by Donna Leon
‘Only a photographer, but all he did was take a picture of the house. No one bothered to come in to ask questions.’ His displeasure at this injustice was clear.
‘Well, we have some,’ Vianello said with an amiable smile as he took a small sip of wine.
The barman leaned closer to him.
‘Was he a regular customer?’ Vianello broke the silence by asking.
The barman grinned. ‘Couple of times a day. He came in for coffee about noon and stayed to have a few glasses of wine.’
‘Breakfast?’ Vianello asked in a knowing way and smiled.
The barman smiled back. ‘I suppose you could call it that. Sometimes he’d come back here about four and have another coffee and some more wine.’
Vianello nodded as if this were an entirely normal way for a man to spend his day, as it might well be for some of the barman’s clients.
‘Once in a while he’d come in about eight for a drink, wait for friends, have a few glasses of wine, then maybe have dinner or keep drinking until he went home.’
‘Anyone particular he drank with?’ Brunetti asked.
The barman shrugged but didn’t answer at first, almost as if he were bound by his sense of professional ethics from discussing a client. Finally he said, but grudgingly, ‘Stefano dalla Lana, though he doesn’t drink much.’ It did not sound like a criticism, but it was hardly meant as a compliment. ‘He’s a teacher,’ he added, as if in exoneration.
While neither Brunetti nor the barman was paying attention to him, Vianello had taken out a notebook and pen. He asked the barman, ‘Do you know his address?’
The man gave Vianello a strange look, as if he’d suddenly found himself in a trap he hadn’t seen and didn’t know how to get out of. ‘He lives in San Giacomo dell’Orio, above the ex-Billa,’ he said, adding, ‘It’s still a supermarket, but it has a different name now.’ Then, without being asked, he opened a drawer and rooted around in it until he found a much-folded piece of paper and read dalla Lana’s telephone number from it.
‘Thanks,’ Vianello said and shoved his notebook aside, at the sight of which the man’s expression relaxed slightly.
‘You said Cavanis told you he’d remembered something,’ Brunetti began. The barman nodded. ‘Did he say anything else about it?’
The barman considered the question and picked up another glass. While he wiped it dry, he said, ‘And his luck was going to change. But,’ he added with a bittersweet smile that affirmed the vanity of human wishes, ‘his luck always was.’
Recalling the keys to the apartment, Brunetti asked, ‘Did many people come to get his keys?’
The barman laughed. ‘I think Pietro did that for effect, so he could play the vagabond with people. In the last year or so, you’re the only one who’s come.’
‘Did he work?’ Brunetti asked, aware that his professional responsibility was to check other possible motives for Cavanis’ murder and not only his long-ago act of courage.
‘Years ago. He was a baker, worked for that guy in Ruga degli Orefici. They closed last year; take-away food there now.’
‘Did he retire? Or quit?’
‘No, he had a bad liver, so he had to stop working and take his pension early; couple of years ago. That’s what he was living on.’
Vianello put on his slyest expression and asked, ‘A real liver problem, or one he and his doctor agreed on?’
‘No, no, Pietro liked his job, liked the people there. It was real; all the men in his family got sick: they’ve all been drinkers.’ A thoughtful expression crossed his face and he said, ‘He wasn’t a bad person; he was never a bad drunk, never loud. Or violent. I don’t know how much pension he could have had. Not much. But he was generous with his friends, and he never said bad things about anyone.’
‘Sounds as if you liked him,’ Vianello said.
‘Of course I liked him,’ the man said with real feeling. ‘You do this job long enough, you learn a lot about people. Some drunks are mean; some are nice people. Pietro was one of those; there was no way he could stop. It would have kil . . .’ he began but was unable to finish the sentence.
He reached into the now-cold water in the sink in front of him and pulled out a glass. He took a fresh towel from a drawer and began slowly to wipe the glass. Turning and turning it, he asked Vianello, ‘Was it very bad?’
Vianello and Brunetti exchanged a brief glance. Neither spoke, each waiting for the other to do it.
Finally, Brunetti said, ‘It was fast.’
Without a word, the barman set the glass on the shelf behind him.
21
Brunetti had sent Foa back to the Questura; now, because San Giacomo dell’Orio wasn’t very far from where they were, they decided to pass by the home of this Stefano dalla Lana. Chatting easily and paying no attention to where they were going, they made their way effortlessly to the large campo, so different now from what it had been when both of them had begun their police careers. Officers had patrolled it only in pairs then, when it was notorious as a centre for drug dealing, a place where the garbage men routinely complained about the number of used syringes on the pavement every morning. Gentrification had only just begun, but the signs were already evident: a new bar, tables still set outside, and inside everything slick and linear; a good restaurant just over the bridge towards Rialto; and the final proof for local residents of what was coming: three separate buildings wrapped in scaffolding.
‘I was down in Santa Giustina a few days ago to meet a friend for a drink,’ Vianello said with no introduction. ‘Man who runs the bar’s closing. They doubled his rent. Same with the guy who sells antiques.’ They walked another minute and then the Inspector exclaimed, half angry, half astonished, ‘Santa Giustina, for God’s sake. Who’d live down there?’
‘Foreigners, probably,’ Brunetti said as they came into the campo. They started to circle around the apse of the church and saw a tall, grey-haired man approaching them. ‘Are you the police?’ he asked as he drew near. It was a deep voice, speaking Italian clearly but with the give-away Venetian sibilance.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said.
‘I’m Stefano dalla Lana,’ he said but did not extend his hand. ‘Ruggiero at the bar called and said you wanted to talk to me and would probably come to find me.’ Then, before either of them could ask, he added, ‘I thought it would be better to meet you here. My wife’s a very nervous person: it would upset her if the police came to the house.’ He pointed to one of the benches placed under the trees.
‘Of course,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m sorry about your wife.’
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just that bad news bothers her more than it should.’
He led them to a bench and sat in the middle, leaving room for them on either side. ‘What was it you wanted to know?’ dalla Lana asked. He had deep brown eyes from the sides of which radiated the lines that years of strain had left behind.
‘We heard that you were a friend of Pietro Cavanis,’ Brunetti began.
Though he must have known this was their reason for coming, his face tightened when he heard his friend’s name. He looked away, towards the church, and when he looked back at Brunetti, his eyes had grown moist. ‘I’d known him all my life. We went to school together,’ he said, then began to examine the roots of the tree, resting his elbow on his knee and cupping his hand over his forehead to hide his eyes.
Brunetti let the silence do what it wanted, stay as long as it pleased. A dog ran past, followed by two children, one of them on a scooter.
Dalla Lana looked up. ‘Excuse me, please. I still can’t get used to it.’
‘That he’s gone?’ Brunetti said.
‘I wish it were only that,’ dalla Lana said with a sad smile. ‘That he’d moved away or gone somewhere for a while. But that he’s dead . . .’ He broke off and pressed the same hand ove
r his mouth. He shook his head repeatedly, as if the energy of that would be enough to change things.
Knowing that it was not, Brunetti waited a moment and then said, ‘The man in the bar told us that Signor Cavanis had been talking about a change in his life that was about to happen. Did he say anything about this to you?’ When dalla Lana did not respond, Brunetti continued, ‘Since you were his best friend – I wondered if he’d told you about it.’
Dalla Lana grasped his hands together and leaned forward to shove them down between his knees, then in that posture studied the pavement. ‘In school, we were the two dreamers. Pietro wanted to do something big in life: become a doctor and cure some terrible disease; become an engineer and invent something that would make life easier; or go into politics and make a difference to people’s lives.’
‘What did you dream?’ Brunetti asked.
Dalla Lana looked at him quickly, as if no one had ever asked him this question. ‘I wanted to write poetry.’
‘And what happened?’ Brunetti asked.
Dalla Lana shook his head again, started to speak but stopped, took a long breath and said, ‘Pietro was enrolled at the university to study engineering, but that summer his father died and he had to try to find work.’
‘As a baker?’
‘How did you know that?’ he asked, not attempting to hide his surprise.
‘The man in the bar told me.’
‘Did he tell you about his father?’
‘Only that he died,’ Brunetti said, giving half of the truth. ‘He said that your friend had to stop working some years ago.’
‘His liver.’
‘That’s what he said.’
‘It’s what killed his father,’ dalla Lana explained, then went on. ‘The owner offered him his father’s job. It was the only thing he could find. His mother had never worked, and his father’s pension wasn’t very big.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said.
‘He had no choice,’ dalla Lana said, then, after a long time, ‘Bakers have to drink a lot because of the heat and because of the strange hours. That’s how it started. But it didn’t change him, not really. He was still a dreamer, even till the end. The last time we spoke, he was . . . well, he was dreaming.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He called once last week, but I couldn’t answer because I was in class, and then I forgot to call him back. Then he called me again on Saturday night. It was late, and he was drunk. He usually didn’t call me when he’d been drinking, but this time he couldn’t stop talking. He said he’d found a way to pay me back.’
He saw their failure to understand and said, ‘Over the years, I’ve helped him when I could. Never anything big. To help him pay a bill. Or for the rent.’ Seeing their faces, he said quickly, ‘That was only once. And it wasn’t very much.’ He looked down again, as if embarrassed.
‘What else did he say?’ Brunetti asked softly.
Head still lowered, dalla Lana sighed deeply. ‘I didn’t understand a lot of what he said. About always being in debt to me.’
He looked up at Brunetti, then at Vianello, then back to Brunetti. ‘I didn’t want it back. I never asked, never said anything. I wanted to help him. He was my friend.’
Neither Brunetti nor Vianello spoke, and after a time dalla Lana went on. ‘He said he saw what would get the money, then he said something about television, but he wasn’t making sense. I didn’t understand him. I still don’t. He said he did one good thing in his life, and now he’d do another because he remembered something, and everything would be all right.’
Dalla Lana stopped and looked back and forth between the two men again.
‘Did he tell you what he remembered?’
‘No.’ Suddenly his mouth contracted in pain and he said, ‘I told him to go to sleep and call me the next day. I don’t think he understood, but he hung up. And the next I knew, he was dead.’ Then, before Brunetti could ask if Cavanis had called again, dalla Lana said, ‘When he didn’t call, I figured he’d forgotten all about it.’
Out of simple curiosity and to draw dalla Lana away from the thought of his friend’s death, Brunetti asked, ‘And the poetry?’
‘I don’t have the talent,’ he said, as though Brunetti had asked him the time and he’d said he wasn’t wearing a watch.
The three men sat silent after that until Vianello asked, ‘If you don’t mind telling me, why did you remain such good friends all these years?’
Dalla Lana moved restlessly at that, pulled his jacket tighter around him, making Brunetti conscious that the day had suddenly lost what little warmth it had had. Dalla Lana got to his feet and ran his curved palm up and down the trunk of one of the trees a few times. Then he came back to the bench and looked at them. ‘Because he was brave and decent and worked hard when he had a job, until his health betrayed him. And because he read my poetry all these years and told me how good it was, how much it moved him.’
He kicked an empty cigarette packet away. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to know, gentlemen?’
Brunetti got to his feet and took dalla Lana’s hand. ‘No, thank you. You’ve told us a great deal.’
Vianello stepped up and offered his hand. ‘Thank you. I’m sorry for your friend.’
Dalla Lana said goodbye and turned to walk back to where the Billa had been before gentrification had discovered Campo San Giacomo dell’Orio.
22
They stopped on the way to the vaporetto and had a few tramezzini, but they were so filled with mayonnaise that they left Brunetti feeling stuffed but not satisfied. As they headed for the stop at Riva di Biasio, he pulled out his telefonino and called Signorina Elettra. He’d had enough of going by the official route, so he gave her Cavanis’ telefonino number and asked if she could somehow obtain a list of the numbers he’d phoned, starting on the Monday before he died.
‘ “Somehow obtain”,’ she repeated. ‘How elegant, Commissario. Yes, I’m sure I can obtain them. Somehow.’ She paused and then asked, ‘Is there any need for haste?’
‘As in: is there time to wait for a magistrate to authorize the search?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘Ah,’ she said, dragging out the sound while she, no doubt, considered methods. ‘Are you coming back to the Questura?’
‘Yes, we’re on the way now.’
‘I’ll have the numbers for you when you get here.’
He and Vianello had fallen into step, and as he walked, Brunetti repeated, silently, ‘I do not want to know, I do not want to know ’, coming down hard with the step that synchronized with the last word of the phrase. To Vianello, he said, ‘She’ll have the numbers he called for us when we get there.’
Vianello turned to look at Brunetti and smiled. ‘When they fire us all, I wonder if we’ll still be eligible for pensions.’
When they arrived half an hour later, they went directly to Signorina Elettra’s office. She greeted them with evident pleasure and handed Brunetti a sheet of paper. He took it but kept his thoughts to himself. On it were listed only three phone calls. On Monday and Saturday, Cavanis had called a number belonging to Stefano dalla Lana: the first call went unanswered; the next one, made at 11.11 on Saturday evening, lasted eight minutes. The final call, made at 11.22, was a wrong number, made to the office of the Fine Arts Commission. This call lasted six seconds.
‘Too drunk to dial,’ Vianello said.
‘Strange that he didn’t try again with the right number,’ Brunetti said.
‘Drunks are strange,’ Vianello observed.
‘He didn’t make any calls the day he was killed,’ Brunetti said, holding up the paper for both of them to see.
Less than twenty-four hours later, however, Cavanis was lying dead on the floor of his apartment. Brunetti had little faith in coincidence, especially regarding a ma
n who claimed he was going to change his luck and suddenly have lots of money. If there was any truth in what he had said to dalla Lana, he had made no attempt to pursue it, at least not that night and not with his telefonino. And then he had been murdered. ‘Is there a public phone anywhere near his home?’ he surprised Signorina Elettra by asking.
She and Vianello were silent, and Brunetti watched their faces as they tried to picture the calli and campi in that area of Santa Croce. After a moment Vianello said, ‘They’re almost all gone, aren’t they?’
Signorina Elettra held up her hand in a waiter-hailing gesture. ‘Telecom must have a map of where their phones still are,’ she said, looking at her computer as though it were the taxi she had hailed and she were impatient to climb into it.
‘And then what?’ Brunetti asked.
‘If I find a map, I’ll send one of the uniformed men to get the serial numbers of the phones. With that, it should be easy to find the numbers called from the phones.’
‘Ah,’ Brunetti whispered, then ‘find’, as though he were marvelling at some archaic magical formula.
He returned his thoughts to the call that Cavanis might not have wanted to make on his telefonino, but it was impossible to enter into the alcoholic mind. Perhaps not reaching the number he wanted had jolted Cavanis into momentary sobriety. Or by the morning he might have realized that he should not use his own phone for the call he wanted to make.
‘We’ll leave you to look for the map,’ Brunetti said, having thought of another possibility.
Before they could leave, however, Signorina Elettra said, ‘I found the name of Manuela’s family doctor in the medical report you left with me, but he retired soon after the incident and died about five years ago.’ Another dead end. Brunetti thanked her, and they left. Outside, they separated, Brunetti to go down to talk to Bocchese, and Vianello back to the squad room.
When Brunetti reached the laboratory where Bocchese worked, he knocked on the door, didn’t bother to wait, and entered. The technician looked up, then returned his attention to a telefonino that he appeared to be in the process of reassembling.
