Death in a Strange Country

anything at all unusual.

In any other city in Italy, the fact that no one had seen or heard anything would be no more than an indication of their distrust of the police and a general unwillingness to help them. Here, however, where the people were generally law-abiding and most of the police themselves Venetians, it meant no more than that they had seen or heard nothing. If there were any serious involvement with drugs in that neighbourhood, sooner or later they would hear about it. Someone would have a cousin or a boyfriend or a mother-in-law who would make a phone call to a friend who just happened to have a cousin or a boyfriend or a mother-in-law who worked for the police, and so the word would reach him. Until that time, he would have to take it as given that there was little traffic in drugs in that part of the city, that it was not the place where a person would go to take or buy drugs, especially not a foreigner. All of that would seem to rule out drugs as having played a part in the crime, at least if it were related in any way to that neighbourhood.

‘Send Bonsuan up to see me when he gets back, please,’ he told them and went back to his office, careful to use the stairs in the rear of the building that avoided taking him anywhere near Patta’s office. The longer he could avoid talking to his superior, the happier he would be.

In his office, he finally remembered to call Paola. He had forgotten to tell her that he wouldn’t be home for lunch, but it was years since she was surprised or bothered by that. Instead of conversation, she read a book during the meal, unless the children were there. In fact, he had begun to suspect that she enjoyed her quiet lunches alone with the authors she taught at the university, for she never objected if he was delayed or kept from coming.

She answered on the third ring. ‘Pronto.’

‘Ciao, Paola. It’s me.’

‘I thought it might be. How are things?’ She never asked a direct question about his work or about what kept him from meals. It was not that sire took no interest, only that she found it better to wait for him to talk about it. Eventually, she came to learn it all, anyway.

‘I’m sorry about lunch, but I was making phone calls.’

‘That’s all right. I spent it with William Faulkner. Very interesting man.’ Over the course of the years, they’d come to treat her lunchtime visitors as real guests, had evolved jokes about the table manners of Doctor Johnson (shocking), the conversation of Melville (scurrilous), and the amount Jane Austen drank (stunning).

‘I’ll be back for dinner, though. All I have to do is talk to a few people here and wait for a call from Vicenza.’ When she said nothing, he added, ‘From the American military base there.’

‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ she asked, telling him, with the question, that she had already learned about the crime and the probable identity of the victim. The barman told the postman, who told the woman on the second floor, who called her sister, and, first thing, everyone in the city knew about what had happened, long before a word appeared in the newspapers or on the evening news.

‘Yes, it’s like that,’ he agreed.

‘What time do you think you’ll be back?’

‘Before seven.’

‘All right. I’ll get off the phone now, in case your call comes.’ He loved Paola for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he knew this to be her real motive for getting off the phone. There was no secret message, no hidden agenda in what she said; she merely wanted to free the line so that his work would be easier and he would be home sooner.

‘Thanks, Paola. I’ll see you about seven.’

‘Ciao, Guido,’ and she was gone, back to William Faulkner, leaving him free to work and equally free of guilt about the demands of that work.

It was almost five and still the Americans hadn’t called back. For a moment, he was tempted to call them, but he resisted the impulse. If one of their soldiers was missing, they’d have to contact him. After all, to put it bluntly, he had the body.

He searched through the personnel reports that still lay in front of him until he found those of Luciani and Rossi. In both of them, he added a note that they had behaved far beyond the ordinary in going into the canal to pull the body out. They could have waited for a boat or could have used poles, but they had done something he didn’t know if he would have had the courage, or the will, to do and had gone into that water to pull him ashore.

The phone rang. ‘Brunetti.’

‘This is Captain Duncan. We’ve cheeked all the duty stations, and we have one man who didn’t show up for work today. He meets your description. I sent someone to check his apartment, but there’s no sign of him, so I’d like to send someone to take a look at the body.’

‘When, Captain?’

‘Tonight, if possible.’

‘Certainly. How will you send him?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I’d like to know how you’ll send him, by train or by car, so that I can send someone to meet him.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Duncan answered. ‘By car.’

‘Then I’ll send someone to Piazzale Roma. There’s a Carabinieri station there, to the right as you enter the Piazzale.’

‘All right. The car will be here in about fifteen minutes, so they ought to be there in a bit less than an hour, about quarter to seven.’

‘We’ll have a launch waiting. Hell have to go out to the cemetery to identify the body. Will it be someone who knew the man, Captain?’ Brunetti knew from long experience how difficult it was to recognize the dead from a photograph.

‘Yes, it’s his commanding officer at the hospital.’

‘The hospital?’

‘The man who’s missing is our Public Health Inspector, Sergeant Foster.’

‘Could you give me the name of the man who’s coming?’

‘Captain Peters. Terry Peters. And Commissario,’ Duncan added, ‘the Captain is a woman.’ There was more than a trace of smugness in his voice as he added, ‘And Captain Peters is also Doctor Peters.’

What was he meant to do, Brunetti wondered, fall over on his side because the Americans allowed women into their army? Or because they also allowed them to be doctors? Instead, he decided to out-Herod Herod and become the classic Italian who couldn’t resist the lure of anything, so long as it came in a skirt, even the skirt of a military uniform. ‘Very good, Captain. In that case, I’ll go myself to meet Captain Peters. Doctor Peters.’

Duncan took a few seconds to answer, but all he said was, ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Mr Brunetti. I’ll tell the Captain to ask for you.’

‘Yes. Do,’ Brunetti said and hung up without waiting for the other man to say goodbye. His tone, he realized without regret, had been too strong; as often happened with him, he had allowed himself to be sucked into resentment by what he thought lay between the lines of what he heard. In the past, both during Interpol seminars that had included Americans and during three months of training in Washington, he had often come up against this national sense of moral superiority, this belief so common among Americans that it had somehow been given to them to serve as a glistening moral light in a world dark with error. Perhaps that was not the case here; perhaps he was misinterpreting Duncan’s tone, and the captain had meant to do no more than help Brunetti avoid embarrassment. It’so, then his response had certainly done everything possible to confirm any cliche about hot- blooded, thin-skinned Italians.

Shaking his head in chagrin, he dialled an outside line and then his home number.

‘Pronto,’ Paola responded after three rings.

‘This time I called,’ he said without introduction.

‘Which means you’ll be late.’

‘I’ve got to go to Piazzale Roma to meet an American captain who’s coming from Vicenza to identify the body. I shouldn’t be too late, not much past nine. She’s supposed to get here by seven.’

‘She?’

‘Yes, she,’ Brunetti said. ‘My reaction was the same. She’s also a doctor.’

‘It is a world of miracles in which we live,’ Paola said. ‘Both a captain and a doctor. She had better be very good at both because she’s making you miss polenta and liver.’ It was one of his favourites, and she had probably