Beastly Things

by Donna Leon

  He was suddenly tempted to ask Patta if he had ever considered the view from his window as a metaphor for the difference between himself and Brunetti. They both looked at the same thing, but because Brunetti’s view came from a higher place, it was better. No, perhaps wiser not to ask Patta this.

  ‘Well, get busy with it, then,’ Patta said in the voice he used when urged to be a mover of men and a creator of dynamic action.

  Brunetti knew from long experience that this was the voice that was most in need of deference, and so he answered, ‘Sì, Dottore,’ and got to his feet.

  Downstairs, Vianello was at his desk. He was not reading, nor talking with his colleagues nor on the phone. He sat at his desk, motionless and silent, apparently deep in consideration of its surface. When Brunetti came in, the other men in the room looked at him uneasily, almost as if they feared he was coming to take Vianello away because of something he had done.

  Brunetti stopped at the desk of Masiero and asked in a normal voice if he had had any luck with the break-ins to the cars parked in the Municipal Garage at Piazzale Roma. The officer told him that, the night before, three of the video cameras in the garage had been vandalized, and six cars had been broken into.

  Though he was not involved in the case and had no interest in it, Brunetti continued to question the officer about it, speaking more loudly than he ordinarily would. As Masiero explained his theory that the thefts must be the work of someone who worked there or of someone who parked his car there, Brunetti kept the edge of his attention on Vianello, who remained still and silent.

  Brunetti was about to suggest disguising or camouflaging the cameras when he sensed motion from Vianello, and a moment later the Inspector was at his side. ‘Yes, a coffee would be good.’

  Without another word to Masiero, Brunetti left the squad room and led the way down to the front door and then along the riva towards the bar up near the bridge. Neither had much to say, though Vianello did observe dully that it would probably be easier simply to check the schedule of the people working at the garage for the nights of the thefts. That failing, he went on, it would be easy enough to check the computer list of those who had used their entrance cards to park or remove their cars on the nights in question.

  They entered the bar and, united in their hunger, stood and studied the tramezzini on offer. Bambola asked what they would like. Brunetti asked for a tomato and egg and a tomato and mozzarella. Vianello said he’d have the same. Both asked for white wine and took their glasses to the booth at the far end of the bar.

  It was only a moment before Bambola was there with the sandwiches. Ignoring them, Vianello drank half his wine; Brunetti did the same, then nodded to Bambola, holding up his glass and pointing to Vianello’s.

  He set his glass down and picked up one of the tramezzini, not bothering to see which it was. Hunger demanded haste, not consideration. Less mayonnaise than Sergio used, Brunetti determined with the first bite, and all the better for that. He finished his glass and handed it to the returning Bambola.

  ‘Well?’ Brunetti finally said as the barman went off with the empty glasses.

  ‘What did Patta say?’ Vianello asked, then smiled at Brunetti’s look. ‘Alvise saw you going in.’

  ‘He told me to get on with it, without specifying what he meant. I take it to mean the Borelli woman.’

  ‘It didn’t look like a place a woman would want to be,’ Vianello said, echoing his and Patta’s thought while somehow managing to make it sound less objectionable. Then the Inspector surprised him by saying, ‘My grandfather was a farmer.’

  ‘I thought he was Venetian,’ Brunetti said, one thing making the other impossible.

  ‘Not until he was almost twenty. He came here just before the First World War. My mother’s father. His family was starving to death on a farm in Friuli, so they took the middle boy and sent him to the city to work. But he grew up on a farm. I remember, when I was a kid, he used to tell me stories about what it was like to work under a padrone. The man who owned the farm would ride over on his horse every day and count the eggs, or at least count the chickens and then demand more eggs if he didn’t get the number he thought was right.’ Vianello looked out the window of the bar at the people walking up and down the bridge. ‘Think of it: the guy owned most of the farms in the region, and he spent his time counting eggs.’ He shook his head at the thought and added, ‘He told me the only thing they could do, sometimes, was drink some of the milk while it was set out to settle overnight.’

  Caught by memory, Vianello placed his glass on the table, his sandwiches forgotten. ‘He told me he had an uncle who starved to death. They found him in his barn one morning, in the winter.’

  Brunetti, who had heard similar stories when he was a boy, asked nothing.

  Vianello looked across at Brunetti and smiled. ‘But it doesn’t help anything, does it, talking about these things?’ He picked up one of his sandwiches, took a tentative bite, as if to remind himself what eating was, apparently liked it, and finished the tramezzino in two more quick bites. And then the other.

  ‘I’m curious about this Borelli woman,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Signorina Elettra will find whatever there is,’ Vianello observed, repeating one of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom of the Questura.

  Brunetti finished his wine and set down his glass. ‘Patta wouldn’t like it to have been a robbery,’ he said, repeating another one. ‘Let’s go back.’

  21

  THE RELIEF OF sitting and talking while eating and drinking restored their spirits, and when they left the bar, it seemed the lingering odour was gone from their jackets. Walking along the riva, Brunetti said he would ask Signorina Elettra to have a look into the life of Signorina Borelli. Vianello offered to see what there was to be found out about Papetti, the director of the slaughterhouse, both from official sources and from ‘friends on the mainland’, whatever that might mean. When they entered the Questura, the Inspector went into the officers’ room and Brunetti continued up to Patta’s office.

  Signorina Elettra was behind her computer, her arms raised over her head, hands clasped. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ Brunetti said as he came in.

  ‘Not at all, Dottore,’ she said, lowering her arms but continuing to wiggle her fingers as she did so. ‘I’ve been sitting behind this screen all day, and I suppose I’m tired of it.’

  Had his son said he was tired of eating, or Paola said she was tired of reading, Brunetti could have been no more astonished. He wanted to ask if she was tired of … but he failed to find the word that adequately named what she did all day. Snooping? Unearthing? Breaking the law?

  ‘Is there something else you’d rather do?’ he asked.

  ‘Is that a polite question or a real question, Signore?’

  ‘I believe it’s a real one,’ Brunetti admitted.

  She ran her hand through her hair and considered his question. ‘I suppose if I had to choose a profession, I’d like to have been an archaeologist.’

  ‘Archaeologist?’ he could only repeat. Oh, the secret dream of so many people he knew.

  She put on her most public smile and voice. ‘Of course, only if I could make sensational discoveries and become very, very famous.’

  Aside from Carter and Schliemann, Brunetti thought, few archaeologists became famous.

  Refusing to believe her about this part of her desire, he asked, with audible scepticism, ‘Only for fame?’

  She was silent a long time, considering, then smiled and admitted, ‘No, not really. I’d like to find the pretty trinkets, of course – that’s the only reason archaeologists become famous – but what I’d really like to know is how people lived their daily lives and how much they were like us. Or different, in fact. Though I’m not sure it’s archaeology that tells us that.’

  Brunetti, who believed that it wasn’t and that literature had far more to tell about how people were and lived, nodded. ‘What do you look at in the museums?’ he asked. ‘The beautiful pieces or the
belt loops?’

  ‘That’s what’s so perplexing,’ she answered. ‘So much of their everyday stuff was beautiful that I never know what to look at. Belt loops, hairpins, even the clay dishes they ate from.’ She thought about this and then added, ‘Or maybe we consider them beautiful only because they’re handmade, and we’re so accustomed to seeing mass-produced things that we say they’re beautiful only because each one is different and because we’ve come to place a higher value on handmade objects.’

  She gave a quick laugh and then added, ‘I suspect most of them would be willing to trade their beautiful clay drinking cup for a glass jam jar with a lid, or their hand-carved ivory comb for a dozen machine-made needles.’

  To show that he agreed, he upped the ante and said, ‘They’d probably give you anything you asked for in exchange for a washing machine.’

  She laughed again. ‘I’d give you anything you asked for in exchange for a washing machine.’ Then, suddenly serious, she added, ‘I suspect that most people – at least women – would be willing to renounce their right to vote in exchange for a washing machine. God knows I would.’

  Brunetti at first thought she was joking, pushing things over the top as was her wont, but then he realized she was not.

  ‘Would you really?’ he asked, incredulous.

  ‘For a vote in this country? Absolutely.’

  ‘And in some other country?’ he asked.

  This time she ran the fingers of both hands through her hair and lowered her head. She sat as though she were watching the names of the nations of the world scroll by on the surface of her desk. Finally she looked up and said, all playfulness removed from her voice, ‘I’m afraid I would.’

  Rejoinder or comment had he none, and so he said, ‘I’ve got some things I’d like you to find, Signorina.’

  Instantly, she ceased being a statue representing the demise of democracy and was transformed into her usual efficient self. He gave her Giulia Borelli’s name and explained her relationship to the murdered man and her job at the slaughterhouse. Though he had little doubt of Vianello’s competence, Brunetti did remember that Signorina Elettra was the master, Vianello only the apprentice, and so he added the names of Papetti and Bianchi, explaining who each of them was.

  ‘Is the press going to hound us about this, do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, they’ve got the uncle, now,’ she said. ‘So no one writes. No one calls.’ Her allusion to the murder case that was currently convulsing the country was clear: a murder within the confines of a close-knit family, with parents and relatives telling different stories about the victim and the accused. Each new day brought additions and subtractions to the list of perpetrators; the press and television were gorged with people willing to be interviewed. It seemed that each day also brought a new photo of some mournful-faced member of the same family holding up a photo of the sweet young victim; then by the next day the photo-holder had been transformed by the revelations of yet another relative from mourner to suspect.

  The coffee in the bars was flavoured by the story; one could not ride a boat without hearing it discussed. In the early stages, a month ago, when the young woman first disappeared, the policeman in Brunetti wanted to stand on the boat landings and shout, ‘It was someone in the family’, but he had kept a rigorous, professional silence. Now, when the subject arose, as it did everywhere, he refused to feign surprise at the new discoveries and did his best to change the subject.

  Thus, even with Signorina Elettra, he didn’t bother to engage and said, instead, ‘If anyone from the press does call, direct them to the Vice-Questore, would you?’

  ‘Of course, Commissario.’

  He had been curt; of course he had been curt, but he had not wanted to be sucked into yet another discussion of the crime. It troubled him that many people had so readily come to treat murder as a kind of savage joke, to which the only response was grotesque humour. Perhaps this reaction was no more than magic thinking, a manifestation of the hope that laughter would keep it from happening again, or from happening to the person who laughed.

  Or perhaps it was an attempt to disguise or deny the deeper revelation made by this murder: the close-knit Italian family was as much a piece of antiquity as were those handmade belt loops and clay dishes. Like them, it had been crafted in a simpler age, made from sturdy materials for people who expected simpler things from life. But now contacts and pleasures were mass-produced and made of less valuable materials, and so the family had followed the path of the church choir and attendance at Mass. Lip service was still paid, but all that remained was a well-remembered ghost.

  ‘I’ll be in my office,’ Brunetti said, not wanting to stay there and pursue any of the topics they had initiated. When he reached his own office, he moved his chair to the end of his desk to where he had moved the computer he could not stop himself from thinking of as Signorina Elettra’s.

  He could not bear to learn more about the process he had witnessed that morning, but he was curious to learn about the industry of farming as it existed at present. His curiosity led him through the halls of Brussels and Rome and the impenetrable prose of the various Faceless Deciders of farming policy.

  When he tired of that, Brunetti decided to try his skill by having a look for Papetti, Director of the slaughterhouse at Preganziol, a search which surprised Brunetti with its ease. Alessandro Papetti, it turned out, was not a raw-handed son of the soil with an attachment to husbandry and all things bovine, but the son of a lawyer from Treviso who had taken a degree in economia aziendale from the University of Bologna. His first position, understandably enough, had been in his father’s office, where he had spent a decade as a tax consultant for his father’s business clients. Four years ago, he had been appointed Director of the macello.

  Soon after his appointment, Papetti had given an interview to La Tribuna, the local paper of Treviso, in which he posed for a photo with his wife and three small children. He explained that farmers were the lifeblood of a nation, the men on whose backs the entire nation stood.

  Brunetti failed to find any information about Bianchi, and the files of the Treviso edition of the Gazzettino gave him only a brief reference from three years ago to the appointment of Signorina Borelli to her position at the macello. Signorina Borelli, it was explained, who had earned a degree in marketing and tourism, had left her position at the accounts department of Tekknomed, a small pharmaceutical company in Treviso, to take up her new job.

  Treviso and Treviso, Brunetti reflected. But what’s in a city?

  Idly, he changed sites and brought up the Treviso phone book. In seconds, there it was: Tekknomed. He dialled the number and, after three rings, it was answered by a bright-voiced young woman.

  ‘Good morning, Signorina,’ Brunetti said. ‘This is the office of Avvocato Papetti. We’ve been trying to send you an email for the last half-hour, but it keeps coming back as undeliverable. So I thought I’d call and see if you’ve been having trouble with your server.’ Then, injecting concern into his voice, he added, ‘Of course, it might be ours, but yours is the only address this is happening with, so I thought I should call and tell you.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Signore. Hold on a minute and I’ll check. Who were you sending it to?’

  Prepared for her question, Brunetti said, ‘To the people in Accounts.’

  ‘One minute, please. I’ll ask them.’

  There was a click, a bit of meaningless music, while Brunetti held the line, very happy to be doing so.

  She was quickly back and said, ‘They asked if you’re sending it to the address you always use: conta@Tekknomed.it?

  ‘Absolutely,’ Brunetti said, sounding confused. ‘Let me try it again and see what happens. If it comes back, I’ll call again, all right?’

  ‘Fine. That’s very kind of you, Signore. Not many people would bother to take the trouble to call and tell us.’

  ‘It’s the least we can do for our clients,’ Brunetti said.

  She thanked
him and was gone.

  ‘Bingo,’ Brunetti said as he replaced the phone. But then his habitual caution asserted itself and he changed that to ‘Bingo?’

  22

  ‘IT COULD BE coincidence,’ Vianello insisted in response to Brunetti’s explanation that Tekknomed – where Signora Borelli had worked – was a client of Papetti’s father’s legal office.

  ‘She studied marketing and tourism, Lorenzo. And now she’s his assistant in a slaughterhouse, for God’s sake. Can you tell me how that came about?’

  ‘What are you thinking of accusing her of, Guido? Changing jobs and having an affair?’

  ‘You said it,’ Brunetti replied, realizing how weak and petulant his argument was. ‘She changed jobs after working for a company her new boss was involved with.’

  Vianello gave him a long look before he answered. ‘These are times of self-invention, Guido: you’re the one who’s always telling me that. Young people with degrees, no matter what they’re in, are lucky to have a job, any job. She probably got a good offer and agreed to follow him to the new job.’ When Brunetti didn’t answer, Vianello asked, ‘How many of your friends’ kids have jobs? Most of the ones I know sit at home in front of their computers all day and have to ask their parents for spending money on the weekend.’

  Brunetti raised a hand to stop him. ‘I know all that. Everyone knows that. But it’s not what I’m talking about. Here’s a woman with what was presumably a good job …’

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘Well, we can find out. And if it was a good job, then she left it to go and do something new.’

  ‘Better salary. Better hours. Closer to home. Hated her old boss. More vacation. Private office. Company car.’ Vianello stopped and gave Brunetti a chance to answer, and when he did not, the Inspector asked, ‘You want me to give you more reasons why she might have changed jobs?’

  ‘It feels strange,’ Brunetti said, sounding, even to himself, like a truculent child grasping at straws.