The Golden Egg

by Donna Leon

  From her smile, it was evident how much she appreciated the machine she was using, which caused him, not for the first time, to wonder why she had had it consigned to him and not to herself. He walked to the desk and pulled one of the guest’s chairs around behind it.

  ‘Look,’ she said, pointing to the screen. He recognized the double-faced document he saw before him: front and back cover and then the inside pages of a carta d’identità, issued six years before by the Comune di Venezia. The woman’s age was given as 53, birthplace Venice, and residence the address in San Polo. Her civil status was ‘nubile’, not ‘sposata’, and her profession ‘casalinga’, a housewife or woman who kept house. She received the minimum state pension.

  Signorina Elettra hit a key, and the identity card was replaced by a report from Ulss that gave the woman’s name and the same address, and the name of the doctor who had her under his care. His address was in San Polo, as well.

  Another key, and Brunetti saw the list of and reasons for her medical visits as well as the diagnoses and prescriptions that resulted from them, at least for the last seventeen years, since the records began to be computerized. Running his eye down them, he saw that she was another of those people who would, as was said of his mother for most of her life, put the doctors out of business. She had visited the doctor six times in the last twelve years, twice for influenza, once for a bladder infection, and twice to get a referral for her Pap test. A year ago, she had received a prescription for a common sleeping pill.

  ‘And the son?’ Brunetti asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing. He doesn’t exist. He wasn’t born, didn’t go to school, never saw a doctor or went to the hospital.’ She glanced up at him and said, ‘It’s the same thing Pucetti found. Or didn’t find.’

  She typed in ‘Davide Cavanella’, and the screen showed the name on a document and, across from it, rows of XXXXXXXXXs in place of information. He was never arrested, or issued a hunting or a driver’s licence, had no passport, no carta d’identitá, never worked for the state or paid into a pension. Nor did he receive a disability allowance. Then, as an afterthought or to show that she had checked every possible category, Signorina Elettra went back to the previous screen and tapped at the listing: ‘No carer’s allowance for the mother.’

  In a country filled with fake blind people, with others collecting the pensions of relatives who had died a decade before, of people declared to be 100 per cent incapacitated who played golf and tennis, here was a genuinely disabled person who had never made any claim on the state.

  ‘Nothing?’ he asked, certain that she had looked in other places and not bothered to tell him.

  ‘Nothing. For all the official evidence there is, he does not exist and never has.’

  For some time, they sat quietly, looking at the screen. She pushed another key, and it went blank, as if in illustration of Davide Cavanella’s life: Brunetti considered the gesture melodramatic, but he kept this opinion to himself.

  ‘And Lucrezia Lembo?’ he asked for want of any other possibility.

  Signora Elettra’s hands returned to the keyboard, and she brought up the files and highlighted one of them. She opened it to show another carta d’identità with a black and white photo of a woman of a certain age looking severely at the camera, as if suspicious of its intentions. Her eyes were light, which suggested that her dark colouring was the result of sun rather than nature, and she appeared to be wearing little or no makeup, so it was impossible

  to disguise those wary eyes and a tightly closed mouth. He looked at the inner pages, where he read her date of birth: two years before Ana Cavanella, her parents resident in Dorsoduro. Her height was given as 1.74 metres, her civil state as ‘sposata’, her hair ‘bionda’, her current profession ‘Direttrice’, which, without an indication of what it was she was the director of, could mean just about anything.

  ‘What else?’ he asked.

  Silently, she showed him Lucrezia Lembo’s health records for the last fifteen years, which made heavy reading. She had developed diabetes in her fifties, yet apparently kept it under control with pills; she had been hospitalized twice with pneumonia, and according to her doctor’s notes, continued to smoke heavily, which the same doctor noted as a factor exacerbating not only the pneumonia, but the diabetes. There was little evidence that she had yearly tests of any sort: she had apparently never had a PAP test or a mammogram, though her doctor’s notes were filled with recommendations that she do so.

  She took Avandia for her diabetes, Tavor for anxiety, Zoloft for depression, and in the past had been given Antabuse, a drug he knew was given to alcoholics that made them violently ill if they consumed any alcohol. That prescription had been filled once six years ago, then four years ago, but not since then. Brunetti cast his eye down a long list of the medicines which had been prescribed to her with some regularity and noticed a number of common antibiotics; the others were unfamiliar to him.

  She had a passport and over the years had always kept it renewed. There was no indication of where she went with it.

  Three years before, she had started to receive a state pension, having worked for twenty-seven years as the Director of Products of Lembo Minerals.

  ‘What does Lembo Minerals do?’ he asked.

  ‘They extract ore – chiefly copper – from mines all over the world and ship it to factories in other countries.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘In essence, yes,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘At least, from the public information available.’

  ‘Then what would their products be?’

  ‘Large and small pieces of earth, I’d guess, with quantities of metal stuck in or to them.’

  ‘She was Director of Products,’ he said, pointing to the words on the form displayed on the screen.

  ‘It was her father’s company,’ Signorina Elettra suggested.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning we should be glad he gave her a job and she paid taxes and contributed to her pension. Otherwise, he could just have handed it to her, and that was that, and no taxes paid on it.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way,’ Brunetti admitted.

  Ignoring that, or pretending to, she said, ‘Look at this.’ She hit a few keys, and the screen exploded in colour. When his eyes adjusted to the change, he saw that he was looking at the cover of a Spanish scandal magazine. The photo showed a Junoesque woman in a bikini she really should not have dared to wear, not any more, with one hand raised to shield her perma-tanned face from the sun. The background was the standard turquoise-floored swimming pool, palm trees everywhere. Beside the pool, a gloriously handsome young man in equally skimpy bathing attire he could wear with panache handed a cigarette to the woman while another much younger couple in thick white cotton beach robes perched, knees pressed together, on the edge of dazzling white plastic chairs, doing their best to look as though they had no idea who those other two people were.

  The Spanish caption was easy enough to translate into: ‘Lucrezia, the Princess of Copper, and her new companion, enjoy themselves at the home of friends in Ibiza.’ Signorina Elettra flicked the pages with a touch of a key: Brunetti was impressed by the way they turned as if in response to the motions of a human hand. The magazine opened to two inner pages containing further photos of all four people. The page on the left had more bathing suit photos, a very unfortunate one of Lucrezia Lembo from the back, not only because of the sad sagging that had begun to assail the flesh at the top of her thighs, but for the sight of the young man’s hand slipped under the elastic of her bikini bottom. The captions on the opposite page explained that the two white-clad young people – who remained fully covered in every picture in which they appeared – were her son and daughter, Loredano and Letizia.

  ‘They seem to like the letter,’ Signorina Elettra said.

  Ignoring this and pointing at the screen, Brunetti asked, ‘How many years ago was this?’

  She flicked the screen back to the magazine cover and
let him read: twelve years before. Lucrezia would have been fifty, with a face that appeared to have been kept behind for a decade or so. Her children looked in their late teens, so they’d be approaching or in their early thirties now.

  ‘The young man?’ he asked.

  ‘Her husband, you mean,’ Signorina Elettra said, and Brunetti felt a wave of pathos sweep across him, as if he’d heard of the illness or death of a friend.

  Not wanting Signorina Elettra to accuse him of judging people rashly, nor of that equal crime of throwing his compassion around with too liberal a hand, he said nothing, but he did take another look at the face and posture of the young man. His body bristled with confidence: was there a desire that had not been answered? Was there something he still longed to have?

  Brunetti forced himself to look away from the photo, troubled that his feelings against this unknown man could be so unreasonably strong. He told himself to stop behaving like a teenage Sir Galahad and said, ‘What about the other sister, or sisters?’

  ‘There were three altogether,’ she answered. ‘Lavinia and Lorenza, and Lucrezia.’

  ‘They were stretching a bit with Lorenza,’ Brunetti said, relieved to have so easily rediscovered his ironic tone.

  ‘As it happens, she died.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘According to the reports I read, she drowned in their swimming pool,’ Signorina Elettra answered. Brunetti’s memory fled to the first photo.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘not there.’ Then quickly, ‘I should have explained. They had a ranch in Chile, some kind of finca, it sounds like, and she was found there.’ Before he could ask, she said, ‘Eight years ago.’ Then, soberly, ‘She was the baby of the family, only twenty when it happened.’

  Brunetti had been busy working out the dates and, when he had finished, he asked, ‘Same mother?’

  ‘No. He left the first one after thirty-four years and set up a household with – are you ready? – the physical therapist who took care of him after he broke his shoulder in a skiing accident. Lorenza was their daughter.’

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘When he left?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sixty.’

  It was a common enough story and certainly none of his business. It had usually happened to his friends when they were about forty: all Lembo had done was wait a generation. ‘He died last year, didn’t he?’ Brunetti asked. He had a vague memory of reading about his death, but what he remembered most was his surprise that the newspapers would engage in so much hand-wringing over the death of another dinosaur.

  ‘Yes. They were here, but not living in the palazzo.’

  ‘Where? They?’

  ‘He was living on the Giudecca. Not with the physical therapist: she left him after the daughter died. He had a companion and people who came to clean and cook. He wasn’t married to the companion.’

  Brunetti had the strange sensation that he had just played another round of the backward plot game with his family. Wealthy blonde marries gigolo young enough to be her son. Wealthy man unable to produce a male heir, leaves wife for younger woman, only to have another daughter. Daughter dies. ‘And the other daughter? Lavinia?’

  Signorina Elettra made no move towards the keys. ‘She studied abroad and lives abroad. She’s fifty-one now.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Ireland. Teaching mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin.’ Before he could ask, she said, ‘She’s been to her classes this week.’

  Brunetti felt relief pass over him at this suggestion that one of the daughters had turned out well. He returned his attention to Lucrezia and asked, ‘Could you go back and show me the name of her doctor again?’

  ‘Whose?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘Signora Cavanella’s.’

  She quickly brought up the medical records, and he wrote down the name, address, and phone number of the doctor. The name seemed familiar, Luca Proni. Hadn’t he been at school with Umberto Proni? Surely there could not be more than one family in the city with that name.

  He pulled out his phone and dialled the number of the doctor’s office. A recorded message told him the doctor’s office hours were 9–13 and 16–19, Monday to Friday. For emergencies, patients could reach him on his telefonino. Brunetti was astonished to hear such a message from a family doctor, and even more so when it was followed by the number. He wrote down the number and immediately dialled it.

  After three rings, a deep voice answered with, ‘Proni.’

  ‘Dottor Proni,’ Brunetti said, deciding not to waste time and not to deceive. ‘This is Guido Brunetti. I was at school with Umberto.’

  ‘You’re the one who became a policeman, aren’t you?’ he asked in an entirely neutral voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Umberto’s often spoken of you.’ From the way he said it, there was no way of gauging what Umberto might have said.

  ‘Spoken well, I hope,’ Brunetti said lightly, trying to remember anything Umberto might have told him, all those years ago, about his older brother. Nothing came.

  ‘Always.’ Then, ‘How may I help you, Commissario?’

  ‘You’re listed as Ana Cavanella’s doctor.’

  There was a brief hesitation. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Then you’ve been told, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked. He was her doctor, so the hospital would have called him.

  ‘About what?’ Proni asked in a voice somewhere between curiosity and concern, but nowhere near alarm.

  ‘Signora Cavanella’s in the hospital.’

  ‘What?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dottore. I thought they would have called you.’

  ‘No. What happened?’

  ‘She was found over on the Zattere yesterday. She told the man who found her that she’d fallen down.’ Brunetti spoke neutrally, merely repeating a piece of information. When Proni said nothing, Brunetti continued, ‘She may have a concussion, two fingers are crushed, and her face is badly bruised. But the doctor who examined her says she’s not in any danger.’ Proni still said nothing.

  ‘I’d like to speak to you,’ Brunetti added.

  ‘You realize I’m her doctor,’ he said, this time using that fact to construct a barrier to information.

  ‘I understand that, Dottore.’ Brunetti abandoned any idea of asking about Davide: all he wanted was the chance to talk to Proni directly. ‘I know what it means in terms of your professional responsibility.’

  ‘But still you want to talk to me?’

  Brunetti decided to tell him the truth. ‘Yes, I do. There are things about her I don’t understand. And about her son.’

  ‘You mean his death?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Proni said.

  ‘I believe that, Dottore. But I’d like to understand how it was possible.’

  ‘This sounds like nothing more than personal curiosity, Commissario.’

  Brunetti let out a small puff of air, exasperated at how transparent he had become. ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll speak to you,’ Proni surprised him by saying.

  Brunetti glanced at his watch. ‘I could be at your office in twenty minutes, Dottore.’

  ‘All right.’ Brunetti heard the click of the phone as the doctor replaced it.

  18

  Brunetti went to the window, leaned out and saw Foa on the fondamenta, talking to the guard at the door. Brunetti called the pilot’s name and shouted down that he had to go over to San Polo; Foa raised an arm in assent. As he went down the stairs, Brunetti was conscious of the dim view Chiara would take of his crossing the entire city in a police boat when he could just as easily have used public transportation, even though the Number Two would take more than twenty minutes to get him there. ‘People have to learn to wait,’ was her current mantra.

  He stepped on to the boat, ignoring the pilot’s outstretched hand. Foa turned the key, revved the motor, and pulled them away
from the dock towards the bacino. ‘Last days for standing around outside, I’m afraid, sir,’ the pilot said amiably.

  ‘For the likes of me, it certainly is,’ Brunetti said. ‘Until the first sign of springtime, I’ll leave being out in the weather to you.’

  Foa heard the friendliness and smiled. ‘I called a couple of people I know, sir. About the Lembo family, like you asked me to. To see what else I could learn.’

  ‘Very good,’ Brunetti said. ‘What did they have to

  tell you?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Foa said, turning right in a broad sweep that would take them up the Grand Canal, ‘It’s una famiglia sfigata.’ It was the language of the streets, but from the little Brunetti had heard, it did sound as if the whole family was screwed.

  ‘What did they tell you?’

  ‘Well, there’s the daughter that died. In Brazil, I think. There’s another one in Ireland or some place like that, but it seems she turned out all right. And then there’s the one who had the kids, Lucrezia.’ He gave a little puff of exasperation with the name. ‘Who’d do that to a kid, give her a name like that?’

  ‘She named her own children Loredano and Letizia.’

  Foa made another exasperated noise. ‘I suppose that was to keep in good with her parents. From what my friends said, they ran a tight ship.’ Then, after a moment’s reflection, Foa said, ‘Though a couple of them said it was the mother. A real tiger. And a religious one at that.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti looked up to the top of the bell tower of San Giorgio just at the instant when the angel chose to shift in the wind and wave his wings at Brunetti.

  ‘She was a friend of the Patriarch, always wore a black veil when she went to Mass, the worst sort of basabanchi.’ Then, after a pause, ‘Got it from her family, I’m told.’