Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(61)

‘She said she asked the other guy to tell him to slow down, but he just shrugged.’

‘What else did she say?’

‘She grabbed his arm and tried to pull him away from the motor, but it was impossible. She stood up to move back to where Lucy was sitting, and that’s when they hit something and she fell over.

‘When she sat up – she doesn’t know how much time had passed, Lucy was still lying on her stomach and the other one – not the driver – was kneeling next to her, talking to her.’ Watson kept nodding his head, as though that would force him to remember what he’d been told.

‘JoJo said her arm started to hurt then, really hurt. No one spoke except the guy who was trying to talk to Lucy.’ He stopped and bit at his lip, as though he had to punish himself for saying her name.

‘The other guy started the motor, and they began moving again; it seemed very slow to JoJo, but she said she wasn’t sure because her arm hurt so much and she was cold. She said a lot of water had splashed into the boat when they stopped.’

‘Does she remember being taken to the hospital?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No. She said she might have fainted from the pain because the boat kept hitting waves and she and Lucy were knocked around in the bottom of the boat.’ He paused here and added, ‘She thinks her mind kept going in and out: things were real, and then they weren’t. At one point, she thinks she heard one of them say, “He’ll kill me. He’ll kill me,” but she isn’t sure because of the pain and the fear.’ Watson stopped.

‘Nothing else?’ Brunetti asked softly.

‘She woke up in the hospital, but Lucy wasn’t there. After a while, the policewoman came, and things began to make sense.’

Then, as if his senses had suddenly been restored, Watson asked, ‘Who took them there?’

‘The men who were in the boat,’ Brunetti told him, since it would soon be common knowledge.

‘Who are they?’

Brunetti took it upon himself to answer, ‘What they seemed to be, sir: two young men, both Venetians, who had . . .‘

‘I know that,’ Watson said shortly. ‘JoJo told me. But you know who they are?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I’ve spoken to both of them.’

‘Without telling anyone?’ he asked, moving towards anger. Brunetti saw that all signs of amiability had disappeared. ‘What did they tell you?’ Watson demanded, seeming to grow larger as he spoke.

‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to tell you that, sir, not while the investigation is still in progress.’ Brunetti spoke calmly, in what he tried to make sound like a friendly voice.

‘So they took them to the hospital? And then what did they do?’

Brunetti realized there was no use in lying to him. ‘They left, sir. One of them was badly injured himself.’

‘I don’t care about him,’ Watson shot back. He was silent for a moment, and then anger drove him to repeat Brunetti’s words. ‘“They left them.” Just dumped them there and left. . .’ Watson began, his anger now unleashed, ‘and left them there like they were . . . .’ Watson stopped and looked around the corridor, as though the words he wanted were hiding from him. But then he found it, and it burst from him, ‘. . . like trash.’ He raised his hands in fists but did no more than bring them down at his sides.

‘Did you ask them about drugs? About alcohol?’ Watson demanded.

Brunetti shook his head.

‘You didn’t ask them?’ Watson all but shouted.

‘I’m sorry, sir. We did question them, but I’m not at liberty to discuss this with anyone who isn’t involved in the investigation.’

The man nodded, but Brunetti saw the tightening of his jaw as he fought back words. Brunetti wondered how well he’d succeed in controlling himself if it had been Chiara on that boat, Chiara in the bed in the room opposite them, and suddenly he felt admir--ation for Watson’s powers of restraint.

The man looked at Brunetti and then at the door to the room. He nodded a few more times, then said, ‘I think I need to get back.’ He turned away from Brunetti and went into the room, closing the door quietly behind him.





22


Because it was almost five when Brunetti left the hospital, he decided to go home directly but to do so on the tram, which he had never ridden. Il Gazzettino had, for years, kept him informed of the tram’s many malfunctions, derailments, and crashes as well as the frequent breakdowns of no known origins. But he had never taken it, and he wanted to, so he looked at the schedule of the buses going to the centre of Mestre, where he assumed he could connect to the tram, and took the 32H to Piazzale Cialdine, where the Number One tram stopped on its way between the cities.

‘Is this for the tram that goes to Piazzale Roma?’ he asked an elderly woman who stood at the stop, a COIN shopping bag in her hand. Ah, how his mother had aspired to being able to shop in COIN, but she had succeeded only in looking in the windows. The woman smiled, moving her wrinkles closer together, then said, ‘It should.’

That too, was a statement his mother had favoured: his father should be home at eight, the plumber should come that afternoon, there should be enough money for his school books. ‘Dovrebbe,’ he repeated, and the woman smiled and shrugged. ‘I just missed one, so at least we know they’re running,’ she said, generously allowing him to be a part of her certainty.