She kept her eyes on the distant fields, letting whole minutes pass. A small boat chugged past, a dog, gap-mouthed with joy, facing forward on the prow.
When the noise of the engine had disappeared, she turned to Brunetti and said, ‘My father said that he liked you. And trusted you.’
‘Trusted?’ Brunetti asked.
‘He said he could see who had taught you how to row and that you were reliable.’ She nodded, as though to confirm her memory.
He wondered if she knew and said, ‘He and my father won the regatta once.’
She smiled. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been told that.’ In response to Brunetti’s unasked question, she added, ‘It’s one of my favourite stories. I’ve heard him describe every turn and twist, and I know the names of the men in the first four boats to finish.’ After a pause, she added, ‘It’s the only time he won.’
She started walking again, back towards the villa. When Brunetti joined her, she turned to him and said, ‘I can’t tell you why I think this, but he seemed nervous, or excited, as if there was something he was impatient to do.’ After a moment, in a softer voice, she added, ‘I thought it was something he wanted to tell my mother.’
There was still no sign of the boat. ‘Have you called him?’ Brunetti asked, knowing it was a stupid question.
‘Since early this morning,’ she answered, pulling her phone from her pocket and hitting the redial key. She held it towards Brunetti, who heard a quick, insistent beep until she poked it off. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ Her voice was rough.
Brunetti was at a loss. On land, if a person went missing, one called the hospitals and the police, but he was the police, and they were kilometres from any hospital. ‘What about the Guardia Costiera?’ he asked. ‘Or the Capitaneria di Porto?’ One of them, he was sure, had to be in charge of searching for someone lost at sea.
Yet, was he sure? Casati had been missing less than twenty-four hours, and there must be many possible explanations for that. But somehow a disappearance this close to the sea – especially in the wake of a storm like yesterday’s – seemed far more serious than one on land, where the person could easily have got on a train and gone to Ferrara for the day or simply not bothered to call. On the mainland, there were so many places a person could go; out here, there was little choice but to come home.
‘Massimo has a friend in the Capitaneria,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask him to call.’
She turned and stared out over the waters of the laguna, as if only now aware of the vast expanse in which they would have to look for her father.
‘Is there any place where he might have gone?’ Brunetti asked again when they got back to the mooring place in front of the villa, thinking it better to be absolutely sure about this before a search was launched.
Federica gave this a lot of thought until she finally shook her head; it looked as though she’d dismissed a possibility, not found one. ‘He’s never been gone overnight before. Without telling me, that is.’
‘Is your husband still at home?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No, he went out this morning. At four,’ Federica said, glancing at her watch.
‘Do you want to call him and ask him to contact his friend?’
‘Yes, yes.’ She pressed another key and, while she waited, again studied the empty horizon. Brunetti looked down and saw how cloudy the water was, as though whatever the waves had whipped up from the seabed yesterday had not yet had time to filter back down. He watched what might have been fish move about in quick spurts, then heard a man’s voice answer Federica’s call. She moved away a few steps and turned from him to continue the conversation.
Brunetti headed for the villa, reluctant to seem to eavesdrop. Casati had told him on Friday that he had something he had to do at the weekend, although the day before that he had told Brunetti they’d go out. Plans change, Brunetti knew: things happen. It could be anything.
The light had bloomed and the temperature had risen. Brunetti felt the sweat on his chest. He looked towards Burano and, beyond it, Torcello, but the reflected light was too fierce and he turned south-west to look towards Murano. How different it seemed from this side rather than from Fondamente Nove. Point of view changed everything, as it had with the idea of why Casati might spend a night away. Brunetti, a man, had seen it as understandable in someone still so youthful and vigorous, but he doubted that Federica would view it the same way. Would a woman understand another man’s participatory triumph at the thought of Casati’s having spent the night with a woman? Hardly, and particularly not if she were his daughter.
But someone like Casati would have called if he had known he was going to be away all night, even if he had to lie about the reason. The storm made it even more imperative.
His musings were interrupted by Federica, who was approaching from behind. ‘Massimo said he’d call his friend when we hung up,’ she said as she reached him. ‘The Capitaneria handles this.’
All of a sudden, Federica put both of her hands over her face and made a low sound that had nothing to do with words or thought: it was fear made audible, nothing more. ‘I don’t want this,’ she said in a tortured voice.
Brunetti took her arm and spoke her name a few times before she stopped. She uncovered her eyes and stepped back from him. Casati’s daughter nodded, tight-lipped, and told him she was all right, then continued walking towards the villa.
Brunetti paused to find the number and called the Capitaneria di Porto to tell them he was a police commissario who was now on Sant’Erasmo with the daughter of the man who’d been reported missing and would like to speak to the person in charge.
He thought the officer he spoke to would request some proof of identity, but he did not. Asking Brunetti to wait a moment, he transferred the call to Captain Dantone, who was in charge of search and rescue at sea. The Captain said that they would search with boats immediately, starting near Sant’Erasmo and expanding as the boats covered a fixed order of quadrants. Finally, in the event of continuing failure, the Vigili del Fuoco and the Guardia Costiera would be asked to add their boats to the search. If still no sign of man or boat was found within half a day, the Carabinieri would be requested to do a flyover with a helicopter.
Brunetti thanked him, said he’d be remaining on the island, and asked the Captain how long the search would continue.
‘Until we find the boat,’ the Captain answered, then asked if there were more questions, and hung up when Brunetti said that there were not.
Until they found the boat, Brunetti repeated to himself.
12