Beastly Things

by Donna Leon

  ‘I see.’ Brunetti allowed some time to pass, during which Pucetti twice glanced at the computer, as if memorizing the name and dimensions. ‘And where does this lead us?’

  Pucetti looked up eagerly. ‘Isn’t it enough to reopen the investigation? He makes about fifteen hundred Euros a month at that job. Where else does this money come from? He’s been filmed opening suitcases and taking things from them: jewels, cameras, computers.’ He paused, as though he were not the one who should be answering questions.

  ‘The filming was dismissed as evidence during the last trial, as you know, Pucetti, and we are not yet at a place where the mere possession of large amounts of money is proof that it was stolen.’ Brunetti kept calm, imitating the voice of the defence attorney the last time the baggage handlers had been accused of theft. ‘He could have won the lottery, or his wife could have. He could have borrowed the money from members of his family. He could have found it in the street.’

  ‘But you know he didn’t, sir,’ Pucetti pleaded. ‘You know what he’s doing, what the lot of them are doing.’

  ‘What I know and what a prosecutor can prove in a court of law are entirely different matters, Pucetti,’ Brunetti said, not without a note of reprimand in his voice. ‘And I suggest very strongly that you consider this fact.’ He saw the young man open his mouth to protest and raised his voice to stop him. ‘Further, I want you to go back and very carefully cancel any traces you might have left during your investigation of Signor Buffaldi’s finances.’ Before Pucetti could object, he added, ‘If you managed to find them, then someone else will be able to find that you have been there, and that information would render Signor Buffaldi untouchable for the rest of his career.’

  ‘He’s pretty much untouchable now, isn’t he?’ Pucetti said, voice just short of anger.

  That was enough to spark Brunetti’s own. Impetuous boy, thinking he could change things: so much the way Brunetti had been decades ago, just sworn into the force and keen to work for justice. The memory calmed Brunetti, who said, ‘Pucetti, the system we have is the one we have to use. To criticize it is as useless as to praise it. You know and I know how limited our powers are.’

  As if giving in to a force stronger than his power to resist it, Pucetti said, ‘But what about her? She finds out things, and you use them.’ Brunetti was again conscious of Pucetti’s zeal.

  ‘Pucetti, I saw your face when I told you to cancel your traces: you know you left some. If you can’t eliminate them, then ask Signorina Elettra to help you do so. I don’t want this case made more difficult than it is.’

  ‘But unless you use this …’ Pucetti said in a high voice.

  Staring him down, Brunetti continued in a tight voice. ‘I have the information, Pucetti. I’ve had it since they booked the tickets for the cruises and bought the car, and bought the house. So go back and remove your traces, and don’t ever think of doing something like this without my knowledge, without my authorization.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Pucetti asked, in a voice that sought information, not sarcastic revenge. ‘About how you got it?’

  How much to trust him? How to stop Pucetti from dragging them into a legal swamp while still encouraging him to take chances? ‘She doesn’t leave traces and you do.’

  Then Brunetti picked up his phone and dialled Signorina Elettra’s number. When she answered, he said, ‘Signorina. I’m just going out for a coffee. Do you think you could step up to my office while I’m gone? Pucetti has some changes he has to make to research he’s been doing, and I wonder if you could help him.’ He paused for a moment while she answered, then said, ‘Of course I’ll wait until you come up.’ He replaced the phone and went to stand by the window until she arrived.

  4

  BRUNETTI, WHO HAD already had three coffees that morning and did not want another, went down to the lab in search of Bocchese and whatever information he might have about the man who had been found that morning. When he went in, he saw two technicians at a long table at the back, one pulling objects from a cardboard box with plastic-gloved hands while the other appeared to check something on a list each time he removed a new object. The gloved one took a step to his left as Brunetti entered, cutting off his ability to distinguish the objects.

  Bocchese sat at his desk in the corner, his head bent over a sheet of paper on which he appeared to be making a drawing. The lab chief did not raise his head at the sound of approaching footsteps, and Brunetti saw that the bald spot on the top of his head had expanded in recent months. Draped in a shapeless white workman’s tunic, Bocchese could easily have been a monk in some medieval monastery. Brunetti abandoned this idea as he grew near and saw that the man was drawing a thin blade and not illuminating the initial letter in some biblical text.

  ‘Is that what killed him?’ Brunetti asked.

  Bocchese changed his grip on the pencil and used the side of the point to shade in the underside of the blade. ‘It’s what Rizzardi’s report described,’ he said, holding the paper up so that he and Brunetti could examine it. ‘It’s almost twenty centimetres long and widens to four near the handle.’ Then, with gruff expertise, ‘So it was a regular knife, not one he could fold closed and put in his pocket. Find it in any kitchen, I’d say.’

  ‘The point?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Very narrow. But that’s normal with knives, isn’t it? Most of it is about two centimetres wide.’ He tapped the eraser end of the pencil against the point of the blade in the drawing. Then he added a few lines, curving the cutting edge of the blade upward to the tip. ‘The report says tissue at the top of the cuts showed evidence of being scraped, probably when the blade was pulled out,’ he explained. ‘The cuts were wider at the top, but knife wounds always are.’ Again he tapped the drawing with the eraser. ‘That’s what we’re looking for.’

  ‘You didn’t draw a handle,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Of course not,’ the technician said, putting the paper down on his desk. ‘There’s nothing in the report that would give me any idea of what it was like.’

  ‘Does it make a difference, not knowing?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘You mean in identifying what sort of knife it is?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  Bocchese put his hand, palm down, on the paper, just at the wider end of the blade, as if to wrap it around whatever handle would be there. ‘It would have to be at least ten centimetres long,’ he said, his hand still flat on the paper. ‘Most handles are.’ Then, surprising Brunetti with the irrelevance of it, he added, ‘Even potato peelers.’

  He removed his hand and looked at Brunetti for the first time. ‘You need at least ten to get a grip of any sort. Why’d you ask?’

  ‘Because he’d have to carry it, and if the blade’s twenty and the handle ten, then it would be an awkward thing to walk around with.’

  ‘Folded in a newspaper, in a computer case, briefcase; it would even fit in a Manila folder if you put it in on the slant,’ Bocchese said. ‘Make a difference?’

  ‘You don’t walk around with a knife that long unless you have a reason to. You have to think about how to carry it so no one will see it.’

  ‘And that suggests premeditation?’

  ‘I think so. He wasn’t killed in the kitchen or the workshop or wherever else a knife might be lying around, was he?’

  Bocchese shrugged.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti asked, leaning one hip against the desk and folding his arms.

  ‘We don’t know where it happened. The ambulance report says he was found in Rio del Malpaga, just behind the Giustinian. Rizzardi’s says he had water in his lungs, so he could have been killed anywhere and put in the water, then drifted there.’ Seeing some invisible imperfection in the drawing, Bocchese picked up his pencil and added another faint line halfway down the blade.

  ‘It’s not an easy thing to do,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Slip a body into a canal.’

  ‘From a boat, it might be
easier,’ Bocchese suggested.

  ‘Then you’ve got blood in a boat.’

  ‘Fish bleed.’

  ‘And fishing boats have motors, and no motors are allowed after eight at night.’

  ‘Taxis are,’ Bocchese volunteered.

  ‘People don’t hire taxis to dump bodies in the water,’ Brunetti said easily, familiar with Bocchese’s manner.

  After only a second’s hesitation, the technician said, ‘Then a boat without a motor.’

  ‘Or a water door from a house.’

  ‘And no nosey neighbours.’

  ‘A quiet canal, a place where there are no neighbours, nosey or otherwise,’ Brunetti suggested, starting to examine the map in his head. Then he said, ‘Rizzardi’s guess was after midnight.’

  ‘Cautious man, the Doctor.’

  ‘Found at six,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘“After midnight”,’ Bocchese said. ‘Doesn’t mean he went in at midnight.’

  ‘Where behind the Giustinian was he found?’ Brunetti asked, needing the first coordinate on his map.

  ‘At the end of Calle Degolin.’

  Brunetti made a noise of acknowledgement, glanced at the wall behind Bocchese, and sent himself walking in an impossible circular path, radiating out from that fixed point, jumping over canals from one dead-end calle to another, trying, but failing, to recall the buildings that had doors and steps down to the water.

  After a moment, Bocchese said, ‘Better ask Foa about the tides. He’d know.’

  It had been Brunetti’s thought, as well. ‘Yes. I’ll ask him.’ Then he asked, ‘Can I have a look at his things?’

  ‘Of course. They should be dry by now,’ Bocchese said. He walked over to the table where the two men were still listing the things taken from the box, passed them, and opened the door to a storeroom to their left. Inside, Brunetti was struck by the heat and by the smell: fetid, rank, a combination of earth and mould and abandoned things.

  Neatly folded over an ordinary household drying rack were a shirt and a pair of trousers, a set of men’s underwear and a pair of socks. Brunetti bent to look more closely and saw nothing peculiar about them. Underneath stood a single shoe, brown, about Brunetti’s size. A small table held a gold wedding ring and a metal watch with an expandable metal band, a few coins, and a set of keys.

  Brunetti picked up the keys without bothering to ask if he could touch them. Four of them looked like ordinary door keys, another one was much smaller and the last one had the distinctive VW that the manufacturer put on all of their keys. ‘So he owns a car,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Like about forty million other people,’ Bocchese answered.

  ‘Then I won’t say anything about the house keys or the one for the mailbox,’ Brunetti said with a smile.

  ‘Four houses?’

  ‘My house needs two,’ Brunetti said. ‘Most of the houses in the city do. And two more get me into my office.’

  ‘I know,’ Bocchese said. ‘I’m trying to provoke you.’

  ‘I noticed,’ Brunetti said. ‘What about the smaller one? Am I right to think it’s for a mailbox?’

  ‘Could be,’ Bocchese admitted, in a tone that said it could just as easily not be.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Small safe, not a serious one; tool chest; garden shed; door to a garden or courtyard; and I suppose I’m overlooking some other possibilities.’

  ‘Anything engraved in the ring?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Bocchese said. ‘Machine made – sold everywhere.’

  ‘Clothes?’

  ‘Most of then made in China – what isn’t these days? – but the shoe is Italian: Fratelli Moretti.’

  ‘Odd combination: clothing made in China and expensive shoes.’

  ‘Someone could have given them to him,’ Bocchese suggested.

  ‘Anyone ever give you a pair of shoes?’

  ‘Does that mean I should stop provoking you?’ the technician asked.

  ‘It would help.’

  ‘All right.’ Then, ‘You want me to guess out loud?’

  ‘That would help, too.’

  ‘I’ve had a look at the things he was wearing, and it doesn’t look like he was in a boat. His clothes are clean: no oil, no tar, none of the sort of thing you’d get on you if you were put in the bottom of a boat. Even if there’s no motor, they’re dirty things.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘So I think he was killed on land, either on the street or in a house, and he was put in the water after he was stabbed. Whoever did it thought he was dead or was so sure of what they were doing that they knew he had no chance, and the canal was just a way to get rid of him. Maybe to give them more time to get out of the city, or maybe they wanted him to drift away from where they did it.’

  Brunetti nodded. He too had been thinking about this. ‘A man lying in the bottom of a boat would always be visible from above.’

  ‘We’ll check for fibres, to see if he was covered or wrapped in something. But I don’t think that’s the case,’ Bocchese said, waving towards the shirt, simple white cotton, the sort of thing any man would wear.

  ‘No jacket, eh?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No. All he was wearing was the shirt and trousers,’ Bocchese said. ‘He must have been wearing a jacket or a sweater. Too cold last night to go out without one.’

  ‘Or he could have been killed in his own house?’ Brunetti suggested. It was his turn to provoke: he wanted Bocchese to agree with him before remarking that most people did not walk around in their houses with their keys in their pockets.

  ‘Yes,’ Bocchese said, sounding very unconvinced.

  ‘But?’

  ‘Rizzardi’s report says he has Madelung. He hasn’t sent the photos yet, but I’ve seen it before. It’s possible someone here has seen him. Or they’d know him at the hospital.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti agreed, uncertain that anyone would recognize a photo of the battered face. Bocchese was being cooperative, so he decided not to mention the keys again.

  ‘Anything else?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No. If I find anything or think of anything, I’ll let you know, all right?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Brunetti said. Bocchese had mentioned the man’s disease, certain that anyone who saw him would remember him. He wondered if a shoe salesman would. ‘Can you send me an email with the information about the shoe?’

  5

  WHEN HE RETURNED to his office, Brunetti found Signorina Elettra still sitting at his computer. She looked up when he came in and smiled. ‘I’m almost finished, Commissario. As I was here, I thought I’d download a few more things, and then it’s ready.’

  ‘Dare I ask how you managed to procure this marvel, Signorina?’ he asked, leaning forward with both hands on the back of a chair.

  She held up one finger to ask him to wait and returned her attention to the keyboard. She was wearing green today, a light wool dress he did not remember her having worn before. She rarely wore green: perhaps her choice was in honour of springtime; even the Church used green as the ecclesiastical colour of hope. Trying not to appear to do so, he watched her work, struck by the totality of her concentration. He might as well have been somewhere else for all the attention she paid him. Was it the program or working on the new computer that enthralled her so? he wondered. And how was it possible that something so alien from the unruly mess of life could exert such an attraction on such a person? Computers failed to interest Brunetti: yes, he used them and was glad of being able to do so, but he was always much happier to send this green-clad hunter off in pursuit of the game that proved too elusive for his limited skills. He simply could not work up any enthusiasm for the concept, had no desire to spend endless hours sitting in front of the screen and seeing what he could make the computer do for him.

  Brunetti was sufficiently attuned to the times in which he lived to realize how foolish his prejudice was and how it sometimes slowed down the pace at which he could work. Had it not been that way with the investigation into
the protest against European milk quotas that had blocked the autostrada near Mestre for two days last autumn? Because Signorina Elettra had been on vacation when that happened, he had had to wait two days before learning that the men who had set fire to cars trapped by the farmers’ roadblock were petty criminals from Vicenza, urban criminals who had probably never seen a cow in their lives. And it was not until her return that he found out they were also cousins of the head of the provincial association of farmers, the man who had organized the protest.

  His memory drifted back to that protest, which his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, had ordered him to observe in case the violence spread to the bridge to Venice and thus into their territory. He remembered the helmeted Carabinieri with their Plexiglas shields and face masks and polished black boots that turned their legs into highly polished stems and thinking how much like giant bugs they looked. He recalled the sight of them marching forward, their shields locked together, pressing ahead to repel any protest from the assembled farmers.

  And there he was, the man with the neck, leaping unsummoned into Brunetti’s memory. He had stood in a group of people on the other side of the blocked road from Brunetti, milling around their stopped cars and looking across the road divider at the farmers and the police. Brunetti remembered the taurine neck and bearded face and the clear eyes that watched the two opposed lines of men with what seemed to be a mixture of confusion and exasperation, but then Brunetti’s attention had been pulled away by the explosion of violence and vandalism into which the protest descended.

  ‘… many graces with which we are favoured by a beneficent Europe,’ he heard Signorina Elettra say and called his attention back to her.

  ‘In what particular way, Signorina?’ he asked.

  ‘The funds to Interpol to combat the falsification of merchandise that is protected by patents from any country in the European Union,’ she said with a smile, the one she used when at her most predatory. Brunetti gave an inner tremble at the thought of the patent authorizations that must be streaming out of the offices of certain countries.