by Donna Leon
Brunetti nodded.
‘He’s done it since she died, so I’m accustomed to it.’
Brunetti nodded again; he could remember his own mother doing the same.
‘So that’s probably where he went,’ she said.
She stood still and looked at him, and he saw that her sea-blue eyes had the same wrinkles at the corners that her father’s had. ‘That must be what he did.’ She looked away from Brunetti and across the water towards Treporti.
She kept her eyes on the distant fields, letting whole minutes pass. A small boat chugged past, a dog, gap-mouthed with joy, facing forward on the prow.
When the noise of the engine had disappeared, she turned to Brunetti and said, ‘My father said that he liked you. And trusted you.’
‘Trusted?’ Brunetti asked.
‘He said he could see who had taught you how to row and that you were reliable.’ She nodded, as though to confirm her memory.
He wondered if she knew and said, ‘He and my father won the regatta once.’
She smiled. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been told that.’ In response to Brunetti’s unasked question, she added, ‘It’s one of my favourite stories. I’ve heard him describe every turn and twist, and I know the names of the men in the first four boats to finish.’ After a pause, she added, ‘It’s the only time he won.’
She started walking again, back towards the villa. When Brunetti joined her, she turned to him and said, ‘I can’t tell you why I think this, but he seemed nervous, or excited, as if there was something he was impatient to do.’ After a moment, in a softer voice, she added, ‘I thought it was something he wanted to tell my mother.’
There was still no sign of the boat. ‘Have you called him?’ Brunetti asked, knowing it was a stupid question.
‘Since early this morning,’ she answered, pulling her phone from her pocket and hitting the redial key. She held it towards Brunetti, who heard a quick, insistent beep until she poked it off. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Her voice was rough.
Brunetti was at a loss. On land, if a person went missing, one called the hospitals and the police, but he was the police, and they were kilometres from any hospital. ‘What about the Guardia Costiera?’ he asked. ‘Or the Capitaneria di Porto?’ One of them, he was sure, had to be in charge of searching for someone lost at sea.
Yet, was he sure? Casati had been missing less than twenty-four hours, and there must be many possible explanations for that. But somehow a disappearance this close to the sea – especially in the wake of a storm like yesterday’s – seemed far more serious than one on land, where the person could easily have got on a train and gone to Ferrara for the day or simply not bothered to call. On the mainland, there were so many places a person could go; out here, there was little choice but to come home.
‘Massimo has a friend in the Capitaneria,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask him to call.’
She turned and stared out over the waters of the laguna, as if only now aware of the vast expanse in which they would have to look for her father.
‘Is there any place where he might have gone?’ Brunetti asked again when they got back to the mooring place in front of the villa, thinking it better to be absolutely sure about this before a search was launched.
Federica gave this a lot of thought until she finally shook her head; it looked as though she’d dismissed a possibility, not found one. ‘He’s never been gone overnight before. Without telling me, that is.’
‘Is your husband still at home?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No, he went out this morning. At four,’ Federica said, glancing at her watch.
‘Do you want to call him and ask him to contact his friend?’
‘Yes, yes.’ She pressed another key and, while she waited, again studied the empty horizon. Brunetti looked down and saw how cloudy the water was, as though whatever the waves had whipped up from the seabed yesterday had not yet had time to filter back down. He watched what might have been fish move about in quick spurts, then heard a man’s voice answer Federica’s call. She moved away a few steps and turned from him to continue the conversation.
Brunetti headed for the villa, reluctant to seem to eavesdrop. Casati had told him on Friday that he had something he had to do at the weekend, although the day before that he had told Brunetti they’d go out. Plans change, Brunetti knew: things happen. It could be anything.
The light had bloomed and the temperature had risen. Brunetti felt the sweat on his chest. He looked towards Burano and, beyond it, Torcello, but the reflected light was too fierce and he turned south-west to look towards Murano. How different it seemed from this side rather than from Fondamente Nove. Point of view changed everything, as it had with the idea of why Casati might spend a night away. Brunetti, a man, had seen it as understandable in someone still so youthful and vigorous, but he doubted that Federica would view it the same way. Would a woman understand another man’s participatory triumph at the thought of Casati’s having spent the night with a woman? Hardly, and particularly not if she were his daughter.
But someone like Casati would have called if he had known he was going to be away all night, even if he had to lie about the reason. The storm made it even more imperative.
His musings were interrupted by Federica, who was approaching from behind. ‘Massimo said he’d call his friend when we hung up,’ she said as she reached him. ‘The Capitaneria handles this.’
All of a sudden, Federica put both of her hands over her face and made a low sound that had nothing to do with words or thought: it was fear made audible, nothing more. ‘I don’t want this,’ she said in a tortured voice.
Brunetti took her arm and spoke her name a few times before she stopped. She uncovered her eyes and stepped back from him. Casati’s daughter nodded, tight-lipped, and told him she was all right, then continued walking towards the villa.
Brunetti paused to find the number and called the Capitaneria di Porto to tell them he was a police commissario who was now on Sant’Erasmo with the daughter of the man who’d been reported missing and would like to speak to the person in charge.
He thought the officer he spoke to would request some proof of identity, but he did not. Asking Brunetti to wait a moment, he transferred the call to Captain Dantone, who was in charge of search and rescue at sea. The Captain said that they would search with boats immediately, starting near Sant’Erasmo and expanding as the boats covered a fixed order of quadrants. Finally, in the event of continuing failure, the Vigili del Fuoco and the Guardia Costiera would be asked to add their boats to the search. If still no sign of man or boat was found within half a day, the Carabinieri would be requested to do a flyover with a helicopter.
Brunetti thanked him, said he’d be remaining on the island, and asked the Captain how long the search would continue.
‘Until we find the boat,’ the Captain answered, then asked if there were more questions, and hung up when Brunetti said that there were not.
Until they found the boat, Brunetti repeated to himself.
12
When Brunetti went to tell Federica what he had learned about the search, he found her in the kitchen of the villa, making coffee. As he entered the room, he saw that there were two cups and saucers on the table; he pulled out a chair and sat to wait for the coffee.
When it finished boiling up, Federica brought the pot over and poured them each a cup. She sat and put two sugars into her coffee, slid the bowl towards Brunetti, and stirred the sugar around before taking a sip. Brunetti did much the same.
‘The Capitaneria will send boats. So will the Guardia Costiera and, if necessary, the Vigili del Fuoco,’ Brunetti said.
‘And if they don’t find anything?’
‘Then the Carabinieri will send a helicopter.’
She considered this, stirred her coffee again. ‘And if his boat sank?’
‘It’s too light to sink,’ Brunetti said, although he was far from certain. ‘The man at the Capitaneria told me they divide the area into
quadrants and search back and forth.’
‘They’re from the South, usually,’ she said to Brunetti’s utter confusion.
‘Who?’
‘The people there.’
‘Many of them, I suppose,’ Brunetti conceded. ‘But they’ve been trained to do this sort of thing.’
‘The laguna’s very big.’
‘Federica,’ he said, stopping himself from reaching across the table to touch her arm, ‘let them do their work, and then we’ll see.’
She got up and collected their cups and saucers and set them into the sink. ‘I think I’ll go back home,’ she said. ‘Papà might try to call.’
‘Of course,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet.
When she was gone, he called Paola.
‘I saw the flashes of lightning from the terrace,’ she said, ‘but we still didn’t get it here. Just some rain and not even a lot of it.’ Then, abandoning the storm, she asked, ‘Will you have anything to do with the search?’
‘The only people who know I’m a policeman are Federica – her father told her, and he knew because Emilio told him – and the officer at the Capitaneria. To everyone else, I’m just some relative of Emilio’s who’s come out to go rowing.’
‘If he was such a good boatman, why’d he go out in that storm?’
‘I don’t know that he did. All Federica said was that he seemed excited, or nervous, at breakfast, but she couldn’t give any reason for thinking that, except that she knows him so well.’
‘It could be that she’s saying it now that she doesn’t know where he is. Retrospective memory.’
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said. ‘But she seems a sensible person.’
‘All the more reason for her to try to make sense of what’s happened. Or to find some sort of reason for it.’
‘You’ve been reading too many books,’ Brunetti said in an attempt at lightness.
‘Probably,’ Paola said quite amiably. ‘Tell me what happens,’ she added and then said goodbye.
After she was gone, Brunetti was swept with sudden longing for her presence, for the comfort her spirit provided to his own. Just talking to her for five minutes had calmed him and made him feel he was a better man.
He shook himself free of introspection and went up to his room, where he tossed his sweater on the foot of the bed and changed to his jeans. He was surprised by the way they hung at his waist and took the belt from his shorts and slipped it into place. There was a mirror on one wall, but Brunetti didn’t look. Instead, he went outside, took the bicycle and started down to the bar at the other end of the island.
No respecter of human emotions, the day continued perfect. The rain of the previous evening had brought down the temperature, and though it was bound to rise during the day, the air now was still a caress on the skin.
Brunetti rode slowly, noticing the small puddles that remained in the fields. It had been a long time since the last rain; the plants looked relieved to have had it, and he was happy for them. The thought of Casati crept back into his mind, and he felt a moment’s embarrassment at having so easily given in to the seductions of nature.
As he rode, he tried to recall his conversations with Casati and his remarks about the bees, his girls. Brunetti had read no more than the average person about bees and knew that the phenomenon of their mass deaths was worldwide, but he had never cared to find out more than that, even though Chiara often talked about them knowingly, insisting that bees were the canaries in the mine and a good gauge of how poorly things were going for the planet.
He thought of the dead bees Casati had brought back to the boat, saying that they had to be tested. Brunetti had given it little thought at the time, but if they were dead, then the only thing it made sense to test them for was what had killed them. Brunetti wondered what his friend the pathologist Rizzardi would think if he knew he was now concerned with the deaths of bees.
He saw motion to his left and automatically slowed the bike. A man stood in a tree-filled field, waving at him. He recognized one of the men who played cards in the bar in the afternoon, a retired fisherman who now farmed his land and often said how sweet it was to sleep late in the morning, by which he meant six.
‘Hey, Guido,’ he called. ‘Come and give me a hand.’
Brunetti stopped the bike and lowered it into the grass at the side of the road, then walked across the field to the man, whose name he thought was Ubaldo. The wet grass, uncut for weeks, brushed at his ankles, a not unpleasant feeling. Four or five white plastic buckets surrounded the man, and all of them were surrounded by the trees. Brunetti stopped a few metres from him and asked, ‘What is it?’
‘Apricots,’ Ubaldo answered, waving a hand towards the ground, where Brunetti noticed small orange ovals hiding in the grass.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
Instead of answering, Ubaldo pointed to the trees, whose leaves glistened with last night’s rain. Some fruit still clung to the branches, but it was evident from the slaughter at their feet that the wind and rain had had their way with the fruit.
‘What would you like me to do?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Get one of those pails, fill it up and take it home with you,’ Ubaldo said, bending down to pick up two apricots and setting them gently on top of the ones already in the bucket next to him. ‘Go ahead,’ he insisted, handing Brunetti another of the white pails.
‘But there are too many,’ Brunetti objected.
‘That’s why I want you to take some away. There’s too much for my family.’ When Brunetti still hesitated, Ubaldo said, ‘Please. It’s a sin to throw food away – my mother always told us that – so I want people to take them. Please.’
Brunetti remembered what he’d been told about fishermen: when they found themselves with an excessive catch, they chose to give it away rather than watch it rot. He picked up the pail and began to fill it. ‘Just take the good ones,’ Ubaldo said. ‘I’ll send the grandkids out later to get the bruised ones. My wife can make jam.’
Ubaldo’s admonition gave Brunetti the right to be picky, and he was, careful to select only fruit that had no sign of bruises. After five minutes, the bucket was half full. He quickly filled it and asked Ubaldo if he would like some help with the rest.
‘No,’ the former fisherman said, pausing to wipe his face with a vast white handkerchief. ‘It gives me something to do.’
Brunetti carried the bucket over to the bike. When he had the bike upright, he slipped the bucket over the handlebars and wheeled the bike closer to Ubaldo, who was still busy picking up the fallen fruit.
‘Have you seen Davide?’ Brunetti asked in mild interrogation.
Ubaldo stood upright, placed an apricot into the bucket, and said, ‘No, not for a few days. Anything important?’
‘No, I wanted to ask him something about the boat. But it can wait.’ Brunetti smiled, rose up with his foot on one pedal, and took off. He called his thanks to Ubaldo and continued down towards the bar.
When he went inside, the three men at the long table looked up at him, their faces filled with curiosity they saw no reason to disguise. One of them waved him over to their table and pushed out a chair for him. ‘Have they found him?’ the first one, Pierangelo, asked, not bothering to explain how they knew Casati was missing.
Brunetti called over to the barman and asked for a coffee before taking his seat. He raised both hands in a gesture of surrender and said, ‘I have no idea. I spoke to Federica; then she called her husband, who spoke to the Capitaneria.’ Since arriving on the island, Brunetti had spoken only Veneziano with everyone he encountered; his use of the dialect had, he hoped, logged him into the confidence of those who took him to be one of themselves.
The oldest of the men, Gianni, wore a threadbare suit jacket as evidence of his former employment as a bookkeeper for a glass factory on Murano; he had somehow come to take on the role of leader and said, ‘They’ll find him. If anyone can, they will.’
Franco – Brunetti had never been given t
heir surnames and knew him only as the tall one with the arthritic hands – said, ‘I heard he was over on Burano with that woman. He probably tried to come back in the storm.’
Brunetti happened to be watching Gianni when the other man spoke, so he noticed the way his face tightened when he heard Franco say this. Brunetti glanced away. A moment passed before Gianni said, ‘Davide has more sense than that. He probably went out to see that his bees were safe.’ He gave an enormous shrug, as if to indicate that there was no understanding the strangeness of human behaviour or the efforts to which a person would go for things they had at heart.
Pierangelo sipped at his wine and said nothing, which were his usual contributions to any conversation. He did, however, cast a long-suffering look at Gianni and shake his head.
The barman brought Brunetti his coffee, saying, ‘That storm was nothing for someone like Davide. Remember the one when Claudio Mozza was lost? That was a storm. How long ago was it – seven, eight years?’ He pulled over an empty chair and braced his hands on the back, looking around the table for help. The man who never spoke said, ‘Eight,’ and that was that. Perhaps he was their collective memory.
‘That’s right,’ the barman said. ‘Just two days ago, Davide said the orate were running two kilometres out from Treporti. He told me all he had to do was put a net in the water, and they fought to swim into it.’ He chuckled at the memory and went on. ‘I bet that’s where he went.’
‘And this other person, Mozza? What happened to him?’ Brunetti asked. He looked from the barman to Gianni, to Franco in search of an answer.
‘They never found him,’ Gianni said. ‘They were out there for three days, even sent out a helicopter.’ He looked around, and the other men at the table nodded in confirmation. ‘They found his boat. Down by Poveglia. No one ever understood how it got there.’
‘Will they do the same thing now?’ Brunetti asked innocently.
‘There’s no need,’ the barman insisted. ‘As soon as they start looking, Davide will show up and ask what all the fuss is for.’
The barman released the back of the chair, picked up three empty glasses from the table and, without asking if they wanted anything else, went back to the counter and started to wash the glasses.