Death in a Strange Country (19 page)

It seemed to Brunetti
that babies had no business being born here, on a military installation, surrounded
by guns, uniforms, and the business of killing. But then he remembered that, so
far, he had seen a library, chapel, swimming-pool, and Baskin Robbins ice-cream
parlour on this same military installation, so maybe it did make sense that
babies were born here, too. How little of what he had seen here, in fact, had
anything to do with the business of war or killing or being an army. Did the
Americans realize, he wondered, where their money went? Did they realize the
profligacy with which it was spent? Because he was an Italian, he assumed that
his government was serious only about the business of tossing money away,
usually in the general direction of the friends of those in government, but it
had never occurred to him that the American government might be equally intent
upon doing the same thing.

‘This is Doctor Peters’
office, sir. I think she’s with a patient now, but she ought to be back soon.’
She smiled and left him standing there, never having bothered to ask who he was
or what he wanted.

The office looked like
any doctor’s office he had ever been in. One wall was covered with thick books
with thicker titles; there was a scale in one corner with a sliding metal pole
for measuring height. He stepped on the scale and slid the metal weight back
and forth on the horizontal pole until it clicked into place at 193. He did the
arithmetic in his head, dividing by 2.2, and sighed at the result. He measured
his height, 5 feet, 10 inches, but he had never been able to do that conversion
without pencil and paper. Besides, he assumed that his height would be less
likely to betray him, the way his weight had.

There were some posters
on the wall: one of Fulvio Roiter’s predictable photos of Carnevale; a
reproduction of the mosaics in San Vitale in Ravenna; an enlarged photo of
mountains that looked like the jagged-toothed Dolomites. The wall to the right,
as was the case in so many doctors’ offices, was covered with framed diplomas,
as if doctors were afraid no one would believe them unless tangible proof of
their training were plastered up on the wall for all to see. ‘Emory University.’
That meant nothing to him.
‘Phi Beta Kappa.’ Not
did that.
‘Summa Cum
Laude.’
Well, that certainly did.

A magazine lay closed on
the desk.
Family Practice Journal.
He picked it up and leafed through,
then stopped at an article that carried coloured photos of what he thought were
human feet, but feet distorted beyond all recognition, with toes that grew
every which way, toes that curled up and back towards the top of the foot, or,
worse, toes that curved down towards the soles. He stared at the photos for a
while, then, just as he began to read the article, he sensed motion beside him
and looked up to see Doctor Peters standing just inside the door. With no
preamble, she took the magazine from his hands, slapped it closed, and placed
it on the other side of the desk from him.

‘What are you doing here?’
she asked, hiding neither surprise nor anger.

He stood. ‘I apologize
for touching your things, Doctor. I came here to talk to you, if you have time.
I saw the magazine there and looked through it while I was waiting. I hope you
don’t mind.’

Clearly, she realized
that her reaction had been too strong. He watched while she tried to gain
control of herself. Finally, she sat in the chair in front of her desk and
said, trying to smile, ‘Well, better that than my mail.’ That said, her smile
seemed to become genuine. She pointed to the now closed magazine. ‘It happens
in old people. They get too stiff to bend down and cut their toenails, but they
continue to grow, and, as you saw, the feet become horribly distorted.’

‘Better paediatrics,’ he
said.

She smiled again. ‘Yes,
far better. I think it’s better to invest your time in children.’ She placed
her stethoscope on top of the magazine and said, ‘I
don’t think you came
here to discuss my career choices, Commissario. What is it you’d like to know?’

‘I’d like to know why you
lied about your trip to Cairo with Sergeant Foster.’

He saw that she wasn’t
surprised, had perhaps been expecting it. She crossed her legs, her knees just
visible under the hem of the uniform skirt she wore beneath the white jacket. ‘So
you do read my mail?’ she asked. When he didn’t say anything, she continued, ‘I
didn’t want anyone here to know what happened.’

‘Doctor, you sent the
postcard here, with both your names, well, initials, on it. It would hardly be
a secret to anyone here that you went to Cairo together.’

‘Please, you know what I
mean. I didn’t want anyone here to know what happened,’ she repeated. ‘You were
there when I saw his body. So you know.’

‘Why don’t you want
anyone here to know? Are you married to someone else?’

‘No,’ she said, shaking
her head tiredly at his failure to understand. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if it
were only that. But I’m an officer, and Mike was an enlisted man.’ She saw his
confusion. ‘That’s fraternization, and it’s one of the things we are forbidden
to do.’ She paused for a long time. ‘One of many things.’

‘What would happen to you
if they found out?’ he asked, not thinking it necessary to define ‘they’.

She shrugged. ‘I have no
idea. One of us would have been spoken to, perhaps disciplined. Maybe even
transferred to some other place. But that’s hardly a concern now, is it?’ she
asked, looking at him directly.

‘No, I’m afraid it isn’t.
Could it still hurt your career?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be out of the Army
in six months, Mr Brunetti. They wouldn’t bother with it now, and if they did,
I don’t mink I’d much care. I don’t want a career, not with the Army, but I
still don’t want them to know. I just want to get out and go back to my life,’
She paused for a moment, gave him a diagnostic glance, then continued. ‘The
Army sent me to medical school. I could never have afforded it myself and
neither could my family. So they gave me six years of school, and now I’ve
given them four years of work. That’s ten years, Mr Brunetti, ten years. So I
guess I shouldn’t even say I want to go back to my life. I want to start to
have one.’

‘What are you going to
do? With that life, I mean.’

She pursed her lips and
raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t know. I’ve applied to some hospitals. There’s
always private practice. Or I could go back to school. I don’t think about that
much.’

‘Is that because of
Sergeant Foster’s death?’

She prodded the
stethoscope with one finger, looked at him, then back down at her hand.

‘Doctor Peters,’ he
began, feeling awkward about how speech-like this was going to sound in
English. ‘I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I know that Sergeant Foster
wasn’t killed by a mugger or in some bungled robbery attempt He was murdered,
and whoever murdered him has something to do with the American military, or
with the Italian police. And I believe that you know something about whatever
it was that caused him to be killed. I’d like you to tell me what it is you
know, or what it is you suspect. Or what you’re afraid of.’ The words sounded
leaden and artificial in his ears.

She looked over at him
when he said that, and he saw a phantom of what he had seen in her eyes that
night on the island of San Michele. She started to speak, stopped, and looked
back down at the stethoscope. After a long time, she shook her head and said, ‘I
think you’re exaggerating my reaction, Mr Brunetti. I don’t know what you’re
talking about when you say I’m afraid of something.’ And then, to convince them
both, ‘I don’t know anything about why Mike would have been killed
 
or who might have wanted
to kill him.’
 
                     

He glanced at her hand
and saw that she had
 
bent the black rubber
tube that led down to the flat
 
disc at the
end of the instrument until the rubber
 
was
grey with tension. She caught the direction of his eyes, looked down at her own
hand, and slowly released it, until the tube was again straight, the rubber
black. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another patient to see.’

‘Certainly, Doctor,’ he
said, knowing that he had lost. ‘If you think of anything you want to tell
 
me or if you want to talk
to me, you can reach me at the Questura in Venice.’
         
                     
         

‘Thank you,’ she said,
stood and went to the door. ‘Do you want to finish the article?’
     
               

‘No,’ he said, scrambling
to his feet and going to the door. He put out his hand. ‘If you think of
anything, Doctor.’

She took his hand,
smiled, but said nothing. He watched as she went down the corridor to the left
and into the next room, from which he could hear the voice of a woman talking
in a low, crooning
 
voice, probably to a sick
child.
 
                     
             

Outside, the driver was
waiting, busy with a magazine. He looked up when Brunetti opened the back door
of the car. ‘Where to, sir?’
 
                     

‘Is that dining-hall open
today?’ He was very hungry, realized only now that it was after one.

‘Yes, sir. Strike’s been
settled.’
 
                     
           

‘Who was on strike?’

‘CGL,’ he explained,
naming the biggest of the Communist labour unions.

‘CGL?’ Brunetti repeated in
amazement. ‘On an American military base?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the driver
said and laughed. ‘After the war, they hired people who spoke some English, and
they let the unions form without paying any attention to them. But once they
realized that CGL was Communist, they refused to hire anyone else who was a
member. But they can’t get rid of the people who still are. Lots of them work
in the dining-hall. Food’s good.’

‘All right, take me
there. How far?’

‘Oh, about two minutes,’
he said, pulling away from the kerb and cutting the car into another tight
U-turn that took them back up what Brunetti was sure was a one-way street.

On their left, they
passed two larger-man-life Statues that he hadn’t noticed before. ‘Who are
those two?’ he asked.

‘I
don’t know who the angel
with the sword is, but the other one is Saint Barbara.’

‘Saint Barbara? What’s
she doing here?’

‘She’s the patron saint
of the artillery, sir. Remember, her father was struck by lightning when he
tried to cut her head off?’

Although he had been raised
a Catholic, Brunetti had never felt much interest in religion and found it
difficult to keep the different saints straight, rather, he believed, in the
manner the pagans must have found it hard to remember which god was in charge
of what. Besides, it had always seemed to him that the saints spent entirely
too much time misplacing various body parts: eyes, breasts, arms, and now, with
Saint Barbara, her head. ‘I don’t know the legend. What happened?’

The driver swerved
through a STOP sign and around a corner, looked back at Brunetti, and
explained. ‘Her father was a pagan, and she was a Christian. Her father wanted
her to marry a pagan, but she wanted to stay a virgin.’ He added, under his
breath, ‘Silly girl.’ He looked back at the road, just in time to brake sharply
to avoid running into a truck. ‘So the father decided to punish her by cutting
off her head. He raised his sword over her, giving her one last chance to obey
him, and
zacketay!
lightning struck the sword and killed him.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Oh, they never tell you
that part of the story. In any case, because of the explosion of the lightning,
she’s the patron saint of the artillery.’ He pulled up in front of another low
building. ‘Here we are, sir.’ Then he added, puzzled. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t
know that, sir. About Saint Barbara.’

‘I wasn’t assigned the
case,’ Brunetti said.