The Conte reached for the grappa the maid had brought and poured some into two glasses. He handed one to Brunetti and took a sip from his own. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll find out.’
‘What does that mean, dear?’ his wife asked.
‘This isn’t over.’ In one sip he finished the grappa, and then set down the empty glass.
8
Emerging from the palazzo a half-hour later, Paola suggested to Brunetti that they take the Accademia Bridge and walk home on the other side of the canal for a change. Both of them knew this would add fifteen minutes to their walk, but it would also mean they could go at least that far with Flavia, who was staying only a few minutes from the bridge. Since she had no reason to know where their home was, she would not see Paola’s long detour as the protective gesture it was.
Brunetti, still curious about the changes that seemed to have taken place in Flavia over the years, wondered if they would talk of music and thus put her at the centre of the conversation. She, however, chose to speak of those things that parents talk about. She told them that she worried terribly about drugs, even though neither of her children had ever shown much interest in them. And she feared that one of them – she admitted that she feared more for her daughter than for her son – would fall into the wrong company and be led to do things she would not ordinarily do.
When Paola asked what she feared most, Flavia shook her head in exasperation, either with the world or with her own formless fears, and said, ‘I don’t know. I can’t imagine the world they live in. I always have this low-grade noise in my mind, worrying about them.’
Paola leaned closer, linking her arm in Flavia’s as they walked. ‘People think they have babies,’ Paola said. ‘But we don’t: we have people, and we have them all their lives, and we never stop worrying about them. Never.’ Then, in a thoughtful tone Brunetti recognized, she said, ‘I think someone should invent a special telephone for parents of teenage children.’
‘That does what?’ Flavia asked.
‘That can’t ring between one and six in the morning.’
Flavia laughed out loud and said, ‘If you ever find it, please get me one.’
At ease as with old friends, they reached the museum and the bridge and stopped at the bottom of the steps. Flavia kissed Paola on both cheeks and stepped back to turn to Brunetti. ‘I can’t thank all of you enough. I had no idea how much I needed an evening like this: conversation and good food and nothing to worry about.’
A Number One vaporetto heading towards the Lido revved its engine into reverse and banged into the imbarcadero. So common a sound was it that neither Brunetti nor Paola really heard it, but Flavia started and turned towards the noise. When the few people from the boat had dispersed, she went on, ‘I’d like to thank you for your patience.’ She smiled, but it was a faint shadow of the smile Brunetti remembered from years before.
To reassure her, Brunetti said, ‘I’ll talk to Freddy. It’s been too long since I’ve seen him, and this is a good reason to call him or meet for a drink.’
‘Only if you think it might be useful.’
Brunetti bent down and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘It’s always useful to see old friends, don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her eyes on his. ‘Old friends.’
The night was clement, the moon only a day short of being full. They stopped at the top of the bridge and looked out towards the Lido and, behind it, the Adriatic.
‘Do you think of her as an old friend?’ Paola asked. There was no wind, so the moon was reflected as though on a plate of dark glass. No boats came for some minutes, and Brunetti remained silent, as if afraid that the sound of his voice would shatter the surface of the water and thus destroy the moon. The footsteps on the bridge stopped, and for a long time there was silence. A Number One appeared down at Vallaresso and crossed over to La Salute, breaking the spell and then the reflection. When Brunetti turned towards San Vidal, he saw motionless people on the steps below him, all transfixed by the now-shimmering moon and the silence and the façades on either side of the canal. He looked to his right and saw that the railing was lined with more motionless people, faces raised for the moon’s benediction.
He took Paola’s hand, and they descended the steps, heading home the long way.
‘It feels like an old friendship, although I don’t know why I think that,’ he finally answered as they entered Campo Santo Stefano. ‘I haven’t seen her for years, and I don’t think we were really friends either time I knew her.’ He thought about this for some time and then said, ‘Perhaps friendship comes to you with the memory of hard times together.’
‘You make it sound as if you were in the trenches with her, the way your father used to talk about his friends.’
‘Yes, he did, didn’t he?’ Brunetti answered. ‘We hardly suffered as much as they did, she and I. But there was violence, and people did suffer.’
‘I wonder what’s she been doing all these years,’ Paola said to move him away from those memories. ‘Other than becoming even more famous, that is.’
They approached the bridge leading to Campo Manin, and Brunetti paused to look into the window of the book dealer. When he moved away and started up the bridge, he said at last, ‘I have no idea. I’ve seen as much as you have; perhaps even less because I don’t read the music reviews.’
‘Lucky you,’ Paola said. ‘Overblown,’ she added, and nothing more.
‘The reviews, presumably,’ Brunetti said as they passed in front of the lion.
This made Paola laugh. ‘Flavia’s name comes up now and again. The reviews are always good. More than good.’ Then, as they crossed San Luca, ‘You heard her the other night, didn’t you? Saw her?’
‘I’d like to hear her in something with music that’s more . . .’ Brunetti had no idea of how to twist himself out of this sentence.
‘Respectable?’ Paola suggested.
This time it was he who laughed.
Talking of this and that, veering away from music to discuss Raffi’s apparent cooling towards Sara Paganuzzi, only to return to music, they crossed the Rialto on the left side and started along the riva. The restaurants were closed or closing, the waiters visibly weary at the end of a long day.
They said little as they walked along the water. Just before they turned right under the passageway, both of them turned back and saw the moon’s reflection looking as though it were about to slide under the bridge.
‘We live in Paradise, don’t we?’ Paola asked.
The call would have slipped past Paola’s parental telephone because it came at six-fifteen two mornings later. Brunetti answered with his name at the third ring.
‘It’s me,’ a man’s voice said, and Brunetti’s mind chugged.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked, identifying the voice as that of Ettore Rizzardi, one of the city’s pathologists, who should not be calling him at this hour.
‘It’s Ettore,’ the doctor said, though there was hardly need of that. ‘I’m sorry to call you this early, Guido, but there’s something I think you should know about.’
‘Where are you?’ Brunetti asked.
‘At the hospital,’ he answered.
To Brunetti, that meant the mortuary: where else would Rizzardi be?
‘What’s happened?’ Brunetti asked, shying away from what he wanted to ask: Who’s died?
‘I came in this morning for the autopsy on that boy who shot himself,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I wanted to get it done before the day began.’
‘Why?’ Brunetti asked, though it was none of his business.
‘I’ve got a new doctor here, just out of medical school, and I don’t want her to have to see this. Not yet.’
‘Is that why you’re calling me?’ Brunetti asked, hoping – coming as close to praying as he was capable of doing – that Rizzardi had no doubts about the suicide.
‘No, it’s something one of the nurses told me. You know her, Clara Bondi, Araldo’s wife.’
‘Yes,’ Br
unetti said, wondering what was going on and why none of this was making sense. ‘What did she say?’
‘There’s a girl in the Emergency Room. She’s got a broken arm, and they put six stitches in her scalp.’
‘What happened?’ Brunetti turned to look at the clock. Almost six-thirty. No chance of going back to sleep.
‘She fell down the steps on Ponte de le Scuole.’
The elongated mass buried by covers beside him moved and made a moaning noise. He placed a calming hand on Paola’s hip and said, voice consciously pleasant and friendly, ‘Why are you telling me this, Ettore?’
‘They brought her in by ambulance. Some people going home found her about midnight at the bottom of the bridge and called the Carabinieri. They went over and called the ambulance. She was unconscious when they brought her in.’
That was probably a good thing if she had had to have her arm set and have six stitches, Brunetti thought. ‘And?’
‘And Clara was the nurse on the ward where they put her.’
‘And?’
‘And when she woke up, she told Clara that someone had pushed her down the steps.’
Brunetti considered possibilities. ‘Had she been drinking?’
‘Apparently not. They checked that when she came in.’
‘Blood test?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No, just the breath, but there was nothing.’ Rizzardi let a moment pass and then added, ‘Clara said the girl sounded very certain about it.’
‘Why are you calling me, Ettore?’
‘When Clara told the doctor, he said the girl was probably making it up, that people didn’t do that here.’ Before Brunetti could protest, Rizzardi said, ‘So he’s refused to call the police. He doesn’t want any trouble with them.’
‘What does he expect the girl to do?’ Brunetti asked.
‘He said she can call them when she gets home.’
‘When will that be?’
‘I have no idea, Guido,’ Rizzardi said, suddenly exasperated. ‘That’s not why I called you.’
‘All right, Ettore,’ Brunetti said, shoving back the covers. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ He could all but hear Rizzardi calming down, so he asked, ‘Have you spoken to her?’
‘No, but I’ve known Clara since I started working here, and she’s got more sense than most of my colleagues. She said she believes the girl, and that’s enough for me.’
Brunetti made a noise as he got out of the bed.
‘Is that the weight of the world I hear on your shoulders, Guido?’ Rizzardi asked in his normal voice.
‘Let me have a shower and some coffee. I’ll be there in an hour.’
‘She’ll be here.’
9
Brunetti left for the hospital very shortly after, having decided not to make coffee at home but to stop on the way. It was not yet seven-thirty when he reached Ballarin, but to his relief he saw that there was already someone inside. He tapped on the door; when Antonella came to see who was there, he asked if he could have a coffee and a brioche. She stuck her head out and looked both ways, then pulled the door fully open to let him in. She closed and locked the door after him.
When she caught his glance, she said, ‘We can’t serve before opening time. It’s against the law.’
Brunetti was tempted to put on his mock-severe voice and say he was the law around there, but it was too early for jokes – and he had had no coffee. Instead, he thanked her and said he would stop by another time and pay, so no law would be broken.
‘There’s probably some other law we don’t know about,’ she said as she went behind the counter, but then her voice was drowned out by the coffee grinder. She handed him a brioche, still hot, and turned to get his coffee. It took some time and two packets of sugar, but the combination worked its magical transformation, and he left the pasticceria a man reborn.
At the hospital, he realized he had no idea where to find the injured woman, nor even whom to ask about: he had been too dulled by sleep to ask her name. He shied away from the idea of going to see Rizzardi in the place where he worked and went to the Emergency Room, where it was likely the girl had first been taken. There, he was told that, because the other wards were already overcrowded, she had been sent to cardiologia. Her paperwork had been sent along with her, and four people were queuing behind him, so Brunetti decided that he had enough information to be able to find her: after all, how many girls with a broken arm and stitches in her head would be in the cardiology ward?
Indeed she was the only one, lying on a trolley in an empty corridor, apparently parked – Brunetti’s choice of word – until they managed to find a room where there was space for her. He approached her. A pale-faced young woman lay on her back, apparently asleep, her left arm in a cast on her stomach, palm open on her hip. Her head was bandaged, and he saw that a swathe of hair had been shaved away to allow the tape to hold.
He went to the nurses’ station and found someone. ‘I’ve come to see the young woman over there. May I see her chart?’ he asked.
‘Are you a doctor?’ the nurse asked, looking him up and down.
‘No, I’m a policeman.’
‘Has she done something?’ the nurse asked, shooting a quick look in the girl’s direction.
‘No, quite the opposite, it would seem.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She may have been pushed down the bridge,’ Brunetti said, curious to see how the nurse would respond to his confidence.
‘Who’d do something like that?’ the woman asked in a voice now warmed by concern, as she glanced back at the young woman. Obviously, her colleague Clara had told her nothing.
‘That’s what I’ve come to find out.’ Brunetti smiled when he said this.
‘Ah, take it, then,’ she said and passed him a file lying on the counter that separated them.
‘“Francesca Santello”,’ Brunetti read. ‘Is she Venetian?’
‘She sounds it,’ the woman answered. ‘Well, in the little I heard her say. They gave her something when they set her arm and did the stitches, and she’s been groggy or asleep since then.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She asked me to call her father,’ the nurse answered, then added, ‘but she was asleep before she could tell me his name.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said and looked through the file. Her name and date of birth, residence in Santa Croce. The X-rays of her skull had clipped to them a note saying they showed no sign of fracture or internal bleeding. The examining physician wrote that the fracture of her arm was a simple one, and the cast could be removed in five weeks.
‘I looked,’ the nurse said forcefully, as if to deny some accusation from Brunetti.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, looking up from the file.
‘Santello. In the phone book. But there’s a dozen of them.’
Brunetti thought to ask if she had checked the addresses but limited himself to a smile.
‘How long has she been here?’
The nurse looked at her watch. ‘They brought her up after they put in the stitches.’
‘I’d like to stay here for a while to see if she wakes up,’ Brunetti said.
Perhaps because his explanations had transformed the young woman from a suspect to a victim, the nurse raised no objection, and Brunetti went back to the side of the trolley. When he looked down at her, he saw that she was staring at him.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Commissario Guido Brunetti,’ he answered. ‘I came because one of the nurses said you think you were pushed down the steps.’
‘I don’t think it,’ she said. ‘I know it.’ Her voice used too much breath, as if she had to pump out the words to get them free. She closed her eyes, and he saw her lips press together in frustration or pain.
He waited.
She looked at him with clear, almost translucent blue eyes. ‘I know it.’ Her voice was little more than a whisper, but the pronunciation was diamond-sharp.
‘Would you t
ell me what happened?’ Brunetti asked.
She moved her head minimally, but even that caused her a sudden gasp of pain. She lay still and then said, speaking very softly, as if to keep the pain from noticing, ‘I was going home. After dinner with friends. When I was going up the bridge behind the Scuola, I heard footsteps behind me.’ She studied his face to see if he was following.
Brunetti nodded but said nothing.
She lay still for some time, gathering more breath to enable herself to continue. ‘When I started down, I felt someone behind me. Too close.
‘Then he touched my back and said, “È mia”, and he shoved me and I tripped. I think I tried to grab the railing.’ Brunetti leaned forward, the better to hear her. ‘Why would he say “You’re mine”?’ she asked.
She raised her right hand to touch the bandage on her head. ‘Maybe I hit it. I remember falling, but that’s all. Then there were police, and they put me on a boat. That’s all I remember.’ She shifted her eyes around the corridor and out the windows. ‘I’m in the hospital, aren’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me what’s wrong with me?’ she asked.
‘Good heavens,’ Brunetti answered with mock seriousness. ‘I’m not sure that’s any of my business.’
It took her a moment to understand, then she smiled and added, joining in the joke, ‘Physically, that is.’
‘Your left arm is broken, but your chart says it’s not a bad break,’ he said. ‘And there are stitches in your scalp. There’s no evident damage to your brain or skull: no haemorrhage and no fracture.’ He had given the bare facts and felt obliged to add, ‘You have a concussion, so I suppose they’ll keep you here for a day or two to see that they didn’t overlook anything.’
She closed her eyes again. This time they stayed closed for at least five minutes, but Brunetti remained standing beside the bed.
When she opened them again, he asked, ‘Are you sure that’s what you heard, “È mia”?’
‘Yes,’ she said without hesitation or uncertainty.
‘Can you tell me anything about the voice?’ Brunetti asked. ‘The tone or the pronunciation?’ It would hardly be much to go on, but if the attacker had come from behind her, that’s all there would be.