Earthly Remains

by Donna Leon

  ‘The ways of the computer are many and mysterious,’ Brunetti answered in a falsely solemn voice.

  ‘I have faith in the computer,’ Vianello said, ‘but not in the people who enter information into them.’

  Brunetti swept his friend’s doubts aside by saying, ‘We need a date, and we need the name of their employer. Then we can begin looking. There’s always something.’

  ‘And this blind man, Zeno Bianchi?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘We go to talk to him as soon as we can.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘About his blindness and its cause and about why he and Casati no longer spoke to one another.’

  Vianello put his palms together and turned them over to look at the back of his right hand, as though he sought there what he wanted to say. ‘Guido,’ he began but did not finish the sentence.

  Brunetti was suddenly alert to the tone of Vianello’s voice and suspected he knew what was coming.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked with studied mildness.

  ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ Vianello’s glance shot to Brunetti’s face and as quickly away.

  An idea had been growing in Brunetti’s imagination since the time Casati had spoken about how ‘we’ had killed ‘her’ and killed the bees and would go on to kill his grandchildren and Brunetti’s children. At the time, it had seemed nothing more than wild, raving talk, and to a certain degree it still did. But not entirely.

  It took him some time to think of a way to answer Vianello. ‘No, I’m not sure, not at all,’ Brunetti said. ‘But I’m doing what I want to do and what I think is right to do.’ That was all the explanation he could give. ‘Is that enough?’ he asked his friend.

  ‘Yes,’ Vianello answered.

  At the sound of Federica’s returning footsteps, both men sat up straighter and turned to face the door. She entered, a small slip of paper in her right hand, walked over and placed it on the table in front of Brunetti. ‘It’s the number of his telefonino, and that’s the name of the place where he is,’ she said. ‘It’s all I have.’

  Brunetti thanked her and put the paper in his pocket. ‘Do you remember the name of the company where they worked?’ he asked.

  She glanced out the window and rubbed absently at her right cheekbone. Eventually, she said, ‘It was named after the wife of the owner. M something: Maura, Mar … No, not that.’ She pulled her lips together and said, ‘M, M, M,’ but it appeared to bring memory no closer. Her face changed in an instant, and she smiled. ‘No, it’s R. “Romina Rimozione”. Her name was Romina, and the company removed things.’ She turned to smile at Brunetti and tapped her finger on her forehead. ‘It’s all in there. Still.’

  ‘Did Signor Bianchi live in Marghera, too?’

  ‘Oh, I thought I’d told you. At San Pietro in Castello, in one of the apartments above the cloister.’ Seeing Brunetti’s confusion, she said, ‘To the right of the church, there’s that big doorway that goes into the cloister.

  ‘He lived on the top floor,’ she went on. Before they could ask, she explained. ‘I never saw him there, but once when I went with my father into the city – this was after we moved out here – we took a walk down to San Pietro, and he told me that’s where his friend Zeno used to live.’

  ‘You said he never married,’ Brunetti reminded her.

  ‘No. And he was a handsome man. But then,’ she began and paused briefly to think this through, ‘I suppose all tall men who are friends of your father are handsome when you’re a little girl.’

  Smiling, Brunetti said, ‘I certainly hope that’s true of my daughter’s friends,’ and got to his feet.

  Federica put herself between Brunetti and the door, trying to make the motion seem natural, and failing. ‘When will …’ she began.

  She ran out of words, and Brunetti supplied them. ‘I think the pathologist will give a release in a day or two.’

  ‘Not before that?’ she asked, stricken by the delay.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Federica. I’ll ask them, but these are things we – the police – don’t control. I’m sorry.’

  She nodded.

  Brunetti bent and kissed her on both cheeks, and Vianello extended his hand and shook hers. Brunetti and Vianello started back towards the villa.

  23

  ‘Does it make any sense for us to stay here?’ Vianello asked as they left Federica’s house.

  ‘No. There’s nothing we can do here for the moment,’ Brunetti answered. While he had been speaking to Federica, he’d seen a trail open up before him, a trail made seductive by the unexplained. Two men working for the same company had been hospitalized at the same time, and a long friendship had been ruptured soon before one of those men died. Brunetti knew himself enough to know he would not ignore this trail, just as he knew that to return to Venice would be to put the first foot on that trail.

  ‘How do we get back?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘Same way we came: on the boat.’

  Brunetti left a note for Federica on the kitchen table, explaining that he was returning to the city for a few days but would call her when he knew when he’d be back and would do his best to find out when her father’s body would be released for burial.

  There was nothing he had to take with him, aside from his keys; he went upstairs to get them and to close the windows and shutters, leaving it to Vianello to close the ones on the ground floor. They walked to the embarcadero, each wrapped so deeply in his own thoughts that neither reacted to the heat and humidity. During the ride, he called Signorina Elettra and told her that he and Vianello were on the way to the Questura, and while they were, he’d like her to try to find some record of … here he had to pause and look out the window to find a way to express what it was that might have happened. ‘An accident in Marghera, at least twenty years ago, involving a company called Romina Rimozione. There are two men who might have been injured: Davide Casati and Zeno Bianchi.’

  ‘Ah,’ she exhaled, making the sound last a long time. She did not sniff, she did not wag her tail, nor did she pull at the lead, but Brunetti could sense her desire to be off in pursuit of what might be only a rustle in the grass but might just as easily be prey.

  ‘The second one,’ Brunetti continued as though he had not heard her sigh, ‘spent months in a hospital in Padova. His problem was his eyes: whatever happened left him blind. The other was burned badly, though I don’t know where he was treated.’

  ‘Anything else, Dottore?’

  ‘Have you had a response from the university?’

  ‘No, nothing yet.’

  ‘Is there any way you could …’ he began and left the question unfinished, not wanting to be recorded suggesting to his superior’s secretary that she break into the computer system of a university in a foreign country.

  ‘I’m reluctant to do anything like that in Switzerland, Signore. They’re very good at placing tripwires, and since the request was made through official channels, there will eventually be an answer. All that’s needed is time.’

  Brunetti knew that, but it did nothing to still his impatience.

  ‘All right,’ he said and pulled the paper Federica had given him from his pocket. ‘There’s a nursing home somewhere in Mira: Villa Flora. Could you have a look and see what sort of place it is? From what I’ve heard, it must be … basic.’ It seemed a neutral way to describe a place that could reduce a man to tears when speaking about it.

  ‘Of course, Signore. If they have a website, I’ll send you the link.’

  ‘We’ll be at Fondamente Nove in fifteen minutes. Could you ask Foa to meet us?’ Brunetti asked. When she said she would, he broke the connection.

  When they pulled up to the landing, Brunetti saw the police launch bobbing in the water a few metres to the right. As the passengers started filing off the left side of the boat, Foa pulled alongside the other, and the sailor pulled back the metal bar and saluted the two police officers as they stepped on to the smaller boat bobbing beside them.

  Foa touched
his hand to his cap and swung away from the Number 13 in a graceful pirouette that started them back towards the entrance to the Rio dei Mendicanti that would take them quickly to the Questura.

  Brunetti studied the building as they approached and was surprised to see someone standing at the window of his office. He was even more surprised when, as they drew closer, he could discern that it was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, who stood, like a whaler’s widow, two steps back from the window, casting his gaze to left and right in the only directions from which his beloved could return.

  He nudged Vianello in the ribs and said, ‘Patta’s in my office.’

  It was with the exercise of enormous restraint that Vianello refused to look upwards, thus losing the opportunity some day to tell his grandchildren what he had observed with his own eyes.

  Foa glided up to the dock, and the Inspector followed his superior off the boat, careful to raise his eyes no higher than Brunetti’s head.

  As they entered, the guard in the glass security booth raised his hand, then stood and came over to open the door. ‘Commissario,’ he said, leaning out. ‘The Vice-Questore would like to see you in his office.’

  Brunetti nodded his thanks, and both men went silently towards the stairway. At the bottom, Brunetti paused for a moment and said, ‘Perhaps we should give him time to get back to his own office.’

  ‘You’ll spoil him if you’re not careful, Guido.’

  Brunetti allowed two minutes to pass before he put his foot on the first stair. Vianello veered off towards the officers’ squad room. Brunetti walked towards his superior’s office and into the small anteroom, where he found Signorina Elettra, who was that day lightening the burden of the heat with white linen. Her blouse threw beams of reflected light at Brunetti. It gave the impression of flowing looseness, as though the material had alighted on her shoulders while being wafted to some astral location. Anyone glancing at it would at first think it should be worn by a larger person. Until, that is, the viewer observed just where the shoulders ended and how the pleats slid open when she raised her arm to push back a strand of hair.

  ‘How nice to have you back, Commissario,’ she said, her face tossing a few more beams his way.

  ‘One of life’s oft-repeating joys,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘To come here?’

  ‘In a word, yes.’

  ‘The Vice-Questore has just arrived and is waiting for you.’ With a sly smile, she added, ‘Another joy.’ Then, with an upraised hand, ‘Perhaps I should tell you, Commissario, that he’s not in the most tranquil of moods.’

  ‘How unusual,’ Brunetti said, passed in front of her desk, and went to the Vice-Questore’s office. He knocked, a sound that was acknowledged by a bark.

  ‘Good afternoon, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said as he closed the door. He came across the room.

  ‘Sit down.’ Patta’s eyes reflected quite a different light from that of Signorina Elettra’s blouse. Brunetti had had years to learn the signs of Patta’s irritation, and he saw immediately that the signals the Vice-Questore gave were mild. This, however, did not allow him to relax: Patta was as dangerous impatient as rabid.

  ‘What’s going on?’ his superior demanded. Brunetti found it interesting that Patta had said nothing about his recent, prolonged absence from the Questura nor about his supposedly compromised health.

  ‘If you’re referring to the man from Sant’Erasmo who died while I was there, I know only what everyone on the island knows: he was caught in a storm, fell from his boat, and drowned.’ Hearing this, Patta waved a hand, which Brunetti interpreted as an invitation to sit. Patta today wore a light tan linen suit, but this late in the afternoon, the elbows looked like accordions. Had he been doing push-ups while waiting for Brunetti to arrive? As was always the case in the summer – as well as after the two winter vacations he managed to afford himself – Patta was bronzed and as sleek as a well-oiled cricket bat.

  ‘Actually, I was talking about the problems Avvocato Ruggieri has been having.’

  Aha, Brunetti told himself. Of course, and what a fool I am. How could Patta be interested in a man’s death when the son of a wealthy notary had suffered momentary embarrassment?

  ‘I’m sorry, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said, ‘but I know nothing about that.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’

  ‘Because I found the body of the man who drowned, Dottore, I thought it correct to file a report in the hope that this would speed things along.’

  Patta’s eyes narrowed in a look so filled with suspicion that Brunetti feared he might soon be subjected to physical torture. ‘Is that the truth?’ Patta demanded in a voice he made deep enough to hold all of the menace he injected into it.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said. ‘I haven’t thought about that interview since it was interrupted,’ he said, trying to look like a person who had recently suffered a collapse from a weakened heart.

  Patta put his wrinkled elbows on the table, wove his fingers together, and rested his chin on the bridge formed by his fingers. He kept Brunetti under scrutiny for a few moments, like an entomologist waiting for a dung beetle to begin rolling up its ball of lies. Finally he said, ‘I hope, Brunetti, that this isn’t another one of your—’

  A knock on the door cut Patta off.

  ‘Come in,’ he barked.

  The door opened, and Signorina Elettra appeared. ‘Ah, Vice-Questore, I didn’t know anyone was with you,’ she said, and gave every appearance of being embarrassed at having interrupted them. ‘You said earlier that you wanted to send an email to the Prefetto.’ Only then did Brunetti notice that she had a notebook in her hand. Was she actually going to take Patta’s dictation? His superior was indeed a remarkable man.

  Brunetti’s face showed no expression as he got to his feet. ‘I’ll leave you to your work, Dottore,’ he said with a small nod. He went slowly to the door and paused to allow Signorina Elettra to pass in front of him, then he went out and closed the door.

  Her chair stood far back from her desk, as though she had pushed it away hurriedly. A page of text filled the screen of her computer, and a headset lay in front of it. YouTube? In the fashion of all good detectives, he decided to be sure, as if her choice in music would tell him something important about her.

  He walked to her desk and, consciously ignoring the computer screen – which he considered taboo unless she showed it to him – picked up the headset, placed one of the earpieces to his left ear, and listened. ‘No, Dottore,’ he heard her say, ‘I think it should go in a registered letter. An email is too informal.’

  ‘Oddio,’ Brunetti whispered, replaced the headphones quietly on her desk, and left her office.

  24

  As Brunetti walked back to his office, he asked himself why a place as modest as the one Federica talked about would have a website. The sort of place where patients were kept hungry would hardly cater to the computer literate. But then he recalled that even the shelter where the city sent lost or abandoned dogs had a website. Brunetti paused and reflected on the way one thought had suggested the other; the spontaneity of the comparison embarrassed him. He should take the hungry old man a box of chocolates.

  He nevertheless clicked on ‘Villa Flora, Mira’, sure that the photos would attempt to make spare rooms look inviting or grim-faced patients happy. He prepared himself to view a cement bunker pretending to be home.

  Where had that tremendous villa come from? Where that rose garden gambolling happily up towards it? He read the captions and learned that this was Villa Flora, Mira. There could certainly be only one home for old people named Villa Flora in Mira.

  ‘An ambience where our guests will feel entirely at home.’ ‘Villa Flora offers only a change of address, not a change of life.’ ‘Why should retirement mean you’re no longer special?’ ‘Well, well, well,’ Brunetti muttered under his breath. ‘America comes to Mira.’

  Brunetti looked through the photos again, more slowly this time, and read the historical information about the
building. Designed by a friend of Palladio, the villa – the information insisted – was very much in the master’s style. Brunetti clicked back to the photo that served as the backdrop for the web page. Any influence by Palladio was from the architect’s early years, Brunetti decided, for the building resembled nothing so much as the fierce, fortress-like Villa Godi, where Brunetti had taken his family years ago, mistaken in his certainty that the kids would love the archaeology museum in the basement.

  He clicked to the photos of the separate suites on offer: there were nineteen of them. Each had a sitting room, a bedroom, and a bath: meals were served in the dining room, though they could be taken privately. Much of the furniture in the residents’ rooms could easily have been taken from his parents-in-law’s palazzo: spindly-legged tables, velvet-covered sofas, ornate gold-framed mirrors; while the bathrooms looked like those in a five-star hotel: twin sinks, shower heads the size of pizzas, gold fixtures.

  The dining room was what he imagined cruise ships boasted: fields of white linen, glistening cutlery, three glasses at every place. Drapes were pulled back from the French windows; beyond lay formal gardens filled, at the time of the photo, with an excess of roses of every colour, each large section of the garden neatly enclosed by low boxwood hedges. And the staff? As Brunetti had guessed, they were described as ‘top professionals in their fields’, ‘highly motivated to treat every resident as a guest’, and were always aware that ‘a guest is a member of our family’. Scrolling down, he saw many pictures of the staff, always smiling, always extending a hand to help.

  He went back to ‘Home’ and looked for a key word that might be related to costs or prices, but nothing was to be found. He tried ‘Services’ with similar lack of success. Instead of spending more time searching, he dialled Signorina Elettra’s number.

  ‘Sì, Commissario?’

  ‘I’ve got the website of Villa Flora in front of me,’ he said, ‘but I can’t find any place that lists prices.’

  ‘They’re called “fees” now, Commissario,’ she informed him in a voice that suggested reproach.