The Temptation of Forgiveness

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti was astonished to hear spoken what he had so often thought himself. Without pausing to think, he said, ‘It can’t be as bad as that.’

  She turned away from him and looked at the screen, as though she’d lost interest in what he had to say or didn’t agree with him but didn’t think it worth the trouble to talk about it. He went back to his office, musing on the fact that both he and Signorina Elettra worked for this unresponsive, negligent state.

  Because he’d been awake since two, Brunetti decided to treat himself well and walked down to Al Covo for lunch. On the way back, he gave thanks, as he always did, that the restaurant was only ten minutes from the Questura and never failed to send him back a new and happier man.

  Unfortunately, this new man was confronted with old problems: he called Professoressa Crosera’s telefonino but was told to leave a message; he called the hospital and received no information about Gasparini. He called Gasparini’s home number every hour, but the phone rang unanswered. Finally, at about five, he decided he had no choice but to pass by the hospital on his way home, and called Griffoni to tell her where he was going.

  He might as well have saved himself the effort: Professoressa Crosera was in her husband’s room, but when he went in and said good evening, she held her finger to her lips and pointed to her husband, lying now in a proper hospital bed. Brunetti indicated the door and the corridor beyond, but she shook her head and did not speak. Brunetti knew there was no likelihood that their conversation would disturb her husband, but it was not his right to tell her that.

  He stepped up to the bed and looked at Gasparini. The pale liquid still dripped into the back of his hand.

  Brunetti nodded to the woman and went out to the nurses’ desk and asked for Dottor Stampini, hoping that the doctor had learned something from the CAT scan. They told him the doctor had already left. Choosing to believe this, Brunetti decided to go home, too.

  12

  He entered a silent apartment, but years of experience told him it was not empty. The scent of pine forests filled the hallway, which meant that Raffi had used Brunetti’s shampoo again, and in the living room, Chiara’s red wool scarf trailed down the back of the sofa. Guido Brunetti, super-detective, he complimented himself as he went down the hall to Paola’s study.

  He stuck his head inside the door and found her lolling in complete abandon on the sofa, a book propped on her chest, a pencil in one hand.

  ‘Hard at work, I see,’ he said, coming into the room. He walked over and bent to kiss her forehead.

  ‘Just like you: so busy you couldn’t call and tell me about the man who was found,’ she said in fake umbrage.

  He sat at the other end of the sofa and pulled her feet on to his lap. ‘How did you find out about that?’

  ‘I wondered why you’d left so early, so I looked at Il Gazzettino online and found the story this afternoon.’ She let the book fall open on her chest. ‘That could mean only one thing.’ Her tone lightened as she went on. ‘I also wondered if you’d take time for lunch and whether you were dressed warmly enough – those silly things wives think about.’

  He took her left foot and began to push her toes back and forth. ‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

  She smiled and admitted, ‘It’s not easy, I know.’ She closed the book and leaned aside to place it on the table. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘Remember I told you about the woman who came to talk to me a week ago, afraid that her son was using drugs?’ He had not told her who it was, only the inconclusive story of a woman who lacked the courage to trust the police and left without giving any detailed information.

  She nodded.

  ‘It was a colleague of yours: Professoressa Crosera. The man in the hospital is her husband. It looks as though he was attacked on the street.’

  Paola pulled her foot free from him and sat up in the sofa, facing him, legs pulled beneath her. ‘Elisa’s husband? I can’t believe it. He’s an accountant, for God’s sake.’

  She paused for a moment as if suddenly conscious of what she’d just said, and added, ‘I mean, he’s such an ordinary man: no one would want to harm him.’

  A reason could always be found to want to harm some other person, Brunetti knew. ‘There are signs that someone grabbed his arm and shoved him down the steps of the bridge. What did Il Gazzettino say?’

  ‘Only that a man was found unconscious on the street,’ Paola answered. ‘There was no mention of an attack, only that people were asked to call the police if they saw anything that might be related to the incident, which they said took place near Ca’ Pesaro. They didn’t even give his initials, the way they do when they don’t want to provide a name.’

  Brunetti did not understand the ways of Il Gazzettino and thus remained silent.

  ‘Is Elisa with him?’ Paola asked.

  ‘Yes. I recognized him and called her this morning. She’s still there, I think.’

  ‘Ah, the poor woman,’ Paola said. ‘First the son, and now this.’

  ‘Did you know about the son?’ Brunetti asked, careful to keep his voice neutral.

  Paola looked at him sharply. ‘Of course not. She’d never tell me something like that. I simply assumed it because she was worried enough to go and talk to you. That means she knew something.’

  ‘But she said she didn’t,’ Brunetti insisted.

  ‘Of course she’d deny it. You’re the police.’ Paola might as well have been reading the multiplication table, so certain was she of her conclusion.

  Brunetti decided to leave that remark alone and said, instead, ‘She said she wanted to talk to her husband before telling me anything else.’

  ‘When will she be able to?’ Paola asked.

  Brunetti looked at the back of his hands, then at her, wondering how to tell her. ‘Maybe never,’ he finally said. When he saw Paola’s reaction to this, he temporized. ‘That’s what the neurologist said after he’d seen the X-rays. He said he needed a CAT scan to be certain. They did that today.’

  ‘The results?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. When I went back to the hospital, the doctor had already left. I can call him tomorrow.’ He allowed her to assimilate this, then added, ‘He said there was a chance he might be wrong.’

  Paola nodded. She turned and put her head back on the pillow, extended her legs and prodded at his thigh with her feet. ‘Poor woman,’ she said again. Then, after some time, ‘Poor everyone.’

  She closed her eyes, opened them for a time to study the ceiling, and then closed them again. Brunetti rested his right hand, quiet, on her feet and closed his own eyes. Soon he felt his reality begin to loosen and drift off from him. He remained seated, but he was somewhere else, and there were people passing by. He felt something move in his hand and he jerked up, suddenly awake but uncertain where he was.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Paola asked.

  ‘Nothing. I must have fallen asleep. It’s been a long day.’ He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the sofa.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Paola said.

  Brunetti was awake enough to say, ‘Always dangerous.’

  Together, their voices finished this family mantra … ‘especially in a woman.’

  That done, he asked, ‘Thinking what?’

  ‘Legal things. But you’ve probably already thought about them.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Brunetti said, aware that he had not given much legal thought to Gasparini’s situation.

  ‘If he doesn’t die, but just lies there for the rest of his life, what can the attacker ever be charged with?’ Before Brunetti could begin to answer, she added, ‘I know, I know, you have to find him first. But when you do, what crime has he committed?’

  Brunetti gave this some thought, testing the idea of assault. ‘That will depend on what happened on the bridge.’

  ‘And in the absence of witnesses, how will that be decided?’ He heard scepticism in her voice.

  Eyes still closed, Brunetti nodded. ‘You’re rig
ht, of course. If we get a match for the DNA, that person could very well say he was attacked by Gasparini.’ He considered this and then added, ‘We have to find him first.’

  ‘He’d have to explain why he didn’t report it to the police,’ Paola added. ‘If he knew Gasparini was injured, he’d have to report it, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but some people probably wouldn’t. At least if it’s a minor thing, even if they’re the victim. Imagine someone coming to us after attacking another person, even in self-defence: the idea’s ridiculous.’ He thought about this, then said, voice rich in the surprise with which one announces a discovery, ‘No one trusts us.’

  ‘Then you must place your hopes in Il Gazzettino and La Nuova,’ Paola said, forcing a note of religious piety into her voice.

  The thought of it drove Brunetti to ask, ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’

  With the wine, Brunetti brought his copy of Sophocles, decided on Antigone, and settled in at Paola’s feet to read the time away until dinner. He read half of the Introduction, written by a professor of psychology at the University of Cagliari. In it, the author presented a Jungian interpretation of the play, with Antigone as an archetype of the Mother and Creon of the Trickster. One’s darker side, The Shadow, Brunetti learned, could be exterior or interior: it could be your enemy or it could be yourself. Brunetti cheated and looked to see how many more pages of the Introduction remained to him. Fourteen. He set the book face-down on the table in front of the sofa and took a sip of wine – a very nice Collavini Ribolla Gialla he’d been saving for a special book – and sighed at the different sensations life could offer.

  Fortified, he picked up the book and flipped past the rest of the Introduction and began reading the play. He recalled the opening scene, Antigone explaining to her sister Ismene that the King, Creon, had forbidden that funeral rites be performed for their brother, Polyneices, whom Creon had declared a traitor to Thebes. His putrefying body lies outside the city walls, subject to the appetites of vultures and jackals.

  Antigone has decided that he must be buried, and that she will do it. She asks her sister if she will help her, and Ismene – poor, cautious Ismene – will have none of it. ‘The law is strong. We must submit to the law in this, and even in things that are worse.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Brunetti said aloud.

  Paola prodded his thigh with her left foot. ‘What?’

  ‘A Jungian psychologist has informed me that one’s Dark Shadow can be either interior or exterior, and now Ismene is telling me we must submit to the law.’

  ‘I hope there are other options,’ she said, not bothering to look up from her own book.

  ‘No. And now Ismene tells me that “We are mere women, and we cannot fight against men.”‘

  This time, Paola lowered her book and looked at him. Smiling, she said, ‘So I’ve always believed,’ and raised the book again. But then, before he could continue reading, Paola said from behind the book, ‘If memory serves, Ismene is about to protest, “I have no strength to break laws that are made for the public good.”‘

  Brunetti took one hand off his book and patted her ankle. ‘That’s why they’re classics, dear.’

  She did not choose to dignify his remark with a response.

  He read on and soon came to that fatal declaration from Antigone: ‘I am doing only what I must do.’

  It might as well have been Professoressa Crosera speaking, doing what she had to do, choosing to obey the law she accepted, that gave mothers the right to do anything to protect their children. Seek information from the police and solace from the fact that her son could not be arrested, and to hell with anyone else’s child.

  Antigone was obeying her own law. He turned the page and found her words: ‘But I will bury him. And if I must die because of it, I say that this crime is sacred.’ His hands sank to his lap and he sat, book abandoned, and tried to think of what it would be so to value your sense of what is right, or whatever you chose to call it, as to perform a ritual you believed to be necessary, knowing that your death was the inescapable result of doing so. Brunetti believed he would die for a person: his children, his wife. But for an ideal, a rule?

  His thoughts turned to Gasparini, that other father. What might he have been capable of doing in order to protect his son? Brunetti considered that possibility for a time. Could it be that he’d got it backwards, and Gasparini had been the aggressor on the bridge? Brunetti chided himself: only now did he consider the possibility, as if the man’s injuries made him necessarily a victim or because, having spoken to his wife, Brunetti would not think it gentlemanly to suspect him.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Paola interrupted him. ‘There was a note for you in the mailbox.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘On the kitchen counter. I thought you’d see it there.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Brunetti said, getting to his feet. In the kitchen he found an envelope with his name printed on it in block letters – no stamp. It stood braced against the pepper mill. He slipped his thumb under the tab and opened it. Inside, written in the same hand, he read,

  ‘Gianluca Fornari, Castello 2712.’

  13

  The next morning, Brunetti arrived at the Questura at nine. When he was told that Commissario Griffoni had not yet arrived, he went to her office and left a note on her desk, asking her to call him when she could.

  On the steps he met Alvise, who told him that Vianello had come in briefly but had had to return to Marghera again because the wife in the domestic violence case was now volunteering information about her husband’s activities in Venice.

  Brunetti was disappointed that his friend and sounding board would be gone again, taking with him the experience and good sense with which he listened to Brunetti’s descriptions of events. There was no need, however, for Alvise to know this, especially when the officer was trying to be helpful. ‘Good you told me, Alvise,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘He told me you’d say that, sir,’ Alvise answered with a smile, pleased to be the bearer of what he thought was important information. ‘He asked me to tell you he went back because it’s related to the break-in at Signor Bordoni’s.’

  ‘Thank you, Alvise,’ Brunetti said in a warmer voice, recognizing the name but not sure why. He climbed the stairs, sounding out the rhythm of the syllables with his steps: Bor-DON-i, Bor-DON-i. On the third sounding of the name, it clicked into place and Brunetti remembered the robbery, three years before, when thieves had opened the porta blindata to the Bordonis’ apartment by spraying liquid nitrogen on the hinges and bolts and shattering them, then lowering the metal-framed door to the ground, a job that suggested the participation of at least two people. The family was on holiday in Sardegna at the time, the live-in maid out for the evening to play burraco with her friends, as she did – Brunetti recalled – every Tuesday.

  The maid had come home at eleven and, finding the door lying on the floor in front of the apartment, had dialled 113 and gone downstairs to seek refuge with the neighbours until the police arrived.

  When the officers entered the apartment, they found the place in complete order: nothing damaged, nothing thrown carelessly to the floor, the lights on, just as the maid had left them. Everything seemed fine, and the police had begun to wonder why the door had been removed to no purpose – Brunetti remembered reading this in their report – until they entered the study of Dottor Bordoni. Three paintings – which the maid, who had memorized them from years of dusting, described as a fat woman with no clothes on; another woman in a black dress with a black servant holding a red umbrella for her; and a third female, this one perhaps a girl but not looking like a real human being – were gone. It was only on the family’s return the following day that Brunetti – who had been given the case by Patta because he ‘knew about paintings’ – learned that the female portraits were by Renoir, Van Dyck, and Picasso.

  Everything else was correctly in place. The three paintings were gone, evaporated from among the other paintings i
n whose company they had lived for years. No attempt was made by their thieves to contact the owner, nor were the paintings ever mentioned by those who occasionally sold information to the Art Fraud Police.

  And now Vianello, called to assist with an interrogation in a case of domestic abuse, might have caught a glimpse of them. Or so Brunetti hoped.

  He stopped at Signorina Elettra’s office, but as he entered he remembered it was Tuesday, which meant she would have had one of the pilots take her on a police launch to the Rialto market to buy flowers. He wrote Fornari’s name and address on a piece of paper, added a question mark, sealed it inside an envelope, and laid it on the keys of her computer.

  When he reached his office, he dialled Professoressa Crosera’s home phone and let it ring until he was told to leave a message and he’d be called in good course. He told her his name and gave his number and said that he would like to … but before he could finish speaking, the line suddenly clicked open. He hoped it would be the Professoressa answering and waited expectantly for her voice, but the line went dead.

  He dialled the central number for the hospital and asked to speak to Dottor Stampini in Neurologia and, when asked, gave his name and said it was police business, volunteering nothing more than that.

  Dottor Stampini was soon on the line. ‘Good morning, Commissario,’ he said and then went on without the formality of an introduction, ‘I’d like to be able to give you better news than I can, but the CAT scan is fairly clear.’ He paused and, in a far less impersonal voice, asked, ‘Do you understand the jargon?’