could be an officer. At the sound of it, Brunetti determined to address her, at least It’she came anywhere within hearing of these two, by her rank and to give her every sign of the respect to which her rank entitled her. Not for the first time, he cringed when he saw his own prejudices manifest in other people.
He engaged in a few desultory remarks with the Carabinieri. What chance did Napott have of winning this Weekend? Would Maradona ever play again? Would the government fall? He stood looking out of the glass door and watched the waves of traffic flow into the Piazzale. Pedestrians danced and wove their way through the cars and buses. No one paid the least attention to the zebra crossing or to the white lines that were meant to indicate the separation of lanes. And yet the traffic flowed smoothly and quickly.
A light green sedan cut across the bus lane and drew up behind the two blue and white Carabinieri vehicles. It was an almost anonymous rectangle, devoid of markings or rooftop light, its only distinguishing mark a number plate which read ‘AFI Official’. The driver’s door opened, and a uniformed soldier emerged. He bent and opened the door behind him and held it while a young woman in a dark-green uniform got out. As soon as she stood clear of the car, she put on her uniform cap and looked around her, then over towards the Carabinieri station.
Without bothering to say goodbye to the men inside, Brunetti left the station and went towards the car. ‘Doctor Peters?’ he said as he approached.
She looked up at the sound of her name and took a step towards him. As he came up, she held out her hand and shook his briefly. She appeared to be in her late twenties, with curly dark-brown hair that pushed back against the pressure of her hat. Her eyes were chestnut, her skin still brown from a summer tan. Had she smiled, she would have been even prettier. Instead, she looked at him directly, mouth pulled into a tense straight line, and asked, ‘Are you the police inspector?’
‘Commissario Brunetti. I have a boat here. It will take us out to San Michele.’ Seeing her confusion, he explained, ‘The cemetery island. The body’s been taken there.’
Without waiting for her reply, he pointed in the direction of the mooring and led the way across the road. She paused long enough to say something to the driver and then followed him. At the water’s edge, he pointed to the blue and white police boat moored to the embankment. ‘If you’ll come this way, Doctor,’ he said, stepping from the pavement and onto the deck of the boat. She came up close behind him and accepted his hand. The skirt of her uniform fell just a few inches below her knees. Her legs were good, tanned and muscular, the ankles slim. With no hesitation, she gripped his hand and allowed herself to be helped on board the boat. As soon as they were down in the cabin and seated, Monetti backed out of the mooring and turned the boat up the Grand Canal. He took them quickly past the railway station, blue light turning, and turned left into the Canale della Misericordia, beyond the outlet of which lay the cemetery island.
Usually, when he had to take people foreign to Venice on a police launch, Brunetti busied himself by pointing out sights and points of interest along the way. This time, however, he contented himself with the most formal of openings. ‘I hope you had no trouble in getting here, Doctor.’
She looked down at the strip of green carpeting on the floor between them and muttered something he took to be a ‘no’ but said nothing further. He noticed that she occasionally took a deep breath in an effort to calm herself, a strange response in someone who was, after all, a doctor.
As It’she had read his thoughts, she glanced up at him, smiled a very pretty smile, and said, ‘It’s different, when you know the person. In medical school, they’re strangers, so it’s easy to keep a professional distance.’ She paused for a long time. ‘And people my age don’t usually die.’
That was certainly true enough. ‘Did you work together for a long time?’ Brunetti asked.
She nodded and began to answer, but before she could say anything, the boat gave a sudden lurch. She grabbed the front of her seat with both hands and shot him a frightened glance.
‘We’ve moved out into the
‘I’m not a good sailor. I was born in North Dakota, and there’s not a lot of water there. I never even learned how to swim.’ Her smile was weak, but it was back in place.
‘Did you and Mr Foster work together for a long time?’
‘Sergeant,’ she corrected him automatically. ‘Yes, ever since I got to Vicenza, about seven months ago. He really runs everything. They just need an officer to be in charge. And to sign papers.’
‘To take the blame?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Yes, yes, I suppose you could say that. But nothing’s ever gone wrong. Not with Mike. He’s very good at his job.’ Her voice was warm. Praise? Affection?
Below them, the engine slowed to an even purr, and then there came the heavy thump as they slid into the dock at the cemetery. He stood and went up the narrow stairway to the open deck, pausing at the top to hold one side of the swinging door open to allow the doctor to pass through it. Monetti was busy wrapping the mooring lines around one of the wooden pilings that stuck up at a crazy angle from the waters of the
Brunetti stepped ashore and held out his arm. She placed her hand on it, then leaned heavily on it as she leaped to the shore beside him. He noticed that she carried neither handbag nor briefcase, perhaps having left it in the car or in the boat.
The cemetery closed at four, so Brunetti had to ring the bell that stood to the right of the large wooden doors. After a few minutes, the door on the right side was pulled open by a man in a dark blue uniform, and Brunetti gave his name. The man held the door open, then closed it after them. Brunetti led their way through the main entrance and paused at the watchman’s window, where he announced himself and showed his warrant card. The watchman signalled for them to continue down tine open arcade to the right. Brunetti nodded. He knew the way.
When they stepped through the door and into the building that held the morgue, Brunetti felt the sudden drop in temperature. Doctor Peters apparently did as well, for she brought her arms together across her chest and lowered her head. A white-uniformed attendant sat at a plain wooden desk at the end of a long corridor. He got to his feet as they approached, careful to place his book face down in front of him. ‘Commissario Brunetti?’ he asked.
Brunetti nodded. ‘This is the doctor from the American base,’ he added, nodding to the young woman at his side. To one who had looked so frequently upon the face of death, the sight of a young woman in a military uniform was hardly worthy of notice, so the attendant passed quickly in front of them and opened the heavy wooden door that stood to his left.
‘I knew you were coming, so I brought him out,’ he said as he led them towards a metal gurney that stood on one side of the room. All three of them recognized what was under the white cloth. When they drew up next to the body, the young man looked at Doctor Peters. She nodded. When he pulled the cloth back, she looked at the face of the dead man, and Brunetti looked at hers. For the first few moments, her own remained absolutely still and expressionless, then she closed her eyes and pulled her upper lip between her teeth. It’she was trying to bite back tears, she failed, for they welled up and seeped out of her eyes. ‘Mike, Mike,’ she whispered and turned away from the body.
Brunetti nodded to the attendant, and he drew the cloth back across the young man’s face.
Brunetti felt her hand on his arm, her grip surprisingly strong. ‘What killed him?’
He stepped back, intending to turn and lead her from the room, but her grip tightened and she repeated, voice insistent, ‘What killed him?’
Brunetti placed his hand on top of hers and said, ‘Come outside.’
Before he had any idea what she was doing, she pushed past him and grabbed at the cloth that covered the body of the young man, ripping it away to expose his body to the waist. The giant incision of the autopsy, running from navel to neck, was sewn together with large stitches. Unsewn and seeming quite harmless when compared to the enormous incision of the autopsy was the small horizontal line that had killed him.
Her voice came out as a low moan, and she repeated the name, ‘Mike, Mike,’ drawing the sound out in a long, keening wail. She stood beside the body, curiously straight and rigid, and the noise continued to come from her.
The attendant stepped quickly in front of her and fastidiously replaced the cloth, covering both wounds and then the face.
She turned to face Brunetti, and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears, but he saw something else in them that looked like nothing so much as terror, sheer animal terror.
