Brunetti braked when he reached them and got off the bike. He propped it against the wall surrounding the villa. ‘Capitano Dantone?’ he called to the man walking towards the villa, recognizing the two bars on the shoulders of his uniform jacket.
‘Sì,’ the man responded, turning towards Brunetti. He gave Brunetti a careful look and did not seem suspicious, though he might well have been of a man in jeans and faded shirt, wearing a pair of shabby old tennis shoes and holding a bucket of ripe apricots. Dantone was, Brunetti thought, at least ten years younger than he and seemed both confident and calm. He had close-cropped light brown hair, light-coloured eyes, and a nose so thin and fine that it might well have been a woman’s, had not his heavy brow and sharply angled jaw laughed at that suggestion.
Extending his hand, Brunetti introduced himself and explained that he was the man who had called.
‘Do you have identification?’ Dantone asked in a normal voice. Brunetti failed to identify his accent.
‘Yes, it’s in my room. Would you like me to get it?’ At Dantone’s nod, Brunetti went upstairs. He brought back the plasticized card and passed it to Dantone, who looked at it closely, then flipped it over and studied the back.
‘Thank you, Commissario,’ he said as he handed it to Brunetti. ‘Could you tell me why you’re here?’
‘My wife’s aunt owns this villa, and I’ve come out for a while to row,’ he explained.
‘I see,’ Dantone said. ‘You know Signor Casati?’
‘Yes. I’ve been rowing with him since I’ve been here.’
‘How long has that been?’ Dantone asked.
‘Ten days.’
‘And all you did was row together?’ When Brunetti nodded, the Captain asked, ‘How good a rower is he?’
‘Very good.’
‘Even in a storm?’ Dantone asked.
‘I’m sorry, Capitano, but I’m no judge of that. I’m only an amateur. You’d have to ask someone who’s had more experience and who knows Signor Casati better than I do.’
Dantone nodded and was about to speak when they were interrupted by a squawky noise from the boat. Dantone walked over, stepped back on board, and picked up what looked like the receiver of a telephone. He spoke briefly, then turned to ask the pilot something. The sailor who had been standing beside him went down into the cabin.
Dantone spoke into the phone for a longer time, listened to the other voice, and hung up. He called over to Brunetti. ‘Would you like to join the search, Commissario?’
Brunetti agreed immediately, then asked, ‘May I get some things from my room?’
‘Of course,’ Dantone said, then continued talking to the pilot, who moved to the left of the wheel and pointed to a screen on the shelf in front of them. The man who had moored the boat reached to untie the rope.
Brunetti hurried up to his room, grabbed his sunglasses and sweater, then stuffed the baseball cap into his pocket. He was at the door when he remembered to go back and take his telefonino from the table beside the bed.
He heard the engine roar to life, ran down the stairs and outside, slamming the door behind him. He stepped on to the boat and remained on deck next to the pilot. The water appeared to be lower than it had been that morning.
The pilot took them up the same canal that Brunetti and Casati had used the first two days. Each time they passed what appeared to be a smaller canal, the pilot slowed the boat, and the two sailors studied the tributary through binoculars. Brunetti moved around the pilot and Dantone and looked at the screen on the shelf in front of them. He recognized the map of the Laguna Nord that showed a red dot moving to the north-east; it took him only a moment to realize that they were the dot.
The pilot tapped a few keys, and horizontal and vertical red lines divided the entire area into square segments. Small dark rectangles appeared on the right of the screen, and when Brunetti looked to the shore on the right, he saw the corresponding buildings.
To Casati, the mudflats and canals were as familiar as the calli of Venice were to Brunetti. Casati had seemed automatically to factor in tidal patterns and their twice-daily elimination and subsequent recreation of canals and canaletti; just so would Brunetti move about the city during acqua alta, adjusting his choice of calli to the rising and lowering of tides.
Brunetti pulled himself free of his reverie and saw that they were moving north. Reeds and tall grass were visible on both sides of the canal; as they proceeded, the grasses seemed to creep towards them from the sides of the narrowing canal. Finally the pilot slowed and then stopped the boat. ‘No more, Capitano,’ he said, ‘or we’ll run aground.’
Dantone, who was speaking on the phone, nodded and pointed back the way they had come. He kept talking while the pilot reversed and began the slow retreat from the canal. The grasses backed away from the moving boat until the pilot found a side canal wide enough to reverse into and emerge heading back towards Sant’Erasmo.
Brunetti had eavesdropped all along: Dantone was in contact with two other boats, represented on the screen as two more red dots. One was somewhere between Torcello and Burano, while the other was in the Canale di Treporti. All he heard was Dantone’s telling them which canal they were to enter and then giving them permission to retreat when the water grew too shallow.
To cut the glare, rather than to protect himself from the sun, Brunetti put on the baseball cap and was glad to have brought it.
After an hour, none of the smaller canals could be entered. Listening to Dantone’s conversations, Brunetti understood that the same was true of the areas the other boats were patrolling.
Dantone, after telling the other boats to go west and have a look, if they could, at Canale Silone and Canale Dese, pulled out his telefonino and punched in a number.
‘Ciao, Toni,’ he said, and Brunetti assumed it was a personal call. ‘The tide’s on the way out, so we’re not going to be able to do anything for the next few hours. I’d like you to send out the helicopter, all right?’ Dantone listened for a while and then said, ‘I don’t care what the procedure is. It doesn’t matter who I call: Vigili del Fuoco, Guardia Costiera. No boats will be able to go into the canals for hours. You saw the moon last night: the tide’s low. So do me a favour, would you, and just send it up?’ Again, a long silence, and then he said, no longer bothering to disguise his irritation, ‘Maybe in a kayak, but not in the boats we have.’ There elapsed another long silence, and then Dantone said in a much more conciliating voice, ‘I know, Toni: we’ve got the accountants screaming at us all the time, too. But this guy might be hurt and lying in his boat somewhere. And we aren’t going to find him this way, not from the boats.’ His voice grew more friendly and he said, ‘Do it and I’ll buy you a drink the next time I see you.’
Dantone said nothing for some time, and Brunetti began to think they’d have to wait until the tide made it possible for them to resume, but then the Captain said, ‘Thanks, Toni. Just pray it works.’