Acqua Alta

  Along with the violence, along with the hired killers who shot twelve-year-olds as messages to their parents, had come the men with the briefcases, the soft-spoken patrons of the opera and the arts, with their university-educated children, their wine cellars and their fierce desire to be perceived as patrons, epicures and gentlemen, not as the thugs they were, prating and posturing with their talk of omertà and loyalty.

  For a moment, he had to stop himself and accept the fact that Signor La Capra might well be no more than what he appeared to be: a man of wealth who had bought and restored a palazzo on the Grand Canal. But even as he thought this, he thought of the presence of Salvatore La Capra’s fingerprints in Semenzato’s office and saw again the names of those cities and the identical dates when La Capra and Semenzato had visited them. Coincidence? Absurd.

  Scattalon had said La Capra was living in the palazzo; perhaps it was time for a representative of one of the official arms of the city to greet the new resident and have a word with him about the need for security in these sadly criminal times.

  Since the palazzo was on the same side of the Grand Canal as his home, he had lunch there but had no coffee after it, thinking that Signor La Capra might be polite enough to offer it to him.

  The palazzo stood at the end of Calle Dilera, a small street that dead-ended into the Grand Canal. As he approached, Brunetti could see the sure signs of newness. The exterior layer of intonaco plastered over the bricks from which the walls were constructed was still virgin and free of graffiti. Only near the bottom did it show the first signs of wear: the recent acqua alta had left its mark at about the height of Brunetti’s knee, lightening the dull orange of the plaster, some of which had already begun to crumble away and now lay kicked or swept to the side of the narrow calle. Iron gratings were cemented into place on the four ground-level windows and thus prevented all chance of entry. Behind them, he saw new wooden shutters, tightly closed. He moved to the other side of the narrow calle and put his head back to study the upper floors. All of them had the same dark green wooden shutters, these thrown back, and windows of double-glazed glass. The gutters that hung under the new terracotta tiles of the roof were copper, as were the pipes that carried the run-off water from them. At the second floor, however, the pipes changed to far less tempting tin and ran down to the ground.

  The nameplate by the single bell was taste itself: a simple italic script with only the name, ‘La Capra’. He rang the bell and stood near the intercom.

  ‘Sì, chi è?’ a male voice asked.

  ‘Polizia,’ he answered, having decided not to waste time with subtlety.

  ‘Sì. Arrivo,’ the voice said, and then Brunetti heard only a mechanical click. He waited.

  After a few minutes, the door was opened by a young man in a dark blue suit. Clean-shaven and dark-eyed, he was handsome enough to be a model but perhaps a bit too stocky to photograph well. ‘Sì?’ he asked, not smiling but not seeming any more unfriendly than the average citizen would be if asked to come to the door by the police.

  ‘Buon giorno,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m Commissario Brunetti; I’d like to speak to Signor La Capra.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About crime in the city.’

  The young man remained where he was, standing a bit outside the door, and made no move to open it or allow Brunetti to enter. He waited for Brunetti to explain more fully, and when it became obvious this was not about to happen, he said, ‘I thought there wasn’t supposed to be any crime in Venice.’ His Sicilian accent became audible in the longer sentence, his belligerence in the tone.

  ‘Is Signor La Capra at home?’ Brunetti asked, tired of sparring and beginning to feel the cold.

  ‘Yes.’ The young man stepped back inside the door and held it open for Brunetti. He found himself in a large courtyard with a circular well in the centre. Off to the left, marble pillars supported a flight of steps that led up to the first floor of the building that enclosed the courtyard on all sides. At the top, the stairs turned back upon themselves, still hugging the exterior wall of the building, and climbed to the second and then the third floor. The carved heads of stone lions stood at equal distances on the marble banister that ran along the stairs. Tucked below the stairs were the signs of recent work: a wheelbarrow filled with paper bags of cement, a roll of heavy-duty plastic sheeting, and large tins dripping different colours of paint down their sides.

  At the top of the first flight of steps, the young man opened a door and stepped back to allow Brunetti to pass into the palazzo. The moment he stepped inside, Brunetti heard music filtering down from the floors above. As he followed the young man up the steps, the sound grew louder, until he could distinguish the presence of a single soprano voice in the midst of it. The accompaniment, it seemed, was strings, but the sound was muffled, coming from another part of the house. The young man opened another door, and just at that moment the voice soared up above the instruments and hung suspended in beauty for the space of five heartbeats, then dropped back to the lesser world of the instruments.

  They passed down a marble hallway and started up an inner stairway, and as they went, the music grew louder and louder, the voice clearer and brighter, the nearer they came to its source. The young man seemed not to hear, though the world in which they moved was filled only with that sound, nothing more. At the top of the second flight of stairs, the young man opened another door and stood back again, nodding Brunetti into a long corridor. He could only nod; there was no way Brunetti could have heard him.

  Brunetti walked in front of him and along the corridor. The young man caught up with him and opened a door on the right; this time he bowed as Brunetti passed in front of him and closed the door behind him, leaving Brunetti inside, all but deafened by the music.

  Robbed of every sense but sight, Brunetti saw in four corners wide cloth-covered panels that reached from the floor to the height of a man, all turned to face the centre of the room. And there in the centre, a man lay on a chaise-longue covered with pale brown leather. His attention entirely given to a small square booklet in his hands, he gave no sign that he had noticed Brunetti’s entrance. Brunetti stopped just inside the door and watched him. And he listened to the music.

  The soprano’s tone was absolutely pure, a sound that was generated in the heart and warmed there until it came swelling out with the apparent effortlessness that was achieved only by the greatest singers and then only with the greatest skill. Her voice paused upon a note, soared off from it, swelled, flirted with what he now realized was a harpsichord, and then rested for a moment while the strings spoke with the harpsichord. And then, as if it had always been there, the voice returned and swept the strings up with it, higher and higher still. Brunetti could make out words and phrases here and there, ‘disprezzo’, ‘perchè’, ‘per pietade’, ‘fugge il mio bene’, all of which spoke of love and longing and loss. Opera, then, though he had no idea which one it was.

  The man on the chaise-longue looked to be in his late fifties and wore around his middle proof of good eating and soft living. His face was dominated by his nose, large and fleshy – the same nose Brunetti had seen on the mug shot of the accused rapist, his son – on which sat a pair of half-lens reading glasses. His eyes were large, limpid and dark enough to seem almost black. He was cleanshaven, but his beard was so heavy that a dark shadow was evident on his cheeks, though it was still early afternoon.

  The music came to a chilling diminuendo and died away. It was only in the silence that radiated out to him that Brunetti became aware of just how perfect the quality of sound had been, the volume disguised by that perfection.

  The man leaned back limply on his chaiselongue, and the booklet fell from his hand to the floor beside him. He closed his eyes, head back, his entire body slack. Though he had in no way acknowledged Brunetti’s arrival, Brunetti had no doubt the man was very much aware of his presence in the room; moreover, he had the feeling that this display of aesthetic ravishment was being put on specifically for hi
s edification.

  Gently, much in the manner his mother-in-law used to applaud an aria she hadn’t liked but had been told was very well sung, he patted the tips of his fingers together a few times, very lightly.

  As if called back from realms where lesser mortals dared not enter, the man on the chaise-longue opened his eyes, shook his head in feigned astonishment, and turned to look at the source of the lukewarm response.

  ‘Didn’t you like the voice?’ La Capra asked with real surprise.

  ‘Oh, I liked the voice a great deal,’ Brunetti answered, then added, ‘but the performance seemed a bit forced.’

  If La Capra caught the absence of possessive pronoun, he chose to ignore it. He picked up the libretto and waved it in the air. ‘That was the best voice of our age, the only great singer,’ he said, waving the small libretto for emphasis.

  ‘Signora Petrelli?’ Brunetti inquired.

  The man’s mouth twisted up as if he’d bitten into something unpleasant. ‘Sing Handel? La Petrelli?’ he asked with tired surprise. ‘All she can sing is Verdi and Puccini.’ He pronounced the names as a nun would say “sex” and “passion”.

  Brunetti began to offer that Flavia also sang Mozart, but instead he asked, ‘Signor La Capra?’

  At the sound of his name, the man pushed himself to his feet, suddenly recalled from aesthetic pronouncements to his duty as a host, and approached Brunetti, extending his hand. ‘Yes. And whom do I have the honour of meeting?’

  Brunetti took his hand and returned the very formal smile. ‘Commissario Guido Brunetti.’

  ‘Commissario?’ One would think La Capra had never heard the word.

  Brunetti nodded. ‘Of the police.’

  Momentary confusion crossed the other man’s face, but this time Brunetti thought it might be a real emotion, not one manufactured for an audience. La Capra quickly recovered and asked, very politely, ‘And what is it, if I might ask, that brings you to visit me, Commissario?’

  Brunetti didn’t want La Capra to suspect that the police connected him with Semenzato’s death, so he had decided to say nothing about his son’s fingerprints having been found at the scene of Semenzato’s murder. And until he had a better sense of the man, he didn’t want La Capra to know the police were curious about any link that might exist between him and Brett. ‘Theft, Signor La Capra,’ Brunetti said and then repeated, ‘Theft.’

  Signor La Capra was, in an instant, all polite attention. ‘Yes, Commissario?’

  Brunetti smiled his most friendly smile. ‘I came to speak to you about the city, Signor La Capra, since you’re a new resident, and about some of the risks of living here.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Dottore,’ returned La Capra, matching him smile for smile. ‘But, please, we can’t stand here like two statues. Could I offer you a coffee? You’ve had lunch, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I have. But a coffee would be welcome.’

  ‘Ah, then come along with me. We’ll go down to my study and I’ll have us brought some.’ Saying that, he led Brunetti from the room and back down the stairway. On the second floor, he opened a door and stood back politely to allow Brunetti to enter before him. Books lined two walls; paintings much in need of cleaning – and looking all the more expensive because of that – filled the third. Three ceiling-high windows looked out over the Grand Canal, where boats went about their boaty business. La Capra waved Brunetti to a satin-covered divan and went himself to a long oak desk, where he picked up the phone, pushed a button, and asked that coffee be brought to the study.

  He came back across the room and sat down opposite Brunetti, careful first to pull gently at his trousers above the knees so as not to stretch them out when he sat. ‘As I said, it’s very thoughtful of you to come to speak to me, Dottor Brunetti. I’ll be sure to thank Dottor Patta when I see him.’

  ‘Are you a friend of the Vice-Questore’s?’ Brunetti asked.

  La Capra raised his hands in a self-deprecating gesture, pushing away the possibility of such glory. ‘No, I have no such honour. But we are both members of the Lions’ Club, and so we have occasion to meet socially.’ He paused a moment and then added, ‘I’ll be sure to thank him for your thoughtfulness.’

  Brunetti nodded his gratitude, knowing just how thoughtful Patta would find it.

  ‘But, tell me, Dottor Brunetti, what is it you wanted to warn me about?’

  ‘There’s no specific warning I can give you, Signor La Capra. It’s more that I want to tell you that the appearances of this city are deceiving.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It seems that we have a peaceful city here,’ Brunetti began and then interrupted himself to ask, ‘You know that there are only seventy thousand inhabitants?’

  La Capra nodded.

  ‘So it would seem, at first glance, that it is a sleepy little provincial town, that the streets are safe.’ Here Brunetti hastened to add, ‘And they are; people are still safe at all times of the day or night.’ He paused a moment and then added, as if it had just come to him, ‘And they are generally safe in their homes, as well.’

  ‘If I might interrupt you here, Commissario, that’s one of the reasons I chose to move here, to enjoy that safety, the tranquillity that seems to remain only in this city.’

  ‘You are from . . .?’ Brunetti asked, though the accent that bubbled up, no matter how La Capra fought to keep it down, left that in no doubt.

  ‘Palermo,’ La Capra responded.

  Brunetti paused to allow that name to sink in and then continued, ‘There is still, however, and it is this I came to speak to you about, there is still a risk of theft. There are many wealthy people in the city, and some of them, lulled, perhaps, by the apparent peacefulness of the city, are not as careful as they should be about the security they maintain within their homes.’ He glanced around him and then followed with a graceful gesture of the hand. ‘I can see that you have many beautiful things here.’ Signor La Capra smiled but then quickly bowed his head in the appearance of modesty. ‘I hope only that you have been provident enough to see to their best protection,’ Brunetti concluded.

  The door opened behind him and the same young man came into the room carrying a tray on which sat two cups of coffee and a silver sugar bowl resting on three delicate clawed feet. He stood silently beside Brunetti and waited while he took a cup and spooned two sugars into it. He repeated the process with Signor La Capra and left the room without having said a word, taking the tray with him.

  As he stirred his coffee, Brunetti noticed that it was covered with the thin layer of froth that came only from the standard electric espresso machines: no screw-top Moka Espresso pot placed hurriedly on the back burner in Signor La Capra’s kitchen.

  ‘It’s very thoughtful of you to come to tell me this, Commissario. I’m afraid it’s true that many of us do see Venice as an oasis of peace in what is an increasingly criminal society.’ Here, Signor La Capra shook his head from side to side. ‘But I assure you that I have taken every precaution to see that my possessions remain safe.’

  ‘I’m glad to learn that, Signor La Capra,’ Brunetti said, placing his cup and saucer on top of a small marble-topped table that stood beside the divan. ‘I’m sure you would want to be most prudent with the beautiful things you have here. After all, I’m sure you’ve gone to considerable trouble to acquire some of them.’

  This time, Signor La Capra’s smile, when it came, was in a lower key. He finished his coffee and leaned forward to place his cup and saucer beside Brunetti’s. He said nothing.

  ‘Would it be intrusive if I were to ask you what sort of protection you’ve provided, Signor La Capra?’

  ‘Intrusive?’ La Capra asked, opening his eyes wide in surprise. ‘But how could that be? I’m sure you ask only out of consideration for the citizens of the city.’ He let that rest a moment and then explained, ‘I had a burglar alarm installed. But more importantly, I have round-the-clock staff. One of them is always here. I tend to place greater trust in the loyalty of
my staff than in any mechanical protection I might buy.’ Here, Signor La Capra turned up the temperature of his smile. ‘Perhaps this makes me old-fashioned, but I believe in these values – loyalty, honour.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Brunetti said blandly, but he smiled to show that he understood. ‘Do you allow people to see the other pieces in your collection? If these,’ Brunetti said, waving a hand lightly in a gesture that encompassed the entire room, ‘are any indication, then it must be very impressive.’

  ‘Ah, Commissario, I’m sorry,’ La Capra said with a small shake of his head, ‘but I’m afraid that would be impossible just now.’

  ‘Yes?’ Brunetti inquired politely.

  ‘You see, the room where I plan to display them isn’t finished to my satisfaction yet. The lighting, the tiles for the floor, even the ceiling panels – none of them makes me happy, so I would be embarrassed, yes, actually embarrassed, to allow anyone to see it now. But I’d be very happy to invite you back to see my collection when the room is finished and,’ he paused, searching for the proper final word, and finding it, ‘presentable.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, signore. I’ll plan, then, on seeing you again?’

  La Capra nodded, but he did not smile.

  ‘I’m sure you’re a very busy man,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet. How strange, he thought, for a lover of art to feel the least reluctance to show his collection to someone who displayed curiosity or enthusiasm for beautiful things. Brunetti had never known it to happen before. And even stranger that, during all this talk of crime in the city, La Capra had not seen fit to mention either of the two incidents which had, this very week, shattered the calm of Venice and the lives of people who, like himself, were lovers of beauty.