Friends in High Places

From the receiver, he heard the dim sound of a higher voice, raised in curiosity or fear, but then the sound was cut off as Landi covered the phone with his hand. Another minute passed. Then he could hear Landi’s voice. Brunetti pulled the phone to his ear, but all he heard was Landi saying, ‘I’ll call you back’, and the connection was broken.

While he sat and waited, Brunetti considered the nature of this crime. If Guerriero was right and Marco had died because his body had grown unaccustomed to the terrible shock of heroin during the time he hadn’t been using it, then what crime had been committed other than the sale of a prohibited substance? And what sort of crime was that, to sell heroin to an addict, and where existed the judge to treat it as more than a misdemeanour? If, instead, the heroin that killed him had been laced with something dangerous or lethal, how to determine at what point along the trail that stretched from the poppy fields of the East to the veins of the West that substance had been added, and by whom?

No matter how he considered it, there was no way Brunetti could see that this crime would have serious legal consequences. Nor could he see much likelihood that the identity of the person responsible would ever be discovered. And yet the young student who drew the whimsical rabbits and had the wit to hide them in different places in each of his drawings was no less dead for that.

He got up from his desk and stood at the window. The sun beat down on Campo San Lorenzo. All of the men who lived in the old-age home had answered the summons to sleep, leaving the campo to the cats and the people who crossed it at this hour. Brunetti leaned forward, resting his hands on the sill, and watched the campo as if in search of an omen. After half an hour, Landi called to say that he and his wife would arrive in Venice at seven that evening and asked how they could get to the Questura.

When Landi answered that, yes, they would be coming by train, Brunetti said he would meet them and take them to the hospital by boat.

‘The hospital?’ Landi asked, hopeless hope springing into his voice.

‘I’m sorry, Signor Landi. It’s where they’re taken.’

‘Ah,’ was Landi’s only answer, and again he broke the connection.

Later that afternoon, Brunetti called a friend who ran a hotel in Campo Santa Marina and asked if he had a double room available that he would hold for some people who might stay the night. People called somewhere by disaster forgot about things like eating and sleeping and all those intrusive details showing that life continued.

He asked Vianello to come with him, telling himself it would be easier for the Landis to recognize the police if someone in uniform met their train, though part of him knew that Vianello was the best person to take along, for himself as much as for the Landis.

The train was on time, and Marco’s parents were easy to spot as they came down the platform. She was a tall, spare woman in a grey dress that had been badly wrinkled by the trip: she wore her hair in a small bun at the back of her head, a fashion that was decades out of date. Her husband held her arm, and anyone who saw them could see that it was not a gesture of courtesy or habit: she walked unsteadily, as if in the grip of drink or illness. Landi was short and muscular, with an iron-hard body that spoke of a lifetime spent at work, hard work. In other circumstances, Brunetti might have seen the contrast between them as comic, but not now. Landi’s face was to the darkness of leather; his pale hair provided thin protection to his scalp, which was tanned the same colour as his face. He had the look of a man who spent all of his days outside, and Brunetti remembered the mother’s letter about spring planting.

They saw Vianello’s uniform, and Landi led his wife toward it. Brunetti introduced himself and his sergeant and explained that they had a boat waiting. Only Landi shook hands; only he was capable of speech. His wife could do no more than nod toward them and wipe at her eyes with her left hand.

It was quickly done. At the hospital, Brunetti suggested that Signor Landi alone identify Marco, but they both insisted on going into the room to see their son. Brunetti and Vianello waited outside, neither speaking. When the Landis emerged, some minutes later, both were sobbing openly. Procedure demanded that some formal identification be made, that the person who identified the body do so in speech or writing to the accompanying official.

When they had calmed down, the only thing Brunetti said was, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of reserving you a room for the night, if you’d prefer to stay.’

Landi turned to his wife, but she shook her head.

‘No. We’ll go back, sir. I think it’s better. There’s a train at eight thirty. We checked before we came.’

He was right: it was better this way, Brunetti knew. Tomorrow would be the autopsy, and any parent should be spared that or the knowledge of that. He led them out the emergency entrance of the hospital and back to the police boat at the dock. Bonsuan saw them coming and had the boat unmoored even before they reached it. Vianello took Signora Landi’s arm and helped her on board and then down into the cabin. Brunetti took Landi’s arm as they stepped aboard but with gentle pressure stopped him from following his wife down the steps into the cabin.

As accustomed to boats as to breathing, Bonsuan moved them smoothly away from the dock, running the motor at a low speed so that their passage was virtually silent. Landi kept his eyes lowered toward the water, unwilling to look at this city that had taken his son’s life.

‘Can you tell me something about Marco?’ Brunetti asked.

‘What do you want to know?’ Landi asked, his eyes still lowered.

‘You knew about the drugs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Had he stopped?’

‘I thought so. He came home to us late last year. He said he had stopped and wanted to spend time at home before coming back here. He was healthy, and he did a man’s work this winter. Together we put a new roof on the barn. You can’t do that kind of work if you’re taking those things or your body is sick with them.’ Landi kept his eyes on the water as the boat glided across it.

‘Did he ever talk about it?’

‘The drugs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Only once. He knew I couldn’t stand hearing about it.’

‘Did he tell you why he did it or where he got them?’

Landi looked up at Brunetti. His eyes were the blue of glaciers, his face curiously unlined, though roughened by sun and wind. ‘Who can understand why they do that to their bodies?’ He shook his head and returned his gaze to the water.

Brunetti quelled the impulse to apologize for his questions and asked, ‘Did you know about his life here? His friends? What he did?’

Landi answered a different question. ‘He always wanted to be an architect. Ever since he was a little boy, all he was ever interested in was buildings and how to make them. I don’t understand that. I’m just a farmer. That’s all I know about, farming.’ As the boat moved out into the waters of the laguna, a wave lurched against them, but Landi kept his balance as though he’d felt nothing. ‘There’s no future in the land, not any more, and there’s no living to be made from it. We all know that, but we don’t know what else to do.’ He sighed.

Still not looking up, he went on. ‘Marco came here to study. Two years ago. And when he came home at the end of the first year, we knew something was wrong, but we didn’t know what.’ He looked up at Brunetti. ‘We’re simple people: we don’t know about things like that, about drugs.’ He looked away, saw the buildings that faced the laguna, and looked down at the water again.

The wind freshened, and Brunetti had to lean down to hear what he said. ‘He came back at Christmas last year, and he was very troubled. So I talked to him, and he told me. He said he had stopped and didn’t want to do it any more, that he knew it would kill him.’ Brunetti shifted his weight and he saw Landi’s work-hardened hands clenched to the railing of the boat.

‘He couldn’t explain why he did it or what it was like, but I know he meant it when he said he didn’t want to do it any more. We didn’t tell his mother.’ Landi stopped.

Brunetti finally asked, ‘What happened?’

‘He stayed with us for the rest of the winter, and we worked together on the barn. That’s why I know he was