by Donna Leon
‘You’re very kind, Signora,’ he said, painfully aware of how true this was.
She walked with him to the door, again leading him by the arm, as if he were a blind man or liable to lose his way. At the door to the street, they shook hands formally, and she stood at the door, watching him as he walked away.
15
The next morning, Sunday, was the day of the week Paola dreaded, for it was the day when she woke up with a stranger. During the years of their marriage, she had grown accustomed to waking up with her husband, a grim, foul creature incapable of civility for at least an hour after waking, a surly presence from whom she expected grunts and dark looks. Not the brightest bed partner, perhaps, but at least he left her alone and let her sleep. On Sunday, however, his place was taken by someone who, she hated the very word, chirped. Liberated from work and responsibility, a different man emerged: friendly, playful, often amorous. She loathed him.
This Sunday, he was awake at seven, thinking of what he could do with the money he had won at the Casinò. He could beat his father-in-law to the purchase of a computer for Chiara. He could get himself a new winter coat. They could all go to the mountains for a week in January. He lay in bed for half an hour, spending and respending the money, then was finally driven out of bed by his desire for coffee.
He hummed his way to the kitchen and pulled down the largest pot, filled it, set it on the stove, and put a saucepan of milk next to it, then went into the bathroom while they heated. When he emerged, teeth brushed and face glowing from the shock of cold water, the coffee was bubbling up, filling the house with its aroma. He poured it into two large cups, added the sugar and the milk, and went back towards the bedroom. He set the cups on the table beside their bed, got back down under the covers, and fought with his pillow until he had beaten it into a position that would allow him to sit up enough to drink his coffee. He took a loud sip, wiggled himself into a more comfortable position, and said softly, ‘Paola.’
From the long lump beside him, his fair consort made no response.
‘Paola,’ he repeated, voice a little louder. Silence. ‘Humm, such good coffee. Think I’ll have another sip,’ which he proceeded to do, loudly. A hand emerged from the lump, turned itself into a fist, and poked at his shoulder. ‘Wonderful, wonderful coffee. Think I’ll have another sip.’ A distinctly threatening noise emerged. He ignored it and sipped at his coffee. Knowing what was about to come, he placed the cup on the table beside the bed so that it would not be spilled. ‘Umm,’ was all he said before the lump erupted and Paola flipped herself onto her back, in the manner of a large fish, extending her left arm across his chest. Turning, he took the second cup from the table and placed it into her hand, then took it back and held it for her while she pushed herself up onto her pillow.
This scene had first taken place the second Sunday of their marriage, they still on their honeymoon, when he had bent over his still-sleeping wife to nuzzle at her ear. The voice that had said, steel-like, ‘If you don’t stop that, I’ll rip out your liver and eat it,’ had informed him that the honeymoon was over.
Try as he might, which wasn’t very hard, he could never understand her lack of sympathy with what he insisted upon seeing as his real self. Sunday was the only day he had during the week, the only day when he didn’t have to concern himself directly with death and disaster, so the person who woke up, he maintained, was the real man, the true Brunetti, and he could dismiss that other, Hyde-like creature as being in no way representative of his spirit. Paola was having none of this.
While she sipped at her coffee and worked at getting her eyes open, he switched on the radio and listened to the morning news, though he knew it was likely to turn his mood until it resembled hers. Three more murders in Calabria, all members of the Mafia, one a wanted killer (one for us, he thought); talk of the imminent collapse of the government (when was it not imminent?); a boatload of toxic waste docked at Genoa, turned back from Africa (and why not?); and a priest, murdered in his garden, shot eight times in the head (had he given too severe a penance in confession?). He switched it off while there was still time to save his day and turned to Paola. ‘You awake?’
She nodded, still incapable of speech.
‘What will we do with the money?’
She shook her head, nose buried in the fumes of the coffee.
‘Anything you’d like?’
She finished the coffee, handed the cup to him without comment, and fell back on her pillow. Looking at her, he didn’t know whether to give her more coffee or artificial respiration. ‘Kids need anything?’
Eyes still closed, she shook her head.
‘Sure there’s nothing you’d like?’
It cost her inhuman effort, but she got the words out. ‘Go away for an hour, then bring me a brioche and more coffee.’ That said, she flipped herself over onto her stomach and was asleep before he was out of the room.
He took a long shower, shaving under the flood of hot water, glad that he didn’t have to fear the responses of the varied ecological sensibilities of the other members of the household, always ready to decry what they saw as waste or misuse of the environment. Brunetti believed himself to be a man whose family always chose enthusiasms and causes that contributed directly to his inconvenience. Other men, he was sure, managed to have children who contented themselves with worrying about things that were far away – the rainforest, nuclear testing, the plight of the Kurds. Yet here he was, a city official, a man the newspapers had even once praised, and he was forbidden, by members of his own family, from buying mineral water that came in plastic bottles. Instead, he had to buy water in glass bottles, then haul those bottles up and down ninety-four steps. And if he stayed under the shower for more time than it took the average human being to wash his hands, he had to listen to endless denunciations of the thoughtlessness of the West, its devouring of the resources of the world. When he was a child, waste was condemned because they were poor; now it was condemned because they were rich. At this point, he discovered how difficult it was to shave while grinning, so he abandoned the catalogue of his woes and finished his shower.
When he emerged from the house twenty minutes later, he found himself swept by a boundless feeling of unspecified delight. Though the morning was cool, the day would be warm, one of those glorious sun-swept days that graced the city in the autumn. The air was so dry that it was impossible to believe the city was built on water, though a glance to the right as he walked past any of the side streets on his way towards Rialto was ample proof of that fact.
Arriving at the major cross-street, he turned left and headed down towards the fish market, closed now on Sunday but still giving off the faintest odour of the fish that had been sold there for hundreds of years. He crossed a bridge, turned to the left, and went into a pasticceria. He ordered a dozen pastries. Even if they didn’t eat them all for breakfast, Chiara was sure to knock them off during the course of the day. Probably the morning. Balancing the rectangular package on his outstretched palm, he went back towards Rialto, then turned right and back up towards San Polo. At Sant’ Aponal, he stopped at the newsstand and bought two papers, Corriere and Il Manifesto, which he thought were the ones Paola wanted to read that day. Back home, the steps seemed almost not to be there as he climbed up to the apartment.
He found Paola in the kitchen, coffee just brimming up in the pot. From down the hall, he heard Raffaele shouting to Chiara through the bathroom door, ‘Come on, hurry up. You’ve been in there all morning.’ Ah, the water police, back on duty.
He set the package down on the table and tore back the white paper. The mound of pastries glistened with melted sugar, and some fine powdered sugar floated out to settle on the dark wood of the table. He grabbed a piece of apple strudel and took a bite.
‘Where’d they come from?’ Paola asked, pouring coffee.
‘That place down by Carampane.’
‘You went all the way there?’
‘It’s a beautiful day, Paola. After we eat,
let’s go for a walk. We could go out to Burano for lunch. Come on, let’s do it. It’s a perfect day for the ride out.’ Even the thought of it, the long boat ride out to the island, the sun glimmering on the crazy patchwork of riotously coloured houses as they grew nearer, lifted his heart even higher.
‘Good idea,’ she agreed. ‘What about the kids?’
‘Ask them. Chiara will want to come.’
‘All right. Maybe Raffi will, too.’
Maybe.
Paola shoved the Manifesto towards him and picked up Corriere. Nothing would be done, no move to embrace this glorious day, until she had at least two more cups of coffee and read the papers. He took the newspaper in one hand, his cup in the other, and went back through the living room to the terrace. He set those things down on the balcony and went back into the living room for a straight-backed chair, which he propped up just the right distance from the railing. He sat, pushed the chair back, and rested his feet on the railing. Grabbing the paper, he opened it and began to read.
Church bells sounded, the sun rained down abundantly upon his face, and Brunetti knew a moment of absolute peace.
Paola spoke from the doorway to the terrace. ‘Guido, what was that doctor’s name?’
‘The pretty one?’ he asked, not looking up from his paper, not really paying attention to her voice.
‘Guido, what was her name?’
He lowered his paper and turned to look at her. When he saw her face, he took his feet from the railing and set the chair down. ‘Peters.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, then handed him the Corriere, turned back to a page in the middle.
‘American Doctor Dead of Overdose’, he read. The article was a small one, easily overlooked, no more than six or seven lines. The body of Captain Terry Peters, a paediatrician in the US Army, had been found late Saturday afternoon, in her apartment in Due Ville, in the province of Vicenza. Doctor Peters, who worked at the Army hospital at Caserme Ederle, had been found by a friend, who had gone to see why the doctor had not shown up for work that morning. A used syringe was found by the doctor’s body, and there were signs of other drug use, as well as evidence that the doctor had been drinking. The Carabinieri and the American military police were handling the investigation.
He read the article again, then again. He looked through the newspaper he had, but Il Manifesto had made no mention of it.
‘Is this possible, Guido?’
He shook his head. No, an overdose was impossible, but she was dead; the paper gave proof of that.
‘What will you do?’
He looked off towards the bell tower of San Polo, the closest church. He had no idea. Patta would see this as an unrelated event or, if related, either an unfortunate accident or, at worst, a suicide. Since only Brunetti knew she had destroyed the postcard from Cairo, and only he had seen her reaction to the body of her lover, there was nothing to link the two of them together as anything other than colleagues, and that surely was no reason for suicide. Drugs and alcohol, and a woman living alone; that was enough to tell how the Press would treat this one – unless, unless the same sort of call that Brunetti was sure had been made to Patta were to be made to editors’ offices. In that case, the story would die a quick death, as many stories did. As Doctor Peters had.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, finally answering Paola’s question. ‘Patta’s warned me off, told me not to go back to Vicenza.’
‘But certainly this changes things.’
‘Not for Patta. It’s an overdose. The Carabinieri and the American military police will handle it. They’ll do an autopsy, then they’ll send her body back to America.’
‘Just like the other one,’ Paola said, giving voice to his thoughts. ‘Why kill them both?’
Brunetti shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’ But he knew. She had been silenced. Her casual remark that she wasn’t interested in drugs had not been a lie: the idea of an overdose was ludicrous. She’d been killed because of whatever she knew about Foster, because of whatever it was that had sent her careening across the room, away from her lover’s body. Killed by drugs. He wondered if that was meant to be a message to him but dismissed the idea as vainglorious. Whoever had killed her hadn’t had enough time to arrange an accident, and a second murder would have been too obvious, a suicide unexplained and therefore suspicious. So an accidental overdose was the perfect solution: she did it to herself, nowhere else to look, another dead end. And Brunetti didn’t even know if it was she who had called to say, ‘Basta’.
Paola came closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Guido. Sorry for her.’
‘She couldn’t have been thirty yet,’ he said. ‘All those years in school, all that work.’ It seemed to him that her death would have been less unfair if she had had time for more fun. ‘I hope her family doesn’t believe it.’
Paola spoke his thoughts. ‘If the police and the Army tell you something, you’re likely to believe it. And I’m sure it looked very real, very convincing.’
‘Poor people,’ he said.
‘Could you …’ she broke off, remembering that Patta had told him to stay clear of this.
‘If I can. It’s bad enough that she’s dead. They don’t need to believe this.’
‘That she was murdered isn’t going to be any better,’ Paola said.
‘At least she didn’t do that.’
Both of them stayed there in the late autumn sunshine, thinking about parents and being a parent, and what parents want and need to know about their children. He had no idea which would be better, worse. At least, if you knew that your child had been murdered, your life would have the grim hope of someday being able to kill the person who had done it, but that hardly seemed any sort of consolation.
‘I should have called her.’
‘Guido,’ she said, voice growing firm. ‘Don’t start that. Because all it means is that you should have been a mind-reader. And you’re not. So don’t even start thinking that.’ He was surprised by the real anger in her voice.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. They remained like that, without speaking, until the bells of San Marco boomed out ten o’clock.
‘What are you going to do? Will you go to Vicenza?’
‘No, not yet. I’m going to wait.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Whatever they knew, they knew because of where they worked. It’s the link they had. There have got to be other people who know or suspect or have access to what they learned. So I’m going to wait.’
‘Guido, now you’re asking other people to be mind-readers. How are they going to know to come to you?’
‘I’ll go out there, but not for a week, and then I’ll make myself conspicuous. Speak to that major, to the sergeant who worked with them, to other doctors. It’s a small world there. People will talk to one another; they’ll know something.’ And to hell with Patta.
‘Let’s forget Burano, all right, Guido?’
He nodded then got to his feet. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk. I’ll be back for lunch.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘I just need to walk.’ He glanced out over the rooftops of the city. How strange; the glory of the day was undiminished. Sparrows swooped and played tag with one another almost within his grasp, chirping for the joy of flight. And off in the far distance, the gold on the wings of the angel atop the bell tower of San Marco flashed in the sun, bathing the entire city in its glistening benediction.
16
On Monday morning, he went into his office at the regular time and stood looking at the façade of the church of San Lorenzo for more than an hour. During that entire time, he saw no sign of motion or activity, neither on the scaffolding nor on the roof, which was stacked with neat rows of terracotta tiles. Twice he heard people come into his office, but when they didn’t speak to him, he didn’t bother to turn around, and they left, presumably after having placed things on his desk.
At ten-thirty, his phone rang, and he turned away from the window to answe
r it.
‘Good morning, Commissario. This is Maggiore Ambrogiani.’
‘Good morning, Maggiore. I’m glad you called. In fact, I was going to call you this afternoon.’
‘They did it this morning,’ Ambrogiani said with no prelude.
‘And?’ Brunetti asked, knowing what he meant.
‘It was an overdose of heroin, enough to kill someone twice her size.’
‘Who did the autopsy?’
‘Doctor Franceso Urbani. One of ours.’
‘Where?’
‘Here at the hospital in Vicenza.
‘Were any of the Americans present?’
‘They sent one of their doctors. Sent him down from Germany. A colonel, this doctor.’
‘Did he assist or only observe?’
‘He merely observed the autopsy.’
‘Who’s Urbani?’
‘Our pathologist.’
‘Reliable?’
‘Very.’
Aware of the potential ambiguity of the last question, Brunetti rephrased it. ‘Believable?’
‘Yes.’
‘So that means it was really an overdose?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid it does.’
‘What else did he find?’
‘Urbani?’
‘Yes.’
‘There were no signs of violence in the apartment. There were no signs of prior drug use, but there was a bruise on her upper right arm and one on her left wrist. It was suggested to Doctor Urbani that these bruises were consistent with a fall.’
‘Who made that suggestion?’
The length of the pause before Ambrogiani answered was probably meant as a reproach to Brunetti’s even having to ask. ‘The American doctor. The colonel.’
‘And what was Doctor Urbani’s opinion?’
‘That the marks are not inconsistent with a fall.’
‘Any other needle marks?’
‘No, none.’
‘So she overdosed the first time she did it?’