A Sea of Troubles

His mind was still processing this information when his body moved. It pushed aside reflection, cause-effect reasoning, and the ability to draw a conclusion, all those things which are said to define humanity. His body pounded up the stairs, he opened his mouth and emitted an animal roar of bare-fanged aggression. Bonsuan turned, very gently and slowly, like a groom about to kiss his bride, and fell down the steps towards Brunetti. He twisted as he fell, his weight so heavy that Brunetti had no hope of supporting him as he crashed past him. The piece of wood jutting from his chest, a thick sliver that could at one time have been an oar, or a sharp piece of tree limb, dragged across Brunetti's legs, snagging the wool of his trousers and leaving a red welt on his thighs.

Instinct registered that Bonsuan was beyond help and propelled Brunetti up the stairs and into the fading light of a tranquil spring evening. In front of him stood a short, barrel-chested man, one of the men he'd seen in Signora Follini's store, his hands raised in a wrestler's expectant grasp. He'd been momentarily stunned by Brunetti's shout and now by his sudden appearance, but now he recovered and moved towards Brunetti on wide- spread legs, his thick body compressed with menace. His left hand glowed red in the light of the setting sun.

Brunetti was unarmed. As an adult, words and wit had always served him as sufficient weaponry, and he had seldom, since becoming a policeman, been called upon to defend himself. But he had been raised a Venetian, in a poor family, with a father given to violence and drink. He had learned early how to defend himself, not only against his father but against anyone who mocked him for his father's behaviour. Civilization dropped from him, and he kicked the man between the legs.

Spadini crumpled, collapsed to the ground with a howl, his hands helplessly clutching at himself. He lay there, moaning and sobbing, paralysed with pain. Brunetti ran down the steps and turned Bonsuan gently on to his back; the pilot looked back at him with surprised eyes. Brunetti flipped Bonsuan's jacket open and pulled his clasp knife from the right pocket of his uniform trousers, where he'd seen the pilot put it a hundred times, a thousand times, for more years than Chiara had been alive. Brunetti ran back up the stairs.

The man still lay on the ground; his moans had not decreased. Looking around him, Brunetti saw a plastic shopping bag lying on the ground; he picked it up and, using Bonsuan's knife, sliced it into strips. He yanked the man's hands away from his body and pulled them behind him. Roughly, wanting to hurt him, Brunetti tied his wrists together, then found another bag and repeated the process, careless of how tightly he drew the strips. He tested them by trying to pull the man's arms apart, but they held fast. He found a third bag, cut it into more strips, and tied the man's ankles together. Then, remembering something he'd once read in a report from Amnesty International, he threaded a strip between the wrists and the ankles and yanked the man's legs up until he was anchored in a backward curve that Brunetti hoped was even more painful than it looked.

More slowly this time, he went back down the steps and over to Bonsuan. Knowing that the bodies of murder victims must not be touched until the medical examiner has declared them dead, he nevertheless bent down over Bonsuan and pressed his eyes closed, keeping his fingers pressed against the lids for long seconds. When he took his hands away, the eyes remained shut. He searched the pockets of Bonsuan's jacket, then of his thermal vest, bloody now, until he found the pilot's telefonino.

He went back outside and dialled 112. The phone rang fifteen times before it was answered. Too tired to comment, he gave his name and rank and explained where he was. He gave a brief account of the situation and asked that either a launch or a helicopter be sent immediately.

'This is the Carabinieri, Commissario,' the young officer explained. 'Perhaps it would be better if you called your own commander with your request'

The chill that had worked itself into Brunetti's bones washed into his voice. 'Officer, it is now 6.37. If your phone log doesn't show you placed a call for a launch or helicopter within the next two minutes, you will regret it.' As he spoke, he began to spin wild plans: to find out this man's name, to have Paola's father use his position to threaten his commander into dismissing him, tell the other pilots who had refused to help Bonsuan.

Before he got to the end of the list, the man answered, 'Yes, sir,' and hung up.

From memory, he dialled Vianello's number.

'Vianello,' he answered on the third ring.

'It's me, Lorenzo,' Brunetti said.

'What's wrong?'

'Bonsuan's dead. I'm at Ca' Roman, by the fort.' He waited for Vianello to say something, but the sergeant remained silent, waiting.

'I've got the man who did it. He's here.' The man lay at his feet, his face flushed crimson as he strained at the strips holding him in that painful, helpless curve. Brunetti looked down at him, and the man opened his mouth, either to protest or to implore.

Brunetti kicked him. He didn't aim for any particular place, not for his head and not for his face. He just lashed out with his right foot, and as chance had it, he caught the man on the top of his shoulder, just where it joined his neck. He groaned and went silent.

Brunetti turned his attention back to Vianello. 'I called and told them to send a launch or a helicopter.'

'Who'd you call?' Vianello asked.

'I dialled 112.'

'They're hopeless’ Vianello decreed. 'I'll call Massimo and get out there in half an hour. Where are you, exactly?'

'By the fort’ Brunetti said, not at all concerned to know who Massimo was or just what Vianello would do.

'I'll be there’ Vianello said and hung up.

Brunetti put the telefonino into the pocket of his jacket, forgetting to switch it off. Without so much as a glance at the man on the ground, he went and sat on an immense stone by the wall of the fort. He leaned back against the wall and stared off to the west, his face warmed by the fading rays of the sun. He took his hands from his armpits and held the palms out towards the sun, as a chilled man would towards a fire. He thought of removing his jacket but decided it would take too much effort to do so, even though he knew he'd be warmer if he could free himself of its sodden weight.

He waited for something to happen. Nothing much did. The man on the ground moaned and moved around but Brunetti bothered to look at him only occasionally and then only to assure himself that his ankles and hands were still securely tied. At one point, he found himself thinking that, if he were to pick up one of the stones that lay nearby and hit the man on the front of the head with it, he could claim the man had attacked him after killing Bonsuan and he'd died during the ensuing struggle. It troubled Brunetti to find himself thinking this, but it troubled him even more to realize he was dissuaded from action, at least in part, by his realization that the marks of the ligatures on the man's wrists and ankles would show what had really happened.

Slowly, taking the warmth of the day with it, the sun surrendered itself to the grey flatness of the coastline. To the north, the light faded, erasing the jagged ramparts and jutting spires of that horror, Marghera. He heard a fly buzz. Listening intently, he realized it was not a fly but the sound of a motor, sharp and high and approaching at great speed. A launch from the Questura? Vianello and the heroic Massimo? Brunetti had no idea which of his possible saviours it might be; it could just as easily be a passing taxi or some waterborne commuter hurrying home, now that the storm was over and peace restored. He thought for a moment of what a comfort it would be to see Vianello, tough and bear-like Vianello, and then he remembered that Vianello was Bonsuan's greatest friend on the force.

He had three daughters, Bonsuan: a doctor, an architect and a lawyer, and it had all been done on the salary of a police pilot. Yet Bonsuan had always been the first to insist on paying for a round of coffees or drinks; police rumour had it that he and his wife helped support a young Bosnian woman who had studied law with their youngest daughter and needed to pass only two more exams before graduation. Brunetti had no idea if this were true, and now he'd probably never know. It hardly mattered, though.

The buzzing grew closer, then stopped, and he heard a man's voice shout his name.

26

Brunetti pushed himself to his feet, feeling for the first time in his life a warning shot from the territory of age. So this was what it would be like, the aching hip, the long pull of muscles in the thighs, the unsteadiness of the ground under his feet, and the overwhelming realization that everything was simply too much trouble. He started towards the beach, heading in the general direction of the voice that had called his name. Once he stumbled when his right foot caught in a trailing plant, and another time he started back in fear when a bird shot up from under his feet, no doubt warning him away from her nest.