Death in a Strange Country (31 page)

‘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 mat. 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 the 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 backyards.’

‘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.