CB18 About Face (2009)

by Donna Leon

  ‘“Higher?”’ Vianello asked as he handed the papers back to Brunetti. ‘God help us,’ Vianello said.

  ‘No one else will.’

  The Inspector was reduced to raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘There remains Signorina Landi,’ Brunetti answered, much to the Ispettore’s confusion.

  22

  They met the next day, he and Dottoressa Landi, at the train station of Casarsa, having agreed to split the distance between Venice and Trieste. He paused on the steps of the station, hit by the warmth of the sun. Much in the manner of a sunflower, he turned his face towards it and closed his eyes.

  ‘Commissario?’ a woman’s voice called from the row of cars parked in front of him. He opened his eyes and saw a short dark woman with black hair step from a car. He noticed first that her hair, cut as short as a boy’s, glistened wetly with gel, then that her body, even inside the padding of a grey down parka, was slim and youthful.

  He walked down the steps and over to the car. ‘Dottoressa,’ he said formally, ‘I want to thank you for agreeing to meet me.’ She came barely to his shoulder and appeared to be in her thirties, though not by much. What makeup she wore had been carelessly applied, and she had already gnawed off most of her lipstick. It was a sunny day up here in Friuli, but her eyes were pulled tight by more than the sun. Regular features, normal nose, a face made memorable because of the hair and the evidence of strain.

  He took her hand. ‘I thought we might go somewhere and talk,’ she said. She had a pleasant voice a bit heavy on the aspirants. Tuscan, perhaps.

  ‘Certainly,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I don’t know this area at all well.’

  ‘I’m afraid there isn’t all that much to know,’ she said, getting back into the car. When both of them were buckled in, she started the engine, saying, ‘There’s a restaurant not far from here.’ With a shiver, she added, ‘It’s too cold to stay outside.’

  ‘Whatever you like,’ Brunetti answered.

  They drove though the centre of town. Pasolini, Brunetti remembered, had come from here, had fled in disgrace, gone to Rome. As they drove down the narrow street, Brunetti thought how lucky Pasolini had been to have been driven out of all of this undistinguished orderliness. How to live in a place like this?

  Beyond the town, they drove down a highway, each side lined with houses or businesses or commercial buildings of some sort. The trees were naked. How bleak the winter was up here, Brunetti thought. And then came the thought of how bleak the other seasons would be.

  No expert, Brunetti could not judge how well she drove. They turned to the left or right, passed through roundabouts, switched to smaller roads. Within minutes he was completely lost, could not have pointed in the direction of the station had his life depended on it. They passed a small shopping centre with a large optician’s shop, then down another road lined with bare trees. And then to the left and into a parking lot.

  Dottoressa Landi turned off the engine and got out of the car without saying anything. Indeed, she had not spoken since they set out, and Brunetti had remained just as quiet, busy watching her hands and what little scenery they passed.

  Inside, a waiter showed them to a table in a corner. Another waiter moved around the room, which held about a dozen tables, putting down silver and napkins, shifting chairs closer to or farther from the tables. The scent of roasting meat came from the kitchen, and Brunetti recognized the penetrating odour of fried onions.

  She asked for a caffé macchiato, Brunetti the same.

  She draped her parka over the back of her chair and sat, not bothering with the business of waiting for someone to help her. He chose the place opposite her. The table was set for lunch, and she carefully shifted the napkin to the side, placed the knife and fork on top of it, then rested both arms on the table.

  ‘I don’t know how to do this,’ Brunetti began, hoping to save time.

  ‘What are our options?’ she asked. Her face was neither friendly nor the opposite, her gaze level and dispassionate, as though she were a jeweller given something to assess, about to rub it on the touchstone of her intelligence to see how much gold it contained.

  ‘I give one piece of information and then you give one, and then I give another, and so forth. Like laying down cards in a game,’ Brunetti suggested, not entirely serious.

  ‘Or else?’ she asked with mild interest.

  ‘Or else one of us tells everything they know, and then the other does the same.’

  ‘That gives a tremendous advantage to the second person, doesn’t it?’ she asked, but in a warmer voice.

  ‘Unless the first person lies, too,’ Brunetti answered.

  She smiled for the first time and grew younger. ‘Shall I go first, then?’ she asked.

  ‘Please,’ Brunetti said. The waiter brought the coffees and two small glasses of water. The Dottoressa added no sugar to her coffee, he noticed. Instead of drinking it, she looked into the cup and swirled it around.

  ‘I spoke to Filippo after he went to see you.’ She paused after that, then added, ‘He told me what you talked about. The man he wanted you to help him identify.’ Her eyes met his, then returned to the study of the foam on the top of her coffee. ‘We worked together for five years.’

  Brunetti drank his coffee and set the cup on the saucer.

  Suddenly she shook her head, saying, ‘No, it won’t work this way, will it? My doing all the talking?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Brunetti said and smiled.

  She laughed for the first time, and he saw that she was really an attractive woman disguised by worry. As if relieved to be starting all over again, she said, ‘I’m a chemist, not a policewoman. But I told you that, didn’t I? Or you knew it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So I try to leave all of the police stuff to them. But after all these years, I’m still learning things, even if I don’t realize it. Even if I’m not paying attention.’ Nothing she had said so far suggested that she and Guarino had been more than colleagues. Then why was she bothering to explain how it was she knew so much about ‘police stuff’?

  ‘I’m sure it’s impossible not to hear things,’ Brunetti agreed.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, then her voice changed and she asked, ‘Filippo told you about the shipments, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s how we met,’ she said in a voice that had moved into a softer register. ‘They sequestered a shipment that was going south. This was about five years ago. I did the chemical analysis of what they found, and when they traced it back to where it was picked up, I did the analysis of the ground and water around it.’ After some time, she said, ‘Filippo was in charge of that case, and he suggested I be transferred to his unit.’

  ‘Friendships have started in stranger ways,’ Brunetti volunteered.

  Her glance was sudden and long. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said and finally drank her coffee.

  ‘What was it?’ Brunetti asked and at her inquisitive glance, added, ‘In the shipment.’

  ‘Pesticides, hospital waste, and outdated pharmaceuticals.’ A pause, and then, ‘But not on the bills of lading.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘The usual: urban garbage, just as if they were compressed bales of orange peel and coffee grounds from under the kitchen sink.’

  ‘Where were they going?’

  ‘To Campania,’ she said. ‘To the incinerator.’ Then, as if to be sure he understood the full import of what she had said, she repeated: ‘Pesticides. Hospital waste. Outdated pharmaceuticals.’ She took a small sip of water.

  ‘Five years ago?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And since then?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Nothing’s changed, except that there’s far more of it.’

  ‘Where does it go now?’ he asked.

  ‘Some gets burned, some gets put in dumps.’

  ‘And the rest?’

  ‘There’s always the sea,�
� she told him, as though this were the most natural thing to say.

  ‘Ah.’

  She picked up her spoon and set it carefully beside her cup. ‘It’s just like Somalia, where they used to drop it. If there’s no government, then they can do what they want.’

  A waiter approached their table, and Dottoressa Landi asked for another coffee. Brunetti knew he could not drink another one before lunch and so asked for a glass of mineral water. Not wanting to be interrupted by the waiter’s return, Brunetti said nothing, and she seemed glad of the silence. Time passed. The waiter returned and replaced their drinks.

  When he was gone, she asked, leaping from one subject to another, ‘He came to ask you about the man in the photo, didn’t he?’ Her voice had grown calm, almost as if being able to list the things she had found had worked some sort of exorcism.

  Brunetti nodded.

  ‘And?’

  Well, here it was, Brunetti realized, that moment when he had to call upon his experience of life, personal and professional, and decide whether to trust this young woman or not. He knew his weakness for women in distress – though perhaps he did not know its full extent – but he also knew that his instincts were often correct. She had obviously decided that he was to be the posthumous beneficiary of Guarino’s trust, and he saw no reason to suspect her.

  ‘His name is Antonio Terrasini,’ he began. She did not react to the name, nor did she ask how he had discovered this. ‘He’s a member of one of the Camorra clans.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you know anything about the photo?’

  She made a business of stirring her coffee, then set the spoon on her saucer. ‘The man who was killed . . .’ she began, then gave Brunetti a stricken look and put her hand to her mouth.

  ‘Ranzato?’ Brunetti volunteered.

  She nodded by way of answer, then forced herself to say, ‘Yes. Filippo said he took it and sent it to him.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, only that.’

  ‘When did you see him last?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘The day before he went down to talk to you.’

  ‘Not after?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he call you?’

  ‘Yes, twice.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he’d spoken to you and thought he could trust you. Then, the second time, that he had spoken to you again and sent you the photo.’ She paused, decided to say it. ‘He said you were very insistent.’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, and they lapsed into silence.

  He saw her looking at her spoon, as if trying to decide whether to pick it up and move it around. Finally, she asked, ‘Why kill him?’ and Brunetti realized she had agreed to this meeting in order to ask that question. He had no answer to give.

  Voices came from the other side of the room, but it was nothing more than a discussion among the waiters. When Brunetti looked back at her, he saw that she was as relieved as he by the distraction. Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that he had twenty minutes to reach the next train back to Venice. He caught the waiter’s eye and asked for the bill.

  After he had paid and left some change on the table, they got to their feet. Outside, the sun was stronger, and it was a few degrees warmer. She tossed her parka into the back seat of the car before she got in. Again, the drive was silent.

  In front of the station, he offered his hand. He turned to open his door, and she said, ‘There’s one more thing.’ The sudden seriousness of her voice halted Brunetti just as he touched the handle of the door. ‘I think I should tell you.’ He turned towards her.

  ‘About two weeks ago, Filippo told me he’d heard rumours. There was all that trouble in Naples, with the dumps closed, too many police. So they stopped shipping and started to stockpile the really bad things, or at least that’s what he told me.’

  ‘What does “really bad” mean?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Anything heavily toxic. Chemicals. Maybe nuclear. Acids. It would have to be substances that can be held in containers or barrels. That’s what anyone can recognize as dangerous, so they wouldn’t risk shipping it when there was trouble.’

  ‘Did he have any idea where it might be?’

  ‘Not really,’ she answered evasively, the way an honest person does when trying to lie. His eyes met hers and held them before she could turn away. ‘It’s really the only place, isn’t it?’ she said.

  Paola would be proud of him, he had time to think, his eyes still held by Dottoressa Landi’s. His first thought had been of the short story, though he couldn’t remember who had written it. Hawthorne? Poe? The Something Letter. Hide the letter in the place where no one will notice it: among the letters. Just so. Hide the chemicals among the other chemicals and no one will notice them. ‘It explains why he was at the petrochemical complex,’ he said.

  Her smile was infinitely sad as she said, ‘Filippo said you were smart.’

  23

  When he got back to the Questura, Brunetti decided to start at the bottom of the food chain with someone he had not spoken to for some time. Claudio Vizotti was, not to put too fine a point on it, a nasty piece of work. A plumber, hired decades ago by one of the petrochemical companies in Marghera, he had joined the union when he started his job. Over the years, he had risen effortlessly through its ranks, until now he had the responsibility of representing workers in claims against the companies regarding work-related injuries. Brunetti had first encountered him some years before, about a year after Vizotti had persuaded a worker injured in a fall from badly built scaffolding to settle his claim against the company in return for ten thousand Euros.

  It had come to light – during a card game in which a drunken accountant from the company had complained about the vulpine behaviour of the union representatives – that the company had actually given Vizotti a total of twenty thousand Euros for his efforts in persuading the worker to settle, money that had somehow failed to make its way either into the hands of the injured worker or into the union’s coffers. The word had spread, and since the card game had taken place not in Marghera but in Venice, it had spread to the police and not to the workers to whose protection Vizotti had dedicated his professional life. Brunetti, learning of the conversation, had called Vizotti in for another one. At first the union representative had indignantly denied everything and threatened to sue the accountant for libel and to make a complaint against Brunetti for harassment. It was then that Brunetti had pointed out that the injured worker, a man of irascible temper, now had one leg a few centimetres shorter than the other and was in almost constant pain. He knew nothing about the accommodation Vizotti had made with his employers, but he could very easily learn of it.

  At this, Vizotti had turned smilingly tractable and said he had actually been keeping the money for the injured man and had somehow forgotten to pass it on to him: the press of work, union responsibilities, so much to do and think about, so little time. Speaking man to man, he had asked Brunetti if he wanted to take part in the transfer. Had he even winked when he proposed this?

  Brunetti had refused the opportunity but told Vizotti to keep his name in mind should Brunetti ever want to talk to him again. It took Brunetti a few minutes to locate the number of Vizotti’s telefonino, but there was no delay before Vizotti recognized Brunetti’s name.

  ‘What do you want?’ the union representative asked.

  In the ordinary course of events, Brunetti would have chided the man for his incivility, but he decided to take a more liberal stance and asked in a normal voice, ‘I’d like some information.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About storage facilities in Marghera.’

  ‘Call the firemen, then,’ Vizotti shot back. ‘That’s not my job.’

  ‘Storage facilities for things that the companies might not want to know about,’ Brunetti went on imperturbably.

  Vizotti had no instant answer to this, and Brunetti asked, ‘If a person wanted to store barrels there, where would he put them?’

  �
��Barrels of what?’

  ‘Barrels of dangerous substances.’

  ‘Not drugs?’ Vizotti asked quickly, a question Brunetti found interesting but would not pause to consider just now.

  ‘No, not drugs. Liquids, perhaps powders.’

  ‘How many barrels?’

  ‘Perhaps several truckloads.’

  ‘Is this about that man they found out here?’

  Seeing no reason to lie, Brunetti said, ‘Yes.’

  There ensued a long silence, during which Brunetti could almost hear Vizotti plunking down on the scales the possible consequences of lying against those of telling the truth. Brunetti knew enough of the man to know that Vizotti’s thumb would be pressed down on the side that held self-interest.

  ‘You know where he was found?’ Vizotti asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Some of the men were talking – I don’t remember who they were – and they said something about the storage tanks out in that area. Where the body was.’

  Brunetti recalled the scene, the abandoned rust-eaten tanks that served as a background to the body in the field.

  ‘And what did they say about them?’ he asked in his mildest voice.

  ‘That some of them look like they’ve doors now.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘If you hear anything else, I’d be . . .’

  But Vizotti cut him short, saying, ‘There won’t be any more.’ Then the line went dead.

  Brunetti replaced his phone quietly. ‘Well, well, well,’ he allowed himself to say. He felt enmeshed in ambiguity. The case was not theirs, but Patta had ordered him to investigate it. The Carabinieri had control over the investigation of illegal shipping and dumping, and Brunetti had no authorization from a magistrate to make inquiries, certainly not to make an unauthorized raid. Well, if he and Vianello went alone, it could hardly be described as a raid on to private property, could it? They would be doing nothing more than going back to have another look at the scene of the murder, after all.

  He was just getting to his feet to go down and talk to Vianello when the phone rang. He looked at it, let it ring three more times, then decided to answer it.