by Donna Leon
No, he supposed she hadn’t thought about the consequences of her actions. Strange, really, in a woman as intelligent as Paola.
‘What will you do?’ she asked.
‘I’ll go back this afternoon. You?’
‘I don’t have a class until the day after tomorrow.’
‘You can’t stay in the house all that time, Paola.’
‘God, it’s like being in prison, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Prison’s worse.’
‘Will you come home? After work?’
‘Of course.’
‘You will?’
He was going to say that he had nowhere else to go, but he realized she’d misunderstand him if he said it like that. Instead, he said, ‘There’s no place else I want to go.’
‘Oh, Guido,’ she said, then, ‘Ciao, amore,’ and put down the phone.
* * * *
10
These sentiments, however, meant nothing in the face of the crowd that awaited his return to the Questura after lunch. Avian metaphors beat around him as he came down from Ponte dei Greci and walked towards the assembled members of the press: crows, vultures, harpies, crowding round the front of the Questura in a tight circle, they lacked only the putrefying corpse at their feet to make the picture complete.
One of them saw him and - traitor - giving no sign to his companions, slipped away from them and hurried towards Brunetti, his microphone jammed out before him like a cattle prod. ‘Commissario,’ he began, while still a metre from Brunetti, ‘has Dottor Mitri decided to bring civil charges against your wife?’
Smiling, Brunetti stopped. ‘You’ll have to ask Dottor Mitri, I believe.’ As he spoke, he saw the pack sense the absence of their colleague and turn in a kind of collective spasm towards the voices behind them. Instantly, they broke up and ran at him, microphones pressed ahead of them, as if to catch any words that might still float upon the air around Brunetti.
In the panic of their movement, one of the cameramen caught his foot in a cable and fell forward to the ground, his camera crashing down beside him. The lens popped free from the body of the shattered apparatus and went rolling, like a soda can kicked in a children’s game, to the edge of the canal. Everyone stopped, riveted by surprise or other emotions, and watched its progress towards the steps that led to the water. It approached the top step, gently rolled over the lip, touched lightly on the second, then the third and, with a quiet splash, sank into the green waters of the canal.
Brunetti took advantage of the moment of general inattention to resume his way to the front door of the Questura, but the reporters recovered just as quickly and moved to stop him. ‘Will you resign from the police?’ ‘Is it true your wife has a previous record of arrest?’ ‘... kept out of court?’
Smiling his most plastic smile, he moved along, not pushing them, but not letting their bodies prevent him from reaching his goal. Just as he got there, the door opened and Vianello and Pucetti emerged, standing on either side of it with their arms extended to prevent the reporters from entering.
Brunetti went in, Vianello and Pucetti following. ‘Savage, aren’t they?’ Vianello said, standing with his back against the glass door. Unlike Orfeo, Brunetti did not look back and did not speak, but started up the stairs to his office. He heard steps behind him and turned to see Vianello, taking the treads two at a time. ‘He wants to see you.’
Still wearing his coat, Brunetti went to Patta’s office, where he found Signorina Elettra at her desk, the day’s Gazzettino spread out before her.
He glanced down and saw that the front page of the second section carried a picture of him, one taken some years ago, and the photo of Paola which appeared in her carta d’identità. Looking up, Signorina Elettra said, ‘If you get much more famous, I’ll have to beg for an autograph.’
‘Is that what the Vice-Questura wants?’ he asked, smiling.
‘No, your head, I think.’
‘I imagined as much,’ he said and knocked at the door.
Patta’s voice came through: tones of doom. How much easier it would be if they could simply stop all the melodrama and have done with it, Brunetti found himself thinking. As he entered, a line from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena flashed through his memory - ‘If those who judge me are those who have already condemned me, I have no chance.’ Good lord, talk about melodrama.
‘You wanted to see me, Vice-Questore?’ he asked as he entered.
Patta sat behind his desk, face impassive. All he lacked was the black cap that English judges were said to put on top of their wigs when they condemned a prisoner to death. ‘Yes, Brunetti. No, don’t bother to sit down. What I have to say is very short. I’ve spoken about this to the Questore, and we’ve decided that you should go on administrative leave until it’s resolved.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That, until this case is settled, there is no need for you to come to the Questura.’
‘Settled?’
‘Until a judgement is given and your wife pays a fine, or makes restitution to Dottor Mitri for the damage she has caused to his property and business.’
‘This is to assume she’s charged and convicted,’ Brunetti said, knowing how likely both were. Patta didn’t deign to answer. ‘And that could take years,’ Brunetti added, no stranger to the law.
‘I doubt that,’ Patta said.
‘Sir, there are cases in my files that have been open for more than five years, waiting for a trial date to be set. I repeat: it could take years.’
‘That depends entirely upon your wife’s decision, Commissario. Dottor Mitri was civilized enough, I would even say kind enough, to offer an efficient solution to this problem. But your wife has apparently chosen not to accept it. The consequences, therefore, will be her own.’
‘With all respect, sir,’ Brunetti said, ‘that’s not entirely true.’ Before Patta could object, Brunetti went on, ‘Dottor Mitri offered the solution to me, not to my wife. As I explained, it is a decision I cannot make in my wife’s place. If he were to offer it to her directly and if she were to refuse, then what you say would be true.’
‘You haven’t told her?’ Patta asked, no attempt made to disguise his surprise.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s Dottor Mitri’s business, I think, to do so.’
Again, Patta’s surprise was easy to read. He considered this for a while, then said, ‘I’ll mention it to him.’
Brunetti nodded, whether in thanks or acknowledgement, neither of them knew. ‘Will that be all, sir?’ he asked.
‘Yes. But you’re still to consider yourself on administrative leave. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said, though he had no idea what it meant, save that he was no longer to work as a policeman, was not, in fact, to have a job. He didn’t bother to say anything to Patta but turned and left his office.
Outside, Signorina Elettra was still at her desk, but she was reading a magazine, having finished with the Gazzettino. She looked up at him when he came out.
‘Who told the press?’
She shook her head. ‘No idea. Probably the lieutenant.’ She glanced for an instant towards Patta’s door.
‘Administrative leave.’
‘Never heard of it,’ she said. ‘It must have been invented to fit the occasion. What will you do, Commissario?’
‘Go home and read,’ he answered, and with the answer came the thought, and with the thought came the desire. All he had to do was get through the reporters in front of the building, escape their cameras and repeated questions, and he could go home and read for as long as it took Paola to come to a decision, or for this to be resolved. He could allow his books to carry him out of the Questura, out of Venice, out of this shabby century filled with cheap sentimentality and blood lust, and take him back to worlds where his spirit felt more at ease.
Signorina Elettra smiled, hearing a joke in this answer, and returned her attention to her magazine.
He di
dn’t bother to go back to his office but went directly to the door of the Questura. Strangely enough, the reporters were gone, the only sign of their recent presence some chips of plastic and a broken camera strap.
* * * *
11
He found the broken pieces of the mob in front of his apartment when he got there, three of them the same men who had tried to interrogate him outside the Questura. He made no attempt to answer their shouted questions, pushed his way through them and raised his key to the lock in the enormous portone that led into the entrance hall. A hand shot out from behind him and took his arm, trying to pull his hand away from the door.
Brunetti wheeled to his right, the large bunch of keys clutched in his hand like a weapon. The reporter, seeing not the keys but the expression on Brunetti’s face, backed away, one hand raised placatingly between them. ‘Excuse me, Commissario,’ he said, his smile as false as his words. Something animal in the others heard the naked fear in his tone and responded to it. No one spoke. Brunetti looked around at their faces. No cameras flashed and the video cameras were not raised.
Brunetti turned back to the door and placed the key in the lock. He turned it and let himself into the entrance hall, closed the door, and leaned back against it. His chest, indeed his entire upper body, was covered with the heavy sweat of sudden rage, and his heart pounded uncontrollably. He unbuttoned his coat and pulled it open, letting the chill air of the hallway cool him. With his shoulders, he shoved himself away from the door and started up the stairs.
Paola must have heard him coming because she opened the door when he got to the bottom of the final ramp of stairs. She held it for him and, when he got inside, took his coat and hung it up. He bent and kissed her cheek, liking the smell of her.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Something called “administrative leave”. Invented for the occasion, I think.’
‘Which means?’ she asked, walking beside him into the living-room.
He flopped down on to the sofa, his feet splayed out in front of him. ‘It means I get to stay home and read until you and Mitri come to some sort of agreement.’
‘Agreement?’ she asked, sitting on the edge of the sofa beside him.
‘Apparently Patta thinks you should pay Mitri for the window and apologize.’ He thought about Mitri and corrected himself, ‘Or just pay for the window.’
‘Once or twice?’ she asked.
‘Does it make any difference?’
She looked down and, with her foot, straightened the edge of the carpet that ran in front of the sofa. ‘No, not really. I can’t give him a lira.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
‘Can’t.’
‘Well, I guess it’ll give me a chance, finally, to read Gibbon.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘That I get to stay home until some sort of resolution, either personal or legal, is made.’
‘If they give me a fine, I’ll pay it,’ she said, her voice so much that of the virtuous citizen that Brunetti was forced to grin.
Still smiling, he said, ‘I think it’s Voltaire who says somewhere, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”‘
‘He said a lot of things like that, Voltaire. Sounds good. He had a habit of saying things that sounded good.’
‘You seem sceptical.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m always suspicious of noble sentiments.’
‘Especially when they come from men?’
She leaned towards him, covering one of his hands with hers. ‘You said that, I didn’t.’
‘No less true for that.’
She shrugged again. ‘You really going to read Gibbon?’
‘I’ve always wanted to. But in translation, I think. His style’s a bit too manicured for me.’
‘That’s the joy of it.’
‘I get enough fancy rhetoric in the newspapers; I don’t need it in a history book.’
‘They’re going to love this, aren’t they, the newspapers?’ she asked.
‘No one’s tried to arrest Andreotti for ages, so they’ve got to write about something.’
‘I suppose so.’ She got to her feet. ‘Is there anything I can bring you?’
Brunetti, who had had little lunch and not enjoyed it, said, ‘A sandwich and a glass of Dolcetto.’ He leaned down and started to untie his shoes. When Paola started towards the door he called after her, ‘And the first volume of Gibbon.’
She was back in ten minutes with all three, and he indulged himself shamelessly, stretching out on the sofa, glass on the table beside him, plate balanced on his chest, while he opened the book and began to read. The panino contained speck and tomato, with fine slices of an aged Pecorino slipped between them. After a few minutes, Paola came in and spread a cloth napkin under his chin, just in time to catch a piece of damp tomato that fell out of the sandwich. He set his food on the plate, reached for the glass and took a long swallow. Returning to the book, he read the magisterial opening chapter, with its politically incorrect paean to the glory of the Roman Empire.
After some time, just as Gibbon was explaining the tolerance with which the polytheist observes all religions, Paola came in and refilled his glass. She took the empty plate from his chest, picked up the napkin and went back into the kitchen. Gibbon would no doubt have something to say about the submissiveness of the good Roman wife: Brunetti looked forward to reading it.
* * * *
The next day he alternated his reading of Gibbon with his perusal of the national and local press, brought into the house by the children. Il Gazzettino, whose reporter had pulled his arm away from the door, raged about the abuse of power on the part of the authorities, about Brunetti’s refusal to co-operate with the press’s legitimate right to information, his arrogance, his inclination to violence. Paola’s professed motivation, which they had somehow learned about, was made light of, the newspaper fierce in its denunciation of this spirit of vigilante crime, presenting her as a woman in search of publicity, clearly unsuited for her position as a university professor. The fact that she had never been asked for an interview was nowhere mentioned in the article.
The larger papers were less fulminating, though the story was always presented as an example of a dangerous tendency on the part of the private citizen to abrogate the legitimate power of the State in a misguided search for some mistaken idea of ‘justice’, a word they never failed to include within the quotation marks of their contempt.
After reading the papers Brunetti continued with his book and did not leave the house. Nor did Paola, who spent most of her time in her study, going through the doctoral dissertation of a student who was preparing for his exams under her direction. The children, though alerted by their parents to what was going on, came and went undisturbed, doing the shopping, bringing up the newspapers and in general behaving very well in light of the disruption of their family life.
On the second day, Brunetti treated himself to a long nap after lunch, even going to the trouble of getting into bed and under the covers, not simply stretching out on the sofa to let sleep come upon him accidentally. In the afternoon the phone rang a few times, but he left it to Paola to answer. If Mitri or his lawyer called to speak to her she’d tell him, or maybe she wouldn’t.
The phone rang shortly after breakfast on the third day of what Brunetti was coming to think of as purdah. After a few minutes Paola came into the living-room and said it was for him.
He leaned forward on the sofa, not bothering to put his feet on the floor, and picked up the receiver. ‘Si?’
‘It’s Vianello, sir. Have they called you?’
‘Who?’
‘The men on duty last night.’
‘No. Why?’
Whatever Vianello started to say was blocked out by the sound of loud voices in the background.
‘Where are you, Vianello?’
‘Down at the bar near the bridge.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Mitri was killed last night.’
Brunetti pulled himself up on the sofa, feet on the floor in front of him. ‘How? Where?’
‘In his home. He was garrotted, or that’s what it looks like. Someone must have got behind him and choked him. Whatever they used, they took it with them. But-’ he said and again his voice was drowned out by what seemed like noises coming over a radio.
‘What?’ Brunetti asked when the sound died down.
‘They found a note, next to his body. I haven’t seen it, but Pucetti told me it said something about paedophiles and the people who help them. Something about justice.’
