Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(70)
‘He could just as easily be spending it on drugs,’ Alaimo interrupted, but they could hear that he didn’t really believe this.
Brunetti’s memory flashed back to something Paola had read to him early in their marriage, decades ago. He no longer remembered why she was reading the book: had she been teaching the American novel that year? She’d read him a scene in which a man secretly watched a woman lying on a bed in the building opposite. She had a secret hoard of gold coins, and as he watched, she pulled the coins close to and on to her naked body. With a start, he remembered the erotic rush he’d felt as Paola, golden-haired and lying on the sofa, read him the scene.
‘Would you accept women as a reason?’ Alaimo turned to Brunetti and asked, as though he believed their united male vote would settle the matter. Brunetti failed to speak; Alaimo shrugged.
‘Maybe it’s money,’ Brunetti said, surprising them.
‘What?’ Alaimo asked, as if reluctant to abandon a sexual motive for Borgato’s actions.
‘Just that. Greed. Money. Maybe he simply wants it, more and more of it.’ Brunetti considered the idea as though one of the -others had offered it. ‘There are people like that. I’ve known one or two. It’s the motive for everything they do.’
As if speaking from far away or through a bad connection, Griffoni asked lazily, ‘Does it matter?’ When neither of the men answered, she said, ‘Really?’ Still neither man spoke, so she said, ‘It doesn’t matter why he does this; it matters only that he does it, and our main concern is that he can be caught while doing it.’
She looked back and forth between them, waiting for one of them to say something, and when they did not, she spoke into their radiating silence, ‘Which brings us back to the weak link.’
Somehow, Griffoni had become the master of the hunt: the two men pulled their chairs closer to the table and they began to plan just how to bring Pietro Borgato down.
25
They spent endless time in discussion about the best way to make use of Marcello Vio. Lunchtime came and passed; finally, alerted by hunger, Alaimo sent out for a tray of sandwiches and drinks. One of them suggested that they stop while they were eating and talk about something else, but they failed to find that something else and were soon back at finding a way to persuade Marcello to . . . here, the discussion fell apart because Griffoni used the word ‘betray’, and the two men said the word was too strong.
‘Would you prefer “deceive”, she asked them. Or, “mislead”?’ When neither of them answered, she added, ‘Or, “Give him over to the police”?’
This time, Alaimo chose to go to the door and ask one of the men sitting outside to bring three coffees. When he came back and sat down, he looked at her and said, grudgingly, ‘All right. “Betray”.’
Brunetti gave no indication of his approval of her having won the point and remained dispassionate, saying, ‘He’s got to tell us when and where.’
‘For which part of it?’ Griffoni asked.
‘Transferring the women from the bigger ship to Borgato’s or where Borgato lands them?’
‘Since there’s nothing we can do legally when they’re in international waters,’ Alaimo said, ‘all we need is to know where the transfer will happen; then we track him until he lands on Italian territory.’
Alaimo went to his bookshelf and came back with a book of nautical charts. He paged through it for a moment, found what he sought, and placed it, open, on his desk. The others came to stand on either side of him while he ran his forefinger down the open expanse of the Adriatic and stopped at a certain point, tapped there, then moved his finger due west and up and down the coastline. ‘My guess is that it would have to be along here somewhere,’ he said. He slid his finger back across the water to the first point. ‘The ship would have to be here, twelve miles off the coast.’
He pointed to the names of some of the places on the coast. ‘These aren’t easy places to land a small boat; well, most of them aren’t.’
‘Why?’ Griffoni asked.
‘The water’s too shallow. A boat like the ones he has would run aground a few hundred metres from the beach at most of them. Well, depending on the tide. So they’d have to force the women to walk through the water, maybe even carry them.’
He leaned closer to the map to read the names of the locations. ‘My guess is that they’d want a place like this,’ he said, pointing to Duna Verde. He slid his finger farther north and stopped at Spiaggia di Levante. ‘This is a possibility, but storms sometimes change the shape of the sandbanks.’
Alaimo turned the map to make it even easier to read and finally tapped a few times at Cortellazzo. ‘That would be the best place,’ he said, ‘but it’s dangerous.’ Before they could ask, he explained. ‘The Piave enters the laguna there, and all it’s done for thousands of years is cut new channels and then wash them away. Even my best men wouldn’t try to get up that channel at night.’
‘If they knew the tide patterns?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Remember, Borgato’s spent most of his life on the water.’
Alaimo considered this, nodded, picked up the book and left the room. Griffoni got up and went over to the windows to look across at the Giudecca; Brunetti sat and waited, surprised by how little he really knew about the waters around Venice.