Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(9)

5


When Brunetti checked his computer the next morning, he found a mail from the Carabinieri, forwarded by Signorina Elettra, identifying the two men who had left the young women on the dock of the hospital. Marcello Vio was resident on the Giudecca, and Filiberto Duso in Dorsoduro. The name ‘Duso’ triggered a vague, positive response in Brunetti’s memory, but he left it alone and continued reading.

They had been identified by the Carabinieri at the Ponte dei Lavraneri station on the Giudecca, who had also added that they considered Vio a ‘person of interest’, although they failed to explain why.

This was enough to prompt Brunetti to find the web page – and when had police stations begun to have web pages? especially on the Giudecca, he asked himself – and dial the -number. He identified himself, said he’d received a message that someone there had recognized the two men whose photos the Questura had sent, and asked to speak to the person in charge.

There followed some clicking noises, and then a light contralto voice, whether male or female Brunetti could not judge, saying: ‘Nieddu. How can I be of help?’

‘This is Brunetti. Commissario, over at San Lorenzo.’

‘Ah,’ Nieddu said, ‘I’ve heard about you.’

An involuntary burst of air escaped Brunetti’s lips, which he followed by saying, ‘That’ll stop a conversation.’ He paused, but there was no reply, so he added, ‘Acceptable things, I hope.’

The laugh that came through the line was unmistakably female, the voice that followed it still low-pitched and pleasant. ‘Yes, of course. Or else I wouldn’t have mentioned it.’

‘Probably wise, that,’ Brunetti said, then added, ‘As a rule, caution is.’

She let some time pass before she asked, ‘You’re calling about the two men in the photos, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered, ‘I’d be grateful for anything you can tell me about them.’

‘And I’d be grateful if you’d tell me why you would be,’ she answered easily.

‘Ah,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Is this a stand-off?’

‘No, Commissario, not at all,’ she answered, managing to sound both amused and offended at the same time. Whether she was speaking seriously or jokingly, her voice remained a deep contralto that reminded him of the sound of a cello.

‘I’m not sure of your rank,’ Brunetti said, ‘so please forgive me if I didn’t use it when I first spoke.’

‘Captain,’ she said. Nothing more.

‘Then, Captain, is this a bargaining session?’

‘In a way, yes.’

‘Such things are better done in person, don’t you think?’

‘Definitely,’ she answered in a friendlier voice.

Brunetti was about to respond to her warmth with a joke and ask, ‘Your place or mine?’ when he was reined up short by the new rules about sexual harassment that had been imposed by the ministry in Rome and that were already ending careers and altering the rules of conversation. Thinking ahead, he saw that claiming he’d been led on by the beauty of her voice was unlikely to serve as an excuse in today’s atmosphere, so he erased warmth and tried to sound like a bureaucrat.

‘Since I’m the person asking for the information, I should be the one to travel.’

‘If you consider it travel to come to the Giudecca.’

‘Captain,’ Brunetti said, ‘For me, going to the Giudecca is like going on an Arctic expedition.’

In response to her laugh, he told her he could be there in an hour; she said that would be fine, then asked if he knew where the commissariato was.

‘Down at the end, in Sacca Fisola, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. When you cross the bridge, give your name, and the man on duty will let you pass.’

‘All right, thanks.’

‘My rank is Captain,’ she said. ‘But my name is Laura.’

‘Mine’s Guido,’ Brunetti answered, and then, ‘Ciao,’ accepting the amiability of her voice and stepping across the grammatical bridge of cordiality.

Brunetti refrained from checking the police records for the two men, thinking it might be better to have no preconceptions about them when he spoke to the Captain, the better to assess the reasons why one of them was a ‘person of interest’ to the Carabinieri. He took the Number Two to Sacca Fisola, paying little attention to the glory on offer on both sides of the canal, and walked along the riva for a few minutes, then cut to the left and back towards the far corner of the island, where he remembered the Carabinieri station had been for years. The area confirmed his feelings about Giudecca: bleak cement buildings, crudely rectangular, devoid of any attempt at embellishment or adornment: cubes for living in, worsened – at least in his eyes – by the view: across the sullen waters of the laguna sprawled the petrochemical horror of Marghera, staggered rows of brick smokestacks from which spewed, day and night . . . Brunetti’s thoughts stopped there, for he had, like the other residents of Venice, little idea of what rose up in thick clouds from those stacks and even less reason to believe what he was told it was.

Night patrol police boats too often found fishermen there, boats filled with clams scraped up from the bottom of the laguna by nets weighted to drag along the sea bed, the better to dredge up everything, leaving desolation where they passed. The clams they caught were growing fat on what they found to eat down there, in the residue of the liquids that had, for generations, seeped out into the laguna from the tanks that held the petrochemicals.