He heard a noise from inside, and the door was pulled open, revealing a very tall woman in her thirties with shoulder-length dark hair. She wore her uniform jacket: he saw the single bar under the three stars on her lapels. So she was a primo capitano, then, and probably outranked most of the men in the unit.
As he stepped forward, he put out his hand, saying, ‘Good morning, Laura. I’m pleased to meet you.’
‘The pleasure is mine,’ the woman answered in that same deep voice. She stepped back beyond the edge of the open door, saying, ‘We can go to my office and talk there.’ She smiled at last, and he found that almost as attractive as her voice. Her eyes were green; a number of tiny wrinkles spread out from the sides without doing her any damage. Her uniform jacket fitted her closely, making Brunetti wonder where the carabinieri of his youth – fat, moustached, wrinkled – had gone.
She led the way down a corridor, her trousers hiding her legs. Brunetti looked to the side and into the first open door they passed, and then, like a tailor in a competitor’s atelier, he slowed his pace and glanced inside every open door, although he had no idea what it was he was looking for. What he got to see was pretty much what he saw at the Questura: uniformed officers sitting behind computers at desks piled with papers and file folders. The desks also held photos of women and men, children, cats and dogs, one of a man in shorts on a beach, holding up a fish almost as long as he. The walls were covered with the usual plaques and maps, photos of the President of the Republic, in one office a crucifix, and in another the lion flag of San Marco.
She stopped at the last door on the right and turned into the room. No surprises here, either, save that the desk was less littered than the ones he’d seen on the way down the corridor. Computer, keyboard, a book that looked like a volume from the standard compilation of penal law. The In box seemed to hold one thin file: the Out box was full.
She closed the door after him, went behind the desk and sat; Brunetti took the chair closer to the desk and, before he sat, pointed to the In box and said, ‘You have both my compliments and my envy.’
This time she gave him a broader smile. ‘Begin with flattery, Guido. It always works.’
‘I didn’t intend it as that,’ Brunetti said, then added, ‘Although the technique isn’t unknown to me.’
The noise she made might have been a stifled laugh. She leaned forward, extracted a file from the Out box, and passed a few pages to him.
As he expected, they contained the photos Signorina Elettra had sent of the two men who had taken the injured young women to the hospital, enlarged almost to life size. These were clipped to some pages of standard-sized paper covered with pencilled lines of brief notes printed in a neat, clear hand. Before he began reading, Brunetti glanced at Captain Nieddu but said nothing. He found it interesting that the notes were not computer-produced and thus, being handwritten, were certainly unrecorded and unofficial. She didn’t comment on this, and Brunetti turned to examining the file.
He moved the photos aside and began to read. Brunetti was expecting evidence linking the men to the victims, but the text he read sounded – he couldn’t stop himself from thinking – like a bullet outline of a B-grade buddy film. Young men born in the same week, twenty-four years before, one the son of a successful lawyer, the other the son of an odd-job man who cleaned the container tanks at one of the chemical companies at Marghera. Nine years before, away from work and drunk, the odd-job man had driven his car off the road and into a cement pillar. And survived, with reduced mental and physical capacities, not described. The last note was a single, chilling, ‘Institutionalized’.
Brunetti raised his head and glanced towards the Captain, but she was busy reading another file that had appeared miraculously in front of her and didn’t look up. Brunetti returned to the story. Marcello Vio, who was the only son of the injured man, had two younger sisters as well as a mother. To support them, he left school at fifteen and began to work for his uncle’s transport business, where he remained to this day.
Filiberto Duso, in this unlikely script, was the young princeling. He and Vio were inseparable at school, until Duso went to liceo to prepare himself for university and Vio went to work. They remained, however, best friends. Together, they sailed the laguna, always in search of adventure, and they were generally considered ‘bravi ragazzi.’
A number of recent rumours suggested that some of Vio’s latest adventures were of questionable legality, perhaps the smuggling of cigarettes from Montenegro or the transport of illegally harvested clams. His uncle, not Duso, was named in conjunction with these actions, although no date nor specific action was provided. Brunetti read three short comments that spoke of, even warned of, the uncle’s influence upon his nephew. On the Giudecca, it was all but impossible to escape the low murmur of Gossip, and Brunetti was wary of putting much faith in a story that was not corroborated by something more closely resembling fact.
Brunetti finished reading and raised the sheets of paper, and when Nieddu finally looked over at him, he asked, ‘Is this why Vio’s a “person of interest” to you?’
She nodded. ‘Following in the footsteps of his uncle, Pietro Borgato.’
‘Also a person of interest?’
‘Even more so. And for some time. There are rumours.’
‘What sort?’ Brunetti asked.
She started to answer but then shrugged and stopped. ‘You know how it is. People say he’s mixed up in bad things, but when you ask, they don’t know what sort of bad things: but they heard it from someone they trust.’ She let him think about that for a short time and then added, ‘A woman who lives next to one of my men said he’s a smuggler, but she didn’t know what he was smuggling.’ She raised a hand and made a waving gesture, as if to drive these remarks away. ‘It might just as easily be that she simply doesn’t like him and thinks he’s got to be a smuggler because he has boats.’
Because there was nothing he could say, Brunetti remained silent for a moment and then tapped at the photos and asked, ‘How do you know it was these two at the hospital dock?’ he finally asked.
Instead of answering, Nieddu reached to the In box and pulled out the file. She flicked through it until, finding the paper she sought, she turned it around and leaned across her desk to pass it to him.
Clipped to the top was a single photo of two young men, arm in arm, relaxed, smiling at the camera. They were dressed in shorts and T-shirts. Both were deeply tanned; one was heavily muscled. He had pushed his sunglasses back on his head, while the thinner one wore the crown of green laurel leaves that students put on to celebrate their graduation from university. Red silk streamers ran down from a large bow attached to the crown; his mouth was wide open and he seemed ready to take a bite out of the planet. Brunetti’s spirit recalled the joy and wild pride he’d felt when he’d worn the same wreath for a single day: he understood Duso’s expression, for this had to be Duso.
He studied both faces briefly, placed the photo on the desk, picked up the photos Signorina Elettra had sent and placed them on either side of the photo of the two young men together. He glanced back and forth: there was no confounding him, the one with the sunglasses was Marcello Vio.
‘Duso’s graduation party?’ Brunetti asked, tapping at the photo.
‘Yes. This summer.’
‘Who took it?’
The Captain hesitated a moment before she answered, ‘One of my men.’
Brunetti gave no indication of his surprise. ‘How did you get it?’
‘He saw the photos we were sent and brought that one to me this morning.’
Brunetti nodded and considered what she’d just said. To have taken the photo, the officer would have to be a friend, perhaps even a relative, of one of the men in the photo. ‘Am I allowed to compliment you on this?’
She