Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(51)

‘It’s justified if I’ve got a copy of the registration in my files.’ Then, the idea suddenly occurring to him, he turned to Brunetti and demanded, ‘Have you spoken to this Chiogiotto?’ he asked, reading out the name as though it were an insult: ‘Samuele Tantucci.’

‘Who?’ Brunetti asked, looking at the other man with a perplexity sure to push him closer to the edge of his patience.

Borgato turned, grabbed the second paper from Brunetti’s hand and shook it under his nose. ‘This one, you idiot, this Chiogiotto who has the same number. Have you even bothered to look at these papers? Have you spoken to him?’

Brunetti took the paper from Borgato and spent some time trying to remove the wrinkles the other man’s hand had made. When that was done, he returned to his chair and slipped both papers carefully back into his briefcase. He looked at Borgato and said, ‘I came here to try to do you a favour, Signore, not to be abused by you. If you don’t want my help to settle this matter now, then you can wait until the process goes a little bit further, and then, when the Guardia Costiera comes to ask the same questions, you might be sorry you didn’t pay attention when you had the chance.’ He took his trench coat and folded it carefully over his arm, took a firm grasp on the handle of his briefcase, and turned to the door.

He’d taken three steps when Borgato said, ‘Wait a minute.’

Brunetti took another step and reached for the handle of the door.

‘Please, Signore,’ Borgato said in an entirely different voice, all anger, all arrogance, gone.

Brunetti stopped. He turned back to him and asked, ‘Are you going to be reasonable?’

‘Yes,’ Borgato said. He walked to Brunetti’s chair and pulled it over to his desk. With something resembling a smile, he waved Brunetti towards it. ‘Have a seat and let’s go over this again.’ He tried to make his voice friendly, but it was clear this did not come easily to him.

Brunetti sat on the edge, trench coat over one arm, briefcase in his lap. Borgato went behind his desk and sat, looking at Brunetti.

‘What is it you want to know?’ Borgato asked.

‘Do you know this man in Chioggia – Samuele Tantucci?’

‘No.’ Borgato almost shouted the word but quickly got himself under control and repeated it in a lower voice. ‘No.’

Brunetti set his briefcase on the floor and said, ‘I see no reason why you can’t be told this. A boat with this number has been seen off the coast, at night, and reported to the Guardia Costiera.’

‘Who did that?’ Borgato snapped.

‘I’m not at liberty to say, Signore,’ Brunetti answered in his most officious voice. ‘All we were told is that your transport boat, this one,’ he said, leaning down to tap at the side of the briefcase where the information was, ‘was seen off the coast at night two months ago, and because it was not a fishing boat, it was reported to the Guardia Costiera.’

‘Fucking fishermen, can’t mind their own business,’ Borgato said angrily.

Brunetti allowed himself to nod. ‘The Guardia seems to be of the same mind and doesn’t want to be bothered about it, so they asked us to check on the licence plate duplication and let them know what’s going on. That way,’ Brunetti said with a softening of his voice, as though he were asking a colleague to understand and help him avoid spending more time on a bureaucratic tangle, ‘we can settle this and close the file.’ Then, speaking to himself, Brunetti muttered, ‘As if we don’t have enough to do.’

Borgato put his hands flat on his desk and held that position for a few seconds, then looked across at Brunetti and said, ‘Well, you can tell the Guardia that my boat was out at night because we had the motor overhauled at a place in Caorle, and when we got there in the afternoon to bring the boat back, it wasn’t ready, and we didn’t get it until after eleven – the fucking workers refused to miss their dinner – so we had to sit around in fucking Caorle until they ate and got back to work on the motors.’

‘Caorle?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Can’t people fix it here?’

‘The specialist for these motors is the company in Caorle: that’s where we bought them.’

‘Caorle?’ Brunetti repeated, making no attempt to disguise his astonishment. ‘That must take hours.’

As though it had just occurred to him, Borgato asked, ‘What time did this person say he saw the boat?’

Brunetti reached for his briefcase but pulled his hand back slowly. ‘I didn’t bring those reports with me. Do you remember when you started back?’

‘No,’ Borgato said. ‘Midnight? No later than that.’

Brunetti pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and hunted until he found a piece of paper. ‘Do you remember what day that was?’ he asked.

Borgato closed his eyes in thought and said, ‘I think it was during the second week of August, maybe the tenth because that’s when Lazio was playing, and we missed the game.’ Then, trying to make a joke, he added, ‘We didn’t stop to go fishing, that’s for sure.’

Brunetti gave a small laugh and wrote something on the back of the slip of paper – the receipt he’d received for a coffee in a bar the last time he’d worn the jacket – then stuffed it carelessly back in his pocket.