Death in a Strange Country

by Donna Leon

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. See what Patta does,’ he said, cutting a piece of meat from the shank and placing it on her plate. With a motion of her hand, she signalled that she didn’t want any more. He cut himself two large pieces, reached for some bread, and started to eat again.

  ‘What difference does it make what Patta does?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah, my sweet innocent,’ he replied. ‘If he tries to shift me away from this, then I’ll be sure that someone wants it covered up. And since our Vice-Questore responds only to voices that come from high places – the higher the place, the faster he moves – then I’ll know that whoever wants this thing shut down has a certain amount of power.’

  ‘Like who?’

  He took another piece of bread and wiped at the gravy on his plate. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, but it makes me very uncomfortable, thinking about who it might be.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know, not exactly. But if the American military is involved, then you can be sure it’s political, and that means the government. Theirs. And that means ours, as well.’

  ‘And hence a phone call to Patta?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And hence trouble?’

  Brunetti was not given to remarking upon the self-evident.

  ‘And if Patta doesn’t try to stop you?’

  Brunetti shrugged. He’d wait and see.

  Paola removed the plates. ‘Dessert?’

  He shook his head. ‘What time will the kids be home?’

  Moving about the kitchen, she answered, ‘Chiara will be here by nine. I told Raffaele to be home by ten.’ The difference in the way she expressed it told the whole story.

  ‘You speak to his teachers?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No. It’s too soon in the year.’

  ‘When’s the first meeting for the parents?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve got the letter from the school around here somewhere. In October, I think.’

  ‘How is he?’ Even as he asked it, he hoped Paola would just answer the question, not ask him what he meant, because he didn’t know what he meant.

  ‘I don’t know, Guido. He never talks to me, not about school or about his friends or what he’s doing. Were you like that when you were his age?’

  He thought about being sixteen and what it had been like. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I was. But then I discovered girls, and I forgot all about being angry or lost, or whatever I was. I just wanted them to like me. That’s the only thing that was important to me.’

  ‘Were there a lot of them?’ she asked.

  He shrugged.

  ‘And did they like you?’

  He grinned.

  ‘Oh, go away, Guido, and find yourself something to do. Watch television.’

  ‘I hate television.’

  ‘Then help me do the dishes.’

  ‘I love television.’

  ‘Guido,’ she repeated, not exasperated, but on the way, ‘just get up and go away from me.’

  Both of them heard the sound of a key in the lock. It was Chiara, banging the door open and dropping a school book as she came into the apartment. She came down the hall to the kitchen, kissed both of her parents, and went to stand next to Brunetti, arm draped on his shoulder. ‘Is there anything to eat, Mamma?’ she asked.

  ‘Didn’t Luisa’s mother feed you?’

  ‘Yes, but that was hours ago. I’m starved.’

  Brunetti wrapped his arm around her and pulled her onto his lap. In his bad cop voice he said, harshly, ‘All right, I’ve got you. Confess. Where do you put it?’

  ‘Oh, Papà, stop it,’ she said, squirming with delight. ‘I just eat it. But then I get hungry again. Don’t you?’

  ‘Your father usually waits at least an hour, Chiara.’ Then, more kindly, Paola asked, ‘Fruit? A sandwich?’

  ‘Both?’ she pleaded.

  By the time Chiara had eaten a sandwich, a massive thing filled with prosciutto, tomato, and mayonnaise, then devoured two apples, it was time for all of them to go to bed. Raffaele had not returned by eleven-thirty, but Brunetti, waking in the night, heard the door open and close and his son’s footsteps in the hall. After that, he slept deeply.

  13

  Ordinarily, Brunetti would not bother to go to the Questura on a Saturday, but this morning he did, more to see who else turned up than for any other reason. He made no attempt to get there on time, ambled through Campo San Luca and had a cappuccino at Rosa Salva, the bar Paola insisted had the best coffee in the city.

  He continued towards the Questura, cutting parallel to San Marco but avoiding the Piazza itself. When he arrived, he went to the second floor, where he found Rossi talking to Riverre, an officer he thought was out on sick leave. When he walked in, Rossi signalled for him to come over to his desk.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, sir. We’ve got something new.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A break-in. On the Grand Canal. That big palazzo that’s just been restored, over by San Stae.’

  ‘The one that belongs to the Milanese?’

  ‘Yes, sir. When he got there last night, he found two men, maybe there were three, he wasn’t sure, in the place.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Vianello’s over at the hospital, talking to him now. What I’ve got, I got from the men who answered the call and took him to the hospital.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘He tried to get out, but they grabbed him and gave him a going over. He had to be taken to the hospital, but it’s nothing too bad. Cuts and bruises.’

  ‘And the three men? Two men?’

  ‘No sign of them. The men who answered the call went back to the place after they took him to the hospital. It looks like they got away with a couple of paintings and some of his wife’s jewellery.’

  ‘Any description of the men who did it?’

  ‘He didn’t see them clearly, couldn’t say much, except that one of them was very tall, and he thought one of them might have a beard. But,’ Rossi added, looking up and smiling, ‘there was a pair of tourists sitting on the edge of the canal, and they saw three men come out of the palazzo. One of them was carrying a suitcase. These kids were still there when our men arrived, and they gave us a description.’ He paused and smiled as if sure Brunetti would enjoy what was coming next. ‘One of them sounds like Ruffolo.’

  Brunetti’s response was immediate. ‘I thought he was in prison.’

  ‘He was, sir, until two weeks ago.’

  ‘Have you shown them photos?’

  ‘Yes, sir. And they think it’s him. They noticed the big ears.’

  ‘What about the owner? Have you shown him the photo?’

  ‘Not yet, sir. I just got back from talking to these Belgian kids. Sounds like Ruffolo to me.’

  ‘And what about the other two men? Are the descriptions these Belgian kids gave you the same as his?’

  ‘Well, sir, it was dark, and they weren’t really paying attention.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But they’re pretty sure neither one of them had a beard.’

  Brunetti thought about this for a moment, then told Rossi, ‘Take the photo over to the hospital and see if he recognizes him. Can he talk, the Milanese?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir. He’s all right. A couple of bruises, a black eye, but he’s all right. Place is fully insured.’

  Why was it that it always seemed less a crime if the place was insured?

  ‘If he gives you a positive identification of Ruffolo, let me know, and I’ll go over to his mother’s place and see if she knows where he is.’

  Rossi snorted at this.

  ‘I know, I know. She’d lie to the Pope if it would save her little Peppino. Well, who’s to blame her? He is her only son. Besides, I’d like to see the old battle-axe again; I don’t think I’ve seen her more than twice since the last time I arrested him.’

  ‘She tried to get you with scissors then, didn’t she,
sir?’ Rossi asked.

  ‘Well, her heart really wasn’t in it, and Peppino was there to stop her.’ He grinned outright at the memory, certainly one of the most absurd moments in his career. ‘Besides, they were only pinking shears.’

  ‘She’s a piece of work, Signora Concetta.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘And get someone to keep an eye on that girlfriend of his. What’s her name?’

  ‘Ivana Something-or-Other.’

  ‘Yes, her.’

  ‘You want us to talk to her, sir?’

  ‘No, she’d just say she hasn’t seen him. Speak to those people who live under her. They turned Ruffolo in last time. Maybe they’d let us put someone in the apartment until he shows up. Ask them.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, nothing.’

  ‘I’ll be in my office for an hour or so. Let me know what happens in the hospital, if it’s Ruffolo.’ He started to leave the office, but Rossi called out after him.

  ‘One thing, sir, a phone call came for you last night.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. The operator said the call came at about eleven. A woman. She asked for you by name, but she didn’t speak Italian, or very little. He said something else, but I don’t remember what it was.’

  ‘I’ll stop and talk to him on the way up,’ Brunetti said and left the office. Instead of taking the stairs, he stopped at the end of the corridor and went into the cubicle where the telephone operator sat. He was a young police recruit, fresh-faced and probably all of eighteen. Brunetti couldn’t remember his name.

  When he saw Brunetti, he leaped to his feet, dragging with him the wire that attached his headphones to the switchboard. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Good morning. Please sit down.’

  The young man did, poised nervously on the edge of his chair.

  ‘Rossi tells me a phone call came for me last night.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the recruit said, fighting the urge to jump to his feet when addressing a superior.

  ‘Did you take the call?’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Then, to prevent Brunetti from asking why he was still there twelve hours later, the young man explained, ‘I was taking Monico’s shift, sir. He’s sick.’

  Uninterested in this detail, Brunetti asked, ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She asked for you by name, sir. But she didn’t speak more than a little bit of Italian.’

  ‘Do you remember exactly what she said?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, fumbling at some papers on the desk in front of the switchboard. ‘I have it written down here.’ He pushed papers aside and came up with a single sheet, from which he read, ‘She asked for you, but she didn’t give her name or anything. I asked her for her name, but she didn’t answer me, or she didn’t understand. I told her that you weren’t here, but then she asked for you again.’

  ‘Was she speaking English?’

  ‘I think so, sir, but she only spoke a few words and I couldn’t understand her. I told her to speak in Italian.’

  ‘What else did she say?’

  ‘She said something that sounded like “basta”, or it could have been “pasta”, or “posta”.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, sir. Just that. And then she hung up.’

  ‘How did she sound?’

  The boy thought about this for a while and finally answered, ‘She didn’t sound anything in particular, sir. Just disappointed that you weren’t here, I’d say.’

  ‘All right. If she calls back, put her call through to me or to Rossi. He speaks English.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the young man said. When Brunetti turned to leave the room, the temptation proved irresistible, and the young man jumped to his feet to salute Brunetti’s retreating back.

  A woman, one who spoke very little Italian. ‘Molto poco’, he remembered the doctor saying. He also remembered something his father had once told him about fishing, when it had been possible to fish in the laguna, that it was bad to flick the bait, that it scared the fish away. So he would wait. She was there for six months, at any rate, and he wasn’t going anywhere. If she didn’t call again, he’d call the hospital on Monday and ask to speak to her.

  And now Ruffolo was out and back in business. A petty thief and burglar, Ruffolo had been in and out of jail for the last ten years, twice put there by Brunetti. His parents had moved up from Naples years ago, bringing with them this delinquent child. His father had drunk himself to death, but not before instilling in his only son the principle that the Ruffolos were not meant for things as ordinary as work, or trade, not even study. True fruit of his father’s loins, Giuseppe had never worked, the only trade he had ever practised was in stolen objects, and all he had ever studied was how best to open a lock or break into a house. If he was back at work so soon after being released, two years in prison had apparently not been wasted on him.

  Brunetti, however, couldn’t keep himself from liking both the mother and the son. Peppino seemed not to hold Brunetti personally responsible for having arrested him, and Signora Concetta, once the pinking shears incident was forgotten, had been grateful for Brunetti’s testimony at Ruffolo’s trial that he had avoided the use of any force or threat of violence in the commission of his crimes. It was probably that testimony that had helped limit the sentence for burglary to only two years.

  He didn’t have to send down to the record office for Ruffolo’s file. Sooner or later, he would turn up at his mother’s apartment, or at Ivana’s, and Giuseppe would soon be back inside, there to become more practised in crime, more fully confirmed in his doom.

  As soon as he got to his office, he began to look for Rizzardi’s report on the autopsy of the young American. When they spoke, the pathologist had said nothing about the presence of drugs in the blood, and Brunetti had not asked that question specifically at the time of the autopsy. He found the report on his desk, opened it, and began to page through. Just as Rizzardi had threatened, its language was virtually impenetrable. On the second page, he found what he thought might be the answer, though it was hard to tell in the midst of the long Latin terms and tortured syntax. He read it through three times and, by then, was reasonably sure that it meant that there had been no traces of drugs of any sort in his blood. He would have been surprised if the autopsy had discovered anything different.

  The intercom buzzer on his phone sounded. He answered with a prompt, ‘Yes, sir.’

  Patta didn’t bother asking him how he knew who was calling, a sure sign that the call was important. ‘I’d like to speak to you, Commissario.’ The use of the title, rather than his name, emphasized the importance of the call.

  Brunetti said that he would go immediately down to the Vice-Questore’s office. Patta was a man of limited moods, each one clearly legible, and this was one that Brunetti needed to read carefully.

  When he went into Patta’s office, Brunetti found his superior sitting behind his empty desk, hands folded in front of him. Usually, Patta made the attempt to create the appearance of diligence, even if it was no more than an empty file in front of him. Today there was nothing, just a serious, one might even say solemn, face and a pair of folded hands. The spicy odour of some omnisexual cologne wafted out from Patta, whose face, this morning, appeared to have been oiled rather than shaved. Brunetti walked over to the desk and stood in front of it, wondering how long Patta would remain silent, a technique he frequently employed when he wanted to stress the importance of what he had to say.

  At least a full minute passed before Patta said, ‘Sit down, Commissario.’ The repeated use of the title told Brunetti that what he was going to hear would be unpleasant in some way and that Patta knew it.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you about this robbery,’ Patta said with no preamble as soon as Brunetti was seated.

  Brunetti suspected he did not mean this most recent one, on the Grand Canal, even though the victim was an industrialist from Milan. An assault on
a person of that importance would usually be enough to drive Patta to almost any excess in the appearance of diligence.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘I learned today that you made another trip out to Vicenza.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why was that necessary? Don’t you have enough to do here in Venice?’

  Brunetti steeled himself, knowing that, despite their previous conversation, he would have to explain everything all over again. ‘I wanted to speak to some of the people who knew him, sir.’

  ‘Didn’t you do that the first day you were there?’

  ‘No, sir, there wasn’t time.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about that when you came back that afternoon.’ When Brunetti didn’t respond, Patta asked, ‘Why didn’t you do that the first day?’

  ‘There wasn’t time, sir.’

  ‘You were back here by six. There would have been plenty of time to stay out there and finish things up that afternoon.’

  Only with difficulty did Brunetti stop himself from displaying his astonishment that Patta would recall a detail such as the time Brunetti had returned from Vicenza. This was the man, after all, who could not be depended upon to name more than two or three of the uniformed police.

  ‘I didn’t get to it, sir.’

  ‘What happened when you went back?’

  ‘I spoke to Foster’s commanding officer and to one of the men who worked with him.’

  ‘And what did you learn?’

  ‘Nothing substantial, sir.’

  Patta glared across the desk at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I didn’t learn anything about why a person would want to kill him.’

  Patta threw his hands up in the air and let out a great sigh of exasperation. ‘That’s exactly the point, Brunetti. There is no reason why anyone would want to kill him, which is why you didn’t find it. And, I might add, why you aren’t going to find it. Because it isn’t there. He was killed for his money, and the proof of that is the fact that his wallet wasn’t found on him.’ One of his shoes wasn’t found with him, either. Did that mean he was killed for a size 11 Reebok?

  Patta opened his top drawer and pulled out a few sheets of paper. ‘I think you’ve wasted more than enough time chasing out to Vicenza, Brunetti. I don’t like the idea of your bothering the Americans about this. The crime happened here, and the killer will be found here.’ Patta made that last sound firmly terminal. He picked up one of the papers and glanced at it. ‘I’d like you to make better use of your time from now on.’