Before he got to the end of the list, the man answered, 'Yes, sir,' and hung up.
From memory, he dialled Vianello's number.
'Vianello,' he answered on the third ring.
'It's me, Lorenzo,' Brunetti said.
'What's wrong?'
'Bonsuan's dead. I'm at Ca' Roman, by the fort.' He waited for Vianello to say something, but the sergeant remained silent, waiting.
'I've got the man who did it. He's here.' The man lay at his feet, his face flushed crimson as he strained at the strips holding him in that painful, helpless curve. Brunetti looked down at him, and the man opened his mouth, either to protest or to implore.
Brunetti kicked him. He didn't aim for any particular place, not for his head and not for his face. He just lashed out with his right foot, and as chance had it, he caught the man on the top of his shoulder, just where it joined his neck. He groaned and went silent.
Brunetti turned his attention back to Vianello. 'I called and told them to send a launch or a helicopter.'
'Who'd you call?' Vianello asked.
'I dialled 112.'
'They're hopeless’ Vianello decreed. 'I'll call Massimo and get out there in half an hour. Where are you, exactly?'
'By the fort’ Brunetti said, not at all concerned to know who Massimo was or just what Vianello would do.
'I'll be there’ Vianello said and hung up.
Brunetti put the telefonino into the pocket of his jacket, forgetting to switch it off. Without so much as a glance at the man on the ground, he went and sat on an immense stone by the wall of the fort. He leaned back against the wall and stared off to the west, his face warmed by the fading rays of the sun. He took his hands from his armpits and held the palms out towards the sun, as a chilled man would towards a fire. He thought of removing his jacket but decided it would take too much effort to do so, even though he knew he'd be warmer if he could free himself of its sodden weight.
He waited for something to happen. Nothing much did. The man on the ground moaned and moved around but Brunetti bothered to look at him only occasionally and then only to assure himself that his ankles and hands were still securely tied. At one point, he found himself thinking that, if he were to pick up one of the stones that lay nearby and hit the man on the front of the head with it, he could claim the man had attacked him after killing Bonsuan and he'd died during the ensuing struggle. It troubled Brunetti to find himself thinking this, but it troubled him even more to realize he was dissuaded from action, at least in part, by his realization that the marks of the ligatures on the man's wrists and ankles would show what had really happened.
Slowly, taking the warmth of the day with it, the sun surrendered itself to the grey flatness of the coastline. To the north, the light faded, erasing the jagged ramparts and jutting spires of that horror, Marghera. He heard a fly buzz. Listening intently, he realized it was not a fly but the sound of a motor, sharp and high and approaching at great speed. A launch from the Questura? Vianello and the heroic Massimo? Brunetti had no idea which of his possible saviours it might be; it could just as easily be a passing taxi or some waterborne commuter hurrying home, now that the storm was over and peace restored. He thought for a moment of what a comfort it would be to see Vianello, tough and bear-like Vianello, and then he remembered that Vianello was Bonsuan's greatest friend on the force.
He had three daughters, Bonsuan: a doctor, an architect and a lawyer, and it had all been done on the salary of a police pilot. Yet Bonsuan had always been the first to insist on paying for a round of coffees or drinks; police rumour had it that he and his wife helped support a young Bosnian woman who had studied law with their youngest daughter and needed to pass only two more exams before graduation. Brunetti had no idea if this were true, and now he'd probably never know. It hardly mattered, though.
The buzzing grew closer, then stopped, and he heard a man's voice shout his name.
26
Brunetti pushed himself to his feet, feeling for the first time in his life a warning shot from the territory of age. So this was what it would be like, the aching hip, the long pull of muscles in the thighs, the unsteadiness of the ground under his feet, and the overwhelming realization that everything was simply too much trouble. He started towards the beach, heading in the general direction of the voice that had called his name. Once he stumbled when his right foot caught in a trailing plant, and another time he started back in fear when a bird shot up from under his feet, no doubt warning him away from her nest.
Protecting her young, protecting her young, and who to protect Bonsuan's young, even though they were no longer young? He heard a noise from the opposite direction and looked up, hoping to see Vianello, but it was Signorina Elettra. At least, a bedraggled young woman who looked very much like Signorina Elettra. One sleeve of her jacket was gone, and through a long tear in her slacks, he could see her calf. One foot was bare, a bloody scrape across the top of her instep. But it was her hair that most surprised him, for in a wide patch just above her right ear it was cut short, no more than a few centimetres from her head. It stuck out like the hair on the tops of the ears of baby jaguars and was little longer than that.
'Are you all right?' he asked.
She raised a hand towards Brunetti. 'Come and find him. Please.' She didn't wait for him to answer but turned and made off in the direction from which she must have come. He noticed that she favoured her left foot, the one without a shoe.
'Signore,' he heard Vianello say behind him.
Brunetti turned and saw him, dressed in jeans and a heavy woollen sweater. Over his arm he carried a second one. Behind him stood another man in civilian clothes, a hunting rifle in one hand: no doubt the Massimo that Vianello said would bring him out so quickly.
'There's a man over there by the fort, on the ground. Watch him,' Brunetti called to the man with the gun, then beckoned to Vianello and set off after Signorina Elettra.
The beach was littered with all sorts of junk, the hundreds of things that get stirred up from the bottom of the laguna by every storm and left to rot until a tide or a new storm carries them back to their watery dump. He saw pieces of life buoys, countless plastic bottles, some with their tops screwed on tightly; there were large hunks of fishing net, shoes and boots> plastic cutlery, seemingly enough for an army. Each time he saw a piece of wood, a sliver of oar or branch, he turned his eyes away, looking for bottles or plastic cups.
When they came upon her, she was kneeling on the sand at the edge of the water. Lying in the shallow water just in front of her was a fishing boat. Its left side was stove in, and the water around it was covered with an expanding slick of black oil.
Hearing them approach, she looked up. ‘I don't know what happened, but he's gone.'
Vianello walked over to her, draped the sweater around her shoulders, and offered her his hand to help her to her feet. She ignored him and pulled the sweater down from her shoulders, letting it drop on the sand
Vianello squatted down beside her. Fussily, he picked up the sweater and placed it back over her shoulders, tying the arms together under her chin. 'Come with us now,' he said and got to his feet, helping her to stand beside him.
He started to speak but stopped when he heard a noise from the direction of Pellestrina. The three of them, like chickens on a perch, turned their heads in the direction of the sharp keening that announced the arrival of the Carabinieri.