Fatal Remedies

by Donna Leon

  As he walked across Campo Santa Maria Formosa, he remembered some of the things she’d said, deaf to his reminder that the children were there, blind to his surprise at her response. ‘It’s because you’re a man,’ she’d hissed in a tight, angry voice. And later, ‘It’s got to be made to cost them more to do it than to stop. Until then, nothing will happen.’ And finally, ‘I don’t care if it’s not illegal. It’s wrong and someone’s going to have to stop them.’

  As was so often the case, Brunetti had dismissed her anger, then her promise - or had it been a threat - to do something on her own. And now, here he was, three days later, turning on to the embankment of San Lorenzo and approaching the Questura, where Paola sat, arrested for a crime she’d told him she was going to commit.

  The same young officer let Brunetti in, saluting him as he entered. Brunetti ignored him and headed for the steps, ran up them two at a time and into the officers’ room, where he found Ruberti at his desk, Paola sitting quietly in front of him.

  Ruberti stood up and saluted when his superior entered.

  Brunetti nodded. He glanced at Paola, who met his eyes, but he had nothing to say to her.

  He motioned Ruberti to sit down and when the officer did, Brunetti said, ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘We had a call about an hour ago, sir. A burglar alarm went off in Campo Manin, so Bellini and I went to answer the call.’

  ‘On foot?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  When Ruberti didn’t continue, Brunetti nodded to him and he went on, ‘When we got there we found the window broken. The alarm was going off like crazy.’

  ‘Where was it coming from?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew.

  ‘The back room, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But from what place?’

  ‘The travel agency, sir.’

  Seeing Brunetti’s response, Ruberti subsided into silence again until Brunetti prodded him by asking, ‘And then?’

  ‘I went in, sir, and turned off the electricity. To stop the alarm,’ he explained unnecessarily. ‘Then, when we came out, we saw a woman in the campo, like she was waiting for us, and we asked her if she had seen what happened.’ Ruberti looked down at his desk, up at Brunetti, across at Paola and when neither of them said anything, he continued, ‘She said she’d seen who did it and when we asked her to describe him, she said it was a woman.’

  Again, he stopped and looked at each of them and again neither said anything. ‘Then, when we asked her to describe the woman she described herself and, when I pointed that out to her, she said she’d done it. Broken the window, sir. That’s what happened.’ He thought for a moment, then added, ‘Well, she didn’t say it, sir. But she nodded when I asked her if she’d done it.’

  Brunetti lowered himself into a chair on Paola’s right and folded his hands on the surface of Ruberti’s desk.

  ‘Where’s Bellini?’ he asked.

  ‘Still there, sir. He’s waiting for the owner to show up.’

  ‘How long ago did you leave him?’ Brunetti asked.

  Ruberti glanced down at his watch. ‘More than a half-hour, sir.’

  ‘Does he have a phone?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Call him.’ Brunetti said.

  Ruberti reached forward and pulled the phone towards him, but before he could begin to dial they heard footsteps on the stairs and a moment later Bellini came into the office. When he saw Brunetti he saluted, though he was unable to show his surprise at finding the commissario there at that hour.

  ‘Buon di, Bellini,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Buon di, Commissario,’ the officer responded and looked towards Ruberti for some hint about what was going on.

  Ruberti gave the barest of shrugs.

  Brunetti reached across the desk and pulled the stack of crime reports towards him. He saw Ruberti’s neat printing, read the time and date, the officer’s name, the name Ruberti had chosen to give the crime. Nothing else was written on the report, no name was listed under ‘Arrested’, not even under ‘Questioned’.

  ‘What has my wife said?’

  ‘As I told you, sir, she hasn’t actually really said anything. Just nodded when I asked her if she did it,’ Ruberti said. To cover the rush of air that sneaked through his partner’s lips he added, ‘Sir.’

  ‘I think you might have misunderstood what she meant, Ruberti,’ Brunetti said. Paola leaned forward as if about to speak, but Brunetti suddenly slapped his outstretched palm on the crime report form and crushed it together in a tight ball.

  Ruberti remembered, again, times when he had been a young officer, weary with sleep and once wet with fear, and he recalled that the commissario had once or twice turned a blind eye to the terrors or errors of youth. ‘Yes, sir, I’m sure I could have misunderstood what she meant,’ he answered seamlessly. Ruberti looked up at Bellini, who nodded, not really understanding but knowing what he had to do.

  ‘Good,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet. The crime report was now a crushed ball in his hand. He stuffed it into the pocket of his overcoat. ‘I’ll take my wife home now.’

  Ruberti got to his feet and went to stand beside Bellini, who said, ‘The owner’s there now, sir.’

  ‘Did you tell him anything?’

  ‘No, sir, only that Ruberti had come back to the Questura.’

  Brunetti nodded. He leaned down towards Paola but did not touch her. She pushed herself up by the arms of her chair and stood, but she did not stand beside her husband.

  ‘I’ll say good-night, then, officers. I’ll see you later this morning.’ Both men saluted, Brunetti waved a hand towards them, then stood back to allow Paola to walk in front of him to the door. She went through it first, Brunetti following behind. He closed the door and, one behind the other, they walked down the stairs. The young officer was there to hold the door open for them. He nodded to Paola, though he had no idea who she was. As was only proper, he saluted his superior as he walked through the door and out into the chill Venetian dawn.

  * * * *

  3

  Outside the door of the Questura, Brunetti set off to the left and made for the first turning. There he paused and waited for Paola to join him. Still neither of them spoke. Side by side, they continued through the deserted calli, their feet automatically piloting them towards home.

  When they turned into Salizzada San Lio, Brunetti could finally bring himself to speak, but not to say anything of substance. ‘I left a note for the kids. In case they woke up.’

  Paola nodded, but he was carefully not looking at her, so he didn’t notice. ‘I didn’t want Chiara to worry,’ he said, and when he realized how much this must have sounded like an attempt to make her feel guilt, he recognized that he didn’t much care if it did.

  ‘I forgot,’ Paola said.

  They entered the underpass and were quickly out into Campo San Bartolomeo, where the cheerful smile on the statue of Goldoni seemed wildly out of place. Brunetti glanced up at the clock. Venetian, he knew to add an hour: almost five, not early enough to bother to go back to bed, yet how to fill the hours between now and the time when he could legitimately leave for work? He looked to his left, but none of the bars was open. He wanted coffee; far more desperately, he needed the diversion it would provide.

  On the other side of the Rialto, they both turned to the left, then right into the underpass that ran alongside Ruga degli Orefici. Halfway along, a bar was just opening and by silent consent they turned into it. An immense pile of fresh brioches lay on the counter, still enveloped in the white paper of the pasticceria. Brunetti ordered two espressos but ignored the pastries. Paola didn’t even notice them.

  When the barman set the coffee in front of them, Brunetti spooned sugar into both cups and slid Paola’s along the bar to her. The barman moved off towards the end of the counter and began to place the brioches, one by one, into a glass display case.

  ‘Well?’ Brunetti asked.

  Paola sipped at the coffee, added another half spoonful of sugar a
nd said, ‘I told you I was going to do it.’

  ‘It didn’t sound like that.’

  ‘Then what did it sound like?’

  ‘It sounded like you were saying that everyone should do it.’

  ‘Everyone should do it,’ Paola said, but her voice held none of the rage that had filled it the first time she had uttered those words.

  ‘I didn’t think you meant this.’ Brunetti gestured with a hand that encompassed, not the bar, but all that had happened before they reached it.

  Paola put her cup down into the saucer and looked at him directly for the first time. ‘Guido, can we talk?’

  His impulse was to say that this was exactly what they were doing, but he knew her well enough to understand what she meant, so he nodded instead.

  ‘I told you, three nights ago, what they were doing.’ Before he could interrupt, she went on, ‘And you told me there was nothing at all illegal about it, that it was their right as travel agents.’

  Brunetti nodded and when the barman approached he signalled with a wave of his hand for more coffee. After the man had moved back towards the machine, Paola continued, ‘But it’s wrong. You know it and I know it. It’s disgusting to arrange sex-tours so that rich - and not so rich - men can go off to Thailand and the Philippines and rape ten-year-olds.’ Before he could speak, she held up a hand to stop him. ‘I know it’s illegal now. But has anyone been arrested? Convicted? You know as well as I, all they have to do is change the language in the ads and it’s business as usual. “Tolerant hotel reception. Friendly local companions.” Don’t tell me you don’t know what that means. It’s business as usual, Guido. And it disgusts me.’

  Still Brunetti said nothing. The waiter brought them two fresh cups of coffee and removed the used ones. The door opened and two burly men followed a gust of damp air into the bar. The waiter moved off towards them.

  ‘I told you then’, Paola resumed, ‘that it was wrong and that they had to be stopped.’

  ‘Do you think you can stop them?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered and before he could question or contradict, she continued, ‘Not me alone, not here in Venice, breaking a window in a travel agency in Campo Manin. But if all the women in Italy went out at night with stones and broke the windows of every travel agency that organized sex-tours, then, after a very short time, there wouldn’t be any sex-tours organized in Italy, would there?’

  ‘Is that a rhetorical question or a real question?’ he asked.

  ‘I think it’s a real one,’ she said. This time, it was Paola who put the sugar into their coffee.

  Brunetti drank his before he said anything. ‘You can’t do it, Paola. You can’t go breaking the windows of offices or stores that do things you don’t want them to do or sell things you don’t think they should sell.’ Before she could say anything he asked her, ‘Remember when the Church tried to ban the sale of contraceptives? Remember your reaction to that? Well, if you don’t, I do, and it was the same thing: off on a crusade against what you decided was evil. But that time you were on the other side, against people who were doing what you say now you have the right to do, stopping people from doing what you think is wrong. No, the obligation.’ He felt himself giving in to the anger that had filled him since he had got out of bed, that had walked through the streets with him and that stood beside him now, in this quiet, early-morning bar.

  ‘It’s the same thing,’ he continued. ‘You decide, all by yourself and for yourself, that something’s wrong, then you make yourself so important that you’re the only one who can stop it, the only one who sees the perfect truth.’

  He thought she’d say something here, but when she didn’t he went on irresistibly, ‘This is a perfect example. What do you want, your picture on the front page of the Gazzettino, you the great defender of little children?’ By a conscious act of will he stopped himself from going on. He reached into his pocket, walked over to the barman and paid for the coffee. He opened the door to the bar and held it for her.

  Outside, she turned to the left, went a few steps, stopped and waited for him to come up to her. ‘Is that how you really see it? That all I want from this is attention, that I want people to see me as being important?’

  He walked past her, ignoring the question.

  From behind him he heard her voice, raised for the first time. ‘Is that it, Guido?’

  He stopped and turned back to face her. A man came from behind her, wheeling a dolly covered with bound stacks of newspapers and magazines. He waited for him to pass them and answered, ‘Yes. Partly.’

  ‘How much a part?’ she shot back.

  ‘I don’t know. You can’t divide something like that.’

  ‘Do you think it’s the reason I’m doing this?’

  His exasperation urged him to answer, ‘Why does everything have to be such a cause for you, Paola? Why does everything you do, or read or say - or wear and eat, for the love of God -why does everything have to be filled with such meaning?’

  For a long time she looked at him without saying anything, then she lowered her head and walked away from him, heading for home.

  He caught up with her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘What’s what supposed to mean?’

  ‘That look.’

  She stopped again and gazed up at him. ‘Sometimes I wonder where the man I married went.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means that when I married you, Guido, you believed in all those things that you make fun of now.’ Before he could ask her what they were, she answered him, ‘Things like justice and what’s right, and how to decide to do what’s right.’

  ‘I still believe in those things,’ he insisted.

  ‘You believe in the law now, Guido,’ she said, but gently, as though she were speaking to a child.

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he said, raising his voice, deaf and blind to the people who hurried past them in increasing numbers, now that it was closer to the time when the first stalls would open. ‘You make what I do sound stupid or dirty. I’m a policeman, for God’s sake. What do you want me to do except obey the law? And enforce it?’ He felt his entire body blaze with hot rage as he saw, or thought he saw, how she had for years belittled and dismissed what he did.

  ‘Then why did you lie to Ruberti?’ she asked.

  His rage fled. ‘I didn’t lie.’

  ‘You told him there was some confusion, that he didn’t understand what I meant. But he knows, and you do, and I do, and so did that other policeman, exactly what I meant and what I did.’ When he said nothing she moved closer to him. ‘I broke the law, Guido. I broke their window and I’d do it again. And I’ll go on breaking their windows until your law, this precious law you’re so proud of, until your law does something - either to me or to them. Because I won’t let them go on doing what they’re doing.’

  His hands shot out before he could stop himself and grabbed her by the elbows. But he didn’t pull her to him. Instead, he stepped towards her, then wrapped his arms round her back, one hand pressing her face into the angle of his neck. He kissed the top of her head and sank his face into her hair. Suddenly he pulled himself back, hand clasped to his mouth.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, frightened for the first time.

  Brunetti pulled away his hand and saw that there was blood on it. He raised a finger to his lip and felt something hard, sharp.

  ‘No, let me,’ Paola said, placing her right hand on his cheek and moving his face down to hers. She removed her glove and touched his lip with two fingers.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘A piece of glass.’

  A sudden tweak of pain, then she kissed him on the lower lip, but gently.

  * * * *

  4

  On the way home they stopped in a pasticceria and bought a large tray of brioches, telling one another it was for the children but knowing it was a sort of celebratory offering to their peace, no matter how precarious its r
estoration. The first thing Brunetti did when they got home was remove the note he’d left on the kitchen table and stuff it deep into the plastic bag of garbage under the sink. Then he went down the corridor, quietly because of the still-sleeping children, and into the bathroom, where he took a long shower, hoping to steam away the troubles that had come to him so unexpectedly and so early this morning.