Brunetti glanced at the husband, who picked up her story. ‘Martha’s right. I knew even before I touched him. He was still warm, poor boy, but the life had gone out of him. Couldn’t have been more than thirty.’ He shook his head. ‘No matter how many times you see it, it’s always new. And terrible.’ He shook his head and, as if to emphasize his words, pushed his empty cup and saucer a few centimetres across the table.
His wife put her hand on top of his and said, as if Brunetti weren’t there, ‘Nothing we could have done, Fred. Those two men knew what they were doing.’
She couldn’t have been more offhand about it: ‘those two men’.
‘What two men?’ Brunetti asked, striving to keep his voice as calm as possible. ‘Could you tell me more about them?’
‘There was the man in the overcoat,’ she said. ‘He was on my right, just a little bit behind me. I didn’t see the other one, but because the noise came from my left, he had to have been on the other side. And I’m not even sure it was a man. I just assume that because the other one was.’
Brunetti turned to the husband, ‘Did you see them, Doctor?’
The man shook his head. ‘Nope. I was looking at the things on the sheet. I didn’t even hear the noise.’ As if to prove this, he turned to the side and showed Brunetti the beige snail of the hearing aid in his left ear. ‘When I heard Martha call me, I didn’t have any idea what was going on. Truth to tell, I thought something might have happened to her, so I pushed right past those people to get to her, and when I saw her down on the ground like that, even though she was kneeling, well, I won’t tell you what I thought, but it wasn’t good.’ He paused as if in pained memory and gave a nervous smile.
Brunetti knew better than to prod him, and after a few moments, the man spoke again. ‘And, as I said, as soon as I touched him, I knew he was gone.’
Brunetti turned his attention back to the woman. ‘Could you describe this man for me, Doctor?’
Just at that moment the waitress came by and asked if she could bring them anything. Brunetti looked at the two Americans, but both shook their heads. Though he didn’t want it, he ordered a coffee.
A full minute passed in silence. The woman looked at her cup, mirrored her husband’s gesture in pushing it away, looked back at Brunetti, and said, ‘It’s not easy to describe him, sir. He was wearing a hat, one of those hats men wear in movies.’ To clarify the description, she added, ‘The kind of thing they wore in movies in the Thirties and Forties.’
She paused, as if trying to visualize the scene, then added, ‘No, all I remember is a sense that he was very tall and very big. He was wearing an overcoat; it might have been grey or dark brown, I really don’t recall. And that hat.’
The waitress set Brunetti’s coffee in front of him and moved away. He left it untouched, smiled across at her and said, ‘Go on, please, Doctor.’
‘There was the overcoat, and he had a scarf; maybe it was grey and maybe it was black. Because there were so many people standing around, all I saw was the side of him.’
‘Could you give me an idea of his age?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Oh, I couldn’t be sure of that, no more than to say he was an adult, perhaps your age,’ she said. ‘I think his hair was dark, but it was hard to tell in that light, and with his hat on. And I wasn’t paying much attention to him at that point, not really, because I didn’t have any idea of what was going on.’
Brunetti thought of the victim and asked, conscious of how it would sound, ‘Was this man white, Doctor?’
‘Oh yes, he was European,’ she answered, then added, ‘but my sense of him was that he looked more Mediterranean than my husband and I do.’ She smiled to show she meant no offence, and Brunetti took none.
‘What, specifically, makes you say that, Doctor?’ he asked.
‘His skin was darker than ours, I think, and it looked like he had dark eyes. He was taller than you, officer, and much taller than either one of us.’ She considered all of this and then added, ‘And thicker. He wasn’t a thin man, officer.’
Brunetti turned his attention to the husband. ‘Do you have any memory of seeing this man, Doctor? Or of seeing someone who might have been the other one?’
The white-haired man shook his head. ‘No. As I told you, my only concern was my wife. When I heard her shout, everything else went out of my head, so I couldn’t even tell you which people from our group were there.’
Brunetti turned back to the woman and asked, ‘Do you remember who was there, Doctor?’
She closed her eyes, as if trying to recall the scene yet again. Finally she said, ‘There were the Petersons; they were standing to my left, and the man was behind me on the right. And I think Lydia Watts was on the other side of the Petersons.’ She kept her eyes closed. When she opened them she said, ‘No, I don’t remember anyone else. That is, I know that we were all there in a bunch, but those are the only ones I can remember seeing.’
‘How many people are in your group, Doctor?’
The husband answered, ‘Sixteen. Plus spouses, that is,’ he immediately corrected. ‘Most of us are retired or semi-retired doctors, all from the North-east.’
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked.
‘At the Paganelli,’ he answered. Brunetti was surprised that a group that large could find room there, and that Americans would have the good sense to choose it.
‘And this evening, for dinner? Is the group scheduled to eat somewhere in particular?’ Brunetti wondered if he could perhaps locate them all and talk to them now, while whatever memories they had would still be fresh.
The Crowleys exchanged a glance. The man said, ‘No, not really. This is our last night in Venice, and some of us decided to eat on our own, so we don’t have any plans, not really.’ He gave an embarrassed smile and added, ‘I guess we’re sort of tired of eating with the same people every night.’
‘We were just going to walk around until we saw a place we liked and eat there,’ his wife added, smiling across at her husband as if proud of their decision. ‘But it’s awfully late now.’
‘And the group?’ Brunetti persisted.
‘They’re booked to eat at some place near San Marco,’ the woman said.
Her husband interrupted, ‘But we didn’t like the sound of it, all that local colour stuff.’
Brunetti had to admit they were probably right. ‘Do you remember the name?’ he asked.
Both shook their heads regretfully; the man spoke for them. ‘I’m sorry, officer, but I don’t.’
‘You said it was your last night here,’ he began, and they nodded. ‘What time do you leave tomorrow morning?’
‘Not until ten,’ she said. ‘We take the train to Rome, and then we fly out on Thursday. Home in time for Christmas.’
Brunetti pulled their bill towards him, added the cost of his own coffee to it, and put fifteen Euros on the table. The man started to object, but Brunetti said, ‘It’s police business,’ and that lie seemed to satisfy the doctor.
‘I can recommend a restaurant,’ he said, and then added, ‘I’d like to come and talk to you, and to these other people, in your hotel tomorrow morning.’
‘Breakfast’s at seven-thirty,’ she explained, ‘and the Petersons are always right on time. I’ll call Lydia Watts, when we get back if you like, and ask her to come down at eight so you can talk to her.’
‘Is your train at ten or do you leave the hotel at ten?’ Brunetti asked, hoping to be spared the need to be on the other side of San Marco by seven-thirty in the morning.
‘The train, so we have to leave the hotel at nine-fifteen. There’s a boat coming to take us to the station.’
Brunetti got to his feet and waited while the man helped his wife into her parka and then put on his own. Wearing them, the old people doubled in size. He led the way to the door, and held it open for them. Outside, in the campo, he pointed to the right and told them to walk along Calle della Mandorla to the Rosa Rossa and to tell the owner that Commissario Brunetti had sent them.
They both repeated his name, and the man said, ‘Sorry, Commissario. I didn’t hear your rank when you came in. I hope you didn’t mind being called officer.’
‘Not at all,’ Brunetti said with a smile. They shook hands, and Brunetti stood and watched them until they had disappeared beyond the corner of the church.
When he returned to the place where the man had been killed, he found a uniformed officer standing beside one of the stanchions. He saw Brunetti approach and saluted. ‘You alone here?’ Brunetti asked. He noticed that all of the sheets and the few bags that had remained had disappeared and wondered if the police had taken them back with them.
‘Yes, sir. Santini said to tell you he didn’t find anything.’ Brunetti assumed this meant not only shell casings, but any traces of whoever might have killed the man.
He looked at the enclosed area and only then noticed an oval mound of sawdust in the centre. Without thinking, he asked, nodding towards it with his chin, ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s the, er, blood, sir,’ the man answered. ‘Because of the cold.’
The image this conjured up was so grotesque that Brunetti refused to consider it; instead, he told the officer to call the Questura at midnight and remind them that he was to be relieved at one. He asked the young man if he wanted to go and have a coffee before the bar closed and then stood and waited for him.
When the uniformed man was back, Brunetti told him that, if he saw any of the other vu cumprà, he was to tell them that their colleague was dead and ask them to call the police if they had any information about him. He made a particular point of telling the officer to make it clear to them that they would not have to give their names or come to the Questura and that all the police wanted from them was information.
Brunetti used his telefonino to call the Questura. He gave his name, repeated what he had just told the crime scene officer, emphasizing that callers were not to be asked their names, and instructed that all calls relating to the shooting were to be recorded. He called the Carabinieri and, unsure of his authority, asked their cooperation in treating any relevant calls they might receive with the same discretion, and when the maresciallo agreed, asked if they would record their calls as well. The maresciallo observed he was very doubtful that any information would be volunteered by the vu cumprà but nevertheless agreed to do so.
There seemed little else for Brunetti to do, so he wished the young officer a good evening, hoped it would get no colder, and, having decided it would be faster to walk, turned towards Rialto and home.
4
Paola sat, mouth agape, fearing that everything she had ever tried to do as a parent had failed miserably and she had produced a monster, not a child. She stared at her daughter, her baby, her bright, shining angel, and wondered if demonic possession were possible.
Up until that point, dinner had been a normal enough affair, at least as normal as a meal can be when it has been delayed by murder. Brunetti, who had been called from home only minutes before they sat down, had phoned a little after nine, saying he would still be some time. The children’s complaints that they were on the verge of expiring from hunger had by then worn down Paola’s resistance, so she fed them, putting her own dinner and Guido’s back in the oven to keep warm. She sat with the children, sipping idly from a glass of prosecco that gradually grew warm and flat as the children ate their way through enormous portions of a pasticcio made of layers of polenta, ragù, and parmigiano. To follow there was only roasted radicchio smothered in stracchino, though Paola marvelled that either one of her children could possibly eat anything else.
‘Why’s he always have to be late?’ Chiara complained as she reached for the radicchio.
‘He’s not always late,’ a literal-minded Paola answered.
‘It seems that way,’ Chiara said, selecting two long stalks and lifting them on to her plate, then carefully spooning melted cheese on top.
‘He said he’d be here as soon as he could.’
‘It’s not like it’s so important or anything, is it? That he has to be so late?’ Chiara asked.
Paola had explained the reason for their father’s absence, and so she found Chiara’s remark not a little strange.
‘I thought I told you someone was killed,’ she said mildly.
‘Yes, but it was only a vu cumprà,’ Chiara said as she picked up her knife.
It was at this remark that Paola’s mouth fell open. She picked up her glass of wine, pretended to take a sip, moved the platter of radicchio towards Raffi, who appeared not to have heard his sister, and asked, ‘What do you mean by, “only”, Chiara?’ Her voice, she was glad to note, was entirely conversational.
‘Just what I said, that it wasn’t one of us,’ her daughter answered.
Paola tried to identify sarcasm or some attempt to provoke her in Chiara’s response, but there was no hint of either. Chiara’s tone, in fact, seemed to echo her own in terms of calm dispassion.
‘By “us”, do you mean Italians or all white people, Chiara?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Chiara said. ‘Europeans.’
‘Ah, of course,’ Paola answered, picking up her glass and toying with the stem for a moment before setting it down, untasted. ‘And where are the borders of Europe?’ she finally asked.
‘What, Mamma?’ asked Chiara, who had been answering a question put to her by Raffi. ‘I didn’t hear you.’
‘I asked where the borders of Europe were.’
‘Oh, you know that, Mamma. It’s in all the books.’ Before Paola could say anything, Chiara asked, ‘Is there any dessert?’
As a young mother, Paola, herself an only child and without any previous experience of small children, had read all the books and manuals that gave modern parents advice on how to treat their children. She had, further, read many books of psychology, and knew that there was a general professional consensus that one should never subject a child to severe criticism until the reasons for their behaviour or words had been explored and examined, and even then, the parent was enjoined to take into consideration the possibility of damaging the developing psyche of the child.
‘That’s the most disgusting, heartless thing I’ve ever heard said at this table, and I am ashamed to have raised a child capable of saying it,’ she said.
Raffi, who had tuned in only when his radar registered his mother’s tone, dropped his fork. Chiara’s mouth fell open in a mirror of her mother’s expression, and for much the same reason: shock and horror that a person so fundamental to her happiness could be capable of such speech. Like her mother, she dismissed even the possibility of diplomacy and demanded, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That’s the most disgusting, heartless thing I’ve ever heard said at this table, and I am ashamed to have raised a child capable of saying it,’ she said.
Raffi, who had tuned in only when his radar registered his mother’s tone, dropped his fork. Chiara’s mouth fell open in a mirror of her mother’s expression, and for much the same reason: shock and horror that a person so fundamental to her happiness could be capable of such speech. Like her mother, she dismissed even the possibility of diplomacy and demanded, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s supposed to mean that vu cumpràs are not only anything. You can’t dismiss them as if their deaths don’t matter.’
Chiara heard her mother’s words; more significantly, she felt the force of her mother’s tone, and so she said, ‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I’ve no idea what you meant, Chiara, but what you said was that the dead man was only a vu cumprà. And you’d have to do a lot of explaining to make me believe that there’s any difference between what those words say and what they mean.’
Chiara set her fork down on her plate and asked, ‘May I go to my room?’
Raffi, his own fork motionless in his hand, turned his head back and forth between them, confused that Chiara had said what she did and stunned by the power of his mother’s response.
‘Yes,’ Paola said.
Chiara stood, quietly pushed her chair back under the table, and left the room. Raffi, who was familiar with his mother’s sense of humour, turned to her, waiting for the one-line remark he was sure would come. Instead, Paola got to her feet and picked up her daughter’s plate. She placed it in the sink, then went into the living room.
Raffi finished his radicchio, resigned himself to the fact that there would be no dessert that night, set his knife and fork neatly parallel on his plate, then took it over to the sink. He went back to his room.
Brunetti returned to this scene half an hour later. Comforted by the scents that filled the entire apartment, he was eager to see his family and talk of things other than violent death. He went into the kitchen and, instead of the family he expected to see eating dessert and eagerly awaiting his return, he found an all-but empty table and dishes stacked in the sink.
He went searching for them in the living room, wondering if there was something interesting on television, impossible as he knew that to be. He found only Paola, lying on the sofa, reading. She looked up when he came in and said, ‘Would you like to eat something, Guido?’
‘Yes, I think I would. But first I’d like a glass of wine and for you to tell me what’s wrong.’ He went back into the kitchen and got a bottle of Falconera and two glasses. He opened the wine, dismissed all the nonsense about leaving it unpoured long enough to breathe, and went back into the living room. He sat down near her feet, set the glasses on the table in front of the sofa, and poured out two large glasses. He leaned towards her and handed her one, then used the same hand to take her left foot. ‘Your feet are cold,’ he said, then pulled a balding old afghan down from the back of the sofa and covered them.
He took a sip large enough to complement the size of the glass and said, ‘All right, what is it?’
‘Chiara complained that you were late, and when I told her it was because someone had been killed, she said that it was only a vu cumprà.’ She kept her voice dispassionate, reportorial.
‘Only?’ he repeated.
‘Only.’
Brunetti took another drink of wine, rested his head on the back of the sofa, and swirled the wine around in his mouth. ‘Hummm,’ he finally said. ‘Not nice at all, is it?’
Though he couldn’t see Paola, he felt the sofa move as she nodded.
‘You think she heard it in school?’ he asked.
‘Where else? She’s too young to be a member of the Lega.’
‘So is it something her friends bring in from their parents, or is it something the teachers give them?’ he asked.
‘It could be either, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Or both.’
‘I suppose so,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘What did you do?’
‘I told her what she said was disgusting and that I’m ashamed she’s my daughter.’
He turned, smiled, held his glass up and saluted her. ‘Always prone to moderation, aren’t you?’
‘What was I supposed to do, send her to some sort of sensitivity training class or give her a sermon on the brotherhood of man?’ Brunetti heard her rage and disgust rekindle as she went on, ‘It is disgusting, and I am ashamed of her.’
Brunetti was pleased she did not bother to assert that their daughter had never heard such things in their home, that they were in no way responsible for this sort of distortion of mind. Heaven alone knew what was suggested by the conversations he and Paola had in front of the children; no one knew what they could have inferred over all those years. He liked to think he was a moderate person, brought up, like most Italians, without racial prejudice, but he was honest enough to accept that this belief was probably yet another national myth. It is easy to grow up without racial prejudice in a society in which there is only one race.
His father hated Russians, and Brunetti had always thought he did so with good reason, if three years as a prisoner of war is a good reason. For his own part, he had an instinctive distrust of southerners, though it was a feeling that caused him no little discomfort. He was far less troubled by his own distrust of Albanians and of Slavs.
But African blacks? That was an almost entirely unfamiliar category for him, and since he was completely ignorant about them, he doubted that he could have infected his children with his prejudices. More likely it was something, like head lice, that Chiara had picked up in school.
‘Do we sit here and castigate ourselves as negligent parents and then punish ourselves for that by not eating dinner?’ he finally asked.
‘I suppose we could,’ she said, her remark entirely devoid of humour.
‘I don’t like the idea of that,’ he said. ‘Either one or the other.’
‘All right,’ she finally said. ‘I’ve been sitting alone in here a long time, which takes care of the castigating, so I suppose we can at least eat dinner in peace.’
‘Good,’ he said, finishing his wine and leaning forward to take the bottle.
As they ate, some tacit agreement having been made not to discuss Chiara’s remark further that evening, Brunetti told her what was said to have happened in Campo Santo Stefano: two men, though no one seemed to have paid much attention to them, appeared out of the darkness and slipped back into it after shooting the African at least five times. It was an execution, not a murder, and certainly there was nothing random about it. ‘He didn’t have a chance, poor devil,’ Brunetti said.
‘Who would want to do something like that? And to a vu cumprà?’ Paola asked. ‘And why?’
These were the questions that had accompanied Brunetti on his walk home. ‘Seems to me that it’s either because of something he did after he got here or something he did before,’ Brunetti said, though he knew this was merely to state the obvious.
‘That doesn’t help much, does it?’ Paola asked, but it was an observation, not a criticism.
‘No, but it’s a place to begin to divide the things we might be looking for.’
Paola, always comfortable when presented with an exercise in logic, said, ‘Begin by examining what you know about him. Which is?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ Brunetti answered.
‘That’s not true.’
‘What?’
‘You know he was a black African, and you know he was working as a vu cumprà, or whatever we’re supposed to call them now.’
‘Venditore ambulante or extracomunitario,’ Brunetti supplied.
‘That’s about as helpful as “Operatore ecologico”,’ she answered.
‘Huh?’
‘Garbage man,’ Paola translated. She got to her feet and left the room. When she came back, she had a bottle of grappa and two small glasses. As she poured, she said, ‘So let’s just call him a vu cumprà to save time and confusion, all right?’
Brunetti thanked her for the grappa with a nod, took a sip, and asked, ‘What else do you think we know?’
‘You know that none of the others stayed to try to help him or to help the police in any way.’
‘I’d guess they saw he was dead when he fell.’
‘Would it have been that obvious?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘And so you know it was an execution,’ Paola went on, ‘not the result of a fight or an argument that provoked it suddenly. Someone wanted him dead and either sent people to do it or came and did it himself.’
‘I’d say he sent people,’ Brunetti offered.
‘How can you tell?’
‘It has that feel about it, the work of professionals. They appeared out of nowhere, executed him, and disappeared.’
‘So what does that tell you about them?’
‘That they’re familiar with the city.’
She gave him a questioning glance, and he elaborated, ‘To know which way to leave. Also to know where he was.’
‘Does that mean Venetian?’
Brunetti shook his head. ‘I’ve never heard of a Venetian who works as a killer.’
Paola considered this and then said, ‘It wouldn’t take all that long to learn at least that much about the city. Some of the Africans are pretty much always there, in Santo Stefano, so all they’d have to do is walk around for a day or so to find them. Or ask someone.’ She closed her eyes and considered the geography of the area and finally said, ‘Afterwards, getting away would be easy. All they’d have to do is go back towards Rialto, or up towards San Marco, or over the Accademia.’
When she stopped, Brunetti continued, ‘Or they could go into San Vidal and then cut back towards San Samuele.’
‘How many places could they get a vaporetto?’ she asked.
‘Three. Four. And then they could have gone either way.’
‘What would you do?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. But if I wanted to leave the city, I’d probably go up towards San Marco and cut in towards the Fenice and then to Rialto.’
‘Did anyone see them?’
‘An American tourist. She saw one of them, said he was a man about my age and size, wearing an overcoat, a scarf, and a hat.’
‘Half the city,’ Paola said. ‘Anything else?’
‘That there were other people from her group there and they might have seen something. I’m going to talk to them tomorrow morning.’
‘How early?’
‘Early. I have to leave here before eight.’
She leaned forward and poured him another small glass of grappa. ‘American tourists at eight in the morning. Here, take this: it’s the least you deserve.’
5
The morning dawned unpleasantly. A thick mist hung suspended in the air, eager to cling to anything that passed through it. By the time Brunetti got to the imbarcadero of the Numero Uno, the shoulders of his overcoat were covered by a thin film of droplets, and he pulled in dampness with every breath. The approaching vaporetto slipped silently from fog so thick Brunetti could barely make out the form of the man waiting to moor it and slide back the metal gate. He stepped on board, looked up and saw its radar screen turning, and wondered what it was like out on the laguna.
He took a seat in the cabin and opened that morning’s Gazzettino, but he learned from it considerably less than he had the night before. In possession of few facts, the writer opted for sentiment and spoke of the terrible cost the extracomunitari had to pay for their desire for a chance at bare survival and to earn enough money to send back to their families. No name was given for the dead man, nor was his nationality known, though it was assumed he was from Senegal, the country from which most of the ambulanti came. An elderly man got on at Sant’ Angelo and chose to sit next to Brunetti. He saw the newspaper and mouthed out the headline, then said, ‘Nothing but trouble once you start letting them in.’
Brunetti ignored him.
Brunetti’s silence spurred the man to add, ‘I’d round them up and send them back.’
Brunetti gave a grunt and turned the page, but the old man failed to take the hint. ‘My son-in-law has a shop in Calle dei Fabbri. Pays his rent, pays his help, pays his taxes. He gives something to the city, gives work. And these people,’ he said, making a gesture that stopped just short of slapping the offending page, ‘what do they give us?’
With another grunt, Brunetti folded his newspaper and excused himself to go and stand on deck, though they were only at Santa Maria del Giglio and he had another two stops before he got off.
The Paganelli was a narrow hotel, slipped in, like an architectural dash separating two capital letters, between the Danieli and the Savoia amp; Jolanda. At the desk he said he was there to meet the Doctors Crowley and was told they were already in the breakfast room. He followed the clerk’s gesture down a narrow corridor and entered a small room that held six or seven tables, at one of which the Crowleys sat. With them were another elderly couple and, between them, a woman whose appearance gave evidence of considerable assistance.
When Doctor Crowley saw Brunetti, he got to his feet and waved at him; his wife looked up and smiled a greeting. The other man at the table rose and stayed standing as Brunetti approached. One of the women smiled in Brunetti’s direction; the other did not.
The people presented to him as the Petersons were tiny, bird-like people, dressed in colours as inconspicuous as those of sparrows. She had iron grey hair that capped her head in a tight perm; he was entirely bald, his head covered with deep, sun-hardened furrows running from front to back. The woman who had not smiled, introduced as Lydia Watts, had lustrous red hair and lips the same colour. Brunetti saw her push back a vagrant curl with a hand that no surgery and no art could make look the same age as her face and hair.
The table was covered with the aftermath of breakfast: coffee cups and teapots and fragments of buttered rolls. There were two empty bread baskets and an equally empty platter that might have held meat or cheese.
After Brunetti shook hands with all of them, Dr Crowley pulled over a chair from a neighbouring table and offered it to Brunetti. He sat and when the doctor did too, looked around the table at the assembled Americans. ‘I’m grateful that you agreed to speak to me this morning,’ he said in English.
Dottoressa Crowley answered, ‘It’s only right, isn’t it, to tell you what we saw, if it can help?’ There were nods of agreement from the others.