Anonymous Venetian

by Donna Leon

  ‘What do you know about this Lega della Moralità?’ Brunetti asked.

  Vianello looked up at Brunetti, narrowed his eyes in an inquisitive glance but, getting no further information, sat and thought about the question for a moment, then answered.

  ‘I don’t know all that much about them. I think they meet at one of the churches: Santi Apostoli? No, that’s thecatecumeni, those people who have guitars and too many babies. La Lega meets in private homes, I think, and in some of the parish houses and meeting rooms. They’re not political, so far as I’ve heard. I’m not sure what they do, but from their name, it sounds like they probably sit around and talk about how good they are and how bad everyone else is.’ His tone was dismissive, indicative of the contempt he would have for such foolishness.

  ‘Do you know anyone who’s a member, Vianello?’

  ‘Me, sir? I should certainly hope not.’ He smiled at this, then saw Brunetti’s face. ‘Oh, you’re serious, eh, sir? Well, then, let me think for a minute.’ He did this for the minute he named, hands clasped around one knee and face raised towards the ceiling.

  ‘There’s one person, sir, a woman in the bank. Nadia knows her better than I do. That is, she has more to do with her than I do since she takes care of the banking. But I remember one day Nadia said that she thought it was strange that such a nice woman would have anything to do with something like that.’

  ‘Why do you think she said that?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Assume that they weren’t good people?’

  ‘Well, just think about the name, sir. Lega della Moralità, as if they’d invented the stuff. They’ve got to be a bunch of basibanchi if you ask me.’ With that word, Veneziano at its most pure, scoffing at people who knelt in church, bowed so low as to kiss the pew in front of them, Vianello gave yet more proof of their dialect’s genius and his own good sense.

  ‘Do you have any idea of how long she’s been a member or how she came to join?’

  ‘No, sir, but I could ask Nadia to find out. Why?’

  Brunetti quickly explained about Santomauro’s presence at Crespo’s apartment and his subsequent phone calls to Patta.

  ‘Interesting, isn’t it, sir?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Santomauro?’ Vianello asked, unnecessarily. Crespo was hardly someone he’d be likely to know.

  Brunetti nodded.

  ‘He used to be my cousin’s lawyer, before he became famous. And expensive.’

  ‘What did your cousin say about him?’

  ‘Not all that much. He was a good lawyer, but he was always willing to push the law, to make it do what he wanted it to do.’ A common enough type in Italy, Brunetti thought, where law was often written but was seldom clear.

  ‘Anything else?’ Brunetti asked.

  Vianello shook his head. ‘Nothing I can remember. It was years ago.’ Before Brunetti could ask him to do it, Vianello said, ‘I’ll call my cousin and ask. He might know other people Santomauro worked for.’

  Brunetti nodded his thanks. ‘I’d also like to see what we can find out about this Lega: where they meet, how many of them there are, who they are, and what it is they do.’ When he stopped to think about it, Brunetti found it strange that an organization so well known that it had become a common reference point for humour should, in truth, have managed to reveal so little about itself. People knew about the Lega, but if Brunetti’s own experience was anything to go by, no one had a clear idea what the Lega did.

  Vianello had his notebook in his hand now and took this all down. ‘Do you want me to ask questions about Signora Santomauro, as well?’

  ‘Yes, anything you can find.’

  ‘I think she’s from Verona originally. A banking family.’ He looked across at Brunetti. ‘Anything else, sir?’

  ‘Yes, that transvestite in Mestre, Francesco Crespo. I’d like you to put the word out here and see if anyone knows him or if the name means anything.’

  ‘What has Mestre got on him, sir?’

  ‘Nothing more than that he was arrested twice for drugs, trying to make a sale. The boys in Vice have him on their list, but he lives in an apartment on Viale Ronconi now, a very nice apartment, and I suppose that means he’s moved beyond Via Cappuccina and the public gardens. And see if Gallo has come up with names for the manufacturers of the dress and the shoes.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ Vianello said, making notes for himself. ‘Anything else, sir?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like you to keep an eye on any missing person reports that come in for a man in his early forties, same description as the dead man. It’s in the file. Maybe the new secretary can do something about it on her computer.’

  ‘From what region, sir?’ Vianello asked, pen poised over the page. The fact that he didn’t ask about the secretary was enough to tell Brunetti that word of her arrival had already spread.

  ‘If she can do it, for the entire country. Also missing tourists.’

  ‘You don’t like the idea of a prostitute, sir?’

  Brunetti remembered that naked body, so terribly like his own. ‘No, it’s not a body anyone would pay to use.’

  * * * *

  Chapter Twelve

  On Saturday morning, Brunetti accompanied his family to the train station, but it was a subdued group that got on to the Number One vaporetto at the San Silvestro stop: Paola was angry that Brunetti would not leave what she had taken to calling ‘his transvestite’ to come up to Bolzano at least for the first weekend of the vacation; Brunetti was angry that she wouldn’t understand; Raffaele regretted leaving the virginal charms of Sara Paganuzzi behind, though he took some comfort from the fact that they would be reunited in one week’s time - besides, until then, there would be fresh mushrooms to hunt for in the woods; Chiara, as was so often the case, was entirely unselfish in her regret, for she wished that her father, who always worked too hard, could get away and have a real vacation.

  Family etiquette dictated that everyone carry their own bag, but since Brunetti would be going only as far as Mestre, and hence had no bag, Paola took advantage of him to carry her large suitcase while she carried only her handbag and The Collected Letters of Henry James, a volume so formidable in size as to convince Brunetti that she wouldn’t have had time for him, anyway. Because Brunetti carried Paola’s suitcase, the domino theory was immediately made manifest, and Chiara stuffed some of her books into her mother’s suitcase, thus leaving space in her own for Raffi’s second pair of mountain boots. Whereupon his mother insisted that he use that space to carry her copy of The Sacred Fount, having decided that this was the year she would finally have enough time to read it.

  They all climbed into the same compartment of the 8.35, a train that would get Brunetti to Mestre in ten minutes and themselves to Bolzano in time for lunch. No one had much to say during the short trip across the laguna: Paola made sure he had the phone number of the hotel in his wallet, and Raffaele reminded him that this was the same train Sara was to take next Saturday, leaving Brunetti to wonder if he was supposed to carry her bag, too.

  At Mestre, he kissed the children, and Paola walked down the corridor to the door with him. ‘I hope you can come up next weekend, Guido. Even better, that you get this settled and can come up even sooner.’

  He smiled, but he didn’t want to tell her how unlikely that was: after all, they didn’t even know who the dead man was yet. He kissed her on both cheeks, got down from the train, and walked back towards the compartment where the children were. Chiara was already eating a peach. As he stood on the platform, gazing at them through the window, he saw Paola come back into the compartment and, almost without glancing at her, pull out a handkerchief and hand it to Chiara. The train began to move just as Chiara turned to wipe her mouth and, turning, saw him on the platform. Her face, half of it still gleaming with peach juice, lit up with pure delight and she leaped to the window. ‘Ciao, Papà, ciao, ciao,’ she shouted over the sound of the engine. She
stood on the seat of the train and leaned out, waving Paola’s handkerchief at him madly. He stood on the platform and waved until the tiny white flag of love disappeared in the distance.

  When he got to Gallo’s office at the Mestre Questura, the sergeant met him at the door. ‘We’ve got someone coming out to take a look at the body,’ he said with no prelude.

  ‘Who? Why?’

  ‘Your people had a call this morning. From a,’ and here he looked down at a piece of paper in his hand, ‘from a Signora Mascari. Her husband is the director of the Venice office of the Bank of Verona. He’s been gone since Saturday.’

  ‘That’s a week ago,’ Brunetti said. ‘What’s taken her this long to notice he’s missing?’

  ‘He was supposed to go on a business trip. To Messina. He left Sunday afternoon, and that’s the last she heard of him.’

  ‘A week? She let a week go before she called us?’

  ‘I didn’t speak to her,’ Gallo said, almost as if Brunetti had been accusing him of negligence.

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I have is a piece of paper that was put on my desk, telling me that she’s going to Umberto Primo this morning to take a look at him and hoped to get there by nine.’

  The men exchanged a look; Gallo pushed up his sleeve and glanced at his watch.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said. ‘Let’s go.’

  There ensued a muddle that was almost cinematic in its idiocy. Their car found itself in heavy early-morning traffic; the driver decided to cut round it and come at the hospital from the rear, only to meet even heavier traffic, which got them to the hospital after Signora Mascari had not only identified the body as that of her husband, Leonardo, but had left in the same taxi that had brought her out from Venice, heading towards the Mestre Questura, where, she was told, the police would answer her questions.

  All of this meant that Brunetti and Gallo got back to the Questura to find that Signora Mascari had been waiting for them for more than quarter of an hour. She sat, upright and entirely alone, on a wooden bench in the corridor outside Gallo’s office. She was a woman whose dress and manner suggested, not that her youth had fled, but that it had never existed. Her suit, a midnight-blue raw silk, was conservative in cut, the skirt a bit longer than was then fashionable. The colour of the cloth contrasted sharply with her pallid skin.

  She looked up as the two men approached, and Brunetti noticed that her hair was that standard red so popular to women of Paola’s age. She wore little makeup, and so he was able to see the small lines at the corners of the eyes and mouth, lines brought on either by age or worry, Brunetti couldn’t tell which. She stood and took a step towards them. Brunetti stopped in front of her and held out his hand. ‘Signora Mascari, I’m Commissario Brunetti from the Venice police.’

  She took his hand and gave it no more than the quickest of light touches. He noticed that her eyes seemed very bright, but he couldn’t tell if this was caused by unshed tears or the reflection from the glasses she wore.

  ‘I extend my condolences, Signora Mascari,’ he said. ‘I understand how painful and shocking this must be for you.’ She still made no acknowledgement that he had spoken. ‘Is there someone you would like us to call and have come here to be with you?’

  She shook her head at this. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps we could step into Sergeant Gallo’s office,’ Brunetti said, reaching down to open the door. He allowed the woman to pass in front of him. He glanced backwards at Gallo, who raised his eyebrows in interrogation; Brunetti nodded, and the sergeant came into the office with them. Brunetti held a chair for Signora Mascari, who sat and looked up at him.

  ‘Is there something we could get you, Signora? A glass of water? Tea?’

  ‘No. Nothing. Tell me what happened.’

  Sergeant Gallo took his place quietly behind his desk; Brunetti sat in a chair not far from Signora Mascari.

  ‘Your husband’s body was found in Mestre on Monday morning. If you’ve spoken to the people at the hospital, you know that the cause of death was a blow to the head.’

  She interrupted him. ‘There were blows to the face, as well.’ After she said this, she looked away and stared down at her hands.

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm your husband, Signora? Can you think of anyone who has ever menaced him or with whom he had a serious argument?’

  She shook her head in immediate negation. ‘Leonardo had no enemies,’ she said.

  Brunetti’s experience suggested that a man did not get to be the director of a bank without making enemies, but he said nothing.

  ‘Did your husband ever mention difficulties at his work? Perhaps an employee he had to fire? Someone who was turned down for a loan and who held him responsible?’

  Again, she shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that. There’s never been any trouble.’

  ‘And your family, Signora? Has your husband ever had difficulties with anyone in your family?’

  ‘What is this?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you asking me these questions?’

  ‘Signora,’ Brunetti began, making what he hoped was a calming gesture with his hands. ‘The manner of your husband’s death, the very violence of it, suggests that whoever did it had reason to hate your husband a great deal, and so, before we can begin to look for that person, we have to have some idea of why he might have done what he did. So it is necessary that these questions be asked, painful as I know them to be.’

  ‘But I can’t tell you anything. Leonardo had no enemies.’ After repeating this, she looked across at Gallo, as if to ask him to verify what she said or to help her persuade Brunetti to believe her.

  ‘When your husband left the house last Sunday, he was on his way to Messina?’ Brunetti asked. She nodded. ‘Do you know the purpose of his trip, Signora?’

  ‘He told me it was for the bank and that he would be back on Friday. Yesterday.’

  ‘But he didn’t mention what the trip was about?’

  ‘No, he never did. He always said his work wasn’t very interesting, and he seldom discussed it with me.’

  ‘Did you hear anything from him after he left, Signora?’

  ‘No. He left for the airport on Sunday afternoon. He had a flight to Rome, where he had to change planes.’

  ‘Did your husband call you after that, Signora? Did he call you from Rome or from Messina?’

  ‘No, but he never did. Whenever he went on a business trip, he’d simply go wherever he was going and then come home, or he’d call me from his office in the bank if he went directly there when he got back to Venice.’

  ‘Was this usual, Signora?’

  ‘Was what usual?’

  ‘That he would go away on business and not get in touch with you?’

  ‘I just told you,’ she said, her voice going a bit sharp. ‘He travelled a bit for the bank, six or seven times a year. Sometimes he would send me a postcard or bring me a gift, but he never called.’

  ‘When did you begin to become alarmed, Signora?’

  ‘Last night. I thought he would go to the bank in the afternoon, when he got back, and then come home. But when he wasn’t home by seven, I called the bank, but it was closed. I tried to call two of the men he worked with, but they weren’t home.’ She paused here, took a deep breath, and then continued, ‘I told myself I’d got the day wrong or the time, but by this morning, I couldn’t fool myself any more, so I called one of the men who works at the bank, and he called a colleague in Messina, and then he called me back.’ She stopped talking here.

  ‘What did he tell you, Signora?’ Brunetti asked in a low voice.

  She put one knuckle to her mouth, hoping, perhaps, to keep the words from coming out, but she had seen the body in the morgue, and so there was no use in that. ‘He told me that Leonardo had never been to Messina. And so I called the police. Called you. They told me ... when I gave them a description of Leonardo ... they told me that I should come out here. So I did.’ Her voice
had grown increasingly ragged as she explained all of this, and when she finished, her hands were clutched desperately together in her lap.

  ‘Signora, are you sure there’s no one you’d like to call or have us call to come here to be with you? Perhaps you shouldn’t be alone at this time,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘No. No, there’s no one I want to see.’ Abruptly, she stood. ‘I don’t have to stay here, do I? Am I free to leave?’

  ‘Of course, Signora. You’ve been more than kind to answer these questions.’

  She ignored this.

  Brunetti made a small gesture to Gallo as he stood and followed Signora Mascari to the door. ‘We’ll have a car take you back to Venice, Signora.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone to see me arrive in a police car,’ she said.