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

moral superiority, this belief so
common among Americans that it had somehow been given to them to serve as a
glistening moral light in a world dark with error. Perhaps that was not the
case here; perhaps he was misinterpreting Duncan’s tone, and the captain had
meant to do no more than help Brunetti avoid embarrassment. It’so, then his
response had certainly done everything possible to confirm any cliché about
hot-blooded, thin-skinned Italians.
     
    Shaking his head in
chagrin, he dialled an outside line and then his home number.
     
    ‘Pronto,’ Paola responded after
three rings.
     
    ‘This time I called,’ he
said without introduction.
     
    ‘Which means you’ll be
late.’
     
    ‘I’ve got to go to
Piazzale Roma to meet an American captain who’s coming from Vicenza to identify
the body. I shouldn’t be too late, not much past nine. She’s supposed to get
here by seven.’
     
    ‘She?’
     
    ‘Yes, she,’ Brunetti
said. ‘My reaction was the same. She’s also a doctor.’
     
    ‘It is a world of miracles
in which we live,’ Paola said. ‘Both a captain and a doctor. She had better be
very good at both because she’s making you miss polenta and liver.’ It was one
of his favourites, and she had probably made it because he had missed lunch.
     
    ‘I’ll eat when I get
back.’
     
    ‘All right, I’ll feed the
kids and wait for you.’
     
    ‘Thanks, Paola. I won’t
be late.’
     
    ‘I’ll wait,’ she said and
replaced the receiver.
     
    As soon as the line was
clear, he called down to the second floor and asked if Bonsuan had come back
yet. The pilot was just coming in, and Brunetti asked that he come up to his
office.
     
    A few minutes later,
Danilo Bonsuan came into Brunetti’s office. Rough-hewn and robust, he looked
like a man who lived on the water but who would never think of drinking the stuff.
Brunetti pointed to the chair in front of his desk. Bonsuan lowered himself
into the chair, stiff-jointed after decades on board and around boats. Brunetti
knew better than to expect him to volunteer information, not because he was
reluctant but simply because he didn’t have the habit of speaking unless there
was some practical purpose to be served by doing so.
     
    ‘Danilo, the woman saw
him at about five-thirty, dead, low tide. Doctor Rizzardi said he had been in
the water about five or six hours; that’s how long he was dead.’ Brunetti
paused, giving the other man time to begin to visualize the waterways near the
hospital. ‘There’s no sign of a weapon in the canal where we found him.’
     
    Bonsuan didn’t bother to
comment on this. No one would bother to throw away a good knife, especially not
where they had just used it to kill someone.
     
    Brunetti took this as
spoken and added, ‘So he might have been killed somewhere else.’
     
    ‘Probably was,’ Bonsuan
said, breaking his silence.
     
    ‘Where?’
     
    ‘Five, six hours?’ Bonsuan
asked. When Brunetti nodded, the pilot put his head back and closed his eyes,
and Brunetti could almost see the tide chart of the laguna that he
studied. Bonsuan remained like that for a few minutes. Once he shook his head
in a brief negative, dismissing some possibility that Brunetti would never
learn about. Finally he opened his eyes and said, ‘There are two places where
it could have been. Behind Santa Marina. You know that dead calle that
leads down to the Rio Santa Marina, behind the new hotel?’
     
    Brunetti nodded. It was a
quiet place, a dead end.
     
    The other is Calle Cocco.’
When Brunetti seemed puzzled, Bonsuan explained, ‘It’s one of those two blind calle that lead off of Calle Lunga, where it heads out of Campo Santa Maria
Formosa. Goes right down to the water.’
     
    Though Bonsuan’s
description made him recognize where the calle was, even allowed him to
recall the entrance to it, past which he must have walked hundreds of times,
Brunetti could not remember ever having actually walked down the calle.