Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(7)

‘How else would he respond to an insult like that?’

Brunetti stopped and turned to face her. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Who?’

‘Giulio. Giulio D’Alessio. My friend.’

After a moment’s hesitation, Griffoni asked, ‘Is his father Filippo?’

Brunetti stared at her, working at keeping his mouth closed. After a moment, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘My father knows him. The father, that is.’

Brunetti put his hands to his ears and began to walk around in a tight circle, saying, ‘My God. It’s a plot. I’m surrounded by them.’

‘Neapolitans?’ she asked, putting her hand on his arm to stop him.

Brunetti paused, then moved to face her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Friends.’

Griffoni put her hand on his shoulder and pushed him away, saying, ‘You really are a fool, Guido.’ Brunetti was astonished by how much she sounded like Paola, who used the same word to reprove him for his worst flights of fancy. He knew enough, however, not to make this comparison to Griffoni.

He returned to his business-as-usual voice and asked, ‘While we’re walking, tell me what else you’ve found out.’

From her bag, she took a dark brown silk scarf and wrapped it around her neck. ‘I don’t know how you stand this weather,’ she said, suggesting that Brunetti had wished it on both of them. Then, as though the sentences were related, she added, ‘They were seen in Campo Santa Margherita on Saturday night. The girl who called to say she saw them remembered them because, when one of them said her name was Lucy, she remembered that her mother always sang a song with that name in it.’

‘Is that all?’ Brunetti asked. Surely, he thought, someone else must have seen them. They had to be in a hotel, a B&B, staying with friends: someone must have noticed their absence or found that they hadn’t slept in their beds.

‘This girl who called said she thought they started to talk to two men. But then she saw some classmates and went over to talk to them and forgot about the Americans until this morning, when she saw the name, “Lucy” in the headline on the Gazzettino.’ He had seen it, too: ‘Lucy and Jojo. Who are they?’

Brunetti was just about to ask if Griffoni had any news about the young woman in the hospital in Mestre, but then they turned left into Barbaria delle Tole: the Ospedale was only a few minutes away.

The lateral wall of the Basilica appeared on their right, and then they were in the campo. The fa?ade of the Ospedale looked down upon them, and as they moved diagonally towards the entrance, the fa?ade of the Basilica slid into view. Griffoni’s steps slowed and her head turned from building to building, as though she’d been asked to give a prize to one of them and couldn’t decide. Most days the Basilica – its majesty unmatched in the city – was Brunetti’s favourite church; some days, for reasons he couldn’t understand, it was San Nicolò dei Mendicoli, and for a long time, when he had known a girl who lived near it, Brunetti had most liked the Miracoli. But he’d grown bored with the girl, and then with the church.

He stopped himself from asking Griffoni if she wanted him to go in with her: it was probably better if she spoke to a woman, especially given the fact that it was two men who had abandoned them at the hospital. He wished Griffoni good luck, said goodbye, and started home.

No one was there yet, so Brunetti pulled out a glass container of olives and dumped half of them on to a plate. He took a bottle of Falanghina from the refrigerator and poured himself a glass. He went into the living room and set the plate and the glass on the table, then sat and took a sip of wine.

From the hospital’s video, enlarged photos of the faces of the two men had been sent to all of the offices of the police in Venice, as well as to the Guardia Costiera, the Carabinieri, and the Guardia di Finanza. As he recalled their faces, Brunetti guessed them to be in their early twenties. Nothing else about them was visible from the photos.

Their boat, riding low in the water, had been invisible because the Ospedale’s video camera was placed at the height of the superstructure of the ambulances, for how else would a person arrive there but in an ambulance? Thus, the much lower boat that had brought the human cargo could not have been seen, only the two men and the burdens, quickly delivered and just as quickly abandoned.

He took another sip of wine, ate a few olives and set the pits on the edge of the plate. He leaned back and had another small sip, then set the glass on the table in front of him. He tapped his thumbs against one another, then tried to remember some of the finger games he and his brother had known as kids. There was one where hands were turned into a church with doors that could open: that was easy to recall. Then there was another where careful manipulation would allow him to appear to detach the first digit of his thumb. He had driven the kids wild with delight with this trick when they were younger, but now, no matter how he fitted his fingers together, he couldn’t remember how to do it. He folded his hands and kept them still.

Campo Santa Margherita. Saturday evening. So long as it didn’t rain, there were always scores – in the summer, hundreds – of students in the campo at night. Chatting, drinking, moving from one group to another, meeting friends or making friends. It was the same thing he had done when he was a student. Well, minus the drugs and the quantity of alcohol.

The two young women had been seen chatting with two men, and some hours later, two men had taken them to the hospital and left them there. There was no sign of sexual activity, nor was there any evidence that either girl had attempted to defend herself from an attack.