They strolled by, amiable and friendly, greeting one another and exchanging pleasant words, thoroughly at home in their little American village here in Italy.
Ten minutes later, the driver pulled up in front of him. Brunetti got into the back seat. ‘Would you like to go to that address now, sir?’ the driver asked.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, a little tired of America.
Driving more quickly than the other cars on the base, they headed towards the front gate and passed through it. Outside, they turned right and headed back towards the city, again passing over the railway bridge. At the bottom, they turned left, then right, and pulled up in front of a five-storey building set back a few metres from the street. Parked opposite the gate they saw a dark-green Jeep, two soldiers in American uniform sitting in the front seat. Brunetti approached them. One of them climbed down from the Jeep.
‘I’m Commissario Brunetti, from Venice,’ he said, resuming his real rank, then added, ‘Major Butterworth sent me out to take a look at Foster’s apartment.’ Perhaps not the truth, but certainly related to it.
The soldier sketched out something that might have been a salute, reached into his pocket, and handed Brunetti a set of keys. ‘The red one is the front door, sir,’ the soldier said. ‘Apartment 3B, on the third floor. Elevator to your right as you go in.’ Inside this building, he took the elevator, feeling hemmed in and uncomfortable in its closeness. The door to 3B stood directly opposite the elevator and opened easily with the key.
He pushed open the door and noticed the usual marble floors. Doors opened off a central corridor at the end of which another door stood ajar. The room on the right was a bathroom, the one on the left a small kitchen. Both were clean, the objects in them well-ordered. He noticed, however, that the kitchen held an enormous refrigerator and a large four-ring stove, beside which stood an equally outsized washing-machine, both of the electrical appliances plugged into a transformer that broke down the 220 Italian current to the 110 of America. Did they bring these appliances all the way from America with them? Little space was left in the kitchen for a small square table, at which only two chairs stood. The wall held the gas-burning neater which seemed to provide both hot water and heat for the radiators in the apartment.
The next doors opened into two bedrooms. One held a double bed and a large cupboard. The other had been turned into a study and held a desk with a computer keyboard and screen attached to a printer. Shelves held books and some stereo equipment, under which was neatly lined a row of compact discs. He checked the books: most appeared to be textbooks, the rest books about travel and - could it be? - religion. He pulled down some of these and took a closer look.
The music was, he thought, rock. Some of the names he recognized from having heard Raffaele and Chiara mention them; he doubted that he would recognize the music.
He switched on the CD player and pushed the ‘Eject’ button on the control panel. Like a patient showing his tongue to a doctor, it opened and slid out the playing panel. Empty. He closed the panel and switched off the machine. He switched on the amplifier and tape deck. Panel lights glowed, showing they both worked. He turned them off. He switched the computer on, watched the letters appear on the screen, then switched it off.
The clothes in the closet were no more forthcoming. He found three complete uniforms, jackets still in the plastic laundry bags, each carefully lined up beside a pair of dark-green trousers. The rack also held a few pairs of jeans, neatly folded over hangers, three or four shirts, and a dark blue suit made out of some synthetic material. Almost absent-mindedly, Brunetti checked the pockets of the jacket and all the trousers, but there was nothing; no loose change, no papers, no comb. Either Sergeant Foster was a very neat young man, or the Americans had been here before him.
He went back into the bathroom, removed the lid from the top of the toilet, glanced into the empty tank, then replaced the lid. He opened the door to the mirror-fronted medicine chest, opened a bottle or two.
In the kitchen, he opened the top section of the outsized refrigerator. Ice. Nothing more. Below, a few apples, an open bottle of white wine, and some ageing cheese in a plastic wrapper. The oven held only three empty pans; the washing-machine was empty. He stood with his back against the worktop and looked slowly around the room. From the top drawer under the worktop he took a knife, then pulled one of the wooden chairs from the table and placed it under the water heater. He climbed up onto the chair and used the knife to loosen the screws that held the front panel to the heater. As they came loose, he dropped the screws into his jacket pocket. When he pulled the last one out, he slipped the knife into his pocket and shifted the panel from side to side until it came loose in his hands. He set it down on the chair, leaning it against his leg.
Two plastic bags were taped to the inside of the wall of the water heater. They contained fine white powder, about a kilo of it, he judged. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and, wrapping his hand in it, pulled first one bag loose, then the other. Just to be sure of what he already knew, he pulled open the ziplock top of one of the bags, wet the tip of his index finger and tapped it onto the powder. When he put his finger to his tongue, he tasted the slightly metallic, unmistakable tang of cocaine.
He leaned down and set the two bags on the counter. Then he lifted the front panel back into place, careful to line it up accurately with the holes in the body of the heater. Slowly, he fitted in the four screws and turned them back into place. Carefully, he turned the grooves in the top screws to perfect horizontals, the two below into equally precise verticals.
He glanced at his watch. He had been inside the apartment fifteen minutes. The Americans had had a day and a half to go through the apartment; the Italian police had had just as much time. Yet Brunetti had found the two packages in less than quarter of an hour.
He opened the door to one of the wall cabinets and saw only three or four dinner plates. He looked under the sink and found what he wanted, two plastic bags. Still covering his hand with his handkerchief, he placed a bag of cocaine inside each of the larger plastic bags and placed them in the two inner pockets of his jacket. He wiped the knife clean on the sleeve of his jacket and replaced it in the drawer, then used his handkerchief to wipe the surface of the heater clean of all prints.
He left the apartment, locking the door behind him. Outside, he approached tine American soldiers in the Jeep, smiling comfortably at them. ‘Thank you,’ he said and handed the key back to the man who had given it to him.
‘Well?’ the soldier asked.
‘Nothing. I just wanted to see how he lived.’ If the soldier was surprised by Brunetti’s answer, he gave no indication of it.
Brunetti walked back to his car, got in, and told the driver to take him to the train station. He caught the three-fifteen Intercity train from Milan and prepared to spend the trip back to Venice as he had spent the trip out,
