Beastly Things (7 page)

‘I’ll be as vague as I can be, sir,’ Pucetti said seriously. Brunetti caught Vianello’s fleeting grin.

‘Good.’ Turning to Vianello, Brunetti said, ‘There are some other things.’ He glanced at his watch to suggest that it was time to go and get a coffee.

By the time Vianello had gone back to his desk and picked up his jacket, Pucetti had disappeared. On the way down to the bar at Ponte dei Greci, Brunetti told Vianello about the autopsy, the man’s strange disease, and his own certainty that he had seen him before, confirmed by the video that Pucetti had taken home to watch and copy.

Still talking, Brunetti led the way into the bar. Bambola, the assistant to the owner, nodded as they passed him on their way to the booth at the back. Within minutes, he was there, carrying two coffees and two glasses of water, along with a plate with four pastries. He spread them on the table and went back to the bar.

Brunetti picked up a brioche. It would soon be time for lunch, but so far that day he had seen the body of a murdered man; strongly reprimanded Pucetti, his favourite among the uniformed branch; Signorina Elettra had had a personal conversation with him; and the man who brought him his coffee was a Black African in a long white dress. ‘By the time we retire, Signorina Elettra will be coming to work in a ball gown and tiara, and Bambola
will
be sacrificing chickens in the back room,’ he observed to Vianello and took a bite of his brioche.

Vianello sipped at his coffee and picked up a raisin-filled snail-shaped pastry and observed, ‘By the time we retire, we’ll be a colony of China, and Bambola’s children will be teaching at the university.’

‘I like the second part,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘You been reading your catastrophe books again, Lorenzo?’

Vianello, as ever, had the grace to smile. He and Signorina Elettra were the declared ecologists at the Questura, though Brunetti had recently observed evidence that their ranks were growing; further, it had been some time since he had heard the epithet
talibano dell’ecologia
attributed to either of them. Foa had requested that fuel efficiency be made a consideration in all future purchases of police boats; fear of Signorina Elettra’s wrath kept everyone from placing the wrong sort of garbage in the receptacles located on every floor; and even Vice-Questore Patta had upon occasion been persuaded to use public transportation.

‘
A proposito
,’ he went on, ‘Signorina Elettra stopped herself just short of a denunciation of cows this morning; or rather, I stopped her. Do you have any idea what that’s all about?’

Vianello picked up his second pastry, a dryish-looking thing covered with fragments of nuts. ‘The days of Heidi are over, Guido,’ he said and took a bite.

‘Which means?’ Brunetti asked, his own second pastry poised in the air.

‘Which means that there are too many cows, and we can’t afford to keep them or raise them or eat them any longer.’

‘“We” being?’ Brunetti inquired and took a bite.

‘“We” being the people in the developed world – which
is
just a euphemism for rich world – who eat too much beef and too many dairy products.’

‘Are you worried about health?’ Brunetti interrupted to ask, mindful of cholesterol levels, something he had never given any thought to, and curious about when and where Vianello and Signorina Elettra had their cell meetings.

‘No, not really,’ said a suddenly serious Vianello. ‘I’m thinking about those poor devils in what we aren’t allowed to call backward countries any more who have their forests cut down so big companies can raise meat to sell to rich people who shouldn’t be eating it anyway.’ He saw that his coffee cup was empty and took a drink of water. Then he surprised Brunetti by saying, ‘I think I don’t want to talk about this any more. Tell me about the man.’

Brunetti pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and used a napkin to draw a rough duplicate of the sketch Bocchese had made of the murder weapon, careful to curve the blade up at the point. ‘This is the sort of knife that killed him. It’s about twenty centimetres long, very narrow. It went in three times. Lower back, right-hand side. The report – I haven’t read it yet – will tell exactly what it cut, but Rizzardi said he bled to death.’

‘In the water?’ Vianello said, putting his pastry back on the plate.

‘He was alive long enough to breathe in some water, but not long enough to drown. Bocchese and I talked about where it could have happened and how it could have been done. Either he was in a boat, which doesn’t sound right to me – too much risk of being seen, and Bocchese said there’s no sign of that sort of dirt on his clothing. Or they did it in a house and slid him in from the water door, or maybe it happened at the end of a
calle
, where it runs into the water, and they just tossed him in.’

‘Big chance of being seen, either way,’ Vianello observed. ‘Or heard.’

‘Less from a house, I think. Also less chance that anyone would have heard.’

Vianello stared through the window of the bar, his eyes on the passers-by, his attention on the possibilities of the murder. After some time, he returned his attention to Brunetti and said, ‘Yes, a house sounds better. Any idea where?’

‘I haven’t seen Foa yet,’ Brunetti said, reminding himself to do this as soon as possible. ‘They found the man’s body at about six at the back of the Giustinian, in Rio del Malpaga. Foa should be able to calculate …’ Brunetti stopped himself from saying ‘the drift’, so appalling did he find the expression, and substituted ‘where he might have started from.’

This time Vianello closed his eyes, and Brunetti watched him do exactly what he had: summon up the decades-old map the Inspector had in his memory and walk his way through the neighbourhood, checking the canals and, to the degree that he could, the direction of the water in the canals. He opened his eyes and looked at Brunetti. ‘We don’t know which way the tide was flowing.’

‘That’s why I have to talk to Foa.’

‘Good. He’ll know,’ Vianello said and pushed his way out of the booth. He went over to the bar and paid, waited for Brunetti to join him, then together they went back to the Questura, both of them keeping their eyes on the water in the canal that ran to their right, looking for motion and wondering which way the tide was flowing when the dead man went into the water.

9

AS HE ENTERED
the Questura, Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was after one; if he left now, he might still reach home in time to eat something. Again, the events of the day flowed through his mind, this time coloured by too much caffeine and sugar: why had he eaten two pastries when he knew he was supposed to go home? Was he some untutored youth, unable to resist the lure of sweet things?

Turning to Vianello, he said, ‘I’ll be back after lunch. I’ll talk to Foa then.’

‘He’s not on shift until four, anyway. Plenty of time.’

Brunetti, the two brioches rumbling at him from inside, decided to walk all the way home but then immediately changed his mind and walked up the Riva degli Schiavoni to get the vaporetto.

Within five minutes, he had begun to regret his decision. Instead of being able to walk untroubled and uncrowded through Campo Santa Maria Formosa and Campo Santa
Marina
before confronting the inevitable logjam of Rialto, he had chosen to launch himself directly into the flood of tourists, even here. As he turned right on the
riva
, he saw the onrushing wave of them, though they moved far more slowly than any wave he had ever encountered.

Like any man of sense, he fled to the vaporetto stop, got on the One, and found a seat inside, to the left. It was a far safer place from which to allow the assault of the beauty of the city. The sun jumped off the still surface of the
bacino
, forcing him to squint his eyes as they passed the newly restored Dogana and the church of the Salute. He’d been inside the first recently, thrilled to see how well it had been restored, appalled by what was on display inside.

When had they sneaked in and switched the rules? he wondered. When did the garish become artistic, and who had the authority to make that declaration? Why was banality of interest to the viewer, and where, oh where, had simple beauty gone? ‘You’re an old fart, Guido,’ he whispered to himself, causing the man in front of him to turn around and stare. Brunetti ignored him and returned his attention to the buildings on the left.

They passed a
palazzo
where a friend of his had offered to sell him an apartment six years before, assuring him that he would make a fortune on the deal: ‘Just keep it for three years and resell it to a foreigner. You’ll make a million.’

Brunetti, whose ethical system was monosyllabic in its simplicity, had refused the offer because something about profiting from land speculation made him uncomfortable, as did the idea of being indebted to anyone for having earned an easy million Euros. Or, for that fact, ten Euros.

They passed the university, and Brunetti looked at it with double fondness: his wife worked there, and his son
was
now a student. Raffi had, to Brunetti’s delight, chosen to study history, not the history of the ancients that so fascinated Brunetti, but the history of modern Italy which, though it also fascinated Brunetti, did so in a manner that led him close to despair.

Their arrival at the San Silvestro stop pulled his mind away from its continuing contemplation of the parallels to be found between the Italy of two thousand years ago and that of today. It was a matter of minutes until he was opening the front door of the building and turning into the first flight of steps. At each landing, Brunetti felt the weight of the brioche fall away from him, and by the time he got to his apartment he was sure he had burned it all off and was prepared to do justice to whatever remained of lunch.

When he entered the kitchen, he saw his children at their places, their untouched lunch in front of them. Paola was just placing a dish of what looked like tagliatelle with scallops in front of his place. Walking back to the stove, she said, ‘I was late today: had to talk to a student. So we decided to wait for you.’ Then, as if to prevent him from forming any idea of her occult powers, she added, ‘I heard you come in.’

He bent to kiss both children on the head, and as he took his place, Raffi asked, ‘Do you know anything about the war in Alto Adige?’ Seeing Brunetti’s surprise at the question, he added, ‘The First World War.’

‘You make it sound as long ago as the war against Carthage,’ Brunetti said with a smile, opening his napkin and spreading it on his lap. ‘Your great-grandfather fought in the war, remember.’

Raffi sat silently with his elbows on the table and chin propped on his folded fingers, a gesture in which his mother was reflected. Brunetti glanced in Chiara’s
direction
and saw that she was sitting with her hands folded in her lap: how long had it taken to train them?

Paola came back to the table, set down her own dish, and took her place. ‘
Buon appetito
,’ she said, picking up her fork.

Ordinarily, that injunction served as the starter’s whistle for Raffi, who sprinted through his first course with a velocity that could still astonish both his parents. But today he ignored his food and said, ‘You never told me.’

Brunetti had often repeated his grandfather’s war stories, to the general uninterest of his own children. ‘Well, he was,’ he limited himself to saying and began to twirl up some noodles with his fork.

‘Did he fight up there?’ Raffi asked. ‘In Alto Adige?’

‘Yes. He was there for four years. He fought in most of the campaigns except, I think, once when he was wounded and sent to Vittorio Veneto to recover.’

‘Not sent home?’ Chiara asked, drawn into the conversation.

Brunetti shook the idea away. ‘They didn’t send wounded men home to recover.’

‘Why?’ she asked, fork poised over her plate.

‘Because they knew they wouldn’t go back,’ Brunetti said.

‘Why?’ she repeated.

‘Because they knew they’d die.’ Before she could say that their great-grandfather, because they were there at the table talking about him, hadn’t died, Brunetti explained, ‘Most of them did; well, hundreds of thousands of them did, so they knew that the odds were pretty bad.’

‘How many died?’ Raffi asked.

Brunetti read little modern history, and when he read Italian history, he tended to read translations of books in other languages, so little confidence did he have that the
Italian
accounts would not be coloured by political or historical allegiance. ‘I’m not sure of the exact number. But it was more than half a million.’ He set his fork down and took a sip of wine, then another.

‘Half a million?’ Chiara repeated, stunned by the number. As if comment or question were useless, she could only repeat, ‘Half a million.’

‘Actually, I think it was more. Maybe six hundred thousand, but it depends on who you read.’ Brunetti took another sip, replaced his glass, and said, ‘That’s not counting civilians, I think.’

‘Jesus on the cross,’ Raffi whispered.

Paola shot him a sharp glance, but it was clear to all of them that astonishment, not blasphemy, had provoked the remark.

‘That’s twelve Venices,’ Raffi said in a small, astonished voice.

Brunetti, in his desire for clarity, even statistical clarity, said, ‘Since it was only young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five or so, it’s far more than that. It would go a long way to depopulating much of the Veneto in the next generation.’ After a moment’s reflection, he added, ‘Which is pretty much what it did.’ He remembered, then, listening as a child as his paternal grandmother chatted with her friends, a recurring topic their good luck in having found a man to marry – a good man or a bad man – when so many of their friends had never been able to find a husband. And he thought of the war memorials he had seen in the North, up near Asiago and above Merano, listing the names of the ‘Heroes of the Nation’, so often long lists of men with the same surname, all dead in the snow and the mud, their lives cast away to gain a metre of barren land or a medal for a general’s chest.