Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

The sailor didn’t respond, didn’t even look back at him, and the engine revved up even higher.

‘Wait.’ Vianello shouted louder, but still failed to achieve any result.

He pushed his way through the people on deck and placed his hand lightly on the arm of the sailor. ‘It’s me, Marco,’ he said in an entirely normal voice. The other looked at him, saw the uniform, recognized his face and waved a hand at the captain, who was glancing back towards the confusion on deck through the glass window of his cabin.

The sailor waved again and the captain slipped the boat suddenly into reverse. A few people on deck tottered as they tried to keep their balance. A woman fell heavily against Brunetti, who put out an arm and held her upright. He hardly wanted to be involved in a charge of police brutality or whatever would result if she fell, but he had grabbed her before he had time to think about this and, when he released her, was glad to see her grateful smile.

Slowly, the boat reversed itself in the water and headed the half-metre back to the embarcadero. The sailor slid the gate open, and Vianello and Brunetti stepped across to the wooden platform of the landing dock. With a wave, Vianello thanked him; the engines surged and the boat pulled forward.

‘But why did you get off?’ Brunetti asked. It was his stop, but Vianello should have stayed on until he got down to Castello.

‘I’ll take the next one. What about Zambino?’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Brunetti answered. ‘But late. I’d like to have Signorina Elettra see if she can find out anything she might have missed so far.’

Vianello nodded in approval of this. ‘She’s a miracle,’ he said. ‘If I knew him well, I’d say Lieutenant Scarpa is afraid of her.’

‘I do know him well,’ Brunetti answered, ‘and he is afraid of her. Because she isn’t, not in the least, frightened of him. And that makes her one of very few people at the Questura who aren’t.’ Since he and Vianello were two more among those very few, he could speak like this. ‘It also makes him very dangerous. I’ve tried to say something to her, but she discounts him.’

‘She shouldn’t,’ Vianello said.

Another boat appeared under the bridge and started towards the landing. When all the passengers had got off, Vianello stepped across the open space on to the deck. ‘A domani, capo,’ he said. Brunetti waved in acknowledgement and turned away even before the other passengers started to board the boat.

He stopped at one of the public phones in front of the landing and, from memory, dialled the number of Rizzardi’s office at the hospital. Rizzardi had gone for the day but had left a message with his assistant for Commissario Brunetti if he called. Everything was as the doctor had assumed it would be. It was a single cord, plastic-covered and about six millimetres thick. Nothing more. Brunetti thanked the assistant and headed home.

The day had taken all warmth with it. He wished he’d thought to bring his scarf with him that morning but contented himself with pulling up the collar of his coat and hunching his neck down inside it. He walked quickly over the bridge, turning left at the bottom and choosing to walk along the water, drawn to the lights that streamed out from the many restaurants along the riva. He ducked right and hurried through the underpass into Campo San Silvestro, then left and up towards his apartment. At Biancat he was tempted by the irises in the window but remembered his anger with Paola and continued past. But then he recalled only Paola, turned back, went into the florist and bought a dozen of the purple ones.

She was in the kitchen when he got home, stuck her head out to see whether it was he or one of the kids, and saw the package in his arms. She came down the corridor, a damp towel clutched in her hands. ‘What’s in the paper, Guido?’ she asked in real confusion.

‘Open it and see,’ he said, handing her the flowers.

She flicked the towel across her shoulder and took them. He turned and removed his coat, hung it in the closet and heard the sound of paper rustling. Suddenly there was silence, dead silence, so he turned to look at her, worried he’d done something wrong. ‘What is it?’ he asked, seeing her stricken look.

She wrapped both arms round the bouquet and pulled it to her breast. Whatever she said was lost in the noise from the crinkling wrapping.

‘What?’ he asked, bending down a little, for she had lowered her head and pressed her face into the petals.

‘I can’t stand the thought that something I did led to the death of that man.’ A sob choked off her voice, but she continued, ‘I’m sorry, Guido. I’m sorry for all the mess I’ve caused you. I do that to you and you can bring me flowers.’ She began to sob, face pressed into the soft petals of the irises, shoulders shaken by the power of her feelings.

He took them from her and looked for a place to put them. There was none, so he lowered them to the floor and put his arms round her. She sobbed against his chest with an abandon his daughter had never shown, even as a small child. He held her protectively, as if afraid she would break apart from the force of her sobs. He bent and kissed the top of her head, drank in her smell, saw the short bits where her hair fell apart into two waves at the base of her skull. He held her and rocked a bit from side to side, saying her name time and again. He had never loved her as much as at this moment. He felt a flash of vindication, then as quickly sensed his face suffuse with a shame stronger than he had ever known. By force of will he pushed back all sense of right, all sense of victory, and found himself in a clean space where there was nothing but pain that his wife, the other half of his spirit, could be in such agony. He bent again and kissed her hair, then, realizing that her sobs were coming to an end, he pushed her away but still held her by the shoulders. ‘Are you all right, Paola?’

She nodded, unable to speak, keeping her face turned down so that he couldn’t see her.

He reached into the pocket of his trousers and took out his handkerchief. It wasn’t freshly laundered, but that hardly seemed to matter. He dabbed her face with it, under each eye, below her nose, then planted it firmly in her hand. She took it and wiped the rest of her face, then blew her nose with a resounding snort. She pressed it against her eyes, hiding from him.

‘Paola,’ he said in something that came close to his normal voice, though it wasn’t, ‘what you did is entirely honourable. I don’t like the fact that you did it, but you acted with honour.’

For a moment, he thought that was going to set her off again, but it didn’t. She took the handkerchief away from her face and looked at him through reddened eyes. ‘If I had known…’ she began.

But he cut her off with a raised palm. ‘Not now, Paola. Maybe later, when we both can talk about it. Now let’s go into the kitchen and see if we can find something to drink.’

It took her no time at all to add, ‘And eat.’ She smiled, glad of the reprieve.

The next morning Brunetti got to the Questura at his regular time, stopping to buy three newspapers on the way. Il Gazzettino continued to devote whole pages to the Mitri murder, lamenting a loss to the city it never made clear, but the national papers appeared to have lost interest in it, only one of them bothering to mention it and then only in a two-paragraph article.

Rizzardi’s final report was on his desk. The double mark on Mitri’s neck was, he had determined, a ‘hesitation mark’ on the part of the murderer, who had probably loosened the cord momentarily to tighten his grip, shifting it and thus leaving a second indentation in Mitri’s flesh. The material under the nails of Mitri’s left hand was indeed human skin, as well as a few fibres of dark-brown wool, probably from a jacket or overcoat and in all likelihood the result of Mitri’s wild, and futile, attempt to fight off his attacker. ‘Find me a suspect and I’ll give you a match,’ Rizzardi had pencilled in the margin.