‘No,’ she answered quickly. ‘I think we’d like to be alone.’ She turned and walked towards the door that led to the main exit, her husband beside her. After a few steps, she stopped and leaned against Massimo, who put both arms around her and held her for some time. Then she moved away from him, wiped at her face, and started walking again. Brunetti watched them go, certain now that he would return to Sant’Erasmo the next day.
Brunetti could think of nothing better to do than to go for a long, purposeless walk, which took up some hours of the afternoon, after which he went home and had a nap. After dinner, he explained the scene at the hospital, trying to make his vague feelings clear to Paola. They still sat at the dinner table, dishes stacked at the side of the sink, drinking their coffee.
‘It’s all grey, everything that happened,’ Brunetti finally said. ‘It might have been an accident; he could easily have stepped into the coiled rope – remember a couple of years ago, one of the crew of a vaporetto did that and it took his leg off him.’ Telling that story was no help, he knew; every accident was different from all others, and there was no real connection.
‘She asked if he ever said anything strange to me,’ he told her. ‘And whether he talked about her mother. If you’d heard her voice when she said he wouldn’t miss her any more, your hair would have stood up on your head, believe me. That was stranger than anything Casati said to me.’ If despair had a voice, in that instant Federica had used it, and if her father’s death had been the result of his own despair, she would have reason for it.
‘It could mean a number of things,’ Paola said.
Brunetti agreed with her but said, ‘Yesterday, before I found him, I was in the bar at the other end of the island, talking to some of the men he knew. One of his friends said something about his going to visit a woman on Burano, but the man he was talking to quickly turned the conversation away. It was nothing obvious, but I sensed there was something they didn’t want a stranger to know. It was just a false note, and I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. But the islands are small places, and there are no secrets.’ He set his cup on the table and got to his feet.
‘If he’d gone to see this woman, it would at least be a sign of life, of still being in life.’
‘And the daughter would have to feel jealousy, not despair?’ Paola asked. ‘Is that better?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti declared. ‘A thousand times better.’
‘May I say something terrible?’ Paola surprised him by asking.
‘What?’
‘The most interesting reactions are the most spontaneous ones.’
‘But this is life, not a book,’ Brunetti said, pretending her remark had not irritated him.
‘As you will, Guido,’ Paola answered.
18
The next morning, Brunetti called Vianello on his telefonino at eight and asked if he could perhaps call in sick and meet him at the Fondamente Nove embarcadero at nine-thirty and go out to Burano with him.
‘Not in uniform, I assume,’ the Inspector answered.
‘No. We’re just going out to ask some questions.’
It took the Number 12 more than half an hour to get to Burano, and during the trip, Brunetti explained what had happened to Casati and what they had been doing before his death. He told Vianello about the death of the bees and how much it had upset Casati, and how he had taken the samples of the dead insects. Vianello followed closely, nodding as he began to recognize the pattern of Brunetti’s days.
Brunetti, halfway through his story, realized how weak it all sounded, at least as a reason to ask Vianello to come out to Burano with him. So he confessed: ‘He spent much of his life on boats. It’s hard for me to think he’d be so careless, but I want to exclude the possibility that he … that he chose to go and join his wife.’
‘And if you find he had a … woman,’ Vianello asked, ‘would that be enough?’
‘Yes, and for his daughter, too. I hope,’ Brunetti said.
When Vianello made no response to that, Brunetti added, ‘Maybe I just want to learn more about him.’ As he said that, Brunetti realized that Casati had been the only man with whom his father had never quarrelled, the man his father had always considered his only friend. But he couldn’t say this, even to Vianello.
‘Let’s do it, then. Besides, I’ve always liked Burano,’ the Inspector said.
Brunetti nodded to acknowledge the remark and then asked, unable not to, ‘What’s happening with Ruggieri?’
‘He says now that he remembers giving the girl two aspirin. She told him she had a headache, and he said he always takes them to parties in case he needs them.’ Vianello’s voice could not have been more dispassionate.
‘How convenient that he remembered,’ Brunetti observed.
‘The people who saw him give something to the girl now say they might well have been aspirin. They’re not sure any longer.’
‘And so?’
‘And so that’s probably going to be the end of it,’ was all Vianello said.
Brunetti looked out the window of the vaporetto and saw they were passing Mazzorbo. Many things passed. Eventually, Brunetti knew, all things do.
‘What do you want to do when we get there?’ Vianello asked at the sound of the slowing of the boat’s engine. ‘Try to find the woman?’
‘Later,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I’d like to go to the post office and see if he was sending the samples from there.’
The boat pulled in and tied up, and the early crowd of tourists disembarked, going off in search of their Indonesian-made Burano lace and Chinese-made Murano glass, certain that, out here on a genuine Venetian island, they’d be sure to get the real thing. And at a better price.
Brunetti saw a café on the left, and they went in. The woman behind the bar smiled in welcome and asked what they’d like. Both of them had coffee and home-made brioche, which both of them complimented. When they were finished, Vianello took a twenty-Euro bill from his wallet. As he waited for his change, he asked, ‘Signora, could you tell me where the post office is?’
‘Don’t you poor people have a post office in Castello?’ she asked, hitting Vianello’s accent right on the nose.
‘Only in Via Garibaldi, Signora, or I can go to Sant’Elena if I want,’ Vianello answered straight-faced, exaggerating his Castello accent to tell her he understood the joke in her question.
‘It’s easy to find,’ she said. ‘You know where Da Romano is?’
‘Yes.’ Vianello had eaten there many times, and always well.
‘Turn into the calle just before it, and cross the bridge. That will take you right to it. It’s open until two.’ She gave Vianello his change with a smile, and the two men left the bar.
The post office stood on Rio Terranova, stuck between a tabaccheria and a shop selling masks and other souvenirs. They entered and found a broad wooden counter behind which sat two women. There were two old men standing in front of the first, two old women in front of the other. Brunetti glanced around for some sign of an office and saw an open door just opposite the entrance.