Beastly Things

Brunetti resisted the urge to say that it was about time that he had; instead he asked, ‘And what do they tell you? Us?’

With the ease of a young man who spent most of his time on boats, Foa got to his feet and, bracing his hands on the top of the windscreen, flipped himself over it effortlessly, landing upright on the deck. ‘There was a neap tide that night, Commissario,’ he said, pulling a sheet of paper from his pocket.

Brunetti recognized a map of the area around the Giustinian Hospital. Holding it towards them, Foa said, ‘The tide turned at three twenty-seven that morning, and they found him at six, so if Dottor Rizzardi’s right and he was in the water for about six hours, then he wouldn’t have gone far from where he went in. Not unless he got slowed down by something.’ Then, before either could comment or question, he added, ‘That’s assuming he drifted back the way he came, which he probably did.’

‘And in the slack tide?’ Brunetti asked.

‘It’s longest with the neap tide, sir, so the water would have been still a long time,’ Foa said. The pilot tapped at a point on the map. ‘This is where they found him.’ Then he moved his finger back and forth along Rio del Malpaga. ‘My guess is that he went in somewhere on either side of that spot.’ Foa shrugged. ‘Unless he was snagged for a while on something, as I said: a bridge, a mooring cable, a piling. Unless that happened, then I’d guess he went in not more than a hundred metres from where they found him.’

Over the bent head of the pilot, Vianello and Brunetti exchanged a glance. A hundred metres, Brunetti thought. How many water doors would there be? How many calli coming to a dead end at the water? How many unlit angles where a boat could stop and unburden itself of its cargo?

‘You have a girlfriend, don’t you, Foa?’

‘A fiancee, sir,’ Foa answered promptly.

Brunetti all but heard Vianello’s teeth grinding together as he stopped himself from saying that one did not exclude the other. ‘Good. And you have your own boat, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sir, a sandolo.’

‘With a motor?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Foa answered with mounting confusion.

‘Good, then what I want the two of you to do is take a camera and go up and down Rio del Malpaga, taking photos of all the water gates.’ He pulled the map towards him and pointed to the place Foa had indicated. ‘And then go back and walk in front of the houses – both sides of the canal – and find the street numbers of the buildings where the gates are, then give the list to Signorina Elettra.’

‘Do you want me to copy the names on the doorbells while we’re there, sir?’ Foa asked, and moved a step higher in Brunetti’s estimation.

Brunetti thought of how conspicuous this would be. ‘No. Only the numbers of the houses you think have water gates, all right?’

‘When, sir?’ Foa asked.

‘As soon as possible,’ Brunetti said, then, with a look around them, added, ‘Can you do it this afternoon?’

Foa fought to contain his glee at being suddenly promoted to something more closely resembling a policeman. ‘I’ll call her and tell her to leave work,’ he said.

‘So can you, Foa. Tell Battisti I said you’re on special assignment.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the pilot said with a smart salute.

Brunetti and Vianello turned away from the smiling officer and entered the Questura. When they reached the bottom of the steps, Vianello stopped like a horse that sees something dangerous lying in its path. He turned to look at Brunetti, unable to hide his emotions. ‘I keep thinking about yesterday.’ He gave an embarrassed smile and added, ‘We’ve seen much worse. When it was people.’ He shook his head at his own confusion. ‘I don’t understand. But I don’t think I want to be here today.’

The simplicity of Vianello’s confession struck Brunetti with sudden force. His impulse was to put his arm around his friend’s shoulder, but he contented himself with a pat to his upper arm, saying only, ‘Yes.’ The word conveyed his own lingering shock after yesterday’s visit to the slaughterhouse and today’s effort of disguising his deep dislike of Meucci, but chiefly it expressed his longing to return to his nest and have about him the sheer animal comfort of the people he held most dear.

He repeated, ‘Yes. Tomorrow we can start from the beginning and talk it all through.’ It was hardly sufficient justification for their going home at this hour, but Brunetti didn’t care, so strongly had he been infected with Vianello’s visceral need to leave. He could tell himself that any lingering smell was merely a phantom of his imagination, but he wasn’t fully convinced. He could tell himself that what he had seen in Preganziol was merely the way some things were done, but that changed nothing.

* * *

An hour later, a pink-skinned Brunetti stood, a towel wrapped around his waist after his second shower of the day, in front of a mirror in which he did not appear, or if he did, it was as a damp mirage dimly visible behind the condensation. Occasionally a group of water droplets coalesced and raced downwards, opening up a pink slit on the surface. He wiped his hand across the mirror, but the steam instantly covered the place he had swept clean.

Behind him, someone knocked on the door. ‘You all right?’ he heard Paola ask.

‘Yes,’ he called back and turned to open the door, allowing a sudden flood of cold, stinging air into the room. ‘Oddio!’ he said and grabbed his flannel bathrobe from the back of the door. Not until he was safely wrapped in it did he let the towel fall to the ground. As he reached for it, Paola said from the hall, ‘I wanted to see if your skin had started to peel off.’

Then, perhaps seeing the glance he shot her, she came a step forward, saying, ‘I was kidding, Guido.’ She took the towel from him and draped it over the radiator, saying, ‘If you spend half an hour in the shower, I know enough to realize something’s wrong.’ Slowly, she reached up and pushed his still-wet hair back from his forehead, running her hand over his head and down across his shoulder. ‘Here,’ she said, opening the linen cupboard and pulling down a smaller towel, ‘lean towards me.’

He did; she spread the towel in her hands and placed it over his head. He raised his own hands to cover hers and began to rub it back and forth. Face hidden, he said, ‘Would you put the clothes I wore yesterday in a plastic bag for me? And the shirt.’

‘Already done,’ she said in her most amiable voice.

For a moment, he was tempted to play the scene for all it was worth and tell her to give it to Caritas, but then he remembered how much he liked the jacket, so he uncovered his face and said, ‘It should all go to the cleaners.’

Brunetti had told her, yesterday morning, where he and Vianello were going, but she hadn’t asked him about it and still did not. Instead, she asked, ‘Would you like that sweater you got in Ferrara last year?’

‘The orange one?’

‘Yes. It’s warm; I thought you might like to wear it.’

‘After parboiling myself, you mean?’ he asked. ‘And opening up all my pores?’

‘Thus weakening your entire system for the attack of the germs,’ she continued, speaking the last phrase with the same silent capital letters with which his mother, for decades, had maintained her belief in the dangers of the body’s exposure to excessive temperatures of any sort, especially those caused by hot water.

‘At least an assault by those that aren’t on perpetual duty outside the open windows of trains so they can launch their attack from un corrente d’aria,’ he continued, smiling at the memory of his mother’s insistence on preaching these two gospels and of the good spirit in which she had always endured his joking and Paola’s obvious refusal to believe them.

Stepping back into the hallway, she said, ‘When you’re dressed, come and tell me about it.’

25

BRUNETTI WAS AWAKENED the next morning by a smell; by two of them, in fact. The first was the smell of springtime, a soft sweetness that drifted through the window they had left open for the first time the night before,