By Its Cover

by Donna Leon

  Foa slowed again when he entered Rio di S. Ana and told them to duck their heads as they went under a bridge; he turned left and glided up and stopped behind another police launch that was moored on the right side of the canal. He hadn’t even grabbed the rope before Brunetti and Vianello leaped up to the riva and started across the campo.

  They saw a man on one of the benches who seemed unaware of anything around him. He sat slumped over, legs apart, looking at the ground between his feet. He held a white handkerchief in his left hand, and as they approached him, he wiped at his eyes and blew his nose, then looked down again, his forearms propped on his thighs. Brunetti saw his shoulders rise and fall and heard his choked sob. The man wiped his eyes again but didn’t look up at the sound of their approaching footsteps.

  Brunetti heard a humming sound, and then the man sobbed again. His hands were coiled into tight fists, the handkerchief crushed between his fingers. Brunetti approached the bench and stopped a metre from the man. ‘Signor Franchini,’ he said in a normal voice. The humming noise continued, and the man wiped at his eyes again.

  Brunetti squatted down, bringing his eyes level with the other man’s. ‘Signor Franchini,’ he said again, this time raising his voice a little.

  The man gave a sudden start, looked at Brunetti, pulled himself upright, and pressed himself against the back of the bench. Brunetti held up a hand, palm towards him. ‘We’re police officers, Signore. Don’t be frightened.’

  The man stared at him, silent. He appeared to be in his late fifties, dressed in a woollen suit, his tie neatly knotted, as though he had come here from his office. His thin grey hair fell across a narrow forehead. His eyes were brown, swollen in the aftermath of tears, his nose long and slender.

  ‘Signor Franchini?’ Brunetti said again. His knees began to hurt, and he leaned forward and pressed one hand against the ground. He pushed himself to his feet, careful to rise very slowly, though he felt it in his knees as he did.

  ‘Can we help you in any way?’ he asked, turning to Vianello, who had stopped a few metres away, then motioning him to come closer. Vianello was careful to move very slowly as he came to stand near his superior, leaving a space big enough for a man to dash through between them.

  ‘Who are you?’ the man asked. He sniffled, blew his nose, let his hands fall to his lap.

  ‘I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti, and this is Ispettore Vianello. We just heard about your brother, so we came here.’ He half turned and indicated the two police boats moored one behind the other, as if that would prove he was telling the truth.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ the man asked.

  Brunetti shook his head. ‘No. We’ve just got here.’

  ‘It’s very bad, you know,’ the man said.

  ‘You’re his brother?’ Brunetti asked.

  The man nodded. ‘Yes, the baby brother.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘It’s not easy,’ Franchini said.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Brunetti agreed.

  ‘They’re never careful enough.’ Franchini stopped, surprised at what he had just said, and raised the handkerchief with both hands to press it against his eyes. He gave a single, short sob, before lowering his hands.

  ‘Do you mind if I sit?’ Brunetti asked. ‘My knees can’t do that any more.’

  ‘Please, please,’ Franchini said and moved to the left to make room for him.

  Brunetti sat down with a sigh and stretched his legs in front of him. He made a motion with his head, and Vianello started walking towards the house. The other man paid no attention to him.

  ‘You came from Padova?’ Brunetti asked casually.

  ‘Yes. Aldo and I always speak to each other on Tuesday nights, and when he didn’t answer his phone last night, I decided I better come and see what was wrong.’

  ‘Why did you think something was wrong?’ Brunetti asked in an entirely conversational voice.

  ‘Because we’ve spoken to each other every Tuesday night, at nine o’clock, for sixteen years.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said and nodded to confirm the good sense of Franchini’s decision to come. He turned to face the man, as in a normal conversation, and saw that, although he was a thin man, a double chin hung incongruously beneath his face. He had large ears.

  ‘And you came this afternoon?’

  ‘I had to work today. We don’t get out until three.’

  ‘Oh, what do you do?’

  ‘I’m a teacher. Latin and Greek. In Padova.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘Those were my favourite classes.’

  ‘Really?’ Franchini turned to ask him, unable to contain his pleasure.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said. ‘I liked the precision of them, especially of Greek. Everything had the right place.’

  ‘Did you keep it up?’ Franchini asked.

  Brunetti shook his head, his regret real. ‘I got lazy, I’m afraid. I still read them, but in Italian.’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ Franchini said, then quickly added, as though afraid of hurting a student’s feelings, ‘But it’s good that you still read them.’

  Brunetti let a long time pass and then asked, ‘Were you and your brother close?’

  After an even longer time, Franchini said ‘Yes.’ Another pause, then he added, ‘And no.’

  ‘Like me and my brother,’ Brunetti offered, waited a few moments and asked, ‘How were you close?’

  ‘We studied the same things,’ Franchini said, glancing aside to look Brunetti in the face. ‘He preferred Latin, though.’

  ‘And you Greek?’

  Franchini shrugged in assent.

  ‘How else?’

  He could see Franchini start to fold his handkerchief into a neat square, as if the apparent normality of the conversation had eliminated the need for tears. ‘We were raised as believers. Our parents were very religious.’

  His father having been a savage atheist, Brunetti nodded to suggest a common experience.

  ‘Aldo was more interested than I.’ Franchini looked away. ‘He answered his vocation and became a priest.’ He was still folding the handkerchief, which was now reduced to the size of a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘But then he lost it. He told me once that he woke up one morning and it was gone, as if he’d put it somewhere before he went to bed and couldn’t find it when he woke up.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘He left. He stopped being a priest, so they fired him from his teaching job. They couldn’t do that, not legally, so they had to make it seem like he retired early, and they gave him a pension.’

  ‘How did he manage to live here?’ Brunetti asked, knowing Franchini would understand he was asking about money.

  ‘The apartment belonged to my parents, and they left it to us. So he moved here, and I stayed in Padova.’

  ‘Is your family there?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said but did not elaborate.

  ‘And you called him every Tuesday?’

  Franchini nodded. ‘Aldo changed when he lost his job: it was like he’d lost everything that was important to him. Except for Latin. He spent his time reading.’

  ‘In Latin?’

  ‘I helped find him a place here where he could read. He said he wanted to read the Fathers of the Church,’ Franchini said.

  ‘To find his faith again?’ Brunetti asked.

  He heard the cloth of the other man’s jacket rub against the back of the bench as he shrugged. ‘He didn’t say.’ Then, before Brunetti could speak, he added, ‘And I never asked.’

  ‘So he spent his time reading the Fathers of the Church,’ Brunetti said, half statement, half question.

  ‘Yes,’ Franchini said. ‘And then this,’ he added, raising the hand that was not holding the handkerchief and waving it vaguely at the building behind them.

  13

  From that same building, as if in response to the waving of Franchini’s hand, came the sound of a window being opened, and th
en a voice called down, ‘Commissario.’

  Brunetti stood and turned to face the voice, angry that his peaceful colloquy with Franchini had been interrupted so sharply. A uniformed officer stood at the window, leaning out and waving, as if he thought Brunetti did not know they were in the apartment. Brunetti raised his hand and made a rolling gesture, hoping the man would understand he was on his way, or would be soon.

  When he looked back at Franchini, he saw that he had bent forward again and was staring at the pavement, hands together, forearms resting on his thighs. He seemed unaware of Brunetti, who took out his phone and dialled Vianello’s number. When the Inspector answered, Brunetti said, ‘Can you send someone down to stay with Signor Franchini?’ and hung up before Vianello could speak.

  A few minutes later, Brunetti was relieved to see Pucetti emerge from the front door of the building.

  When Pucetti reached the bench, Brunetti bent down to Franchini and said, ‘Signore, Officer Pucetti will stay here with you until I get back.’ Franchini looked at him, then at Pucetti. The officer gave a small bow. Franchini returned his gaze to Brunetti, then to the pavement. Brunetti patted the younger man’s arm but said nothing.

  Inside, an officer he recognized, whose name he thought was Staffelli, stood in the corridor beside an open door on the third floor. He saluted Brunetti, then pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows in an expression that could signify anything from surprise at human behaviour to acceptance of the way the world functioned. Brunetti raised a hand to acknowledge his salute as well as whatever message he was trying to transmit. There was no sign of Vianello.

  Inside, he saw Bocchese, the head of the scientific team, dressed in his white paper suit and shoes, standing in an open doorway, looking into a room from which came the occasional flash of light.

  ‘Bocchese,’ Brunetti said.

  The technician turned and looked at him, raised a hand in greeting, then turned back just as another quick series of flashes shot past him. Brunetti took a few steps, but was stopped by a hiss from Bocchese. The technician reached into his pocket for two transparent plastic envelopes. ‘Put these on,’ he said, handing them to Brunetti.

  Familiar with Bocchese’s rules, Brunetti backed out into the hall. He held the railing with one hand while he slipped the paper coverings over his shoes, then put on the plastic gloves. He handed the empty envelopes to Staffelli and went back into the apartment.

  Bocchese was no longer in the doorway, so Brunetti took his place there. Men’s voices filtered towards him from some other place in the apartment: one of them sounded like Vianello’s. Two white-suited technicians were moving their camera equipment to the other side of the room, away from the man’s body that lay against the wall.

  So that was Tertullian, he thought, looking across at the surprisingly small sprawled form. Had there not been so much blood, he could have been a drunk who had passed out in his home while trying to find his way to bed or lost his balance and slithered down to lie with his head and one shoulder resting against the wall. This could have been the case, indeed, had not the alternative scenario been drawn on the wall behind him. Three bloody right-hand prints climbed the wall, as if the man had braced himself as he got to his feet, but a descending red hand-streak had cancelled them as it raced to the floor, like the central red brushstroke at the heart of a Shiraga.

  The dead man lay with one shoulder lodged against the wall, his arms spread open, head at an unlikely angle, one knee bent under his other leg. Had there been a sign of life, any person seeing him would have acted on pure animal instinct and shifted him away from the wall to free his neck and straighten his trapped knee. A moment’s reflection, however, would have convinced even the most optimistic that there was no life left in this inert, diminished thing.

  Brunetti had observed the same phenomenon more times than he liked to recall, how the spirit seemed to take mass and substance with it when it fled the body, leaving behind a smaller being than the one it had inhabited. This man had been young once, had been a priest, a believer, a reader, and now he was a twisted form with a blood-streaked face and a jacket bunched under his shoulders. The sole smiled loose from his left shoe: above was a dark grey sock and above that a slice of the pasty white skin of an old man.

  Two pools of dried blood darkened the parquet a metre from the body. One of them had been squashed by a foot, and from it three partial bloody footprints, all of the right foot, came directly towards him. There was no fourth.

  A flash burst, and Brunetti shied away from it, instinctively raising one hand in surprise. He turned to the two technicians. ‘Who’s coming?’

  ‘Probably Rizzardi,’ the taller of them answered but did not explain his uncertainty.

  ‘When did you get here?’ Brunetti asked.

  The man shoved up the sleeve of his white suit with the edge of a gloved hand. ‘About twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘What else is there?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘He was in the other room,’ the second one interrupted, shifting the tripod that held their camera a bit to the left.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  He clicked a few photos. Brunetti, accustomed to the flash now, did not bother to shield his eyes. Shifting the camera further left, the technician said, ‘Take a look, Commissario,’ pointing towards the door to his left. ‘You’ll see what I mean.’

  Brunetti walked to the door and looked into the room, curious about what story he would read there. An easy chair covered in dark green corduroy sat in one corner, behind it a reading lamp with a white glass shade. Beside the chair stood a round table with a smaller lamp. Both lamps were turned on, and beside the one on the table a book lay face down, as though the person reading it had been momentarily interrupted and had placed it there while he went to answer the phone, or the door. Behind the chair stood a large bookcase with every shelf filled.

  An acoustical trick carried the men’s voices, now recognizable as Vianello’s and Bocchese’s, to him. ‘You taking prints in every room?’ Brunetti heard Vianello ask. ‘Of course,’ Bocchese answered, but then they must have moved because their voices grew muffled and indistinct.

  Brunetti turned back to the first room and saw Dottor Rizzardi, the pathologist, at the door. They exchanged quiet greetings. Tall, slender, his hair greyer than the last time Brunetti had seen him, Rizzardi looked at Brunetti but could not keep his attention from drifting to the broken package that had once held Franchini’s life.

  Rizzardi was already wearing plastic booties and was just pulling the second glove on to his left hand. He walked over to the corpse and stood above it for some time, and Brunetti wondered if he were saying a prayer for the man’s spirit or wishing him peace on his journey to the next world, until he remembered that Rizzardi had once said he couldn’t believe in a next world, not after what he had seen in this one.

  The pathologist went down on one knee and leaned closer to the dead man. He reached and took his wrist. Punctilious to a fault, Rizzardi was checking his pulse. Brunetti looked away for a moment, and when he returned his attention, the pathologist had moved closer to the body and was lowering Franchini’s shoulder to the floor, where it flopped to one side. He tried to straighten the bent knee but failed.

  Rizzardi rose and, still crouching, stepped to the head of the body. He knelt again and examined the back of the head, tilting it to provide a better look. He got to his feet and approached Brunetti.

  ‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Someone kicked him. Someone wearing heavy shoes or boots.’

  ‘In the head?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes: that’s what killed him. But also in the face. His right cheek is cut almost all the way through, and at least four teeth are broken. But it’s the ones in the back of his head that killed him.’ He turned and gestured back to the scene. ‘He tried to stand – God knows how – but he couldn’t. Or the other one pulled him down.’

  ‘But he was an old man,’ Brunetti protested.
/>   ‘Old people are better victims,’ Rizzardi said, stripping off his gloves. He placed the gloves carefully face to face, then slipped them into the transparent package they came in before putting them into his pocket. ‘They’re weak and can’t defend themselves.’

  ‘You’d think people would respect them,’ Brunetti said. ‘That people would be … different.’

  Rizzardi looked at Brunetti. ‘You know, Guido, at times I find it difficult to believe you do the sort of work you do.’

  Brunetti had observed for years the respect, almost reverence, with which Rizzardi treated the dead he was called to view, and so said nothing.

  ‘It’s hard to tell how many times he was kicked,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I’ll be sure … later.’

  ‘“The pleasure of those who injure you lies in your pain”,’ Brunetti found himself repeating.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Rizzardi asked.

  ‘It’s something Tertullian wrote,’ he explained.

  ‘Tertullian?’

  ‘The theologian.’

  Rizzardi gave a sigh he tried to make sound as patient as possible. ‘I know who Tertullian is, Guido. I don’t know why you’re quoting him just now.’

  ‘That’s what he was called,’ Brunetti said, nodding towards the dead man.

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘I knew about him,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Ah,’ was Rizzardi’s only response.

  ‘He spent his time reading the Fathers of the Church at the Merula Library.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Maybe because they had them in Latin. And it was a place to go.’

  ‘So are cinemas and restaurants,’ Rizzardi observed.

  ‘He used to be a priest,’ Brunetti explained. ‘So perhaps he felt more at home reading than going to see Bambi.’

  ‘Do people still go to see Bambi?’ Rizzardi asked.