About Face

24
Fincantieri was working three shifts building cruise ships, so there was a constant stream of people leaving and entering the petrochemical and industrial area. When three men arrived in a plain sedan at nine-thirty that evening, the guard did not bother to come out of his booth: he raised a friendly hand and waved them through the gates.
‘Do you remember the way?’ Vianello asked Brunetti, who sat in the front seat of the unmarked police car beside Pucetti. The Inspector peered out of the windows on one side of the car, then the other. ‘It all looks different.’
Brunetti remembered the directions the guard had given the other day and repeated them to Pucetti. A few minutes later, they came upon the red building; Brunetti suggested they leave the car there and proceed on foot. Vianello, not a little embarrassed, asked them if they wanted anything to drink before they set off, saying that his wife had insisted he take along a thermos of tea with lemon and sugar. When they declined, he added that he had thought to put some whisky in, patting the pocket of his down parka.
The moon was almost full that night, so they had little need of Vianello’s flashlight, and he soon put it in his other pocket. The source of the eerie glow that allowed them to see their way was hard to determine: it seemed to come as much from the flaring gas burn-off at the top of a tower not far from them as from the general radiance that slipped across the laguna from Venice, a city that had conquered darkness.
Brunetti turned and looked back towards the red building, red no more at night. Distance and proportion were meaningless: they could have been passing the place where Guarino had been found, or they could be hundreds of metres from it. Ahead he saw the hulking outlines of the storage tanks, draughtsmen on this vast, flat plain. Pucetti asked, keeping his voice low, ‘If there are new doors, how do we get in?’
By way of answer, Vianello tapped the pocket of his jacket, and Brunetti knew he had brought along his set of burglar tools, scandalous should they be found on the person of a serving police officer. Even more shocking, Brunetti knew, was the skill with which the Ispettore could use them.
Droplets of humidity clung to their coats, and suddenly they were all conscious of the smell. It was not acid, nor was it the strong tang of iron, but some combination of chemical and gas that left a film on the skin and caused a faint irritation to nose and eye. Better not to breathe it; better not to walk in it.
They came abreast of the first storage tank and circled it until they came to a door that looked to have been crudely cut into the metal with a blowtorch. They stopped a few metres short of it, and Vianello cast the beam of his flashlight on the area just in front of the door. The mud there was slick and smooth, frozen and undisturbed since the last rain, some weeks before. ‘No one’s been in there,’ Vianello said unnecessarily and switched off the light.
The next was the same: the mud was unmarked save by the tracks of some sort of animal: cat, dog, rat. None of them had any idea.
They went back to the dirt road and continued towards the third tank. It loomed above them, at least twenty metres high, a menacing cylinder back-lit by the lights of the port of San Basilio in the distance. To its left and right they saw the thousands of lights on the three cruise ships docked in the city across the laguna.
From behind them, they heard the dull hum of an approaching motor, and they all moved to the side of the road, seeking a place to hide. They ran towards the third tank and pressed themselves flat against its corroded surface as the sound grew, and grew. A light hit the ground and came towards them at alarming speed, and they pressed themselves harder against the curved metal surface.
The plane passed over them, drowning them in sound. Brunetti and Vianello covered their ears, but Pucetti did not bother. When the plane was past them, leaving them stunned in its wake, they pushed themselves away from the tank and started to circle back towards the door.
Again, standing not far from it, Vianello waved the beam across the mud in front of the door, but this time it revealed an entirely different story: tyre tracks and footprints led to and from the entrance. This door, further, was not a sloppy rectangle cut with a blowtorch and then hastily patched with a few wooden boards nailed together to discourage entrance. It was a proper, curved sliding door, the sort seen on a garage, but not the garage of a private house: the garage of a bus terminal. Or a warehouse.
Vianello went over to study the lock. His light illuminated another one above it, and then a padlock fixed through two metal circles soldered to the door and the wall of the tank. ‘I’m not good enough for the top one,’ he said as he turned away.
‘So now what?’ Brunetti asked.
Pucetti walked off to the left, staying close to the metal hull of the tank. He came back after a few steps and asked Vianello for the flashlight, then set off again with it in his hand. Brunetti and Vianello could hear his steps as he circled towards the back of the tank, then the odd clang as he banged something against the side. The sound of his footsteps was suddenly drowned out by the arrival of another plane, which again filled their universe with noise and light, and then was gone.
A minute passed before something approaching silence returned, though motors were audible in the distance and, somewhere, electrical wires hummed in the night air. Then they heard Pucetti coming back, frozen mud splintering under his feet.
‘There’s a ladder up the side,’ the young officer said, unable to contain his excitement: cops and robbers, a night out with the boys. ‘Come on; I’ll show you.’
He was gone, disappearing around the curve of metal. They went after him and found him standing near the tank, flashlight pointing up the side. When their eyes followed the beam, they saw a series of round metal crossbars, starting about two metres from the ground and going up straight to the top.
‘What happens up there?’ Vianello asked.
Pucetti backed away, keeping the beam aimed at the point where the ladder reached the top. ‘I don’t know. I can’t see.’ Both of them joined him, but they could see nothing, either, save the final crossbar a hand’s-breadth from the top.
‘Only one way to find out,’ Brunetti said, feeling quite bold. He walked back to the tank and reached towards the rungs.
‘Wait a minute, sir,’ Pucetti said. He came over to them and stuffed the flashlight into Brunetti’s pocket, then got down on one knee, then the other, and made himself into a human footstool. ‘Step up from my shoulder, sir. It’ll be easier.’
Five years ago, Brunetti’s masculinity would have scorned the offer. He raised his right foot, but when he felt the pull of cloth across his chest, he put his foot down and unbuttoned his coat, then stepped on Pucetti’s shoulder and grabbed the second and third rungs. Easily, he pulled and stepped at the same moment and ended with both feet on the first rung of the ladder. As he started climbing, he heard Pucetti, then Vianello, say something. The sound of scrabbling below drove him up and up again; and he heard a heavy thump below him as a foot banged the side of the tank.
He had watched the first Spider-Man film with the kids and had enjoyed it. He could not now shake the feeling that he too was climbing up the side of a building, clinging to the side by virtue of his special powers. He climbed ten more rungs, paused for a moment and started to look at the men below him, but thought better of it and continued towards the top.
The ladder ended at a metal platform the size of a door. Luckily, it was enclosed in a metal handrail. Brunetti crawled on to it and got to his feet, then walked to the far end to leave space for the others. He took out the flashlight and lit the way for them, first Vianello and then Pucetti, as they crawled on to the platform. Vianello got to his feet and gave a stricken look into the flashlight’s beam. Brunetti moved it quickly to Pucetti, whose face was radiant. What larks, what larks.
Brunetti turned the light on the wall of the tank and saw that a door with a metal handle stood at his end of the platform. He pressed it, and the door swung open easily on to an identical platform on the inside of the tank. He stepped inside and turned the light back so they could see well enough to join him inside.
Brunetti snapped his fingers: a moment later the sound came back, then repeated itself a few times until it dissolved. He tapped the thick plastic case of the flashlight against the railing that surrounded this platform, and after a moment that duller sharper sound was echoed back.
He shone the light down the steps ahead of them, illuminating the stairway that curved along the inner wall and towards the bottom of the tank. The beam was not strong enough to reach the end of the stairs so they could see only part of the way down: the darkness changed everything and made it impossible to calculate the distance to the bottom.
‘Well?’ Vianello asked.
‘We go down,’ Brunetti said.
To assure himself of what he sensed, Brunetti switched off the flashlight. The other men drew in their breath: darkness visible. They knew darkness, the ancients, knew it as people today could only construct it artificially so as to make themselves feel the titillation of fear. This was darkness: nothing else was.
Brunetti switched the light back on and felt the other two relax minimally. ‘Vianello,’ he said. ‘I’m going to give Pucetti the light, then you and I join arms and go down first.’ Handing the light to Pucetti, he said, ‘You shine it on our feet and follow us.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Pucetti said. Vianello reached sideways and took Brunetti’s arm.
‘Let’s go,’ Brunetti said. Vianello was on the outside, so he kept one hand on the railing, his other arm linked with Brunetti’s, just as if they were a pair of frail old pensioners out for an afternoon walk that had suddenly turned out to be more difficult than expected. Pucetti kept the light on the step immediately in front of the other men, following them by instinct as much as by sight.
All of them could see the piles of rust on the steps, and Brunetti, walking down a stairway wide enough for only one person, felt the flakes brushing free from the inner wall and was convinced he could smell them as well. They descended into the Stygian dark, and with each step the stench grew more intense. Oil, rust, metal: it became more invasive as they got closer to the bottom, or else the overpowering sense of being engulfed in limitless darkness made their other senses more acute.
Though Brunetti knew it to be impossible, he thought it was darker than when they had entered. ‘I’m going to stop, Pucetti,’ he said, so that the young man would not crash into them. He paused, Vianello perfectly in step with him. ‘Take a look around the bottom,’ he told Pucetti, who leaned against the railing and flashed the light into the darkness below.
Brunetti looked up and saw a dull greyness that must be the door they had used to come in; he was surprised to see they had come more than halfway round the tank. He turned back and let his eyes follow the beam of light: they were still four or five metres from the bottom. In the beam of light, the floor seemed to glisten and sparkle, as from some inner glow or source of light. It was not liquid for, like the mud outside, its surface was composed of stiff whirls and waves: the moving reflection transformed it to a wine dark sea.
A shiver passed down Vianello’s arm, and Brunetti was suddenly aware of the cold.
‘What now, sir?’ Pucetti asked, moving the beam back and forth in an even rhythm, ever farther from them. About twenty metres from them it lit up a vertical surface, and Pucetti allowed the light to move slowly up, as though asking it to climb the face of a mountain. The obstacle, however, proved to be no more than five or six metres high, for the face exposed by the light was the front of an assemblage of barrels and plastic containers: some black, some grey, some yellow. No great effort had been made to stack them neatly or in straight rows. Some of the barrels in the top row leaned tiredly against the ones next to them, and some in the outside rows tilted inwards like penguins huddling in the Antarctic night.
Without having to be told to do it, Pucetti ran the beam to one end of the pile, then moved it slowly back to the other end, allowing them to count the barrels in the front row. When the light reached the end, Vianello said softly, ‘Twenty-four.’
Brunetti had read once that barrels contained a hundred and fifty litres, or perhaps it was more. Or less. But surely more than a hundred. He tried to do the numbers in his head, but his uncertainty about the volume, as well as how many rows stood behind the ones they could see, meant that he could not estimate the total more than to say each row contained at least twelve thousand litres.
Not that the number meant anything, not without knowing the contents. After that, they could tabulate the extent of the danger. All of these thoughts, numerical and otherwise, went through his mind as the light played over the fa?ade of barrels.
‘Let’s have a look,’ Brunetti said, keeping his voice down. He and Vianello descended to the bottom step. ‘Give me the light, Pucetti.’
Brunetti freed his arm from Vianello’s and stepped on to the floor of the tank. Pucetti passed the Ispettore and stepped down, then took another step, and joined Brunetti. ‘I’ll come with you, sir,’ the younger man said, shining the light on to the mud just beneath their feet.
Vianello lifted one foot, but Brunetti put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘I want to see how we get out of here, first.’ He was conscious of how softly they all spoke, as if to cause an echo might bring peril.
Instead of answering, Pucetti waved the beam of light back up the curving stairs, all the way to the top.
‘In case we have to move quickly,’ Brunetti said. In the glow from the flashlight, he reached out and took it from Pucetti’s hand. ‘Wait here,’ he said and moved off, his left hand sliding along the wall of the tank. He moved slowly until he found the door and then the inner keyholes of the two locks.
Not too far ahead he saw what he had hoped to see: the horizontal hand-bar of a smaller emergency exit cut into the larger door. Brunetti saw no written warning about an alarm nor any sign that it was wired to one. He pressed down on the bar, and the door swung outward on well-oiled hinges. The air brushed across his face, bringing different smells and a reminder of just how foul the air inside was. He toyed for a moment with the idea of leaving the door propped open, but decided against it. He pulled it closed, and the inner cold and smell returned.
He lit his way back to the others. Before he could say anything, Pucetti stepped closer and linked his arm in Brunetti’s, a gesture Brunetti found touchingly protective. Tentatively, arm in arm, they set off, careful of where they trod on the icy surface, pausing after every step to see that their feet were safely grounded on the frozen peaks and crevices of the floor. Caution slowed them, so it took them some time to reach the centre of the front line of barrels.
Brunetti ran the light across them, hunting for something that would disclose their contents or origins. The first three gave no indication of either, though the white skull and crossbones suggested the superfluity of such niceties. The next barrel had traces of white paper where something had been ripped away, leaving two faded Cyrillic letters. The container beside it was clean, as were the next three. Close to the end of the row stood a barrel with a sulphurous green trail leading from under the lid to a patch of dried powder in the mud in front of it. Pucetti released Brunetti’s arm and walked beyond the last barrel. Brunetti turned the corner and flashed the light along the side of the rows of barrels. ‘Eighteen,’ Pucetti said after a moment. Brunetti, who had counted nineteen, nodded and moved back to have a closer look at the corner barrel; he could see an orange label just below the lid. German was not a language he could read, but it was one he could recognize. ‘Achtung!’ Well, that left little doubt. ‘Vorsicht Lebensgefahr.’ This one, too, had a leak near the top and a dark green stain in the mud below.
‘I think we’ve seen enough, Pucetti,’ he said and turned back to where he thought Vianello was waiting.
‘Right, Commissario,’ Pucetti said and started towards him.
Brunetti stepped away from Pucetti, called Vianello’s name and, when he answered, pointed the beam in the direction of his voice. Neither of them saw what happened. Behind him, he heard Pucetti take a sharp breath – of surprise, not of fear – and then he heard a long slithery noise that he was able to identify only in retrospect as the sound of Pucetti’s foot sliding suddenly forward on the frozen mud.
He felt something slam into his back and he had a moment’s terror at the thought that it was one of the barrels. Then a thud, then silence, then a sudden cry from Pucetti.
He turned slowly, moving his feet carefully, and pointed the light towards Pucetti’s voice. The young officer was on his knees, wiping his left hand across the front of his coat, moaning while he did so. He stuffed his hand between his knees and began to rub it back and forth against the cloth of his trousers.
‘Oddio, oddio,’ the young man moaned and astonished Brunetti by spitting on his hand before wiping it again. He scrambled to his feet.
‘Vianello, the tea,’ Brunetti shouted and turned to point the light wildly, no longer sure where Vianello was, nor the door.
‘I’m here,’ the Ispettore said, and suddenly Brunetti had him transfixed in the light, thermos in one hand. Brunetti pulled Pucetti forward and locked his own hand around his lower arm, shoving Pucetti’s hand towards Vianello. The young man’s palm and part of the back of his hand were covered with traces of some black substance, much of which he had managed to wipe on to his clothing. Amidst the black, the skin was red, in places peeling back and already bleeding.
‘This is going to hurt, Roberto,’ Vianello said. He raised the thermos above the young man’s hand, and at first Brunetti didn’t understand what he was doing. But when the liquid spilled out, steaming, he realized that the Ispettore hoped that it would cool at least minimally before hitting the burnt flesh of Pucetti’s hand.
Brunetti tightened his grip, but there was no need to do that. Pucetti understood and stood motionless as the tea hit and then splashed across his hand. Brunetti stepped back, the better to keep the light steady on what was happening. The stream fell, leaving a halo of vapour all around it. Time seemed without end. ‘Here,’ Vianello finally said and handed Brunetti the thermos.
The Ispettore pulled off his parka and ripped a piece of the fleece lining from the inside. He dropped the jacket in the mud and used the ragged strip to wipe between the young man’s fingers, as thoughtful and careful as a mother. When he had most of the black goo removed, he took back the thermos and dribbled more tea across Pucetti’s hand, turning the hand carefully to see that the liquid went everywhere before running off on to the ground.
When the thermos was empty, Vianello dropped it and said to Brunetti, ‘Give me your handkerchief.’ Brunetti gave it to him, and Vianello wrapped it around Pucetti’s hand, tying it in a knot on the back. He picked up the thermos, pulled the young man to him in a one-armed hug, then said to Brunetti, ‘Let’s get him to the hospital.’