Death in a Strange Country

by Donna Leon

  ‘Right,’ he said, speaking crisply, the way policemen in American films spoke, ‘let me know as soon as this Ruffolo is in custody. Do you need any more men assigned to this?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Brunetti said after a reflective pause. ‘I think we’ve got enough on it right now. It’s just a question of waiting until he makes a false step. That’s bound to happen soon enough.’

  Patta was completely uninterested in what it was or was not a question of. He wanted an arrest, the return of the paintings, and Viscardi’s support should he decide to run for city councillor. ‘Fine, let me know when you have something,’ he said, dismissing Brunetti with the tone, if not with the words. Patta reached for another cigarette and Brunetti, unwilling to wait and watch the ceremony, excused himself and went down to speak to Vianello.

  ‘Any word on Ruffolo?’ Brunetti asked when he went into the office.

  ‘There is and there isn’t,’ Vianello answered, rising minimally from his chair in deference to his superior, then lowering himself back into it.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that the word is that he’d like to talk.’

  ‘Where’d the word come from?’

  ‘From someone who knows someone who knows him.’

  ‘And who spoke to this someone?’

  ‘I did. It’s one of those kids out on Burano. You know, the ones who stole the fishing boat last year. Ever since we let them off on that, I’ve figured he’s owed me a favour, so I went out to talk to him yesterday. I remembered that he went to school with Ruffolo. And he called me back about an hour ago. No questions asked. He just said that this other person had talked to someone who saw Ruffolo, and he wants to talk to us.’

  ‘To anyone in particular?’

  ‘Not to you, I’d imagine, sir. After all, you’ve put him away twice.’

  ‘You want to do it, Vianello?’

  The other man shrugged. ‘Why not? I just don’t want it to be a lot of bother. He’s had nothing to do for the last two years but sit in jail and watch American police movies, so he’ll probably suggest that we meet at midnight in a boat on the laguna.’

  ‘Or in the cemetery at dawn, just when the vampires are flying back to nest.’

  ‘Why can’t he just make it a bar, so we can be comfortable and have a glass of wine?’

  ‘Well, wherever it is, go and meet him.’

  ‘Should I arrest him when he shows up?’

  ‘No, don’t try it. Just ask him what he wants to tell us, see what sort of deal he wants to make.’

  ‘Do you want me to have someone there to follow him?’

  ‘No. He’ll probably be expecting that. And he’d panic if he thought he was being followed. Just see what he wants. If it isn’t too much, make a deal with him.’

  ‘You think he’s going to tell us about Viscardi?’

  ‘There’s no other reason for him to want to talk to us, is there?’

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  When Brunetti turned to leave, Vianello asked, ‘What about the deal I make with him? Will we keep our part of it?’

  At this, Brunetti turned back and gave Vianello a long look. ‘Of course. If criminals can’t believe in an illegal deal with the police, what can they believe in?’

  19

  He heard nothing from Ambrogiani that afternoon, nor did Vianello manage to make contact with the boy on Burano. The next morning, no call had come in, nor had there been any by the time he got back from lunch. Vianello came in at about five to tell him that the boy had called and a meeting had been set up for Saturday afternoon, at Piazzale Roma. A car would come to meet Vianello, who was not to be in uniform, and would take him to where Ruffolo would talk to him. After he explained this to Brunetti, Vianello grinned and added, ‘Hollywood.’

  ‘It probably means they’ll have to steal a car to do it, too.’

  ‘And no chance of a drink, either, I suppose,’ said Vianello resignedly.

  ‘Pity they pulled down the Pullman Bar; at least that way you could have had one before you left.’

  ‘No such luck. I have to stand where the number five bus stops. They’ll pull up and I have to get in.’

  ‘How are they going to recognize you?’

  Did Vianello blush? ‘I have to be carrying a bouquet of red carnations.’

  At this, Brunetti could not restrain himself and exploded into laughter. ‘Red carnations? You? My God, I hope no one who knows you sees you, standing at a bus stop, leaving the city, with a bouquet of red carnations.’

  ‘I’ve told my wife. She doesn’t like it, not one bit, especially that I have to use my Saturday afternoon to do it. We were supposed to go out to dinner, and I won’t hear the end of this for months.’

  ‘Vianello, I’ll make a deal. Do this, we’ll even pay for the carnations, but you’ll have to get a receipt, but do it and I’ll fix the duty rosters so that you get next Friday and Saturday off, all right?’ It seemed the least he could do for the man who was willing to take the risk of putting himself into the hands of known criminals and who, more courageously, was willing to take the risk of angering his wife.

  ‘It’s all right, sir, but I don’t like it.’

  ‘Look, you don’t have to do this, Vianello. We’re bound to get our hands on him sooner or later.’

  ‘That’s all right, sir. He’s never been stupid enough to do anything to one of us before. And I know him from the last time.’

  Vianello, Brunetti remembered, had two children and a third on the way. ‘If this works, you get the credit for it. It’ll help towards a promotion.’

  ‘Oh, fine, and how’s he going to like that?’ Vianello lowered his eyes in the direction of Patta’s office. ‘How’s he going to like our arresting his friend, Signor Politically Important Viscardi?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Vianello, you know what he’ll do. Once Viscardi’s behind bars and the case looks strong enough, Patta’ll talk about the way he was suspicious from the very beginning but remained friendly with Viscardi, the better to lead him into the trap that he himself had devised.’ Both of them knew from long experience that this was true.

  Further ruminations on the behaviour of their superior were cut short by Vianello’s phone. He answered it with his name, listened for a moment, then handed it to Brunetti. ‘For you, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, then felt a rush of excitement when he recognized Ambrogiani’s voice.

  ‘He’s still here. One of my men followed him to his home; it’s in Grisignano, about twenty minutes from the base.’

  ‘The train stops there, doesn’t it?’ Brunetti asked, already planning.

  ‘Only the local. When do you want to see him?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Hold on a minute; I’ve got the schedule here.’ While Brunetti waited, he heard the phone being set down for a moment, then Ambrogiani’s voice. ‘There’s one that leaves Venice at eight; gets into Grisignano at eight-forty-three.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘Six-twenty-four.’

  ‘Can you have someone meet that?’

  ‘Guido, that gets in at seven-thirty,’ Ambrogiani said, voice almost pleading.

  ‘I want to speak to him at his house, and I don’t want him to leave before I get a chance to talk to him.’

  ‘Guido, you can’t go barging in on people’s homes at seven-thirty in the morning, even if they are Americans.’

  ‘If you give me the address, maybe I can get a car here.’ Even as he said it, he knew it was impossible; news of the request was bound to get back to Patta, and that was bound to cause nothing but trouble.

  ‘You’re a stubborn devil, aren’t you?’ Ambrogiani asked, but with more respect than anger in his voice. ‘All right, I’ll meet the train. I’ll bring my own car; that way we can park near his house and not have the entire neighbourhood wondering what we’re doing there.’ Brunetti, to whom cars were alien, strange things, hadn’t stopped to consider this, how a car that clearly belonged either to t
he Carabinieri or the police was bound to cause a stir in any small neighbourhood.

  ‘Thanks, Giancarlo. I appreciate it.’

  ‘I would certainly hope so. Seven-thirty on Saturday morning,’ Ambrogiani said with disbelief and replaced the receiver before Brunetti could say anything else. Well, at least he didn’t have to carry a dozen red carnations.

  The next morning, he managed to get to the station on time to have a coffee before the train left, so he was reasonably civil to Ambrogiani when he met him at the tiny station of Grisignano. The Maggiore looked surprisingly fresh and alert, as though he had been up for hours, something that Brunetti found, in his current mood, faintly annoying. Opposite the station, they stopped at a bar, and each had a coffee and a brioche, the Maggiore signalling to the barman with his chin that he wanted a dash of grappa added to his coffee. ‘It’s not far from here,’ Ambrogiani said. ‘A few kilometres. They live in a semi-detached house. On the other side there’s the landlord and his family.’ Seeing Brunetti’s inquisitive gaze, he explained. ‘I had someone come out and ask a few questions. Not much to say. Three kids. They’ve lived there for more than three years, always pay their rent on time, get on well with the landlord. His wife’s Italian, so that helps things in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘He’s here, back from the hospital in Germany.’

  ‘And how is he?’

  ‘He began school in September. Nothing seems to be wrong with him, but one of the neighbours says he has a nasty scar on his arm. Like he was burned.’

  Brunetti finished his coffee, put the cup down on the counter, and said, ‘Let’s go out to their house, and I’ll tell you what I know.’

  As they drove though the sleepy lanes and tree-lined roads, Brunetti explained to Ambrogiani what he had learned from the books he read, told him about the Xerox copy of the medical report on Kayman’s son, and about the article in the medical journal.

  ‘It sounds like she, or Foster, put it together. But that still doesn’t explain why they were both killed.’

  ‘You think they were, too?’ Brunetti asked.

  Ambrogiani turned his attention from the road and looked at Brunetti. ‘I never believed Foster was killed in a robbery, and I don’t believe in an overdose. No matter how good both of them were made to look.’

  Ambrogiani turned into an even smaller road and pulled up a hundred metres before a white cement house that stood back from the road, surrounded by a metal fence. The double entry doors to the semi-detached house opened from a porch raised above the doors of twin garages. In the driveway two bicycles lay, one beside the other, with the complete abandon that only bicycles could achieve.

  ‘Tell me more about these chemicals,’ Ambrogiani said when he turned off the engine. ‘I tried to find out something about them last night, but no one I asked seemed to know anything precise about them, except that they were dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t know that I learned much more from what I read,’ Brunetti admitted. ‘There’s a whole spectrum of them, a real death cocktail. It’s easy to produce them, and most factories seem to need some of them, or create them doing whatever it is they do, but the trouble comes in getting rid of them. It used to be possible to dump them just about anywhere, but now it’s harder. Too many people complained about having them in their back yards.’

  ‘Wasn’t there something in the paper a few years ago, about a ship, Karen B or something like that, that got as far as Africa and got turned around, ended up in Genoa?’

  When Ambrogiani mentioned it, Brunetti remembered it and remembered the headlines about the ‘Ship of Poisons’, a freighter that had tried to unload its cargo in some African port but was refused permission to dock. So the boat sailed around in the Mediterranean for what seemed like weeks, the Press as fond of it as it was of those crazy porpoises who tried to swim up the Tiber every couple of years. Finally, the Karen B had docked at Genoa, and that had been the end of it. As efficiently as if she had gone down in the waters of the Mediterranean, the Karen B sank off the pages of the newspapers and from the screens of Italian television. And the poisons she had been carrying, an entire boatload of lethal substances, had just as completely disappeared, no one to know or ask how. Or where.

  ‘Yes. But I don’t remember what her cargo was,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘We’ve never had a case of it out here,’ Ambrogiani said, not feeling it necessary to explain that ‘we’ were the Carabinieri and ‘it’ illegal dumping. ‘I don’t even know if it’s our job to look for it or arrest for it.’

  Neither of them wanted to be the first to break the silence that thought led to. Finally, Brunetti said, ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’

  ‘That no one seems responsible to enforce the law? If there are laws?’ Ambrogiani asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Before they could follow this up, the front door on the left side of the house they were watching opened and a man stepped out onto the porch. He walked down the steps, pulled open the garage door, then bent to move both bicycles to the grass at the side of the driveway. When he disappeared back into the garage, both Brunetti and Ambrogiani got out of the car and started to walk towards the house.

  Just as they got to the gate in the fence, a car came backing slowly out of the garage. It backed towards the gate, and the man got out, leaving the engine running, and moved to the gate to open it. Either he didn’t see the two men there or he chose to ignore them. He unlatched the gate, shoved it open, and then headed back towards the open door of his car.

  ‘Sergeant Kayman?’ Brunetti called over the sound of the engine.

  At the sound of his name, the man turned and looked at them. Both policemen stepped forward but stopped at the gate, careful not to pass onto the man’s property uninvited. Seeing this, the man waved them ahead with his hand and bent into the car to switch off the engine.

  He was a tall blond man with a slight stoop that might once have been intended to disguise his height but which had now become habitual. He moved with that loose-limbed ease so common to Americans, the ease that made them look so good in casual clothing, so awkward in formal dress. He walked towards them, face open and quizzical, not smiling but certainly not suspicious.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked in English. ‘You guys looking for me?’

  ‘Sergeant Edward Kayman?’ Ambrogiani asked.

  ‘Yeah. What can I do for you? Sort of early, isn’t it?’

  Brunetti stepped forward and extended his hand. ‘Good morning, Sergeant. I’m Guido Brunetti, from the Venice police.’

  The American shook Brunetti’s hand, his grasp firm and strong. ‘Long way from home, aren’t you, Mr Brunetti?’ he asked, turning the last two consonants into ‘D’s.

  It was meant as a pleasantry, so Brunetti smiled at him. ‘I suppose I am. But there are a few things I wanted to ask you, Sergeant.’ Ambrogiani smiled and nodded but made no attempt to introduce himself, leaving the conversation to Brunetti.

  ‘Well, ask away,’ said the American, then added, ‘sorry I can’t invite you gentlemen into the house for a cup of coffee, but the wife’s still asleep, and she’d kill me if I woke the kids up. Saturday’s her only morning to sleep in.’

  ‘I understand,’ Brunetti said. ‘Same thing at my house. I had to sneak out like a burglar myself this morning.’ They shared a grin at the unreasonable tyranny of sleeping women, and Brunetti began, ‘I’d like to ask you about your son.’

  ‘Daniel?’ the American asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘You don’t seem surprised,’ Brunetti remarked.

  Before he answered, the soldier moved over and leaned back against his car, bracing his weight against it. Brunetti took this opportunity to turn to Ambrogiani and asked in Italian, ‘Are you following what we say?’ The Carabiniere nodded.

  The American crossed his feet at the ankles and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He held the pack towards the Italians, but both shoo
k their heads. He lit a cigarette with a lighter, careful to cup it between both hands from the nonexistent breeze, then slipped both packet and lighter back into his pocket.

  ‘It’s about this doctor business, isn’t it?’ he asked, putting his head back and blowing a stream of smoke up into the air.

  ‘What makes you say that, Sergeant?’

  ‘Doesn’t take much figuring, does it? She was Danny’s doctor, and she sure as heck was all upset when his arm got so bad. Kept asking him what happened, and then that boyfriend of hers, the one that got himself killed in Venice, then he started bein’ all over me with questions.’

  ‘You knew he was her boyfriend?’ Brunetti asked, honestly surprised.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t until after he was killed that anyone said anything, but I suspect a fair number of people must have known before. I didn’t, for one, but I didn’t work with them. Heck, there aren’t but a few thousand of us, all living and working cheek by jowl. Nobody gets to keep any secrets, leastways not for very long.’

  ‘What sort of questions did he ask you?’

  ‘About where it was that Danny had been walking that day. And what else we saw there. Stuff like that.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him I didn’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t know?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. We were up above Aviano that day, up near Lake Barcis, but we stopped at another place on the way back down from the mountains; that’s where we had our picnic. Danny went off for a while into the woods by himself, but he couldn’t remember where it was he fell down, which place it was. I told Foster, tried to describe where it was, but I couldn’t remember real clear where we parked the car that day. With three kids and a dog to keep an eye on, you don’t pay much attention to things like that.’