A Sea of Troubles

stretched his legs out in front of him, his cup held between both hands. 'I'm over-reacting, I know, to this thing with the woman getting married, but every once in a while I read something or something happens, and I just can't stand it'

'Didn't the papers say he beat her?' Paola asked.

‘I know someone in Bologna. He did the original questioning. She said nothing about that until she spoke to a lawyer. She'd been having an affair with the guy she married.'

'None of that was in the papers, so I suppose none of it was mentioned at her trial,' Paola said.

'No, there was no proof of the affair. But she killed the husband, maybe during an argument, as she said, and now she's married to the other guy, and nothing will happen to her.'

'Happily ever after?' Paola suggested.

'That's only a small case,' he began but instantly corrected himself, 'No, no one's murder is small. I mean it was a single case, and maybe there'd been an argument. But it happens all the time: men kill ten, twenty people, and then some clever lawyer, or more often, some incompetent judge, gets them out. And they don't hesitate a minute till they go back to doing what they do best, killing people.'

Paola, who had long experience of listening to him in these moments, had never heard Brunetti so distressed or angry about the conditions under which he worked.

'What would you do if you retired?'

'That's just it: I have no idea. It's too late to try to take the law exams; I'd probably have to go back to university and start all over again.'

'If there is one thing I recommend you don't do,' she interrupted, 'it is to think about going back to university.' Her shudder of horror at the thought was no less real for being consciously manufactured.

They considered the question for a while, but neither came up with anything. Finally Paola said, 'Didn't the noble Romans always go back to their farms and devote themselves to the improvement of the land and the writing of letters to friends in the city, lamenting the state of the Empire?'

'Umm,' Brunetti agreed. 'But I'm afraid I'm not noble.'

'And thank God you're not a Roman’ Paola added.

'Nor do we have a farm.'

'I suppose that means you can't retire’ she concluded and asked for another cup of tisane.

The weekend passed quietly. Brunetti had no clear idea of when Signorina Elettra planned to go out to Pellestrina. He thought of calling her at home, even looked up her number in the phone book, something he'd never done before. He found the listing, a low number in Castello that would put her home, he calculated, somewhere near Santa Maria Formosa. While he had the page open, he checked for other Zorzis and found at least two who lived within a few numbers of her address: family?

She had given him the number of her telefonino, but he'd left it in the office, and so short of calling her at home, he had no way of knowing what she was doing until Monday morning, when he would or would not see her at her desk at the Questura.

On Saturday evening, Pucetti called to tell him he was already on Pellestrina and already at work, though he had seen no sign of Signorina Elettra. His brother-in-law, Pucetti explained, after discovering that he and the owner of the restaurant in Pellestrina had many acquaintances in common, had secured Pucetti the chance to work at least until the owner could find out if Scarpa was coming back.

On Sunday afternoon Brunetti went into the room that had, over the course of years, been transformed from spare bedroom to junk room. On top of a wardrobe in one corner he found the hand-painted chest that had somehow come to him from his Uncle Claudio, the one who had always wanted to be a painter. Large enough to house a German Shepherd, the chest was entirely covered with brightly coloured flowers of confused species, assembled in gaudy promiscuity. For some reason it held maps, all thrown inside with much the same confusion as prevailed on the top and sides of the box.

Brunetti began by shifting them from one side to the other as he hunted for the map he wanted. Finally, when this proved futile, he began the slow, inescapable process of removing them one by one. The more he looked, the more it wasn't there. At last, after he had shifted most of the nations and continents of the world, he found the map of the laguna he had used, years ago, when he and his schoolfriends spent weekends and holidays exploring the weaving channels that surrounded the city.

He dropped the other maps back into the box and took the map of the laguna out on to the terrace. Careful of the long-dried tape that held parts of it together, he opened it slowly and stretched it out on the table. How tiny the islands looked, surrounded by the vast expanse of palude. For kilometres in every direction, the capillaries and veins of the channels spread, pumping water in and out twice a day, as regular as the moon itself. For a thousand years, those few canals at Chioggia, Malamocco and San Nicolo had served as aortas, keeping the waters clean, even at the height of the Serenissima's power, when hundreds of thousands of people had lived there, their waste added to the waters every day.

Brunetti caught himself before this thought could take its familiar course. He recalled what Paola had said two nights ago, of the disgruntled Roman, life blighted by displeasure with the present, ever longing for the better past he knew was lost, and he pulled his thoughts away from history and turned them to geography.

The immensity of the area depicted on the map reminded him how lost he was in it and how ignorant of how things were organized upon its waters, even in relation to the jurisdiction of crimes. If cases were given out, rather in the manner of party favours, to the first comer, then how could one expect to find consistent records of what had happened there?

He assumed that large fish were taken from the Adriatic; where then did the clams and shrimp come from? He had no idea what places in the laguna could legitimately be used for fishing, though he assumed that all of the shallow waters lying just off the coast of Marghera would be closed. Yet if what Bonsuan said, and Vianello believed, was true, then even that area was still fished.

He sometimes went to Rialto with Paola to buy fish and recalled the sign often placed on the gleaming skins of the fish on display: 'Nostrani’ as if the claim that the fish was 'Ours' somehow imbued it with health and goodness, washed it clean of even the thought of contamination. He'd seen the same sign on cherries, peaches, plums, and again, he realized, the same magic was meant to work: the fact that the fruit was Italian was enough to sweep it clean of all taint of chemical or pesticide and render it pure as mother's milk.

He'd once read a book that traced the history of what people ate, and so he knew that his ancestors, far from having enjoyed an Edenic diet both safe and healthy, had ingested vast quantities of chemicals and poisons with every bite and had risked tuberculosis, and worse, with every sip of milk.

Dissatisfied by his own dissatisfaction, he folded the map and took it back into the apartment. 'Paola,' he called towards the back of the apartment, 'let's go get a drink.'

The first thing he learned on Monday morning was that, despite his plans, he was in charge while Patta was gone. Marotta, it turned out, had been summoned back to Turin for a week to testify in a case.. He had not been directly involved, had merely been in charge of a squad of detectives when two of them had made the arrest of six suspects in an arms trafficking case. It was highly unlikely that he would be called to testify, he probably could have refused to go, but as it meant a trip home at government expense as well as a living allowance for the time he was there, he accepted, leaving a note for Brunetti explaining that his presence was essential to the successful prosecution of the case and that he was sure Vice-Questore Patta would approve of his decision to designate Brunetti as his own acting commander.

Repeatedly he called down to Signorina Elettra's office during the course of the morning, but as it was her habit not to overburden the Questura with her presence when her superior was absent, he wasn't certain whether she had decided to sleep until noon or to go out to Pellestrina. At eleven, his phone rang, and he was greatly relieved to hear her voice.

'Where are you, Signorina?' he asked, rather than demanded.

'On the beach of Pellestrina, sir, the side that faces the sea. Did you know they'd removed the grounded ship?' When he didn't answer, she went on, ‘I was surprised not to see it there. My cousin said they hauled it off last year. I miss it.'

'When did you get there, Signorina?'

'I came out before lunch on Saturday because I wanted to have as much time here as possible.'

'What did you tell your cousin?'

He heard the sharp cry of a seagull. 'That I was sorry I hadn't been out for so long but I wanted to get away