Authors: Donna Leon
'Yes, sir?' the sergeant asked.
'Pucetti just called. From a public phone. They've fished up a body.'
'I'll be at the Giardini stop,' Vianello said and hung up.
He was there fifteen minutes later, but he was not in uniform, nor did he do more than raise his hand in acknowledgement to Brunetti when the boat slowed without stopping to allow him to step on board. Vianello assumed he'd been told everything Brunetti knew, so he didn't waste time asking questions, nor did he voice Signorina Elettra's name.
'Nadia?' Brunetti asked in the shorthand of long association.
'Her parents were taking us to dinner.'
'Anything special?' 'Our anniversary
’
Vianello answered. Instead of apologizing, Brunetti asked, 'How many?' 'Fifteen.'
The launch swung to the right, taking them down towards Malamocco and Pellestrina. 'I called for a scene of crime team to come out
’
Brunetti said. 'But the pilot'll have to go around and collect them, so I doubt they'll be out any time soon.'
'How do we explain getting there so quickly?' Vianello asked.
‘I
can say someone called us.'
‘I
hope no one saw Pucetti making the call, then.'
Brunetti, who almost never remembered to carry his, asked, 'Why wasn't he given a
telefonino?’
'Most of the young ones have their own, sir.' 'Does he?'
'I don't know. But I suppose not, if he called you from a public phone.'
'Stupid thing to do
’
Brunetti said, aware as he spoke that he was transforming the fear he felt for Signorina Elettra into anger at the young officer for provoking his fear in the first place.
Brunetti's
telefon
ino
rang. When he answered it, the operator at the Questura said that a call had just come in, a man saying that a woman's body had been pulled up in the nets of a boat and had been taken to the dock at Pellestrina.
'Did he give his name?' Brunetti asked. 'No, sir.'
'Did he say he'd found the body?'
'No, sir. All he said was that a boat had come in with a body, not that he'd had anything to do with it
’
Brunetti thanked him and hung up. He turned to Vianello. 'It's a woman.' The sergeant didn't say anything, so Brunetti asked, 'If all those boats have radios and phones, why didn't they call us?'
'Most people don't much want to get involved with us.'
'If they've got a woman's body in their fishing nets, it doesn't seem to me there's any way they can help getting involved with us
’
Brunetti said, transferring a bit of his anger to Vianello.
'People don't think of those things, I'm afraid. Perhaps most of all when they've got a woman's body in their nets.'
Knowing the sergeant was right and sorry he'd spoken so sharply, Brunetti said, 'Of course, of course.'
The lights of Malamocco swept by, then the Alberoni, and then there was nothing but the long straight sweep towards Pellestrina. Soon, ahead of them they saw the scattered lights of the houses and the straight line of lights on the dock along which the town was built. Strangely enough, there was no evidence that anything extraordinary had taken place, for there were only a few people visible on the
ri
va.
Surely, even the Pellestrinotti could not have been so quickly hardened to death.
The pilot, who had not been out to Pellestrina during this investigation, started to pull the launch into the empty place in the line of fishing boats. Brunetti jumped up the steps and put a hand on his shoulder, saying, 'No, not here. Down at the end.'
Instantly, the pilot reversed the engines, and the boat slowed, then started to pull back from the
riva.
'Over there, to the right,' Brunetti told him, and the pilot brought the boat gently up to the dock. Vianello tossed the mooring rope to a man who approached them, and as soon as he had tied it round the metal stanchion, Brunetti and Vianello jumped from the boat.
'Where is she?' Brunetti asked, leaving it to the boat's markings to explain who they were.
'Over here,' the man said, turning back towards the small group of people who stood in the dim light cast by the street lamps. As Brunetti and Vianello approached, the group separated, creating a passage towards what lay on the pavement.
Her feet lay in a pool of light, her head in darkness, but when Brunetti saw the blonde hair, he knew who it was. Fighting down a surge of relief, he drew closer. At first he thought her eyes were closed, that some gentle soul had pressed them closed for her, but then he saw that they were gone. He remembered that one of the policemen had explained the decision to bring up the bodies of the Bottins because there were crabs down below. He had read books in which the stomachs of people in situations like this were said to heave, but what Brunetti felt registered in his heart, which pounded wildly for a few seconds and did not grow steady until he looked away from the woman's face, out over the calm waters of the
laguna.
Vianello had the presence of mind to ask, 'Who found her?'
A short, stocky man stepped forward from the shadows. 'I did,' he said, careful to keep his eyes on Vianello rather than on the silent woman over whom all of this was being said.
'Where did you find her? And when?' Vianello asked.
The man pointed in the general direction of the mainland, off to the north. 'Out there, about two hundred metres offshore, right at the mouth of the Canale di Ca' Roman.'
When he failed to answer Vianello's second question, Brunetti repeated it. 'When?'
The man glanced down at his watch. 'About an hour ago. I brought her up in my net, but it took me a long time to get her alongside the boat.' He looked back and forth between Brunetti and Vianello, as if searching to see which of them would be more likely to believe what he said. 'I was alone in my
sandolo,
and I was afraid I'd capsize if I pulled her in.' He stopped.
'So what did you do?'
'I towed her,' he said, obviously troubled by having to confess this. 'It was the only way to get her here.'
'Did you recognize her?' Brunetti asked.
He nodded.
Glad not to have to look at Signora Follini, Brunetti let his eyes rove around the faces of the people above her, but Signorina Elettra was not among them. If they looked down at the body, their faces disappeared in the shadows cast by the overhead lights, but most of them preferred not to. 'When did any of you see her last?' he asked.
No one answered.
He caught the eye of the one woman standing in the group. 'You, Signora,' he said, keeping his voice soft, merely inquisitive, no trace of authority in it. 'Can you remember when you last saw Signora Follini?'
The woman stared back at him with frightened eyes, then glanced to right and left. Finally she said, all in a rush, 'A week ago. Maybe five days. I went to the store for toilet paper.' Suddenly aware of what she had said in front of all these men, she covered her mouth with her hand, looked down, then quickly up again.
'Perhaps we could move away from here,' Brunetti suggested, moving back towards the bright windows of the houses. A man approached from the direction of the village carrying a blanket. As he drew close to the body, Brunetti forced himself to say, 'You'd better not do that. The body shouldn't be touched.'
'It's for respect, sir,' the man insisted, though he didn't look down at her. 'She shouldn't be left like that.' He held the blanket draped over one arm, a gesture that conveyed a curious sense of formality.
'I'm sorry, but I think it's better,' Brunetti said, giving no hint of how deeply he sympathized with the man's desire. His refusal to let the man cover Signora Follini lost him whatever sympathy he might have gained by moving the crowd away from the body.
Sensing this, Vianello moved a few steps further towards the village, put his hand lightly on the arm of the woman, and said, 'Is your husband here, Signora? Perhaps he could take you home.'
The woman shook her head, freed her arm from his hand, but slowly and with no hint of having taken or wanting to give offence, and walked away towards the houses, leaving the matter to the men.
Vianello moved closer to the man who had stood next to the woman. 'Can you remember when you saw Signora Follini last, Signore?'
'Some time this week, perhaps Wednesday. My wife sent me to get mineral water.'
'Do you remember who else might have been in the store when you were there?'
The man hesitated a moment before he answered. Both Brunetti and Vianello noticed this; neither gave any sign that they had.
'No.'
Vianello didn't ask for an explanation.
Instead, he turned back to the crowd. 'Can anyone else tell me when they saw her?'
One man said, 'Tuesday. In the morning. She was opening the store. I was on my way to the bar.'
Another volunteered, 'My wife bought the newspaper on Wednesday.'
When no one else spoke, Vianello asked, 'Does anyone remember seeing her after Wednesday?' None of them answered. Vianello pulled his notebook from his back pocket, opened it, and said, 'Could I ask you to give me your names?'
'What for?' demanded the man with the blanket.
'We're going to have to speak to everyone in the village,' Vianello began reasonably, as if taking no notice of the question or the tone in which it had been asked, 'so if I can get your names, we won't have to bother any of you again.'
Though not fully persuaded by this, the men nevertheless gave him their names and, when asked, their addresses. Then they filed slowly away, moving in and out of the circles of light, leaving the pavement to the two policemen and, at a distance, to the woman who lay silent, her blank eyes raised to the stars.
17
Before he spoke, Brunetti moved even farther away from the body of the dead woman. 'When I was in the store with her last week, two men came in. It was obvious they made her nervous. When I called her, I think it was Monday, she hung up as soon as she heard my name. When I called again, later in the week, a man answered, and I hung up without saying anything. Probably stupid.' He thought of what he'd learned about her, that she had been an addict for so many years and had stopped, come home, and gone to work in her parents' store. 'I liked her. She had a sense of humour. And she was tough.' The subject of these observations lay behind them, deaf now to the opinion of others.
'Sounds like you mean that as a compliment
’
Vianello said.
Without hesitation, Brunetti answered, 'I do.'
After a pause, Vianello asked, 'And she didn't have any illusions about life in Pellestrina, did she?'
Brunetti looked over at the low houses of the village. A light went out in a downstairs window of one of them, and then in another. Was it because the residents of Pellestrina hoped to get what sleep they could before the fishing fleet set sail or was it to darken their rooms, the better to enable them to see what was going on outside? 'I don't think any of them have any illusions about living here.'
If either of them thought about going to the bar to have a drink while they waited for the scene of crime team, neither suggested it. Brunetti glanced back at the police launch and saw the pilot, sitting in a pool of light on the mushroom-shaped top of the metal stanchion, smoking a cigarette, but he didn't move off in that direction. It seemed little enough to remain with Signora Follini until the others arrived to transform her into a crime victim, a statistic.
The second police launch brought not only the four men of the team but a young doctor from the hospital who worked as a substitute when neither Rizzardi nor Guerriero was available. Brunetti had been at two crime scenes when he had been sent to declare the victim dead, and both times the doctor had behaved in a way that Brunetti did not like, dismissive of the solemnity of the moment. Only five years out of medical school, Dottor Venturi had apparently spent his time acquiring the arrogance, rather than the compassion, of his profession. He had also carefully copied the meticulous dress of his superior, Rizzardi, though the result always seemed slightly ridiculous on his short, stubby body.
The boat pulled in and moored beside theirs; the doctor jumped heavily down and walked towards the forms he knew to be Brunetti and Vianello, but he made no acknowledgement of their presence. He wore a dark charcoal grey suit with just the faintest of dark vertical stripes, a pattern which emphasized, rather than disguised, his rotundity.
He looked down at Signora Follini's body for a moment, then pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and dropped it on the wet pavement beside her before kneeling carefully on it. He picked up her hand without bothering to look at her face, felt her wrist, then let it slap wetly back on the pavement. 'She's dead,' he said to no one in particular. He glanced up at Brunetti and Vianello to see how they would respond.
When neither of them spoke, Venturi repeated,
‘I
said she was dead.'
Brunetti looked away from the
laguna
then and glanced down at the young doctor. He wanted to know the cause of her death, but he did not want to watch this young man touch her again, so he simply nodded in acknowledgement and turned back to his contemplation of the distant lights visible on the water.