A Sea of Troubles

'That's good to know,' Brunetti said. Looking at the book, he added, ‘I was fascinated by his view of lawns.'

She smiled up at him. 'Yes, and sports.'

He couldn't resist, 'And next, when you finish that?'

‘I haven't decided.' A smile blossomed. 'Perhaps I could ask the Vice-Questore's advice.'

'Indeed,' Brunetti replied. ‘I came to ask about him. Is he in?'

'No, not yet. He called about an hour ago and said he was at a meeting and would probably not be in until after lunch.'

'Ah,' Brunetti said, surprised not at the message but at the fact that Patta had bothered to call to leave it. 'When he comes in, please tell him I've gone to Pellestrina.'

'To meet Vianello?' she asked with her usual effortless omniscience.

He nodded. ‘It looks like one of the men in the boat was murdered.' He stopped there, wondering if she already knew all of this.

'Pellestrina, eh?' she asked, with an intonation that turned the question into a statement.

'Yes. Nothing but trouble, aren't they?'

'Not as bad as the Chioggotti,' she said with a shudder that was neither delicate nor artificial.

Chioggia, a mainland city the guidebooks never tired of calling 'the faithful daughter of Venice', had indeed remained loyal to her throughout the reign of La Serenissima. It was only now that animosity existed, violent and constant, as the fishermen of the two cities fought over ever-diminishing catches in waters which increasingly suffered the impositions of the Magistrato alle Acque, as larger and larger portions of the laguna were closed to fishing.

The idea had occurred to Brunetti, as it would to any Venetian, that these deaths had something to do with this competition. In the past there had been fights, and shots had been fired in anger, but nothing like this had happened. Boats had been stolen and burned, men had been killed in collisions on the water, but no one had yet been murdered in cold blood.

'Una brutta razza’ Signorina Elettra said, with the scorn that people whose families had been Venetian since the Crusades reserve for non-Venetians, regardless of their origin.

Brunetti exercised discretion and correctness in not giving voice to his agreement and left her to Veblen's analysis of the problems and inescapable corruptions of wealth. In the officers' room he found only one pilot, Rocca, and told him he needed to be taken out to Pellestrina. The pilot's face brightened at the news: it was a long run, and the day was glorious, a brisk wind coming from the west.

Brunetti stood on deck all the way out, gazing at the islands they passed: Santa Maria della Grazia, San Clemente, Santo Spirito, even tiny Poveglia, until he saw to their left the buildings of Malamocco. Though Brunetti had spent a great deal of his youth on boats and in the laguna, he had never fully mastered the art of piloting and so had never burned into his memory a map of the most direct routes between various points in the laguna. He knew that Pellestrina lay ahead of them, in the middle of this narrow spit of land, and he knew that the boat had to stay within the rows of slanting wooden pilings, but had they strayed into the expanse of water on their right, he would have found it embarrassingly difficult to get them safely back to Venice.

Rocca, his young face radiating simple pleasure at being outside and in motion on this beautiful day, called back to his superior, 'Where are we going, sir?'

To the port. Vianello and Bonsuan are there. We should see them.'

On their left were trees; and the occasional car swept by. Ahead he began to make out the forms of boats, what seemed to be a long row of them, facing towards a cement-walled pier. He cast his eye along their blunt sterns, but he saw no sign of the police launch. They reached an opening in the line of boats, and beyond it, on the shore a few metres away, he saw Vianello, standing in the sun, one hand raised to shade his eyes.

Brunetti waved and Vianello started to walk to the right, towards the end of the line of moored boats, signalling for them to follow him. When they finally reached the open space at the end of the line of boats, Rocca pulled the launch up and Brunetti jumped on to the riva, momentarily surprised to feel its solidity under his feet.

'Has Bonsuan gone back?' he asked.

'One of their neighbours came on board the boat and identified them. It's who we thought: Giulio Bottin and his son, Marco. I sent him back to the hospital with them.' Vianello nodded toward Rocca, who was busy with a rope, mooring the boat to a metal stanchion. ‘I can go back with you, sir.'

'What else?' asked Brunetti.

‘I spoke to two or three people, and all of them pretty much told me the same story. They woke up with the noise of the explosion of the gas tank at about three. By the time they got out to the pier, the boat was in flames, and before they could do anything, it had sunk.'

Vianello started walking back towards the line of low houses that was the village of Pellestrina, and Brunetti fell into step with him. 'Then there was the usual nonsense,' Vianello began. 'No one bothered to call the Carabinieri, everybody thinking someone else had. So they weren't called until this morning.' Vianello stopped dead, looking at the houses, as if he couldn't believe that humans inhabited them. 'Incredible: two men get killed in an explosion, and no one calls us, no one calls anyone.'

He resumed walking. 'Anyway, the Carabinieri came out, then they called us and handed it over, said something about it being in our jurisdiction.' He waved ahead at the space between the boats. 'The divers brought them up.'

'You said the father had a wound on his head?'

'Yes. Terrible, the skull was crushed in.' 'What about the son?'

'Knife,' Vianello said. 'In the stomach. I'd say he bled to death.' Then, before Brunetti could ask, he added, 'It was like he was gutted. The knife went in low and was pulled up. His shirt was covering it when the body was brought up, but when we moved him, we saw it.' Vianello stopped walking again and looked over at the still waters of the laguna. 'He would have bled to death in minutes.' Remembering his place, he added, 'But the autopsy will decide that, I suppose.'

'Who have you spoken to?'

Vianello patted the pocket of his jacket where he kept his notebook. 'I've got their names in here: neighbours, mostly. A couple of men who have boats and who fished with them, well, who went out with them, because I don't get the impression that these men think of fishing as anything they're meant to share.'

'Did anyone tell you that?'

Vianello shook the idea away. 'No, no one said anything, at least not directly. But it was always there, this sense that they were forcing themselves to talk as though they felt some sense of loyalty or common bond because they were all fishermen, while at the same time I got the feeling they'd push anyone out of the way who tried to fish a spot where they wanted to or that they thought they had a right to.'

'Push out of the way?' Brunetti asked.

'Well, in a manner of speaking’ Vianello answered. ‘I don't know enough about the way things work out here, but that's the feeling I get: there's too many of them and too few fish left. And it's too late for most of them to learn to do anything else.'

Brunetti waited to see if Vianello had anything else to say, but when it seemed that he had finished, Brunetti said, 'There used to be a restaurant off to the right here somewhere.'

Vianello nodded. ‘I had a coffee there earlier while I was talking to one of them.'

'There's no sense in my pretending I'm just a passing tourist, is there?' Brunetti asked.

Vianello smiled at the absurdity of it. 'Everyone in the village saw you get off that launch, sir. And walk back here with me. Damned by the company, if I might dare to say it'

'So we might as well go and have lunch together,' suggested Brunetti.

Vianello led the way back to the village. At the first row of houses he stopped in front of the large windows and wooden door of a restaurant. He pushed open the door and held it for Brunetti, then pulled it closed behind them.

A man in a long apron stood behind the zinc-covered bar, wiping at a squat glass with a cloth large enough to cover a small table. He nodded to Vianello then, an instant later, to Brunetti.

'Could we have lunch here?' the sergeant asked.