His reverie was broken by the sound of a woman’s voice speaking his name. He looked up and saw Federica, wearing a black skirt and grey blouse and holding the arm of a tall man with a high widow’s peak and a thick nose that had been broken and badly set.
Brunetti approached them, and she opened her arms and embraced him. He felt her begin to sob and held his arms around her until she managed to stop and could move back from him, her face averted. Brunetti put out his hand to the man, who shook it a few times and presented himself as Massimo. That done, he stepped around Brunetti to take his wife’s arm. There was protectiveness, but no claim of possession, in his gesture.
‘Can we see him?’ Massimo asked.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘The room is down the hall. After, if he’s free, we can talk to Doctor Rizzardi.’
‘Is he the pathologist?’ Federica’s husband asked.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘He’s a good man,’ he added, then wondered what difference this could possibly make to them.
Brunetti led them down the corridor and stopped at the familiar door. He knocked and the same attendant as the day before opened it. This time, the man stepped back immediately and allowed Brunetti to lead the others into the small viewing room where relatives and friends were taken to identify their dead. He muttered something soft and inaudible as they entered.
The room was as cold as Brunetti remembered it, shocking on this July day. The walls were a neutral grey, the floor enormous dark slate slabs Brunetti had always thought looked unfortunately like tombstones.
A wheeled stretcher stood in the centre of the room; a single window gave out on a courtyard in which a palm tree grew under the protective shade of a pine. He wanted to study the trees, but instead he studied the draped figure on the stretcher. There was the nose, and there, aslant, the feet.
The attendant approached the body and put both hands on the top of the cloth, the part covering the face. ‘Signori,’ he said softly, ‘I am going to uncover his face. I’d like you to tell me if this is Davide Casati.’
Federica and her husband nodded silently. She wrapped her arms around her body, as if hoping to bring some warmth into the room. Her husband placed his arm around her shoulder again, pulling her slightly towards him.
The attendant moved the cloth. Casati’s eyes were finally closed, and a sort of baker’s cap was pulled down over his forehead. To cover the incision, Brunetti knew and hoped they did not.
Federica stiffened and turned to bury her face in her husband’s chest. He coughed lightly once and said, ‘Yes, that’s Davide Casati.’
‘Thank you,’ the attendant said and covered Casati’s face again.
Brunetti looked at the attendant, who nodded towards the door. Federica and Massimo turned and moved towards it, Brunetti behind them. Somehow the attendant got to the door first and held it open for them. Brunetti let the others leave and when they had started down the hall, asked the attendant, ‘Can they see the Dottore?’
‘I’m sorry but the doctor’s started another autopsy.’ Before Brunetti could protest, he added, ‘It’s a little boy. He had his tonsils out three days ago and was sent home yesterday.’
‘He died?’ Brunetti asked, hoping he had misunderstood.
‘His parents found him last night.’
‘That’s horrible,’ Brunetti said.
The attendant nodded. ‘So they asked him to do it immediately. They need to know.’
Who did he mean? Brunetti asked himself. The parents? The doctors? The hospital administration? The police? Dear Jesus, keep my children from harm. He knew it was the worst sort of primitive superstition; he knew there was no-sense to it and no chance that it could help, but he could not stop himself from thinking this silent prayer. And let the boy’s parents not be destroyed by this, he added, though he knew that prayer was useless.
Brunetti rejoined the others, saying, ‘Dottor Rizzardi can’t see you now. He’s busy.’ He thought it better not to explain.
Federica demanded, eyes wide, ‘Does that mean we don’t get any information? No one tells us what happened?’
‘I spoke to him yesterday, very briefly,’ Brunetti said. He led them out to the courtyard and around to the side where few people passed. He sat on the low wall and asked them to join him. He leaned forward so he could see them both and told them what Rizzardi had found: her father had apparently been caught by the storm and had somehow become tangled in his anchor rope and been pulled into the water by it.
Brunetti watched Massimo, who sat beside him, factor in the experience of a man who surely had found himself alone in the laguna with wind and rain howling around him. Ropes would be driven wildly along the floor of the boat, almost anything could be picked up by a random gust and tossed over the side. Brunetti saw him nod, accepting the possibility.
Federica, her hands clasped between her knees, stared at the pavement, silent. Brunetti saw her in profile and watched her mouth tighten and relax, tighten and relax as she struggled to understand, perhaps imagine, the scene. Her left hand sneaked from her lap and took Massimo’s, and then she asked Brunetti, ‘Did he say anything to you while you were out in the laguna?’
‘He said a lot, Federica. We were together hours every day.’
‘I know that,’ she said shortly. ‘I mean did he say anything unusual? Strange?’ Her eyes remained on the pavement.
Brunetti could think only of the times Casati had talked about his bees and the damage that had been done to the laguna, but he felt that their spirits had so mingled during those long days that he could no longer judge what the other man had said to be strange.
‘No,’ Brunetti finally said.
‘Did he talk about my mother?’
‘No more than to give me a sense that he missed her terribly.’
‘“That he missed her terribly”,’ Federica repeated. She sat upright and Massimo’s body blocked Brunetti’s view of her, and then said, voice desolate and slow, ‘Well, he won’t any more, will he?’
Massimo’s head whipped round to face her. A moment passed and the fisherman said, ‘You told him not even to think about it, Fede.’
‘But he went there,’ she said with despair that left Brunetti’s mouth open. She got to her feet. Massimo stood, as if in response to a current that had passed between them simultaneously. He pulled his lower lip between his teeth and covered his mouth with his right hand. ‘Poor man, poor man.’
Massimo reached out his hand and shook Brunetti’s. ‘Thank you for your help.’
Federica wiped at tears with an inattentive hand, then took her husband’s forearm in a strong grasp. ‘We’ll go now,’ she said.
‘Shall I go to the boat with you?’ Brunetti asked.