‘Is there anything you think I should know?’ Ambrogiani asked.
Ambrogiani was there, in daily contact with the Americans. Anything Brunetti told him was sure to become a fair trade. ‘They were lovers, and she was very frightened when she saw his body.’
‘Saw his body?’
‘Yes. She was sent to identify his body.’
Ambrogiani’s silence suggested that he, too, saw this as a particularly subtle touch. ‘Did you speak to her after it?’ he finally asked.
‘Yes and no. I came back to the city on the boat with her, but she didn’t want to talk about it. It seemed to me at the time that she was afraid of something. She had the same reaction when I saw her out there.’
‘Was that when you came out here?’ Ambrogiani asked.
‘Yes. Friday.’
‘Do you have any idea what she was afraid of?’
‘No. None. She might have tried to call me here on Friday night. There was a phone message here at the Questura, from a woman who didn’t speak Italian. The operator who took the call doesn’t speak English and all he could understand was that she said,
‘Do you think it was she?’
‘It could have been. I’ve no idea. But the message makes no sense.’ Brunetti thought of Patta’s order and asked, ‘What’s going to happen out there?’
‘Their military police are going to try to find out where she got the heroin. There were other signs of drugs found with her, the ends of marijuana cigarettes, some hashish. And the autopsy showed that she had been drinking.’
‘They certainly didn’t leave any doubt, did they?’ Brunetti asked.
‘There’s no sign that she was forced to take the injection.’
‘Those bruises?’ Brunetti asked.
‘She fell.’
‘So it looks like she did it?’
‘Yes.’ Neither of them spoke for a while, then Ambrogiani asked, ‘Are you going to come out here?’
‘I’ve been told not to bother the Americans.’
‘Who told you?’
‘The Vice-Questore here in Venice.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll wait a few days, a week, then I’d like to come out there and speak to you. Do your men have contact with the Americans?’
‘Not much. We each keep to ourselves. But I’ll see what I can find out about her.’
‘Did any Italians work with them?’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘I’m not sure. But both of them, especially Foster, had to travel for his job, going back and forth to places like Egypt.’
‘Drugs?’ Ambrogiani asked.
‘Could be. Or it could be something else.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. Drugs don’t feel right, somehow.’
‘What does feel right?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked up and saw Vianello at the door to his office. ‘Look, Maggiore, I’ve got someone here now. I’ll call you in a few days. We can decide then when I can go out there.’
‘All right. I’ll see what I can find out here.’
Brunetti hung up and waved Vianello into the office. ‘Anything on Ruffolo?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir. Those people who live below his girlfriend said he was there last week. They saw him a few times on the steps, but they haven’t seen him for three or four days. Do you want me to speak to her, sir?’
‘Yes, maybe you’d better. Tell her that it’s different from the other times. Viscardi has been assaulted, so that changes everything, especially for her if she’s hiding him or knows where he is.’
‘You think it will work?’
‘On Ivana?’ Brunetti asked sarcastically.
‘Well, no, I suppose it won’t,’ Vianello agreed. ‘But I’ll try it anyway. Besides, I’d rather talk to her than to the mother. At least I can understand what she says, even though every word of it is a lie.’
When Vianello had left to go and try to interview Ivana, Brunetti went back to the window, but after a few minutes he found that unsatisfactory and went to sit at his desk. Ignoring the files that had been placed there during the morning, he sat and considered the various possibilities. The first one, that it had been an overdose, he dismissed out of hand. Suicide, too, was impossible. In the past, he had seen distraught lovers who saw no
