'Yes.'
'And beyond that? Were they friends of yours?'
She paused and thought for a moment. 'Perhaps you could say Marco was a friend.' She put special emphasis on the word 'friend', as if to suggest the interesting possibility that they had been more than that, then added, 'But definitely not his father.'
'And why was that?' Brunetti asked.
This time it was her turn to shrug. 'We didn't get along.'
'About anything in particular?'
'About everything in particular,' she said, smiling at the speed of her own response. Her smile, which exposed perfect teeth and permitted the appearance of only two small wrinkles at the corners of her mouth, gave Brunetti a suggestion of what she might have been had she not decided to devote her middle years to the reacquisition of her earlier ones.
'And why was that?' he asked.
'Our fathers had a fight when they were young men, about fifty years ago,' she said, her delivery this time so deadpan that Brunetti had no idea if she was being serious or making fun of the way things were supposed to be in small villages.
‘I doubt that either you or Giulio could have been much affected,' Brunetti said, then added, 'You couldn't even have been born at the time.'
He had spoken with the excessive sincerity of flattery. Her smile this time created pairs of wrinkles, though very small ones. Paola had taught a class in the sonnet last year, and Brunetti remembered one - he thought it was
English - that said something about the denial of age, a form of deceit that had always seemed particularly pathetic to Brunetti.
'But didn't you have to deal with him, the older Bottin?' Brunetti asked. 'After all, this is a small village: people here must see one another every day.'
She actually put the back of her hand to her forehead when she answered, 'Don't tell me about that. I know, I know. From long experience, I know what people in small villages are like. All they need is the tiniest thing, and they invent lies about everyone.' Her studied performance of this lament raised in Brunetti's mind a certain curiosity as to the whereabouts, or the actual existence, of Signor Follini. She glanced at Vianello and opened her mouth to continue.
'And Signor Bottin?' Brunetti cut her off by asking. 'Did they invent lies about him, as well?'
Seemingly unoffended by Brunetti's interruption, she said with some asperity, 'The truth would have sufficed.'
'The truth about what?'
Her expression showed him just how eager she was to tell him, but then he saw the precise moment when the discretion that is learned from life in small villages returned to her.
'Oh, the usual things,' she said with an airy wave of the hand, and Brunetti knew it was useless to try to get anything more from her.
Nevertheless, he asked, 'What things?'
After a long pause which she clearly was using to choose examples as meaningless as she could make them, she said, That he was unkind to his wife and harsh with his son.'
'I would guess those things could be said about most men.'
'I doubt they're said about you, officer,' she said, leaning forward over the counter suggestively.
Vianello chose this moment to interrupt. The pilot said we had to get back, sir,' he said in a quiet voice, though loud enough for her to hear.
'Yes, of course, Sergeant,' Brunetti answered in his most official tone. Turning back to Signora Follini and giving her a brief smile, he said, 'I'm afraid that's all for now, Signora. If we have any further questions, someone will come out again.'
'Not you?' she asked, attempting to sound disappointed.
'Perhaps’ Brunetti answered, 'if it's necessary.'
He thanked her for her time and, Vianello preceding, they left the store. Vianello turned left and then right, already familiar with the few streets that made up the centre of Pellestrina.
'And not a moment too soon, Sergeant’ Brunetti said with a laugh.
'I thought it best to try to get us out by means of cunning, sir.'
'And if that hadn't worked?'
‘I had my gun’ Vianello answered, patting his holster.
Ahead of them loomed the sea wall, and on impulse Brunetti crossed the narrow road that led down to the end of the peninsula and started up the steps cut into the side of the wall. At the top, he moved aside to make room for Vianello on the narrow cement walkway that ran off in both directions.
Beyond them stretched the quietly moving waters of the Adriatic; dotted in the middle distance were tankers and cargo ships. And beyond those lay the open wound of the former Yugoslavia.
'It's strange, isn't it, sir, the way women like that seem absurd if they have "un lifting" but when they're richer or more famous, they don't?'
Brunetti considered two friends of his wife's known for their frequent disappearances to Rome and for their subsequent transformations. Because they were wealthy, the work was better done than it had been on the face of Signora Follini, so the results were less obvious and thus more successful. To him, however, the desire that prompted them was the same and no less pathetic.
He made a noncommittal noise and asked, 'What did the people you spoke to tell you? Anything about her?'
'No, sir. You know how it is in places like this: no one is willing to say anything that might be repeated to the person they said it about.'
'So much for police secrecy,' Brunetti said with a wry shake of his head.
'But you can understand it, can't you, sir? If it ever gets to trial, we have to say how we got a name in the first place or why we began to investigate a particular person. The trial goes on and what happens, happens. But they still have to live here, among people who see them as informers.'
Brunetti knew better than to give Vianello his standard lecture about civic duty and the responsibility of the citizen to help the authorities in their investigation of crime. The fact that this was a murder, a double murder, would make not the least bit of difference to anyone who lived here: the highest civic duty was to live in peace and not be harassed by the state. A person was much safer trusting family and neighbours. Beyond that ring of safety lay the dangers of bureaucracy and officialdom and the inevitable consequences of being embroiled with either.
Leaving Vianello to his own reflections, Brunetti stood a while longer, looking out at the sea. The ships were a bit further along in their journeys towards their destinations. They were alone in that, it seemed to him.
6
Reflecting that his distaste for what Vianello had just told him in no way altered its truth, Brunetti decided there was little purpose in their remaining in Pellestrina any longer, so he suggested they start back to Venice. Vianello displayed no surprise at this and they turned back down the steps, across the road, and through the narrow village until they were once again on the side facing Venice, where the police boat awaited them. On the trip across the laguna, Vianello gave him the names of the people he had questioned and a quick summary of the banalities they had given him. Bottin's brother, he had learned, lived in Murano, where he worked in a glass factory; the only other people related to him, the family of his late wife, lived on that island as well, though no one had seemed able to tell him what they did there.
The people to whom Vianello had spoken had not been uncooperative in any way: they had all answered whatever questions he put to them. But no one had volunteered any information beyond that contained in the simplest, most direct response. There had been no extraneous detail, no release of the tide of gossip in which all social life swims. They had been clever enough not to answer in bare monosyllables and managed to suggest that they were doing everything they could to recall whatever might be of use to the police. And all the while, Vianello had known what they were doing, and it was likely that they knew he knew.