Earthly Remains (Commissario Brunetti #26)
Donna Leon
About the Book
During the interrogation of an entitled, arrogant man suspected of giving drugs to a young girl who then died, Commissario Guido Brunetti acts rashly, doing something he will quickly come to regret. In the aftermath, he begins to doubt his career choices and realises that he needs a break from the stifling problems of his work.
Granted leave from the Questura, Brunetti is shipped off by his wife, Paola, to a villa owned by a wealthy relative on Sant’Erasmo, one of the largest islands in the Venetian laguna. There he intends to pass his days rowing, and his nights reading Pliny’s Natural History.
The recuperative stay goes according to plan and Brunetti is finally able to relax, until Davide Casati, the caretaker of the house, goes missing following a sudden storm. Nobody can find him – not his daughter, not his friends, and not the woman he’d been secretly visiting. Now, Brunetti feels compelled to investigate, to set aside his holiday and discover what happened to the man who had recently become his friend.
In Earthly Remains, Donna Leon shows Venice through an insider’s eyes. From family meals and vaporetti rides to the never-ending influx of tourists and suffocating political corruption, the details and rhythms of everyday Venetian life are at the core of this thrilling novel, and of the terrible crime at its heart.
About the Author
Donna Leon was named by The Times as one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers. She is an award-winning crime novelist, celebrated for the bestselling Brunetti series. Donna has lived in Venice for thirty years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. Donna’s books have been translated into thirty-five languages and have been published around the world.
Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed; including Friends in High Places, which won the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Fatal Remedies, Doctored Evidence, A Sea of Troubles and Beastly Things.
For Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
E scenderem col fiume, e in seno accolti
il mar ci avrà pria che risorga il giorno.
We’ll go down with the stream, and the sea
Will have us before the day dawns.
Handel, Ottone, Act 2, Scene 9
1
After an exchange of courtesies, the session had gone on for another half-hour, and Brunetti was beginning to feel the strain of it. The man across from him, a 42-year-old lawyer whose father was one of the most successful – and thus most powerful – notaries in the city, had been asked to come in to the Questura that morning after having been named by two people as the man who had offered some pills to a girl at a party in a private home two nights before.
The girl had washed them down with a glass of orange juice reported also to have been given to her by the man now sitting opposite Brunetti. She had collapsed some time later and had been taken to the emergency room of the Ospedale Civile, where her condition had been listed as ‘Riservata’.
Antonio Ruggieri had arrived punctually at ten and, as apparent evidence of his faith in the competence and probity of the police, had not bothered to bring another lawyer with him. Nor had he complained about the heat in the one-windowed room, though his eyes had paused for a moment on the fan standing in the corner, doing its best – and failing – to counteract the muggy oppression of the hottest July on record.
Brunetti had apologized for the heat in the room, explaining that the ongoing heatwave had forced the Questura to choose between using its reduced supply of energy for the computers or for air conditioning and had chosen the former. Ruggieri had been gracious and had said only that he’d remove his jacket if he might.
Brunetti, who kept his jacket on, had begun by making it amply clear that this was only an informal conversation to provide the police with more background information about just what had happened at the party.
Registering this bumbling commissario’s badly disguised admiration for the stature of Ruggieri’s family, the famous people in the city who were their clients and friends, and the circle of wealth and ease in which Ruggieri travelled by right, it had taken the lawyer little time to lapse into easy condescension towards the older man.
Because the officer sitting next to Commissario Brunetti was wearing a uniform, Ruggieri ignored him, though he kept his sensors active to ensure that the younger man responded in a manner proper to the speech of his elders and betters. When the young man failed to react adequately to his self-effacing superiority, the lawyer ceased to use the plural when addressing the two men.
‘As I was saying, Commissario,’ Ruggieri went on, ‘it was a friend’s birthday party: we’ve known one another since we were at school.’
‘Did you know many people there?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Practically all of them: most of us have been friends since we were children.’
‘And the girl?’ Brunetti asked with faint confusion.
‘She must have come with one of the invited guests. There’s no other way she could have got in.’ Then, to show Brunetti how he and his friends safeguarded their privacy, he added, ‘One of us always keeps an eye on the door to see who comes, just in case.’
‘Indeed,’ Brunetti said with a nod of agreement, and in response to Ruggieri’s glance, added, ‘That’s always best.’ He reached forward to push the upright microphone a bit closer to Ruggieri.
‘Do you have any idea whom she might have come with, if I might ask?’
It took Ruggieri a moment to answer. ‘No. I didn’t see her talking to anyone I know.’
‘How was it that you started to talk to her?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Oh, you know how it is,’ Ruggieri said. ‘Lots of people dancing or standing around. One minute I was alone, watching the dancers, and the next thing I knew, she was standing beside me and asking me my name.’
‘Did you know her?’ Brunetti asked, in his best old-fashioned, slightly puzzled voice.
‘No,’ Ruggieri said emphatically. Then he added, ‘And she used “tu” when she spoke to me.’
Brunetti shook his head in apparent disapproval, then asked, ‘What did you talk about?’
‘She said she didn’t know many people and didn’t know how to get a drink.’ Ruggieri said. When Brunetti made no comment, he went on, ‘So I had to ask her if I could bring her one. After all, what else is a gentleman to do?’ Brunetti remained silent, and Ruggieri said hurriedly, ‘It didn’t seem polite to ask her how it was she didn’t know people there. But it did cross my mind.’
‘Of course,’ Brunetti agreed, quite as though it were a situation in which he often found himself. He put an attentive look on his face and waited.