sitting and looking out of the window of the train while thinking about why a young American soldier would have been murdered. But now he had a new thought to add to that one: why would drugs have been planted in his apartment after his death? And who would have planted them?
* * * *
8
As his train pulled out of the Vicenza train station, Brunetti walked towards the front, searching for an empty compartment in the first-class section. The two plastic packages weighed down his inner pockets, and he hunched forward in an attempt to disguise their bulk. Finally, in the first car, he found an empty compartment and sat near the window, then got up to slide the door closed. He put his briefcase on the seat beside him and debated whether to transfer the packages or not. As he sat debating, the door to the compartment was abruptly pulled open by a man in uniform. For a hallucinogenic instant, Brunetti saw his career in ruins, himself in jail, but then the man asked for his ticket, and Brunetti was saved.
When the conductor left, Brunetti concentrated on keeping himself from reaching inside his jacket or from checking with his elbows to see that the two packages were still in place. He seldom had to deal with drugs in his work, but he knew enough to realize, that he was carrying at least a few hundred million lire in each pocket: a new apartment in one and early retirement in the other. The idea had little attraction for him. He would gladly have traded both packages to know who had put them where he found them. Though he had no idea of who, the reason why was pretty clear: what better motive for murder than drugs and drug dealing, and what better proof of drug dealing than the presence of a kilo of cocaine hidden in a man’s home? And who better to find it than the policeman from Venice, who, if only because of geography, could not possibly have had any involvement with the crime or the dead man? And what could that young soldier have been involved in that a kilo of cocaine would be used to call attention away from it?
At Padova, an elderly woman came into the compartment and sat, reading a magazine, until Mestre station, where she got out, without even having spoken to or looked at Brunetti. When the train pulled into Venice station, Brunetti picked up his briefcase and left the train, checking to see if any of the people who had got onto the train in Vicenza got down from the train with him. In front of the station, he walked to the right, towards the number one boat, got as far as the landing dock, then stopped and looked back at the clock that stood on tike other side of the station. Abruptly, he changed direction and walked towards the other side of tine
A few minutes later, the boat came from the right, and he was the only person to get on. At four-thirty, there were few people on the boat. He walked down the steps and through the rear cabin, out to the aft deck, where he was alone. The boat pulled away from the embankment and under the Bridge of the Scalzi, up the Grand Canal towards the Rialto and its final stop.
Through the glass doors, Brunetti saw that the four people sitting in the inner cabin were all busy reading their newspapers. He set his briefcase on the chair beside him, propped the lid open, and reached into his inner pocket, pulling out one of the envelopes. Carefully, touching only its comers, he peeled it open. Turning sideways, the better to examine the facade of the Natural History Museum, he slid his hand under the railing and emptied the white powder into the waters of the canal. He slipped the empty bag into his briefcase and repeated the process with the second. During the golden age of the Most Serene Republic, the Doge used to perform an elaborate yearly ceremony, tossing a gold ring into the waters of the Grand Canal to solemnize the wedding of the city to the waters that gave it life, wealth, and power. But never, Brunetti thought, had such great wealth been deliberately offered to any waters.
From the Rialto, he walked back to the Questura and went directly to the lab. Bocchese was there, sharpening a pair of scissors at one of the many machines that only he seemed able to operate. He turned the machine off when he saw Brunetti and set the scissors on the counter in front of him.
Brunetti put his briefcase beside the scissors, opened it, and pulled out, careful to touch them only at the corners, the two plastic bags. He set them beside the scissors. ‘Could you see if the American’s prints are on these?’ he asked. Bocchese nodded. ‘I’ll come down and you can tell me, all right?’ Brunetti said.
The technician nodded again. ‘It’s like that, huh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you like me to lose the bags after I get the prints off them?’ Bocchese asked.
‘What bags?’
Bocchese reached for the scissors. ‘As soon as I finish this,’ he said. He flipped a switch, and the wheel of the machine spun into life again. Brunetti’s muttered thanks were drowned out by the high-pitched rasp of metal against metal as Bocchese went back to sharpening the scissors.
Deciding that it would be better to go and speak to Patta than be told to do so, Brunetti took the front steps and stopped outside his superior’s door. He knocked, heard a noise, and opened the door. As he did so, he realized, belatedly, that the sound he had heard had not been an invitation to enter.
The scene was a blending of cartoon cliche and every bureaucrat’s worst nightmare: in front of the window, the top two buttons of her blouse open, stood Anita, from the Ufficio Stranieri; a single step from her, and moving backward, stood a red-faced Vice-Questore Patta. Brunetti caught this in a glance and dropped his briefcase in an attempt to give Anita time to turn her back on the two men and button her blouse. As she did this, Brunetti knelt to retrieve the papers that had spilled from the briefcase, and Patta went to sit behind his desk: It took Anita as long to button her blouse as it did Brunetti to stuff the papers back into his briefcase.
When everything was back where it should be, Patta said, using the formal ‘lei’, ‘Thank you, Signorina. I’ll have these papers taken down to you as soon as I sign them.’
She nodded and made towards the door. As she walked past Brunetti, she gave him a wink and an enormous smile, both of which he ignored.
When she was gone, Brunetti walked over to Patta’s desk. ‘I’ve just got back from Vicenza, sir. From the American base.’
‘Yes? What did you find?’ Patta asked, face still suffused with a residual blush that Brunetti had to force himself to ignore.
‘Nothing much. I took a look at his apartment.’
‘Did you find anything?’
‘No, sir. Nothing. I’d like to go back there tomorrow.’
