Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

  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.'

  'Is that what he did, ruin the beds?' Brunetti asked.

  ‘I told you it's what they all do,' Bonsuan answered. "They'll dig anywhere, and every year there are
fewer clams. So the price goes up.' He looked from Brunetti to Vianello, who was standing on the dock, listening. With a brusque beckoning gesture, the pilot waved towards the sergeant and said, 'Come on, Lorenzo.' Vianello tossed his end of the rope around one of the stanchions on the side of the boat and jumped on board.

  'But if he's lost his boat’ Brunetti said, pretending to ignore the successful conclusion of peace negotiations, and bringing the conversation back from the general to the particular, 'what does he do now?'

  'Fidele said he's working for one of his sons, runs one of his boats for him’ Bonsuan said, pulling out dials on the panel in front of him. 'It's a much smaller boat, and there's only two of them on it.'

  'Must be difficult for him’ Vianello interrupted, 'not being the owner any more.'

  Bonsuan shrugged. 'Depends on the son, I suppose.'

  'And Signora Follini?' Brunetti asked, again bringing the conversation back to his immediate concern.

  'It had been going on for about two years,' Bonsuan said. 'Ever since he lost the boat' Feeling that this wasn't sufficient explanation, Bonsuan went on. 'He doesn't have to get to sea so early any more, only when he wants to.'

  'And the wife?' Vianello asked.

  All of Italy and all of its history and culture went into the shrug with which Bonsuan dismissed this question. 'She's got a home, and he pays the rent. They've got three children, all married and on their own. What has she got to complain about?'Anything else he might have said was lost in the sound of the engine, which sprang to life at his command.

  Not wanting to discuss this, Brunetti was content that they should return to the city, to their own homes and to their own children.

  19

  Brunetti had been in his office for less than an hour the following morning when he answered the phone to hear Signorina Elettra's voice.

  'Where are you?' he asked brusquely, then moderated his tone and added, ‘I mean how are you?'

  Her long silence suggested how she felt about being questioned in this manner. When she did answer, however, there was no sign of resentment in her voice. 'I'm on the beach. And I'm fine.'

  The far-off cries of the gulls spoke to the truth of the first, the lightness in her voice to the second.

  'Signorina,' he began with little preparation and less thought, 'you've been there more than a week now. I think it's time you began to think about coming back.'

  'Oh, no, sir, I don't think that's a good idea at all.'

  'But I do,' he insisted. ‘I think you should say your farewells to your family and report for work tomorrow.'

  'It's the beginning of the week, sir. I'd planned to stay until at least the weekend.'

  'Well, I think it would be better if you came back. There's a lot of work that's piled up since you left.'

  'Please, sir. I'm sure it's nothing one of the other secretaries couldn't handle.'

  'I need to get some information,' Brunetti said, realizing how close his voice came to pleading. 'Things I don't want the secretaries to know about.'

  'Vianello can handle the computer well enough now to get you what you want.'

  'It's the Guardia di Finanza,' Brunetti said, playing what he thought would be a trump card. ‘I need information from them and I doubt that Vianello would be able to get it.'

  'What sort of information, sir?' He heard noises in the background: gulls, a horn of some sort, a car engine starting, and he remembered how narrow the beach of Pellestrina was and how close to the road.

  ‘I need to know about tax evasion.'

  'Read the newspaper, sir,' she said, laughing at her own joke. When there was no response, she said, the laughter gone and her voice less rich for that, 'You can call their main office and ask. There's a maresciallo there, Resto, who can tell you everything you need to know. Just tell him I told you to call.'

  He had known her long enough to recognize the polite inflexibility he was dealing with. ‘I think it would be better if you handled it, Signorina.'

  All pleasantness dropped from her voice as she said, 'If you keep this up, sir, I'll be forced to take a week of real vacation, and I'd rather not do that because it would take a lot of time to adjust the timetables.'

  He wanted to cut it short and simply ask her who the man was he had seen her with yesterday, but their relationship had ill prepared him for such a question, especially in the tone he knew he would be incapable of preventing himself from using. He was her superior, but that hardly gave him the authority to act in loco parentis. Because the difference in their positions precluded the intimacy of friendship, he could not ask her to tell him what was going on between her and the handsome young man he had seen her with. He could not think of a way to express concern that would not sound like jealousy, and he could not explain, even to himself, which it was he actually felt.

  "Then tell me if you've learned anything,' he said in a voice he forced himself to make less stern, hoping that this would be viewed as compromise rather than the defeat it so clearly was.

  'I've learned to tell un sandolo from un puparin, and I've learned to spot a school of fish on a sonar screen’ she said.

  He avoided the lure of sarcasm and asked, voice bland, 'And about the murders?'

  'Nothing’ she admitted. 'I'm not from here, so no one talks about them in front of me, at least not to say more than the sort of things people say.' She sounded wistful at the confession that the Pellestrinotti did not treat her like one of their own, and he wondered about the lure of the place, or the people, that could cause this response. Yet he would not ask.

  'What about Pucetti? Has he learned anything?'

  'Not that I know, sir. I see him in the bar when he makes me a coffee, but he's given no sign that he has anything to tell me. I don't see that there's any sense in keeping him out here any longer.'

  She was not alone in that sentiment: Brunetti had already had three questions about Pucetti from Lieutenant Scarpa, Patta's assistant, who had noticed the absence of the young officer's name from the regular duty roster. With the ease of long habit, Brunetti had lied and told Scarpa that he had assigned the young officer to the investigation of suspected drug shipments at the airport. There was no reason for his lie beyond his instinctive suspicion of the lieutenant and his desire that no one at all should learn of Pucetti's presence, nor that of Signorina Elettra, on Pellestrina.

  'The same goes for you, Signorina’ he said, aiming at lightness and humour. 'When are you coming back?'

  ‘I told you, sir. I want to stay a bit longer.'

  Above the cries of the gulls, a man's voice called out, 'Elettra.' He heard her sudden intake of breath, and then she said into the phone, 'Ti chiamero. Ciao Silvia,' and then she was gone, leaving Brunetti strangely unsettled that, in order finally to use the familiar tu with him, she had had to call him Silvia.

  Signorina Elettra had no trouble whatsoever in addressing Carlo as tu. In fact, there were times when she thought that the grammatical intimacy did little justice to the sense of ease and familiarity she felt with him. Not only had something about him seemed familiar when they first met; it had continued to grow as she listened to him talk and came to know him better. They both loved mortadella, but they also loved, of all improbable things, Asterix and Bracio di Ferro, sugarless coffee and Bambi, and both confessed that they had cried when they learned of the death of Moana Pozzi, going on to say they'd never felt so proud to be Italian as when they saw the spontaneous outpouring of sympathy for the death of a porno star.

  They'd spent hours talking during this week, and it had pained her, in the face of his openness, to maintain the lie that she was working for a bank. He'd expanded on his brief history of his life and told her he'd studied economics in Milano before abandoning his studies and returning home when his father died two years ago. There was, as neither of them needed to be told, no suitable work for a man who still had to pass two exams before finishing his degree in economics. She admired his honesty in telling her that he had no choice but to become a f
isherman, and she delighted in hearing the pride with which he spoke of his gratitude to his uncle for having offered him a job.

  The work on the boat was so heavy and exhausting that he had twice fallen asleep in her company, once while they sat in their cave on the beach and once as he sat beside her in the bar. She didn't mind either time, as it gave her the chance to study the small hollow just in front of his ear and the way his face relaxed and grew younger as he slept. She often told him he was too thin, and he replied that it was the work that did it. Though he ate like a wolf, and she had seen proof of this at every meal, she saw no trace of fat on his body. When he moved, he seemed to be composed of flexing lines and muscles; the sight of his bronzed forearm had once brought her close to tears, so beautiful did she find it.

  When she gave it thought, she reminded herself that she was out on Pellestrina in order to listen to what people had to say about murder, not to fall into the orbit of a young man, no matter how beautiful he might be. She was there in the hope of picking up some piece of information that might be of use to the police, not to find herself enmeshed by a man who, if only by virtue of his occupation, could well be one of the people she should be gathering information about.

  All of this fled her mind as Carlo's arm found its already familiar place on her shoulder, his left hand curving around behind her to come to rest on her arm. She'd already grown accustomed to the way his hand registered his emotions, fingers tightening on her arm when he wanted to emphasize something he said or tapping out a quick rhythm whenever he was preparing to make a joke. Though a number of men had touched her arm, few had managed to touch her heart the way he did. One night, when she'd gone out on the boat with him and his uncle, she'd seen his hands glistening in the light of the full moon, covered with fish guts, scales and blood, his face distant and intense with the need to shovel them from the nets into the refrigerated hold below decks. He'd looked up and seen her watching him and had immediately turned himself into Frankenstein's monster, arms raised in front of him, fingers quivering menacingly as he tromped, stiff-kneed, towards her.