A Sea of Troubles

'How long are you planning on staying out there?'

'I can stay as long as I usually do, I suppose: a week, perhaps a bit more. It's not as if the people in the village are going to see me get down from the orange bus and come up to tell me the name of the person who did it, is it, sir? I'll just go out and stay with my cousin and see what's new and what people are talking about. Nothing at all unusual about that.'

There was little left to settle. 'Would it be too melodramatic if I asked if you'd like to take a gun with you?' he asked.

'I think it would be far more melodramatic if I accepted, sir,' she said, and turned away, as glad as he to be finished with all of this. 'I'll start seeing what I can find about the Bottins, shall I?' she asked, reaching out to swing the screen of her computer towards her.

7

'You're going to let her do what?' Paola protested that night after dinner, when he had finished telling her about his trip to Pellestrina and his subsequent conversation - he wanted to call it a confrontation but thought that was an exaggeration - with Signorina Elettra in the office. 'You're going to let her go out to Pellestrina and play detective? Alone? Unarmed? With a killer running around? Are you out of your mind, Guido?'

They were still sitting at the table, the children gone off to do whatever it is dutiful and obedient children do after dinner in order to avoid their share of the housework. She set her glass, still half full of Calvados, back on the table and stared across at him. 'I repeat: are you out of your mind?'

'There was no way I could stop her’ Brunetti insisted, conscious of how weak the admission made him sound. In his recounting of the incident, he had omitted to mention that the original idea had come from him and had given Paola a modified version in which Signorina Elettra insisted on her own initiative that she take a more active part in the investigation. Brunetti heard himself emerging from his telling of the tale as the hapless boss, outwitted by his secretary and too indulgent to endanger her career by imposing upon her the necessary discipline.

Long experience with the prevarications of men in positions of power led Paola to suspect that what she heard was at some variance with the truth. She saw no profit, however, in questioning his account of the incident when it was only the results that interested her.

'So you're going to let her go?' she repeated.

‘I told you, Paola,' he said, thinking it would be better to wait until this was over before he poured himself another Calvados, 'it's not at all a case of letting her; it's a case of not being able to stop her. If I hadn't given in, she would have taken a week of vacation and gone out there on her own anyway to start asking questions.'

'Then is she the one who's out of her mind?' Paola demanded.

Though there were many questions Brunetti would have liked answered about Signorina Elettra, this was not among them. Rather than say that, he gave in to his baser nature and poured himself another drop of Calvados.

'What does she think she's going to be able to do?' Paola asked.

He set his glass down untouched. 'The way she explained it to me, she hopes to employ the same tactics and techniques she does with her computer: ask questions, listen to the answers, then ask more questions.'

'And what if, while she's asking one of these questions, someone decides to stick a knife into her stomach the way they did with that fisherman's son?' Paola demanded.

'That's exactly what I asked her,' Brunetti said, which was certainly true in intention if not in fact.

'And?'

'She's convinced that the fact that she's been going out there every summer for years is enough.'

'To what - shroud her in a cloak of invisibility?'Paola rolled her eyes and shook her head in astonishment.

'She's not a fool, Paola,' Brunetti said in Signorina Elettra's defence.

‘I know that, but she's only a woman.'

He had been leaning forward to pick up his glass when she spoke, but her remark stopped him cold. 'This from the Rosa Luxemburg of feminism?' he asked. 'She's only a woman?'

'Oh, fight fair, Guido,' Paola said with real anger. 'You know what I mean. She'll be out there with a telefonino and her wits, but someone else is out there with a knife, and this someone has already murdered two people. Those aren't odds I'd want to give to anyone I cared about.'

He registered her last remark and let it pass for the moment. 'Perhaps you should have talked to her, instead of me.'

'No,' Paola said, ignoring his sarcasm. 'I doubt that would have done any good.' Paola had met Signorina Elettra only twice, both times at official dinners given by Patta for members of the Questura staff. Each time, though they had been introduced to one another and had managed to speak for a few moments, they had been seated at different tables, something Brunetti had always viewed as a conscious decision on Patta's part to keep the two women from talking about him.

Ever practical, Paola leaped over theory and recrimination and set herself to deal with reality. 'Is there any way you can see that someone could be put there to keep an eye on her?'

'I'm not sure at this point that that will be necessary.'

'When and if it does become necessary, it will be too late to do anything about it,' Paola said, and he was forced to agree, though he didn't tell her this.

'Well?' she insisted.

‘I spoke to Vianello to see if there's anyone on the force who lives out there.' He shook his head to indicate the answer. 'Besides, she was very insistent that she doesn't want anyone except me and Vianello to know where she is and what she's doing.' Before Paola could ask, he explained. 'She said no one in her family knows what she does, though I find that hard to believe. I'd agree it's unlikely that her relatives on Pellestrina know, especially if she sees them only once a year, but I'm sure that some members of her family must pay attention to what she does.'

'And if they do know or someone asks her about it, or someone finds out she works at the Questura?' Paola asked.

'Oh,' he said instantly, 'I'm sure she'd be able to invent something to explain it. She's an excellent liar; I've listened to her do it for years.'

'But what if she's in danger?' Paola asked, bringing him back to earth.

‘I certainly hope she isn't.'

'That's not an answer, Guido, and it's not enough.'

'There's nothing we can do. She's decided this and I don't think she can be stopped.'

'You sound very cavalier about it, I must say.'

Brunetti was uncertain of how his wife would respond to any revelation of his feelings for another woman, so he made no attempt to defend himself.

'It would be terrible if anything happened to her,' Paola said.

Biting back the confession that it would break his heart, Brunetti reached forward and picked up his Calvados.

The next morning, Brunetti got to the Questura after nine, delayed by phone calls to three different informers, calls he was always careful to make from public phones and only to their telefonini. Though all had read about the crime, none of them could give him any information about the Bottins or their murder. All promised to call him if they heard anything, but none was optimistic because the crime had taken place so far away. As far as his Venetian contacts were concerned, it might as well have taken place in Milan.

The subject of his discussion with Paola was not in her office when he got there, so he went up to his own and read quickly through the newspapers. The national papers had understandably not bothered with the Bottins, but Il Gazzettino had given them half of the first page of the second section. In the hyperventilated style the local paper reserved for crimes of violence, the article began by asking if the Bottin men had felt some sort of strange premonition or if they had known, when they woke up the previous morning, that it would turn out to be the last day of their lives. Since these questions had become, by now, the paper's opening trope in any account of any violent death, Brunetti muttered, 'Probably not.'

The story repeated the facts Brunetti had already learned: the father had died from a blow to the head, the