Sea of Troubles (11 page)

Signora Follini was already standing behind the counter, talking to an old woman. Signora Follini glanced up when he came in and started to smile. But as Brunetti watched, he saw her suddenly remember the presence of the other woman and change the smile into a formal acknowledgement of the arrival of a stranger who had no claim to anything beyond civility.

'Buon giorno,'
Brunetti said.

Signora Follini, today wearing an orange dress with large bands of ivory-coloured lace at neck and waist, returned his greeting but immediately turned her attention back to the old woman, who was watching Brunetti. She looked at him, eyes the clouded grey of advancing age, but no less keen for that. If she had teeth, she hadn't bothered to wear them that day. She was short, at least a head shorter than Signora Follini, and she was entirely dressed in black. Looking at her, Brunetti thought that the word 'swathed' would be more appropriate, for it was difficult to distinguish just what it was she wore. A long skirt came to well below her knees, and some sort of woollen coat was buttoned tightly over that. Wrapped around her shoulders and covering her head was a crocheted woollen scarf the ends of which hung down almost to her waist.

Her clothing declared her widowhood as indisputably as would a hand-held placard or a giant letter pinned to her breast. The South was full of women like this, shrouded in black and destined to pass, cloud-like, through the remaining years of their lives, the limits of their behaviour as strictly delineated as those of peasant women in Bengal or Peru. But that was the South, and this was Venice, where widows wore bright colours, went dancing if and with whom they pleased, married again if they so chose.

He felt her eyes on him, nodded, and said, 'Good morning, Signora.'

She ignored him and turned back to Signora Follini. 'And a package of candles and half a kilo of flour,' Brunetti thought she said, though her dialect was so strong he wasn't sure. Here he was, less than twenty kilometres from his own home, and he found it hard to understand the natives.

He moved towards the back of the store and started to examine the goods on the shelves. He picked up a can of Cirio tomatoes and, out of curiosity, turned it over to look at the sell-by date. It had expired two years before. He set the can carefully back into the ring of dust that had surrounded it and moved towards the soap powder.

He glanced back at the counter, but the widow was still there. He heard her talking to Signora Follini, but her voice was too low for him to hear what she was saying, not that he was sure he'd understand her if he could. A thin film lay on top of the irregularly stacked boxes of detergent; one had been chewed open at a corner, and a small mound of tiny white and blue beads had spilled out on to the shelf.

His watch told him he'd been inside the store for more than five minutes. Signora Follini had added nothing to the candles and flour, which sat on the counter in front of the old woman, but still they stood there and still they talked.

He retreated further into the back of the shop and directed his attention to a row of bottles of pickles and olives that stood at the height of his chest. One bottle of what appeared to be mushrooms caught his attention because of a small oval of white mould that had edged from beneath the lid and begun to make its way slowly down the side of the bottle. Next to it stood a tiny can that had no label. It sat there, looking curiously lost and useless, yet faintly menacing.

Brunetti heard the bell and turned towards the counter. The old woman was gone, and with her had disappeared the candles and flour. He walked towards the front of the store and said again,
'Buon
giorno.'

She smiled in response, but the smile had little warmth; perhaps the old woman had taken some of it with her or had left behind a cool warning about how women with no visible husbands were meant to behave in the presence of strange men.

'How are you today, Signora?'

'Fine, thank you,' she answered with some formality. 'How can I help you?' On his previous visit, she would have asked this with the clear suggestion that what she would be willing to provide contained at least the promise of sensuality. This time, however, the list suggested by her voice went no further than dried peas, salt and a bottle of anchovies.

Brunetti gave her his warmest smile. 'I've come back to speak to you, Signora,' he began, wondering if this would cause her to respond. When it did not, he went on,
‘I
wanted to ask if you'd remembered anything else about the Bottins that might be useful to us.' Her face remained expressionless. 'You suggested, the last time we spoke, that you knew at least the son very well, and I wondered if you'd thought of anything else that might be important.'

She shook her head but still didn't speak.

'By now I suppose it's common knowledge that they were murdered,' he began and waited.

'I know,' she finally said.

'But what people don't know is that it was a particularly vicious crime, especially what was done to Marco.'

She nodded at this, to acknowledge either that she had heard him or that even this detail was now known to the people of Pellestrina.

'And so we need to learn as much about them as possible so that we can begin to get an idea of who would want to do this.' When she didn't respond, he asked, 'Do you understand, Signora?'

She looked up and met his eyes. Her mouth remained frozen in the smile the surgeons had given her, but Brunetti could not mistake the sadness in her eyes. 'No one would want to do Marco any harm. He was a good boy.'

She stopped here and glanced away from him, towards the empty back of the store.

'And his father?' Brunetti asked.

'I can't tell you anything,' she said in a tight voice. 'Nothing.'

Something in Brunetti responded to the nervousness in her voice. 'Nothing you tell me will be repeated, Signora.'

The immobility of her features made her expression impossible to read, but he thought he sensed her relax.

'They couldn't have wanted to kill Marco,' she said.

'They?' he asked.

The nervousness swept back. 'Whoever it was,' she said.

'What sort of man was he, Giulio?' Brunetti asked.

Her sculpted chin moved back and forth in absolute denial of any further information.

'But, Signora . . .' Brunetti began but was interrupted by the sound of the bell. He saw her eyes shoot in the direction of the door. She stepped back from the counter and said, 'As I've told you, Signore, you'll have to buy matches at the tobacco shop. I don't sell them.'

'Sorry, Signora. When I saw the candles you sold the old lady, I thought you'd be selling them, too,' he answered seamlessly, paying no attention to the sound of footsteps behind him.

Brunetti turned away from the woman and moved towards the door. As is the custom in small villages, he nodded in acknowledgement of the presence of the two men who stood there and, while paying no evident attention to them, registered every detail of their appearance. As he approached the door, they stepped to either side of it, a motion that filled Brunetti with a vague sense of menace, though the men made it clear that they took as little interest in him as he did in them.

The little bell tinkled as he opened the door, and when he stepped into the sunlight, his back gave an answering shiver as he heard the door close gently behind him.

He turned to the right, his mind absorbing the faces and forms of the two men. Though he recognized neither, Brunetti knew too well the type of men they were. They might have been related, so similar were the red, roughened complexions of their faces and so similar their thick, hardened bodies. But both of these things might just as easily have come from years of heavy work outside. The younger man had a narrow face, and dark hair slicked back with some sort of oily pomade. The older wore his in the same fashion, but as it was much thinner, it ended up looking as if it had been painted on to his skull, though a few greasy locks managed to dangle limply on the collar of his shirt. Both wore jeans that gave signs of heavy wear and the thick boots common to men who did heavy work.

The men had studied Brunetti with eyes framed by a multitude of small lines, the lines that came with years of life in the sun, and both had given him the sort of attention that is usually given to prey: motionless, watchful, eager to make a move. It was this sense of contained aggression that had set off alarms in Brunetti's body, regardless of the fact that the Signora was there as a witness, regardless of the fact that the men probably knew he was a policeman.

He walked down the narrow street and into the tobacco shop. It was as dim and grimy as Signora Follini's store, another place where failure had come to nest.

The man behind the counter raised his attention from the magazine he was reading and looked at him from behind thick glasses. 'Yes?' he asked.

'I'd like some matches,' Brunetti said, maintaining Signora Follini's story.

The man pulled open a drawer beneath the counter and asked, 'Box or booklet?'

'Box, please,' Brunetti said, reaching into his pocket for some small change.

The man set a small box of matches in front of Brunetti and asked for two hundred lire. As Brunetti placed the coins on the counter, the man asked, 'Cigarettes?'

'No,' Brunetti answered. 'I'm trying to stop. But I like to have matches in case I can't stand it any more and ask someone to give me one.'

The man smiled at that. 'Lot of people trying to stop,' he said. "They don't want to, not really, most of them, but they think it's good for them, so they try.'

'And do they succeed?'

'Beh,' the man exclaimed in disgust. 'They manage it for a week or two, or a month, but sooner or later they're all back in here, buying cigarettes.'

'Doesn't say much for people's willpower, does it?' Brunetti asked.

The man picked up the coins and dropped them one by one into the wooden cash drawer. 'People are going to do what they want to do, no matter what you tell them and no matter how bad they know it is for them to do it. Nothing can stop them; not fear or law or promises.' He saw Brunetti's expression and added, 'You spend a lifetime selling cigarettes, and that's one thing you learn. Nothing will ever stop them, not if they want to badly enough.'

11

The tobacconist's words lingered with Brunetti as he walked towards the restaurant: he wondered if they would some day apply to Vianello and the clams or whether the sergeant would turn out to be one of those rare men who have the strength of character to stop themselves from doing what they want to do. As for himself, Brunetti believed he was not particularly strong-willed and knew he often manipulated situations so that he could avoid having to make the decision to do something he didn't want to do.

Two years ago, when Paola had finally nagged him into having a complete physical exam, he had told the doctor not to bother with the tests for cholesterol and diabetes, leaving it
to the doctor to infer that the tests were not necessary because he'd recently had them done. In truth, Brunetti had not wanted to know the results because he had not wanted to have to do whatever he would have to do if the results were bad. Whenever he thought of his deceit and the possible consequences to his family, he told himself he had never felt healthier in his life and to stop worrying about it.

And three years ago, when an Albanian suspect had been arrested for having beaten the two eleven-year-old prostitutes who helped to support him, Brunetti had done nothing to prevent his being assigned for questioning to a detective who had a daughter the same age and another whose fifteen-year-old daughter had been assaulted by another Albanian. Nor had he ever enquired as to just what happened during the examination, though the suspect had quickly confessed to the crimes.

Before he could examine his conscience further, he reached the restaurant and went in. From behind the counter, where he was making coffee for a few men standing at the bar, the owner acknowledged his arrival with a nod. 'Your officer is in the back,' he said. All of the men at the counter turned to look at Brunetti, and he felt the same intense stare he'd been given by the two men in the store. Ignoring it, he moved to the curtained doorway, pushed aside the strips of plastic, and went into the dining room.

Vianello sat at the same table, a bottle of mineral water and a half-litre of white wine in front of him. As Brunetti pulled out the chair opposite him, Vianello leaned forward and poured some water, then some wine, into the glasses at Brunetti's place.

Brunetti drank down the glass of water, surprised at how thirsty he was, curious as to whether it could be a delayed response to the fear - he admitted that it was fear - he had felt when he turned his back on the two men. Looking across at Vianello, he asked, 'Well?'

"The waiter, Lorenzo Scarpa, hasn't been back to work since we were here. The boss says he called and said he had to go and take care of a friend, but he didn't say where the friend lived, and he didn't give any idea of how long he'd be gone.' Brunetti asked nothing about this, so Vianello continued.
‘I
went to his place - the boss gave me his address - but his neighbours can't remember seeing him for a few days, say they don't have any idea where he is.'

'And the brother, Sandro?'