Blood from a stone

3

Brunetti hadn’t been in the bar for years, ever since the brief period when it had been converted into an American ice-cream parlour and had begun to serve an ice-cream so rich it had caused him a serious bout of indigestion the one time he had eaten it. It had been, he recalled, like eating lard, though not the salty lard he remembered from his childhood, tossed in to give taste and substance to a pot of beans or lentil soup, but lard as lard would be if sugar and strawberries were added to it.
His fellow Venetians must have responded in similar fashion, for the place had changed ownership after a few years, but Brunetti had never been back. The tubs of ice-cream were gone now, and it had reverted to looking like an Italian bar. A number of people stood at the curved counter, talking animatedly and turning often to point out at the now-quiet campo; some sat at small tables that led into the back room. Three women stood behind the bar; one of them, seeing Brunetti enter, offered him a friendly smile. He walked towards the back and saw an elderly couple at the last table on the left. They had to be Americans. They might as well have been draped in the flag. White-haired, both of them, they gave the bizarre impression that they were dressed in each other’s clothing. The woman wore a checked flannel shirt and a pair of thick woollen slacks, while the man wore a pink V-necked sweater, a pair of dark trousers, and white tennis shoes. Both apparently had their hair cut by the same hand. One could not say, exactly, that hers was longer: it was merely less short.
‘Excuse me,’ Brunetti said in English as he approached their table. ‘Were you out in the campo earlier?’
‘When the man was killed?’ the woman asked.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said.
The man pulled out a chair for Brunetti and, with old-fashioned courtesy, got to his feet and waited until Brunetti was seated. ‘I’m Guido Brunetti, from the police,’ he began. ‘I’d like to talk to you about what you saw.’
Both of them had the faces of mariners: eyes narrowed in a perpetual squint, wrinkles seared into place by too much sun, and a sharpness of expression that even heavy seas would not disturb.
The man put out his hand, saying, ‘I’m Fred Crowley, officer, and this is my wife, Martha.’ When Brunetti released his hand, the woman stretched hers out, surprising him with the strength of her grip.
‘We’re from Maine,’ she said. ‘Biddeford Pool,’ she specified, and then, as though that were not enough, added, ‘It’s on the coast.’
‘How do you do,’ Brunetti said, an old-fashioned phrase he had forgotten he knew. ‘Could you tell me what you saw, Mr and Mrs Crowley?’ How strange this was, he the impatient Italian and these the Americans who needed to go through the slow ritual of courtesy before getting down to the matter at hand.
‘Doctors,’ she corrected.
‘Excuse me?’ said Brunetti, at a loss.
‘Doctor Crowley and Doctor Crowley,’ she explained. ‘Fred’s a surgeon, and I’m an internist.’ Before he could express his surprise that people their age were still working as doctors, she added, ‘Well, we were, that is.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said, then paused and waited to see if they had any intention of answering his original question.
They exchanged a look, then the woman spoke. ‘We were just coming into what you call the campo, and I saw all these purses on the ground and the men selling them. I wanted to have a look and see if there was something we could take back to our granddaughter. I was standing just in front, looking at the purses, when I heard this strange noise, sort of like that fitt, fitt, fitt your coffee machines make when they turn that nozzle thing to make the steam. From my right, three times, and then from the left, the same noise, fitt, fitt, twice that time.’ She stopped, as if hearing it all over again, then went on. ‘I turned to see what the noise was, but all I could see were the people beside me and behind me, some of the people from the tour, and a man in an overcoat. When I looked back, that poor young man was on the ground, and I knelt down to try to help him. I think I called for Fred then, but it might have been later, when I saw the blood. At first I was afraid he’d fainted; not being used to the cold, or something like that. But then I saw the blood, and maybe that was when I called Fred; I really don’t recall. He did a lot of time in the Emergency Room, you see. But by the time Fred got there, I knew he was gone.’ She considered this, then added, ‘I don’t know how I could tell, because all I could see was the back of his neck, but there’s a look about them, when they’re dead. When Fred knelt down and touched him, he knew, too.’
Brunetti glanced at the husband, who picked up her story. ‘Martha’s right. I knew even before I touched him. He was still warm, poor boy, but the life had gone out of him. Couldn’t have been more than thirty.’ He shook his head. ‘No matter how many times you see it, it’s always new. And terrible.’ He shook his head and, as if to emphasize his words, pushed his empty cup and saucer a few centimetres across the table.
His wife put her hand on top of his and said, as if Brunetti weren’t there, ‘Nothing we could have done, Fred. Those two men knew what they were doing.’
She couldn’t have been more offhand about it: ‘those two men’.
‘What two men?’ Brunetti asked, striving to keep his voice as calm as possible. ‘Could you tell me more about them?’
‘There was the man in the overcoat,’ she said. ‘He was on my right, just a little bit behind me. I didn’t see the other one, but because the noise came from my left, he had to have been on the other side. And I’m not even sure it was a man. I just assume that because the other one was.’
Brunetti turned to the husband, ‘Did you see them, Doctor?’
The man shook his head. ‘Nope. I was looking at the things on the sheet. I didn’t even hear the noise.’ As if to prove this, he turned to the side and showed Brunetti the beige snail of the hearing aid in his left ear. ‘When I heard Martha call me, I didn’t have any idea what was going on. Truth to tell, I thought something might have happened to her, so I pushed right past those people to get to her, and when I saw her down on the ground like that, even though she was kneeling, well, I won’t tell you what I thought, but it wasn’t good.’ He paused as if in pained memory and gave a nervous smile.
Brunetti knew better than to prod him, and after a few moments, the man spoke again. ‘And, as I said, as soon as I touched him, I knew he was gone.’
Brunetti turned his attention back to the woman. ‘Could you describe this man for me, Doctor?’
Just at that moment the waitress came by and asked if she could bring them anything. Brunetti looked at the two Americans, but both shook their heads. Though he didn’t want it, he ordered a coffee.
A full minute passed in silence. The woman looked at her cup, mirrored her husband’s gesture in pushing it away, looked back at Brunetti, and said, ‘It’s not easy to describe him, sir. He was wearing a hat, one of those hats men wear in movies.’ To clarify the description, she added, ‘The kind of thing they wore in movies in the Thirties and Forties.’
She paused, as if trying to visualize the scene, then added, ‘No, all I remember is a sense that he was very tall and very big. He was wearing an overcoat; it might have been grey or dark brown, I really don’t recall. And that hat.’
The waitress set Brunetti’s coffee in front of him and moved away. He left it untouched, smiled across at her and said, ‘Go on, please, Doctor.’
‘There was the overcoat, and he had a scarf; maybe it was grey and maybe it was black. Because there were so many people standing around, all I saw was the side of him.’
‘Could you give me an idea of his age?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Oh, I couldn’t be sure of that, no more than to say he was an adult, perhaps your age,’ she said. ‘I think his hair was dark, but it was hard to tell in that light, and with his hat on. And I wasn’t paying much attention to him at that point, not really, because I didn’t have any idea of what was going on.’
Brunetti thought of the victim and asked, conscious of how it would sound, ‘Was this man white, Doctor?’
‘Oh yes, he was European,’ she answered, then added, ‘but my sense of him was that he looked more Mediterranean than my husband and I do.’ She smiled to show she meant no offence, and Brunetti took none.
‘What, specifically, makes you say that, Doctor?’ he asked.
‘His skin was darker than ours, I think, and it looked like he had dark eyes. He was taller than you, officer, and much taller than either one of us.’ She considered all of this and then added, ‘And thicker. He wasn’t a thin man, officer.’
Brunetti turned his attention to the husband. ‘Do you have any memory of seeing this man, Doctor? Or of seeing someone who might have been the other one?’
The white-haired man shook his head. ‘No. As I told you, my only concern was my wife. When I heard her shout, everything else went out of my head, so I couldn’t even tell you which people from our group were there.’
Brunetti turned back to the woman and asked, ‘Do you remember who was there, Doctor?’
She closed her eyes, as if trying to recall the scene yet again. Finally she said, ‘There were the Petersons; they were standing to my left, and the man was behind me on the right. And I think Lydia Watts was on the other side of the Petersons.’ She kept her eyes closed. When she opened them she said, ‘No, I don’t remember anyone else. That is, I know that we were all there in a bunch, but those are the only ones I can remember seeing.’
‘How many people are in your group, Doctor?’
The husband answered, ‘Sixteen. Plus spouses, that is,’ he immediately corrected. ‘Most of us are retired or semi-retired doctors, all from the North-east.’
‘Where are you staying?’ he asked.
‘At the Paganelli,’ he answered. Brunetti was surprised that a group that large could find room there, and that Americans would have the good sense to choose it.
‘And this evening, for dinner? Is the group scheduled to eat somewhere in particular?’ Brunetti wondered if he could perhaps locate them all and talk to them now, while whatever memories they had would still be fresh.
The Crowleys exchanged a glance. The man said, ‘No, not really. This is our last night in Venice, and some of us decided to eat on our own, so we don’t have any plans, not really.’ He gave an embarrassed smile and added, ‘I guess we’re sort of tired of eating with the same people every night.’
‘We were just going to walk around until we saw a place we liked and eat there,’ his wife added, smiling across at her husband as if proud of their decision. ‘But it’s awfully late now.’
‘And the group?’ Brunetti persisted.
‘They’re booked to eat at some place near San Marco,’ the woman said.
Her husband interrupted, ‘But we didn’t like the sound of it, all that local colour stuff.’
Brunetti had to admit they were probably right. ‘Do you remember the name?’ he asked.
Both shook their heads regretfully; the man spoke for them. ‘I’m sorry, officer, but I don’t.’
‘You said it was your last night here,’ he began, and they nodded. ‘What time do you leave tomorrow morning?’
‘Not until ten,’ she said. ‘We take the train to Rome, and then we fly out on Thursday. Home in time for Christmas.’
Brunetti pulled their bill towards him, added the cost of his own coffee to it, and put fifteen Euros on the table. The man started to object, but Brunetti said, ‘It’s police business,’ and that lie seemed to satisfy the doctor.
‘I can recommend a restaurant,’ he said, and then added, ‘I’d like to come and talk to you, and to these other people, in your hotel tomorrow morning.’
‘Breakfast’s at seven-thirty,’ she explained, ‘and the Petersons are always right on time. I’ll call Lydia Watts, when we get back if you like, and ask her to come down at eight so you can talk to her.’
‘Is your train at ten or do you leave the hotel at ten?’ Brunetti asked, hoping to be spared the need to be on the other side of San Marco by seven-thirty in the morning.
‘The train, so we have to leave the hotel at nine-fifteen. There’s a boat coming to take us to the station.’
Brunetti got to his feet and waited while the man helped his wife into her parka and then put on his own. Wearing them, the old people doubled in size. He led the way to the door, and held it open for them. Outside, in the campo, he pointed to the right and told them to walk along Calle della Mandorla to the Rosa Rossa and to tell the owner that Commissario Brunetti had sent them.
They both repeated his name, and the man said, ‘Sorry, Commissario. I didn’t hear your rank when you came in. I hope you didn’t mind being called officer.’
‘Not at all,’ Brunetti said with a smile. They shook hands, and Brunetti stood and watched them until they had disappeared beyond the corner of the church.
When he returned to the place where the man had been killed, he found a uniformed officer standing beside one of the stanchions. He saw Brunetti approach and saluted. ‘You alone here?’ Brunetti asked. He noticed that all of the sheets and the few bags that had remained had disappeared and wondered if the police had taken them back with them.
‘Yes, sir. Santini said to tell you he didn’t find anything.’ Brunetti assumed this meant not only shell casings, but any traces of whoever might have killed the man.
He looked at the enclosed area and only then noticed an oval mound of sawdust in the centre. Without thinking, he asked, nodding towards it with his chin, ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s the, er, blood, sir,’ the man answered. ‘Because of the cold.’
The image this conjured up was so grotesque that Brunetti refused to consider it; instead, he told the officer to call the Questura at midnight and remind them that he was to be relieved at one. He asked the young man if he wanted to go and have a coffee before the bar closed and then stood and waited for him.
When the uniformed man was back, Brunetti told him that, if he saw any of the other vu cumprà, he was to tell them that their colleague was dead and ask them to call the police if they had any information about him. He made a particular point of telling the officer to make it clear to them that they would not have to give their names or come to the Questura and that all the police wanted from them was information.
Brunetti used his telefonino to call the Questura. He gave his name, repeated what he had just told the crime scene officer, emphasizing that callers were not to be asked their names, and instructed that all calls relating to the shooting were to be recorded. He called the Carabinieri and, unsure of his authority, asked their cooperation in treating any relevant calls they might receive with the same discretion, and when the maresciallo agreed, asked if they would record their calls as well. The maresciallo observed he was very doubtful that any information would be volunteered by the vu cumprà but nevertheless agreed to do so.
There seemed little else for Brunetti to do, so he wished the young officer a good evening, hoped it would get no colder, and, having decided it would be faster to walk, turned towards Rialto and home.