Transient Desires. Донна Леон

going on if he managed to keep his eyes on Brunetti and Griffoni all the time they spoke.

      Brunetti returned his attention to Vio, saying, ‘We’d like to ask you some questions about Saturday night, Signor Vio.’

      Vio’s mouth fell open and he stared, speechless, at Brunetti, then at Griffoni. He sat still – prey – waiting, too frightened to move.

      Brunetti smiled again, amiability itself. ‘Could you give us an idea of what you did on Saturday night, Signor Vio?’

      ‘I . . .’ he began, and they could see him trying to remember what Saturday was, and when he had that figured out, when Saturday was. ‘I went for a walk.’

      ‘Were you at home when you decided to go for your walk?’ Griffoni asked. Then she smiled to suggest that she was merely trying to pass the time.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And where is home, if I might ask?’

      ‘Near Sant’Eufemia.’

      She allowed her smile to soften and said, ‘You have to be patient with me, Signor Vio: I’m not Venetian, so I don’t know where that is.’

      For a moment, it seemed that Signor Vio didn’t know, either, but then he burst into speech, saying, ‘It’s down at the end of the canal before you get to Harry’s Dolci. Number 630.’ He raised an arm, as if to point towards his home, but the gesture was cut off by a deep wince of pain and a single, barked cough. Out came the handkerchief, and he wiped at his mouth again.

      ‘Thank you, Signor Vio,’ Griffoni said.

      Brunetti interrupted to add, ‘There’s not much to do there on a Saturday night, I’d say.’ Then, thinking he should make it clear to Vio that he knew the place he was talking about, he added, ‘Even Palanca closes at ten.’

      ‘No, not there,’ Vio said.

      ‘Oh, where did you go?’ Griffoni chirped, suggesting that he had but to name the beautiful Venetian location where he’d decided to go and she’d be out of the room and on her way to see it the instant he stopped speaking.

      Brunetti and Griffoni had developed a symbiotic ability to delude and deceive suspects or, indeed, any people they interviewed together. They took turns being the good cop or the bad cop; sometimes they even switched roles during an interrogation. They had never discussed this, did not plan before speaking to someone: they simply looked for weakness and dived towards it, no more thoughtful than sharks.

      ‘On the other side,’ Vio said, grudgingly.

      ‘Of the Giudecca Canal?’ Griffoni asked, as if she believed there could be some other canal to cross from the Giudecca.

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And where did you go?’

      Vio opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Brunetti interrupted to ask, ‘Did you see anyone you know?’

      Vio’s mouth slammed shut, almost involuntarily, and they both watched him retracing his steps through the city on Saturday night. And they saw him meet someone, at least open his eyes with surprise and look about him, as if in search of that person. His breathing became more agitated, and his nervousness seemed to prevent him from taking in enough oxygen.

      Vio nodded and waved a hand, unable to speak.

      After waiting some time for him to get his breath back, Brunetti asked, with a complete absence of friendliness, ‘Who did you meet?’

      ‘Someone from work.’

      ‘Who?’ Brunetti continued.

      Vio remained silent for a while and then said, ‘My uncle’s secretary,’ and Brunetti disguised his pleasure at this answer: a woman was more likely to tell the truth when asked if, and where, she had seen him. No, he told his ever-constant eavesdropper: not because women were more honest – though he believed they were – but because they were more afraid of having trouble with authority.

      ‘And where did you go?’ Brunetti asked.

      ‘Campo Santa Margherita,’ Vio answered. ‘That’s where I saw her.’

      ‘Oh, did you walk all that way?’ Griffoni asked, with great display of sympathy, as if she suspected that the walk to anywhere in the city from any of the stops the Number Two vaporetto made on its arrival from the Giudecca was the same distance as Venice to Rome.

      ‘No,’ Vio said, almost inaudibly.

      ‘Oh,’ she all but chirped, ‘Did you take a boat?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Proudly, the foreigner showing off her familiarity with the vaporetto, she asked, ‘Numero Due?’ Brunetti hoped she would not overdo this fey demonstration of familiarity with the routes of the vaporetti and ask if he’d gone all the way to Santa Marta before getting off.

      Vio sat alone on his side of the long table. The chair on his left was empty, and Pucetti, still silent, stood almost two metres from him. Yet Vio looked uncomfortable, as if people were crowding in at him from every side. He looked, in a word, trapped.

      He lowered his head and spoke to the top of the table.

      ‘Excuse me,’ Griffoni said pleasantly. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t hear you.’

      The young man mumbled something.

      She gave a small laugh and said, ‘Sorry, I still didn’t hear what you said.’

      He looked up and across the table at her, there beside the stolid Brunetti. He pulled his lips inside his mouth and made a soft humming sound. His fingers tightened until they became two fists resting on the table.

      He closed his eyes, opened them, closed them again and kept them closed while the humming noise grew louder.

      Vio opened his eyes again and turned to Brunetti. He opened his hands and pressed them against the table, as if to give himself strength. ‘I took . . .’ he began, then pushed himself suddenly to his feet and turned as if to flee the room. His foot blundered into the leg of the chair and, trying to free himself, he twisted his body sharply; once, twice, unaware of what trapped him and wanting only to escape it. When his foot finally pulled free, his entire upper body twisted again to the right.

      He moaned, then moaned again as though the other people in the room had suddenly pressed sharp objects against his skin. He collapsed against the table, tried to find something to cling to, failed, and started to sink to the floor, his moaning louder.

      Suddenly, as though there had not been shock enough, he was racked by coughing and a tiny thread of blood-mottled saliva came from his mouth, paralysing the others until his body fell to the floor.