Acqua Alta

  Brunetti chose not to repeat his remark about progress, and Paola, realizing he was going to offer no explanation, turned back to the desk. ‘I can’t spend any more time looking for it. I’ll have to think of something else.’

  ‘Why don’t you lie?’ Brunetti suggested casually.

  Paola snapped her head up to look at him and asked, ‘What do you mean, lie?’

  It seemed clear enough to him. ‘Just think of a place in one of the books where it might have been and tell them that’s where it is.’

  ‘But what if they’ve read the book?’

  ‘He wrote a lot of letters, didn’t he?’ Brunetti knew full well that he had: the letters had gone to Paris with them two years ago.

  ‘And if they ask what letter?’

  He refused to answer so stupid a question.

  ‘To Edith Wharton, 26 July 1906,’ she supplied immediately, putting into her voice the tone of absolute certainty that Brunetti recognized as always sustaining her in her most outrageous inventions.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said and smiled.

  ‘Me, too.’ She closed the last book, looked at her watch, then up at him. ‘It’s almost seven. Gianni had some beautiful lamb chops today. Come and have a glass of wine and talk to me while I cook them.’

  Dante, Brunetti recalled, punished the Evil Counsellors by enclosing them within enormous tongues of flame, where they were to twist and burn for eternity. There had been, he remembered, no mention of lamb chops.

  Chapter Seven

  WHEN THE STORY finally appeared the following day, it carried the headline ‘Attempted Robbery in Cannaregio’ and gave the briefest of accounts. Brett was described as an expert on Chinese art who had returned to Venice to seek funding from the Italian government for the excavations in Xian, where she co-ordinated the work of Chinese and Western archaeologists. There was a brief description of the two men, who had been foiled in their attempt by an unidentified ‘amica’ who happened to be in the apartment with Dottoressa Lynch at the time. When he read it, Brunetti wondered at the identity of the ‘amico’ who had suppressed the use of Flavia’s name. It might well have been anyone, from the mayor of Venice to the director of La Scala, attempting to protect his chosen prima donna from the possibility of harmful publicity.

  When he got to work, he stopped in Signorina Elettra’s office on the way up to his own. The freesias were gone today, replaced by a luminous spray of calla lilies. She looked up when he came in and said immediately, without even bothering to say good morning, ‘Sergeant Vianello asked me to tell you that there was nothing in Mestre. He said he spoke to some people there, but no one knew anything about the attack. And,’ she continued, looking down at a paper on her desk, ‘no one has been admitted to any of the hospitals in the area with a cut on his arm.’ Before he could ask, she said, ‘And nothing from Rome yet about the fingerprints.’

  Faced with dead ends on every side, Brunetti decided it was time to see what else there was to be learned about Semenzato. ‘You used to work at Banca d’Italia, didn’t you, signorina?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I did.’

  ‘And you still have friends there?’

  ‘And in other banks.’ Not one to hide her light, Signorina Elettra.

  ‘Do you think you could spin a web of gossamer with your computer and see what you can find out about Francesco Semenzato? Bank accounts, stock holdings, investments of any sort.’

  Her response was a smile so broad as to leave Brunetti wondering at the exact velocity with which news travelled at the Questura.

  ‘Of course, Dottore. Nothing easier. And would you like me to check on the wife, as well? I believe she’s Sicilian.’

  ‘Yes, the wife as well.’

  Even before he could ask, she volunteered. ‘They’ve been having trouble with their phone lines, so it might take me until tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Are you at liberty to reveal your source, signorina?’

  ‘Someone who has to wait until the director of the bank’s computer system goes home,’ was all she revealed.

  ‘Very well,’ Brunetti said, content with her explanation. ‘I’d like you to check it with Interpol in Geneva, as well. You can contact—’

  She cut him short, but she smiled as she did it. ‘I know the address, sir, and I think I know whom to contact.’

  ‘Heinegger?’ Brunetti asked, naming the captain in charge of the office of financial investigation.

  ‘Yes, Heinegger,’ she answered and repeated his address and fax number.

  ‘How did you learn that so quickly, signorina?’ he asked, honestly surprised.

  ‘I dealt with him often in my last job,’ she replied blandly.

  Though he was a policeman, the connection between Banca d’Italia and Interpol was one he didn’t want to ask about just then. ‘So you know what to do,’ was all he could think of to say.

  ‘I’ll bring you Heinegger’s reply as soon as it comes in,’ she said, turning to her computer.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Good morning, signorina.’ He turned and left the office, but not before taking another look at the flowers, framed against the open window behind them.

  The rain of the last few days had stopped, taking with it the immediate threat of acqua alta and bringing, instead, crystalline skies, so there was no chance of catching Lele at home: he would be somewhere in the city, painting. Brunetti decided to go to the hospital and continue his questioning of Brett, for he still had no clear idea of the reasons that had brought her back halfway across the world.

  When he entered the hospital room, he thought for a moment that Signorina Elettra had been at work here as well, for masses of flowers exploded from every available flat surface. Roses, iris, lilies and orchids flooded the room with their mingled sweetness, and the wastepaper basket overflowed with crumpled wrapping paper from Fantin and Biancat, the two florists where Venetians were most likely to go. He noticed that Americans, or at least foreigners, had also sent flowers: no Italian would have sent a sick person those immense bouquets of chrysanthemums, flowers used exclusively for funerals and for the tombs of the departed. He realized that it made him uncomfortable to be in a hospital room with them but dismissed the sensation as the worst sort of superstition.

  Both women were, as he had either expected or hoped, in the room, Brett propped up against the raised back of the bed, head cushioned between two pillows, and Flavia sitting in a chair at her side. Spread out on the surface of the bed between them were a number of coloured sketches of women in long, elaborate gowns. Each wore a diadem that surrounded her head in a jewelled sunburst. Brett glanced up from the drawings when he came in, and her lips moved minimally; the smile was all in her eyes. Flavia, after a moment, and at a reduced temperature, did the same.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said to both of them and glanced down at the pictures. The wave-patterned border at the hem of two of the dresses made them look oriental. But, instead of the usual dragons, the dresses were patterned with abstract splashes that hurled violent colours at one another and yet managed to create harmony, not dissonance.

  ‘What are those?’ he asked with real curiosity and, as soon as he spoke, realized he should have been asking Brett how she was.

  Flavia answered him. ‘Sketches for the new Turandot at La Scala.’

  ‘Then you are going to sing it?’ he asked. The press had been buzzing with this for weeks, even though the opening night was almost a full year away. The soprano whose name had been ‘hinted at’ as the one ‘rumoured to be’ the ‘possible choice’ – this was the way things were expressed at La Scala – had said she was interested in the possibility and would consider it, which clearly meant she wasn’t, and wouldn’t. Flavia Petrelli, who had never sung the role, was named as the next possibility, and she had issued, just two weeks ago, a statement to the press saying she refused absolutely even to consider the idea, as close to a formal acceptance as a soprano could be expected to come.

  ‘You should know better than to try to solv
e the riddles of Turandot,’ Flavia said, voice falsely light, letting him know he had seen something he was not to have seen. She leaned forward and gathered the drawings together. Quickly translated, both messages meant he was to say nothing about this.

  ‘How are you?’ he finally asked Brett.

  Though her jaws were no longer wired together, Brett’s smile was still faintly idiotic, lips separate from one another and pulling up at the corners. ‘Better. I can go home in a day.’

  ‘Two,’ Flavia corrected.

  ‘A day or two,’ Brett amended. Seeing him standing there, still in his coat, she said, ‘Excuse me. Please sit down.’ She pointed to a chair that stood behind Flavia. He picked it up and placed it beside the bed, folded his coat over the back and sat.

  ‘Do you feel like talking about what happened?’ he asked, encompassing both of them in the question.

  Puzzled, Brett asked, ‘But we talked about this before, didn’t we?’

  Brunetti nodded and asked, ‘What did they say to you? Exactly. Can you remember?’

  ‘Exactly?’ she repeated, confused.

  ‘Did they say enough to let you know where they came from?’ Brunetti prompted.

  ‘I see,’ Brett said. She closed her eyes and put herself momentarily back in the hall of her apartment, remembered the men, their faces and voices. ‘Sicilian. At least the one who hit me was. I’m less sure about the other. He said very little.’ She looked at Brunetti. ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘It might help us identify them.’

  ‘I certainly hope so,’ Flavia broke in, giving no clues whether she spoke in reproach or hope.

  ‘Did either of you recognize any of the photos?’ he asked, though he was sure the officer who had brought over the photos of men who matched the descriptions the two women had given would have told him if they had.

  Flavia shook her head, and Brett said, ‘No.’

  ‘You said they warned you not to go to a meeting with Dottor Semenzato. Then you said something about ceramics from the China exhibition. Do you mean the one that was here, at the Doge’s Palace?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I remember,’ Brunetti said. ‘You organized it, didn’t you?’ he asked.

  She forgot and nodded, then rested her head back on the pillows and waited a moment for the world to stop spinning. When it did, she said, ‘Some pieces came from our dig, in Xian. The Chinese chose me as liaison. I know people.’ Even though the wires were gone, she still moved her jaw gingerly; a deep buzz still underlay everything she said and filled her ears with its constant whine.

  Flavia interrupted and explained for her. ‘The show opened first in New York and then went to London. Brett went to the New York opening and then back to close it down for shipment to London. But she had to go back to China before the London opening. Something happened at the dig.’ Turning to Brett, she asked, ‘What was it, cara?’

  ‘Treasure.’

  That, apparently, was enough to remind Flavia. ‘They’d just opened up the passage into the burial chamber, so they called Brett in London and told her she had to go back to oversee the excavation of the tomb.’

  ‘Who was in charge of the opening here?’

  This time, Brett answered. ‘I was, I got back from China three days before it closed in London. And then I came here with it to set it up.’ She closed her eyes then, and Brunetti thought she was tired with the talking, but she opened them immediately and continued. ‘I left before the exhibition closed, so they sent the pieces back to China.’

  ‘They?’ Brunetti asked.

  Brett glanced across at Flavia before she answered, then said, ‘Dottor Semenzato was here, and my assistant came from China to close the show and send everything back.’

  ‘You weren’t in charge?’ he asked.

  Again, she looked at Flavia before answering. ‘No, I couldn’t be here. I didn’t see the pieces again until this winter.’

  ‘Four years later?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said and waved her hand as if that would help explain. ‘The shipment got held up on the way back to China and then in Beijing. Red tape. It ended up in a customs warehouse in Shanghai for two years. The pieces from Xian didn’t get back until two months ago.’ Brunetti watched her consider her words, searching for a way to explain. ‘They weren’t the same. Copies. Not the soldier or the jade shroud: they were the originals. But the ceramics, I knew it, but I couldn’t prove it until I tested them, and I couldn’t do that in China.’

  He had learned enough from Lele’s offended glance not to ask her how she knew they were false. She just knew, and that was that. Prevented from asking a qualitative question, he could still ask a quantitative one. ‘How many pieces were fake?’

  ‘Three. Maybe four or five. And that’s only from the dig in Xian where I am.’

  ‘What about other pieces from the show?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. That’s not the sort of question you can ask in China.’

  Through all of this, Flavia sat quietly, turning her head back and forth as they spoke. Her lack of surprise told him that she already knew about this.

  ‘What have you done?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘So far, nothing.’

  Given the fact that this conversation was taking place in a hospital room and she was speaking through swollen lips, this seemed, to Brunetti, something of an understatement. ‘Who did you tell about it?’

  ‘Only Semenzato. I wrote to him from China, three months ago, and told him some of the pieces sent back were copies. I asked to see him.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Nothing. He didn’t answer my letter. I waited three weeks, then I tried to call him, but that’s not easy, from China. So I came here to talk to him.’

  Just like that? You can’t get through on the phone, so you jump on a plane and fly halfway around the world to talk to someone?

  As if she had read his thoughts, she answered. ‘It’s my reputation. I’m responsible for those pieces.’

  Flavia broke in here. ‘The pieces could have been switched when they got back to China. It didn’t have to happen here. And you’re hardly responsible for what happened when they got there.’ There was real animosity in Flavia’s voice. Brunetti found it interesting that she sounded jealous, of all things, of a country.

  Her tone wasn’t lost on Brett, who answered sharply, ‘It doesn’t matter where it happened; it happened.’

  To divert them both and remembering what Lele had said about ‘knowing’ that something was genuine or false, Brunetti the policeman asked, ‘Do you have proof?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brett began, voice more slurred than it had been when he arrived.

  Hearing that, Flavia interrupted them both and turned to Brunetti. ‘I think that’s enough, Dottor Brunetti.’

  He looked across at Brett, and he was forced to agree. The bruises on her face seemed darker now than when he had come in, and she had sunk lower on the pillows. She smiled and closed her eyes.

  He didn’t insist. ‘I’m sorry, signora,’ he said to Flavia. ‘But it can’t wait.’

  ‘At least until she’s home,’ Flavia said.

  He glanced at Brett, to see what she thought of this, but she was asleep, head turned to one side, mouth slack and open. ‘Tomorrow?’

  Flavia hesitated, then gave him a reluctant ‘Yes’.

  He stood and took his coat from the chair. Flavia came as far as the door with him. ‘She’s not just worried about her reputation, you know,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand it, but she needs to see that these pieces get back to China,’ she added, shaking her head in apparent confusion.

  Because Flavia Petrelli was one of the best singing actresses of her day, Brunetti knew it was impossible to tell when the actress spoke and when the woman, but this sounded like the second. Assuming that it was, he answered, ‘I know that. I think it’s one of the reasons I want to find out about this.’

  ‘And the other reasons?’ she asked suspi
ciously.

  ‘I won’t work any better if I’m doing it out of personal motives, signora,’ he said, signalling the end of their brief personal truce. He pulled on his coat and let himself out of the room. Flavia stood for a moment staring across at Brett, then returned to her seat beside the bed and picked up the pile of costume drawings.

  Chapter Eight

  LEAVING THE hospital, Brunetti noticed that the sky had darkened, and a sharp wind had risen, sweeping across the city from the south. The air was heavy and damp, presaging rain, and that meant they might be awakened in the night by the shrill blast of the sirens. He hated acqua alta with the passion that all Venetians felt for it, felt an anticipatory rage at the gaping tourists who would cluster together on the raised wooden boards, giggling, pointing, snapping pictures and blocking decent people who just wanted to get to work or do their shopping so they could get inside where it was dry and be rid of the bother, the mess, the constant irritation that the unstoppable waters brought to the city. Already calculating, he realized that the water would affect him only on the way to and from work, when he had to pass through Campo San Bartolomeo at the foot of the Rialto Bridge. Luckily, the area around the Questura was high enough to be free of all but the worst flooding.

  He pulled up the collar of his coat, wishing he had thought to wear a scarf that morning, and hunched his head down, propelled from behind by the wind. As he crossed behind the statue of Colleoni, the first fat drops splattered on the pavement in front of him. The only advantage of the wind was that it drove the rain at a sharp diagonal, keeping one side of the narrow calle dry, protected by the roofs. Those wiser than he had thought to bring umbrellas and walked protected by them, ignoring anyone who had to dodge around or under them.

  By the time he got to the Questura, the shoulders of his coat were wet through and his shoes soaked. In his office, he removed his coat and put it on a hanger, then hung it on the curtain rod that ran in front of the window above the radiator. Anyone looking into the room from across the canal would see, perhaps, a man who had hanged himself in his own office. If they worked in the Questura, their first impulse would no doubt be to count the floors, looking to see if it was Patta’s window.