The pilot of the launch slowed as he approached a boat with the markings of the Fire Department that was already anchored and bobbing in the water just behind the only empty space in the long line of docked boats. He slipped his engine into reverse for an instant, to bring the boat to a stop. Sergeant Lorenzo Vianello walked to the side of the boat and looked down into the waters that filled the empty space, but the sun glistened brightly and all he could see were the tilted masts sticking out of the surface. 'Is that it?' he called to the two black-suited divers who stood on the deck of the Fire Department launch.
One of the divers called across something Vianello couldn't make out and then went back to the business of pulling on his left flipper.
Danilo Bonsuan, the police pilot, came out of the small cabin at the front of the police launch and glanced down at the sunken boat. He raised a protective hand to cut the sun's glare and looked down to where Vianello was pointing. 'That's got to be it’ he said. 'The man who called said it caught fire and sank.' He looked at the boats on either side of the empty space, and saw that their sides and decks were scarred and blackened by flames.
Beside them, the two divers fiddled with their masks, pulling tight the straps that held their oxygen canisters to their backs. They slipped the mouthpieces in, took a few exploratory breaths, and walked to the side of their boat. Vianello, tall and broad shouldered, stood beside his shorter colleague, still looking down into the water.
Indicating the two divers, he asked Bonsuan, 'Would you go into that water?'
The pilot shrugged. 'It's not too bad out here. Besides, they're covered,' he said, nodding with his chin towards the black-suited divers.
The first diver stepped over the side of the boat and, facing outward, the back of his rubber fins placed carefully on the rungs of the exterior ladder, walked down into the water, followed immediately by the other.
'Aren't they supposed to jump in backwards?' Vianello asked.
'That's only on Jacques Cousteau,' Bonsuan said and went back into the cabin. He came out a moment later, a cigarette cupped in one hand. 'What else did they tell you?' he asked the sergeant.
'A call came in from the Carabinieri on the Lido’ Vianello began. Bonsuan interrupted him with an antiphonal, 'sons of bitches', but the sergeant pretended not to hear and continued, 'They said there were two bodies in a sunken boat and we should get some divers out here to have a look.'
'Nothing else?' Bonsuan asked.
Vianello shrugged, as if to ask whether much more could be expected from Carabinieri.
Silently, they watched the bubbles burst on the surface in front of their boat. Gradually, the tide pulled the boat backwards; Bonsuan let it drift for a few minutes but then went back into the cabin, fired the engine to life, and pulled the boat back into place directly behind the gap in the line of boats. He cut the engine and came back out on deck. He reached down and picked up a rope. Effortlessly, he tossed it towards the Fire Department boat, looping it around a stanchion the first time, and tied their own boat to the other. Below them, they could see motion, but it was no more than gleams and flashes, and they could make no sense of it. Bonsuan finished his cigarette and tossed the butt overboard, like most Venetians utterly careless about what he threw into the water. The two men watched the filter float, then dance, in the fizzing bubbles before freeing itself and drifting away.
After about five minutes, the divers surfaced and pulled back their masks. Graziano, the more senior, called up to the men on the police boat, 'There's two of them down there.'
'What happened?' Vianello asked.
Graziano shook his head. 'No idea. It looks like they drowned when the boat went down.'
'They're fishermen,' Bonsuan said in disbelief. 'They wouldn't get trapped in a sinking boat.'
Graziano's business was to dive into the water, not to speculate on what he found there, so he said nothing. When Bonsuan remained silent, the man bobbing on the surface beside Graziano asked, 'Do you want us to bring them up?'
Vianello and Bonsuan exchanged a glance. Neither of them had any idea of what had happened to take the two men down with their boat, but neither of them wanted to make a decision of this sort and thus run the risk of destroying whatever evidence might be down there with them.
Finally Graziano said, 'The crabs are there already.'
'OK, get them out,' Vianello said.
Graziano and his partner pulled on their masks, slipped the mouthpieces into place, and, like a pair of eider ducks, upended themselves and disappeared. The pilot went down the cabin steps, pulled open one of the seats along the side, and took out some complicated rigging from the end of which hung a double canvas sling. He came up the steps and back to Vianello's side. He raised the rope, slung it over the side of the boat, and lowered it into the water.
A minute later Graziano and his partner bobbed to the surface, the body of a third man dangling limp between them. With motions so practised it made Vianello uneasy to watch them, they eased the arms of the dead man into the sling Bonsuan tossed down; one of them dived under the water to run a rope between the man's legs, then attached it to a hook on the front of the sling.
He waved to Bonsuan and the pilot and Vianello hauled the dead man up, amazed at how heavy he was. Vianello caught himself thinking that this was why it was called dead weight, but he forced himself, embarrassed, away from that thought. Slowly the body lifted out of the water, and the two men had to lean out from the deck to prevent it from banging against the side. They were not entirely successful, but finally they dragged him over the railing and laid him on the deck, his sightless eyes staring up at the sky.
Before they could take a closer look, they heard splashing below them. Quickly, they loosened the sling and threw it over the side again. Even more careful this time to keep the second body from the side of the boat, they hauled it up on to the deck and stretched it out beside the other.
Two crabs still clung to the hair of the first corpse, but Vianello was too horrified by the sight to do anything except stare. Bonsuan reached down and pulled them off, casually tossing them over the side of the boat into the water.
The divers climbed up the ladder on the side of the police boat and stepped over the gunwale and on to the deck. They unhooked their oxygen tanks and set them carefully down, pulled off their masks, then the black rubber hoods that covered their heads.
On the deck of the police launch, the four men looked at the bodies that lay at their feet. Vianello went into the cabin, and when he emerged he had two woollen blankets in his hands. He stuffed one under his elbow, signalled to Bonsuan, and shook out the first one. The pilot caught the other end, and together they lowered it over the body of the older man. Vianello took the second blanket, and together they repeated the process with the son.
It was only then, when they were fully covered and hidden from sight, that Graziano's partner, the youngest living person on the boat, said, 'No crab did that to his face.'
4
Vianello had seen the crushed fragments of bone showing through the bloodless wound on the older man's head, though his quick glance had discerned no sign of violence on the son's body. Nodding in acknowledgement of the diver's remark, he took out his telefonino, called the Questura, and asked to speak to his immediate superior, Commissario Guido Brunetti. While he waited, he watched the two divers climb on to their own boat. Brunetti finally answered, and the sergeant said, 'I'm out here on Pellestrina, sir. It looks like one of them was killed.' Then, to avoid any ambiguity, given the fact that the men had died in what appeared to be an accident, he continued, 'That is, murdered.' 'How?' Brunetti asked.