Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(79)

Alaimo turned to the pilot. ‘What do you think, Crema?’

Eyes still looking forward, the young sailor answered, ‘I’ve gone as fast as fifty-five knots, Capitano.’

‘And if I weren’t here, and it was a friend asking you that question, what would you say?’

The young man smiled and bowed his head, then looked forward again and said, ‘Well, sir, if you really weren’t here, and I was alone, I’d say sixty, but really, only if I were alone in her.’

Brunetti saw Alaimo smile at the pilot’s answer. ‘That’s faster than any of Borgato’s boats,’ the Captain said.

‘Does he have the same system you have, and he can switch to electric, too?’

‘Of course. Two of his boats have them, but he doesn’t have the same number of batteries.’ Before Brunetti could enquire about this, Alaimo said, ‘He’s got to leave room for his cargo, remember.’

‘How do you know all that?’ Brunetti asked.

Alaimo suddenly took an interest in something on the control panel and turned away from Brunetti to bend and look at it. Ah, thought Brunetti, the instinct to protect sources is universal. He tried to think of something to say and found it by asking, ‘How much longer?’

‘What do you think, Crema?’ the Captain asked.

Before answering, the pilot bent towards an illuminated screen with a white circle, a steadily turning bar radiating from the centre. Like the ones Brunetti had seen in submarine movies, a blip of light flashed over the same point each time the bar passed over it. ‘That’s him,’ the pilot said, tapping at the flash of light. ‘Hour and a half, sir. Unless he really lets it rip: then maybe he could do it in a bit more than an hour.’ Alaimo thanked the pilot, raised his shoulders at the growing chill, and said, ‘Let’s go down into the cabin. We still have time.’

The cabin, though not warm, was certainly warmer than it had been on deck. This had had its effect on the sailors, who were already asleep, leaning in the two back corners of the boat. A third, who must have been down there already, nodded when they came in but quickly adjusted his ear pods and returned his attention to his iPhone.

Brunetti and Alaimo sat facing one another on the padded side seats and leaned forward to talk above the sound of the motor, louder down here, closer to the engines. Alaimo explained that, of the many ships making their way north in the Adriatic, only two had slowed down in the evening and were now anchored for the night about forty kilometres north-east of Venice. If they sailed early, they would get to Trieste by late morning and could unload and reload cargo. One was a British-flagged oil tanker, and the other was a Maltese-flagged transport.

‘If Vio told his friend that he’s going out tonight, it’s got to be to meet one of these two,’ Alaimo said.

‘What do we do?’ Brunetti asked.

‘We’ve got a fix on the transmitter that’s on Vio’s wrist, so we’ll lag well behind them until they pick up the cargo from the larger ship. It will have radar, the big one, but we could easily be fishermen: we’ve already passed three of them.’

Surprised, Brunetti said, ‘I didn’t see them.’

‘You don’t know how to look for them,’ Alaimo gave back simply. Brunetti didn’t question this but did ask, ‘What do we do when he approaches the ship?’

‘We stay where we are and behave like a fishing boat: remain in one place for some time and then move to another.’

Suddenly there was a tapping at the door. Alaimo got to his feet, held up his palm to Brunetti, and went up on deck. After some time, Brunetti stood and went towards the door but stopped and went back and sat down again. The second time he got to his feet, the sailor looked up from his phone and shook his head, waving Brunetti back to his seat. He went and sat.

Ten minutes passed and then another ten, and then the motors slowed. In the silence, Brunetti heard footsteps coming down the steps and got to his feet. Alaimo pushed open the doors. ‘It was the one with the Maltese flag,’ he said. ‘Borgato’s boat stopped alongside it about fifteen minutes ago, but now it’s cleared away and heading west, towards the coast.’ He pulled out his phone and tapped in a message, quite a long one.

When he was finished, Alaimo said, ‘I’ve told my squad that they’re heading towards Cortellazzo. It’s the best place for them to unload cargo.’ Brunetti noted that he did not name that cargo.

‘Are you sure?’ Brunetti asked.

Alaimo surprised him by laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘We’re sure, believe me,’ Alaimo said, unable to suppress a smile. ‘Last weekend, a colleague of mine and I took our sons and four of their friends, all of them dressed in their Boy Scout uniforms, and we went to where the river empties into the sea. We sailed up the river a bit, stopping at different spots and explaining to the kids the tidal patterns and the differences between the fish that swim in sweet water and salt.’

Seeing Brunetti’s reaction, Alaimo went on. ‘It was the only way I could think of for us to take a look at the possible landing places without calling attention to ourselves.’ He smiled and shrugged, looking embarrassed, ‘Just in case Borgato has friends who fish or live along there and might tell him about anyone showing interest in that patch of river.’

‘How was it?’