CB19 A Question of Belief (2010)

by Donna Leon

  ‘Power,’ she answered, then more reflectively, ‘So long as he can control or limit what other people know, he knows more than they do and feels as if he has power over them or what they do.’ She shrugged, adding, ‘It’s a common enough technique.’

  ‘I’d say in some places it’s standard operating procedure,’ Brunetti added and started up the stairs.

  The landing of the second floor had only two doors; a policeman stood outside one of them. He saluted when he saw Brunetti and Griffoni and said, ‘Ispettore Vianello is still inside.’

  Brunetti indicated the other door, but the officer said, ‘That side of the building’s not been restored, sir. All three apartments are empty.’ Then, before Brunetti could ask, he added, ‘We checked them, sir.’

  Brunetti nodded his thanks and tapped on the door twice, but when he saw it was ajar he pushed it open and went into the apartment. The light evaporated, and all he saw was a dim glow at the end of what must have been a long corridor. Unconsciously, Griffoni took a step closer to him until her arm was touching his in the near-darkness. They stood still until their eyes adjusted and they could begin to make out the objects lining the corridor. Brunetti saw the outline of a door on his right and opened it, hoping to allow some light to filter into the corridor, but the room was dark, and all he could make out were four thin vertical bars of gold. It took Brunetti a moment to realize they were cracks of light at the edges of the shutters closed over two windows. Here, as well, he saw the dim shadows of objects standing about in the room, but it was impossible to distinguish what they were.

  He pulled the door closed and began to pat the wall of the corridor in search of a light switch. When he found one and pressed it, the difference was minimal, for it illuminated only a single overhead light halfway down the corridor. The objects emerged closer to visibility: narrow tables, low trunks, a few standing lamps, a suitcase – all crowded back against the walls.

  They heard the murmur of a voice, perhaps more than one, from the end of the corridor, and both of them set off at the same moment. They passed another door on the right and another on the left. Ordinarily the darkness would have provided some relief from the heat, but that was not the case here. If air be stagnant, then stagnant air grew in that hall. It pressed itself against them as they moved, reluctant to let them pass and interested only in adding to their discomfort. The dampness wrapped itself around them and stroked their exposed flesh.

  They stopped in front of a door which was ajar, and Brunetti was about to call Vianello’s name when he recalled that the woman was a widow, had lived alone with her only son, who had just been killed. ‘You call him,’ he told Griffoni softly.

  ‘Ispettore Vianello?’ Griffoni said into the crack between the door and the jamb.

  Her voice was answered by the sound of a chair scraping on the floor, and Vianello appeared at the door and pulled it fully open. Like Brunetti, he was dressed for vacation, in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Whatever his clothing lacked in seriousness was more than made up for by the expression on his face and by the voice in which he said, ‘Commissario Griffoni. Commissario Brunetti. I’d like to present you to Signora Fontana, the mother of the victim.’ The Inspector’s voice grew softer with the final word.

  He stepped slowly back from the doorway and turned towards two chairs that sat in the middle of the room, both with their backs to what appeared to be a row of windows obscured by maroon velvet curtains.

  The apartment had prepared Brunetti to see a woman of some austerity: he had imagined grey hair pulled tight in a small bun at the back of her head, stick-like calves under a long dark skirt. Instead, the woman sitting in the centre of the room was plump and so short that, even with her feet resting on a velvet-covered hassock, her head did not reach the top of the back of the chair. She had short curly hair, the standard dark red chosen by women of her age. She needed no makeup: her cheeks were rosy with good health, the skin as smooth and soft as that of a young woman. Her eyes, when Brunetti got close enough to see them, seemed to be the eyes of a different person entirely or to belong on a different face. Hooded, deep-set, angled down at the corners, they looked at the world, and at Brunetti, with a sharpness that was evident nowhere on her body.

  He moved up behind Griffoni, who bent over the woman and said, ‘Signora, I would like to extend my condolences at this terrible time.’ The woman extended her hand and allowed Griffoni to press hers, but she said nothing.

  Brunetti bent down then and said, ‘I join my colleague in extending my sympathies, Signora.’ The hand she gave him was soft as a baby’s, the skin smooth and unblemished by age spots. She exerted no pressure on his hand, merely allowed hers to be held for a few seconds and then removed it from his grasp.

  She looked at Vianello and asked in a soft voice, ‘Are these the colleagues you were telling me about, Ispettore?’

  ‘Yes, Signora. Commissario Brunetti and I have worked together for years, and Commissario Griffoni, because of her exemplary conduct at another Questura, has been assigned here.’ This was not strictly the truth. In fact, it was a lie. Claudia Griffoni, Brunetti had discovered only after she had been at the Questura for almost a year, had been sent there because she had been too active in her investigation of the business activities of one of the politicians of the party currently holding the majority in Parliament. Her questore had warned her, as had two magistrates who were working on the same investigation. Both of them had told her to be less obvious, not to speak to the press, but the press had not been able to resist a story in which the conflicting parts were played by a convicted criminal and a very attractive female police commissario, who just happened to be blonde, and whose father had been seriously wounded in a Mafia attempt on his life two decades before.

  A week after a story appeared, stating that the politician was the subject of a police investigation, Griffoni had found herself transferred to Venice, a city not famed for active interference in the doings of either the members of the political class or the Mafia.

  Brunetti was pulled back from these reflections by the voice of Signora Fontana, who said to Vianello, ‘Ispettore, perhaps you could bring chairs for your colleagues?’

  When the four of them were sitting in a rough circle, Brunetti said, ‘Signora, I realize this is going to be a terribly hard time for you. Not only have you suffered an unbearable loss, but you will now have to suffer the invasion of the press and public.’

  ‘And police,’ she said instantly.

  He gave an easy smile and nodded. ‘And the police, Signora. But the difference is that we are interested in finding the person who did this: the press has other goals.’

  Vianello sat up straighter and turned to Brunetti. ‘Signora Fontana has already had an offer from a magazine. To tell her story. And her son’s.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said, turning to the woman. ‘What did you tell them?’

  ‘The Ispettore spoke to them for me,’ she said. ‘And told them I was not interested, which I am not.’ She brought her lips together in an expression of prim disapproval, but her eyes were careful to watch for Brunetti’s response.

  He nodded in open approval, giving her what he thought she wanted.

  ‘It won’t change what they write,’ Vianello interrupted to say, ‘but of course they won’t be able to use family photos.’

  ‘At least not from my side of the family,’ Signora Fontana said with more than a touch of asperity.

  Brunetti let it pass as though he had not heard and asked, ‘Have you any idea who might have wanted to hurt your son, Signora?’

  She shook her head furiously, but not a single lock of her permed hair fell out of place. ‘No one could want to hurt Araldo. He was such a good boy. He was always a good boy. His father raised him that way, and then when his father died, I tried to do the same.’

  Griffoni placed her hand on Signora Fontana’s arm and said something Brunetti could not hear, but it had no effect whatsoever on the woman. Indeed, it seemed to spur her
on. ‘He was hard-working and honest and devoted to his work. And to me.’ She put her face in her hands and her shoulders moved convulsively, but for some reason Brunetti was not persuaded of the sincerity of her grief until she took her hands away from her face and he saw the tears. Like Saint Thomas, he was convinced then that she did mourn her son, but still he was left uneasy by the manner in which she showed it, as though the round-faced part of her was being instructed by those guarded eyes to behave in a fashion that would persuade.

  When she had stopped crying and her handkerchief was clutched in her left hand, Brunetti said, ‘Signora, was it unusual for your son not to return home in the evening?’

  She gave him an offended look. Had not her tears washed away the possibility that she would have to answer such questions? ‘I never knew when he returned home, Signore,’ she said, either having forgotten, or choosing to ignore, Brunetti’s rank. ‘He was fifty-two years old, please remember. He had his own life, his own friends, and I tried to interfere as little as I could.’

  Griffoni muttered something appreciative of suffering motherhood, and Vianello nodded in approbation of Signora Fontana’s self-sacrifice.

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Did you usually see one another in the morning, before he went to work?’

  ‘Of course,’ she insisted. ‘I wouldn’t let my boy go off in the morning without caffè latte and some bread and jam.’

  ‘But this morning, Signora?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘The first thing I knew was Signor Marsano, banging on the door and telling me something was wrong. I was still in my nightgown so I couldn’t go out, but by the time I was dressed the police were here and they wouldn’t let me go down.’ She glanced at the circle of sympathetic faces surrounding her and said, ‘They wouldn’t let a mother go to her only son’, and again Brunetti had the feeling that the whole thing was being orchestrated for some purpose he could not understand.

  When Signora Fontana seemed a bit calmer, Griffoni asked, ‘Did he tell you where he was going last night, Signora?’

  The woman looked away from the question and from the person who had asked it and addressed Brunetti. ‘I go to bed early, Signore. Araldo was here when I did. We’d had dinner together.’

  None of the police officers said anything, so she suggested, ‘He must have gone out for a walk. Perhaps he couldn’t sleep in this heat.’ She glanced at their faces in turn, as if to see which one of them believed her.

  ‘Did you hear him go out?’ Griffoni asked.

  Signora Fontana looked stricken. ‘Why do you ask me all these things? I told you: Araldo had his own life. I don’t know what he did. What else do you expect me to tell you?’ Her voice had reached a point familiar to Brunetti, perhaps to all three of them, where the person being interviewed begins to see himself as a victim of persecution. It was but a step from there to anger and from anger to a truculent refusal to answer more questions.

  Turning to Griffoni, Brunetti said, in a voice into which he pumped the tones of reprimand, ‘I think the Signora has answered more than enough of your questions, Commissario. This is a moment of unbearable grief, and I think she should be spared more questions.’

  Griffoni, no fool, lowered her head and said something contrite.

  Then, quickly, before Signora Fontana could respond, Brunetti addressed her directly, saying, ‘If there is anyone from your family you’d like to have here with you, Signora, please tell us and we’ll do what we can to contact them for you.’

  The old woman shook her head, and again her curls did not move. As if barely able to force out the words, she said, ‘No one. No. I think to be alone is what I want.’

  Brunetti got quickly to his feet, followed by Vianello and Griffoni. ‘If there is any way we can be of help to you, Signora, you have only to call the Questura. And, speaking personally, I join my prayers to yours that il Signore will help you find the way to get through this terrible time.’

  He led the other two – who had the good sense not to say anything – from the room and out into the corridor.

  16

  ‘That was close,’ Vianello said as they walked down the stairs. Brunetti was glad the Inspector had chosen to speak: had he done so himself, it might have sounded as if he had meant his reproach to Griffoni.

  ‘Clever of you to look so penitent, Claudia,’ Vianello added.

  ‘It’s a survival skill I’ve developed in the job, I think,’ she said.

  When they stepped into the courtyard, Brunetti’s heart lifted to be again in the sunlight, regardless of the residual heat of the late afternoon. ‘What did you make of her answers?’ he asked Griffoni.

  It took her a moment to formulate an answer. ‘I think she’s suffering terribly. But I also think she knows more about his death than she’s letting us know.’

  ‘Or letting herself know,’ continued Vianello.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Brunetti asked, remembering that the Inspector had had time alone with the woman before their arrival.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that she loved him,’ the Inspector said. ‘But I’d also say that she knows something she’s not telling us and that she feels guilty about whatever it is.’

  ‘But not guilty enough to tell us?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ Vianello answered immediately. ‘I have the feeling she knows something about him that would interest us in some way.’ He thought about this and continued, ‘I let her talk, asked her questions about what sort of boy he’d been, how he did at school, that sort of thing. It’s what mothers always want to tell you about their children.’

  Brunetti, having done his fair share of it, thought it must be true of all parents, not just mothers, but he said nothing.

  ‘Whenever I got away from that or asked about what he was doing in recent years, whether he was successful at work, she always managed to pull the conversation back into the past and talked about when he was a little boy or a student.’

  ‘She certainly didn’t want to talk about last night,’ Griffoni said.

  Vianello slipped a white envelope from the pocket of his shirt and opened it. He pulled out a small photo, full face, the sort of thing that would be used for a passport or carta d’identità, and showed it to them. A man in sober late middle age looked back at the three of them. His hair was thinning, he had a few age spots on his left cheek, and had the sort of unremarkable face that would make a viewer assume immediately that the subject was a civil servant with a long history of working at the same job. His face was expressionless, as though he’d grown tired of waiting for the picture to be taken and had forgotten about his smile.

  ‘What a sad man,’ Griffoni said with real compassion. ‘To be so sad and then to die like that. God, it’s unbearable.’ This last she said with real passion.

  ‘We don’t know that he was sad,’ Brunetti insisted.

  She placed the tip of her finger on the bridge of Fontana’s nose and said, ‘Just look at him. Look at those eyes. And he lived with that woman for fifty-two years.’ She made a motion that was halfway between a shrug and a shudder. ‘Poor man,’ she said.

  Brunetti remembered then what Signorina Elettra had said of him: ‘Poor little man.’ Was he being presented, Brunetti wondered, with an example of feminine intuition, and he too dull to understand?

  ‘She said something we need to check,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘What?’ Griffoni asked.

  ‘The family. Remember what she said, that she was sure that her side of the family wouldn’t give a photo to the press?’ Both of them nodded.

  ‘I’d like to find out about her husband’s family, who there is, and what they have to say about Araldo and his mother. Should be easy enough to find them,’ Brunetti concluded.

  ‘I’ll see what I can find,’ Vianello said.

  ‘Zucchero,’ Brunetti called over to the young man.

  ‘Yes, Commissario?’ he said, approaching.

  ‘How much longer will you be here?�
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  ‘Until my shift finishes at eight, sir.’

  ‘There’s no reason for you to stay,’ Brunetti said decisively. ‘Instead, I’d like you to see if any of the people who live near here heard anything last night. After midnight. Then, when you get back to the Questura, see if you can find Alvise. Find out if they got the names of the people who were here when they arrived.’ The young man nodded. ‘But don’t let him know that’s what you want to know. Do you understand?’ This time Zucchero nodded and smiled.

  ‘You know Alvise, then?’ Brunetti could not stop himself from asking.

  ‘He was part of my orientation team, Commissario,’ the young officer answered neutrally.

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti answered in the same tone.

  He turned back to Griffoni and Vianello, saying, ‘Let’s get something to eat.’

  They went into the first bar they came to and asked for a plate of tramezzini. When Vianello bit into the first one, he glanced at his watch and said, ‘Nadia’s probably just beginning to shell the shrimps.’

  The others were busy eating, so he went on, ‘We got them at the beach this morning, when the fishing boats came in. Two kilos. Ten Euros, and some of them were still alive.’

  ‘Just like in the tourist brochures,’ Griffoni said and took a long drink of mineral water. ‘Is there traditional dancing in local costume?’

  Vianello laughed and answered, ‘Just about. There’s a tourist village about three kilometres up the coast where they have all that.’

  ‘But not where you are?’

  ‘No,’ he said with surprising abruptness.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Griffoni asked with real curiosity.

  ‘Oh, a little village to the north of Split.’

  ‘How’d you find it?’

  ‘A friend.’ Vianello got up and went over to the bar to get three more glasses of water.

  Brunetti took the opportunity to say, keeping his voice low, ‘From what he told me, I’d guess it belongs to a relative of someone who . . . gives him information. He married a Croatian woman, and they rent the cottage out to friends.’