by Donna Leon
‘But he asked me,’ she said and closed her eyes for so long that Brunetti feared she was gone. But then she opened them again and said, ‘And I was afraid he’d . . . he’d leave me if I didn’t do it.’
‘Don’t worry about that now, Signora. Lie quietly. Someone will be here soon.’ They were in the middle of a hospital: why was it taking so long?
He heard footsteps, looked up, and saw Rizzardi. The doctor came over and knelt on the other side of the woman. He sighed, almost moaned, when he saw her there. ‘Elvira,’ he said, ‘what have you done?’ Brunetti noted that he used the familiar ‘tu’ when speaking to her. He sounded like a parent, disappointed in a child who has failed at something.
‘Dottore,’ she said and opened her eyes. She smiled. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble.’
Rizzardi leaned down and placed one of his hands over hers. ‘You’ve never caused a moment’s trouble, Elvira. Quite the opposite. The only reason I have any faith in this lab is because you’re here.’
She closed her eyes again and tears trickled from the outer edges. They spurred Rizzardi to say, ‘Don’t cry, Elvira. Nothing’s going to happen. You’ll be all right.’
‘He’ll leave me,’ she said, eyes still closed and tears running into her ears.
‘No, once he knows what you’ve done, he’ll want to help you,’ Rizzardi said, then glanced at Brunetti, as if to ask if he were saying the right lines.
‘He won’t be able to use the lab results now,’ she said. ‘People won’t believe he helps them.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked up at Rizzardi. ‘But he does, Dottore. He really does.’ She smiled, and for an instant her face was transformed into something approaching beauty. ‘He helped me.’
There was a great deal of noise behind them. Brunetti looked up and saw three green-jacketed aides blocking the door with a wheeled stretcher. They banged it repeatedly against the sides of the door until one slipped around to the front and guided it through. Two of them came quickly over to the woman on the floor and the men kneeling beside her, forcing them aside with the press of their bodies.
Brunetti and Rizzardi got to their feet. Almost maddened by its sound, Brunetti took two steps to the sink and turned off the water. Vianello, who had come in with the attendants, went to stand beside Rizzardi. The third aide came over, pushing the stretcher. He did something with a lever and the stretcher sank almost to the ground, then he joined his colleagues and together they lifted the woman on to it. Another motion of the switch raised her slowly to waist height. The first one took a tube running from a bottle of clear liquid hanging above the stretcher and inserted the needle into a vein in her arm.
Rizzardi stepped forward then and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding it for some time, either to take her pulse or to convey whatever reassurance he could. ‘Get her to emergency,’ he said.
One of the attendants started to say something, but the first one, who seemed to be in charge, said, ‘He’s a doctor.’
As Rizzardi started to unwrap his fingers from her wrist she opened her eyes again and said, ‘Will you come with me, Dottore?’
Rizzardi smiled at her, and Brunetti realized how seldom he had seen the doctor smile in all the years he had known him. ‘Of course,’ he said, and the attendants started towards the door.
27
Brunetti’s first thought was the Contessa. He didn’t know exactly how Gorini had profited from the lab tests Signorina Montini must have altered, but he knew she had done it to his profit, and for love, so that he would not leave her. If Gorini was capable of this, then Brunetti wanted to keep his mother-in-law away from him.
‘I can’t let Paola’s mother see him.’ Vianello, who knew of Brunetti’s conversation, understood. Brunetti took out his telefonino, found the number for Palazzo Falier and was quickly put through to her.
‘Ah, Guido, how lovely to hear your voice. How are Paola and the kids?’ she asked, as if she did not speak to her daughter at least twice a day.
‘Fine, fine. But I’m calling about that other thing.’
After the briefest of pauses, she said, ‘Oh, you mean that Gorini man?’
‘Yes. Have you done anything about contacting him?’
‘Only indirectly. As it turns out, a friend of mine, Nuria Santo, has been going to him for months, and she says she’d be happy to introduce me to him. She’s convinced he saved her husband.’
‘Oh, how?’ Brunetti inquired, speaking in his mildest voice and allowing signs of only the most modest curiosity.
‘Something about his cholesterol. She said it doesn’t make any sense: Piero eats like a bird, never eats cheese, doesn’t like meat, but his bad cholesterol – I think there’s a bad one and a good one . . .’ The Contessa paused and then added, ‘Isn’t it strange that nature should be so Manichaean?’ Brunetti ignored the remark, told himself to be patient and listen, and she continued, ‘Whatever it is they count, it was up near the stars, and the good one was no help at all. Nuria told me that during one of his consultations Gorini recommended some herbal tea – it costs the earth – that he guaranteed would bring it down, and it did, so now she’s convinced he’s a saint and she’s spreading the word among all of our friends.’
‘Do you have an appointment with him?’ Brunetti asked in what he hoped was a conversational tone.
‘Next Tuesday,’ she said and laughed. ‘He’s a clever devil, isn’t he? Makes people wait a week before he’ll talk to them.’
‘Donatella, I’d like you not to go.’
Warned, perhaps, by the change in his voice as much as by his words, the Contessa asked, ‘Is this something I should tell Nuria?’
How to warn off this other woman without frightening his prey? ‘Maybe you could suggest she cancel her appointment.’
The Contessa was silent for some time, and then she asked, ‘Can you tell me about it?’
‘Not now. But I will.’ He realized how quickly he was speaking, hastening her to go.
‘Good. I’ll tell her. Thank you, Guido,’ she said and replaced the phone.
Looking at Vianello, Brunetti asked, ‘You didn’t hear any of it, did you?’
It took the Inspector a moment to sort out which conversation Brunetti was referring to, and when he did, he said, ‘No, nothing. I came in too late.’
‘She did it because she loves him,’ Brunetti told him, oppressed by the sadness of the words.
‘Did what?’ Vianello asked impatiently.
‘She said he – Gorini, I’m sure – was using the lab results – I think this is what it’s got to mean – to convince people he could cure them. She said if he couldn’t use the results then people wouldn’t believe he could help them any more. And then he’d leave her.’ Brunetti raised a hand in a vague gesture of incomprehension or acceptance. ‘So she changed them.’ Vianello had not heard her tell Rizzardi that she had not wanted to cause any trouble, but Brunetti didn’t know if he could bear to repeat that.
Vianello looked around the lab, at the vials of different-coloured fluids still standing upright in the wooden stands, the various machines that had perhaps been too heavy for Signora Montini to try to destroy, and the jars and bottles only a professional could understand the use of. Brunetti could almost hear the Inspector thinking it all out. To aid him, Brunetti said, ‘All he needed was to convince one person that he had worked a cure, and the word would spread.’ He waited, then added, tapping the pocket where he had put his telefonino, ‘My mother-in-law told me a friend of hers is convinced he saved her husband by giving him some herbal tea that gets rid of cholesterol.’
‘It becomes a contest, doesn’t it, once people find someone they think can help them?’ Vianello asked.
‘My doctor’s better than your doctor,’ Brunetti said. ‘Just convince one person you’ve cured them, and soon all their friends will be at your door, and soon you’ll have to beat them off with a boathook.’
‘But the tests?’ Vianello objected. ‘How could he be sure
Montini would get to do them?’ Before Brunetti could begin to speculate on that, they were disturbed by a noise at the door. Dottoressa Zeno took a half-step into the lab. ‘Can we come back in?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Brunetti said and started walking towards her. ‘I’d like to talk to you, Dottoressa.’
They soon had a clear idea of how Signora Montini could have done it. Everyone at the lab had worked together for so long that the choice of who would do which tests was often left to choice: usually the first people who came to work in the morning selected the first sample that had been delivered to the lab or the ones they wanted to do, and the others took what was left. Since Signorina Montini was usually the first to get there, she took first choice.
It soon became obvious to Dottoressa Zeno what sort of possibility they were considering, and she told them she could easily check for any tests done by Signora Montini where very bad results had improved over a short time.
The results took her only minutes to find in the computer, and when she printed them out for Brunetti, they were remarkable: among the people whose exams Signora Montini had performed during the last two years, there were more than thirty – all of them well over the age of sixty – whose cholesterol level had spiked suddenly, then after a period of about two months had gradually begun to sink back towards normal levels. The same pattern showed for numerous cases of what might have been adult-onset diabetes, with suddenly spiking glucose levels that descended to normal in a period of a few months.
‘Oh, the clever bastard,’ Vianello exclaimed when the pattern became obvious. Then, more practically, ‘Why didn’t anyone see it?’
Signora Zeno pushed a few keys, and the number 73,461 came up on the screen.
‘What’s that?’ Vianello asked.
‘The number of separate tests we did last month,’ she answered coolly. Then, driving in the nails, she added, ‘That’s only the ones from patients in the hospitals in the city, not those we’re sent by doctors who take their own samples.’ She smiled and asked the Inspector, ‘Would you like to see that number?’
Vianello put up his hands like a man about to be shot. ‘You win, Dottoressa. I had no idea.’
Gracious in victory, she said, ‘Most people don’t, even people who work in the hospital.’
Brunetti heard a noise and noticed that two of the technicians were looking towards the door. He turned and saw Rizzardi. Brunetti had no idea how it had happened, but the normally dapper pathologist looked haggard and rumpled, as if he had slept in his clothing. He took a few steps into the room and raised his right hand in a half circle, ending with his hand upside down and his fingers outstretched, pointing out nothing and nothingness.
‘They bandaged her wrists and set up a transfusion, but then the nurse was called to another room,’ he began, looking across at Brunetti. He took out his handkerchief, wiped his face and forehead, and then his hands. ‘She tore off the bandages while the nurse was gone, and took out the drip.’ He shook his head.
Brunetti’s thoughts fled to Cato, that noblest of noble Republicans. When life proved intolerable, he cut open his stomach, and when his friends tried to save him, he ripped out his viscera because death was preferable to a life without honour.
‘I’m going home,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I won’t do it.’ And then he was gone.
Dottoressa Zeno left them and went over to talk to the technicians. ‘Won’t do what?’ Vianello asked.
‘The autopsy, I assume,’ Brunetti said, wishing Vianello had not asked.
That stopped Vianello in his tracks.
‘This means the case is . . .’ Brunetti began but could not bring himself to use the word ‘dead’. ‘It’s over,’ he said. Without the testimony of Signorina Montini – and there was never any reason to believe she would have testified – there was no evidence against Gorini. Mistakes happen, all sorts of errors abound in the hospitals: people suffer and die as a result.
‘We don’t know if it was only the cholesterol tests she was changing.’
‘You think she’d put people in danger?’
No, Brunetti did not, but that was hardly a secure enough protection for the people whose lab work she had handled. ‘They’ll have to redo all the tests she did,’ Brunetti said, thinking that this was an order only Patta, or perhaps the director of the hospital, could give. As to making any move against Gorini, that was impossible. Signorina Montini’s death had removed any risk he ran, and it was unlikely she would have kept a written record of what she was doing. Certainly she would not keep such a document in the home she shared with Gorini, nor at work, the place where she was betraying her honour.
‘The only thing we can do is call the police in Aversa and Naples,’ Brunetti said resignedly, ‘and tell them he’s here.’
28
As Brunetti had both known and feared, it proved impossible to persuade Vice-Questore Patta that the laboratory tests performed by Signorina Montini should be repeated. His superior had already dismissed the idea of investigating Signor Gorini or his dealings with his clients. The man – Patta had this on good authority – had been very helpful in treating the wife of a member of the city council, and thus the idea of causing him trouble – in the face of a complete absence of evidence – was unthinkable.
When Brunetti refused to abandon the idea of redoing the tests, Patta demanded, ‘Do you have any idea how much money ULSS loses every year?’ When Brunetti did not answer, Patta said, ‘And you want to add to it because of some wild theory you have that a faith healer corrupted this woman into falsifying medical reports?’
‘A faith healer with a long criminal record, Dottore,’ Brunetti added.
‘A long history of accusation of crime,’ Patta corrected. ‘I don’t think you, of all people, Commissario, should have to be reminded that they are not the same thing.’ Patta gave a friendly smile here, as if this were a joke with an old friend who had never understood the difference.
Brunetti was having none of it. ‘If this woman was tampering with test results, Vice-Questore, then the tests have to be redone.’
Patta gave another smile, but there was no humour in his voice when he said, ‘In the absence of any evidence that this woman was involved in criminal behaviour – regardless of what you suspect, Commissario – I think it would be irresponsible on our part to spread needless alarm among the people whose tests she might have performed.’ He paused in reflection and then added, ‘Or to weaken in any way the public’s faith in government institutions.’
As so often happened when Brunetti dealt with Patta, he was forced to admire the skill with which his superior could transmute his own worst failings – in this case blind ambition and an absolute refusal to perform any action that did not benefit him directly – into the appearance of probity.
Not bothering to explain or prepare for the change in subject, Brunetti said, ‘I’m going to Fontana’s funeral tomorrow morning, sir.’
The temptation proved too strong for Patta, who asked, ‘In hopes of seeing the murderer there?’ He smiled, inviting Brunetti to share the joke.
‘No, sir,’ Brunetti said soberly. ‘So that his death isn’t treated as something insignificant.’ Good sense and the instinct of survival stopped Brunetti from adding, ‘too’ to his sentence. He got to his feet, said something polite to the Vice-Questore, went upstairs and made two disappointing calls to his colleagues in Aversa and Naples, and then went home and spent the rest of the day and evening reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a pleasure he had not permitted himself for some years.
The funeral took place in the church of Madonna dell’Orto, the parish into which Fontana’s mother had been born and which had always been the spiritual centre of her life. Brunetti and Vianello arrived ten minutes before the Mass began and took seats in the twelfth row. Vianello wore a dark blue suit and Brunetti dark grey linen. He was glad of the jacket, for this was the first place he had felt cool since stepping into the house where he had found Lucia and Zin
ka.
The heat of the day had kept at bay the morbidly curious and the habitual attenders of funerals, so there were only about fifty people present, seated sparsely and in sad separation in the rows in front of them. After doing his rough count of those present, Brunetti realized they averaged only one person for each year of Fontana’s life.
Brunetti and Vianello were too far back to see who sat in the first rows, reserved for family and close friends, but they would soon file from the church after the coffin and reveal themselves.
The music began: some sort of dreary organ theme that would have suited an elevator in a very respectable, if not necessarily wealthy, neighbourhood. Noise from behind slipped under the sound of the organ; Brunetti and Vianello stood and turned to face it.
A flower-draped coffin on a wheeled bier came down the aisle, pulled along by four black-suited men who looked extraneous to any emotional weight this scene might have. Would the mother have hired mutes if they had been available, Brunetti wondered? When the coffin stopped in front of the altar, everyone in the church sat and the Mass began. Brunetti was attentive for the first minutes, but the ceremony was duller now than it had been when he, as a boy, had attended the funerals of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles. The words were spoken in Italian: he missed the magical incantation of the Latin. Suddenly aware of the silence, he wondered if the absence of the tolling of the death bell during the Mass, the sound that had accompanied so many members of his family to their last resting place, most recently his mother, was also planned in this modern – and banal – ceremony.
As he stood and sat, knelt briefly only to rise to his feet again, moved on the tides of memory, Brunetti reflected on this strange death. Signorina Elettra had ‘accessed’ the files of the Tribunale and had managed to trace Signor Puntera’s legal history. Both the case of the contested warehouses and the injured worker had been assigned to Judge Coltellini, and in both cases long delays had resulted from the absence or temporary misplacing of files and pertinent documents. Further, other cases that had been assigned to the judge’s docket had experienced similar delays. In all of them, Signorina Elettra’s researches had ascertained, one party in the cause stood to profit from these delays. The judge, however, owned her own home, which she had bought three years ago, though not from Signor Puntera.
