Still holding her arm, though she almost laughed at how unnecessary that was, he turned the key and pulled the door open. She looked in and saw low steps leading down towards glittering darkness. From the first step, the darkness was palpable, and from its surface she saw the reflection of light on water.
The man wheeled towards her and grabbed her arm. He flung her forward, and she tripped through the doorway, feet searching automatically for the steps beneath them. On the first, her foot plunged into water, but the second was slimy with seaweed and moss, and her foot slipped out from under her. She had time to raise her arms in front of her, and then she plunged forward into the stillrising waters.
Chapter Twenty-Three
ALL FLAVIA wanted to do was stop the sound of the music that echoed grotesquely through the apartment. As she neared the bookcase, transcendent beauty rippled up through the woodwinds and the violins, but she wanted only the comfort of silence. She looked at the complicated stereo equipment, trapped helplessly in the sound that poured from it, and cursed herself for never bothering to learn how it worked. But then the music soared up to even greater beauty, all harmony was proclaimed, and the symphony ended. She turned, relieved, towards Brunetti.
Just as she started to speak, the opening chords of the symphony crashed anew into the room. She wheeled around, enraged, and slashed a hand towards the CD player, as if to stun it into silence. Because the thin plastic box that had once held the CD was propped against the front of the player, her hand caught it, knocking it to the floor, where it fell on a corner and burst open, spilling its contents at Flavia’s feet. She kicked at it, missed and looked down to see where it lay, wanting to stamp the life from it and, by so doing, somehow put an end to the music that spilled joyously through the apartment. She sensed Brunetti beside her. He reached in front of her and turned the volume control to the left. The music faded away, leaving them in the explosive silence of the room. He bent down and picked up the box, then bent again to pick up the pamphlet that had fallen from inside and a small slip of paper that the pamphlet covered.
‘A man called. They’ve got Flavia.’ Nothing else was written there. No time, no explanation of her intention. Her absence from the apartment gave him all the explanation he needed.
Saying nothing, he passed the slip of paper to Flavia.
She read it and understood immediately. She crushed the paper in her hand, squeezing it into a tight scrap, but soon she opened her fingers and placed it flat on the bookshelf in front of her, silent, terrifyingly aware that this might be the last contact she would ever have with Brett.
‘What time did you leave?’ Brunetti asked her.
‘About two. Why?’
He looked down at his watch, calculating possibilities. They would have allowed Flavia some time away from the apartment before they called, and someone would have followed her to see that she didn’t suddenly turn back towards Brett’s. It was almost seven, so they’d had Brett for a number of hours. At no time did it occur to Brunetti to question who had done this. La Capra’s name was as clearly fixed in his mind as if it had been spoken. He wondered where she would have been taken. Murino’s shop? Only if the dealer was involved in the murders, and that seemed unlikely. The obvious choice, then, was La Capra’s palazzo. As soon as he thought it, he began to plan ways to get inside, but he realized there was no chance of a search warrant on the basis of three dates on credit card receipts and the description of a room that could just as easily serve as a cell as a private gallery. Brunetti’s intuitions would count for nothing here, especially when they concerned a man of La Capra’s apparent stature and, more importantly, evident wealth.
Were Brunetti to return to the palazzo, there was every reason to believe La Capra would refuse to see him, and there was no way to get inside without that permission. Unless . . .
Flavia grabbed his arm. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘I think so.’
Hearing this, Flavia went into the hallway and returned a moment later carrying a pair of high black rubber boots. She sat on the sofa, pulled them on over her wet stockings and got to her feet. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. ‘Where is she?’
‘Flavia—’ he began, but she cut him short.
‘I said I’m coming with you.’
Brunetti knew there was no way he could stop her and decided immediately what to do. ‘One phone call first. I’ll explain on the way.’ He grabbed the phone and dialled the number of the Questura, then asked to speak to Vianello.
When the sergeant answered, Brunetti said, ‘It’s me, Vianello. Is anyone around?’
In response to Vianello’s affirmative noise, Brunetti continued, ‘Then just listen and I’ll explain. Remember you told me you worked three years in Burglary?’ A deep grunt came down the line. ‘I’ve got something I want you to do for me. A door. To a building.’ The next grunt was clearly interrogative. ‘It’s wooden, reinforced with metal, new. I think there are two locks.’ This time, he heard a snort at the insulting simplicity of this. Only two locks. Only steel reinforcement. He thought quickly, remembering the neighbourhood. He looked out of the window; it was fully dark and the rain continued as before. ‘I’ll meet you at Campo San Aponal. As soon as you can get there. And, Vianello,’ he added, ‘don’t wear your uniform coat.’ The only response to this was a deep laugh, and then Vianello was gone.
When Brunetti and Flavia reached the bottom of the steps, they saw that the water had risen even higher, and from beyond the door came the roar of the rain as it bucketed down.
They picked up the umbrellas and stepped out under the rain, water reaching up towards the tops of their boots. Few people were out, so they got quickly to Rialto, where the water was even deeper. Had it not been for the wooden walkways on their iron stanchions, the water would have flooded into their boots and made progress impossible. On the other side of the bridge, they descended again into the water and turned down towards San Polo, both of them now soaked and exhausted with forcing their way through the rising floods. At San Aponal, they ducked into a bar to wait for Vianello, glad to be free of the drumming insistence of the rain.
They had been enveloped in this watery world for so long that it struck neither one of them as strange that they stood, inside the bar, in water that rose above their calves, listening to the splashings of the barman as he moved back and forth behind the counter, setting down glasses and cups.
Steam covered the inside of the glass doors to the bar, so Brunetti had to reach out with his sleeve and repeatedly wipe away the mist to create a circle through which he watched for Vianello. Bent forms ploughed across the small campo. Many people had abandoned the pretence of carrying umbrellas, so capricious was the wind that came from left, right, below, sweeping rain from every angle.
Brunetti felt a sudden heavy pressure against him and looked down to see the top of Flavia’s head, bent heavily against his arm, forcing him to bend down to hear what she said. ‘Is she going to be all right?’
No words came to him; no easy lie sprang to his lips. He could do no more than shift his arm and wrap it around her shoulder, pulling her closer. He felt her tremble and convinced himself that it was cold, not fear. But still no words came.
Soon after this, Vianello’s bearlike form appeared in the campo from the direction of Rialto. The wind tore his raincoat back, and Brunetti saw under it a pair of black waist-high waders. He squeezed Flavia’s arm. ‘He’s here.’
She moved slowly away from him, closed her eyes for a moment and tried to smile.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ she answered and nodded as proof.
He pulled open the door of the bar, calling out to Vianello, who hurried across the campo towards them. Wind and rain gusted into the overheated bar, and then Vianello splashed his way in, making the place look somehow smaller for his presence. He pulled his sailor’s watchcap from his head and beat it repeatedly against the back of a chair, splashing water in a wide circle around him. He to
ssed the sodden cap on a table and ran his fingers through his hair, splashing even more water behind him. He glanced at Brunetti, saw Flavia and asked, ‘Where is it?’
‘Down by the water, at the end of the Calle Dilera. It’s the one that’s just been restored. On the left.’
‘The one with the metal gratings?’ Vianello asked.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered, wondering if there was a building in the city that Vianello didn’t know.
‘What do you want me to do, sir, get us in?’
Brunetti felt a surge of relief at the sound of that ‘us’. ‘Yes. There’s a courtyard, but no one’s likely to be there, not in this rain.’ Vianello nodded in agreement. Anyone with any sense would be inside on a day like this.
‘All right. You wait here and I’ll give it a try. If it’s the one I think it is, there shouldn’t be any problem. Won’t take long. Give me about three minutes, and then you come.’ He gave Flavia a quick look, grabbed his cap and stepped back into the pounding rain.
‘What are you going to do?’ Flavia asked.
‘I’m going to get in and see if she’s there,’ he said, though he had no idea, in real terms, what this meant. Brett could be anywhere inside the palazzo, in any of the countless rooms. She didn’t even have to be inside but could already be lying dead, body floating in the filthy water that had conquered the city.
‘And if she’s not?’ Flavia asked so quickly that Brunetti was convinced she must share his vision of Brett’s fate.
Instead of answering her, he said, ‘I want you to stay here. Or go back to the apartment. There’s nothing you can do.’
Not bothering to argue with him, she dismissed what he said with a wave and asked, ‘He’s had enough time by now, hasn’t he?’ Before he could answer, Flavia pushed past him out of the bar and into the campo, where she yanked her umbrella open and stood, waiting.
He left the bar and joined her, blocking her from the wind with his body. ‘No. You can’t come. This is police business.’
The wind swooped at them, dragging her hair across her face, covering her eyes. She raked it back with an angry hand and looked up at him, stone-faced. ‘I know where it is. So I come with you now or I follow you.’
When he began to protest, she cut him off: ‘This is my life, Guido.’
Brunetti turned away from her and into Calle Dilera, flushed with rage, fighting the desire to hurl her bodily into the bar and somehow keep her there. As they approached the palazzo, Brunetti was surprised to see that the narrow calle was empty. There was no sign of Vianello, and the heavy wooden door appeared to be closed. As they drew abreast of it, the door suddenly swung open from within. A large hand emerged and beckoned them inside, and then Vianello’s face appeared in the dim light of the calle, smiling, running with rainwater.
Brunetti slipped inside, but before he could press the door closed, Flavia slipped into the courtyard after him. They stood still for a moment while their eyes adjusted to the darkness. ‘Too easy,’ Vianello said, pushing the door closed behind them.
Because they were so close to the Grand Canal, the water was even deeper here and had turned the courtyard into a broad lake upon which the rain continued to pound. The only light came from the windows of the palazzo, from the left side of which light spilled down into the courtyard, illuminating its centre but leaving the side where they stood wrapped in heavy darkness. Silently, the three of them moved out of the rain and slipped under the long balcony that covered three sides of the courtyard until they were all but invisible, even to one another.
Brunetti realized he had come here in response to purest impulse without considering what to do once he was inside. On his one and only visit to the palazzo he had been so quickly shepherded to the top floor that he had no clear sense of the layout of the building. He remembered passing doors that led off the exterior staircase to the rooms on each floor, but he had no idea of what lay behind those doors save for the room at the top, where he had spoken to La Capra, and the study on the floor below. It also occurred to him that he, Brunetti, an officer of the state, had just participated in the commission of a crime; what is more, he had involved in that crime not only a civilian but also a fellow officer.
‘Wait here,’ Brunetti whispered, putting his mouth close to Flavia’s ear to speak, even though the rain would have covered the sound of his voice. It was too dark for him to see whatever gesture she might have made in response, but he sensed her move even further back into the darkness.
‘Vianello,’ he said, grabbing his arm and pulling him close, ‘I’m going up the stairs to try to get in. If there’s any trouble, get her out of here. Don’t bother with anyone unless they try to stop you.’ Vianello muttered his assent. Brunetti turned away from them and took a few steps towards the stairway, pushing his legs slowly through the continued resistance of the water. It wasn’t until he reached the second step that his legs finally pulled free of the pressure of the water that sucked at them with every step. The sudden change made him feel curiously light-footed, as though he could float or fly up the steps with no effort whatsoever. With that liberty, however, he was suddenly freed to feel the grinding cold that spread up from the icy water trapped inside his boots, from the sodden clothing that hung heavy on his body. He bent down and pulled off the boots, started up the steps, then went back down and kicked the boots into the water. He waited until they sank out of sight, then started up the stairs again.
At the top of the first flight, he paused on the small balcony and turned the handle of the door that led inside. It moved down under his hand, but the door was locked and didn’t open. He climbed another flight but found this door locked as well.
He turned and looked over the railing and across the courtyard to where Flavia and Vianello must be standing, but he could see nothing except the pattern of shattered light as the rain continued to fall on the surface of the water beneath him.
To his surprise, the door at the top swung open under his hand, and he found himself at the beginning of a long corridor. He stepped inside, closed the door behind him and stood still for a moment, conscious only of the sound of water dripping from his coat on to the marble floor below him.
Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the light in the corridor while he waited, listening intently for any sound that might come from beyond the doors along its length.
A sudden chill shook him until he bowed his head and hunched his shoulders in an attempt to find warmth somewhere in his body. When he looked up again, La Capra was standing at an open door a few metres from him, mouth open in surprise at seeing Brunetti.
La Capra recovered first and gave an easy smile. ‘Signor Policeman, so you’ve come back. What a pleasant coincidence. I’ve just finished putting the last few pieces into my gallery. Perhaps you’d like to have a look at them?’
Chapter Twenty-Four
BRUNETTI FOLLOWED him into the gallery and let his eyes run across the raised cases and display stands. La Capra turned as they entered and said, ‘Please, let me take your coat. You must be frozen, walking around in the rain. On a night like this.’ He shook his head at the very thought.
Brunetti took off his coat, conscious of its sodden weight as he handed it to La Capra. The other man, too, seemed surprised at the bulk of the coat and could think of nothing to do except drape it over the back of a chair, where it lay, water trickling to the floor in thick rivulets.
‘What brings you back to see me, Dottore?’ La Capra asked, but before Brunetti could answer, he said, ‘Please, let me offer you something to drink. A grappa, perhaps? Or a hot rum punch. Please, I can’t let you stand there, chilled, a guest in my house, and not have you take something.’ Without waiting for an answer, he walked over to an intercom that hung on one wall and pushed a button. A few seconds later there was a faint click, and La Capra spoke into the receiver. ‘Would you bring up a bottle of grappa and some hot rum punch?’
He turned towards Brunetti, smiling, the perfect host. ‘It’ll just be a moment. Now, tel
l me, Dottore, while we wait. What brings you back to visit me so soon?’
‘Your collection, Signor La Capra. I’ve been learning more and more about it. And about you.’
‘Really?’ La Capra asked, his smile remaining in place. ‘I had no idea I was so well known in Venice.’
‘In other places as well,’ Brunetti answered. ‘In London, for example.’
‘In London?’ La Capra showed polite surprise. ‘How very strange. I don’t believe I know anyone in London.’
‘No, but perhaps you’ve acquired pieces there?’
‘Ah, yes, that could be it, I suppose,’ La Capra answered, smile still in place.
‘And in Paris,’ Brunetti added.
Again, La Capra’s surprise was studied, as if he had been waiting for mention of Paris after Brunetti’s reference to London. Before he could say anything, however, the door was pushed open and a young man came in, not the one who had let him in before. He carried a tray with bottles, glasses and a silver Thermos. He set the tray down on a low table and turned to go. Brunetti recognized him, not only from the mug shot sent up from Rome, but from his resemblance to his father.
‘No, stay and have a drink with us, Salvatore,’ La Capra said. Then, to Brunetti, ‘What would you like, Dottore? I see there’s sugar. Would you like me to fix you a punch?’
‘No, thank you. Grappa is fine.’
Jacopo Poli, delicate hand-blown bottle, nothing but the best for Signor La Capra. Brunetti drank it down in one swallow and set his glass back on the tray even before La Capra had finished pouring the boiling water into his own rum. As La Capra busied himself with pouring and stirring, Brunetti looked around the room. Many of the pieces resembled objects he had seen in Brett’s apartment.