Death in a Strange Country

‘Well, tell him Carl Marx never went shopping at Duca D’Aosta. Let him go to Benetton with the rest of the proletariat.’ Four hundred thousand lire; he’d won almost ten times that at the Casino. In a family of four, Raffi’s fair share? No, not for a jacket. This must be it, the first crack in the ice, the beginning of the end of adolescence. And adolescence over, that meant the next step his son would take was into young manhood. Manhood.

‘Do you have any idea why this is happening?’ he asked her. If it occurred to Paola to say that he would be a better person to understand the phenomenon of male adolescence, she didn’t say it, and instead, answered, ‘Signora Pizzutti spoke to me on the stairs today.’

He gave her a puzzled stare, and then it registered. ‘Sara’s mother.’

Paola nodded. ‘Sara’s mother.’

‘Oh my God! No!’

‘Yes, Guido, and she’s a nice girl.’

‘He’s only sixteen, Paola.’ He heard the bleat in his voice, but he couldn’t stop it.

Paola put her hand on his arm, then up to her mouth, and then burst into loud peals of laughter. ‘Oh, Guido, you should hear yourself. “He’s only sixteen.” No, I don’t believe it.’ She continued to laugh, had to lean back against the arm of the sofa, so helpless did her mirth render her.

What was he supposed to do, he wondered, grin and tell dirty jokes? Raffaele was his only son, and he didn’t know anything about what was out there: AIDS, prostitutes, girls who got pregnant and made you marry them. And then, suddenly, he saw it through Paola’s eyes, and he laughed until tears came into his.

Raffaele came in then to ask his mother to help him with his Greek homework and, finding them like that, he wondered what all this talk about adulthood was.

* * * *

23

Neither that night nor the following day did Ambrogiani call, and Brunetti had to fight the constant temptation to call the American base and try to get in touch with him. He called Fosco in Milan and got only his answering machine. Peeling not a little foolish at being reduced to talking to a machine, he told Riccardo what Ambrogiani had told him about Gamberetto, asked him to see what else he could find out, and asked him to call. Beyond this, he could mink of little to do, so he read and commented on reports, read the newspapers, and found himself constantly distracted by the thought of that night’s meeting with Ruffolo.

Just as he was preparing to leave to go home for lunch, the intercom rang. ‘Yes, Vice-Questore,’ he answered automatically, too preoccupied to be able to savour Patta’s inevitable moment of unease when he was recognized before he identified himself.

‘Brunetti,’ he began, ‘I’d like you to step down to my office for a moment.’

‘Immediately, sir,’ Brunetti answered, pulling yet another report towards him, opening it, and beginning to read.

‘I’d like you to come now, not “immediately”, Commissario,’ Patta said, so sternly that Brunetti realized he must have someone, someone important, in his office with him.

‘Yes, sir. This instant,’ he answered and turned the page he was reading face down, the better to resume his place when he came back. After lunch, he thought, and went to the window to see if it still looked like rain. The sky above San Lorenzo was grey and ominous, and the leaves of the trees Hi the small campo flipped over with the force of the wind that swirled around them. He went over to the cupboard to hunt for an umbrella: he hadn’t bothered to bring one with him this morning. He pulled open the door and looked inside. There was the usual jumble of abandoned objects: a single yellow boot, a shopping bag filled with old newspapers, two large, padded envelopes, and a pink umbrella. Pink. Chiara’s, left there months ago. If he remembered correctly, it had large, happy elephants on it, but he didn’t want to open it to find out. Pink was bad enough. He looked deeper, shifting things aside delicately with his toe, but there was no second umbrella.

He took the umbrella from the closet and went back to his desk. If he rolled La Repubblica the long way, he could wrap it around most of the umbrella, leaving only the handle exposed, the handle and a handsbreadth of pink. He did this to his satisfaction, left his office, and took the steps down to Patta’s. He knocked, waited until he was sure he heard his superior call ‘Avanti’, and went in.

Usually, when Brunetti entered, he found Patta behind his desk - ‘enthroned’ was the word that sprang most easily to mind - but today he was seated in one of the smaller chairs that sat in front of the desk, seated to the right of a dark-haired man who sat entirely at his ease, legs crossed at the knees, one hand dangling from the arm of the chair, cigarette held between the first two fingers. Neither man bothered to stand when Brunetti came in, though the visitor did uncross his legs and lean forward to stab out his cigarette in the malachite ashtray.

‘Ah, Brunetti,’ Patta said. Had he been expecting someone else? He gestured to the man beside him. ‘This is Signor Viscardi. He’s in Venice for the day and stopped by to bring me an invitation to the gala dinner at Palazzo Pisani Moretta next week, and I asked him to stay. I thought he might like to have a word wife you.’

Viscardi got to his feet then and approached Brunetti, hand extended. ‘I’d like to thank you, Commissario, for your attention to this case.’ As Rossi had noted, the man spoke wife the elided R of Milan, the consonant slithering unpronounced from his tongue. He was a tall man with dark brown eyes, soft and peaceful eyes, and an easy, relaxed smile. The skin under his left eye was slightly discoloured and appeared to be covered with something, perhaps make-up.

Brunetti shook his hand and returned his smile.

Patta interrupted here. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t much progress, Augusto, but we hope to have some information about your paintings soon.’ He used the familiar ‘tu’ with Viscardi, an intimacy Brunetti assumed he was meant to register. And respect.

‘I certainly hope so. My wife is very attached to those paintings, especially the Monet.’ He made it sound like the enthusiasm children had for their toys. He turned his attention, and his charm, to Brunetti. ‘Perhaps you could tell me if you have had any, I think they’re called “leads”, Commissario. I’d like to be able to take good news back to my wife.’

‘Unfortunately, we have very little to report, Signor Viscardi. We’ve passed the descriptions you gave us of the men you saw to our officers, and we’ve sent copies of your photos of the paintings to the Art Fraud Police. But