‘That’s not a boatman’s knot,’ Massimo said with complete certainty. ‘No man who works on boats tied that. It’s a landman’s knot; it’s nothing.’
Brunetti looked more closely. No, although the knot was double, it wasn’t the double bowline he’d seen Casati tie. When he studied it, the knot looked like something one of his children would tie: two simple knots, one on top of the other, as if the person who tied it wanted to make sure it could not be easily untied. As it had not been.
‘You think he didn’t tie this?’ Brunetti asked.
Massimo punched his finger on to the knot again. ‘For God’s sake, Guido, Davide couldn’t tie this. It’s a mess; no sailor could make it. It’s stupid, useless.’ In disgust, Massimo pushed the photo away from them; it slid over and stopped just at the edge of Brunetti’s desk.
He looked across at Massimo. ‘Where’s the grating?’
‘It was in the boat when they towed it back to us.’
‘And the knot?’ Brunetti asked.
‘They’d untied the rope at both ends and coiled it in the bottom of the boat.’
Brunetti stared at the photo and imagined showing it to Patta or to a magistrate and trying to persuade them that this knot had been tied by someone other than the dead man, and that the small wound on the man’s forehead had resulted from a blow, after which the rope had intentionally been coiled around his leg and …
Then Brunetti considered the response of judges to that hypothesis – he dared not call it evidence – and realized that there was no way this photo would ever make its way into a courtroom.
Nor would Bianchi ever be asked to risk his comfort by repeating his story, and who could question the largesse of the Maschietto family? Had they not given a church to their village?
The justice system had been looking into what had gone on in Marghera for decades, both before and after the so-called ‘pianificazione’. Sooner or later, they might have a look at GCM Holdings and its part in the clean-up. Or they might not.
Brunetti’s speculations turned to Casati. Maybe he was somewhere, talking to his wife, taking care of his bees. Brunetti’s mother would have liked this scenario; she was a woman who liked happy endings, even though she had seen few of them in her own life.
He looked across at Massimo. ‘Did Federica see this photo?’
‘No.’
Brunetti closed his eyes. Casati continued to speak with his wife, that small woman with large dark eyes. And his bees continued to explore the barena – why not make it a barena in which there was no poison, no death? – and bring back pollen and nectar and transform them by the magic of bees into honey, that sweetest of all things.
Brunetti opened his eyes and looked at Massimo. ‘Good,’ he said.
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Epub ISBN: 9781473539839
Version 1.0
Published by William Heinemann 2017
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Copyright © Donna Leon and Diogenes Verlag 2017
Cover photomontage derived from images supplied courtesy of Getty Images
Map © Martin Lubikowski, ML Design, London
Donna Leon has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First published by William Heinemann in 2017
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781785151354
Donna Leon, Earthly Remains
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