Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(8)

‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ Brunetti muttered to himself. He thought of a book Paola had told him for years he had to read, Three Men in a Boat. He had, and he’d hated it. These were only two men in a boat, but who were they, and why were they in a boat at three o’clock in the morning? And how was it they knew where to take the young women, or drop them off or get rid of them, depending on which opinion he wanted to convey of their behaviour? If they had a boat, they’d be familiar with the laguna, although not necessarily be Venetian. To know the dock of the Ospedale, they’d be Venetian. To have met the girls in Campo Santa Margherita, they might be students. If they’d succeeded in speaking to the girls, they’d have known some English, which suggested, but did not confirm, that they were indeed students.

He thought of the way the men had delivered – he decided to remain with that verb – the two Americans to the dock: one climbed gingerly up the stairs to the dock and moored the boat, then stood and watched the other lift them from the boat one after the other and put them on to the dock. Wouldn’t it have been easier for him to return to the boat and help lift the unconscious young women to the dock? What had they said to one another on the dock? What’s wrong with this picture?

He sipped again and ate a few more olives. Then he took his phone and called Griffoni.

‘You still in the Ospedale?’

‘Sì.’

‘You with the American?’

‘Sì.’

‘Does she remember anything?’

‘Wait a moment,’ Griffoni said, and he thought he could hear a chair being pushed across the floor. Then she covered the mouthpiece and said something. There was a long pause; he thought he heard steps. ‘They were in a campo with lots of students,’ Griffoni began. ‘The girl thinks it was called Santa Margherita. They met two guys who offered to take them for a ride.’

‘Ride?’

‘They had a boat, and she said they seemed like nice guys, so they agreed to go with them.’ Griffoni paused but Brunetti decided to let her tell the story without his prodding.

‘It was parked – as she said – near a bridge.’

There was a bridge at the end of Campo Santa Margherita, he knew, with a long riva on the other side.

‘She said the ride was exciting at first. They went into a big canal, with big houses on both sides. And then they went past some churches and all of a sudden, she saw that they were in open water.’

‘And then?’

‘She said it was creepy because it was absolutely dark once they got away from the city: the only lights were far off, and they had no idea what they were. And then the boat speeded up, with its front bouncing all over the place, and the guys shouting and laughing.’ Griffoni paused a moment, then added, ‘She said that’s when she started to be really frightened. She had to hold on to the seat because the boat was bumping so much.’ Griffoni stopped.

‘And then what happened?’

‘And then she doesn’t remember anything else. Before that, all she remembers is shouting at them to slow down and thinking she was going to be sick. And then she was in the hospital, but she doesn’t have any idea of how she got there.’

‘And the men?’ Brunetti asked.

‘They told them they were Venetian. One of them did, that is. She said he spoke English pretty well. The other one didn’t say much, only spoke Italian.’

‘Did she learn their names?’

‘The one who spoke English said to call him Phil, and the other one had a name that began with M. Mario, Michele, she doesn’t remember.’

‘Anything else?’

‘All she said was that one of them had some sort of tattoo on his left wrist: black and geometric, like a bracelet.’

‘He and a thousand other people,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Does she remember being in the water?’

Griffoni sighed. ‘She really doesn’t remember anything else, Guido.’

‘What do the doctors think?’

‘That maybe things will come back, but slowly. Or maybe they won’t. They couldn’t find any sign that she hurt her head, so they think it’s just shock and cold and the pain from her broken arm and having been so frightened.’

Before Brunetti could ask anything else, Griffoni said, ‘They’re calling me. I’ve got to go back,’ and then she was gone.

That left Brunetti with olive pits, an empty glass, and still no clear understanding of what had happened on Saturday night. He thought of the young woman whose face had been so distorted: how was it that a surgeon who had never seen her could reconstruct her face? Make her look like she did before?

He pulled his thoughts back from useless speculation and directed them at more practical concerns. They were Venetian, had access to a boat, perhaps even worked around or on them. Brunetti had no idea of the number of men and women in the city whose work was tied to the water in some way: it would be many hundreds, perhaps far more. As it had been from the times when La Serenissima had ruled the surrounding seas, the work often remained within certain families for generations and created among the workers a unity and loyalty common in men whose work put their lives at risk.

Brunetti picked up the dish with the olive pits and carried it back to the kitchen, placed it and his glass to the side of the sink. Then he went back to Paola’s study to find something he wanted to read while he waited for the rest of the family to come home for dinner.