Death in a Strange Country Read Free Page B

beside
him. ‘I’ve sent him out to the cemetery, sir. Anything else?’
     
    ‘Yes. Is there a bar
around here?’
     
    ‘Over there, sir, behind
the statue. It opens at six.’
     
    ‘Good. I need a coffee.’
As they walked towards the bar, Brunetti began to give orders. ‘We’ll need
divers, a pair of them. Get them busy in the water where the body was found. I
want them to bring up anything that could be a weapon: a knife, blade about
three centimetres wide. But it might have been something else, even a piece of
metal, so have them bring up anything that might have made a wound like that.
Tools, anything.’
     
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Vianello
said, trying to write this in his notebook while walking.
     
    ‘Doctor Rizzardi will
give us a time of death this afternoon. As soon as we have it, I want to see
Bonsuan.’
     
    ‘For the tides, sir?’
Vianello asked, understanding immediately.
     
    ‘Yes. And start calling
the hotels. See if anyone is missing from his room, especially Americans.’ He
knew the men disliked this, the endless calls to the hotels, pages and pages of
them on the police list. And after they’d called the hotels, there remained the
pensions and hostels, more pages of names and numbers.
     
    The steamy warmth of the
bar was comforting and familiar, as were the smells of coffee and pastry. A man
and woman standing at the counter glanced at the uniformed man, then went back
to their conversation. Brunetti asked for espresso, Vianello for caff è corretto, black coffee with a
substantial splash of grappa. When the barman put their coffees in front of
them, both spooned in two sugars and cradled the warm cups in their hands for a
moment.
     
    Vianello downed his
coffee in one gulp, set the cup back on the counter, and asked, ‘Anything else,
sir?’
     
    ‘See about drug dealing
in the neighbourhood. Who does it, and where? See if there’s anyone in the
neighbourhood with a record of drug arrests or street crimes: selling, using,
stealing, anything. And find out where they go to shoot up, any of those calle that dead-end into the canal, if there’s a place where syringes turn up in
the morning.’
     
    ‘You think it’s a drug
crime, sir?’
     
    Brunetti finished his
coffee and nodded to the barman for another. Without being asked, Vianello’
shook his head in a quick negative. ‘I don’t know. It’s possible. So let’s
check that first.’
     
    Vianello nodded and wrote
in his notebook. Finished, he slipped it into his breast pocket and began to
reach for his wallet.
     
    ‘No, no,’ Brunetti
insisted. ‘I’ll get it. Go back to the boat and call about the divers. And have
your men set up barricades. Get the entrances to the canal blocked off while
the divers work.’
     
    Vianello nodded his
thanks for the coffee and left. Through the steamy windows of the bar, Brunetti
saw the ebb and flow of people across the campo. He watched as they came
down from the main bridge that led to the hospital, noticed the police at their
right, and asked the people standing around what was going on. Usually, they
paused, looking from the dark uniforms that still milled around to the police
launch that bobbed at the side of the canal. Then, seeing nothing at all out of
the ordinary beyond that, they continued about their business. The old man, he
saw, still leaned against the iron railing. Even after all his years of police
work, he could not understand how people could so willingly place themselves
near the death of their own kind. It was a mystery he had never been able to
penetrate, that awful fascination with the termination of life, especially when
it was violent, as this had been.
     
    He turned back to his
second coffee and drank it quickly. ‘How much?’ he asked.
     
    ‘Five thousand lire.’
     
    He paid with a ten and
waited for his change. When he handed it to Brunetti, the barman asked, ‘Something
bad, sir?’
     
    ‘Yes, something bad,’
Brunetti answered. ‘Something very