CB19 A Question of Belief (2010)

by Donna Leon

  The same could hardly be said of Bambola. The African wore a long beige djellaba and a white turban. Tall and slender, his dark face gleaming with health, Bambola stood behind the counter looking rather like a lighthouse, his turban reflecting back the light that shone in through the large windows that gave out on to the canal. He refused to wear an apron, but his djellabas never showed a spot or stain.

  As the two men entered, Brunetti was struck by the increased brightness of the place and looked up to see if Bambola had turned on the lights, hardly necessary on a day that gleamed as did this one. But it was the windows. Not only were they cleaner than he had ever seen them be, but the posters and stickers for ice-cream, soft drinks and different makes of beer had all been peeled or shaved away, an innovation which redoubled the light that flooded into the bar. The windowsill had been swept clean of old magazines and newspapers, nor was there any sign of the fly-specked menus that had lain there for years. Instead, a white cloth ran from end to end, and in the middle rested a dark blue vase of pink strawflowers.

  Brunetti noticed that the battered plastic display case which, for as long as he could remember, had held pastries and brioche had been replaced by a three-tier case with glass walls and shelves. He was relieved to see that the same pastries were there: Sergio might not be the most rigorous of housekeepers, but he understood pastries, and he understood tramezzini.

  ‘Urban renewal?’ he asked Bambola by way of greeting.

  His answer was a curved gleam of teeth, like a secondary light suddenly flashing on beneath the main beam of his turban. ‘Sì, Commissario,’ Bambola said. ‘Sergio’s down with summer flu, and he asked me to take over while he’s sick.’ With a cloth so white it could have been an extension of his turban, he took a swipe at the bar and asked what he could offer them.

  ‘Two coffees, please,’ Brunetti said.

  The Senegalese turned away and busied himself with the machine. Unconsciously, Brunetti prepared himself for the familiar clanks and thumps of Sergio’s technique as he prised loose the handle that held the used coffee grounds, banged it clean, then flipped the lever that would fill it with fresh coffee. The noises came, but muted, and when he glanced at the machine he saw that the wooden bar on which Sergio had been banging the metal cup for decades had been covered with rubber stripping that effectively buffered the noise. The name of the machine’s maker, ‘Gaggia’, had been liberated from the accumulation of grime and coffee stains that had obscured it since Brunetti had first come to the bar.

  ‘Will Sergio recognize the place when he comes back?’ Vianello asked the barman.

  ‘I hope so, Ispettore. And I hope he likes it.’

  ‘The case?’ Vianello asked with a nod of his chin in the direction of the pastries.

  ‘A friend found it for me,’ Bambola explained and gave it an affectionate swipe with the towel. ‘Even keeps them warm.’

  Brunetti and Vianello did not exchange a look, but the long silence with which they greeted the barman’s explanation had the same effect. ‘Bought it for me, Ispettore,’ Bambola said in a more sober voice, emphasis heavy on the first word. ‘I have the receipt.’

  ‘He did you a favour, then,’ Vianello said with a smile. ‘It’s much better than that old plastic thing with the crack on the side.’

  ‘Sergio thought people didn’t notice it,’ Bambola said, his normal voice restored.

  ‘Hah!’ Vianello said. ‘This one makes you want to open it and eat.’ Fitting the deed to the word, he opened the case and, careful to take a napkin first, grabbed a crème-filled brioche from the top shelf. He took a bite, covering his chin and the front of his shirt with powdered sugar. ‘Don’t change these, Bambola,’ he said as he licked away his sugar moustache.

  The barman put the two coffees on the counter, setting a small ceramic plate beside Vianello’s.

  ‘No paper plates,’ Vianello observed. ‘Good.’ He rested the remaining half of the brioche on the plate.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, Ispettore,’ Bambola said. ‘Ecological sense, that is. Use all that paper, just to make a plate that gets used once and thrown away.’

  ‘And recycled,’ Brunetti offered.

  Bambola shrugged the suggestion away, a response Brunetti was accustomed to. Like everyone else in the city, he had no idea what happened to the garbage they so carefully separated: he could only hope.

  ‘You interested in that?’ Vianello asked. Then, to avoid confusion, added, ‘Recycling?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bambola said.

  ‘Why?’ Vianello asked. Before the barman could answer, two men came in and ordered coffee and mineral water. They took their places at the other end of the bar.

  When they were served and Bambola came back, Vianello returned to his question. ‘You interested because it will save Sergio money? Not using paper plates.’

  Bambola removed their cups and saucers and placed them in the sink. He rinsed them quickly and set them inside the dishwasher.

  ‘I’m an engineer, Ispettore,’ he finally said. ‘So it interests me professionally. In terms of cycles of consumption and production.’

  ‘I figured you’d studied,’ Vianello said. ‘But I didn’t know how to ask you.’ After waiting a moment to see how Bambola accepted this last, he asked, ‘What sort of engineer?’

  ‘Hydraulic. Water purification plants. Things like that.’

  ‘I see.’ Vianello pulled some change from his pocket, sorted through it, and left the right amount on the bar.

  ‘If you speak to Sergio,’ Brunetti said as he moved towards the door, ‘please say hello and tell him to get better.’

  ‘I will, Commissario,’ Bambola said and turned away towards the two men at the end of the bar. Brunetti had expected Vianello to return to the subject of his aunt, but the impulse, it seemed, had been left in the Questura and Brunetti, having no particular desire to continue that conversation, did not pursue it.

  Outside, both men paused involuntarily under the whip of the sun. The Questura was less than two minutes’ walk, but in the heat that appeared to have increased while they were inside, it might have been half a city away. The sun blasted down on the pavement along the canal. Tourists sat under the umbrellas in front of the trattoria on the other side of the bridge. Brunetti studied them for a moment, seeking some sign of motion. Could it be that the heat had dried them out, and they were no more than empty shells, like locusts? But then a waiter took a tall glass of some dark liquid to one of the tables, and the guest moved his head slowly to watch his arrival.

  They set off. Bodies of water, Brunetti knew, were meant to cool the places where they were found, but the flat, dark green surface of the canal seemed only to reflect and redouble the light and heat. Instead of relief, it provided humidity. They trudged on.

  ‘I had no idea he was an engineer,’ Vianello said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Hydraulic engineer at that,’ Vianello added with undisguised admiration. The door to the Questura was only a few steps away. The guard, understandably, had retreated inside.

  Brunetti wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt, marvelling that he had been so foolish as to wear a long-sleeved shirt that day. ‘How long’s he been around?’ Brunetti asked, moving off towards the stairs.

  ‘I’m not sure. Three, four years. I figure he was illegal for most of that, before he got his papers. He always used to disappear when I came in wearing my uniform.’ Vianello smiled at the memory. ‘Tall guy like that. Remarkable, he’d be there one minute, but then he simply wasn’t, like he’d evaporated or something.’

  ‘I’m going to, soon,’ Brunetti said as they got to the first floor.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Evaporate.’

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t,’ Vianello said.

  ‘Who? Bambola?’

  ‘Yes. Sergio can’t work all those hours. And you have to admit the place looks better. Just in a day.’

  ‘His wife’s been sick,’ Brunetti said. ‘Good thing he
found him.’

  ‘Lousy work, running a bar,’ Vianello said. ‘You’re there all day, never know what sort of trouble you’re going to have with the people who come in, and you always have to be polite.’

  ‘Sounds like working here,’ Brunetti said.

  Vianello laughed and turned down towards the officers’ squad room, leaving Brunetti to confront the second flight of steps on his own.

  3

  Two days later, sitting at his desk, Brunetti wondered at the possibility of making some sort of deal with the criminals in the city. Could they be induced to leave people alone until the end of this heat spell? That presupposed some sort of central organization, but Brunetti knew that crime had become too diversified and too international for any reliable agreement to be possible. Once, when crime had been an exclusively local affair, the criminals well known and part of the social fabric, it might have worked, and the criminals, as burdened by the unrelenting heat as the police, might even have been willing to cooperate. ‘At least until the first of September,’ he said out loud.

  Too assailed by the heat to consider the papers on his desk, Brunetti allowed himself to continue his idle train of thought: how to convince the Romanians to stop picking pockets, the Gypsies to stop sending their children to break into homes? And that was only in Venice. On the mainland, the requests would have been far more serious, asking the Moldavians to stop selling thirteen-year-olds and the Albanians to stop selling drugs. He considered for a moment the possibility of persuading Italian men – men like him and Vianello – to stop wanting young prostitutes or cheap drugs.

  He sat, conscious of the faint slithering sensation as perspiration moved across the skin of various parts of his body. In New Zealand, he had been told, businessmen wore shorts and short-sleeved shirts to work when it was this hot. And hadn’t the Japanese decided to go jacketless during the worst of the summer heat? He took out his handkerchief and wiped the inside of his collar. This was the weather when people killed one another fighting for a parking space. Or because of an angry remark.

  His thoughts drifted to the promises he had made to Paola that tonight they would discuss their own vacation. He, a Venetian, was going to turn himself and his family into tourists, but tourists going in the other direction, away from Venice, leaving room for the millions who were expected this year. Last year, twenty million. God have mercy on us all.

  He heard a sound at the door and looked up to see Signorina Elettra, the light streaming in his windows illuminating her as in a spotlight. Could it be? Was it possible that, after more than a decade in which his superior’s secretary had brightened his days with the flawlessness of her appearance, the heat had managed to make inroads, even here? Was that a wrinkle down the left side of her white linen shirt?

  Brunetti blinked, closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, saw that it had been an illusion: the line was nothing more than the shadow created by the light coming in from his windows. Signorina Elettra paused at the door and glanced over her shoulder, and as she did another person appeared beside her.

  ‘Good morning, Dottore,’ she said. The man beside her smiled and said, ‘Ciao, Guido.’

  To see Toni Brusca out of his office at the Commune during the working day was like seeing a badger out of its sett in daylight hours. Brusca had always made Brunetti think of that animal: thick dark hair with a white stripe running down one side; stocky, short-legged body, incredible tenacity once a subject took his interest.

  ‘I met Toni on the way here,’ Signorina Elettra said; Brunetti had had no idea the two were acquainted. ‘So I thought I’d show him the way to your office.’ She stepped back and gave what Brunetti recognized as her first-class smile to the visitor. This indicated either that Brusca was a good friend or, Signorina Elettra being a woman of endless and instinctive deceitfulness, that she knew the man was the head of the department of employment records at the Commune and thus a man of potential usefulness.

  Brusca gave her a friendly nod and walked over to Brunetti’s desk, gazing around the office as he did so. ‘You certainly have more light than I do,’ he said with open admiration. Brunetti noticed that he carried a briefcase.

  Brunetti stepped around his desk and took Brusca’s hand, then clapped him on the shoulder a few times. He nodded to Signorina Elettra, who smiled, though not her first-class smile, and left the office.

  Brunetti showed his friend to one of the chairs in front of his desk and sat facing him in the other. He waited for Toni to speak: surely Brusca had not come here to discuss the relative merits of their offices. Toni had never been a man to waste time or energy when he had something he wanted to do, or know: this was something Brunetti remembered from their years together in middle school. The best tactic had always been to sit and wait him out, and this is what Brunetti intended to do.

  He did not have long to wait. Brusca said, ‘There’s something I want to ask you about, Guido.’ From his briefcase he pulled out a transparent plastic folder, and from it he pulled a number of papers.

  He set the briefcase back on the floor, the papers on his lap, and looked at his friend. ‘A lot of people at the Commune talk to me,’ he said. ‘And they tell me things that sometimes make me curious, and then I ask around and people tell me more things. And because I sit in my ground floor office with only one window and because my job allows me to be curious about what people are doing – and because I am always very polite and very thorough – people tend to answer my questions.’

  ‘Even if they really aren’t about things that should concern you professionally?’ Brunetti asked, beginning to suspect why Brusca might have come to see his friend the policeman.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Is that what you have there?’ Brunetti asked, nodding to the papers. Like Brusca, Brunetti was a man who preferred not to waste time.

  Brusca pulled them from their plastic folder and handed them to Brunetti. ‘Take a look,’ he said.

  The first paper bore the letterhead of the Tribunale di Venezia. The left side of the sheet held four vertical columns, headed: ‘Case Number, Date, Judge, Courtroom Number’. After a thick vertical line appeared a single box headed ‘Result’. Brunetti shifted the paper to one side and found three more like it. The quality of the reproductions varied: one was so blurred as to be barely legible. A date was stamped on the bottom right of each page with beside it a neat signature, and beside that the stamp of the Ministry of Justice. The dates differed, but the signature was the same. Twice, the seal of the Ministry of Justice was carelessly stamped and ran off the side of the page. Brunetti had spent what seemed a lifetime looking at such documents. How many had he stamped himself before consigning them to their next reader?

  These were not the sort of court documents he was accustomed to reading in the course of his own investigations, not the usual transcripts of testimony or of the arguments presented at the conclusion of a trial, nor yet were they copies of the verdicts finally reached. These were for internal use only and, if he was reading them correctly, dealt with preliminary sessions. He found no pattern.

  He glanced at Brusca, whose face was impassive. Brunetti returned his attention to the papers. He looked for correspondences and saw that many of the sessions listed had been adjourned or postponed without a hearing, and then he noticed that most of these cases had been heard by the same judge. He recognized the name and had no good opinion of her, though, if pressed, Brunetti could not have explained why that was. Things heard, things overheard, a certain tone of voice used when her name came up in conversation, and something, years ago, that one of his informers had said. No, not said, but implied, and not about her but about someone in her family. The name of the court functionary who had signed the papers meant nothing to him.

  He looked across at his friend and said, ‘My guess is that these postponements might work to the advantage of one of the two parties in each case and that Judge Coltellini is somehow involved in the delays.’ Brusca gave an encouraging nod and p
ointed with his chin to the papers, as if to prompt a promising student. ‘If that means I am to see something more here, then I’d guess that the person who signed the papers is also involved.’

  ‘Araldo Fontana,’ Brusca said. ‘At the Tribunale. He started working there in 1975, was promoted to chief usher ten years later, and has been there ever since. His scheduled date of retirement is the tenth of April 2014.’

  ‘What colour is his underwear?’ asked a straight-faced Brunetti.

  ‘Very funny, very funny, Guido.’

  ‘All right. Forget the underwear and tell me about him.’

  ‘As chief usher, he sees that papers are processed and delivered on time.’

  ‘And “processed and delivered” means . . . ?’

  Brusca sat back and crossed his legs, then raised one hand in a gesture indicative of motion. ‘There’s a central deposit where all documents regarding cases are kept. When they’re needed during a hearing or trial, the ushers see that they’re delivered to the right courtroom so the judge can consult them if necessary. Then, when the hearing is over, the ushers take them back to the central deposit and refile them. When the next hearing is held, they’re delivered again. When a verdict is reached, all of the papers in the case are moved to a permanent storage deposit.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But papers sometimes go missing or aren’t delivered, and when they aren’t there, the judge has no choice but to postpone the hearing and set a later date. And if the hearing is anywhere near a holiday, then the judge might think it best to delay until after the holiday, but in both cases the judge has to check the docket and see when there is an opening to schedule a hearing, and then there might be long delays.’

  Brunetti nodded: this had been his general understanding of how things worked. ‘Then tell me,’ he said, ‘because to listen to you is to put my ear to the beating heart of goddess Rumour, what’s going on here?’

  Brusca smiled, but barely so. It was an expression not of humour or amusement but one that acknowledged human nature as it was, not as anyone would want it to be. ‘Before I say anything about what might be going on here, I have to tell you one thing.’ He paused long enough to be sure he had Brunetti’s full attention, then continued. ‘He’s a decorous man, Fontana. It’s an old-fashioned word, I know, but he’s an old-fashioned man. Almost as if he were from our parents’ generation: that’s how people speak of him. He wears a suit and tie to work every day, does his job, is polite with everyone. I’ve never, in all these years, heard a word against him and, as you know, if there is a word to be heard against anyone at the Commune, it generally ends up being repeated to me. Sooner or later, I probably hear everything. But never a word against Fontana, save that he is tedious and shy.’