CB18 About Face (2009)

by Donna Leon

Brunetti got to his feet, doing his best to appear disgruntled and unwilling. ‘All right, Vice-Questore, but I don’t think . . .’

  ‘What you think isn’t important, Commissario. I told you I want the two of you out there. And while you’re there, it’s your duty to show this captain who’s in charge.’

  Good sense intervened and prevented Brunetti from overplaying the role of bumbling reluctance: at times even Patta was capable of noticing the obvious. ‘All right,’ he limited himself to saying. All business now, he asked, ‘Where exactly was this man calling from, sir?’

  ‘He said he was at the petrochemical complex in Marghera. I’ll give you his number, and you can call him and ask where exactly,’ Patta said. He picked up his telefonino, which Brunetti had failed to notice resting just beside his desk calendar. He flipped it open with negligent ease. Patta, of course, had the most recent slim-line model. The Vice-Questore refused to use the BlackBerry he had been issued by the Ministry of the Interior, saying he did not want to become a techno-slave, though Brunetti suspected he rather feared its effect on the line of his jackets.

  Patta pressed buttons then suddenly held the phone out to Brunetti, saying nothing. Guarino’s face filled the tiny screen. His deep-set eyes were open, though he was glancing off to the side as if embarrassed that someone would see him lying like this, so inattentive to life. As Patta had said, the chin was damaged, though destroyed might have been a better word. There was no mistaking the thin face and the greying temples. His hair would never grow grey now, Brunetti found himself thinking, and he would never get to call Signorina Elettra, if that had been his intention.

  ‘Well?’ Patta asked, and Brunetti almost shouted at him, so unnecessary was the question, so easily recognizable the dead man.

  ‘I’d say it’s he,’ Brunetti limited himself to saying, flipped the phone closed, and handed it back to Patta. Long moments passed, during which time Brunetti watched Patta wash everything save affability and the selfless desire for cooperation from his face. As soon as Patta began to speak, Brunetti realized that the same transformation had taken place in Patta’s voice. ‘I’ve decided it might be wiser to tell them he was here.’

  Like an Olympic relay racer, Brunetti did his best to sprint up to the man in front of him, reach his hand forward while they were both running full tilt, and pluck the stick from him, allowing the other runner to slow down and eventually drop out of the race.

  For a moment, Brunetti feared that Patta was going to press the call-back number and pass the phone to him: he would not trust himself if Patta did. Perhaps Patta saw this. Whatever did happen, Patta opened the phone again. He pulled a sheet of paper towards him, wrote down the caller’s number and slid the paper across the desk to Brunetti. ‘I don’t remember his name, but he’s a captain.’

  Brunetti took the paper and read it a few times. When it was obvious that the Vice-Questore had nothing further to contribute, Brunetti got up and moved towards the door, saying, ‘I’ll call him.’

  ‘Good. Keep me posted,’ Patta said, his voice filled with the relief that came from so artfully having passed it all to Brunetti.

  Upstairs, he dialled the number. After only two rings, a man’s voice answered, ‘Sì?’

  ‘I’m returning your call to Vice-Questore Patta,’ Brunetti said neutrally, having decided to use the weight of Patta’s rank for whatever it was worth. ‘Someone called from this number and spoke to the Vice-Questore, then sent a photo.’ He paused but there was no expression of acknowledgement or curiosity from the other end. ‘Vice-Questore Patta has shown me the photo of what appears to be a dead man, and from what the Vice-Questore has told me, he was killed in our territory,’ Brunetti went on in his most officious voice. ‘The Vice-Questore has tasked me to go out there and then report to him.’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ the other man said coolly.

  ‘I disagree,’ Brunetti answered with matching coolness, ‘that’s why I’m coming.’

  Doing his best to sound like someone who was trying only to do his job, the other man said, ‘We’ve got a positive identification. We recognize the man as a colleague involved in one of our ongoing cases.’

  As if the other man had not spoken, Brunetti said, ‘If you tell me where you are, we’ll come out.’

  ‘That’s not necessary. I told you, the body’s already been identified.’ He waited a moment then added, ‘I’m afraid the case is ours.’

  ‘And who are we?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘The Carabinieri, Commissario. Guarino was with Nas, which I think doubles our authority to investigate.’

  Brunetti said only, ‘I can certainly discuss it with a magistrate here.’

  Stalemate.

  Brunetti waited, sure that the other was doing the same thing. He reflected that waiting was what he had done with Guarino, what he had done with Patta, what he spent too much time doing.

  Still no sound from the other end of the line. Brunetti broke the connection. Of course, Guarino would have to have been with the Nas, and how could anyone keep all of these acronyms straight? The Nuclei Anti-Sofisticazione section of the Carabinieri was supposed to see that environmental laws were enforced. Brunetti’s thoughts turned to the images of the garbage-filled streets of Naples, but they were pushed aside by the memory of the photo of Guarino.

  He dialled Vianello’s number, but the officer who answered said the Inspector had gone out. Brunetti tried his telefonino, but it was turned off and not receiving messages. He called Griffoni and told her they were to go out to the scene of a murder in Marghera and that he would explain on the way. Downstairs, he went into Signorina Elettra’s office.

  ‘Yes, Commissario?’ she asked.

  It didn’t seem the right time to tell her about Guarino, but then there was never a right time to tell people that someone had died.

  ‘I’ve just had some bad news, Signorina,’ he said.

  Her smile grew more tentative.

  ‘Vice-Questore Patta had a phone call this morning,’ he began. Brunetti watched her response to his use of Patta’s title: it was enough to warn her that whatever she was going to hear might be something she would not like. ‘A captain from the Carabinieri told him that the man who came here earlier this week, Maggior Guarino, has been killed. Shot.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment, long enough to hide whatever emotion this caused her but not long enough to hide the fact that she felt something.

  Before she could ask anything, he went on. ‘They sent a photo, and they wanted to know if he had been here to talk to us.’

  ‘It really is?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Truth was mercy.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ was all she could find to say.

  ‘So am I. He seemed like a decent man, and Avisani vouched for him.’

  ‘You needed someone to vouch for him?’ she asked in a voice that seemed to be seeking an outlet for anger.

  ‘If I was going to trust him, yes. I had no idea what he was involved in or what he wanted.’ Perhaps irritated by her manner, he added, ‘I still don’t.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that I don’t know whether the story he told me is true or not, and that means I don’t know why the man who called is interested in knowing why the Maggiore came here in the first place.’

  ‘But he’s dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  Brunetti went to meet Griffoni.

  15

  The shipbuilding works and the petrochemical and other factories littering the landscape of Marghera had exercised a fascination over Brunetti’s imagination ever since he was a boy. For a period of about two years, from when he was six until a bit after his eighth birthday, his father had worked as a warehouseman for a factory producing paint and solvents. Brunetti recalled it as one of the quietest and happiest times of his childhood, with his father steadily employed and proud to maintain his family with what he earned.

  But
then had come the strikes, after which his father had not been taken back. Things changed then and peace fled from their home, but for some years his father kept in contact with some of his fellow workers from the factory. Brunetti could still remember these men and their stories of work and each other, their rough good humour, their jokes, and their endless patience with his volatile father. Cancer had taken them all, as it had, over the years, taken so many of the people who worked in the other factories that sprang up on the edge of the laguna, with its welcoming and oh-so-unprotected waters.

  Brunetti had not been to the industrial area for years, though the plumes from its smokestacks formed an eternal backdrop for anyone arriving in the city by boat, and the highest plumes of smoke could sometimes be seen from Brunetti’s terrace. He was always struck by their whiteness, especially at night, when the smoke swirled so beautifully against the velvet sky. It looked so very harmless, so pure, and never failed to make Brunetti think of snow, first communion dresses, brides. Bones.

  Over the years, all efforts to shut down the factories had met with failure, often with the violent protests of the men whose lives might have been saved, or at least prolonged, by their closure. If a man cannot provide for his family, is he any longer a man? Brunetti’s father had thought not; Brunetti could understand only now why he thought that way.

  As they climbed into the car waiting for them at Piazzale Roma, Brunetti began to explain to Griffoni his phone call from Guarino and the call that was taking them out to Marghera. They crossed the causeway in a series of manoeuvres that made sense only to the driver, then doubled back towards the factories; by the time they pulled up at the main gates, Brunetti had filled her in on almost everything.

  A uniformed man stepped out of a small guardhouse to the left of the gate and raised a hand to wave them through, as if familiar with the sight of police cars. Brunetti had the driver stop and ask where the others were. The guard pointed off to his left, told him to go straight ahead, over three bridges, then turn to the right after a red building. From there, they would see the other cars.

  Their driver followed the directions, and as they turned at the red building, which stood isolated at a crossroads, they did indeed see a number of vehicles, including an ambulance with flashing lights; beyond the vehicles was a group of people facing the other way. The paving on the road ahead of them was broken and uneven; beyond the parked vehicles Brunetti saw four enormous metal oil-storage tanks, two on each side of the road. Their walls were gnawed through in places by rust; a square had been cut out near the top of one of them and the metal peeled back, creating a window or door. The land around them was desolate and littered with papers and plastic bags. Nothing grew.

  The driver pulled up not far from the ambulance; Brunetti and Griffoni got out. Those heads that had not turned at the sound of the engine turned when the doors slammed shut.

  Brunetti recognized one of them as a Carabiniere he had worked with some years before, though he had been a lieutenant then. Rubini? Rosato? Finally it came – Ribasso, and then he realized that his must have been the voice he had failed to recognize on the phone.

  Beside Ribasso stood another man in the same uniform and two men and a woman whose white paper suits defined them as the crime squad. Two attendants stood beside the ambulance, a rolled-up stretcher propped beside them. Both were smoking. All of them had by now turned to watch Brunetti and Griffoni approach.

  Ribasso stepped forward and extended his hand to Brunetti, saying, ‘I thought it was you on the phone, but I wasn’t sure.’ He smiled but said nothing further about the call.

  ‘Maybe I’m watching too many programmes about tough cops on television,’ Brunetti, who was not, said by way of explanation or apology. Ribasso patted him on the shoulder and turned to say hello to Griffoni, addressing her by name. The others took their cue from Ribasso’s manner and nodded at the newcomers, then shifted around and opened up a space large enough for Brunetti and Griffoni to join them.

  About three metres away, the body of a man lay on his back at the centre of a space marked off by red and white plastic tape attached to a series of thin metal poles. Without the photo he had already seen, Brunetti might not have recognized Guarino from this distance. Part of his jaw was missing, and what remained of his face was turned away. His coat was dark, so no blood could be seen on it or on the lapels of his jacket. His shirt, however, was a different matter.

  Small patches of mud had dried on the knees of his trousers and the right shoulder of his coat, and some strands of what looked like plastic fibre were stuck to the sole of his right shoe. Footsteps had churned up whorls in the frosty mud around the body, cancelling one another out.

  ‘He’s on his back,’ was the first thing Brunetti said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ribasso answered.

  ‘So where was he moved from?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ribasso said, then, failing to disguise his anger, ‘The idiots were all over the place before they called us.’

  ‘Which idiots?’ Griffoni asked.

  ‘The ones who found him,’ Ribasso said, giving in to his anger. ‘Two men in a truck who were making a delivery of copper tubing. They got lost, turned into the road up there,’ he said, waving back the way Brunetti and Griffoni had come. ‘They were about to turn around, but they saw him on the ground and came down to have a look.’

  Brunetti could read some of what must have followed from the mass of footprints in the mud around the body and the two breast-like impressions left when one of them knelt beside the dead man.

  ‘Is it possible they turned him over?’ Griffoni asked, though it sounded as if she hardly believed it.

  ‘They said they didn’t,’ was the best answer Ribasso could give. ‘And it doesn’t look as though they did, though they certainly walked around enough to destroy any evidence.’

  ‘Did they touch him?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘They said they couldn’t remember.’ Ribasso’s disgust was audible. ‘But when they called, they said there was a dead Carabiniere, so they must have taken out his wallet.’

  In the face of this, nothing could be said.

  ‘Did you know him?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Ribasso said. ‘In fact, I’m the one who told him to go and talk to you.’

  ‘About that man he wanted to find?’

  ‘Yes.’ Then, after a pause, ‘I thought you’d help him.’

  ‘I tried to.’ Brunetti turned away from the dead man.

  The woman, who seemed to be in charge of the scene of crime team, called to Ribasso, who went over and had a word with her. He then signalled to the attendants and told them they could take the body to the morgue at the hospital.

  The two men tossed their cigarettes to the ground, adding them to the ones lying there. As Brunetti watched, they took the stretcher over to the dead man and lifted him on to it. Everyone stepped aside to allow them to carry him to the ambulance, where they slid the stretcher into the back. The sound of the slamming doors broke the spell that had rendered them all silent.

  Ribasso stepped aside and spoke to the other Carabiniere, who went over to the car, propped himself up against the side, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. The three technicians stripped off their paper suits, rolled them up and put them in a plastic bag, which they tossed into the back of their van. They collapsed their tripod and stashed the cameras in a padded metal case. There was a great slamming of doors and sound of engines, and then the ambulance drove off, followed by the technicians.

  Into the expanding silence, Brunetti asked, ‘Why did you call Patta?’

  Ribasso’s answer was preceded by an exasperated grunt. ‘I’ve dealt with him before.’ He looked back at the place where Guarino had been, then at Brunetti. ‘It was best to do it officially from the beginning. Besides, I knew he’d pass it on, maybe to someone we could work with.’

  Brunetti nodded. ‘What did Guarino tell you?’

  ‘That you’d try to identify the man i
n the photo.’

  ‘Is this your case, too?’

  ‘More or less,’ Ribasso said.

  ‘Pietro,’ Brunetti said, taking advantage of the familiarity that had been formed between them the last time. ‘Guarino – may he rest in peace – tried that with me.’ ‘And you threatened to throw him out of your office,’ Ribasso said. ‘He told me.’

  ‘So don’t start,’ said a relentless Brunetti.

  Griffoni’s head turned back and forth as the two men spoke. ‘All right,’ Ribasso said. ‘I said more or less because he talked with me as a friend about it.’

  This seemed all Ribasso was prepared to say, so Brunetti prodded him by asking, ‘You said he was working for Nas?’ So that explained Guarino’s interest in the transport of garbage: Nas handled everything that had to do with pollution or the destruction of the physical heritage of the country. Brunetti had long considered the location of their office in Marghera, source of generations of pollution, an ironic, not an accidental, choice.

  Ribasso nodded. ‘Filippo studied biochemistry: I think he joined that branch because he wanted to do something useful. Maybe important. They were glad to get him.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Eight, nine years. Maybe. I’ve known him only for the last five or six.’ Then, before Brunetti could ask, Ribasso added, ‘We never worked on a case together.’

  ‘Not this one?’ Griffoni asked.

  Ribasso shifted his weight from one foot to another. ‘I told you, he would talk to me.’

  ‘What else did he tell you?’ Brunetti asked. Quickly, Griffoni broke in to add, ‘It can’t make any difference to him now.’

  Ribasso took a few steps towards his car. He turned back to face them. ‘He told me the whole thing stank of Camorra. The man who got killed – Ranzato – he was only one of the people mixed up in it. Filippo was trying to find out how all this stuff got moved around.’

  ‘How much are we talking about?’ Griffoni broke in to ask. ‘Tons?’

  ‘Hundreds of tons, I’d say,’ Brunetti added.

  ‘Hundreds of thousands of tons is closer to the truth,’ Ribasso said, silencing them both.