Death in a Strange Country

Brunetti could never see that line without a surge of historical irony: three generations of his own family had fled Italy, seeking their fortunes in places as far apart as Australia and Argentina. And now, in a Europe transformed by recent events, Italy had become the El Dorado of new waves of still poorer, still darker immigrants. Many of his friends spoke of these people with contempt, disgust, even anger, but Brunetti could never see them without superimposing upon them the fantasy image of his own ancestors, standing in similar lines, themselves badly dressed, ill-shod, making a hash of the language. And, like these poor devils here, willing to clean the mess and raise the children of anyone who would pay them.

He went up the steps to his fourth-floor office, saying good-morning to one or two people, nodding to others. When he reached the office, he checked to see if there were any new papers on his desk. Nothing had arrived yet, so he considered himself free to do with the day whatever he saw fit. And that was to reach for his phone and ask to be connected with the Carabinieri station at the American base in Vicenza.

This number proved considerably easier to find and, within minutes, he was speaking to Maggiore Ambrogiani, who told Brunetti that he had been put in charge of the Italian investigation into Foster’s murder.

‘Italian?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Well, Italian as different from the investigation that the Americans will conduct themselves.’

‘Does that mean there are going to be problems of jurisdiction?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ the Maggiore answered. ‘You people in Venice, the civil police, are in charge of the investigation there. But you’ll need the permission or help of the Americans for anything you might want to do out here.’

‘In Vicenza?’

Ambrogiani laughed. ‘No, I don’t want to give mat impression. Only here, on the base. So long as you are in Vicenza, the city, then we’re in charge, the Carabinieri. But once you come onto this base, they take over, and it’s the Americans who will help you.’

‘You make it sound as if you have some doubts about that, Maggiore,’ Brunetti said.

‘No, no doubts. Not at all.’

‘Then I’ve misinterpreted your tone.’ But he thought that he hadn’t, not at all. ‘I’d like to come out there and speak to the people who knew him, worked with him.’

‘They’re Americans, most of them,’ Ambrogiani said, leaving it to Brunetti to infer the possibilities of difficulty with language.

‘My English is all right.’

‘Then you should have no trouble talking to them.’

‘When would it be possible for me to come there?’

‘This morning? This afternoon? Whenever you please, Commissario.’

From his bottom drawer, Brunetti grabbed a railway timetable and flipped through it, looking for the Venice- Milan line. There was a train leaving in an hour. ‘I can take the nine-twenty-five.’

‘Fine. I’ll send a car to meet you.’

‘Thank you, Maggiore.’

‘A pleasure, Commissario. A pleasure. I look forward to meeting you.’

They exchanged courtesies, and Brunetti replaced the receiver. The first thing he did was go across to the cupboard that stood against the far wall. He opened it and began to hunt through the things piled and tossed on the bottom: a pair of boots, three light bulbs in separate boxes, an extension cord, a few old magazines, and a brown leather briefcase. He pulled out the briefcase and dusted it off with his hand. Carrying it back to his desk, he put the newspapers inside, then added a few files he had still to read. From his front drawer, he took a two-week-old copy of Panorama and threw it in.

The ride was a familiar one, along the route to Milan, through a checkered pattern of cornfields burned to painful darkness by the summer drought. He sat on the right side of the train to avoid the slanting sun that still burned through, even though it was September and the ferocity of the summer was gone. At Padova, the second stop, scores of university students crowded off the train, carrying their new text books as though they were magic talismans that would carry them to a sure, better future. He remembered mat feeling, that yearly renewal of optimism that used to come to him while he was at the university, as if each year’s virgin notebooks carried with them the promise of a better year, a brighter destiny.

At Vicenza, he got down from the train and looked along the platform for someone in uniform. Seeing no one, he went down the steps, through the tunnel that ran under the tracks, and up into the station. In front of it he saw the dark blue sedan marked ‘Carabinieri’, parked in an arrogant, unnecessary diagonal in front of the station, the driver engaged equally in a cigarette and the pink pages of the Gazzettino dello Sport.

Brunetti tapped on the back window. The driver turned his head languidly, stabbed out his cigarette, and reached back to unlock the door. As he opened the door, Brunetti thought about how different things were here in the North. In Southern Italy, any Carabiniere who heard an unexpected noise from the back of his car would immediately be on the floor of the car or crouched on the pavement beside it, gun in hand, perhaps already firing at the source of the noise. But here, in sleepy Vicenza, all he did was reach, without question, to allow the stranger into his car.

‘Inspector Bonnini?’ the driver asked.’

‘Commissario Brunetti.’

‘From Venice?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good morning. I’ll take you to the base.’

‘Is it far?’

‘Five minutes.’ Saying this, the driver set the paper on the seat beside him, the latest triumph of Schilacci displayed for a soccer-loving public, and put the car in gear. Bothering to look neither right nor left, he tore out of the station car park, cutting directly into the traffic that flowed past. He skirted the city, cutting back towards the east, in the direction from which Brunetti had come.

Brunetti had not been to Vicenza for at least a decade, but he remembered it as one of the loveliest cities in Italy, its centre filled with narrow, twisting streets along which crowded Renaissance and Baroque palazzi, jumbled together with no regard for symmetry, chronology, or plan. Instead of this, they swung past an immense concrete football stadium, over a high railway bridge, then along one of the new viales that had sprung up all over mainland Italy in acknowledgement of the final triumph of the automobile.

Without signalling, the driver suddenly cut to the left and started down a narrow road lined on the right by a wire-topped cement wall. Behind it, Brunetti saw an immense dish-shaped communications antenna. The car swept in a broad curve to the right, and in front of them Brunetti saw an open gate, beside which stood a number of armed guards. There were two uniformed Carabinieri, machine guns dangling casually at their sides, and an American soldier in combat fatigues. The driver slowed, gave a desultory wave to the machine guns, which waved and dipped in acknowledgement, then followed the car onto the base with their hollow-tipped barrels. The American, Brunetti observed, followed them with his eyes but made no attempt to stop them. A quick right turn, another, and they drew up in front of a low cement building. ‘This is our headquarters,’ the driver said. ‘Maggiore Ambrogiani’s office is the fourth one on the right.’

Brunetti thanked him and went into the low building. The floor appeared to be cement, the walls lined with bulletin boards upon which notices in both English and Italian were posted. On his left, he saw a sign for ‘MP Station’. A bit further on, he saw a door with the name ‘Ambrogiani’ printed on a card beside it. No title, just the name. He knocked, waited for the shouted ‘Avanti!’, and went in. Desk, two windows, a plant in desperate need of water, a calendar, and behind the desk, a bull of a man whose neck was in open revolt against the tight collar of his uniform shirt. His broad shoulders pushed against the fabric of his uniform jacket; even his wrists seemed too tightly enclosed by the sleeves. On his shoulders, Brunetti saw the squat tower and single star of a major. He rose when Brunetti walked in, glanced at the watch that grabbed at his wrist, and said, ‘Commissario Brunetti?’

‘Yes.’

The smile that filled the Carabiniere’s face was almost angelic in its warmth and simplicity. My God, the man had dimples! ‘I’m glad you could come all the way from Venice about this.’ He came around his desk, surprisingly