A Sea of Troubles

from the city for a while,' she said, then paused and the gull had something else to say. When it was finished, she went on, ‘I told Bruna I'd had 'una storia' that ended badly and wanted to get away from anything that would remind me of him.' In a softer voice, she added, 'Well, that's true enough,' and Brunetti found himself immediately curious about who he was and why it had ended.

'How long did you tell her you'd be there?'

'Oh, I was vague about that; at least a week, probably more, depending on how I felt. But I already feel better; the sun's wonderful, and the air is completely different from the city. I could stay here for ever.'

The bureaucrat in him spoke before he could help it. ‘I certainly hope you don't mean that.'

'Just a figure of speech, sir.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Walk on the beach and see who I meet. Go and have a coffee at the bar and see what's new. Talk to people. Go fishing.'

'Just a normal vacation on Pellestrina?' Brunetti asked.

'Exactly,' she said, to which the gull made no comment. With the promise to call him again, she broke the connection.

14

As she slipped the telefonino back into the left pocket of her jacket, Elettra Zorzi was glad she'd thought to bring the suede, instead of the wool. The pockets were deeper and thus more securely held the tiny Nokia, little bigger than a pack of cigarettes. And it was a better match for the navy blue slacks, though she wasn't really happy with the way it looked with the Topsiders she'd brought along to wear on the beach. She'd never liked the combination of leather and suede, wished now she'd bought that pair of fawn-coloured suede loafers she'd seen in the Fratelli Rossetti sale.

The gull called out again, but she ignored it. When it continued to squawk at her, she turned and walked directly at it until it took off and flew away down the beach in the direction of the Riserva of Ca' Roman. Like most Venetians, she tolerated gulls but loathed pigeons, which she viewed as a source of constant trouble, their nests blocking drainpipes and their constant droppings turning marble into meringue. She thought of the tourists she'd often seen in San Marco, pigeons hopping about on their heads and outstretched arms, and she shivered: flying rats.

She continued down the beach, away from the village, glad of the feel of the sun on her back, intent on nothing more than reaching San Pietro in Volta and having a coffee before turning back to Pellestrina. She lengthened her stride, aware at every step of how long she'd been sitting at a desk and how much her body rejoiced in this simple act of walking on the beach in the sun.

Her cousin Bruna, when she'd called last week, had not seemed at all surprised at her suggestion that she come out for a week or so. When she asked why Elettra was free at such short notice, she decided to tell at least part of the truth and explained that she and her boyfriend had planned for months to go to France for two weeks, but their sudden separation had ended those plans, leaving her with the impossibility of changing her request for vacation time. Bruna had shown no sign of taking offence at being only second choice and had insisted she come out immediately, to leave all thought of him behind in the city.

Though she'd been on Pellestrina only two days, it had pretty much worked. Her ex-boyfriend was a doctor, one of her sister's friends, and she'd probably known for months that he was wrong: too serious, too ambitious, and, she had to admit even this, too greedy. She had feared that being on her own again would be painful; instead, she had begun to realize, she felt rather like that gull: it hadn't liked the way it was treated, so it had taken flight and soared away.

She walked down to the water's edge and stooped to pull off her shoes and roll up the bottoms of her slacks. She could stand the water only for seconds before she danced back on to the sand, then flopped down and rubbed at one, then the other, foot. When they felt like feet again, she hooked two fingers into the backs of her shoes and walked along, barefoot, free, remembering what it was like to be happy.

Soon enough she ran out of sand and had to climb the steps to the top of the sea wall. Boats went about their boaty business to her right, and soon the small village of San Pietro in Volta appeared on her left.

At the bar, which occupied the ground floor of someone's house, she asked for a mineral water and a coffee, drank the water greedily, and sipped at her coffee. The man behind the bar, who was in his sixties, remembered her from other visits and asked when she had arrived. They fell into easy conversation, and soon he was talking about the recent murders, events in which she appeared to take little interest.

'Cut open, gutted like a fish,' he said. 'Pity. He was a nice boy. Amazing, really, when you think about his father.' Not enough time had passed for people to start to tell the whole truth about Bottin, she realized: he was still close enough to life to make people cautious about what they had to say of him.

‘I didn't know them,' she said and glanced idly at the front page of ‘‘ Gazzettino that lay folded on the top of the counter.

'Marco went to school with my granddaughter,' he said.

Elettra paid for the water and the coffee, said how wonderful it was to be out here again, and left. She used the sea wall to walk the entire way back to Pellestrina, and by the time she got there she was thirsty again, so she went into the front part of the restaurant for a glass of prosecco. And who should serve her but Pucetti himself, who paid her no more attention than he would any other attractive woman a few years older than he.

As she drank it, she listened to the men clustered at the bar. They too paid little attention to her, having slotted her into place as Bruna's cousin, the one who came out every summer, and thus a sort of honorary native.

The murders were mentioned, but only in passing, as just another example of the bad luck that afflicts all fishermen. More important, they discussed what to do about those bastards from

Chioggia who were coming over into their waters at night and ripping up the clam beds. One man suggested they tell the police; no one bothered to respond to a suggestion so patently stupid.

She went to the cash register and paid. The owner also remembered her as Bruna's cousin and welcomed her back. They chatted idly for a while, and when he too mentioned the recent murders, she said she was on vacation and didn't want to hear about such things, suggesting by her tone that people from the big city didn't really take much interest in the doings of provincials, however sanguinary they might be.

The rest of the day, and the next, passed quietly enough. She heard nothing new but was still careful to call Brunetti again and tell him that much, or that little. Remaining strong in her refusal to discuss the recent murders, she quickly adapted to the rhythm of Pellestrina, a village that led life at its own pace. The bulk of the population sailed off to work while it was still dark and returned only in the late morning or early afternoon. Many people went to bed not long after nightfall. She soon fell into a routine. Bruna took care of her grandchildren every day, while their mother taught in the local elementary school. To avoid the confusion brought into the house by the presence of two young children, Elettra spent most of her days outside, walking on the beach, occasionally taking the boat over to Chioggia for a few hours. But she always ended up having a coffee in the bar of the restaurant just at the time the men from the boats began to drift in.

Within days, she was an attractive fixture, and one that responded to any mention of the Bottins or their murder with silence. She realized from the first that they all disliked Giulio; only as time passed did she begin to sense that the objection to him went far beyond his penchant for violence. After all, these were men who made their living by killing, and though their victims were only fish, the job had rendered many of them casual about blood and gore and the taking of life. The savagery of Giulio's disposal seemed not to trouble them in the least; in fact, if they mentioned it at all, it was with something like grudging admiration. What they seemed to object to was his refusal to put the good of the hunting pack of Pellestrinotti ahead of all else. Any act of aggression or betrayal, so long as it was directed against the fishermen of Chioggia was completely justified, even praiseworthy. Giulio Bottin, however, had seemed capable of behaving in the same way towards his own kind, if it would work to his advantage, and this was something they would not forgive, not even after death, and not even after a death as horrible as his had been.

On the Wednesday afternoon, as she sat at a table in the front part of the bar, reading through Il Gazzettino and paying no attention, none at all, to the conversations around her, she was conscious of the arrival of someone new. She didn't look up until she had read a few more pages, and when she did, she saw a man a few years older than herself, the casual elegance of whose appearance made him stand out among the