Death in a Strange Country

‘I’m sorry, sir, but he’s not at the station right now.’

‘When do you expect him back?’

‘Couldn’t say, sir. Could you give me some idea of what this is about?’

‘A missing soldier.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

‘I’d like to know if there’s been any report out there of a missing soldier.’

The voice suddenly grew more serious. ‘Who did you say this was, sir?’

‘Commissario Brunetti. Venice police.’

‘Do you have a number where we can call you?’

‘You can call me at the Questura in Venice. The number is 5203222, and the city code for Venice is 041, but you’ll probably want to check the number in the phone book. I’ll wait for your call. Brunetti.’ He hung up, certain they would now check the number and call him back. The change in the sergeant’s voice had indicated interest, not alarm, so there was probably no report of a missing soldier. Not yet.

After about ten minutes, the phone rang, and the operator told him it was the American base in Vicenza calling. ‘Brunetti,’ he said when he heard the line open.

‘Commissario Brunetti,’ a different voice said, ‘this is Captain Duncan of the Military Police at Vicenza. Could you tell me what it is you want to know?’

‘I’d like to know if you’ve had a report of a missing soldier. A young man, in his mid-twenties. Light hair, blue eyes.’ It took him a moment to do the calculation from metres to feet and inches. ‘About five feet, nine inches tall.’

‘Could you tell me why the Venice police want to know about this? Has he gotten into trouble there?’

‘You could say that, Captain. We found the body of a young man floating in a canal this morning. He had a round-trip ticket from Vicenza in his pocket, and his clothing and dental work are American, so we thought of the base and wondered if he came from there.’

‘Did he drown?’

Brunetti remained silent so long that the other repeated the question. ‘Did he drown?’

‘No, Captain, he didn’t. There were signs of violence.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘He was stabbed.’

‘Robbed?’

‘It would appear so, Captain.’

‘You sound like you have some doubt about that.’

‘It looks like robbery. He has no wallet, and all of his identification is missing.’ Brunetti went back to his original question. ‘Could you tell me if you’ve had a report of someone who is missing, who hasn’t shown up for work?’

There was a long pause before the Captain replied. ‘Can I call you back in about an hour?’

‘Certainly.’

‘We’ll have to contact the individual duty stations and see if anyone is missing from work or their barracks. Could you repeat the description, please?’

‘The man we found appears to be in his mid-twenties, has blue eyes, light hair, and is about five feet, nine inches tall.’

“Thank you, Commissario. I’ll get my men working on this immediately, and we’ll call you as soon as we learn anything.’

‘Thank you, Captain.’ Brunetti said and broke the connection.

If the young man did turn out to be an American soldier, Patta would be apoplectic with the need to find the killer. Patta, he knew, was incapable of viewing it as the taking of a human life. To him, it could be no more or less than a blow against tourism, and in protection of that civic good Patta was certain to grow ferocious.

He left his desk and walked down the flight of stairs that led to the larger offices where the uniformed men worked. Entering, he saw that Luciani was there, looking none the worse for his early-morning soaking. Brunetti shivered at the thought of entering the waters of the canals, not because of the cold but because of the filth. He’d often joked that falling into a canal was an experience he’d prefer not to survive. And yet, as a boy, he’d swum in the waters of the Grand Canal, and older people he knew talked of the way that, in the poverty of their youth, they had been forced to use the salt waters of the canals and of the laguna for cooking, this in the days when salt was an expensive and heavily taxed commodity, and Venetians were a poor people, tourism unknown.

Luciani was talking on the phone when Brunetti entered the office and waved him over to his desk. ‘Yes, Uncle, I know that,’ he said. ‘But what about his son? No, not the one that was in trouble in Mestrino last year.’

As he listened to his uncle’s answer, he nodded to Brunetti and signalled with an open palm that he should wait until the conversation was finished. Brunetti sat and listened to the rest of the conversation. ‘When was the last time he worked? At Breda? Come on, Uncle, you know he’s not able to keep any job that long.’ Luciani went silent and listened for a long time, then said, ‘No, no, if you hear anything about him, maybe that he suddenly has a lot of money, let me know. Yes, yes, Uncle, and give Aunt Luisa a kiss for me.’ There followed a long series of those bi-syllabic ‘ciaos’ without which Venetians seemed incapable of ending a conversation.

When he hung up, Luciani turned to Brunetti and said, ‘That was my Uncle Carlo. He lives over near Fondamente Nuove, back a bit from Santi Giovanni e Paolo. I asked him about the neighbourhood - about who sells drugs, who uses. The only one he knows about is that Vittorio Argenti.’ Brunetti nodded in recognition of the name. ‘We’ve had him here a dozen times. But my uncle said he took a job at Breda about six months ago, and now that I think about it, it’s been about that long since we’ve seen him in here. I can check the records, but I think I would have remembered if we’d pulled him in for anything. My uncle knows the family, and he swears they’re all convinced that Vittorio’s changed.’ Luciani lit a cigarette and blew out the match. ‘From the way my uncle spoke, it sounds like he’s convinced, too.’

‘Aside from Argenti, is there anyone else in the neighbourhood?’

‘He seems to have been the principal one. There’s never been much drug traffic in that part of the city. I know the rubbish man, Noe, and he’s never complained of finding syringes on the street in the morning, not like San Maurizio,’ he said, naming a part of the city notorious for drug use.

‘What about Rossi? He find anything?’

‘Pretty much the same, sir. It’s a quiet neighbourhood. Occasionally, there’s a robbery or a break-in, but there’s never been much in the way of drugs, and there’s never been any violence,’ he said, then added, ‘before this.’

‘What about the people in those houses? Did they hear or see anything?’

‘No, sir. We spoke to all the people who were in the campo this morning, but no one heard or saw anything suspicious. And the same thing for the people in the houses.’ He anticipated Brunetti’s next question. ‘Puccetti said the same thing, sir.’

‘Where’s Rossi?’

With no hesitation, whatsoever, Luciani answered, ‘He’s gone out to get a coffee, sir. Ought to be back in a few minutes if you want to talk to him.’

‘What about the divers?’

‘They were in there for more than an hour. But they didn’t bring up anything that could be a weapon. The usual mess: bottles, cups, even a refrigerator, and a screw driver, but there’s nothing that even comes close.’

‘What about Bonsuan? Did anyone talk to him about the tides?’

‘No, sir. Not yet. We don’t have a time of death yet.’

‘About midnight.’ Brunetti supplied.

Luciani flipped open a logbook that lay on his desk and ran one thick finger down a column of names, ‘He’s taking a boat to the station right now. Delivering two prisoners to the Milan train. Want me to have him go up to your office when he gets back?’

Brunetti nodded, and then they were interrupted by the return of Rossi. His story was just as Luciani had said: no one in the campo that morning nor in the houses facing it had seen or heard