Acqua Alta Read online

  Suddenly Brett realized how tired this brief conversation had made her, and she felt new waves of sleep pulling at her body. ‘Go home for a while, Flavia. I’ll sleep and then . . .’ Her voice trailed away before she could finish, and she was asleep. Flavia pushed herself back into her chair and studied the damaged face that lay sideways on the bed in front of her. The bruises that spread across the forehead and the cheeks had gone almost black during the last day and a half, and one eye was still swollen shut. Brett’s lower lip was swollen up and around the vertical split that left it gaping wide.

  Flavia had been forcibly kept out of the emergency room while the doctors worked on Brett, cleaning her back and taping her ribs. Nor had she been there to watch them thread the thin wires between her teeth, binding her jaws together. She had been left to pace the long corridors of the hospital, joining her fear with that of the other visitors and patients who walked, crowded into the bar, caught what little light filtered into the open courtyard. She had paced for an hour, begging three cigarettes from different people, the first she had smoked in more than ten years.

  Since late Sunday afternoon, she had been at the side of Brett’s bed, waiting for her to wake up, and had gone back to the apartment just once, the day before, and then only to shower and make a few phone calls, inventing the phantom illness that was to keep her from singing at La Scala that evening. Her nerves were pulled tight by too little sleep, too much coffee, the renewed craving for a cigarette, and the oily slick of fear that clings to the skin of all those who spend too long a time inside a hospital.

  She looked across at her lover and wished again that she had killed the man who did this. Flavia Petrelli had no comprehension of regret, but there was very little she didn’t understand about revenge.

  * * * *

  Chapter Three

  Behind her, a door opened, but Flavia didn’t turn her head to see who it was. Another nurse. Hardly a doctor: they were in rare supply here. After a few moments, she heard a man’s voice ask, ‘Signora Petrelli?’

  She turned, wondering who it was and how they had found her here. Just inside the door stood a man, tallish and heavily built, who looked vaguely familiar but whom she couldn’t place. One of the ward doctors? Worse, a reporter? He stood by the door, seeming to wait to be invited into the room and closer to Brett.

  ‘Good morning, signora,’ he said, not moving from the door. ‘I’m Guido Brunetti. We met a few years ago.’

  It was that policeman, the one who had investigated the Wellauer affair at La Fenice. He had been not unintelligent, she recalled, and Brett, for reasons Flavia had never been able to fathom, had found him simpatico.

  ‘Good morning, Dottor Brunetti,’ Flavia answered formally, keeping her voice low. She stood, gave a look at Brett to see that she was still sleeping, and went over to where he stood. She extended her hand and he took it, shaking it briefly.

  ‘Did they assign you to this?’ she asked. As soon as she spoke, she realized how aggressive her question was and regretted it.

  He ignored the tone and answered the question. ‘No, signora, I recognized Dottoressa Lynch’s name on the report of the assault, so I came to see how she was.’ Even before Flavia could remark on his slowness, he explained, ‘The case was given to someone else; I didn’t see the report until this morning.’ He looked over towards the sleeping woman, letting his glance ask the question.

  ‘Better,’ Flavia said. She stepped back and gestured for him to come closer to the bed. Brunetti walked across the room and stopped just behind Flavia’s chair. He set his briefcase on the floor, rested both hands on the back of the chair, and looked down at the face of the beaten woman. Finally, he asked, ‘What happened?’ He had read the report and the transcripts of the account Flavia had given, but he wanted to hear her version of it.

  Flavia resisted the impulse to tell him that this was precisely what he was supposed to be finding out; instead, she explained, keeping her voice low, ‘Two men came to the apartment on Sunday. They said they were from the museum and had some papers for Brett. She answered the door. After she had been out in the hall with them a long time, I went to see what was keeping her, and I found her on the floor.’ As she spoke, he nodded; all of this was in the report she had given to two different policemen.

  ‘When I went out, I had a knife in my hand. I’d been chopping vegetables, and I simply forgot I had it. When I saw what they were doing, I didn’t think. I cut one of them. Very badly, on the arm. They ran out of the apartment.’

  ‘Robbery?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘It’s possible. But why would they have done that?’ she asked, waving her hand towards Brett.

  He nodded again and muttered. ‘Right, right.’ He backed away and returned to stand near her, then asked in a normal voice, ‘Is there much of value in the apartment?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Carpets, paintings, ceramics.’

  ‘So it could have been a robbery?’ he asked, and it sounded to Flavia as if he were trying to convince himself.

  ‘They said they were from the director of the museum. How did they know to say that?’ she asked. Robbery made no sense to her, and it made less sense each time she looked at Brett’s face. If this policeman didn’t understand that, he understood nothing.

  ‘How badly is she hurt?’ he asked, not answering her question. ‘I haven’t had time to speak to the doctors.’

  ‘Broken ribs and a cracked bone in her jaw, but there’s no sign of concussion.’

  ‘Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her brusque reply reminded him that there had been no great sympathy between them the last time they met.

  ‘I’m sorry this happened.’ He said it like a man, not a public official.

  Flavia nodded in cursory acknowledgement but said nothing.

  ‘Is she going to be all right?’ The question, phrased like that, honoured her intimate knowledge of Brett, acknowledged her ability to, as it were, touch her spiritual pulse and see how much damage it would do her to have been treated like this.

  Flavia was confused by her desire to thank him for asking the question and, with it, acknowledging her position in Brett’s life. ‘Yes, she’ll be all right.’ And then, more practically, ‘What about the police? Have you found anything?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Brunetti said. ‘The descriptions you gave of the two men don’t correspond to anyone we know here. We’ve checked the hospitals, here and in Mestre, but no one was admitted with a knife wound. We’re checking the envelope for fingerprints.’ He did not tell her that the blood covering one side of it made that difficult to do, nor did he tell her that the envelope had proved to be empty.

  Behind him, Brett shifted on the bed, sighed, and then was quiet.

  ‘Signora Petrelli,’ he began, then paused, searching for the right words. ‘I’d like to sit with her for a while, if you don’t mind.’

  Flavia caught herself wondering why she was so flattered by his casual acceptance of what she and Brett were to each other, then surprised herself even more by realizing that she had no clear idea of what that was. Spurred by those thoughts, she pulled a chair from behind the door and placed it next to the one she had been sitting on.

  ‘Grazie,’ he said. He sat, leaned back in the chair, and crossed his arms. She had the impression that he was prepared to sit there all day, if necessary.

  He made no further attempt to speak to her, sat quietly and waited for whatever would happen. She took her place on the chair next to him, surprised by how little need she felt to make conversation with him or be socially correct. She sat. Ten minutes passed. Gradually, her head fell back against the top of the chair and she drifted off to sleep, then yanked awake when her head fell forward. She glanced at her watch. Eleven thirty. He had been there an hour.

  ‘Has she been awake?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes, but only for a few minutes. She didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Did she see you?’

  ‘Yes.’
<
br />   ‘Did she know who you are?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Good.’

  After a long pause, he said, ‘Signora, would you like to go home for a while? Perhaps get something to eat? I’ll stay here. She’s seen me with you, so she won’t be afraid if she wakes up and I’m here.’

  Hours ago, Flavia had felt gnawing hunger; now all sign of it had disappeared. But the combination of fatigue and dirt lingered with her, and at the thought of a shower, clean towels, clean hair, clean clothes, she almost gasped with yearning. Brett was asleep, and who safer to leave her with than a policeman? The idea grew too strong. ‘Yes,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘I won’t be long. If she wakes up, please tell her where I’ve gone.’

  ‘Certainly,’ he said, standing as Flavia gathered her bag and took her coat from behind the door. At the door, she turned in farewell and gave him the first real smile she had ever given him, then left the room, careful to close the door quietly after her.

  * * * *

  When Signorina Elettra had handed him the robbery report that morning, he had barely glanced at it, especially when he saw that it was being handled by the uniformed branch. When she saw him place it to the side of his desk, Signorina Elettra had said, ‘You might want to take a look at that, Dottore,’ before going back down to her office.

  The address had meant nothing to him, but addresses were relatively meaningless in a city with only six separate mailing addresses. The name had jumped up from the page: Brett Lynch. He had no idea she was back from China, had forgotten about her in the years that had elapsed since their last meeting. It was the memory of that meeting and all that preceded it that had brought him to the hospital.

  The beautiful young woman he had met some years ago was unrecognizable, could easily have changed places with any of the scores of battered and beaten women he had seen during his years with the police. Looking at her, he drew up a list of the men he knew to be capable of this sort of violence towards a woman — not one they knew, but one they met in the commission of a crime. It turned out to be a very short list: one of them was in jail in Trieste, and the other was in Sicily or believed to be. The list of those who would do it to women they knew was much longer, and some of them were in Venice, but he doubted that any of those men would know her or, if they did, would have cause to do this.

  Robbery? Signora Petrelli had told the two policemen who interviewed her that the two men who had come to the apartment had no idea that anyone else was there, so the beating made no sense. If they had come to rob Brett’s apartment, they could have tied her up or locked her in a room and then taken whatever they wanted at their leisure. None of the thieves he knew in Venice would have done something like this. If not a robbery, then what?

  Because she didn’t open her eyes, her voice, when she spoke, surprised him. ‘Mi dai da bere?’

  Startled, he moved closer to her.

  ‘Water,’ she asked.

  On the table beside the bed he saw a plastic carafe and a cup with a plastic straw. He filled the cup and held the straw to her lips until she had drunk all the water. Behind her lips, he saw the cage of wires that bound her jaws together. That accounted for the slurred speech, that and the drugs.

  Her right eye opened, a brighter blue than the flesh around it. ‘Thank you, Commissario.’ The single eye blinked, stayed open. ‘Strange place to meet again.’ Because of the wires, her voice sounded as if it issued from a badly tuned radio.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, smiling at the absurdity of her remark, at its banal formality.

  ‘Flavia?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s gone home for a moment. She’ll be back soon.’

  Brett moved her head on her pillow, and he heard the sudden intake of breath. After a moment, she asked, ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I saw your name on the crime report, so I came to see how you were.’

  There was the faintest motion of her lip, a smile, perhaps, cut off by pain. ‘Not very good.’

  Silence stretched out between them. Finally, he asked, though he had told himself he wouldn’t, ‘Do you remember what happened?’

  She made a noise of assent and then began to explain. ‘They had papers from Dottor Semenzato, at the museum.’ He nodded, familiar with both the name and the man. ‘I let them in. Then this. . .’ Her voice trailed off, then she said, ‘Started this.’

  ‘Did they say anything?’

  Her eye closed and she lay silent for a long time. He couldn’t tell if she was trying to remember or deciding whether to tell him. So long a time passed that he began to think she had gone back to sleep. But finally she said, ‘Told me not to go to meeting.’

  ‘What meeting?’

  ‘With Semenzato.’ So it hadn’t been a robbery. He said nothing. This was not the time to push her, not now.

  Voice growing thicker and slower, she explained. ‘This morning, at the museum. Ceramics in the China exhibition.’ There was a long pause and she fought to keep her eye open. ‘They knew about me and Flavia.’ After that, her breathing slowed and he realized she was asleep again.

  He sat, watching her, and tried to make some sense out of what she had said. Semenzato was the director of the museum at the Doge’s Palace. Until the reopening of the restored Palazzo Grassi, it had been the most famous museum in Venice, Semenzato the most important museum director. Perhaps he still was. After all, the Doge’s Palace had mounted the Titian show; all Palazzo Grassi had presented in recent years was Andy Warhol and the Celts, both shows the product of the ‘new’ Venice and hence more the outcome of media hype than of serious artistic study.

  It was Semenzato, Brunetti recalled, who had helped arrange, about five years ago, the exhibition of Chinese art, and it was Brett Lynch who had served as intermediary between the city administration and the Chinese government. He had seen the show long before he met her, and he could still remember some of the exhibits: the life-size terracotta statues of soldiers, a bronze chariot, and a full suit of decorative mail, constructed from thousands of interlocking pieces of jade. There had been paintings as well, but he had found them boring: weeping willows, men with beards, and the same old flimsy bridges. The statue of the soldier, however, had stunned him, and he remembered standing motionless in front of it, studying the face and reading in it fidelity, courage and honour, signs of a common humanity that had spanned two millennia and half the world.

  Brunetti had met Semenzato on various occasions and had found him an intelligent, charming man, with the patina of graceful manners that men in public positions acquire with the passing of years. Venetian, of an old family, Semenzato was one of several brothers, all of whom had to do with antiquities, art, or the trade in those things.

  Because Brett had arranged the show, it made sense that she would see Semenzato when she was back in Venice. What made no sense at all was that someone would try to prevent that meeting and would go to such brutal lengths to do so.

  A nurse with a pile of sheets in her arms came into the room without knocking and asked him to leave while she bathed the patient and changed the linen. Obviously, Signora Petrelli had been at work on the hospital staff, seeing that the little envelopes, bustarelle, were delivered into the proper hands. In the absence of those ‘gifts’, even the most basic services wouldn’t be performed for patients in this hospital, and even in their presence, it often fell to the family to feed and bathe the patient.

  He left the room and stood at a window in the corridor, gazing down into the central courtyard that was part of the original fifteenth-century monastery. Opposite him he saw the new pavilion that had been built and opened with such public shouts of glory — nuclear medicine, most advanced technologies to be had in all of Italy, most famous doctors, a new age in health care for the exorbitantly taxed citizens of Venice. No expense had been spared; the building emerged an architectural wonder, its high marble arches giving a modern-day reflection of the graceful arches that stood out in Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo and led the way into
the main hospital.

  The opening ceremony had been held, there had been speeches and the press had come, but the building had never been used. No drains. No sewers. And no responsibility. Was it the architect who had forgotten to put them in the original blueprints, or the builders who had failed to put them where they were meant to go? The only thing that was certain was that responsibility fell on no one and that the drains would have to be added to the already finished building, at enormous expense.

  Brunetti’s reading of the event was that it had been planned like this from the very moment of inception, planned so that the builder would get not only the original contract to construct the new pavilion but the work, later, to destroy much of what had been built in order to install the forgotten drains.

  Did one laugh or cry? The building had been left unprotected after the opening that was not an opening, and vandals had already broken in and damaged some of the equipment, so now the hospital paid for guards to patrol the empty corridors, and patients who needed the treatments and procedures it was supposed to provide were sent to other hospitals, or told to wait, or told to go to private clinics. He could no longer remember how many billion lire had been spent. And nurses had to be bribed to change the sheets.