Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(5)

The attached medical report stated that they were both given a full physical examination to assess the possibility of further injury. Both remained unconscious during this procedure. Neither showed signs of recent sexual activity.

The young woman with the broken nose, after a brain scan, was quickly transferred to the hospital in Mestre to await emergency surgery. It was at this point that the police were alerted. The officer on night duty had called, and awoken, Commissario Griffoni. She asked that a launch be sent to take her to the hospital.

Griffoni’s report stated that, when she arrived, she found the young woman with the broken arm lying on a gurney in a corridor, in tears and begging in English for something to ease the pain. This catapulted Griffoni to the nurses’ desk, where she showed her warrant card and demanded to speak to the doctor in charge. After Griffoni had a few words with him, things went more easily, and the young woman was quickly taken into a treatment room, given an injection, and had her arm set and put in a cast.

A room for her was found, and Griffoni, who had waited in the corridor, took it upon herself to push her there in a wheelchair. A nurse helped her into bed, and Griffoni sat in the chair at the foot of the bed and assured the young woman that she would stay with her. Griffoni waited for her to fall asleep, which she did almost immediately. At six in the morning, the arrival of the trollies at the end of the hallway woke the young woman, who looked around, groggy.

Griffoni asked her name and the name of her companion. JoJo Peterson, she told Griffoni; the other was Lucy Watson, but then she grew agitated and asked where Lucy was and what had happened. Griffoni explained about the surgery and lied to assure her that everything was going to be all right. Soon after hearing that, the girl told her that Lucy’s parents worked at the US Embassy in Rome. JoJo and Lucy were friends at university, and they were visiting from the States. She soon fell asleep again: not even the terrific sound storm of breakfast managed to keep her awake.

Griffoni wrote that Lucy Watson’s parents had been contacted through the Embassy, where her father worked in Human Resources, his wife as a translator.

Brunetti’s desk phone rang, and he recognized the number of Griffoni’s extension.

‘Yes?’ he asked.

‘Do you want to come up?’

‘Three minutes,’ Brunetti said and replaced the phone.

Upstairs, Griffoni was already standing in the corridor. This was not a sign of her eagerness to see him but a concession to the size – or lack of size – of her office: if she set her chair just inside the doorway, her back to the door, she could sit at her desk; beyond it there was a bit more than a metre for a guest’s chair and then a wall.

‘Tell me,’ he said by way of greeting as he walked in front of her to take his place.

Pointing to the darkened screen of her computer, she said, ‘The hospital has a camera at every entrance, even on the dock for the ambulances, where they were left.’ She leaned over and clicked the screen into life then shifted it towards Brunetti, who saw a full-screen image that at first confused him.

He propped his elbow on the desk, rested his chin in his hand, and studied the image. He saw a pattern of rectangles, long and thin, running horizontally; beyond the rectangles, blackness. Griffoni tapped a key, and after a moment the scene brightened, almost as if a floodlight had been turned on, transforming the rectangles into a wooden floor and, beyond it, revealing the darkness as water.

‘This it?’ Brunetti asked.

Griffoni nodded, saying, ‘They sent it half an hour ago. I’ve watched it only once.’

The film was, strangely, silent: the laguna is never quiet, docks always have the slapping of waves, however small. In the absence of motion to interest him, Brunetti looked at the information at the bottom of the screen: it told the number of the telecamera and the time: 2:57.

The dock suddenly shook, surprising Brunetti into grasping at the top of the table. A disembodied head appeared a bit beyond the edge, cruised on its own power across the computer screen and stopped.

A pair of hands suddenly grabbed at the handrails of the ladder to the dock, and a man appeared, moving slowly, gingerly. He kept his eyes on his feet while climbing the ladder, as though he feared falling backwards. He stepped on to the dock and looked around, then turned back towards the water and bent over to speak to someone below. A single hand appeared and passed him a rope, which he wrapped around the stanchion and tightened into place with easy, if slow, familiarity.

When the boat was moored, the top half of the other person appeared, showing the shoulders and head of a man wearing a woollen cap. He disappeared as quickly as he had appeared and was back a moment later, carrying a small woman, his arms under her shoulders and knees. He reached up and set her on the edge of the dock and then pushed her away from the edge with both hands.

He disappeared again, only to come back into sight a bit farther to the right with a second woman, held the same way. He placed her down and shoved her across the dock just as he had the first.

He called to the other man, turned and pointed off screen. The man on the dock shook his head and said something. Whatever it was, it propelled the man in the cap up the ladder and on to the dock. The other raised a hand, as if to stop him, then took a step towards him and placed his hand on his arm. The man with the cap shook free of the other and walked in the direction of the camera. He disappeared from the frame but was quickly back, passing the other and going to the top of the ladder. He turned and started down, called to the other man, and vanished. The other untied the boat and tossed the rope over the edge of the dock, then walked slowly to the ladder, turned, and disappeared very slowly after him. The camera showed only the two women lying on the dock.