Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(71)

Within minutes, Alaimo was back. ‘One of my men grew up there. Yes, it’s possible. If you’re from there and know the tides.’ Griffoni walked back to her chair, but neither she nor Brunetti spoke.

Finally, Griffoni asked, ‘How do we get there?’

Brunetti’s voice was low when he said, ‘Before thinking about that, we should be sure Marcello Vio will cooperate.’

‘So here we are, back at the starting point,’ Alaimo said. He went to the door and pulled it open, called out that someone should come in and take the plates and cups away. No one spoke while a cadet cleared the table, and neither Brunetti nor Griffoni protested when Alaimo told the cadet to bring three more coffees.

‘It all depends on him,’ Alaimo said after they’d drunk their second coffees. Then, explaining the situation at the Capitaneria, he added, ‘I haven’t got the resources to patrol that area every night, and I haven’t got the legal right to board a ship in inter-national waters.’

Brunetti raised his hands in a gesture of near-resignation. ‘So it has to be Marcello.’ The other two nodded, however reluctantly, and Brunetti went on. ‘If his behaviour at Duso’s place was his reaction to what he saw, and did, that night, then there’s a chance he’ll agree to talk about it.’

‘Talking’s not enough,’ Griffoni observed coldly. Then, as if in opposition to her own remark, she began again, saying, ‘If he’s really the “bravo ragazzo” everyone says he is . . . ’ but she failed to finish the sentence.

Alaimo interrupted to do it for her. ‘Then he’ll tell us.’

‘He won’t do it,’ Brunetti said, seeing it clearly now. ‘He’s too afraid of his uncle. That’s why he was so slow going to the hospital. Two girls lying on the bottom of the boat, blood on them, and he didn’t speed.’ He raised his voice and concluded, ‘Think what would have happened if the police had stopped him for speeding and found the two girls.’ Before either could respond, he added, ‘Once he got them out of the boat, he went home as fast as he could because if he’d been stopped, he would have been fined for speeding, if at all.’

He glanced at Griffoni and saw from her expression that she agreed with him. And Alaimo, when Brunetti looked at him, was nodding.

‘Stalemate?’ Alaimo asked.

Brunetti shook his head and said only, ‘Duso.’

‘His friend?’ Alaimo asked.

Brunetti nodded.

‘What’s he got to do with this?’

‘Marcello went to Duso’s the night of Ferragosto and told him what he’d done. “We killed them. We killed them.” There was a full moon that night, so it would have been easy to see the Nigerian women in the water. Drowning.’

He watched as both of them reached for their phones. ‘There was a full moon the night of Ferragosto,’ he said. ‘We had dinner on the terrace, and we didn’t need candles.’

Griffoni raised a hand, as if to signal that it was her turn to talk. ‘The Nigerian woman said she saw a white man in the water, didn’t she?’

Brunetti nodded.

‘That must have been Marcello, then,’ she said.

After the three of them had sat silent for some time, Alaimo asked Brunetti, ‘Do you have a suggestion?’

Brunetti nodded again. ‘It’s probably a bad one, but it’s the only one I can think of.’

Neither spoke.

‘I need to speak to Duso again,’ Brunetti began. ‘And I need to persuade him to give Marcello some sort of tracking device.’ He looked at Alaimo and said, ‘You know what I mean: something that we can . . .’

Alaimo began to smile and finished the sentence for Brunetti: ‘Follow.’

A pause spread from them and filled the room, suddenly allowing them to hear boats passing in the Canale. Griffoni turned to her left and looked out the window. She gasped, slapping her hand across her mouth and shifting her weight forward as if in preparation to flee the room.

Both men turned and saw the enormous white wall passing the window on its slow imperial passage toward the terminal on the far side of San Basilio.

It was perhaps twenty metres from them, but its enormity made it seem far closer. They sat, like Hansel and Gretel and a friendly host, and watched the Witch of Destruction slip silently past them, allowing them ample time to view the side of her passing body. And then, as her tailless back-end passed in front of them, they saw the dark trail she left above and behind, sure to be cancelled by the next creature to pass or by a puff of benevo-lent breeze. The true price of her passing would be obliterated by the magic incantation of the forces that commanded the Witch and that transformed her horror into beauty and made her a princess to be desired by all.

Alaimo looked away first, perhaps because this was a spec-tacle granted to him every day, and he had grown numb.

Finally, Alaimo said, ‘We use a tracking device that fits in a watch.’

Seeing their curiosity, he said, ‘We’ve had people who load cargo take them off and stick them into stolen cars that were on ships sailing to Africa; one ended up behind a refrigerator in the galley of another ship; another one was on the wrist of one of the officers. So long as the transmitter functions, it can be traced by satellites to within ten metres of where it is.’

‘What happens if someone finds it?’ Griffoni asked.