Death in a Strange Country

kisses her hand when she comes into the room. At least he doesn’t click his heels.

‘We were just talking about Chiara,’ the Count said, smiling benignly at his wife.

‘Yes,’ agreed Brunetti, ‘we were just saying how lucky Paola and I are that both of the children are so healthy.’ The Count shot him a look over his wife’s head, but she smiled up at both of them, saying, ‘Yes, thank God for that. We’re so lucky we live in a healthy country like Italy.’

‘Indeed,’ agreed the Count

‘What can I bring her from Capri?’ asked the Countess.

‘Only your safe-return,’ Brunetti said gallantly. ‘You know what it’s like down there in the South.’

She smiled up at him. ‘Oh, Guido, all that talk about the Mafia can’t be true. It’s just stories. All my friends say it is.’ She turned to her husband for confirmation.

‘If your friends say so, my dear, then I’m certain it is,’ the Count said. To Brunetti, ‘I’ll take care of those things for you, Guido. I’ll make the calls tonight. And please speak to your friend at Vicenza, There’s no need for either one of you to preoccupy yourself with this.’

His wife gave him a questioning look. ‘Nothing, my dearest,’ he said. ‘Just some business Guido asked me to look into for him. Nothing important. Just some paperwork that I might be able to get through more quickly than he can.’

‘How kind of you, Orazio. And Guido,’ she said, positively aglow with this vision of happy families, ‘I’m so glad you’d think to ask.’

The Count put his hand under her arm and said, ‘We might think about leaving now, dearest. Is the launch here?’

‘Oh, yes, that’s what I came to tell you. But I forgot about it with all this talk of business.’ She turned to Brunetti. ‘Give my love to Paola and kiss the children for me. I’ll call when we get to Capri. Or is it Ischia? Orazio, which is it?’

‘Capri, my dearest.’

‘I’ll call, then. Goodbye, Guido,’ she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him again.

The Count and Brunetti shook hands. All three of them walked down into the courtyard together. The Count and Countess turned and walked through the water gate and stepped into the launch that waited for them at the landing stage of the palazzo. Brunetti let himself out of the main door, careful to slam it closed behind him.

* * * *

22

Monday was a normal day at the Questura: three North Africans were brought in for selling purses and sunglasses on the street without a licence; two break-ins were reported in various parts of the city; four summonses were given to boats caught without the proper safety equipment aboard; and two known drug addicts were brought in for threatening a doctor who refused to write them prescriptions. Patta appeared at eleven, called up to Brunetti to learn if there was any progress on the Viscardi case, made no attempt to disguise his irritation that there had not been, and went to lunch half an hour later, not to return until well past three.

Vianello came up to report to Brunetti that the car had not shown up on Saturday, and he had been left waiting at Piazzale Roma for an hour, standing at the number five bus stop with a bouquet of red carnations in his arms. He had finally given up and gone home and given his wife the flowers. Keeping his part of the bargain, even if the criminals couldn’t be depended on, Brunetti changed the duty roster to give Vianello the following Friday and Saturday free, asking him to get in touch with the boy on Burano to see what had gone wrong and why Ruffolo’s friends had not shown up for the meeting.

He had bought all of the major papers on the way to his office and passed the better part of the morning reading through them, searching for any reference to the dump near Lake Barcis, Gamberetto, or anything that had to do with the deaths of the two Americans. History, however, refused to concern itself with any of these topics, so he ended up reading the soccer news and calling it work.

He bought the papers again the next morning and began to read through them carefully. Riots in Albania, the Kurds, a volcano, Indians killing one another, this time for politics, instead of religion, but there was no mention of the finding of toxic waste near Lake Barcis.

Knowing it was foolish but unable to stop himself from doing it, he went down to the switchboard and asked the operator for the number of the American base. If Ambrogiani had been able to find out anything about Gamberetto, Brunetti wanted to know what it was and found himself incapable of waiting for the other man to call. The operator gave him both the central number and that of the Carabinieri office. Brunetti had to walk to Riva degli Schiavoni before he found a public phone that would take a magnetic phone card. He dialled the number of the Carabinieri station and asked for Maggiore Ambrogiani. The Maggiore was not at his desk at the moment. Who was calling, please? ‘Signor Rossi, from the Generan Insurance Company. I’ll call back this afternoon.’

Ambrogiani’s absence could mean nothing. Or anything.

As he did whenever he was overcome by nervousness, Brunetti walked. He turned left and walked along the water until he came to the bridge that took him to Sant’ Elena, crossed it, and walked around this farthest part of the dry, finding it no more interesting than he ever had in the past. He cut back through Castello, along the wall of the Arsenate, and back towards Santi Giovanni e Paolo, where all of this had begun. Intentionally, he avoided the campo, refusing to look at the place where Foster’s body had been pulled out of the water. He cut directly towards the Fondamente Nuove and followed the water until he had to turn away from it and head back into the city. He passed the Madonna dell’ Orto, noticed that work was still being done on the hotel, and suddenly found himself in Campo del Ghetto. He sat on a bench and watched the people going past him. They had no idea, none at all. They distrusted the government, feared the Mafia, resented the Americans, but they were all generalized, unfocused ideas. They sensed conspiracy, as Italians always have, but they lacked the details, the proofs. They had learned enough, from long centuries of experience, to know that the proof was there, amply, but those same brutal centuries had also taught the people that whatever government happened to be in power would always succeed in hiding any and all proof of its evildoing from its citizens.

He closed his eyes, sank lower on the bench, glad of the sun. When he opened them, he saw the two Mariani sisters walking across the campo. They must be in their seventies now, both of them, with their shoulder-length hair, high heels, and bright carmined lips. No one any longer remembered the facts, but everyone remembered the story. During the war, the Christian husband of one of them had denounced her to the police, and both of them