Acqua Alta

by Donna Leon

  ‘Wonderful,’ Brett said. ‘I can tell the Chinese and save my neck, but I ruin my career. Or I keep quiet, save my career, and then all I have to worry about is my neck.’

  Flavia leaned across the table and placed her hand on Brett’s knee. ‘That’s the first time you’ve sounded like yourself since this began.’

  Brett smiled in response and said, ‘Nothing like the fear of death to wake a person up, is there?’

  Flavia sat back in her chair again and asked Brunetti, ‘Do you think the Chinese are involved in this?’

  Brunetti was no more inclined than any other Italian to believe in conspiracy theories, which meant he often saw them even in the most innocent of coincidences. ‘I don’t believe your friend’s death was accidental,’ he said to Brett. ‘That means they have someone in China.’

  ‘Whoever “they” are,’ Flavia interrupted with heavy emphasis.

  ‘Because I don’t know who they are doesn’t mean they don’t exist,’ Brunetti said, turning to her.

  ‘Precisely,’ agreed Flavia and smiled.

  To Brett, he said, ‘That’s why I think it might be better if you were to leave the city for a while.’

  She nodded vaguely, surely not in agreement. ‘If I do go, I’ll let you know.’ Hardly a pledge of good faith. She leaned back again and rested her head on the back of the sofa. From above them all, the sound of the rain pounded down.

  He turned his attention to Flavia, who signalled towards the door with her eyes, then made a small gesture with her chin, telling him it was time to leave.

  He realized that there was little more to say, so he got to his feet. Brett, seeing him, pulled her feet out from beneath her and started to rise.

  ‘No, don’t bother,’ Flavia said, standing and moving off towards the entrance hall. ‘I’ll see him out.’

  He leaned down and shook Brett’s hand. Neither said anything.

  At the door, Flavia took his hand and pressed it with real warmth. ‘Thank you,’ was all she said, and then she held the door while he passed in front of her and started down the steps. The closing door cut off the sound of the falling rain.

  * * * *

  Chapter Eighteen

  Even though he had assured Brett that he had not been followed, when he left her apartment, Brunetti paused before turning into Calle della Testa and looked both ways, searching for anyone he might remember having seen when he entered. No one looked familiar. He started to turn right, but then he recalled something he had been told when he came to the area some years ago, searching for Brett’s apartment.

  He turned left and walked down to the first large cross street, Calle Giacinto Gallina, and there he found, just as he remembered from his first visit, the news stand that stood at the corner, in front of die grammar school, facing on to the street that was the main artery of this neighbourhood. And, as though she hadn’t moved from where he had seen her last, he found Signora Maria, seated on a high stool inside the newsstand, her upper body wrapped in a hand-knitted scarf that made at least three passes around her neck. Her face was red, either with cold or an early morning brandy, perhaps both, and her short hair seemed even whiter by the contrast.

  ‘Buon giorno, Signora Maria,’ he said, smiling up at her ensconced behind the papers and magazines.

  ‘Buon giorno, Commissario,’ she answered, as casually as if he were an old customer.

  ‘Signora, since you know who I am, you probably know why I’m here.’

  ‘L’americana?’ she asked, but it really wasn’t a question.

  He sensed motion behind him; suddenly a hand shot forward and took a newspaper from one of the stacks in front of Maria, extending a ten-thousand-lire note. ‘Tell your mother the plumber will come at four this afternoon,’ Maria said, handing back change.

  ‘Grazie, Maria,’ the young woman said and was gone.

  ‘How can I help you?’ Maria asked him.

  ‘You must see whoever passes this way, signora.’ She nodded. ‘If you see anyone lingering in the neighbourhood who shouldn’t be here, would you call the Questura?’

  ‘Of course, Commissario. I’ve been keeping an eye on things since she got home, but there’s been no one.’

  Once again a hand, this one clearly male, shot in front of Brunetti and pulled down a copy of La Nuova. It disappeared for a moment, then returned with a thousand-lire note and some small change, which Maria took with--a muttered ‘Grazie’.

  ‘Maria, have you seen Piero?’ the man asked.

  ‘He’s down at your sister’s house. He said he’d wait for you there.’

  ‘Grazie,’ the man said and was gone.

  He had come to the right person. ‘If you call, just ask for me,’ he said, reaching for his wallet to give her one of his cards.

  ‘That’s all right, Dottor Brunetti,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the number. I’ll call if I see anything.’ She raised a hand in a friendly gesture, and he noticed that the tips of her woollen gloves were cut off, leaving her fingers free to handle change.

  ‘Can I offer you something, signora?’ he asked, nodding with his head to the bar that stood on the opposite corner.

  ‘A coffee would help against the cold,’ she answered. ‘Un caffè corretto,’ she suggested, and he nodded. If he spent the entire morning sitting motionless in this damp cold, he’d want a shot of grappa in his coffee, too. He thanked her again and went into the bar, where he paid for the caffè corretto and asked that it be taken out to Signora Maria. It was clear from the barman’s response that this was standard procedure in the neighbourhood. Brunetti couldn’t remember if there was a Minister of Information in the current government; if so, Signora Maria was a natural for the job.

  At the Questura, he went quickly up to his office and found it, surprisingly, neither tropical nor arctic. For a moment he entertained the fantasy that the heating system had finally been fixed, but then a shriek of escaping steam from the radiator under his window put an end to it. The explanation, he realized lay in the thick sheaf of papers on his desk. Signorina Elettra must have put them there recently, opened the window for a moment, then closed it before she left.

  He hung his overcoat behind the door and walked over to his desk. He sat, picked up the papers and began to read through them. The first was a copy of Semenzato’s bank statements, going back four years. Brunetti had no idea how much the museum director had been paid and made a note to find out, but he did know the bank statement of a rich man when he saw one. Large deposits had been made with no apparent regularity; just so, amounts of fifty million and more had been taken out, again, with no apparent pattern. At his death, Semenzato’s balance had been two hundred million lire, an enormous amount to keep in a savings account. The second page of the statement noted that he also had double that amount invested in government bonds. A wealthy wife? Good luck on the stock market? Or something else?

  The next pages listed foreign calls made from his office number. There were scores of them, but, again, no pattern that Brunetti could discern.

  The last three pages were copies of Semenzato’s credit card receipts for the last two years, and from them Brunetti got an idea of the airline tickets he had paid for. He ran his eye quickly down the list, amazed at the frequency and distance of the trips. The museum director, it seemed, would spend a weekend in Bangkok as casually as another man might go to his beach house, would go to Taipei for three days and stop in London for the night on his way back to Venice. A copy of the statements from his two charge cards accompanied the itinerary and gave proof that Semenzato did not stint himself in any way when he travelled.

  Beneath these, he found a sheaf of fax papers, clipped together at the top. All of these related to Carmello La Capra. On the first sheet, Signorina Elettra had pencilled the observation, ‘Interesting man, this one.’ Salvatore’s father, it appeared, had no visible means of support; that is, he appeared to have no job or fixed employment. Instead, on his tax return for the last three years, he listed his profession as ‘co
nsultant’, a term which, when added to the fact that he was from Palermo, sounded alarm bells in Brunetti’s mind. His bank statement showed that large transfers had been made to his various accounts in interesting, one might even say suspicious, currencies: Colombian pesos, Ecuadorean escudos, and Pakistani rupees. Brunetti found copies of the bill of sale of the palazzo La Capra had bought two years ago; he must have paid in cash, for there was no corresponding withdrawal from any of his accounts.

  Not only had Signorina Elettra succeeded in getting copies of La Capra’s bank statements, but she had also managed to provide copies of his credit card receipts as complete as those she had obtained for Semenzato. Well aware of how long it took to obtain this information through legal channels, Brunetti had no choice but to accept the fact that she must be doing it unofficially, which probably meant illegally. He admitted this, and he read on. Sotheby’s and the Metropolitan Opera box office while in New York, Christie’s and Covent Garden in London, and the Sydney Opera House, apparently while on the way back from a weekend in Taipei. La Capra had stayed, of course, at the Oriental in Bangkok, where he had gone, it seemed, for a weekend. Seeing that, Brunetti shuffled back through the papers until he found the list of Semenzato’s travels and his credit card receipts. He put the papers side by side: La Capra and Semenzato had spent the same two nights at the Oriental. Brunetti separated the papers and laid the separate sheets in two vertical columns on his desk. On at least five occasions, Semenzato and La Capra had been in a foreign city on the same dates, often staying in the same hotel.

  Did hunters feel this rush of excitement when they saw the first prints in the snow or when they heard a rustling in the trees behind them and turned to see the bright rush of wings? La Capra and his new palazzo, La Capra and his purchases at Sotheby’s, La Capra and his trips to the Orient and the Middle East. The trajectory of his life crossed repeatedly with that of Semenzato, and Brunetti suspected the reason lay in their shared interest in things of great beauty and even greater price. And Murino? How many objects had his shop provided for Signor La Capra’s new home?

  He decided to go down and thank her in person, telling himself that he would make no inquiries about the source of her information. The door to her office was open, and she sat behind her desk, typing into her computer, head turned aside to watch the screen. He noticed that today’s flowers were red roses, at least two dozen of them, flowers which proclaimed love and longing.

  She sensed his presence and glanced up at him, smiled, and stopped typing. ‘Buon giorno, Commissario,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I’ve come to thank you, bravissima Elettra,’ he said. ‘For the papers you left on my desk.’

  She smiled at the use of her first name, as if she saw it as a tribute, not a liberty. ‘Ah, you’re welcome. Interesting coincidences, aren’t they?’ she asked, making no attempt to disguise her satisfaction at having noticed them.

  ‘Yes. How about the phone records? Did you get them?’

  ‘They’re cross-checking them now to see if they called one another. They’ve got the records on Signor La Capra’s phone in Palermo as well as the phone and fax lines he had installed here. I told them to check for any that might have come from Semenzato’s home or office, but that will take a bit longer and probably won’t be ready until tomorrow.’

  ‘Do we owe all of this to your friend Giorgio?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No, he’s in Rome on some sort of training programme. So I called and said Vice-Questore Patta needed the information immediately.’

  ‘Did they ask you what it was for?’

  ‘Of course they did, sir. You wouldn’t want them to give this sort of information out without the proper authorization, would you?’

  ‘No, of course not. And what did you tell them?’

  ‘That it was classified. A government matter. That will make them work faster.’

  ‘And what if the Vice-Questore finds out about this? What if they mention this to him, say you used his name?’

  Her smile grew even warmer. ‘Oh, I told them that he would have to deny all knowledge of it, so he wouldn’t like their mentioning it to him. Besides, I’m afraid they’re rather used to doing things like this, checking on private phones and keeping records of the calls that people make.’

  ‘Yes, so am I,’ Brunetti agreed. He was afraid that a record was also kept of what some people said during those phone calls, a flight of paranoia in which he was probably joined by a large part of the population, but he didn’t bother to mention this to Signorina Elettra. Instead, he asked, ‘Any chance we could get them today?’

  ‘I’ll give them a call. Perhaps this afternoon.’

  ‘Would you bring them up to me if they come in, signorina?’

  ‘Of course,’ she answered and turned back to her keyboard.

  He went to the door but before reaching it, he turned, hoping to capitalize on the intimacy of the last minutes. ‘Signorina, excuse me if I ask, but I’ve always been curious about why you decided to come to work for us. Not everyone gives up a job at Banca d’ltalia.’

  She stopped typing but kept her fingers poised over the keys. ‘Oh, I wanted a change,’ she answered casually and turned her attention back to her typing.

  And fish flew, Brunetti thought to himself as he left her office and went back up to his own. The heat had become tropical in his absence, so he opened the windows for a few minutes, holding them only partially open to prevent the rain from driving in, then closed them and went back to his desk.

  La Capra and Semenzato, the mysterious man from the South and the museum director. The man with expensive taste and the money to indulge it, and the museum director with the contacts that might be necessary to indulge that taste to its fullest. They were an interesting pair. What other objects would Signor La Capra have in his possession, and were they to be found in his palazzo? Was the restoration completed, and, if so, what sort of changes had been made? That was easily discovered; all he had to do was go down to city hall and ask to see the plans. Of course, what was to be read in the plans and the work that had actually been done might not bear too close a resemblance to each other, but to discover the truth of that, all he had to do was learn which of the city inspectors had signed off on the final papers, and he would have a fairly good idea of how close the relationship was likely to be.

  There remained the question of what objects might be contained in the newly restored palazzo, but that demanded a different sort of answer. The magistrate who would issue a search warrant on the basis of hotel receipts for the same dates didn’t exist in Venice, a city where palazzi such as La Capra’s sold for seven million lire per square metre.

  He decided to try official means first, which meant a call to the other side of the city and the offices of the catasto, where all plans, projects and transfers of ownership had to be registered. It took him a long time to get through to the proper office, as his call was shunted back and forth between uninterested civil servants who were sure, even before Brunetti had a chance to explain what he wanted, that it was another office which could give him the information. A few times, he tried speaking in Veneziano, sure that the use of dialect would ease things by assuring the person on the other end of the line that he was not only a police official but, more importantly, a native Venetian. The first three people he spoke to answered his every question in Italian, apparently not themselves Venetian, and the fourth slipped into thoroughly incomprehensible Sardinian until Brunetti relented and spoke in Italian. That, however, didn’t get him what he wanted, but it did get him, finally, transferred to the correct office.

  He felt a surge of joy when the woman who answered the phone spoke in purest veneziano — what’s more, with the strongest of Castello accents. Forget what Dante said about Tuscan being sweet in the mouth. No, this was the language to bring delight.

  During the long wait for officialdom to make up its mind to speak to him, he had abandoned all hope of getting a copy of the plans and so asked, in
stead, for the name of the firm that had done the restorations. Brunetti recognized the name, Scattalon, and knew that they were among the best and most expensive companies in the city. In fact, it was they who had the more-or-less eternal contract to maintain his father-in-law’s palazzo against the equally eternal ravages of time and tide.

  * * * *

  Arturo, the oldest Scattalon son, was in the office but was unwilling to discuss a client’s affairs with the police. ‘I’m sorry, Commissario, but that is privileged information.’

  ‘All I’d like is a general idea of how much the work cost, perhaps rounded out to the nearest ten million,’ Brunetti explained, failing to see how such information could be privileged or in any way private.

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s absolutely impossible.’ The sound from the other end of the line disappeared, and Brunetti imagined Scattalon was covering the mouthpiece with his hand in order to speak to someone there with him. In a moment he was back. ‘You’d have to give us an official request from a judge before we would reveal information like that.’