‘Who knows what her real reason is?’ she asked with something like anger. ‘It’s enough for Brett to want to do something or not to want to do it. She doesn’t need reasons or excuses. She does just what she wants.’ It was not lost on Brunetti that only another person with the same strength of will could find the quality so outrageous.
Though he was tempted to ask Flavia why she had come to see him, Brunetti asked, instead, ‘Is there any way you could convince her to go with you?’
‘You obviously don’t know her very well,’ Flavia said dryly, but then she smiled. ‘No, I don’t think there is. It’d probably be easier if someone told her not to go; then she’d be forced to do it, I suppose.’ She shook her head and repeated, ‘Just like my children.’
‘Would you like me to talk to her?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Do you think it would do any good?’
It was his turn to shrug. ‘I don’t know. I’m not very successful with my own children.’
She looked up, surprised. ‘I didn’t know you had children.’
‘It’s a natural enough thing for a man my age, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ she answered, and considered her next remark before speaking. ‘It’s just that I know you as a policeman, almost as if you weren’t a real person.’ Before he could say it, she added, ‘Yes, I know, and you know me as a singer.’
‘Well, I don’t really, do I?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean? We met when I was singing.’
‘Yes, but the performance was over. And, since then, I’ve only heard you sing on discs. And I’m afraid it’s not the same.’
She gave him a long look, glanced down at her lap, and then back at him. ‘If I gave you tickets to the La Scala performance, would you come?’
‘Yes, I would. Gladly.’
Her smile was open. ‘And who would you bring?’
‘My wife,’ he said simply.
‘Ah,’ she said, just as simply. How rich a single syllable could be. The smile disappeared for a moment, and when it returned, it was just as friendly, but a bit less warm.
He repeated his question. ‘Would you like me to try to talk to her?’
‘Yes. She trusts you a great deal, so she might listen to you. Someone’s got to convince her to leave Venice. I can’t.’
Unsettled by the urgency in her voice, he said, ‘I don’t think there’s really any great danger in her remaining here. Her apartment is safe, and she has enough sense not to let anyone into it. So there’s very little risk for her.’
‘Yes,’ Flavia agreed with a slowness that showed how unconvinced she was of this. As if she had suddenly come back from a long distance and found herself here, she looked around the room and asked, pulling the neck of her sweater away from her throat, ‘Do you have to stay here much longer?’
‘No, I’m free now, if you’d like to go. I’ll come back with you and see if she’ll listen to me.’
She rose to her feet and went to the window, where she stood, looking towards the covered fa c ade of San Lorenzo and then down at the canal that ran in front of the building. ‘It’s beautiful, but I don’t know how you stand it.’ Did she mean marriage, he wondered. ‘I can stand it for a week, but then I begin to feel trapped.’ Fidelity? She turned and faced him. ‘But even with all the disadvantages, it still is the most beautiful city in the world, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he answered simply and held her coat out for her.
Brunetti took two umbrellas from the cabinet against the wall and handed one of them to Flavia as they left the office. At the front door to the Questura, both guards, who usually contented themselves with giving Brunetti no more than a laconic
He linked his arm in hers and turned to the left. Occasional gusts of wind pushed the rain into their faces, then switched around and drove it against the backs of their legs. They met very few people, and all of them wore boots and oilskins, obviously Venetians who were out of their homes only because they had to be. Without conscious thought, he avoided those streets where he knew the water would already have risen and took them towards Barberia delle Tolle, which ran towards the high ground near the hospital. One bridge short of it, they came to a low-lying stretch of pavement where the slick grey water stood ankle deep. He paused, wondering how to get Flavia across it, but she let go of his arm and walked on, completely ignoring the cold water he could hear squishing up out of her shoes.
Wind and rain blasted across the open space of Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo. At one corner, a nun stood under the wildly flapping awning in front of a bar, her eviscerated umbrella clutched helplessly in front of her. The Campo itself seemed to have shrunk, its far side eaten up by the growing waters that had turned the canal into a narrow lake that spread steadily outwards from its banks.
Walking quickly, all but running, they hurried across the Campo, splashing their way towards the bridge that would take them down towards Calle della Testa and Brett’s apartment. From the top of the bridge, they could see that the water in front of them was calf deep, but neither of them paused. When they reached the water at the bottom of the bridge, Brunetti switched his umbrella to his left hand and took Flavia’s arm with his right. And not a moment too soon, for she stumbled and fell forward, kept from spilling into the water only by the force of his arm as he pulled her towards him.
