‘The man who pulled her out . . .’ The faint bell of memory sounded in Brunetti’s mind. A man diving into the water to rescue a girl. Yes . . . something . . . something, but what?
‘The man who saved her said he saw someone push or throw her into the water.’
‘Who did he say that to?’
‘To you,’ she said with barely disguised accusation.
‘I think you must be mistaken, Contessa,’ Brunetti said. ‘With all due respect.’
‘No, not to you, not personally. But to the police who came. He got her out of the water, but he was too drunk to do anything except shout for help. A different young man gave her artificial respiration, but by then the damage had been done.’ So carried away was she by the telling of this story that she made fists of her hands and banged them into one another. ‘It was the other man, the young one, who called the police.
‘When they came, the first man was lying on the pavement, asleep. The police knew him. He was the local drunk, and when they woke him up he was so drunk he couldn’t remember his own name, and he couldn’t find his wallet. He told the police that he’d seen a man with the girl, and it looked as if he’d pushed or thrown her in.’
‘What did the police do?’
She uncurled her fingers and put her hands in her lap. ‘They took them both – him and Manuela – to the hospital. When he woke up in the morning, he remembered his name.’ Brunetti thought the Contessa had stopped, then she added, with great sadness, ‘But she didn’t remember hers.’
She gave a deep sigh, so profound that Brunetti could see her chest rise and fall. ‘But that’s all he remembered. When they asked him about the other man, he said there was someone else, but all he knew was that there was another man. The police assumed he meant the young man who had helped Manuela.’
‘What else did he say?’
‘That he saw something in the water that looked like a person, so he dived in to grab it.’
‘That was very brave of him,’ Brunetti said but then recalled the spurious bravery of drunks.
‘Yes,’ the Contessa agreed but hesitantly and sounding even less certain than he was.
‘Both he and Manuela were there when I got to the hospital. I went to thank him and told him I was her grandmother.’ He watched her recall the scene. ‘He asked me for money,’ she said.
‘Did you give it to him?’
‘Of course.’
‘How much?’
‘I had a few hundred euros in my bag, and I gave it to him.’ Before Brunetti could speak, she went on. ‘When I asked the police about him – this must have been a few weeks later – it was after the doctors told us that the damage to Manuela was very bad . . .’ Her voice trailed off. She wiped at her forehead with the fingers of her right hand, looked at him and asked, ‘Excuse me. What was I saying?’
‘You were telling me what he did with the money you gave him.’
‘The police told me he was drunk for a month. They said he was a drunk and not to believe anything he’d told me because he was just trying to get my money.’ She surprised him by shrugging, a gesture that related to nothing she had said. ‘But it wasn’t until later that I learned about what he’d said about the man.’
‘The police told you?’
Her answer was a long time in coming. ‘In a way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Questore had been a good friend of my husband; he told me what was in the original police report and that the man didn’t remember anything about it when he woke up. The Questore told me the police were convinced it was drunken invention and wasn’t true.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘I had no reason not to.’
‘And now?’
She stroked the velvet covering of the arms of her chair. ‘And now I’d like to be sure.’
There had been so many recent revelations of police brutality and cover-ups that he preferred to spare them both the embarrassment of asking her to explain her change of mind.
‘Did the Questore tell you anything else about him?’
‘Only that he saved her life, and was a drunk. That’s what the police had already told me.’
Brunetti leaned towards her and held up a hand. ‘Let me ask you, Contessa, precisely what it is you’d like me to do.’
Her hands had moved to her lap. She laced her fingers together and stared at them.
Brunetti took up his drink. He studied the surface of the liquid, telling himself he would remain like this until she spoke. No matter how long the silence lasted, he would force her to tell him what she wanted.
Footsteps passed the closed door of the room; for a moment, Brunetti thought he could hear his watch ticking, but he dismissed that as fantasy.
He heard her move restlessly in her chair, but he refused to look at her.
‘I want my granddaughter back,’ she said in a voice that had passed beyond grief into agony.
4