Falling in Love

by Donna Leon

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A man was stabbed in the parking garage at Piazzale Roma,’ Vianello said, sitting opposite him, leaning forward, hands clasped on the edge of the velvet-covered seats.

  As they turned into the open water, Brunetti asked, ‘Why aren’t we going to the hospital?’

  ‘When they called, there was no ambulance there to go and get him, so they took him to the hospital in Mestre.’

  ‘How can that be?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Sanitrans had an ambulance there already, delivering a patient back from Padova, so they drove into the garage to get him.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I think he’s a friend of yours.’

  Cold fingers grasping at his heart, Brunetti asked, ‘What friend?’

  ‘Federico d’Istria.’

  ‘Freddy?’ he asked, recalling the last time he’d seen him. On the bridge. With Flavia. Brunetti stayed very still. Freddy had been stabbed, Freddy, who’d met Paola when they were six and had decided to call her Poppie, a name she’d hated then and which could still drive her wild. ‘How bad is he?’ he asked in a voice he fought to keep level.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘We got the call about fifteen minutes ago, but he was already on his way to the hospital.’

  ‘Who called?’

  ‘The people at the garage,’ Vianello answered. ‘They said a man had been stabbed and left near his car. He managed to crawl out into the aisle, and someone saw him and called them, and they called the hospital and then us.’

  Brunetti had to fight to make what he heard have a meaning. ‘So he’s still on his way there?’ he asked.

  Vianello glanced at his watch. ‘No, it was longer ago than that. A half-hour: he should be there by now.’

  Brunetti started to reach for his phone, but then spread his palm flat on his thigh. ‘Will there be a car?’ he asked, thinking of Piazzale Roma and the ride out to the hospital.

  ‘It’s already waiting,’ Vianello assured him.

  ‘They didn’t tell you anything?’ Brunetti was unable to stop himself from asking.

  Vianello shook his head. ‘Nothing. I called the hospital and asked them to call the men in the ambulance, but they refused. Said we’d find out when we got there.’

  ‘Did they call his wife?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Brunetti took out his phone and scrolled through the numbers until he found Silvana’s, but on the seventh ring an impersonal female voice gave him the option of leaving a message. He couldn’t bring himself to leave a message or send an SMS.

  ‘How’d you know he’s a friend of mine?’ he asked Vianello.

  ‘You mentioned him last year when you went to the reunion of your class at liceo: you said he was there.’

  ‘Why would you remember something like that?’ Brunetti asked, honestly puzzled.

  ‘Nadia’s mother was his parents’ cook – this was ages ago – and I remember she said he was a nice little boy.’

  Brunetti’s fingers entwined themselves and he leaned forward, stabbing them between his legs. Head lowered, he said, ‘I didn’t know him when he was a little boy. But he’s a very nice man.’

  The only sound for the next few minutes was the siren, and then the motor slowed and they were at Piazzale Roma. Forgetting to thank Foa, Brunetti jumped from the boat and ran up the steps to the roadway. The blue car with its flashing light was there; he and Vianello got in, and Brunetti told the driver to use the siren.

  It took twelve minutes. Brunetti knew because he timed it, urging them around a slow-moving bus and a bicycle that had no business to be on the road. The driver remained silent, concentrating on the traffic. They took a new turn-off, and within seconds Brunetti was completely lost. He looked out of the window, but everything he saw was ugly, so he shifted his eyes to the back of the driver’s head. At a certain point, the car stopped, and the driver turned to look at him. ‘We’re here, Commissario.’

  Brunetti thanked him and went into the hospital, which was only a few years old but already looking a bit worn. Vianello led the way deeper into the central part of the building. The second time someone in a white uniform asked who they were, Vianello pulled out his warrant card and held it in front of them, waving it back and forth as though it were a talisman that would ward off evil. Brunetti hoped it was.

  The Inspector pushed open the doors to the Emergency Ward and, still holding out his identification, stopped the first person he saw, a tall woman with a stethoscope around her neck. ‘Where’s the man who was just brought in?’

  ‘Which one?’ she asked. She was very tall, taller than either of them, and sounded harassed and impatient.

  ‘The one who was stabbed,’ Vianello answered.

  ‘He’s in surgery.’

  ‘How bad is he?’ Brunetti asked. She turned to look at him, wondering which of them was in charge, and Brunetti pulled out his own warrant card. ‘Commissario Brunetti. Venice.’

  She gave him a level look, and it came to him to wonder if people who have great experience of human pain develop a defensive coolness they can project from their eyes. She pointed to a row of orange plastic chairs, most of them already occupied, and said, ‘You can wait over there.’ Seeing their reluctance, she added, ‘Or you can go and find some other place if you prefer.’

  ‘Here is fine,’ Brunetti said and tried to smile. Then, as a concession, he added, ‘We’d be grateful for any information you can give us.’

  She turned and left the room. Brunetti and Vianello went and sat in the only two adjoining chairs that were free. To their right, a young man with blood on his face held one swollen hand upright in the other; on their left sat a young woman with her eyes closed, mouth twisted with pain.

  After some time, Brunetti realized that the young man next to him stank with the peculiar sour sharpness of fear and alcohol, an odour Brunetti had smelled more times than he wanted to. From the other side came the occasional low moans of the woman.

  They sat there for fifteen minutes, not moving and not speaking, Brunetti growing gradually accustomed to both the smell and the sound. The door opened and the woman with the stethoscope gestured to them.

  They got to their feet and followed her.

  She led them down a corridor and opened the door to what turned out to be a small, disordered office. She went to the desk, removed the stethoscope, and tossed it on the surface, where it landed on a pile of papers and beside a book left there face down. She did not take a seat, nor did she suggest they sit while she spoke to them.

  ‘The man who was brought in is still in surgery and will probably be there for some time,’ she began. ‘He’s been stabbed four times. In the back.’ As she spoke, Vianello pulled out his notebook and began to write. Brunetti thought of the good eating Freddy had indulged in for years and the resulting thickening of his torso and waist, so well disguised by the jackets he had had made. Oh, please let that fat have helped him now, Brunetti thought, and promised he would never kid Freddy about it again.

  ‘That’s the only information I have. If you want reason for optimism, I can tell you that the chief surgeon told one of his assistants he could leave, that he and the other surgeon would deal with it.’

  Brunetti’s impulse was to ask why the surgeons would then take so long, but he said, instead, ‘Thank you for talking to us, Dottoressa.’ She smiled, but it barely changed the expression on her face.

  Brunetti was suddenly aware that he had brought the scent of the young man into this room with him. He extended his hand to hers, not at all certain that she would take it. But she did, and shook Vianello’s as well, and then was quickly gone.

  As soon as the door closed behind her, Brunetti pulled out his phone and dialled Silvana’s number again, but still there was no answer. He called Signorina Elettra’s office number.

  When she answered, he said, ‘I’m at the hospital in Mestre. My friend Freddy d’Istria was stabb
ed at the parking garage at Piazzale Roma, and they brought him here. Call the garage and tell them to close that floor off, then see if they have closed-circuit cameras and if his car – he was stabbed near his car – is in view of any of them. Get the tapes.’ He gave this some thought and added, ‘Get a magistrate to ask for all of them for the entire day. Then call Bocchese and tell him to send a crew over.’

  He paused to think of what else might be necessary, glanced aside at Vianello, who shook his head.

  ‘It’s the man who owns the apartment where Flavia Petrelli’s staying,’ Brunetti told her.

  ‘Oddio,’ he heard her whisper. ‘Should there be a guard?’

  Brunetti thought about this, considering the distance from Venice. ‘I don’t think we need it here, not in Mestre.’ Freddy had been followed, and that certainly showed an amount of planning, but to stab a man four times and not succeed in killing him did not. Like the attack on the bridge, impulse and momentary rage had taken over. In both cases, the victim had been left lying helpless, but the attacker lacked the killer drive to have done with it and finish them off while the chance was there.

  When Brunetti returned from his reverie, the line was dead. He saw Vianello looking at him, notebook open in his hand. ‘What now, Guido?’

  ‘You stay here,’ Brunetti told him. ‘Talk to him as soon as the doctors let you. Ask him what he remembers.’

  Vianello nodded. ‘And you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m going to talk to Signora Petrelli and find out who did this,’ he said and turned towards the exit and back to the city.

  22

  As he walked towards the door, Brunetti considered crass carnality as a motive. Flavia had gone out of her way to speak to the girl and had shown interest in her. Further, she was living at Freddy’s palazzo, and his affair with her had been much-documented. Brunetti himself had seen Freddy put his arm around her shoulders last night.

  This fan, indeed any fan of Flavia’s – be it a man or a woman – would know about Freddy, and anyone who managed to enter the theatre might have heard about her praise of the young contralto.

  The little Brunetti knew of stalkers told him that people usually stalked their ex, whatever the involvement had been: business partnership, marriage, love affair, boss, employee, though love involvements seemed to be the most common motivator. Life moved along and things changed, and some people were cast aside or replaced by others. Most people took this as normal and went on with their lives. Others refused change, refused the idea of a future different from what they had known or apart from the person they loved.

  A number of them decided that someone had to pay for what had happened. Sometimes it was the ex who had to pay, and sometimes it was the new partner or love interest. Here, Brunetti realized, he was in the world of lunacy, and so he could only speculate. How reason with a person who thinks that he can win back his former lover by killing the person they now love? Is it possible to threaten a person into love? If Paola fell in love with the meter reader from the gas company, what would it serve Brunetti to kill the man?

  Brunetti reproached himself for deviating into irony, a habit he shared with his wife; indeed, with his children. He hoped it wasn’t a bad legacy.

  He left the hospital by the front door and looked around for the police car. It was twenty metres from him, parked on a yellow line, the driver outside, smoking, leaning back against the door. Brunetti moved towards him, but a sudden wave of tiredness flowed over him, and he doubted whether he could reach the car without having to sit down and rest. He stood still for a moment, and the feeling slowly passed, though it left him wondering if he had eaten too much or too little, drunk too much coffee or too little.

  When he felt steady, he pulled out his phone and dialled the number Flavia had given him. She answered on the third ring, saying, her voice unsteady, ‘Silvana told me. She’s on her way to the hospital. She said you were already there.’

  ‘There’s no news yet: he’s still in surgery. Where was Silvana?’ he asked as he stepped into the car.

  ‘Down here with me. She left her telefonino at home. When she went back up, there was a message telling her to call the Mestre hospital, and that’s when they told her. She called me from a taxi on her way there. Nothing since.’ He thought she was finished, but then she said in a ragged voice, ‘Oh my God. Poor Freddy.’ And, insistently, ‘Why won’t they tell you anything? You’re a policeman, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I have to talk to you,’ Brunetti said, ignoring her question. ‘I can be there in half an hour.’ That, he knew, was optimistic, but if he could arrange to have a boat waiting at Piazzale Roma, it might be possible.

  ‘But I don’t know . . .’ she started to say before Brunetti cut her off.

  ‘I’m on my way. Don’t go out.’

  He heard her say something but couldn’t make out what it was.

  ‘Flavia,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed and broke the connection.

  He called the Questura immediately and asked that a boat meet him at Piazzale Roma in ten minutes. The driver, from in front of him, pumped a fist in the air and increased their speed.

  As he hoped, the boat was there. Brunetti told the pilot where he wanted to go and went down into the cabin and called Signorina Elettra again. She answered by saying, ‘I found a magistrate, who wrote an order for the videotapes, and Bocchese’s sent two men to the garage to check the site.’

  Brunetti was tempted to go and search for Bocchese’s technicians in the parking garage, but he knew he would soon be told whatever they had learned, while it was imperative he speak with Flavia while she still felt the impulse of fear. If he gave her time, and if Freddy was not critically injured, she might prove unwilling to unburden herself to Brunetti.

  The pilot used the siren sparingly, snapping it on and off only when he wanted to overtake another boat. They passed under the Scalzi Bridge and then the Rialto, Brunetti barely attending to the buildings they passed. When they approached the Accademia, Brunetti went up on deck and told the pilot to leave him at San Vio.

  As the boat pulled to a stop beside the campo, Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was exactly thirty-two minutes since he had spoken to Flavia: how wonderful, to be a policeman and to break the law with impunity. He thought he could develop a taste for it. He stepped up on to the riva, thanked the pilot, and headed down towards La Salute.

  He turned left into the narrow calle leading to Freddy’s place and stopped at the door. He saw two bells, one unmarked and one with ‘F. I.’. He rang the first.

  ‘Sì?’ a woman’s voice inquired.

  ‘It’s Guido,’ he answered.

  The door snapped open and he started towards the stairs. When he arrived at the second floor, he saw her at the door to the apartment, half hidden behind it, a position that would allow her to slam the door at the first sight of whoever came up the stairs or out of the elevator. She wore a black skirt and a beige sweater; incongruously, she also wore a pair of dark blue felt gondola slippers, the sort of thing tourists would buy, take home, and abandon.

  When she saw him, her body relaxed and she released her hand from the door, but it took a moment for her face to soften and her lips to move into a smile. Brunetti paused at the top of the steps to give her enough time to adjust entirely to his presence and assure her body there was no danger.

  Flavia backed away from the door and said, ‘Come in.’

  He did, asking permission as he crossed the threshold, making his behaviour so formal and formulaic as to calm her even more. He stopped just inside and closed the door very slowly. Then, turning to her, he asked, ‘This can’t open from the outside without a key, can it?’

  ‘No,’ she said, sounding relieved.

  Brunetti waited for her to make the first move. ‘We can talk in here,’ she said, turning to the right and passing into a room. He and Paola had been to Freddy’s a number of times, and Brunetti had imagined this apartment would
be a copy of the one above it.

  He was proven wrong by the sight of a small, narrow room with a single window looking across to the side wall and similar window of the house on the other side of the calle. No majesty, no Grand Canal, only this dreary, constricted room that must have been created by adding the wall to his left, thus making two small rooms out of one normal one and, in the process, almost entirely depriving this one of natural light. It also seemed to have no purpose: there were two armchairs, a round table, and a small chest against one wall. No paintings, no decoration: it reminded him of the interrogation rooms at the Questura.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Flavia asked him.

  ‘This room,’ Brunetti answered. ‘It’s so . . . different from Freddy’s place.’

  Flavia smiled and her beauty came back. ‘He’s so un-Venetian, Freddy. Always has been. Most of them – you – would be using this place as a bed and breakfast.’

  Grudgingly, Brunetti conceded her point with a nod.

  She moved to the left and sat on the arm of one of the worn velvet chairs. Brunetti sat in the other. ‘Can we forget about Venetians for a moment and talk about what’s going on?’ he asked.

  Her face changed, as if she were offended by his brusqueness, but she answered him. ‘Silvana called and said the doctors haven’t told her anything yet, except that she can see him tomorrow morning,’ she said in a tone she tried, and failed, to make sound optimistic. She pressed her lips together and looked at the carpet.

  Brunetti let some time pass. ‘As I said, it’s time we talked about what’s going on. And what’s going on is that someone tried to kill Freddy: that’s what we’re talking about.’

  Her response was immediate, and sharp. ‘I can’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt him, let alone kill him.’ Again she consulted the pattern on the carpet and added, ‘I’ve kept in touch with him ever since . . . since we broke off with one another.’ She looked at Brunetti as if to ask if he knew what she was talking about. He nodded.