Doctored Evidence

by Donna Leon

  ‘I’ll ask Nadia if she knows anyone who lives over there,’ Vianello said. ‘Or maybe we’ll go over there for a drink or have lunch in that new place on the corner of Campo dei Mori.’

  Brunetti acknowledged Vianello’s plan with a grin, then turned to Signorina Elettra and said, ‘The other thing I’d like checked is any possible involvement she might have had with us.’

  ‘Who? The Romanian?’

  ‘No. Signora Battestini.’

  ‘A master criminal in her eighties,’ she chortled. ‘How I’d love to discover one.’

  Brunetti named a former Prime Minister and suggested she might begin by searching the files for information about him.

  Vianello laughed outright and she had the grace to smile.

  ‘And her husband and her late son while you’re about it,’ Brunetti said, returning them to the business at hand.

  ‘Shall I have a look for the lawyer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I love to hunt for lawyers,’ Signorina Elettra could not prevent herself from saying. ‘They think they’re so clever at hiding things, but it’s so easy to flush them out of the undergrowth. Almost too easy.’

  ‘Would you prefer to give them a sporting chance?’ Vianello asked.

  The question brought her back to her senses. ‘Give a lawyer a sporting chance? Do you think I’m mad?’

  9

  BECAUSE HE STILL had to read witness statements in the airport case and because he was not eager to talk to a lawyer, Brunetti contented himself with calling Avvocatessa Marieschi’s office and making an appointment to speak to her the following morning. When the secretary asked what he wanted to discuss, Brunetti said only that it concerned a question of inheritance, gave his name, but made no mention of the fact that he worked for the police.

  He spent an hour reading through contradictory and mutually exclusive statements. Luckily, a small photo was attached to each of them, so he could identify the person making the statement or answering the questions with the people he had observed on the videos from cameras hidden in the baggage hall of the airport. To the best of his understanding, only twelve of the seventy-six people arrested were telling the whole truth, for it was only their testimony that was confirmed by the hours of video he had watched in the last week, film which captured all of the accused taking part in thefts of some sort.

  Brunetti was reluctant to invest much time in the investigation, especially since the defence was arguing that, since the cameras had been placed there without the knowledge of the people being filmed, they represented an invasion of the ‘privacy’ of the accused, that all-purpose word that had been hijacked from English to fill a need in a language which had no term of its own for the concept. If this argument were upheld, and he realized it might well be, then the state’s case collapsed, for all those who had admitted guilt, with the disappearance of the primary evidence against them, would instantly retract their confessions.

  Besides, they were all still at work, it having been argued that, since the Constitution guaranteed everyone the right to work, it would be unconstitutional to fire them. ‘The loony bin, the loony bin,’ he whispered to himself and decided it was time to go home.

  When he got there, he found that Paola had been as good as her word, for the aromas that met him as he entered the apartment were a rich blend of seafood, garlic, and something he wasn’t sure about, perhaps spinach. He set the COIN bag in which he had folded his dirty jacket by the door and went down the hall to the kitchen. She was already seated at the table, a glass of white wine in front of her, reading.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll ask you what you’re reading.’

  She glanced at him over her reading glasses and said, ‘A book that should be of great interest to us both, Guido: Chiara’s textbook on religious doctrine.’

  Little good could come of this, Brunetti realized instantly, but still he asked, ‘Why to us?’

  ‘Because of what it tells us about the world we live in,’ she said, setting the book down and taking a sip of wine.

  ‘For example?’ he asked, going to the refrigerator and taking out the open bottle. It was the good Ribolla Gialla they’d bought from a friend in Corno di Rosazzo.

  ‘There’s a chapter here,’ she said, pointing at the page she had been reading, ‘on the Seven Deadly Sins.’

  Brunetti had often thought that it was convenient that there should be one for each day of the week, but he kept this thought to himself for the moment. ‘And?’ he asked.

  ‘And I started thinking about the way our society has ceased to think of them as sins or, if not all of them, has managed at least to remove most of the scent of sin that was once attached to them.’

  He pulled out a chair and sat opposite her, not really interested in this latest observation but willing to listen. He raised his glass in her direction and took a sip. It was as good as he remembered its being. Thank God, then, for good wine and good friends, and thank God even for a wife who could find reason for polemic in a middle school textbook of religious doctrine.

  ‘Think of lust,’ she continued.

  ‘I often do,’ he said and leered.

  Ignoring him, she went on. ‘When we grew up, it was, if not a sin, at least a semi-sin, or at least something that one did not discuss or present in public. Now you can’t look at a film or television or a magazine without seeing it.’

  ‘Do you think that’s bad?’ he asked.

  ‘Not necessarily. Just different. Maybe a better case is gluttony.’

  Ah, that was to strike a blow close to home, Brunetti thought, and pulled in his stomach a little.

  ‘We’re encouraged to it all the time. Every time we open a magazine or a newspaper.’

  ‘Gluttony?’ he asked, puzzled.

  ‘Not gluttony for food, necessarily,’ she said, ‘but the taking in or consumption of more than we need. After all, what is owning more than one television or one car or one house but a form of gluttony?’

  ‘I’d never thought of it that way,’ he temporized and went back to the refrigerator for more wine.

  ‘No, neither did I, not until I started to read this book. They define gluttony as eating too much and leave it at that, but I started thinking about what it would or could mean in larger terms.’

  That, it seemed to Brunetti, was the essence of Paola, this woman he still loved to the point of distraction, that she was always thinking about things – everything, it sometimes seemed to him – in larger terms.

  ‘Do you think you could start thinking about dinner in larger terms?’ he asked.

  She looked across at him, then at her watch, and saw that it was well after eight. ‘Ah,’ she said, as if surprised at being called back to such mundane things. ‘Of course. I heard the kids come in.’ Then, it seemed, she took her first look at him and asked, ‘What did you do to your shirt? Wipe your hands on it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and at her surprise added, ‘I’ll tell you after dinner.’

  Both Chiara and Raffi were there, a rare enough event during the summer, when one or both of them was often away with friends for dinner, sometimes to spend the night. Raffi had reached an age when his puppy love for Sara Paganuzzi had taken on a far more adult tone, so much so that Brunetti had taken him aside one afternoon some months before and tried to talk to him about sex, only to be told that they’d learned all about that sort of thing at school. It was Paola who had made it clear, declaring the following night that, regardless of what his friends did or thought, she’d spoken to Sara’s parents and they were all in agreement that he would not, under any circumstances, be allowed to spend the night at Sara’s home, and Sara would not stay at theirs.

  ‘But that’s medieval,’ Raffi had whined.

  ‘It’s also final,’ Paola had said, putting an end to argument.

  Whatever arrangement Raffi had worked out with Sara seemed to satisfy them both, for whenever she came to dinner she was polite and friendly to them all, and even Raffi seemed to bea
r his parents no ill-will for a policy most of his friends would certainly concur was ‘medieval’.

  Raffi and Chiara had both spent the day at the Alberoni, though with different groups of friends, and after a day of swimming and playing on the beach, they ate like field hands. It seemed, from the size of the platter Paola had covered with fish and shrimp, that she’d bought an entire swordfish. ‘Are you going to eat a third portion?’ Brunetti asked Raffi when he saw his son eyeing the almost empty platter.

  ‘He’s a growing boy, Papà,’ Chiara surprised him by saying, thus suggesting that she was full.

  Brunetti glanced at Paola, but she was busy helping herself to more spinach and missed the chance to appreciate the greatness of soul he displayed by failing to ask her if their son were guilty of gluttony. Turning back her attention, Paola said, ‘Finish it, Raffi. Nobody likes cold fish.’

  ‘If we were speaking English, would that be a pun, Mamma?’ Chiara asked. Along with Paola’s nose and lanky frame, Chiara had inherited her mother’s passion for language, Brunetti knew, but this was the first time she’d branched out into making jokes in her second language.

  By the time the ice-cream was finished, Chiara was almost asleep, so Paola sent both children to bed and started to gather the dishes. Brunetti carried the empty ice-cream bowl into the kitchen and stood at the counter, licking the serving spoon, then running it around the bottom of the bowl to pick up the last bits of peach. When there was no hopeful prospect of more, he set the bowl to the side of the sink and went back to the table to get the glasses.

  When the dishes were soaking, Paola said, ‘Do you think we should remain with the fruit theme and have a drop of Williams out on the terrace?’

  ‘I’d probably starve to death without you to protect me,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Guido, my dove,’ she said, ‘I worry a great deal about the things that could happen to you because of your job, but, believe me, starving to death is not one of them.’ She went out on to the terrace to wait for him.

  He decided to bring only two glasses and leave the bottle behind. Besides, he could go back and get more if he chose. Outside, he found her in a chair, her feet propped up on the lowest rung of the railing, her eyes closed. As he drew near, she stretched out her hand, and he put the glass into it. She sipped, sighed, sipped again. ‘God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world,’ she said in English.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve already had enough to drink, Paola,’ he observed.

  ‘Tell me about the shirt,’ she said, and he did.

  ‘And you believe this woman, this Signora Gismondi?’ she asked when Brunetti had finished telling her about the events of the day.

  ‘I think I do,’ he said. ‘There’s no reason for her not to be telling the truth. Nothing she said suggested that she was anything but the old woman’s neighbour.’

  ‘With a grudge,’ Paola suggested.

  ‘Because of the television?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t kill people because of the noise of a television,’ he insisted.

  She reached out and put her hand on his arm. ‘I’ve been listening to you talk about your work, Guido, for decades, and it seems to me that there are a lot of people who are ready to kill for a lot less than the noise of a television.’

  ‘For example?’ he asked.

  ‘Remember that man, was it in Mestre, who went outside to tell the guy in the car in front of his house to turn the radio down? When was it, about four years ago? He got killed, didn’t he?’

  ‘But that was a man,’ Brunetti said. ‘And he had a history of violence.’

  ‘And your Signora Gismondi doesn’t?’

  That made Brunetti remember that he had not bothered to ask Signorina Elettra to see what she could find out about Signora Gismondi. ‘I hardly think that’s likely,’ he said.

  ‘You probably wouldn’t find anything, anyway,’ Paola said.

  ‘Then why doubt her?’

  She sighed silently, then said, ‘It’s disappointing at times that after all these years you still don’t understand the way my mind works.’

  ‘I doubt I’ll ever understand that,’ Brunetti admitted with no attempt at irony. Then, ‘What is it I don’t understand now?’

  ‘That I believe you’re right about Signora Gismondi. There’d be no sense in it: a person who is embarrassed when someone tries to kiss their hand in public.’ It might be an inexact description of Signora Gismondi’s remarks, and it seemed he might have few occasions to apply it, but this seemed as good a rule about human behaviour as Brunetti had ever heard.

  ‘But I want you to be able to give proof to people like Patta and Scarpa and whoever else doesn’t want to believe this.’

  Paola still had her eyes closed, and he studied her profile: straight nose, perhaps too long, a faint tracing of lines around her eyes, lines he knew had been put there by humour, and just the first faint sagging of the flesh under her chin.

  He thought of the kids, how tired they had been at dinner, while his eyes travelled down her body. He set his glass down on the table and leaned towards her. ‘Could we return to our examination of the seven deadly sins?’ he asked.

  10

  HIS APPOINTMENT WITH Avvocatessa Roberta Marieschi was set for ten the next morning. Because her office was in Castello, just at the beginning of Via Garibaldi, Brunetti took the Number One and got off at Giardini. The trees in the public gardens looked tired and dusty and greatly in need of rain. Truth to tell, much the same could be said of most of the people in the city. He found the office with no difficulty, next door to what had once been a very good pizzeria, now transformed into a shop selling fake Murano glass. He rang the bell and went into the building, then up the stairs to the first-floor office.

  The secretary with whom he had spoken the previous day looked up when he came in, smiled and asked if he were Signor Brunetti. When he said that he was, she asked him if he would mind waiting a few minutes because the Dottoressa was still with another client. Brunetti took a seat on a comfortable grey sofa and studied the covers of the magazines on the table to his left. He chose Oggi because he seldom got to read it, refusing to buy it and embarrassed to be seen reading it. He was deep into an account of the nuptials of a minor Scandinavian princeling when the door to the left of the secretary opened and an elderly man came into the waiting room. He had a black leather briefcase in one hand, a silver-headed walking stick in the other.

  The secretary got to her feet and smiled. ‘Would you like to make another appointment, Cavaliere?’

  ‘Thank you, Signorina,’ he said with a gracious smile. ‘I’ll read through these papers first and then call about making one.’

  They exchanged polite goodbyes, and then the secretary approached Brunetti, who rose to his feet. ‘I’ll take you in, Signore,’ she said and went to the door the old man had closed behind him. She knocked once and went in, Brunetti a step or two behind her.

  The desk stood on the far side of the room, between two windows. No one sat there, but Brunetti’s eye was automatically drawn to a sudden movement on the floor. As he looked, something flashed from under the desk, then instantly disappeared: light brown, it could have been a mouse or perhaps a dormouse, though he thought they lived in the country, not the city. He pretended not to have seen anything and turned at the sound of his name spoken by a woman’s voice.

  Roberta Marieschi was about thirty-five, tall, erect, and very pretty; she stood at a bookcase that covered one wall of the office, slipping a thick volume back into its place. ‘Excuse me, Signor Brunetti,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’ She came over to him, hand extended, and greeted his own outstretched hand with a firm grasp. Turning to the desk, she said, ‘Please, have a seat.’ The secretary left.

  He studied the lawyer as she walked behind the desk and sat down. She was a bit shorter than he, but her athletic slimness made her look taller than she was. Her suit was dark grey raw silk, the skirt coming to just
below the knee. She wore simple black leather shoes with a low heel, shoes for the office or shoes for walking. Her skin was lightly tanned, just enough to give a glow of health but not so much as to suggest that the next step would be leather. No single feature of her face called for special attention, but the composite did: brown eyes, thick lashes, lips full and soft.

  ‘You said you had some questions about inheritance, Signor Brunetti?’ she said, but before he could confirm this, she surprised him by saying, her voice filled with patient exasperation, ‘Oh, stop that.’

  He had been looking at the papers on her desk, and when he glanced up at her, she had disappeared, or at least her head had disappeared. At the same moment, the light brown thing appeared from under the desk, something between a frond and a fan, and began to move slowly from side to side.

  ‘Poppi, I told you to stop that,’ the lawyer’s voice came from under the desk.

  Uncertain what to do, Brunetti remained where he was and watched the dog’s tail wag back and forth. After what seemed a long time, Avvocatessa Marieschi’s head, her dark hair ruffled, re-emerged, and she said, ‘I’m sorry. I usually don’t bring her to the office, but I just got back from vacation, and she’s angry with me for having left her alone.’ She pushed her chair back and spoke to the dog. ‘Isn’t that right, Poppi? You’re sulking and punishing me by trying to eat my shoe?’

  The dog shifted around under the desk, and after Brunetti heard it flop on to the floor, a considerably greater length of tail emerged. The lawyer looked at him, smiled, perhaps even blushed, and said, ‘I hope you don’t mind dogs.’

  ‘No, not at all. I like them quite a lot.’

  A low growl sounded in response to his voice, and she bent down again and said, ‘Come out of there, you fake. Come out and see there’s nothing to be jealous about.’ She reached under the desk, then lower, and then leaned back in her chair. Slowly there emerged from beneath the desk the head and then the body of the most beautiful dog Brunetti had ever seen. Poppi was a golden retriever, and even though he knew this was the current fashionable dog, nothing could prevent his admiration. Tongue lolling from her mouth, Poppi had broad-spaced eyes that had only to turn their gaze on Brunetti to conquer him. She stood as high as the lawyer’s chair, and as he watched, she laid her head in her owner’s lap and gazed up at her with adoration.