Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon
‘No. I’m part of the administrative staff of the hospital. Our offices are on the other side of the building.’
‘Then who else works here?’ he asked, pointing to the three desks.
‘This desk is Mike’s. Was Mike’s,’ he corrected himself. ‘The other desk is Sergeant Dostie’s, but he’s in Warsaw. They shared the computer.’
How wide this American eagle spread its wings. ‘When will he be back?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Sometime next week, I think,’ Wolf answered.
‘And how long has he been away?’ Brunetti thought this less direct than asking when he had left.
‘Since before this happened,’ Wolf responded, effectively answering Brunetti’s question and eliminating Sergeant Dostie as a suspect.
‘Would you like to come down to my office?’
Brunetti followed him from the room and down the halls of the hospital, trying to remember the way they went. They passed through a set of swinging double doors, down a spotlessly clean corridor, through another set of doors, and then Wolf stopped in front of an open door.
‘Not much, but I call it home,’ he said with surprising warmth. He stepped back to let Brunetti go into the office first, then came in and pulled the door closed behind them. ‘Don’t want us to be disturbed,’ he said and smiled. He walked behind his desk and sat in an imitation-leather swivel chair. Most of the surface was covered with an enormous desk calendar, and on that rested files, an In- and Out-tray, and a telephone. To the right, in a brass frame, was a photo of an Oriental woman and three young children, apparently the children of this mixed marriage.
‘Your wife?’ Brunetti asked, taking a seat in front of the desk.
‘Yes, beautiful, isn’t she?’
‘Very,’ Brunetti answered.
‘And those are our three kids. Joshua’s ten, Melissa’s six, and Jessica is only one.’
‘It’s a very handsome family,’ Brunetti volunteered.
‘Yes, they are. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have them. I often told Mike that’s what he needed, to marry and settle down.’
‘Did he need to settle down?’ Brunetti asked, interested in the fact that it was always married men with numerous children who wished this on single men.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Wolf said, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his desk. ‘He was twenty-five, after all. Time to start a family.’
‘Did he have a girlfriend to start it with?’ Brunetti asked cordially.
Wolf looked across at him, then down at his desk. ‘Not that I knew about.’
‘Did he like women?’ If Wolf understood that the corollary of this was whether he liked men, he gave no sign.
‘I suppose so. I really didn’t know him all that well. Just here at work.’
‘Was anyone here a special friend?’ When Wolf shook his head, Brunetti added, ‘Doctor Peters was very upset when she saw the body.’
‘Well, they’d worked together for a half a year or so. Don’t you think it’s normal she’d be upset to see him?’
‘Yes, I suppose,’ Brunetti answered, offering no explanation. ‘Anyone else?’
‘No, not that I can think of.’
‘Perhaps I could ask Mr Dostie when he gets back.’
‘Sergeant Dostie,’ Wolf corrected automatically.
‘Did he know Sergeant Foster well?’
‘I really don’t know, Commissario.’ It seemed to Brunetti that this man didn’t know very much at all, not about a man who had worked for him for … ‘How long did Sergeant Foster work for you?’ he asked.
Wolf pushed himself back in his chair, glanced at the picture, as if his wife would tell him, then answered, ‘Three years, ever since he got here.’
‘I see. And how long has Sergeant Dostie been here?’
‘About four years.’
‘What kind of man was he, Sergeant Wolf?’ Brunetti asked, turning the conversation back to the dead man.
This time, Wolf checked with his children before he answered. ‘He was an excellent troop. His record will tell you that. He tended pretty much to keep to himself, but that might be because he was going to school, and he was very serious about that.’ Wolf paused, as if looking for something more profound to say. ‘He was a very caring individual.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Brunetti asked, utterly lost. Caring? What did Foster care about? ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
Wolf was glad to explain. ‘You know, what you Italians call “simpatico”.’
‘Oh,’ Brunetti muttered. What a strange language these people spoke. More directly, he asked, ‘Did you like him?’
The soldier was clearly surprised by the question. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I did. I mean, like, we weren’t friends or anything, but he was a nice guy.’
‘What were his exact duties?’ Brunetti asked, taking his notebook from his pocket.
‘Well,’ Sergeant Wolf began, latching his hands behind his head and sitting back more comfortably in his chair, ‘he had to see about housing, that landlords kept up standards. You know, enough hot water, enough heat in the winter. And he had to see that, when we were tenants, we didn’t do any damage to the apartments or the houses. If a landlord calls us and tells us his tenants are creating a health hazard, we go out and investigate it.’
‘What sort of a health hazard?’ Brunetti asked, honestly curious. ‘Oh, lots of things. Not taking the garbage out, or putting the garbage too near the house. Or not cleaning up after their animals. There’s a lot of that.’
‘What do you do?’
‘We have permission to, no, we have the right to go into their houses.’
‘Even if they object?’
‘Especially if they object,’ Wolf said with an easy laugh. ‘That’s generally a sure sign the place will be a mess.’
‘Then what do you do?’
‘We inspect the house to see if there’s any danger to health.’
‘Does this happen often?’
Wolf started to answer, then checked himself, and Brunetti realized that the man was weighing up how much of this he could tell an Italian, what his response would be to such tales regarding Americans. ‘We get a few,’ he said neutrally.
‘And then?’
‘We tell them to clean it up, and we report it to their commander, and they’re given a certain time to clean it up.’
‘And if they don’t?’
‘They get an Article Fifteen.’
Brunetti smiled that bland old smile again. ‘An Article Fifteen?’
‘It’s a sort of official reprimand. It goes into the permanent file, and it can cause someone a lot of trouble.’
‘Such as?’
‘It can cost them salary, or demotion, or sometimes it can get them thrown out of the Army.’
‘For having a dirty house?’ Brunetti asked, unable to restrain his surprise.
‘Mr Brunetti, if you saw some of these houses, you’d want to throw them out of the country.’ He paused for a moment, then began again, ‘And he had to go and check out the kitchens in the embassies, especially if someone got sick there, or, worse, if a lot of people started getting sick. We had hepatitis in Belgrade last year, and he had to go and check it out.’
‘Anything else?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No, nothing important.’
Brunetti smiled. ‘I’m not sure now what is and isn’t important at this point, Sergeant Wolf, but I’d like to have a clear idea of his duties.’
Sergeant Wolf returned his smile. ‘Of course. I understand. He also had to see that the kids at the school all had the proper vaccinations. You know, against things like measles and chickenpox. And he had to see that the rays got disposed of, them and some other stuff that we can’t dispose of in the normal way. And there was a certain amount of public health information that he was in charge of.’ He looked up, finished. ‘That’s about it, I think.’
‘Rays?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes, the X-rays from the den
‘How is that done?’
‘Oh, we’ve got a contract with an Italian haulier who comes in once a month and takes them away. Mike had to see to that, check to see that the containers got picked up.’ Wolf smiled. ‘That’s about it.’
Brunetti returned his smile and stood. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Wolf. You’ve been very helpful.’
‘Well, I hope it does some good. We all liked Mike here, and we certainly want to see you get the person who did this.’
‘Yes. Certainly,’ Brunetti said, extending his hand. ‘I don’t want to keep you from your work, Sergeant.’
The American stood to shake Brunetti’s hand. His grasp was firm, confident. ‘Glad to be of help, sir. If you have any more questions, please come and ask.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant. I just might.’
When he was back in the corridor, he traced his way back to the Public Health Office and knocked on the door again. He waited a few seconds and, hearing nothing, let himself into the office. As he had expected, the Blue Mosque and the Colosseum were still there. The Pyramids were gone.
11
Back in the hall, he asked the first person passing by, a young black woman in a nurse’s uniform, where he might find Doctor Peters. She told him that she was going to Ward B, where Doctor Peters worked, and said she would take him there. This time, they branched off in the opposite direction, through still another set of double doors, but this time the people coming towards him wore white uniforms or light-green scrub suits, not the darker green of military uniforms. They passed a room with a sign that said it was a recovery room, then off to his right he heard the squalling of babies. He glanced down at the nurse, who smiled and nodded her head. ‘Three, all born this week.’
It seemed to Brunetti that babies had no business being born here, on a military installation, surrounded by guns, uniforms, and the business of killing. But then he remembered that, so far, he had seen a library, chapel, swimming-pool, and Baskin Robbins ice-cream parlour on this same military installation, so maybe it did make sense that babies were born here, too. How little of what he had seen here, in fact, had anything to do with the business of war or killing or being an army. Did the Americans realize, he wondered, where their money went? Did they realize the profligacy with which it was spent? Because he was an Italian, he assumed that his government was serious only about the business of tossing money away, usually in the general direction of the friends of those in government, but it had never occurred to him that the American government might be equally intent upon doing the same thing.
‘This is Doctor Peters’ office, sir. I think she’s with a patient now, but she ought to be back soon.’ She smiled and left him standing there, never having bothered to ask who he was or what he wanted.
The office looked like any doctor’s office he had ever been in. One wall was covered with thick books with thicker titles; there was a scale in one corner with a sliding metal pole for measuring height. He stepped on the scale and slid the metal weight back and forth on the horizontal pole until it clicked into place at 193. He did the arithmetic in his head, dividing by 2.2, and sighed at the result. He measured his height, 5 feet, 10 inches, but he had never been able to do that conversion without pencil and paper. Besides, he assumed that his height would be less likely to betray him, the way his weight had.
There were some posters on the wall: one of Fulvio Roiter’s predictable photos of Carnevale; a reproduction of the mosaics in San Vitale in Ravenna; an enlarged photo of mountains that looked like the jagged-toothed Dolomites. The wall to the right, as was the case in so many doctors’ offices, was covered with framed diplomas, as if doctors were afraid no one would believe them unless tangible proof of their training were plastered up on the wall for all to see. ‘Emory University.’ That meant nothing to him. ‘Phi Beta Kappa’. Nor did that. ‘Summa Cum Laude’. Well, that certainly did.
A magazine lay closed on the desk. Family Practice Journal. He picked it up and leafed through, then stopped at an article that carried coloured photos of what he thought were human feet, but feet distorted beyond all recognition, with toes that grew every which way, toes that curled up and back towards the top of the foot, or, worse, toes that curved down towards the soles. He stared at the photos for a while, then, just as he began to read the article, he sensed motion beside him and looked up to see Doctor Peters standing just inside the door. With no preamble, she took the magazine from his hands, slapped it closed, and placed it on the other side of the desk from him.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, hiding neither surprise nor anger.
He stood. ‘I apologize for touching your things, Doctor. I came here to talk to you, if you have time. I saw the magazine there and looked through it while I was waiting. I hope you don’t mind.’
Clearly, she realized that her reaction had been too strong. He watched while she tried to gain control of herself. Finally, she sat in the chair in front of her desk and said, trying to smile, ‘Well, better that than my mail.’ That said, her smile seemed to become genuine. She pointed to the now closed magazine. ‘It happens in old people. They get too stiff to bend down and cut their toenails, but they continue to grow, and, as you saw, the feet become horribly distorted.’
‘Better paediatrics,’ he said.
She smiled again. ‘Yes, far better. I think it’s better to invest your time in children.’ She placed her stethoscope on top of the magazine and said, ‘I don’t think you came here to discuss my career choices, Commissario. What is it you’d like to know?’
‘I’d like to know why you lied about your trip to Cairo with Sergeant Foster.’
He saw that she wasn’t surprised, had perhaps been expecting it. She crossed her legs, her knees just visible under the hem of the uniform skirt she wore beneath the white jacket. ‘So you do read my mail?’ she asked. When he didn’t say anything, she continued, ‘I didn’t want anyone here to know what happened.’
‘Doctor, you sent the postcard here, with both your names, well, initials, on it. It would hardly be a secret to anyone here that you went to Cairo together.’
‘Please, you know what I mean. I didn’t want anyone here to know what happened,’ she repeated. ‘You were there when I saw his body. So you know.’
‘Why don’t you want anyone here to know? Are you married to someone else?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head tiredly at his failure to understand. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if it were only that. But I’m an officer, and Mike was an enlisted man.’ She saw his confusion. ‘That’s fraternization, and it’s one of the things we are forbidden to do.’ She paused for a long time. ‘One of many things.’
‘What would happen to you if they found out?’ he asked, not thinking it necessary to define ‘they’.
She shrugged. ‘I have no idea. One of us would have been spoken to, perhaps disciplined. Maybe even transferred to some other place. But that’s hardly a concern now, is it?’ she asked, looking at him directly.
‘No, I’m afraid it isn’t. Could it still hurt your career?’ he asked.
‘I’ll be out of the Army in six months, Mr Brunetti. They wouldn’t bother with it now, and if they did, I don’t think I’d much care. I don’t want a career, not with the Army, but I still don’t want them to know. I just want to get out and go back to my life.’ She paused for a moment, gave him a diagnostic glance, then continued. ‘The Army sent me to medical school. I could never have afforded it myself and neither could my family. So they gave me six years of school, and now I’ve given them four years of work. That’s ten years, Mr Brunetti, ten years. So I guess I shouldn’t even say I want to go back to my life. I want to start to have one.’
‘What are you going to do? With that life, I mean.’
She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t know. I’ve applied to some hospitals. There’s
‘Is that because of Sergeant Foster’s death?’
She prodded the stethoscope with one finger, looked at him, then back down at her hand.
‘Doctor Peters,’ he began, feeling awkward about how speech-like this was going to sound in English. ‘I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I know that Sergeant Foster wasn’t killed by a mugger or in some bungled robbery attempt. He was murdered, and whoever murdered him has something to do with the American military, or with the Italian police. And I believe that you know something about whatever it was that caused him to be killed. I’d like you to tell me what it is you know, or what it is you suspect. Or what you’re afraid of.’ The words sounded leaden and artificial in his ears.
She looked over at him when he said that, and he saw a phantom of what he had seen in her eyes that night on the island of San Michele. She started to speak, stopped, and looked back down at the stethoscope. After a long time, she shook her head and said, ‘I think you’re exaggerating my reaction, Mr Brunetti. I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say I’m afraid of something.’ And then, to convince them both, ‘I don’t know anything about why Mike would have been killed or who might have wanted to kill him.’
He glanced at her hand and saw that she had bent the black rubber tube that led down to the flat disc at the end of the instrument until the rubber was grey with tension. She caught the direction of his eyes, looked down at her own hand, and slowly released it, until the tube was again straight, the rubber black. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another patient to see.’
‘Certainly, Doctor,’ he said, knowing that he had lost. ‘If you think of anything you want to tell me or if you want to talk to me, you can reach me at the Questura in Venice.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, stood and went to the door. ‘Do you want to finish the article?’
‘No,’ he said, scrambling to his feet and going to the door. He put out his hand. ‘If you think of anything, Doctor.’
She took his hand, smiled, but said nothing. He watched as she went down the corridor to the left and into the next room, from which he could hear the voice of a woman talking in a low, crooning voice, probably to a sick child.