by Donna Leon
Like a rat, he leaped. ‘Who saw the red light, then?’ His imagination was off: guilt, denial, responsibility for her mother’s death, the deaths of two other people, months in the hospital to figure all this out, assess and accept her guilt, then deny it. Who could emerge untouched from such a thing?
‘The people in the car behind her said their light was green,’ Signorina Elettra said, putting an end to his wild scenario. ‘Her right leg was broken in three places, and she was left with a limp.’
His memory flashed away, first to the way the woman on the tape from the garage moved so awkwardly when she walked to the door after watching Freddy get into his car, and then to something that didn’t want to come back to him. He shifted his mind away from it, the way one does when trying to see an object in the dark. But nothing came.
He turned his attention to Signorina Elettra and saw that there were no papers left.
‘Nothing else?’
‘No. I’m trying to find her medical records, so I can have a look, but it’s not easy to work in France.’
She seemed so distressed that Brunetti grew curious. ‘Why?’
‘They guard their records better,’ she said, then, with a whiff of self-deprecation, ‘or perhaps I’m just not very adept at their systems.’
‘Perhaps your friend Giorgio at Telecom could help you look for her,’ Brunetti suggested, remembering the name of the friend she had found so helpful in some of her researches.
‘He’s not with Telecom any more,’ she said.
Brunetti’s panic lasted only a moment, calmed by the realization that no friend of hers would ever name names. ‘Has he changed jobs?’ he asked, praying she would answer yes.
She nodded. ‘He’s set up his own cyber security company. In Liechtenstein. They’re more friendly to business there, he tells me.’
‘Has he been there long?’ Brunetti inquired.
She gave him such an intent look that Brunetti went back to wondering about the computer chip and if she were checking to see if it was still in place.
‘No,’ she said after a longish pause. ‘He hasn’t moved there. The company’s there, but he still lives where he always has, in Santa Croce, next door to his parents.’
‘Ah,’ Brunetti said. ‘I thought you meant he’d moved there.’
‘No, only the company. He’s set up a proxy server, so he can run it from here, making it look like he’s living there.’
Brunetti nodded, quite as if he understood both the reason for and the means of doing this. ‘Perhaps he could give you a hand with this,’ he suggested.
‘He’s already working on it,’ she said and got to her feet.
25
Brunetti decided to try to do his part and, switching on his computer, went to Google and put in Doctor Lemieux’s name. Most of the articles that came up were in French, and after reading his way slowly through some of them, he found one from Il Sole 24 Ore, dated five years before, explaining the planned merger of Lemieux Research with a pharmaceutical company in Monza. He found a subsequent article stating that the merger plans had been cancelled but found nothing else in Italian.
He read through the titles of the remaining articles in French until he found one about the automobile accident in which Anne-Sophie Lemieux had been injured and her mother killed but learned from it nothing that Signorina Elettra had not told him.
He did not know the name of the other sister’s husband and so checked for Chantal Lemieux, finding nothing. For Anne-Sophie, aside from the report on the accident, there was only a brief mention that she had appeared in a minor role in a production of Orfeo at the Conservatory of Music in Paris. This was six years before.
Idly, recalling Signorina Elettra’s perpetual admonition that you never knew what the internet had hidden in its cracks, he checked the date of the article and then, slowly and painstakingly, read through the schedules of the opera houses of Paris for the weeks before and after the date of Anne-Sophie’s appearance in the student production.
Four days after it, Flavia Petrelli had sung in La Traviata at Palais Garnier. He felt the hair on his right arm move and rubbed at it roughly until the sensation was gone. Next, he’d be slaughtering chickens on the terrace and reading their entrails.
He opened another tab and keyed in ‘stalkers’ and was not at all surprised to find that the bulk of the articles listed were in English. More than a quarter stalked famous people; in cases where the stalker sought the love of the victim, the stalking lasted more than three years on average, and the majority of these stalkers were women. As to the victims, they suffered loss of sleep, often moved house in an attempt to elude the unwanted attentions, sometimes tried to change their job, and had the constant terror of dealing with a person who did not recognize the norms of human life.
When he’d last seen Flavia, she’d been unable to disguise the tension that filled her. He wondered how she could concentrate on singing with something like this hanging over her head. His impulse was to call, if only to ask . . . But what to ask? Had anyone else she’d spoken to been attacked? Had anyone tried to kill her? The best he could manage was to do what he had offered: go with Vianello to tonight’s performance and then to the last one. And see what happened.
He called Vianello’s number, and when he answered, Brunetti asked, ‘Did you see Alvise yet?’
‘You’d think he was a bridegroom,’ Vianello said, as happily as if he had been a guest at the wedding. ‘He had everything except a flower in the lapel of his uniform.’
‘Where’d you assign him?’ Brunetti asked, sure that the officer would want to return to his full responsibilities.
‘He looked so good, I sent him on patrol between San Marco and Rialto.’
‘Is there trouble there?’ Brunetti asked.
Vianello laughed. ‘No. But he’s so decorative, I wanted the tourists to see him. Next year, at Carnevale, we’ll probably have hundreds of tourists dressed as policemen.’
When he stopped laughing, Brunetti said, ‘He really did do a good job with those videotapes,’ hoping Vianello would mention it to the other officers.
‘He told me you’d said that,’ Vianello said but did not elaborate. Then he asked, ‘What time tonight?’
‘It starts at eight. I’ll see you at the stage entrance at seven-thirty.’
‘Can I get her autograph?’ Vianello asked.
‘No jokes, Lorenzo,’ Brunetti said with false severity.
‘I mean it. Nadia’s niece is mad for opera, and when she heard I was going to see it tonight, she asked me to get an autograph.’
Concerned that Vianello might have said more than he should have, Brunetti asked, ‘Nadia didn’t think it strange you were going?’
‘No, I told her I was assigned to a unit to accompany the Prefetto and a Russian diplomat. And I made it clear that I didn’t want to do it.’
‘That’s not true, is it?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No,’ Vianello said, and then confessed, ‘Well, at first I didn’t much like the idea, but I’ve been looking at some of it on YouTube, and I’d like to see what the real thing is like.’
Brunetti wasn’t sure how much they’d be able, or allowed, to see from backstage, but still they’d get a look at the production the way few people saw it: less glamour, more truth.
He told Vianello he’d see him later, and hung up. His thoughts returned to Flavia and the paradox of what he did and did not know about her: he knew the names of her last three lovers, but he couldn’t remember the names of her children; he knew she was frightened by the mad attentions of a violent fan, but he didn’t know what her favourite books were, or food, or films, or anything. He had saved her from the accusation of murder and had saved her lover’s life, years ago, but he didn’t know why it was so important to him to help her.
He looked across his desk and saw the papers that had accumulated there in the last few days: abandoned, unread, of little interest. He slid the first pile towards him, found his glasses in his desk
drawer, and forced himself to attend to them. Overcome by the dullness of the first three, he was turning to drop them in the wastepaper basket where non-sensitive documents could be placed when he shoved the pile away from him and got to his feet. He had been content to listen to messages about Freddy and not go and see him. Now he looked at his watch and saw there was still time to get to the hospital before going home to change for the opera.
Brunetti phoned the hospital from the police car, telling first the switchboard and then the surgery ward that he was Commissario Guido Brunetti and was on his way there to speak to the Marchese d’Istria about his attempted murder. Though neither his rank nor Freddy’s title seemed to have the least effect on anyone he spoke to, the word ‘murder’ proved remarkably galvanizing, and as soon as he arrived at the Surgery Ward, he was led to the room without question or hesitation.
The Marchese Federico d’Istria seemed to be in good health. He looked tired and worn and was obviously in pain, but Brunetti had seen many people who had been attacked, and Freddy stood up well when compared to them. He was propped up on a snowbank of pillows, arms at his sides, each attached to a drip. A single plastic tube ran from under the covers and into a transparent plastic bag half filled with pink liquid.
Brunetti walked over to the bed and placed his hand on Freddy’s arm, as far from the needle as possible, and said, ‘I’m sorry about this, Freddy.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Freddy whispered and made a dismissive clicking noise. Trouble, what trouble?
‘Do you remember anything?’ Brunetti asked.
‘You the policeman?’ Freddy asked, not managing to finish the last syllable of the final word.
‘I’m always a policeman, Freddy,’ he said, then added, ‘Just as you’re always a gentleman.’
Brunetti was glad to see Freddy grin at this. But he winced and closed his eyes, then pulled in a lot of air through clenched teeth. He made a kissing motion to push the air out, the motion Brunetti had seen countless people in pain make.
He looked at Brunetti and said, ‘More than thirty stitches.’ Brunetti wondered if Freddy, normally the most modest of men, were boasting. ‘Punctures,’ he said to explain the number.
‘Nasty things,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘Explains all this.’ He waved a finger at the drips and pointed at the tube that Freddy couldn’t see. He began to feel like a character in the British war movies he’d watched as a boy. Should he tell Freddy to keep a stiff upper lip? Whatever it meant, Freddy seemed to be doing it naturally.
‘You remember anything?’ he asked again.
‘I don’t tell you, you pull out my drips?’
‘Something like that,’ Brunetti said, shaking his head. Then, voice serious, he insisted, ‘Tell me.’ When he saw Freddy close his eyes, he said, ‘This person is going to hurt Flavia.’
Freddy’s eyes snapped open.
‘I’m not kidding. She’s the target. It’s the person who’s been sending the flowers.’
‘Maria Santissima,’ Freddy whispered. He closed his eyes again and moved his shoulders on the pillows, wincing when he did. ‘I put the bag in the boot. Behind me, someone. Thin. Then pain in my back. I saw her hand, and the knife. I elbowed her, but I fell.’ He looked at Brunetti and his face went slack. ‘Flavia,’ he began and was suddenly not there any more. Brunetti stood over him and watched his chest rise and fall, rise and fall. He wanted to do something to help Freddy, but all he could think of was to pull his blanket higher up on his chest, but that might affect the needles. Instead, he placed his palm flat on the back of the hand lying closest to him and left it there for a long time. Then he squeezed it softly and left the room.
26
When they met at the theatre, Brunetti told Vianello only that Freddy had said it was a woman who had attacked him. His friend was in pain but not apparently in any danger; the rest of the meeting seemed too personal to be told, even to Vianello. What had Freddy wanted to say about Flavia, or what message did he want to send her? Freddy and Flavia had lived in Milano during the time of their affair, although Brunetti had met her only years later. In fact, that brief meeting on the Accademia Bridge was the only time he had ever seen them together, other than in photos. Vianello held the door open for him, and Brunetti abandoned his thoughts and entered the theatre.
The area around the porter’s office seemed more confused than it had been the last time Brunetti was there and the volume of conversation higher. To Brunetti, the voices sounded more angry than excited, but he ignored them and, not bothering to show his warrant card to the porter, went upstairs to look for the stage manager, who had given him permission to come backstage to the last performances in response to Signora Petrelli’s request.
They found his office, not without difficulty, and were met at the door by a harried-looking young man who held two telefonini, one pressed to his left ear, the other to his chest: ‘. . . many times do I have to tell you? I can’t do anything,’ he said roughly and switched phones. And voices. ‘Of course, of course, we’re doing all we can, Signore, and we’re confident the general manager will have an answer by the end of the second act.’ He held the phone away from himself for a moment and used it to make the sign of the Cross on his body. That done, he returned to listening for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll see you there,’ and stuffed both phones into the pockets of his jacket.
Looking at the two men in front of him, he said, ‘I live in the circus. I work in the circus. I’m surrounded by ravening beasts. How may I help you?’
‘We’re looking for the stage manager,’ Brunetti said, making no attempt to introduce themselves.
‘Isn’t everyone, tesoro?’ the young man asked and walked away.
‘I once told my mother it must be wonderful to be a movie actor,’ a straight-faced Vianello said.
‘And?’
‘And she said she’d burn herself alive if I ever said such a thing again.’
‘Wise woman,’ Brunetti observed. He looked at his watch. Quarter to eight.
‘I suppose the best thing we can do is stand on opposite sides of the stage,’ he told the Inspector. ‘She told me two men from Security will bring her back and forth from her dressing room.’
A woman wearing jeans and a headset walked towards them, and Brunetti asked, ‘Which way’s the stage?’
‘Follow me,’ she answered, not bothering to ask who they were or why they were there. Apparently, once a person crossed the Styx, no one thought to question their right to be in Hell. She walked past them, and they followed her down the corridor, through a door, up a staircase, down another door-lined corridor, and then down a single flight of steps. ‘Avanti,’ she said, pointing ahead, opened a door, and disappeared.
There was less light, but they heard noise from up ahead. They walked one behind the other, Brunetti leading. He thought of using the torch on his phone but instead stopped for a few moments to allow his eyes to adjust to the dimness. He started again, found a thick fire door, opened it and stepped into muffled sounds and bars of light.
It took him a moment to work it out: they had somehow arrived backstage, at the very farthest point from the orchestra pit, off on the right-hand side. Brunetti looked out on the stage and recognized the inside of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, with scaffolding leading up to a platform built in front of the unfinished portrait of a woman. Below the platform stood a double row of pews, an altar, an enormous crucifix hanging on the wall behind it. The heavy curtain separating this scene from the audience was closed.
Brunetti tried to remember whether Tosca arrived on stage from the left or the right, but failed to recall which. It would be some time before she appeared, at any rate, so they had a chance to place themselves to best advantage, if only he knew what that was. ‘You stay on this side, and I’ll go to the other.’ Vianello was looking around as though he’d been asked to memorize the scene and write a report on it.
‘Will I be able to see you over there?’ the Inspector asked.
Brunetti
studied the distance and thought about the opera. All of Act One took place in this setting, so all they had to do was select two points from which they would not lose sight of each other while still having a view of the stage. The next act took place in Scarpia’s office and the third on the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo: steps, the wall against which Cavaradossi would be shot, and the low parapet over which Tosca would leap to her death. Brunetti had no idea where it would be best to stand: probably with the stage manager, if they ever found him, who would have to keep everything in view for the entire performance.
‘We can send messages,’ he said, feeling foolish, especially since he didn’t know if this would be possible in the backstage area. ‘Stay here, and I’ll try to get under the scaffolding.’
‘So we’re looking for a woman?’ Vianello asked.
‘Freddy saw a woman’s hand, and everything we’ve learned says it’s a woman,’ Brunetti answered. Before Vianello could ask, he added, ‘The suspect is French, thirty-four, tall, and has a limp. Nothing else.’
‘Do we know what she wants?’
‘Only she and God know that,’ Brunetti said. He patted Vianello on the arm twice and started across the stage. The instant he stepped forward, two people hissed at him, and another young woman wearing a headset ran at him and pulled him back beside Vianello.
‘Police,’ Brunetti said, giving no further explanation. ‘I have to be on the other side.’ He extricated his arm from her grip.
Without ceremony or question, she took him by the sleeve and led him, walking fast on tennis-shoed feet, to the left. She slipped behind the piece of plywood that formed the altar and back wall of the church and crossed back to the other side of the stage. She deposited him a metre from the back of the scaffolding, told him not to move, and walked away.
Brunetti slipped under the scaffolding, its stairs hiding him from both the audience and the stage. Through a space between the plywood boards, he looked across to where Vianello stood. His friend looked in his direction and raised a hand.
