A Sea of Troubles

boat backwards; Bonsuan let it drift for a few minutes but then went back into the cabin, fired the engine to life, and pulled the boat back into place directly behind the gap in the line of boats. He cut the engine and came back out on deck. He reached down and picked up a rope. Effortlessly, he tossed it towards the Fire Department boat, looping it around a stanchion the first time, and tied their own boat to the other. Below them, they could see motion, but it was no more than gleams and flashes, and they could make no sense of it. Bonsuan finished his cigarette and tossed the butt overboard, like most Venetians utterly careless about what he threw into the water. The two men watched the filter float, then dance, in the fizzing bubbles before freeing itself and drifting away.

After about five minutes, the divers surfaced and pulled back their masks. Graziano, the more senior, called up to the men on the police boat, 'There's two of them down there.'

'What happened?' Vianello asked.

Graziano shook his head. 'No idea. It looks like they drowned when the boat went down.'

'They're fishermen,' Bonsuan said in disbelief. 'They wouldn't get trapped in a sinking boat.'

Graziano's business was to dive into the water, not to speculate on what he found there, so he said nothing. When Bonsuan remained silent, the man bobbing on the surface beside Graziano asked, 'Do you want us to bring them up?'

Vianello and Bonsuan exchanged a glance. Neither of them had any idea of what had happened to take the two men down with their boat, but neither of them wanted to make a decision of this sort and thus run the risk of destroying whatever evidence might be down there with them.

Finally Graziano said, 'The crabs are there already.'

'OK, get them out,' Vianello said.

Graziano and his partner pulled on their masks, slipped the mouthpieces into place, and, like a pair of eider ducks, upended themselves and disappeared. The pilot went down the cabin steps, pulled open one of the seats along the side, and took out some complicated rigging from the end of which hung a double canvas sling. He came up the steps and back to Vianello's side. He raised the rope, slung it over the side of the boat, and lowered it into the water.

A minute later Graziano and his partner bobbed to the surface, the body of a third man dangling limp between them. With motions so practised it made Vianello uneasy to watch them, they eased the arms of the dead man into the sling Bonsuan tossed down; one of them dived under the water to run a rope between the man's legs, then attached it to a hook on the front of the sling.

He waved to Bonsuan and the pilot and Vianello hauled the dead man up, amazed at how heavy he was. Vianello caught himself thinking that this was why it was called dead weight, but he forced himself, embarrassed, away from that thought. Slowly the body lifted out of the water, and the two men had to lean out from the deck to prevent it from banging against the side. They were not entirely successful, but finally they dragged him over the railing and laid him on the deck, his sightless eyes staring up at the sky.

Before they could take a closer look, they heard splashing below them. Quickly, they loosened the sling and threw it over the side again. Even more careful this time to keep the second body from the side of the boat, they hauled it up on to the deck and stretched it out beside the other.

Two crabs still clung to the hair of the first corpse, but Vianello was too horrified by the sight to do anything except stare. Bonsuan reached down and pulled them off, casually tossing them over the side of the boat into the water.

The divers climbed up the ladder on the side of the police boat and stepped over the gunwale and on to the deck. They unhooked their oxygen tanks and set them carefully down, pulled off their masks, then the black rubber hoods that covered their heads.

On the deck of the police launch, the four men looked at the bodies that lay at their feet. Vianello went into the cabin, and when he emerged he had two woollen blankets in his hands. He stuffed one under his elbow, signalled to Bonsuan, and shook out the first one. The pilot caught the other end, and together they lowered it over the body of the older man. Vianello took the second blanket, and together they repeated the process with the son.

It was only then, when they were fully covered and hidden from sight, that Graziano's partner, the youngest living person on the boat, said, 'No crab did that to his face.'

4

Vianello had seen the crushed fragments of bone showing through the bloodless wound on the older man's head, though his quick glance had discerned no sign of violence on the son's body. Nodding in acknowledgement of the diver's remark, he took out his telefonino, called the Questura, and asked to speak to his immediate superior, Commissario Guido Brunetti. While he waited, he watched the two divers climb on to their own boat. Brunetti finally answered, and the sergeant said, 'I'm out here on Pellestrina, sir. It looks like one of them was killed.' Then, to avoid any ambiguity, given the fact that the men had died in what appeared to be an accident, he continued, 'That is, murdered.' 'How?' Brunetti asked.

'The older one was hit on the head, hard enough to do a lot of damage. I don't know about the other one, the son.'

'Are you sure who they are?' his superior asked.

Vianello had been expecting the question. 'No, sir. That is, no one's given us a positive identification, but the man who called the Carabinieri said they were the owners of the boat, Giulio Bottin and his son, so we just assumed that's who they were.'

'See if you can get someone to confirm that.'

'Yes, sir. Anything else?'

'Just the usual. Ask around, see what people say and what they volunteer about them.' Before Vianello could ask, Brunetti added, 'Don't act as though it's anything more than an accident. And talk to the divers, tell them they aren't to say anything.'

'How long do you think that will last?' Vianello asked, looking across to the deck of the other boat, where the two divers, now stripped of their diving gear, were putting on their normal uniforms.

'Ten minutes, I'd guess,' Brunetti said, with a soft explosion of breath that, in other circumstances, might have been a laugh.

'I'll send them back to the Lido, then,' Vianello said. 'That will at least slow things down.' Before Brunetti could comment, the sergeant asked, 'What do you want to do, sir?'

'I want to keep this quiet as long as we can, that they were killed. Start asking around, but gently, and I'll come out. If there's a boat free, I should be there in an hour, maybe less.'

Vianello was relieved. 'Good, sir. Do you want Bonsuan to take the bodies to the hospital?'

'Yes, as soon as you get an identification. I'll call and tell them he's coming in.' Suddenly there was nothing more to be said or ordered. Repeating that he'd be there as soon as he could, Brunetti hung up.

He looked at his watch again, and saw that it was past eleven: surely his superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, should be in his office by now. He walked downstairs without bothering to call ahead and went into the small anteroom that led to the Vice-Questore's much larger office.

Patta's secretary, Signorina Elettra Zorzi, sat at her desk, a book open in front of her. He was surprised to see her reading a book in the office, accustomed as he was to seeing her with magazines and newspapers. Because she had her chin propped on her cupped palms and her fingers pressed over her ears, it was not until she sensed his presence and sat up that he noticed she had cut her hair. It was shorter than usual, and if the roundness of her face and the vermilion of her lips had not declared her femininity, he would have judged the cut severe, almost masculine.

He didn't know how to acknowledge her new hairstyle and, like everyone else in a city where it had not rained for three months, he was tired of asking when it would rain, so he asked, nodding towards the book, 'Something more serious than usual?'

'Veblen,' she answered, 'The Theory of the Leisure Class.' He was flattered that she didn't bother to ask if he was familiar with the book.

'Isn't that a bit heavy?'

She agreed, then said, ‘I used not to be able to get any serious reading done here, what with the constant interruptions.' She pursed her lips as her eyes travelled round her office in an arc that encompassed phone, computer, and the door to Patta's office. 'But things have improved, so I can start to make better use of my time.'