Donna Leon - Beastly Things

‘Pucetti,’ he called as he came in. ‘I’ve got a favour to ask.’ He walked towards the young man’s desk, gesturing to Vianello to join them when he could.

Pucetti shot to his feet, but he no longer snapped out a salute at the sight of his superior. ‘I’ve found the man who was in the canal this morning. Have you read the report?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Pucetti said.

‘There’s a series of videos from that incident with the farmers on the autostrada last year. He was there.’

‘You mean we arrested him?’ Pucetti asked with badly disguised astonishment. ‘And no one remembered?’ It was implicit in his tone that he would surely have remembered, but Brunetti let that pass.

‘No. He was there, but only as a spectator. There’s no mug shot,’ Brunetti said. ‘A video shows him standing at the side of the road, watching.’

Pucetti could not hide his interest.

‘There’s something I’d like you to help me with,’ Brunetti said with a smile, and the younger man, much in the manner of a hunting dog who has heard a familiar whistle, all but went into point position.

Vianello came over to them then and asked, ‘What did you find?’

‘A video with the man Rizzardi worked on this morning,’ Brunetti answered, disliking the verb as soon as he heard himself using it. ‘He was caught on the autostrada in that farmers’ protest last year.’ He told Pucetti about the email he had just sent him and said, ‘I’d like you to see if you can print out copies of specific frames.’

‘Nothing easier, sir,’ Pucetti said, in the eager voice Brunetti was accustomed to hearing him use. ‘Which one is he in?’

‘He’s in the fourth clip. Man with a dark beard; very thick shoulders and neck. I’d like you to see if you can stop it and get a picture of him we can use for identification.’ Before Pucetti could ask, Brunetti said, without explanation, ‘We can’t show a photo of him as he is.’

Pucetti looked over at the officers’ computer, the same machine that had been there for years. ‘It would be much easier if I could work on this on my own equipment at home, sir,’ he said, not panting, but visibly keen to be let off the leash.

‘Then go and do it. If anyone asks, tell them it’s part of the murder investigation,’ he said, knowing that the only person likely to ask was Lieutenant Scarpa, the looming nemesis of the uniformed branch, Patta’s assistant, his eyes and ears. Then, in his automatic response to keep information from the Lieutenant, Brunetti amended this: ‘No, if anyone asks, better to say I’m sending you over to San Marco to get some papers from the Commissariat there.’

‘I’ll be as vague as I can be, sir,’ Pucetti said seriously. Brunetti caught Vianello’s fleeting grin.

‘Good.’ Turning to Vianello, Brunetti said, ‘There are some other things.’ He glanced at his watch to suggest that it was time to go and get a coffee.

By the time Vianello had gone back to his desk and picked up his jacket, Pucetti had disappeared. On the way down to the bar at Ponte dei Greci, Brunetti told Vianello about the autopsy, the man’s strange disease, and his own certainty that he had seen him before, confirmed by the video that Pucetti had taken home to watch and copy.

Still talking, Brunetti led the way into the bar. Bambola, the assistant to the owner, nodded as they passed him on their way to the booth at the back. Within minutes, he was there, carrying two coffees and two glasses of water, along with a plate with four pastries. He spread them on the table and went back to the bar.

Brunetti picked up a brioche. It would soon be time for lunch, but so far that day he had seen the body of a murdered man; strongly reprimanded Pucetti, his favourite among the uniformed branch; Signorina Elettra had had a personal conversation with him; and the man who brought him his coffee was a Black African in a long white dress. ‘By the time we retire, Signorina Elettra will be coming to work in a ball gown and tiara, and Bambola will be sacrificing chickens in the back room,’ he observed to Vianello and took a bite of his brioche.

Vianello sipped at his coffee and picked up a raisin-filled snail-shaped pastry and observed, ‘By the time we retire, we’ll be a colony of China, and Bambola’s children will be teaching at the university.’

‘I like the second part,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘You been reading your catastrophe books again, Lorenzo?’

Vianello, as ever, had the grace to smile. He and Signorina Elettra were the declared ecologists at the Questura, though Brunetti had recently observed evidence that their ranks were growing; further, it had been some time since he had heard the epithet talibano dell’ecologia attributed to either of them. Foa had requested that fuel efficiency be made a consideration in all future purchases of police boats; fear of Signorina Elettra’s wrath kept everyone from placing the wrong sort of garbage in the receptacles located on every floor; and even Vice-Questore Patta had upon occasion been persuaded to use public transportation.

‘ A proposito ,’ he went on, ‘Signorina Elettra stopped herself just short of a denunciation of cows this morning; or rather, I stopped her. Do you have any idea what that’s all about?’

Vianello picked up his second pastry, a dryish-looking thing covered with fragments of nuts. ‘The days of Heidi are over, Guido,’ he said and took a bite.

‘Which means?’ Brunetti asked, his own second pastry poised in the air.

‘Which means that there are too many cows, and we can’t afford to keep them or raise them or eat them any longer.’

‘“We” being?’ Brunetti inquired and took a bite.

‘“We” being the people in the developed world – which is just a euphemism for rich world – who eat too much beef and too many dairy products.’

‘Are you worried about health?’ Brunetti interrupted to ask, mindful of cholesterol levels, something he had never given any thought to, and curious about when and where Vianello and Signorina Elettra had their cell meetings.

‘No, not really,’ said a suddenly serious Vianello. ‘I’m thinking about those poor devils in what we aren’t allowed to call backward countries any more who have their forests cut down so big companies can raise meat to sell to rich people who shouldn’t be eating it anyway.’ He saw that his coffee cup was empty and took a drink of water. Then he surprised Brunetti by saying, ‘I think I don’t want to talk about this any more. Tell me about the man.’

Brunetti pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and used a napkin to draw a rough duplicate of the sketch Bocchese had made of the murder weapon, careful to curve the blade up at the point. ‘This is the sort of knife that killed him. It’s about twenty centimetres long, very narrow. It went in three times. Lower back, right-hand side. The report – I haven’t read it yet – will tell exactly what it cut, but Rizzardi said he bled to death.’

‘In the water?’ Vianello said, putting his pastry back on the plate.

‘He was alive long enough to breathe in some water, but not long enough to drown. Bocchese and I talked about where it could have happened and how it could have been done. Either he was in a boat, which doesn’t sound right to me – too much risk of being seen, and Bocchese said there’s no sign of that sort of dirt on his clothing. Or they did it in a house and slid him in from the water door, or maybe it happened at the end of a calle , where it runs into the water, and they just tossed him in.’

‘Big chance of being seen, either way,’ Vianello observed. ‘Or heard.’

‘Less from a house, I think. Also less chance that anyone would have heard.’