it's only the most courageous and virtuous citizens who can help us, Signora, especially in an age when most people are all too willing to close their eyes to immorality and the sort of behaviour that corrupts society by destroying the unity of the family.' He had been tempted to refer to 'sacred unity', but thought it might be excessive and so contented himself with the lesser nonsense. It sufficed, however, for Signora Boscarini.

'Stefano Silvestri.' The name slithered off her lips: the man who had been so careful to explain that he took his wife to the larger stores on the Lido once a week. 'He was always in the store, like a dog sniffing at a bitch to see if she was ready for him.'

Brunetti received this information with his accepting noise but made no motion towards his notebook. As if encouraged by that act of discretion, she went on: 'She tried to make it look like she wasn't interested, made fun of him whenever anyone was around, but I know what she was up to. We all did. She led him on.' Brunetti listened calmly, trying to recall if this woman had been on the steps of the church and wondering what going to Mass might mean for someone like her.

'Can you think of any other man or men who might have been involved with her?' he asked.

'There was talk
’
she began, all too eager to let him know. 'Another married man
’
she began, lips wet and eager. 'A fisherman.' For a moment, he thought she was going to name him, but he saw her consider the consequences, and she said only, 'I'm sure there were many more.' When Brunetti remained silent in the face of this slander, she said, 'It's because she provoked them.'

'Of course
’
he permitted himself to say. Which would be worse, he wondered: death at sea or another thirty-four years with this woman? He sensed that she was willing to tell him nothing more, assuming that what she had given him was information and not mere spite and jealousy, he got to his feet and picked up his notebook and pen. Slipping them into his pocket, he said, 'Thank you for your help, Signora. I assure you that everything you've said will be kept in the strictest confidence. And, speaking personally, I would like to remark that it is rare for a witness to be so willing to give us this sort of information.' It was a small shot, and it seemed to pass her by, but it was still a shot and it made him feel better. With every expression of politeness, he took his leave, glad to escape from her house, her words, and the sound of that flicking, reptilian tongue.

As they had agreed, he and Vianello met at the bar at five. Each ordered coffee, and when the barman moved off after setting the small cups down in front of them, Brunetti asked, 'Well?'

'There was someone. A man
’
Vianello said.

Brunetti tore open two packets of sugar and poured them into his coffee, stirred it and drank it in one long sip. 'Who?' Vianello, he noticed, still drank his coffee without sugar, a habit his own grandmother had believed 'thinned the blood', whatever that meant.

'No idea. And it was only one man who said anything, something about the way Signora Follini was always up before dawn, even though the store didn't open until eight. It wasn't actually what he said so much as the way he said it, and the look his wife gave him when he did.'

That was all Vianello had, and it didn't seem like very much. It could have been Stefano Silvestri, though Brunetti hardly thought his wife was the sort who would allow her husband to be anywhere before dawn other than lying beside her or working his nets.

‘I
saw Signorina Elettra
’
Vianello added.

Brunetti forced himself to pause before asking, 'Where?'

'Walking towards the beach.'

Brunetti refused to ask and after what seemed a long time, Vianello added, 'She was with the same man.'

'Do you know who he is?'

Vianello shook his head.
‘I
suppose the best way to find out would be to ask Bonsuan to ask his friend.'

Brunetti didn't like the idea, didn't like the chance of doing anything that would call attention to Signorina Elettra in any way. 'No, better to ask Pucetti.'

'If he ever comes back to work,' Vianello said, casting his eyes towards the far end of the bar, where the owner was deep in conversation with two men.

'Where's he living?'

'In one of the houses. Cousin of the owner or something.'

'Can we get in touch with him?'

'No. He didn't want to bring his
telefonino;
said he was afraid someone might call and leave a message that would compromise him.'

'We could have issued him one, then none of his friends would know the number,' Brunetti said with undisguised irritation.

'Didn't want that, either. Said you never know.'

'Never know what?' Brunetti demanded.

'He didn't say. But I imagine he thinks someone at the Questura might mention that he'd been issued a phone for use on some special assignment, or someone might make a call to it, or someone might be listening to all of our calls.'

'Isn't that a bit paranoid?' Brunetti asked, though he had himself, more than once, contemplated the third possibility.

'I think it's always safer to assume that everything you say is overheard.'

'That's no way to live,' Brunetti said hotly, believing this.

Vianello shrugged. 'So what shall we do?'

Brunetti remembered Rizzardi's comments about 'rough sex'. 'I'd like to find out who she was seeing.' He caught Vianello's glance and added, 'Signora Follini, that is.'

'I still think the best way is to ask Bonsuan to ask his friend. These people aren't going to tell us anything, at least not directly.'

'I had a woman tell me that Signora Follini was still tempting the local men to sin,' Brunetti said, disgust mingled with amusement.

'Presumably one of the ones who was tempted was either her husband or the man next door.'

'Two doors down.'

'Same thing.'

Brunetti decided to return to the boat to ask Bonsuan to speak to his friend. That proved unnecessary, as the pilot, whom they ran into upon leaving the bar, had been invited to the man's home for lunch, and then they had spent the rest of the afternoon sipping grappa and talking about their old days in the Army. After they'd relived the Albanian campaign and toasted the three Venetians who had not returned with them, their talk turned to their current lives. Bonsuan had been very careful to set the record straight about where his loyalties might lie, declaring his intention of retiring from the police as soon as he could.

As the three policemen walked slowly towards the boat, Bonsuan explained that it had proven relatively straightforward, and he had emerged, the bottle of grappa almost finished, with the name of Luisa Follini's lover.

'Vittorio Spadini
’
he said, not without pride in his achievement. 'He's from Burano. A fisherman. Married, three children, the sons are fishermen and the daughter's married to one.'

'And?' Brunetti asked.

Perhaps as a result of the grappa or perhaps because of the recent talk of retiring, Bonsuan answered, 'And that's probably more than you and Vianello would get if you stayed here a week.' Surprised to hear himself speak like this, he added, 'Sir', but the time between the answer and the title had been prolonged.

Silence fell, broken only when Bonsuan added, 'But he's not fishing much any more. He lost his boat about two years ago.'

Brunetti thought of Signora Boscarini's husband and asked, 'In a storm?'

Bonsuan dismissed the idea with a quick shake of his head. 'No, worse. Taxes.' Before Brunetti could ask how taxes could be worse than a storm, Bonsuan explained. "The Guardia di Finanza hit him with a bill for three years' false declarations of what he earned. He tried to fight it for a year, but in the end he lost. You always do. They took his boat.'

Vianello broke in to ask, 'Why is that worse than a storm?'

'Insurance,' Bonsuan answered. 'Nothing can insure you against those bastards from the Finanza.'

'How much was it worth?' Brunetti asked, again made aware of just how little he knew about this world of boats and the men who went to sea in them.

'They wanted five hundred million. That was fines and what they calculated he owed them, but no one has that much cash, so he had to sell the boat.'

'My God, are they worth that much?' Brunetti asked.

Bonsuan gave him a puzzled glance. 'If they're as big as his was, they're worth much more; they can cost a billion.'

Vianello broke in. 'If they wanted five hundred million for three years, that probably means he cheated them out of twice that, three times.'

'Easily,' Bonsuan agreed, not without a hint of pride at the cleverness of the men who fished the
laguna.
'Ezio told me Spadini thought he'd win. His lawyer told him to fight the case, but he probably did that just to make his own bill bigger. In the end, Spadini had no choice: they came and took it. If he had come up with enough cash to pay the fine, too many questions would have been asked,' he said, leaving the others to assume that the money was there, hidden in secret investments or accounts, like so much of the wealth of Italy. He glanced at Vianello and added, 'Someone told me that the judge was one of the Greens.'

Vianello shot him a glance but said nothing.

Bonsuan went on, 'That he had a grudge against all of the
vongolari
because of what they do to the
laguna.'

At this, Vianello finally said, his voice dangerously tight, 'Danilo, cases like this, about taxes, don't come up before judges.' Before Bonsuan could answer, he added, 'Whether they belong to the Greens or not.' Then, turning to Brunetti but obviously aiming his remarks at Bonsuan, Vianello added, 'Next we're probably going to be told about the way the Greens take vipers up in helicopters and drop them in the mountains to repopulate the species.' Then to Bonsuan he said, his voice more aggressive than Brunetti could ever remember it, 'Come on, Danilo, aren't you going to tell us how friends of yours have found dead vipers in bottles up in the mountains or how they've seen people tossing them out of helicopters?'

Bonsuan looked at the sergeant but didn't bother to answer, his silence resonant with his conviction of the futility of attempting to reason with fanatics. Brunetti had, over the course of the years, heard many people speak of these mysterious, malevolent helicopters, piloted by mad ecologists bent on restoring some perverted idea of 'nature', but it had never occurred to him that anyone could actually believe in them.

They had reached, not just an impasse, but the boat. Bonsuan turned away from them and busied himself with the mooring ropes. Vianello, perhaps in an attempt to soften the effect of his remarks, went to the back and began to untie the second rope. Brunetti left them to it, busy with calculations of the surprising sums that had just been referred to. When Bonsuan had the rope coiled, Brunetti followed him aboard and called to him as the pilot went up the steps towards the wheel, 'You'd have to catch a lot of fish to afford a boat like that.'.

'Clams,' Bonsuan instantly corrected him. "That's where the money is. No one's going to take a shot at you over fish, but if they catch you digging up their clams and ruining their beds, then there's no telling what they'll do.'