Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online

back?’
     
    ‘Before seven.’
     
    ‘All right. I’ll get off
the phone now, in case your call comes.’ He loved Paola for many reasons, not
the least of which was the fact that he knew this to be her real motive for
getting off the phone. There was no secret message, no hidden agenda in what
she said; she merely wanted to free the line so that his work would be easier
and he would be home sooner.
     
    ‘Thanks, Paola. I’ll see
you about seven.’
     
    ‘Ciao, Guido,’ and she was gone,
back to William Faulkner, leaving him free to work and equally free of guilt
about the demands of that work.
     
    It was almost five and
still the Americans hadn’t called back. For a moment, he was tempted to call
them, but he resisted the impulse. If one of their soldiers was missing, they’d
have to contact him. After all, to put it bluntly, he had the body.
     
    He searched through the
personnel reports that still lay in front of him until he found those of
Luciani and Rossi. In both of them, he added a note that they had behaved far
beyond the ordinary in going into the canal to pull the body out. They could
have waited for a boat or could have used poles, but they had done something he
didn’t know if he would have had the courage, or the will, to do and had gone
into that water to pull him ashore.
     
    The phone rang. ‘Brunetti.’
     
    ‘This is Captain Duncan.
We’ve cheeked all the duty stations, and we have one man who didn’t show up for
work today. He meets your description. I sent someone to check his apartment,
but there’s no sign of him, so I’d like to send someone to take a look at the
body.’
     
    ‘When, Captain?’
     
    ‘Tonight, if possible.’
     
    ‘Certainly. How will you
send him?’
     
    ‘I beg your pardon?’
     
    ‘I’d like to know how you’ll
send him, by train or by car, so that I can send someone to meet him.’
     
    ‘Oh, I see.’ Duncan
answered. ‘By car.’
     
    ‘Then I’ll send someone
to Piazzale Roma. There’s a Carabinieri station there, to the right as you
enter the Piazzale.’
     
    ‘All right. The car will
be here in about fifteen minutes, so they ought to be there in a bit less than
an hour, about quarter to seven.’
     
    ‘We’ll have a launch
waiting. Hell have to go out to the cemetery to identify the body. Will it be
someone who knew the man, Captain?’ Brunetti knew from long experience how
difficult it was to recognize the dead from a photograph.
     
    ‘Yes, it’s his commanding
officer at the hospital.’
     
    ‘The hospital?’
     
    ‘The man who’s missing is
our Public Health Inspector, Sergeant Foster.’
     
    ‘Could you give me the
name of the man who’s coming?’
     
    ‘Captain Peters. Terry
Peters. And Commissario,’ Duncan added, ‘the Captain is a woman.’ There was
more than a trace of smugness in his voice as he added, ‘And Captain Peters is
also Doctor Peters.’
     
    What was he meant to do,
Brunetti wondered, fall over on his side because the Americans allowed women
into their army? Or because they also allowed them to be doctors? Instead, he
decided to out-Herod Herod and become the classic Italian who couldn’t resist
the lure of anything, so long as it came in a skirt, even the skirt of a
military uniform. ‘Very good, Captain. In that case, I’ll go myself to meet
Captain Peters. Doctor Peters.’
     
    Duncan took a few seconds
to answer, but all he said was, ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Mr Brunetti. I’ll
tell the Captain to ask for you.’
     
    ‘Yes. Do,’ Brunetti said
and hung up without waiting for the other man to say goodbye. His tone, he
realized without regret, had been too strong; as often happened with him, he
had allowed himself to be sucked into resentment by what he thought lay between
the lines of what he heard. In the past, both during Interpol seminars that had
included Americans and during three months of training in Washington, he had
often come up against this national sense of