When Brunetti went to tell Federica what he had learned about the search, he found her in the kitchen of the villa, making coffee. As he entered the room, he saw that there were two cups and saucers on the table; he pulled out a chair and sat to wait for the coffee.
When it finished boiling up, Federica brought the pot over and poured them each a cup. She sat and put two sugars into her coffee, slid the bowl towards Brunetti, and stirred the sugar around before taking a sip. Brunetti did much the same.
‘The Capitaneria will send boats. So will the Guardia Costiera and, if necessary, the Vigili del Fuoco,’ Brunetti said.
‘And if they don’t find anything?’
‘Then the Carabinieri will send a helicopter.’
She considered this, stirred her coffee again. ‘And if his boat sank?’
‘It’s too light to sink,’ Brunetti said, although he was far from certain. ‘The man at the Capitaneria told me they divide the area into quadrants and search back and forth.’
‘They’re from the South, usually,’ she said to Brunetti’s utter confusion.
‘Who?’
‘The people there.’
‘Many of them, I suppose,’ Brunetti conceded. ‘But they’ve been trained to do this sort of thing.’
‘The laguna’s very big.’
‘Federica,’ he said, stopping himself from reaching across the table to touch her arm, ‘let them do their work, and then we’ll see.’
She got up and collected their cups and saucers and set them into the sink. ‘I think I’ll go back home,’ she said. ‘Papà might try to call.’
‘Of course,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet.
When she was gone, he called Paola.
‘I saw the flashes of lightning from the terrace,’ she said, ‘but we still didn’t get it here. Just some rain and not even a lot of it.’ Then, abandoning the storm, she asked, ‘Will you have anything to do with the search?’
‘The only people who know I’m a policeman are Federica – her father told her, and he knew because Emilio told him – and the officer at the Capitaneria. To everyone else, I’m just some relative of Emilio’s who’s come out to go rowing.’
‘If he was such a good boatman, why’d he go out in that storm?’
‘I don’t know that he did. All Federica said was that he seemed excited, or nervous, at breakfast, but she couldn’t give any reason for thinking that, except that she knows him so well.’
‘It could be that she’s saying it now that she doesn’t know where he is. Retrospective memory.’
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said. ‘But she seems a sensible person.’
‘All the more reason for her to try to make sense of what’s happened. Or to find some sort of reason for it.’
‘You’ve been reading too many books,’ Brunetti said in an attempt at lightness.
‘Probably,’ Paola said quite amiably. ‘Tell me what happens,’ she added and then said goodbye.
After she was gone, Brunetti was swept with sudden longing for her presence, for the comfort her spirit provided to his own. Just talking to her for five minutes had calmed him and made him feel he was a better man.
He shook himself free of introspection and went up to his room, where he tossed his sweater on the foot of the bed and changed to his jeans. He was surprised by the way they hung at his waist and took the belt from his shorts and slipped it into place. There was a mirror on one wall, but Brunetti didn’t look. Instead, he went outside, took the bicycle and started down to the bar at the other end of the island.
No respecter of human emotions, the day continued perfect. The rain of the previous evening had brought down the temperature, and though it was bound to rise during the day, the air now was still a caress on the skin.
Brunetti rode slowly, noticing the small puddles that remained in the fields. It had been a long time since the last rain; the plants looked relieved to have had it, and he was happy for them. The thought of Casati crept back into his mind, and he felt a moment’s embarrassment at having so easily given in to the seductions of nature.
As he rode, he tried to recall his conversations with Casati and his remarks about the bees, his girls. Brunetti had read no more than the average person about bees and knew that the phenomenon of their mass deaths was worldwide, but he had never cared to find out more than that, even though Chiara often talked about them knowingly, insisting that bees were the canaries in the mine and a good gauge of how poorly things were going for the planet.
He thought of the dead bees Casati had brought back to the boat, saying that they had to be tested. Brunetti had given it little thought at the time, but if they were dead, then the only thing it made sense to test them for was what had killed them. Brunetti wondered what his friend the pathologist Rizzardi would think if he knew he was now concerned with the deaths of bees.
He saw motion to his left and automatically slowed the bike. A man stood in a tree-filled field, waving at him. He recognized one of the men who played cards in the bar in the afternoon, a retired fisherman who now farmed his land and often said how sweet it was to sleep late in the morning, by which he meant six.
‘Hey, Guido,’ he called. ‘Come and give me a hand.’
Brunetti stopped the bike and lowered it into the grass at the side of the road, then walked across the field to the man, whose name he thought was Ubaldo. The wet grass, uncut for weeks, brushed at his ankles, a not unpleasant feeling. Four or five white plastic buckets surrounded the man, and all of them were surrounded by the trees. Brunetti stopped a few metres from him and asked, ‘What is it?’
‘Apricots,’ Ubaldo answered, waving a hand towards the ground, where Brunetti noticed small orange ovals hiding in the grass.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
Instead of answering, Ubaldo pointed to the trees, whose leaves glistened with last night’s rain. Some fruit still clung to the branches, but it was evident from the slaughter at their feet that the wind and rain had had their way with the fruit.
‘What would you like me to do?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Get one of those pails, fill it up and take it home with you,’ Ubaldo said, bending down to pick up two apricots and setting them gently on top of the ones already in the bucket next to him. ‘Go ahead,’ he insisted, handing Brunetti another of the white pails.
‘But there are too many,’ Brunetti objected.
‘That’s why I want you to take some away. There’s too much for my family.’ When Brunetti still hesitated, Ubaldo said, ‘Please. It’s a sin to throw food away – my mother always told us that – so I want people to take them. Please.’
Brunetti remembered what he’d been told about fishermen: when they found themselves with an excessive catch, they chose to give it away rather than watch it rot. He picked up the pail and began to fill it. ‘Just take the good ones,’ Ubaldo said. ‘I’ll send the grandkids out later to get the bruised ones. My wife can make jam.’