‘I’m glad I‘m sitting down, Guido. You make my knees go all wobbly.’
‘I do feel better, though,’ Brunetti said, suddenly serious. ‘I’m hardly drinking at all, get eight hours of sleep, and I’m moving and busy all day.’
‘Will I recognize you?’ Paola asked.
‘It would break my heart if you didn’t,’ he said, unaware until he said it how true it was.
When they hung up, Brunetti realized it was no longer raining and the thunder had moved away from the island. He looked out the front windows and saw fat white clouds reflecting the glow of evening light. He walked to the corner of the property, still glad of the sweater, and looked to the south-west, but there was no sign of the storm, only the same soft evening light coming from the direction of the far-off city. How could a storm that fierce simply have disappeared without a trace? He’d have to ask Casati tomorrow.
He looked at his watch and saw that it was after seven, and yet the day was still with him, vibrant with life. He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked to the riva and stood for a while, watching the light on the fat clouds pass from red to rose and then fade away entirely. After a long time, he went back into the house to prepare his solitary dinner; well, solitary save for the company of Gaius Plinius Secundus, dead for nearly two millennia but very much present to Brunetti.
11
Brunetti awoke in Paradise. Birds chirped, the sun prised with rosy fingers at his eyelids, an invisible cow mooed in the distance, the heat was bearable, and his cotton bedspread welcome in the early morning. He lay still and listened to the silence, didn’t bother to tease himself, as he had every morning since he’d arrived, with looking to the left side of the bed to see if Paola had slipped in during the night.
Instead, he went downstairs and into the brick-floored kitchen to make coffee, surprised by how cold the floor felt under his feet. He noticed that Federica hadn’t brought the bread. He glanced at the clock above the sink and saw that it was still not yet seven: surely he had enough time to make coffee and have a shower before meeting Casati.
He drank the coffee standing at the counter, set the empty cup in the sink, and went back upstairs, where he shaved carefully. The job the days of rowing had done on his muscles relieved him of the need to represent his manliness with a few days’ stubble; besides, he felt better with a shaved face.
The morning chill was still present, so he put a sweater over his shoulders before he went downstairs. Still no sign of Federica. Friday afternoon she had brought him his washed and ironed clothing, insisting that Signor Emilio had asked her to see to this. It made him uncomfortable, and that made him wonder why it didn’t bother him in the least to receive the same treatment in his own home. Clean, ironed shirts, he knew, did not float into his closet every night while he slept, neither here nor at home, yet they might as well have done so, for all the attention he paid to them.
As he left the house, he saw Federica turn into the walkway that led to the front door. ‘Buon dì,’ he said as she drew closer.
Ignoring his greeting, she asked, ‘Have you seen my father?’ She looked behind Brunetti, as if she suspected him of hiding her father in the house.
‘No. Isn’t he at the boat?’
She shook her head. ‘He didn’t come down for coffee this morning, and when I went upstairs, he wasn’t in his room. I saw him in the morning yesterday, but not since then. He wasn’t at dinner.’ Then, after a pause, ‘And he didn’t sleep at home last night.’ She was puzzled, not worried, so it sounded to Brunetti as though it was not such an unusual event. This made sense, he supposed. Casati was still a very handsome man, his age impossible to judge, but his vigour evident. As though she’d read his mind, Federica added, ‘In the past, he’s always called when he wasn’t going to come home.’ Aware of this comic reversal of roles, she gave an embarrassed smile.
‘And the boat?’ Surely, Casati must have moved it to a safer place yesterday: no boat owner would ever have left one tied to a stone wall, fender or no fender, with a storm coming right at it.
‘There’s a small marina where a lot of us put our boats when there’s bad weather. But I haven’t had time to check.’
‘Where is it?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Come with me,’ she said, already moving back the way she had come.
He caught up with her and they walked along side by side, silent. They followed the pavement until, up ahead, Brunetti saw a large L-shaped cement molo sticking out into the water, boats docked at the inner sides. They studied the boats as they moved closer, but the familiar puparìn was not there. These boats floated in full tranquillity. Only one, its tarpaulin sagging in places under the weight of rainwater that had not been bailed from it, showed signs of the passing of the storm.
‘That’s very strange,’ Federica said, running her fingers through her unkempt hair. ‘A boat can’t disappear.’
‘Did he take it out yesterday?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I told him not to, not with a storm coming this way,’ she answered, trying to disguise her anger. Then her face relaxed. ‘But maybe he did and had to sleep in the boat because he couldn’t get back.’
It was when Brunetti heard her grasping at this straw that he began to worry. Didn’t Casati have a telefonino? The storm had stopped twelve hours before: surely a man as familiar with the laguna as Casati would have found his way home, even in the dark. Without thinking, he turned back towards the villa, the only place he could think of going. After a moment, Federica caught up and fell into step with him.
‘Do you have any idea where he might have gone?’ Brunetti asked.
Federica kept her eyes on the ground as they walked, although she must have been as familiar with the route as with the floors of her own home; then she slowed and stopped. She said, ‘My father …’ then paused and pulled her lower lip between her teeth. She cleared her throat to make it easier and said, ‘My father goes to see my mother every week, usually on Sunday.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said in what he tried to make an encouraging voice.
‘He goes to talk to her, to tell her what’s happening and to ask her what she thinks.’ She looked at Brunetti, as if she were a student pausing during an exam to see how things were going.
Brunetti nodded.
‘He’s done it since she died, so I’m accustomed to it.’
Brunetti nodded again; he could remember his own mother doing the same.
‘So that’s probably where he went,’ she said.
She stood still and looked at him, and he saw that her sea-blue eyes had the same wrinkles at the corners that her father’s had. ‘That must be what he did.’ She looked away from Brunetti and across the water towards Treporti.