The Golden Egg

by Donna Leon

  a luxury hotel. Though the official investigation had declared it an accident, doubts remained, especially after one of Griffoni’s informants told her that the son of the expert who had written the report had been hired as manager of a hotel in the chain that was interested in transforming the factory.

  How, he asked himself, could her investigation be of help to him? ‘Tell me more,’ he said, turning from the computer screen to face her directly.

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ she said, suddenly sounding hesitant.

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Your friendship with Vianello.’

  Where did that come from? he wondered, and what business of hers was his friendship with Vianello? To give himself time to think about how to respond, he turned back to the computer and closed all of the open windows, then pushed another key and watched the screen grow dark.

  He turned back to her. ‘But you’re choosing to make it your business?’ he asked in a voice wiped clean of everything save mild curiosity.

  She started to speak, but all she managed to produce was a hesitant vowel sound, perhaps ‘a’, which

  could have served for allora or adesso, or, for all he knew, amico.

  ‘He’s helped me, you know,’ she said. ‘With Scarpa. And with the others.’

  ‘Helped you how?’ Brunetti asked. Then, because there could be no doubt of the universal desire to help against Lieutenant Scarpa, he added, ‘With the others, I mean.’

  She studied his face for a long time, as if trying to make up her mind about something, or about him. ‘You mean you don’t know? You’ve never noticed the way some people here talk to me?’ she asked.

  He thought of Signorina Elettra, and his impulse was to lie, and then he started to recall other things he might have noticed or sensed, references and undertones he had chosen not to interpret in a particular way.

  Then, to goad him, ‘Or about me?’

  Books often described how beautiful women became when they were angry: how wrong her face proved that to be. Her mouth was a tight line, her strong nose suddenly sharp and too big. And her eyes lacked all warmth, all willingness to understand.

  ‘Because you’re Neapolitan, you mean?’

  She made a puffing noise replete with disgust. ‘If it were only that,’ she said. ‘I’m used to being thought of as a terrone: every cousin has to be a Camorrista, my brother has to be under house arrest; and every investigation I make has to be half-hearted, at best, since my only purpose is to be a spy and see that nothing is ever done to harm the Camorra.’ Brunetti had been with her when shots were fired and a man killed, but he had never seen her like this. Her cool dispassion and sense of irony were gone, replaced by an anger he could feel as a force coming across his desk.

  He frowned and then asked, ‘Do you think you’re exaggerating?’

  ‘Of course I’m exaggerating,’ she said sharply. But she paused long enough for some of the anger to melt from her face. ‘There’s no way I can escape it up here. It’s in the northern air.’

  Confronted with his own hypocrisy and how it would colour anything he chose to say, Brunetti opted for silence. How could he tell this woman she was imagining things when his own distrust of southerners was as strongly rooted as his teeth? Like them, it had been formed in childhood, and he had been equally unconscious of the growth of both.

  Had she sensed it in him, too? Brunetti no sooner concluded that, if she had, she would hardly have mentioned the subject to him, than he recalled just how subtle a person she was, and was again uncertain. How strange, prejudice: so comforting until someone noticed it.

  He ran his hands over his face and back through his hair as a visual signal of wiping the slate free of a digression. ‘Where did Vianello go?’ he asked.

  ‘Downstairs. I just spoke with him.’

  Brunetti smiled and waved a hand to dismiss her answer. ‘No. I mean where did the idea of my friendship with him go?’ Seeing the faint relief signalled by her more relaxed posture, he added, ‘We were distracted, I think.’

  She blushed, she actually blushed, and with it her full beauty flowed back into possession of her, or she of it. ‘Sorry, Guido, but you really have no idea.’ For a moment, he was afraid she was going to pick it up again, but she said no more.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘You asked him to ask Nadia to do some work for you.’ Before Brunetti could explain or avoid explanation, she said, ‘No, he didn’t want to tell me. I could see something was bothering him, so I asked him, and I wouldn’t let it go until he told me.’ When she saw that Brunetti believed her, she went on. ‘All he told me was that you wanted her to ask some people about this man who died.’

  ‘Davide Cavanella,’ Brunetti supplied, still not liking the way her original description of his request had sounded.

  ‘And he’s afraid he offended you by refusing.’

  ‘He told you, but he didn’t tell me,’ Brunetti said, hearing the petulance in his voice.

  She smiled again. ‘He said he doesn’t want to let you down. Or hurt your feelings. He’d do anything for

  you: you know that. But that applies to him, and not to his wife.’

  ‘You make it sound like a conflict of loyalties,’ he said, hoping to surprise her.

  Ignoring his affronted tone, she said, ‘Of course it is. Vianello has his wife and his children, and then he

  has you.’

  After she said this, Griffoni bent down to do something with her shoe, something Brunetti knew to be entirely unnecessary. He marvelled at the grace of women and at their charity.

  When she sat up, she asked, ‘Why don’t we do it?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why don’t we do it, the two of us? Go over there and ask people – in shops, in bars – about Signora Cavanella and her son. You can be the good cop and I can be the bad cop, if you like.’

  ‘You know about the case?’

  ‘I’ve read everything you’ve read: Rizzardi’s report and the report from the ambulance squad that answered the original call, and yours about missing documents.’

  She paused, then added, ‘I’ve asked Signorina Elettra if there are any other documents.’

  Brunetti didn’t touch this. Instead, he said, ‘I spoke to Davide’s doctor. Well, to his mother’s doctor, who treated him twice.’ He folded his hands by interlacing the fingers and tapped on his desk a few times. ‘But there was no sign of a medical record.’

  ‘I don’t want to say that’s impossible,’ she began, ‘but it’s hard to believe. There’s got to be some sign of him. Somewhere.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Brunetti said, thinking of the drawings in the doctor’s office but not considering them part of the official record.

  ‘Then what do we do?’ she asked.

  ‘We play good cop and bad cop and go and talk to people and see if we can find some gossip.’

  21

  As Foa took them over to San Polo, Brunetti told her about his conversation with the women in the dry cleaner’s, his meeting with Ana Cavanella, and the apparent ease with which Pucetti had befriended her.

  The wind had driven them into the cabin and they sat side by side on the back cushion, hands braced against the occasional thrust of the waves. ‘He’s a clever boy,’ Griffoni said with a smile of approval. The noun sounded strange coming as it did from lips that could not be a decade older than the ‘boy’s’. As they passed San Giorgio, she turned to Brunetti and asked, in an entirely normal voice, ‘Do you ever get tired of all this beauty?’

  His gaze passed beyond her to the clouds scuttling behind the dome. ‘Never.’ The answer was automatic, unconsidered, true.

  ‘I feel that way about Naples,’ she said. Before he could react and perhaps reluctant to return to the subject, she asked, ‘Have you met Pucetti’s fiancée?’

  ‘The Russian girl,’ Brunetti answered. Then, to show that, although she might see him as just another man without interest in people’s feelings, he still
took the trouble to learn some things about them, added, ‘She’s a mathematician.’

  ‘She was on the fast track to becoming a full professor in Moscow, and now she’s teaching algebra to teenagers in Quarto d’Altino,’ Griffoni said and gave the sort of shrug with which Neapolitans acknowledge the truth that life tosses us around like bags of potatoes at the market. Then, too casually, she said, ‘I’ve had a look at her pension.’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Ana Cavanella’s,’ Griffoni answered. ‘She worked for the Lembo family from the time she was fifteen until she was seventeen.’

  Brunetti wondered where she had found that information but did not ask. Instead, he inquired, ‘And then?’

  ‘Then there’s a gap when she did not work – at least she did not declare an income – for twelve years. And then she worked for a cleaning company until she retired two years ago.’

  ‘Cleaning what?’

  ‘Offices and shops. The company’s in Mestre, but they do a lot of work here. She was legally employed: taxes, health contributions, pension.’

  Brunetti saw that she had something else. ‘Tell me,’ he said. The boat rose up without warning and slapped down with a heavy thump, shaking them both. Brunetti pulled back the curtain and saw that wind was playing on the water, slashing at the white tops of the waves. There was another, lesser, thump and then things quietened down.

  ‘I read about the Lembo family,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What was available online,’ she began, then paused.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I called some friends and asked about them.’

  ‘Friends where?’

  ‘Here. And in Rome.’

  ‘What did you learn?’

  ‘Probably no more than you did. A few people said the mother got what she deserved, but no one explained what they meant. Drugs, sex, and rock and roll for the oldest daughter.’

  ‘Lucrezia,’ Brunetti supplied.

  She nodded and said, ‘There’s much less about the next one, Lavinia. It seems she’s in Ireland.’

  Brunetti nodded, then asked, ‘You know that one of them died?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. The baby.’ She spoke the word in quotes. ‘In Chile. In a swimming pool.’

  ‘Strange place to die,’ he said neutrally.

  ‘If you’re the one dying, any place must be strange.’

  He made an assenting noise.

  ‘What did you find out about Lavinia?’ he asked, surprised by his own easy reference to this unknown woman.

  ‘Only official things. School, university, jobs.’

  ‘You can get into those files?’ he blurted out, wondering where she could have learned to do that. Surely not from Signorina Elettra.

  ‘Vianello checked for me,’ she said. Then, tossing away the line, she added, ‘He asked Signorina Elettra for some help with Ireland.’

  The motion of the boat softened. He looked out again and saw that they had turned into Rio San Polo, where the wind effectively ceased. Foa pulled up to Campiello Sant’Agostin, slipped the engine into neutral, and jumped up on to the riva to moor the boat. Brunetti stepped up beside him, reached back and took Griffoni’s hand to help her up. ‘I don’t know how long we’ll be,’ he told Foa. ‘You might as well go back.’

  ‘Do you mind if I stay, Commissario?’ the pilot asked, looking, Brunetti thought, uncomfortable. ‘My aunt lives over here, and I never come to see her much any more. So I thought that, being as I’m here . . .’ The pilot’s voice trailed off. Brunetti glanced at Griffoni, who shrugged and looked at the pavement: this was not her decision.

  ‘How long has your aunt lived here?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘For ever.’

  ‘Ask her about Ana Cavanella, then, would you?’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Sure thing, Commissario,’ Foa said, jumped back into the boat to retrieve the keys, then vaulted back on to the riva.

  The two commissari took the bridge and started down towards Campo San Stin, where they went into the only bar. A man stood behind the zinc counter, propped over a newspaper: both looked as tired as the tramezzini in a glass case to his left. He glanced at them, then went back to his reading.

  Brunetti asked for two coffees; the man turned away to make them. Reading upside down, Brunetti saw that the paper was three days old: he turned it towards them and paged through until he found the article about Davide Cavanella’s death. When the man returned with the coffees, Brunetti pointed to the article and asked, ‘You know him?’

  The man’s glance was level, a combination of suspicion and insolence. ‘Do I have to answer your question?’

  he asked.

  ‘No,’ Brunetti said. ‘You don’t have to serve me a coffee, and you don’t have to answer my question.’

  The barman put the saucers on the counter and turned away. He disappeared into a narrow space to the right of the bar, leaving the red curtain open behind him.

  ‘I don’t think there’s any sense staying here,’ Griffoni said beside him. She put two Euros on the counter and they left. Neither of them had touched the coffee.

  They spent another hour in the neighbourhood, going into a hardware store, a grocery, a shop that sold buttons and underwear, a gloomy place that sold food and products for pets, even into a shop that sold handbags, but there the saleswoman was Chinese and spoke no Italian except, it seemed, numbers.

  Though they realized early on that no one was going to talk to them, they still persisted. Most people said they did not know Ana Cavanella or her son, but some of them repeated a variation of the response of the man at the bar, a fact that led Brunetti to suspect that phones had been ringing ever since they left the bar.

  As they walked out of the last shop, Griffoni said, ‘It’s just like being at home.’

  ‘Where nobody talks to the police?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why should it be any different?’

  She could not disguise her surprise, as if she had never considered the possibility that Venetians, too, might be suspicious of the police and have strict ideas about omertà.

  Deciding that it was futile to continue, Brunetti dialled Foa’s number and asked him if he was still in the area. Sounding relieved to hear his superior’s voice, Foa said he was and, without being asked, said he’d be at the boat in ten minutes.

  Just as they started walking down the bridge to the side of the canal where the boat was moored, Foa appeared in the calle ahead of them, his smile visible even at this distance. The three of them arrived at the boat at the same time. ‘I talked to my aunt, Commissario,’ he said, his smile now even broader.

  ‘And she knows Ana Cavanella, I assume?’ Brunetti said, unable to hide his own smile.

  ‘Yes, sir. Or at least she knows her to see and knows what’s said about her.’

  ‘Which is?’

  Foa looked around the small campiello, as if he had picked up the neighbourhood’s nervousness about talking to a policeman. ‘Let’s go on board,’ he suggested, turning towards the boat. He jumped on to the deck, which now lay lower in the water than when they arrived. He held out his hand, first for Griffoni and then for Brunetti, who took it gladly as he stepped down.

  Foa switched on the engine and pulled away from the riva, then put the motor into reverse and backed up and into the canal on the right to turn back the way they had come. When they emerged into the Grand Canal, he slowed and Brunetti and Griffoni moved up to stand on either side of him.

  With no urging, Foa began. ‘The story is that the mother moved here ages ago, when Ana was a little girl. The mother rented a house, but then later Ana got hold of it, no one knows how.’ How very Venetian, Brunetti thought, to begin a story like this with talk of real estate.

  ‘When she was still a young girl, Ana got a job as a servant somewhere else in the city and went to live there during the week, though she came home to visit her mother when she could. Then after a couple of years she came home to live wit
h her.’ Foa paused and said, ‘You have to understand, my aunt’s almost ninety.’ He saw their surprise and added, ‘She’s my father’s aunt, really. But she’s still an aunt.’ He laughed, ‘My father’s always said she was his eredità from that side of the family, and I guess I’ve inherited her.’

  ‘And Ana?’ Brunetti prodded, not interested in the particulars of Foa’s relationship with his great-aunt.

  ‘The story that’s told is that she went away on a trip and came back with this son of hers.’

  ‘What?’ Griffoni asked.

  Foa glanced at her, perhaps relieved to find someone else who found the story strange. ‘That’s what she told me. She said it’s what the local people say: she went away for some time – my aunt didn’t know how long – I think they didn’t have a lot of friends in the neighbourhood – and came back with the son.’

  ‘How old was he?’ Griffoni asked.

  ‘No one knew. Exactly, that is. He wasn’t a young child any more, though. Maybe twelve or so. And deaf. That’s what my aunt said Ana and her mother told people, but most people thought something else was wrong with him because he was so simple.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Griffoni said. Foa, confused, slowed the boat. She laughed. ‘No, I mean wait a minute with this story. Did she have this boy stuck in a parking lot somewhere, and when he reached a certain age, she went and picked him up?’ She shook her head repeatedly. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘My aunt said she told people he lived with relatives in the country, and then when he was old enough, she brought him home.’

  ‘Old enough for what?’ Brunetti asked in a soft voice, as if speaking to himself. The others heard him, but neither had any suggestion to make.

  Surprising both men, Griffoni asked, ‘Why don’t we try the Lembos?’ When neither opposed her suggestion, she said, ‘She worked for them for years. Lucrezia’s a few years older than she is, so she would have been a teenager then, and maybe she remembers her.’

  Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was after six. ‘You can drop us off there, Foa, if you like, then take the boat back.’