Death in a Strange Country (5 page)

It was possible, Brunetti
realized, that he could have been renting an apartment in the city; in that
case, days could pass before he was reported missing, or he simply might not be
missed.

He called the lab and
asked to speak to Enzo Bocchese, the Chief Technician. When he came on the
phone, Brunetti asked, ‘Bocchese, have you got anything on the things in his
pockets?’ It wasn’t necessary to specify whose pockets.

‘We used the infra-red on
the ticket. It was so soaked that I didn’t think we’d be able to get anything.
But we did.’

Bocchese; terribly proud
of his technology and the things he could do with it, always needed to be
prompted, and then praised. ‘Good. I don’t know how you do it, but you always
manage to find something.’ Would that this were even close to the truth. ‘Where
was it from?’

‘Vicenza. Round trip to
Venice. Bought yesterday arid cancelled for the trip from Vicenza. I’ve got a
man coming from the station to see if he can tell us anything, from the
cancellation, about what train it was, but I’m not sure he can.’

‘What class was it, first
or second?’

‘Second.’

‘Anything else? Socks?
Belt?’

‘Rizzardi tell you about
the clothes?’

‘Yes. He thinks the
underwear is American.’

‘It is. No question. The
belt — he could have bought that anywhere. Black leather with a brass buckle.
The socks are synthetic. Made in Taiwan or Korea. Sold everywhere.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, nothing.’

‘Good work, Bocchese, but
I think we don’t need more than the ticket to be sure.’

‘Sure of what,
Commissario?’

‘That he’s American.’

‘Why?’ the technician
asked.

‘Because that’s where the
Americans are,’ Brunetti replied. Any Italian in the area knew of the base in
Vicenza, Caserma Something-or-Other, the base where thousands of American
soldiers and their families lived, even now, so many years after the end of the
war. If he was right, this would certainly raise the spectre of terrorism, and
there were certain to be questions of jurisdiction. The Americans had their own
police out there, and the instant someone so much as whispered ‘terrorism’,
there could well be NATO and possibly Interpol. Or even the CIA, at the thought
of which Brunetti grimaced, thinking of how Patta would bask in the exposure,
the celebrity that would follow upon their arrival. Brunetti had no idea of
what acts of terrorism were supposed to feel like, but this didn’t feel like
one to him. A knife was too ordinary a weapon; it didn’t call attention to the
crime. And there had been no call to claim the murder. Surely, that might still
come, but it would be too late, too convenient.

‘Of course, of course,’
Bocchese said. ‘I should have thought of that.’ He paused long enough for
Brunetti to say something, but when he didn’t, Bocchese asked, ‘Anything else,
sir?’

‘Yes. After you speak to
the man from the railways, let me know if he can tell you anything about the
train he might have taken.’

‘I doubt he can, sir. It’s
just an indentation in the ticket. We can’t pull up anything that might
identify a train. But I’ll call you if he can tell us. Anything else?’

‘No, nothing. And thanks,
Bocchese.’

After they hung up,
Brunetti sat at his desk and stared at his wall, considering the information
and the possibilities. A young man, in perfect physical shape, comes to Venice
on a round-trip ticket from a city where there is an American military base. He
had American dental work, and he carried American coins in his pocket.

Brunetti reached for the
phone and dialled the operator. ‘See if you can get me the American military
base in Vicenza.’

* *
* *

3

As he waited for the call to be put through, Brunetti
found the image of that young face, eyes splayed open in death, came back into
his memory. It could have been any one of the faces he had seen in the photos
of the American soldiers in the Gulf War: fresh, clean-shaven, innocent,
glowing with that extraordinary health that so characterized Americans. But the
face of the young American on the embankment had been strangely solemn, set
apart from his fellows by the mystery of death.

‘Brunetti,’ he said,
answering the buzzing intercom.

‘They’re very hard to
find, those Americans,’ the operator said. ‘There’s no listing in the Vicenza
phone book for American base, or for NATO, or for the United States. But I
found one tinder Military Police. Wait just one minute, sir, and I’ll put the
call through.’

How strange, Brunetti
thought, that a presence so strong should be all but unfindable in the phone
book. He listened to the usual clicks of a long-distance call, heard it ring at
the other end, and then a male voice said, ‘MP station, may I help you, sir or
madam?’
 
                     
                     
             

‘Good afternoon,’
Brunetti said in English. ‘This is Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice
police. I’d like to speak to the person in charge of the police there.’

‘May I ask what this is in
connection with, sir?’

‘It’s a police matter.
May I speak to the person in charge?’

‘Just one moment, sir.’

There was a long pause,
the sound of muffled
voices at the other end, then a different voice
spoke. ‘This is Sergeant Frolich. May I help you?’

‘Good afternoon, Sergeant.
This is Commissario Brunetti of the Venice police. I’d like to speak to your
superior officer or to whoever is in charge.’
         

‘Could you tell me what
this is in connection with, sir?’

‘As I explained to your
colleague,’ Brunetti said, keeping his voice level, ‘this is a police matter,
and I’d like to speak to your superior officer.’ How long would he have to go
on repeating the same formula?

‘I’m sorry, sir, but he’s
not at the station right now.’
 
                     
                     
                     
     

‘When do you expect him
back?’

‘Couldn’t say, sir. Could
you give me some idea of what this is about?’

‘A missing soldier.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

‘I’d like to know if
there’s been any report out there of a missing soldier.’

The voice suddenly grew
more serious. ‘Who did you say this was, sir?’

‘Commissario Brunetti.
Venice police.’

‘Do you have a number
where we can call you?’

‘You can call me at the
Questura in Venice. The number is 5203222, and the city code for Venice is 041,
but you’ll probably want to check the number in the phone book. I’ll wait for
your call. Brunetti.’ He hung up, certain they would now check the number and
call him back. The change in the sergeant’s voice had indicated interest, not
alarm, so there was probably no report of a missing soldier. Not yet.

After about ten minutes,
the phone rang, and the operator told him it was the American base in Vicenza
calling. ‘Brunetti,’ he said when he heard the line open.

‘Commissario Brunetti,’ a
different voice said, ‘this is Captain Duncan of the Military Police at
Vicenza. Could you tell me what it is you want to know?’

‘I’d like to know if you’ve
had a report of a missing soldier. A young man, in his mid-twenties. Light
hair, blue eyes.’ It took him a moment to do the calculation from metres to
feet and inches. ‘About five feet, nine inches tall.’

‘Could you tell me why
the Venice police want to know about this? Has he gotten into trouble there?’

‘You could say that,
Captain. We found the body of a young man floating in a canal this morning. He
had a round-trip ticket from Vicenza in his pocket, and his clothing and dental
work are American, so we thought of the base and wondered if he came from
there.’

‘Did
he drown?’

Brunetti remained silent
so long that the other repeated the question. ‘Did he drown?’

‘No, Captain, he didn’t.
There were signs of violence.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘He was stabbed.’

‘Robbed?’

‘It would appear so,
Captain.’

‘You sound like you have
some doubt about that.’

‘It looks like robbery.
He has no wallet, and all of his identification is missing.’ Brunetti went back
to his original question. ‘Could you tell me if you’ve had a report of someone
who is missing, who hasn’t shown up for work?’

There was a long pause
before the Captain replied. ‘Can I call you back in about an hour?’

‘Certainly.’

‘We’ll have to contact
the individual duty stations and see if anyone is missing from work or their
barracks. Could you repeat the description, please?’

‘The man we found appears
to be in his mid-twenties, has blue eyes, light hair, and is about five feet,
nine inches tall.’

“Thank you, Commissario.
I’ll get my men working on this immediately, and we’ll call you as soon as we
learn anything.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’
Brunetti said and broke the connection.

If the young man did turn
out to be an American soldier, Patta would be apoplectic with the need to find
the killer. Patta, he knew, was incapable of viewing it as the taking of a
human life. To him, it could be no more or less than a blow against tourism,
and in protection of that civic good Patta was certain to grow ferocious.

He left his desk and
walked down the flight of stairs that led to the larger offices where the
uniformed men worked. Entering, he saw that Luciani was there, looking none the
worse for his early-morning soaking. Brunetti shivered at the thought of
entering the waters of the canals, not because of the cold but because of the
filth. He’d often joked that falling into a canal was an experience he’d prefer
not to survive. And yet, as a boy, he’d swum in the waters of the Grand Canal,
and older people he knew talked of the way that, in the poverty of their youth,
they had been forced to use the salt waters of the canals and of the
laguna
for
cooking, this in the days when salt was an expensive and heavily taxed
commodity, and Venetians were a poor people, tourism unknown.

Luciani was talking on the
phone when Brunetti entered the office and waved him over to his desk. ‘Yes,
Uncle, I know that,’ he said. ‘But what about his son? No, not the one that was
in trouble in Mestrino last year.’

As he listened to his
uncle’s answer, he nodded
 
to Brunetti and signalled
with an open palm that he should wait until the conversation was finished. Brunetti
sat and listened to the rest of the conversation. ‘When was the last time he
worked? At Breda? Come on, Uncle, you know he’s not able to keep any job that
long.’ Luciani went silent and listened for a long time, then said, ‘No, no, if
you hear anything about him, maybe that he suddenly has a lot of money, let me
know. Yes, yes, Uncle, and give Aunt Luisa a kiss for me.’ There followed a
long series of those bi-syllabic
‘ciaos’
without which Venetians seemed
incapable of ending a conversation.

When he hung up, Luciani
turned to Brunetti
 
and said, ‘That was my
Uncle Carlo. He lives over near Fondamente Nuove, back a bit from Santi
Giovanni e Paolo. I asked him about the neighbourhood - about who sells drugs,
who uses. The only one he knows about is that Vittorio Argenti.’ Brunetti
nodded in recognition of the name.
 
‘We’ve
had him here a dozen times. But my uncle said he took a job at Breda about six
months ago, and now that I think about it, it’s been about that long since we’ve
seen him in here. I can check the records, but I think I would have remembered
if we’d pulled him in for anything. My uncle knows the family, and he swears
they’re all convinced
 
that Vittorio’s changed.’
Luciani lit a cigarette and blew out the match. ‘From the way my uncle spoke, it
sounds like he’s convinced, too.’