Acqua Alta

‘One-ninety, certainly taller than either of us.’

  ‘And heavier, too,’ Rizzardi added. ‘There’d have to have been two of them.’

  Brunetti grunted in agreement.

  ‘I’d say the blows came from the front, so he wasn’t surprised by them, not if he was hit with that,’ Rizzardi said, pointing to the bright blue brick that lay inside its taped rectangle less than a metre from the body. ‘What about noise?’ Rizzardi asked.

  ‘There’s a television in the guards’ office downstairs,’ Brunetti answered. ‘It wasn’t on when I came in.’

  ‘I should think not,’ Rizzardi said, getting to his feet. He stripped the gloves from his hands and stuffed them carelessly in the pocket of his overcoat. ‘That’s all I can do tonight. If your boys can get him out to San Michele for me, I’ll take a closer look tomorrow morning. But it seems pretty clear to me. Three hard blows to the head with the corner of that brick. Wouldn’t take more than that.’

  Vianello, who had been silent through all of this, suddenly asked, ‘Would it have been quick, Dottore?’

  Before he answered, Rizzardi looked down at the body of the dead man. ‘It would depend on where they hit him first. And how hard. It’s possible that he could have fought them off, but not for long. I’ll check to see if there’s anything under his nails. My guess is that it was fast, but I’ll see what shows up.’

  Vianello nodded and Brunetti said, ‘Thanks, Ettore. I’ll have them take him out tonight.’

  ‘Not to the hospital, remember. To San Michele.’

  ‘Of course,’ Brunetti answered, wondering if his insistence meant some new chapter in the doctor’s on-going battle with the directors of the Ospedale Civile.

  ‘I’ll say goodnight then, Guido. I should have something for you by tomorrow afternoon, but I don’t think there are going to be any surprises here.’

  Brunetti agreed. The physical causes of violent death seldom revealed secrets: they lay, if anywhere, in the motive.

  Rizzardi exchanged a nod with Vianello and turned to go. Suddenly he turned back and looked down at Brunetti’s feet. ‘Didn’t you wear boots?’ he asked with real concern.

  ‘I left them downstairs.’

  ‘Good thing you brought them. It was already way above my ankles in Calle della Mandola when I came. Lazy bastards hadn’t got the boards up yet, so I’m going to have to go back to Rialto to get home. It’ll be above my knees by now.’

  ‘Why don’t you take the Number One and get off at Sant’Angelo?’ Brunetti suggested. Rizzardi lived, he knew, by the Cinema Rossini, and he could get there quickly from that boat stop without having to use Calle della Mandola, one of the lowest parts of the city.

  Rizzardi looked at his watch and made quick calculations. ‘No. The next one leaves in three minutes. I’ll never make it. And then I’d have to wait twenty minutes at this time of night. Might as well walk. Besides, who knows if they’ve bothered to put the boards up in the Piazza?’ He started towards the door, but his real anger at this latest of the many inconveniences of living in Venice drew him back. ‘We ought to elect a German mayor some time. Then things would work.’

  Brunetti smiled and said goodnight and listened to the doctor’s boots slapping on the stones of the corridor until the noise disappeared.

  ‘I’ll talk to the guards and have a look around downstairs, sir,’ Vianello said and left the office.

  Brunetti went over to Semenzato’s desk. ‘You finished with this?’ he asked Pavese. The technician was busy with the telephone, which had ended up on the other side of the room, smashed against the wall with such force that it had gouged a chunk from the plaster before falling in pieces to the floor.

  At Pavese’s nod, Brunetti pulled open the first drawer. Pencils, pens, a roll of cellophane tape and a packet of mints.

  The second held a box of stationery engraved with Semenzato’s name and title and the name of the museum. Brunetti found it interesting that the name of the museum was in smaller type.

  The bottom drawer held a few thick manila files, which Brunetti pulled out. He opened the top file on the desk and began to leaf through the papers.

  Fifteen minutes later, when the technicians called across the room that they were finished, Brunetti knew little more about Semenzato than he had when he came in, but he did know that the museum was planning to mount, two years from now, a major show of Renaissance drawings and had already arranged extensive borrowings from museums in Canada, Germany and the United States.

  Brunetti replaced the files and closed the drawer. When he looked up, he saw a man standing in the doorway. Short and sturdily built, he wore a rubber parka which hung open to reveal the white jacket of the hospital staff. Below this, Brunetti saw that he wore high black rubber boots. ‘You finished here, sir?’ he asked, giving a vague nod in the direction of Semenzato’s body. As he spoke, another man, similarly dressed and booted, appeared at his side, a rolled canvas stretcher balanced on his shoulder as casually as if it were a pair of oars.

  A nod from one of the technicians confirmed this, and Brunetti said, ‘Yes. You can take him now. Out to San Michele directly.’

  ‘Not to the hospital?’

  ‘No. Dottor Rizzardi wants him at San Michele.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the attendant said with a shrug. It was all overtime for them, and San Michele was further than the hospital.

  ‘Did you come through the Piazza?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. Our boat’s over by the gondolas.’

  ‘How high is it?’

  ‘About thirty centimetres, I’d say. But the boards are up in the Piazza, so it wasn’t too bad getting here. Which way are you going when you leave here, sir?’

  ‘Over towards San Silvestro,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I wondered how bad Calle dei Fuseri is.’

  The second attendant, taller and thinner, with wispy blond hair that stuck out under the edges of his watch cap, answered, ‘It’s always worse than the Piazza, and there weren’t any boards there when I went through two hours ago, on the way to work.’

  ‘We can go up the Grand Canal,’ the first one said. ‘We could drop you at San Silvestro,’ he offered, smiling.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Brunetti said, returning his smile and, like them, not unaware of the existence of overtime. ‘I’ve got to go back to the Questura,’ he lied. ‘And I’ve got my boots downstairs.’ That was true enough, but even if he had not brought them, he would have refused their offer. He did not relish the company of the dead and would have preferred to ruin his shoes than to share his ride home with a corpse.

  Vianello came back in then and reported that there was nothing new to learn from the guards. One of them had admitted that they had been in the small office, watching television, when the cleaning lady came screaming down the stairs. And those steps, Vianello assured him, were the only access to this part of the museum.

  They stayed until the body was removed, then waited in the corridor while the technicians locked the office and sealed it against unauthorized entry. The four of them went down the stairs together and stopped outside the open door of the guards’ office. The guard who had been there when Brunetti came in looked up from reading Quattro Ruote when he heard them come in. It always surprised Brunetti that anyone who lived in a city where there were no cars would read an automobile magazine. Did some of his sea-locked fellow citizens dream of cars the way men in prison dreamed of women? In the midst of the absolute silence that reigned over Venice at night, did they long for the roar of traffic and the blare of horns? Perhaps, less fantastically, they wanted no more than the convenience of being able to drive home from the supermarket, park the car in front of the house and unload the groceries, rather than carry the heavy bags along crowded streets, up and down bridges, and then up the many flights of stairs that seemed, inevitably, to lurk in wait for all Venetians.

  Recognizing Brunetti, he asked, ‘Are you here for your boots, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He reached un
der the desk to pull out the white shopping bag and handed it to Brunetti, who thanked him.

  ‘Safe and sound,’ the guard said and smiled again.

  The director of the museum had just been beaten to death in his office and whoever did it had walked past the guards’ station unseen, but at least Brunetti’s boots were safe.

  Chapter Ten

  BECAUSE IT WAS after two when Brunetti got home that night, he slept until well past eight the next morning and woke only, and grudgingly, when Paola shook him lightly by the shoulder and told him coffee was beside him. He managed to fight off full consciousness for another few minutes, but then he smelled the coffee, gave up and seized the day. Paola had disappeared after bringing the coffee, a decision the wisdom of which had been taught to her over the years.

  When he finished the coffee, he pushed back the covers and went to look out of the window. Rain. And he remembered that the moon had been almost full the night before, so that meant more acqua alta with the change of tide. He went down the corridor to the bathroom and took a long shower, trying to store up enough heat to last him the day. Back in the bedroom, he began to dress and, while knotting his tie, decided he had better wear a sweater under his jacket because the visits he had already planned to both Brett and Lele would have him walking from one side of the city to the other. He opened the second drawer in the armadio and reached for his grey lambswool. Not finding it, he reached into the next drawer, then the one above it. Detective-like, he thought of the places where it could be, checked the remaining two, and then remembered that Raffi had borrowed the sweater last week. That meant, Brunetti was sure, that he would find it lying in a crumpled ball in the bottom of his son’s closet or in a bunched heap at the back of a drawer. The recent improvement in his son’s academic performance had not, alas, extended to habits of personal cleanliness or general neatness.

  He went across the hall and, because the door was open, into his son’s room. Raffi had already left for school, but Brunetti hoped he wasn’t wearing the sweater. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to wear that sweater, and the more irritated he became at being frustrated in that desire.

  He opened the cupboard. Jackets, shirts, a ski parka, and on the floor assorted boots, tennis shoes and a pair of summer sandals. But no sweater. It wasn’t draped over the chair, nor over the end of the bed. He opened the first drawer in the dresser and found an upheaval of underwear. The second held socks, none of them matching and, he feared, few of them clean. The third drawer looked more promising: it held a sweatshirt and two T-shirts that bore insignia Brunetti didn’t bother to read. He wanted his sweater, not publicity for the rainforest. He pushed aside the second T-shirt, and his hand froze.

  Lying below the T-shirts, half hidden, but lazily so, were two syringes, neatly wrapped in their sterile plastic wrappers. Brunetti felt his heartbeat quicken as he stared down at them. ‘Madre di Dio,’ he said out loud and looked quickly over his shoulder, afraid that Raffi would come in and find his father searching his room. He pushed the T-shirts back over the needles and slipped the drawer closed.

  Suddenly, he found himself remembering the Sunday afternoon, a decade ago, when he had gone to the Lido with Paola and the children. Raffi, running on the beach, had stepped on a piece of broken bottle and sliced open the sole of his foot. And Brunetti, mute in the face of his son’s pain and his own aching love for him, had wrapped a towel around the cut, gathered him up in his arms and carried him, running all the way, the kilometre to the hospital that stood at the end of the beach. He had waited for two hours, dressed in his bathing suit and chilled to the bone by fear and the air conditioning, until a doctor came out and told him the boy was fine. Six stitches and crutches for a week, but he was fine.

  What made Raffi do it? Was he too strict a father? He had never raised his hand to either child, seldom raised his voice; the memory of the violence of his own upbringing was enough to destroy any violent impulse he might have had towards them. Was he too busy with his work, too busy with the problems of society to worry about those of his own children? When was the last time he had helped either one with homework? And where did he get the drugs? And what was it? Please, let it not be heroin, not that.

  Paola? She usually knew before he did what the kids were doing. Did she suspect? Could it be that she knew and hadn’t told him? And if she didn’t know, should he do the same, protect her from this?

  He reached out an unsteady hand and lowered himself to the edge of Raffi’s bed. He locked his hands together and stuck them between his knees, staring down at the floor. Vianello would know who sold drugs in this neighbourhood. Would Vianello tell him if he knew about Raffi? One of Raffi’s shirts lay beside him on the bed. He reached out and pulled it towards him, pressed it to his face and smelled his son’s odour, that same scent he had first smelled the day Paola came home from the hospital with Raffi and he pressed his face into the round belly of his naked son. His throat closed and he tasted salt.

  He sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, remembering the past and shying away from any thought of the future beyond the conviction that he would have to tell Paola. Though he had already embraced his own guilt, he hoped she would deny it, assure him that he had been father enough to his two children. And what about Chiara? Did she know, or suspect? And what beyond that? He stood up at that thought and left the room, leaving the door open, as he had found it.

  Paola sat on the sofa in the living room, feet propped up on the low marble table, reading that morning’s paper. That meant she had already been out in the rain to get it.

  He stood at the door and watched her turn a page. The radar of long marriage caused her to turn to him. ‘Guido, will you make more coffee?’ she asked and turned back to the paper.

  ‘Paola,’ he began. She registered the tone and lowered the paper to her lap. ‘Paola,’ he repeated, not knowing what he had to say or how to say this. ‘I found two syringes in Raffi’s room.’

  She paused, waiting for him to say more, then picked up the paper and continued to read.

  ‘Paola, did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Hm?’ she asked, head tilted back to read the headline at the top of the page.

  ‘I said I found two syringes in Raffi’s room. In the bottom of a drawer.’ He moved towards her, possessed for an instant of the mad urge to rip the paper from her hands and hurl it to the floor.

  ‘That’s where they were, then,’ she said, and turned the page.

  He sat beside her on the sofa and, forcing the gesture to remain calm, placed his palm flat on the page in front of her and pushed the paper slowly on to her lap. ‘What do you mean, “That’s where they were”?’ he asked, voice tight.

  ‘Guido,’ she asked, turning her full attention to him, now that the paper was gone, ‘what’s the matter with you? Don’t you feel well?’

  Entirely unaware of what he was doing, he contracted his hand into an angry fist, dragging the paper into a loose ball. ‘I said I found two syringes in Raffi’s room, Paola. Syringes. Don’t you understand?’

  She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide in confusion, and then she understood what the syringes meant to him. Their eyes locked, and he watched as Raffi’s mother registered his own belief that their son was addicted to drugs. Her mouth contracted, her eyes opened wide, and then she put back her head and began to laugh. She laughed, exploded into peals of real mirth and fell away from him sideways on the sofa, tears filling her eyes. She wiped at them, but she couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Oh, Guido,’ she said, hand to her mouth in a vain effort to stop herself. ‘Oh, Guido, no, you can’t be thinking that. Not drugs.’ And she was gone in another fit of laughter.

  Brunetti thought for a moment that this was the hysteria of real panic, but he knew Paola too well for that; this was the pure laughter of high comedy. With a violent gesture, he grabbed the newspaper from her lap and hurled it to the floor. His rage sobered her instantly, and she pushed herself upright on the sofa.

  ‘Gu
ido. I tarli,’ she said, as though that explained it all.

  Was she drugged too? What did woodworm have to do with this?

  ‘Guido,’ she repeated, keeping her voice soft, her tone level, as if speaking to the dangerous or the mad. ‘I told you last week. We’ve got woodworm in the table in the kitchen. The legs are full of them. And the only way to get rid of them is to inject poison into the holes they leave. Remember, I asked you if you’d help me move it out on to the terrace the first sunny day we have, so the fumes won’t kill us all?’

  Yes, he remembered this, but vaguely. He hadn’t been paying attention when she told him, but it came back now.

  ‘I asked Raffi to get me the syringes and some rubber gloves so we can inject the poison into the table. I thought he’d forgotten them, but I suppose he just put them in his drawer. And then forgot to tell me he’d got them.’ She reached out and placed her hand over his. ‘It’s all right, Guido. It isn’t what you thought.’

  He had to lean against the back of the sofa as a burning rush of relief swept over him. He rested his head back and closed his eyes. He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it, wanted to be as free to make fun of his fear as Paola was, but that wasn’t possible, not yet.

  When he could finally speak, he turned to her and asked, ‘Don’t ever tell Raffi, please, Paola.’

  She leaned towards him and placed her palm against his cheek, studying his face, and he thought she was going to promise, but then she collapsed helplessly on his chest, lost again to laughter.

  The contact of her body freed him at last, and he began to laugh, beginning with a faint chuckle and a shake of his head, but then graduating into real laughter, shouts of it, wild hoots of relief and joy and pure delight. She tightened her arms around him and then inched her body up across his chest, seeking his lips with hers. Like a pair of adolescents, then, they made love there on the sofa, heedless of the clothes that ended up heaped on the floor below them, heaped with much the same abandon as were those in Raffi’s cupboard.