A Sea of Troubles

After the promised moment, a woman emerged, pushing aside the white cotton curtain that separated the shop from the rooms behind it. She wore a short green dress with a scooped neck, and shoes with heels uncomfortably high for a woman who stood behind a counter all day. 'Buon giorno,' she said in their direction, stopping just in front of the curtain. She stood silently for a moment, and Brunetti saw that she was a woman in the most recent flower of her youth, though its apparent blossoming had been much repeated, no doubt at ever shorter intervals.

Her hair was dandelion blonde, though it seemed brighter still because of the deep tan of her skin. Brunetti had once taken a three-day seminar in advanced methods of suspect identification, two hours of which had concerned the means criminals use to disguise their appearance. He had been, quite frankly and perhaps because he spent so much of his life observing women, fascinated by the varieties of plastic surgery by which a face could be transformed and identity disguised. He noted some of those techniques on display here, and it occurred to him that the police could have used this woman's face as an exhibit, for the signs of the work done were so easily detectable.

Her eyes had a faint Oriental cast to them, and she was doomed forever to respond to life with a small smile that parted her lips in perpetual happy anticipation. A butcher could have sharpened his knives on the long line of her jaw. Her nose, pert and upturned, would have done wonders for the face of a woman thirty years her junior. On hers, it struck a note of visual dissonance, placed as it was over a broad, thick-lipped mouth. Brunetti judged her to be a few years older than himself.

'May I help you?' she asked, moving behind the low counter.

'Yes, Signora Follini’ Brunetti answered, stepping forward. 'I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti. I'm here to investigate the accident that took place this morning.' He started to reach for his wallet to show her his warrant card, but she waved him away impatiently.

She glanced at Vianello then returned her attention to Brunetti.

'Accident?' she asked neutrally.

Brunetti shrugged. 'Until we have reason to believe it was something else, that's how it's being treated,' he answered.

She nodded but offered nothing further.

'Did you know them, Signora?'

'Bottin and Marco?' she asked unnecessarily.

'Yes.'

'They came in here,' she said, as if that were enough.

'As customers, you mean?' he asked, though in a place as small as Pellestrina, eventually everyone would be her customer.

'Yes.'

'And beyond that? Were they friends of yours?'

She paused and thought for a moment. 'Perhaps you could say Marco was a friend.' She put special emphasis on the word 'friend', as if to suggest the interesting possibility that they had been more than that, then added, 'But definitely not his father.'

'And why was that?' Brunetti asked.

This time it was her turn to shrug. 'We didn't get along.'

'About anything in particular?'

'About everything in particular,' she said, smiling at the speed of her own response. Her smile, which exposed perfect teeth and permitted the appearance of only two small wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, gave Brunetti a suggestion of what she might have been had she not decided to devote her middle years to the reacquisition of her earlier ones.

'And why was that?' he asked.

'Our fathers had a fight when they were young men, about fifty years ago,' she said, her delivery this time so deadpan that Brunetti had no idea if she was being serious or making fun of the way things were supposed to be in small villages.

‘I doubt that either you or Giulio could have been much affected,' Brunetti said, then added, 'You couldn't even have been born at the time.'

He had spoken with the excessive sincerity of flattery. Her smile this time created pairs of wrinkles, though very small ones. Paola had taught a class in the sonnet last year, and Brunetti remembered one - he thought it was

English - that said something about the denial of age, a form of deceit that had always seemed particularly pathetic to Brunetti.

'But didn't you have to deal with him, the older Bottin?' Brunetti asked. 'After all, this is a small village: people here must see one another every day.'

She actually put the back of her hand to her forehead when she answered, 'Don't tell me about that. I know, I know. From long experience, I know what people in small villages are like. All they need is the tiniest thing, and they invent lies about everyone.' Her studied performance of this lament raised in Brunetti's mind a certain curiosity as to the whereabouts, or the actual existence, of Signor Follini. She glanced at Vianello and opened her mouth to continue.

'And Signor Bottin?' Brunetti cut her off by asking. 'Did they invent lies about him, as well?'

Seemingly unoffended by Brunetti's interruption, she said with some asperity, 'The truth would have sufficed.'

'The truth about what?'

Her expression showed him just how eager she was to tell him, but then he saw the precise moment when the discretion that is learned from life in small villages returned to her.

'Oh, the usual things,' she said with an airy wave of the hand, and Brunetti knew it was useless to try to get anything more from her.

Nevertheless, he asked, 'What things?'

After a long pause which she clearly was using to choose examples as meaningless as she could make them, she said, That he was unkind to his wife and harsh with his son.'

'I would guess those things could be said about most men.'

'I doubt they're said about you, officer,' she said, leaning forward over the counter suggestively.

Vianello chose this moment to interrupt. The pilot said we had to get back, sir,' he said in a quiet voice, though loud enough for her to hear.

'Yes, of course, Sergeant,' Brunetti answered in his most official tone. Turning back to Signora Follini and giving her a brief smile, he said, 'I'm afraid that's all for now, Signora. If we have any further questions, someone will come out again.'

'Not you?' she asked, attempting to sound disappointed.

'Perhaps’ Brunetti answered, 'if it's necessary.'

He thanked her for her time and, Vianello preceding, they left the store. Vianello turned left and then right, already familiar with the few streets that made up the centre of Pellestrina.

'And not a moment too soon, Sergeant’ Brunetti said with a laugh.

'I thought it best to try to get us out by means of cunning, sir.'

'And if that hadn't worked?'

‘I had my gun’ Vianello answered, patting his holster.

Ahead of them loomed the sea wall, and on impulse Brunetti crossed the narrow road that led down to the end of the peninsula and started up the steps cut into the side of the wall. At the top, he moved aside to make room for Vianello on the narrow cement walkway that ran off in both directions.

Beyond them stretched the quietly moving waters of the Adriatic; dotted in the middle distance were tankers and cargo ships. And beyond those lay the open wound of the former Yugoslavia.

'It's strange, isn't it, sir, the way women like that seem absurd if they have 'un lifting' but when they're richer or more famous, they don't?'

Brunetti considered two friends of his wife's known for their frequent disappearances to Rome and for their subsequent transformations. Because they were wealthy, the work was better done than it had been on the face of Signora Follini, so the results were less obvious and thus more successful. To him, however, the desire that