Earthly Remains Read online

  ‘I don’t know, Lieutenant. Vianello might.’

  After a long silence, Scarpa said, ‘You want me to take over?’ Brunetti was glad his eyes were closed. He kept on panting.

  ‘No, sir. I’ve got the rhythm going.’

  ‘All right.’

  The approaching two-beat of the ambulance’s siren slipped into Brunetti’s consciousness. Good Lord, what had he done? He’d hoped to create a momentary distraction to stop Pucetti from attacking the man, but things had got out of control entirely, and now he was on the floor with Pucetti feigning CPR and Lieutenant Scarpa offering to help.

  Would they try to find Vianello? Or call Paola? She’d been asleep when he left that morning, so they hadn’t spoken.

  He hadn’t considered the consequences of his behaviour, had done the first thing he thought would save Pucetti. He could have blamed it on not having slept last night, or having slept too much, because of what he’d eaten or not eaten. Too much coffee, no coffee. But he’d gone too far by falling against Pucetti. And here they were, and here was the ambulance crew.

  Footsteps, noise, Pucetti gone, different hands, mask over his nose and mouth, hands under his ankles and shoulders, stretcher, ambulance, siren, the calming up and down of motion on the water, slow slide into the dock, bumbling about, transfer to a harder surface, the sound of wheels on marble floors as he was rolled through the hospital. He peeked through slitted eyes and saw the automatic doors and huge red cross of Pronto Soccorso.

  Inside, he was wheeled quickly past Reception and parked alongside the wall of a corridor. After some time, he heard footsteps approach. Someone slipped a pillow under his head while another person put something around his wrist, a blanket was placed over him and pulled to his waist, and then the footsteps moved away.

  Brunetti lay still for minutes, eyes tightly closed until he remembered he had to think of a way to put an end to this. He couldn’t jump up and pretend to be Lazarus, nor could he push the blanket aside and step down from the bed, saying he had to get back to work. He lay still and waited. He lapsed into something approaching sleep and was awakened by movement. He opened his eyes and saw that he was in a small examination room, a white-uniformed nurse lowering the sides of his rolling bed. Before he could ask her anything, she left the room.

  Very shortly after this, a woman wearing a white jacket entered the room and approached his bedside without speaking. Their eyes met and she nodded. He noticed that she carried a plastic folder. She reached out her hand and touched his, turned it over, and felt for his pulse. She looked at her watch, made a note in the file, then peeled down his lower eyelid, still saying nothing. He stared ahead.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ she asked.

  Brunetti thought it wiser to nod than to speak.

  ‘Do you feel any pain?’

  He looked up at the woman, saw her nametag, but the angle prevented him from reading it.

  ‘A little,’ he whispered.

  She was about his age, dark-haired. Her skin was dry, her eyes weary and wary.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘My arm,’ he said, having a vague memory that one sign of a heart attack was pain in one of the arms; the left, he thought.

  The woman made a note. After a moment, she turned away from him and slipped the file into a clear plastic holder attached to the top rail of his bed.

  ‘Can you tell me what’s happened, Dottoressa?’ he asked, thinking that was the sort of thing a person would ask if he’d been taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

  She turned back to him, and he saw her name: Dottoressa Sanmartini. Her expression was so neutral that Brunetti wondered if she knew she was speaking to a human being. ‘Your vital signs,’ she began, pointing to his file suspended from the bed, ‘offer a wide range of interpretation.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

  Then she looked across at him, this time appearing to notice him. ‘What work do you do?’

  ‘I’m a commissario of police,’ he answered.

  ‘Ah,’ escaped her lips. She pulled out the file, opened it, and wrote something on the top sheet.

  ‘I’m feeling better, I think,’ Brunetti said nervously, thinking it was time to stop all this and get out of there.

  ‘We still have to do some tests,’ she cut him short by saying. Then, perhaps in response to his expression, she added, ‘Don’t worry, Signor …’ she looked at his chart, ‘… Brunetti. We’ll check a few things, just to be sure what’s going on.’

  ‘I don’t think anything is,’ he said calmly, hoping that the certainty in his voice would persuade her.

  ‘Perhaps it would be better if you left this to us to decide, Signore,’ she said quite amiably, convincing Brunetti that he was going to have to pay for his rashness.

  Brunetti closed his eyes in resignation. He had set this in motion; now he could do nothing but play it out until the end.

  Voice suddenly brisk and professional, she went on, ‘We’ll take blood and do further tests. I’d like to exclude some possibilities.’

  It occurred to him to ask what it was she wanted to eliminate, but he realized that wisdom lay in raising no opposition. ‘Good,’ he forced himself to say.

  Another set of footsteps approached. A male voice said, ‘Elena told me to come, Dottoressa.’

  Brunetti looked towards the voice then and saw a white-bearded mountain of a man carrying a small metal tray. The man set it on a cabinet next to the bed, rolled up Brunetti’s left sleeve, and wrapped a piece of rubber tubing tight around his upper arm. He removed a syringe from the tray and tore off the plastic covering. His immense hand rendered the syringe minute and because of that somehow more threatening. Straight-faced, he said, ‘I hope this won’t hurt, Signore.’

  Brunetti closed his eyes. He felt the man’s hand on his wrist, then the faint touch of the cold needle on his inner arm, then nothing at all while he waited for something to happen. He was conscious of pressure, heard some clinking noises, but he kept his eyes closed, waiting.

  A sudden brush on his arm caused him to open his eyes, and he saw the man untying the rubber tubing. Three glass vials of blood stood upright in a plastic rack on the tray.

  The doctor placed a sheet of paper on it, saying, ‘All of these, Teo. And I’d like them to do the enzymes immediately.’

  ‘Of course, Dottoressa.’ He took the tray and turned away. Brunetti listened to his footsteps disappear down the corridor. What have I done? What have I done?

  ‘I’d like to call my wife,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry, but telefonini don’t work in the examining rooms. There’s no reception,’ Dottoressa Sanmartini explained.

  Brunetti reached his newly freed hand to the edge of the sheet and began to push it back. ‘Not so fast, Signore,’ the Dottoressa said. ‘We still need an electrocardiogram. You can call her after that. A nurse will take you to where you’ll be able to call.’ As if conjured up by the doctor’s words, a female nurse arrived and placed herself at the foot of the bed.

  The doctor stood back while the nurse pushed him from the room. She wheeled Brunetti across the large atrium in front of Pronto Soccorso and then directly into the cardiology emergency room. But once he was inside, things slowed down. Some sort of mix-up in scheduling meant that he had to wait while three people were examined.

  Having once thought of her, Brunetti now became agitated at the idea that Paola knew nothing of what was going on. He looked at his watch and saw it was just after noon: there was still an hour before she’d begin to worry.

  Finally a different doctor did the electrocardiogram, after which Brunetti was wheeled to another room where the same man slathered cold gel on his chest to prepare him for an ultrasound. The doctor told Brunetti he could watch the monitor with him, but Brunetti declined the chance to do so.

  The doctor squeegeed the gel around on Brunetti’s chest for what seemed a long time, then began to rub a blunt wand across his chest. Occasionally he tapped at a computer screen, takin
g pictures from various angles, never saying a word. At last he ripped a long strip of paper towel from an enormous roll and passed it to Brunetti. When Brunetti had finished wiping his chest clean he dropped the towels into a large plastic bin beside the bed, still no wiser than he had been at the beginning of the exams.

  ‘Humm,’ was the doctor’s only comment when Brunetti asked if there was anything wrong.

  Realizing it was the only answer he was going to get, Brunetti asked, ‘Can I go home now?’

  The doctor could not contain his surprise. ‘Go home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s not a decision I can make, Signore. I’m not in charge of your case.’ Then, glancing at the screen, he added, ‘I think it would be wiser if you were to stay here a bit longer.’

  Before Brunetti could say a word, they heard a commotion outside the small room. A female voice was raised loud in protest, and then another one, even louder. Suddenly the door opened and Paola appeared.

  Brunetti pushed himself up on one elbow and held out his other arm towards her. ‘Paola, don’t worry. There’s nothing wrong,’ he said, hoping to quell her fears and assure her he was all right.

  She came quickly to the side of the bed, and he glanced at the doctor, hoping to enlist his support.

  Paola leaned down, and when she was sure she had his attention, said, voice tight with badly contained anger, ‘What have you done now?’

  3

  The doctor, evidently shocked by the woman’s words, to say nothing of the tone in which she said them, asked, ‘Who are you, Signora?’

  ‘I’m this man’s wife, Dottore,’ Paola said in a voice she managed to make sound calm. ‘I’d be very grateful if I could have a few minutes alone with my husband.’

  Brunetti watched the other man’s reaction. The doctor moved his head backwards, as though the distance would afford him a better view of these two people, then tilted his chin to one side and then the other, then upwards, much in the manner of a curious bird. He turned off the machine, and the light in the room grew dimmer. He left silently, closing the door very quietly after him.

  ‘I’ve never seen that happen,’ Brunetti observed.

  ‘What?’ asked his distracted wife.

  ‘That someone bounced a doctor from his own examining room.’

  Brunetti heard Paola take a few deep breaths. He wondered what form her anger was going to take. He should have insisted on phoning, should have got up and found a phone that worked, borrowed one, used his warrant card to commandeer one at the nurses’ desk. But he had not, had completely given himself over to the passivity that hospitals want to instil in their patients.

  She said nothing for so long that Brunetti began to fear her silence was a presage of the consequences of his thoughtlessness.

  ‘Who told you?’ he finally asked.

  Suddenly her right hand was over her eyes, the left tucked under the other elbow. Brunetti said her name, but she turned away from him. ‘Paola. Tell me,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice calm.

  He pushed the blanket back, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and sat up, suddenly light-headed and woozy. He clung to the edge of the mattress with both hands. He took two deep breaths and lowered his feet to the floor; then he stood.

  Paola must have heard him, for she uncovered her eyes and looked at him. ‘Pucetti came to the university. He appeared at the back of the classroom where I was teaching. In his uniform. With a terrible look on his face.’

  Ah, faithful, dutiful Pucetti, trying to amend things by bringing the real news, the good news, to his commander’s wife. Brunetti could imagine the scene: the pale-faced officer at the door, distress written plain across his face.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you were dead, Guido,’ Paola said in a ravaged voice. ‘I thought that was why he’d come, to tell me that you’d been killed. By someone who was trying to rob a bank or some crazy person who had a hostage. I saw him, and I knew for an instant that you were dead.’ Her voice was hoarse, and the words came out with rough edges, as though she had been screaming for hours.

  Paola had not cried, he saw; there were no traces of that around her eyes. She was a woman who lived in her imagination, who immediately turned what she saw into stories, who caught a person’s expression and made up what had happened to them, and she believed in tragedy. She lived a happy life, but her vision of life was tragic.

  ‘And then what happened?’ he asked, still on his guard.

  ‘And then he smiled and held up his thumb to show me things were all right. I still didn’t know what had happened, but he was telling me not to worry.’ Paola stopped and breathed deeply a few times.

  Brunetti waited.

  ‘I looked back at the students. Some of them were turned around, watching Pucetti; the others started to talk.’ She raised her right hand in a gesture that could have signified anything. ‘So I told them class was over.’

  Brunetti nodded. That made sense, letting them go, not pretending that she’d be able to concentrate any longer.

  ‘You’d think they’d never seen a policeman before,’ she said in something that approached her normal voice.

  Brunetti looked down and saw that his feet were naked. Where had his shoes gone? He urgently wanted to be wearing them, to be able to joke with his wife, to sit in his office and be bored.

  ‘When they were gone, Pucetti came across to my desk and told me that it was all an act, done to protect him. I had no idea what he was talking about, and I don’t think I really understand it now, either.’

  Brunetti walked to the chair standing against the wall and brought it back for her. He touched her then, holding her shoulders and guiding her to the chair as though she were an old woman and needed help.

  ‘Tell me what you’ve done, please,’ she asked, the same request that had accompanied her dramatic entrance into the room, but, oh, so different now.

  ‘I was questioning a suspect together with Pucetti. All of a sudden, Pucetti lost control of himself. I thought he was going to grab the guy’s throat. So I jumped up to block him and cause confusion – I really didn’t think about it – and a few minutes later, I was lying on the floor with Pucetti giving me CPR and Scarpa looking down at me.’

  ‘You think Scarpa understood what had happened?’ she asked.

  ‘God knows,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I was on the floor with Pucetti pumping away at my heart, so I didn’t have a clear vision of what was going on.’ Brunetti cast his mind back over the Lieutenant’s behaviour and said, ‘He was worried, but I’m not sure about what.’ How difficult, to think the Lieutenant could have felt concern for him. Perhaps Pucetti would know: after all, he had seen Scarpa’s face and had spoken to him.

  ‘Next thing, Patta will be sending you flowers.’

  ‘I think I’m going to let him,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘I think I’m going to keep this.’

  ‘Keep what?’ she asked, clearly not understanding.

  ‘This thing. Collapse. Sickness. Attack. Whatever it was.’

  ‘Or wasn’t,’ Paola corrected him.

  Brunetti smiled. Life was good again: his wife could joke with him.

  ‘I can’t stand it any longer, doing what I do,’ Brunetti surprised himself by saying. ‘I had to fake all this and end up here in the hospital, with doctors prodding and poking at me, just because I have to protect the people I work with from reacting to the work they do.’ He had never spoken this aloud, never thought it out in this fashion before.

  He leaned against the mattress, glad to have its solidity behind him. Brunetti wanted, even though he was speaking to the one person he trusted without reserve, not to have to explain anything more. He was tired of the whole thing.

  ‘It sounds like you want to run away,’ she said, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  Brunetti nodded.

  She looked at him the same way the doctor had, even tilting her head at
the same angle to study him. He watched his response mirrored in her face: her eyes widened and she glanced away. Her lips grew tight as they sometimes did when she was reading a difficult text. Experience had taught him that he had no option save to give her time to study the text, wait and see what she would decide.

  The door to the room opened, but neither of them bothered to look to see who it was. Silence. The person retreated and the door closed.

  She studied his face for a long time before she asked, ‘Are you sure?’ Then, as though she wanted to be sure they were talking about the same thing, she added, ‘Run away from home?’

  His soul knew that she was his home. ‘In a way,’ he admitted, shocked at how it must sound to her. ‘Not from you. Not from the kids. But from all of the rest.’ To make the distinction clear, he waved at the room in which they found themselves, as though asking her to see it as evidence of everything he was talking about.

  ‘I‘ve been thinking about it for a long time,’ Brunetti continued, discovering truth as he spoke it. ‘I need not to have to do this work for a while. Not think about it and not do it, and not end up in a hospital because a suspect said something offensive about a girl.’

  ‘What girl?’ Paola asked.

  ‘A girl who was given pills at a party and who died here last night,’ he said, remembering where the girl must be.

  Paola let some time pass, the way people do when they hear of an unknown person’s death. Finally she said, ‘If you shot Patta for every offensive thing he’s said, he’d look like Swiss cheese.’ She smiled; Brunetti’s life straightened out and returned to its normal course.

  ‘Pucetti’s young,’ he explained.

  ‘It’s a while since he was the bright young recruit, Guido. He’s in his thirties now.’ Brunetti wondered if she would draw her conclusion, and she did. ‘He should be able to control himself, Guido. He carries a gun, for God’s sake.’

  Brunetti wanted to explain that Pucetti had not been wearing his gun that morning, but he realized it made no difference. He had lost control of himself, or would have, which merited an official reprimand, but Brunetti’s grandstanding had eliminated that possibility. Wasn’t what he had done to save Pucetti a distortion of the truth? Was it any different from kicking a weapon closer to the fallen body of an attacker who might have been about to use it? Or saying that the suspect had resisted arrest and had to be restrained?