Yes, it would hold, and the association between La Capra and Semenzato would, instead of working as evidence of his guilt, be used as the opposite, as an explanation of the underlying good faith between the two men, a trust destroyed by the dishonesty of Semenzato and the impulsiveness of Salvatore, alas, now beyond the power of the law. Brunetti had no doubt that the final legal decision would be that Salvatore had killed Semenzato. Well, he might have; no one would ever know. Either he or La Capra had done it, or had it done, and both of them had paid in their own way. Were he a man more given to sentimentality, Brunetti would judge La Capra to have paid the greater price, but he was not, so it seemed to him that Salvatore had paid the greater price for Semenzato’s death.
Brunetti pushed himself up, away from the desk and from the files that led to this conclusion. He had seen La Capra with his son, had pulled him from the slimy waters and helped the screaming man float his son’s body to the foot of the three low steps. And there, it had taken him and Vianello and two of the other officers to separate them, to pull La Capra away from his futile attempt to close with his own fingers the bloodless hole in the side of his son’s neck.
Brunetti had never believed that a life could be paid for with another life, so he again dismissed the idea that La Capra had paid for Semenzato’s death. All grief was separate and discrete, relating only to one loss. But he found it difficult to feel any personal rancour for the man he had last seen howling in the arms of a policeman whose only concern was to keep him from seeing his son’s body as it was carried away on a stretcher, face covered by Vianello’s rain-soaked coat.
He pushed these memories away. It was all beyond him now, taken into the hands of another agency of the law, and he could no longer affect the outcome in any way. He’d had enough of death and violence, enough of pilfered beauty and the lust for the perfect. He longed for springtime and its many imperfections.
* * * *
An hour later, he left the Questura and walked towards San Marco. Everywhere, he saw the same things he’d been seeing for days, but today he chose to call them signs of spring. Even the omnipresent pastel tourists lifted his heart. Via XXII Marzo pulled his steps down towards the Accademia Bridge. On the other side of it, he saw the season’s first long line of tourists waiting to enter the museum, but he had seen enough of art for a while. The water drew him now and the thought of sitting in the young sun with Flavia, having a coffee, talking of this and that, seeing the way her face went so quickly from ease to joy and back again. He was to meet her at Il Cucciolo at eleven, and he already delighted in the thought of the sound of the waters stirring under the wooden deck, of the desultory motion of the waiters, not yet thawed from their winter lethargy, and of the large valiant umbrellas which insisted on creating shade, long before there was any need of it. He took even greater delight in the thought of the sound of her voice.
Ahead of him he saw the waters of the Giudecca Canal and, beyond them, the happy fa ç ades of the buildings on the other side. From the left, a tanker steamed into view, riding high and empty in the water, and even its streaked grey hull seemed bright and beautiful in this light. A dog scampered past, kicked up its hind legs, then circled back upon itself, bent on capturing its tail.
At the water’s edge, he turned left and walked towards the open deck of the bar, searching for her. Four couples, a lone man, another, a woman and two children, a table with six or seven young girls whose giggles were audible even as he approached. But no Flavia. Perhaps she was late. Perhaps he hadn’t recognized her. He began again at the first near table and studied everyone again, in the same order. And saw her, sitting with the two children, a tall boy and a young girl still plump with the fat of childhood.
His smile disappeared, and a different one took its place. Using this one, he approached their table and took her extended hand.
She smiled up at him. ‘Oh, Guido, how wonderful to see you. What a glorious day.’ She turned to the boy and said, ‘Paolino, this is Dottor Brunetti.’ The young boy stood, almost as tall as Brunetti, took his hand and shook it.
‘Buon giorno, Dottore. I’d like to thank you for helping my mother.’ It sounded as if he had practised the line, and he delivered it formally, as from one trying to be a man to one who already was. He had his mother’s dark eyes, but his face was longer and narrower.
‘Me too, Mamma,’ the girl piped up, and, when Flavia was slow to respond, stood and held her hand out to Brunetti. ‘I’m Victoria, but my friends call me Vivi.’
Taking her hand, Brunetti said, ‘Then I’d like to call you Vivi.’
She was young enough to smile, old enough to look away before she blushed.
He pulled out a chair and sat, then angled the chair to get his face info the sun. They talked generally for a few minutes, the children asking him questions about being a policeman, whether he carried a gun, and when he said he did, where it was. When he told them, Vivi asked if he had ever shot anyone and seemed disappointed when he said that he had not. It didn’t take the children long to realize that being a policeman in Venice was a great deal different from being a cop on Miami Vice, and after that revelation, they seemed to lose interest both in his career and in him.
The waiter came and Brunetti ordered a Campari soda; Flavia asked for another coffee, then changed it to a Campari. The children grew audibly restless, until Flavia suggested that they walk up along the embankment to Nico’s and get themselves gelato, an idea that was met with general relief.
When they were gone, Vivi hurrying to keep up with Paolo’s longer steps, he said, ‘they’re very nice children.’ Flavia said nothing, so he added, ‘I didn’t know you’d brought them to Venice with you.’
‘Yes, it’s seldom that I get a chance to spend a weekend with them, but I’m not scheduled to sing the matinee this Saturday, so we decided to come here. I’m singing in Munich now,’ she added.
‘I know. I read about you in the papers.’
She gazed out over the water, across the canal to the church of the Redentore. ‘I’ve never been here in the early spring before.’
‘Where are you staying?’
She pulled her eyes back from the church and looked at him. ‘At Brett’s.’