Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(20)

‘Then I went back to my own apartment.’

‘Could you tell us where that is?’

‘Dorsoduro,’ he answered, then added, before she could ask, ‘950. Along the canal, just around the corner from Nico’s.’

She nodded, as if she knew exactly where that was.

‘Ah, near the boat stop,’ Brunetti interrupted. ‘It’s very convenient for going to the Giudecca.’

‘And to the station,’ Duso added, as if he were finishing Brunetti’s sentence. ‘Especially if I can catch the Number 5.2. Then I’m at the station in eighteen minutes.’ He offered the time to Brunetti, as if he hoped it would be helpful to him in the future. Brunetti nodded his thanks.

Well, isn’t he clever? Brunetti thought. He’d happily sit here all morning and talk about vaporetto schedules and the fastest way to get to the station.

‘Let’s stay closer to your apartment, Signor Duso, shall we?’ Brunetti asked in a friendly voice. ‘Your home is also very close to Campo Santa Margherita, is it not?’

Duso leaned back in his chair and smiled easily. ‘I’m afraid I’m too old to be interested in Campo Santa Margherita any longer, Commissario.’ Before Brunetti could question that, Duso went on. ‘I spent a lot of time there when I was at university. Perhaps too much time.’ He sighed, as would an old man remarking that, when he was a child, he understood as a child, but now he was a man and had put away childish things.

Duso moved forward in his chair and folded his hands in front of him. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘it’s not the place it was when I was younger.’ Duso restrained himself from shaking his head sadly, Brunetti saw, and went on. ‘There was alcohol, then, plenty of it.’ That remark was followed by a rueful smile. ‘But far fewer drugs.’

Brunetti waited to see what gesture Duso would use to show his disapproval, but he did not move. Instead, he resumed speaking. ‘Today, it’s a drug bazaar: people in the office tell me you can get anything there.’

‘You’re not interested?’ Griffoni asked.

Duso smiled at her question, shrugged, and said, ‘Not any more, I’m not.’ The broad smile returned and he said, ‘I don’t think there’s such a thing as retroactive arrest, so I can tell you I tried drugs once or twice: hashish, marijuana, I even took some pills once that someone gave me when I had to stay up to study for an exam.’ He shook his head in wonder at the things he’d got up to while still a student.

‘But now I’m not,’ he reaffirmed, giving them both a serious look.

‘That’s certainly very interesting, Signor Duso,’ Brunetti said. ‘But could we return to the subject of Campo Santa Margherita?’

‘And the events of Saturday night,’ Griffoni added.

Duso tilted his head and allowed himself to look surprised. ‘I’m afraid this is very confusing, Signori,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you keep taking things back to Campo Santa Margherita.’

‘Were you there on Saturday night?’ Brunetti asked directly.

Duso looked back at him, then at Griffoni, then at the top of the table, and Brunetti could almost hear him playing the odds. Marcello would never have said anything, so who could have seen him there? Who, in the many groups, the ever-shifting and re-forming groups of young people, could have seen him and recognized or remembered him? Who could have seen them getting into the boat with the two Americans?

Duso looked up. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Because we’re police officers,’ Brunetti answered, ‘and because we are interested in a crime that began in Campo Santa Margherita.’

It was an indication of how busy Duso’s mind must be that it took him some time to ask, ‘“Began in”?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘That’s why we want to confirm that you were there.’

‘What crime?’

‘Leaving the scene of an accident,’ Brunetti began. ‘Violation of the rules of navigation. Refusing aid to an injured person.’

At that, Duso said, speaking sharply, ‘But we . . .’ and stopped himself.

‘You what, Signor Duso? Took them to the hospital and left them on the dock? Without calling anyone? At three in the morning?’

Duso looked across at Brunetti and asked, voice less steady than it had been, ‘I have the right to make a phone call, don’t I?’

‘Yes, you do,’ Brunetti said. ‘You’re free to do it here, any time you wish.’

Saying nothing further, Duso took his telefonino from the inside pocket of his jacket and pushed in a number. It rang three times, and a man’s voice answered.

‘Papi, it’s Berto,’ Duso said, sounding a decade younger. ‘I’m in trouble.’





8


How he wished he had not heard him say that, Brunetti thought. How much like his own son Duso had sounded: contrite, frightened, uncertain what damage his behaviour would do to his father’s career. That fear was not expressed in Duso’s words, of course, but hid in the struggle among fear, respect, and shame that began when he first addressed his father and was not finished even by the time he said goodbye and sat, eyes closed, hand lying palm up on the table, like a modern Christ trying to prepare himself for the first nail.