Through A Glass Darkly

by Donna Leon

  De Cal saw Brunetti and stormed towards him, shouting, 'What the hell is it now? First you let that bastard out of jail, and now I can't even go into my own factory.'

  More familiar with De Cal than the others, Grassi stepped forward and, gesturing at the technicians, who were now struggling into their disposable scene-of-crime suits, said, 'I think they want to go in there alone, sir.'

  'Remember who you work for, Grassi,' De Cal spat with effulgent rage. 'For me. Not for the police. I give the orders here, not the police.' He put his face close to Grassi's. Brunetti could see that the tendons of his neck were swollen. 'You understand that?'

  Brunetti moved up beside Grassi. 'Your factory is the scene of a death, Signor De Cal,' he said, noticing that Lazzari seemed relieved by his having taken over. 'The technical crew will be here for a few hours, and then the scene will be opened and your men can go back to work.'

  De Cal came suddenly closer, forcing Brunetti to move back one step. 'I can't afford a few hours.' De Cal noticed, as if for the first time, the technicians and their equipment. 'These fools will be in there all day. How can my men work with them there?'

  'If you prefer, Signore,' Brunetti said with his most official voice, 'we can get an order from a judge and sequester the site for a week or two.' He smiled. Grassi, he noticed, had taken the opportunity to disappear.

  De Cal opened his mouth, then closed it and backed away, muttering. Brunetti heard 'bastard' a few times, and worse, but he chose to ignore the old man.

  The technicians, who had set down their bags while all this was going on, now picked them up and moved towards the doors. Brunetti held up a hand to stop them. Turning to Bocchese, he said, 'If you have masks, you better use them.' The men set their bags down again and one of them hunted around until he found a stack of cellophane-wrapped surgical masks, which he passed out to the other men. Brunetti put out his hand and accepted one, ripped it open, and pulled the elastics over his ears. He adjusted the mask over his nose and mouth, then took a pair of plastic gloves from the same man and slipped them on.

  One of the crew humped a long bag onto his shoulder: lights and tripods. He went in first and started looking around for an electrical socket. To no one in particular, Brunetti said, 'He's down by the free-standing furnace', and then joined the technicians entering the building.

  His eyes had barely adjusted to the dimmer light when he heard his name called from the entrance and turned to see Vianello, wearing gloves but no mask. Brunetti held up a hand to Vianello and went over to the technician to ask for another mask. He took it over to the Inspector and said, 'You'll need this.'

  Side by side, Brunetti fortified by the other man's presence, they went towards the third furnace but stopped a few metres from it and waited for the photographer to finish. Brunetti glanced at the gauges and saw that Forno III had risen to 1,348 degrees. He had no idea what the temperature just outside and below the door would be.

  The photographer finished taking photos of the floor and moved in to take photographs of the dead man from all angles.

  'Which doctor's coming?' Brunetti asked.

  'Venturi’ Vianello answered with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  To Brunetti's right stood a row of the iron tools the glassblowers used: rods and pipes of all lengths and diameters. The work desk of the maestro was covered with clippers and pincers and straight-edged tools: none of them showed any signs of traces of blood. On the wall hung posters of naked women with enormous breasts, casting looks of sexual invitation at the dead man and the men who moved silently around him.

  Brunetti stood to one side and studied Tassini's bearded face. He looked away, not wanting to see any more of the soiled body than he had to. The flash of the photographer drew his eyes back, and he saw that the end of one of the metal rods was trapped under Tassini's body.

  He heard a noise behind him and turned to see Dottor Venturi, who had just set his leather case on top of the tools on the maestro's workbench. A pair of pliers fell to the ground. Brunetti walked over, bent down, and replaced them, saying nothing to Venturi. The doctor opened his bag, took out a pair of gloves, and put them on. He glanced at the dead man, sniffed, and made a face rich with disgust. Brunetti noticed that the lapels of his overcoat were hand-stitched. His black shoes reflected the light from the furnace.

  'That him?' the young doctor asked, pointing at the dead man. No one answered him. He reached back into his bag and pulled out a gauze mask, then extracted a bottle of 4711 toilet water, opened it, and sprinkled it liberally on the gauze. He replaced the cap on the bottle and slipped it into place in his bag. He put the mask to his face and slipped the elastics behind his ears.

  There was a dark green sweater folded over the back of the maestro's chair; Venturi picked it up and carried it over to the dead man and let it drop on to the floor beside him. He hiked up the left knee of his trousers and lowered himself beside the body, careful to place his knee on the sweater. He picked up the dead man's wrist, held it for a second, and then let it fall back to the ground. 'Not cooked yet, I'd say’ Venturi muttered, not under his breath, but at the volume a student might use to say something about the teacher during class.

  He got to his feet and turned to Brunetti. Stripping off his gloves, he dropped them beside his bag on the maestro's workbench. 'He's dead,' Venturi said. He snapped his bag closed and picked it up by the handle. He turned towards the door.

  'Excuse me’ Venturi said, then added, 'gentlemen.'

  'You forgot the sweater,' Brunetti said, and then, after an even longer pause, added, 'Dottore.'

  'What?' Venturi demanded, his voice unusually loud, even in here, with the fierce competition of the howling furnaces.

  'The sweater’ Brunetti repeated. 'You forgot to pick up the sweater.' While he was saying this, Brunetti sensed Bocchese move to stand at his right, Vianello to his left.

  Venturi ran his eyes across their faces, saw the sweat on Vianello's, Bocchese's narrowed eyes. He stepped back and reached down for the sweater. He picked it up by one sleeve and made as if to drop it in the centre of the workbench, but Vianello shifted his weight. The doctor leaned to his right and draped it across the back of the maestro''s chair. He picked up his bag.

  None of the three men moved. Venturi took two steps to the left and walked around Bocchese. None of them bothered to watch him leave, so none of them saw him tear off his mask and drop it on the floor.

  Bocchese called over to the photographers. 'You guys got it all?'

  'Yes.'

  Brunetti did not want to do it, and he was sure that neither Bocchese nor Vianello wanted any part of it. But the sooner they had some idea of what might have happened to Tassini, the sooner they could . . . they could what? Ask him more questions? Bring him back to life?

  Brunetti banished these thoughts. 'You don't have to’ he said to the two men and walked over to Tassini's soiled body. He knelt down. The smell of urine and faeces grew stronger. Vianello walked over to the other side and Bocchese knelt beside the Inspector. Together, the three men put their hands under the body. It was hot under there, and Brunetti had the feeling that what he touched was slippery. He tasted the grappa in his mouth.

  They turned the man over slowly. His face was swollen, and Brunetti saw a mark on the side of his forehead, just where his hair began. His left arm had been trapped under his body, and when they turned him over, it fell free and slapped to the ground, the sound muffled by the thick heat-resistant glove and arm protector he wore. Vianello and Bocchese got to their feet and walked towards the door. Brunetti willed himself to go through all of Tassini's pockets, took one more look at him, and abandoned the idea. Outside, he found Vianello leaning his back against the wall of the building. Bocchese stood on the edge of the grass, leaning over and bracing his hands on his knees. Neither man wore a mask.

  Brunetti stripped off his mask. "There's a bar on the other side of the canal’ he said in what he hoped was a normal voice. He led the way, along the canal, up and down
the bridge, and then towards the bar. By the time they got there, Vianello's face had returned to its normal colour and Bocchese had his hands in his pockets.

  The lingering aftertaste of the grappa warned Brunetti against another one, so he asked for a camomile tea. Bocchese and Vianello exchanged a glance and then asked for the same. They remained silent until the three small pots of tea were set on the bar in front of them, when they each spooned sugar directly into the pots and took them and their cups over to a table by the window.

  'Could be anything,' Bocchese finally broke the silence by suggesting.

  Vianello poured out his tea and blew softly on the surface a few times and then said, 'He hit his head.'

  'Or his head was hit’ said Brunetti.

  'He could have stumbled on that rod,' Bocchese suggested.

  Brunetti remembered the precision with which the factory implements were ordered. 'Not unless he was using it. The place is too neat: nothing else was left lying around, and there was glass at the end of it,' Brunetti said. 'So he was using it to make something. Or was just beginning.' He recalled what Grassi had said about Tassini, that he did not have the talent to be a glass-blower. But that might not have stopped him from trying.

  'Maybe he did it to try to keep himself awake,' Bocchese suggested. 'Worked the glass.'

  'He read’ Brunetti said. Both men gave him strange looks.

  Bocchese finished his cup of tea and refilled it from the pot. 'That's not how you learn to make glass, playing with it alone in a factory at night.'

  Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that it was after nine; he took out his telefonino and dialled the hospital number of Dottor Rizzardi. He recognized the doctor's voice when he answered.

  'It's me, Ettore. I'm out on Murano. Yes, a dead man.' He listened for a while and then said, 'Venturi.' There was an even longer silence, this time on both sides. Finally Brunetti said, 'I'd appreciate it if you could arrange to do it.'

  Vianello and Bocchese heard the murmur of Rizzardi's voice, but all they could distinguish clearly was that of Brunetti, who said, 'In a glass factory. He was in front of one of the furnaces.' Another silence, and then Brunetti said, 'I don't know. Maybe all night.'

  Brunetti glanced at the posters at the end of the bar, fixing his attention on the Costiera Amal-fitana to keep it away from the words he had just spoken. Houses pitty-patted down the cliffs, holding on to whatever they could, and colours did whatever they pleased, never giving a thought to harmony. The sun glistened on the sea, and sailboats swept away to what the viewer knew were even more beautiful places.

  "Thanks, Ettore,' Brunetti said and ended the call. He got to his feet, went over and put a ten-Euro bill on the counter, and the three men left.

  When they got back to the factory, the ambulance boat from the hospital was just pulling away from the dock. There was no sign of De Cal, though three or four workmen stood outside the door, smoking and talking in low voices. Inside the building, the paper-clad technicians were busy packing up their equipment. Brunetti noticed that one of the long iron rods stood against the wall, its surface covered with grey powder. The floor was very clean: had Tassini swept it before he died?

  Bocchese spoke to two of his men, then came back to Vianello and Brunetti. 'Some prints on that rod,' he said, 'and lots of smudges.' He allowed a moment to pass and added, 'Means he could have fallen on it.'

  'On anything else?' Brunetti asked.

  Before Bocchese could answer, one of his men pulled something out of his bag and walked over to the rod. The object he held proved to be a long, thin plastic bag, much like one used to wrap a baguette, though it was considerably longer. He slipped it over the top of the rod and pulled it down to the ground. He went back to his bag and got a roll of tape and used it to seal the bottom of what now looked like a plastic sheath. He twisted the tape to create handles on either end, turning it into a package that could be carried by two men without disturbing the surface where the fingerprints were.

  'Might as well take a closer look,' Bocchese said, and Brunetti thought of the mark on Tassini's forehead.

  As the technician turned away, Brunetti said, 'Let me know, will you?'

  Bocchese answered with a noise and a sideways motion of his hand, and then he and the technicians filed out. A few minutes later, two of them came back and used the handles to take the iron rod out of the factory.

  'Let's have a look around,' Brunetti said. Knowing the technicians had checked the floor and surfaces, Brunetti walked towards the back of the factory and a table with its surface covered with glass pieces.

  They saw the lines of porpoises and the toreador in his shiny black pants and red jacket.

  'De gustibus,' Vianello said, moving along the line of objects. A door led to a cell-like room in which stood a chair and a camp-bed. A copy of the previous day's Gazzettino lay open, spread across the chair, as though it had been placed there in haste. At the head of the bed a pillow stood propped against the wall, what looked like the indentation made by a head visible in it.

  Brunetti took the newspaper by the two upper corners and lifted the pages onto the bed. Below it on the chair lay two books: Industrial Illness, the Curse of Our Millennium and Dante's Inferno, a paper-covered school edition whose worn look suggested it had been often read. Ignoring the first, Brunetti picked up the second book. The corners of many pages were torn and darkened with frequent handling; as he flipped through the pages, he found copious notes in the margins. Tassini had signed the book in red ink on the inside of the front cover, a mannered signature with unnecessary horizontal lines trailing around and away from the dot on the final i. The edition had been published more than twenty years before. Brunetti flipped through the pages again and noticed that there were notes in red and black but that the black handwriting appeared to have grown smaller and less attention-grabbing.

  Vianello had moved over to look through a small window that stood behind the head of the bed. It gave a clear view back towards the glaring flames of the open furnaces. 'What is it?' he asked, nodding at the book in Brunetti's hands.

  'Inferno.'

  'Perfect place for it, I'd say’ the Inspector replied.

  16

  Brunetti took Tassini's books; he and Vianello left the little bedroom and walked back through the factory. Since one book was a paperback edition and the other a small schoolbook, he slipped them easily into the pockets of his jacket. He had just done this when De Cal catapulted himself through the main doors and directly towards them.

  'I spend two thousand Euros a week on gas for the furnaces, for God's sake’ he began, quite as if he were reaching the end of a long explanation they had been resisting. 'Two thousand Euros. If I lose a day of production, who's going to pay me for the gas? It's not like these furnaces can be turned on and off like a radio, you know’ he said, waving distractedly towards the three furnaces, all of them open now.

  'And I still have to pay the workers. I'm paying for them now. Your men are gone, and all you're doing is standing around, doing nothing. Which is exactly what the workers are doing, only I'm paying them to do it.'

  Vianello and Brunetti approached him and stopped. De Cal continued. 'I saw them leave,' he said, pointing in the direction of the canal. 'I saw their boat go back to the city. I want to open my factory and get my men back to work. I don't want to pay them to stand around and talk while the gas burns and I have nothing to show for it.'

  Brunetti could not prevent himself from saying, 'A man died here this morning.'

  With apparent difficulty, De Cal prevented himself from spitting. 'He died this morning. He died yesterday. He died two days ago. What difference does it make? He's not here any more.' As he spoke, De Cal's voice grew increasingly out of control. 'It costs me money,' he shouted, the emphasis heavy on the last word, 'to keep my furnaces burning, and I pay my workers whether they're in here, working, or whether they're standing outside, convincing themselves what a nice fellow Tassini really was, after all.' He moved closer an
d stared up at Brunetti's face, then at Vianello's, as if searching for the reason they could not understand something so simple. 'I'm losing money.'

  Neither Vianello nor Brunetti looked at the other. Finally Brunetti said, 'Your workers can come back in, Signor De Cal.'

  Without bothering to thank him, De Cal wheeled around and went out the door. From inside, they could hear him calling to the workers, telling one of them to go and summon some others. Time to go back to work. Business as usual. Life goes on.

  Suddenly Brunetti realized what he would have to do now, and was taken aback to think that he had so successfully ignored it. Tassini's wife, Tassini's family: someone had to go and tell them that things would never be the same again. Someone would have to go and tell them that their life, as they knew it, was over, that an event had come hurtling at them and destroyed it. He fought the urge to call the Questura and ask them to send a woman officer. He did not know the widow, had spoken only once with the mother-in-law, and his meeting with Tassini had lasted no more than a quarter of an hour, yet there was nothing for it but for him to go.

  He turned to Vianello and explained what he was going to do and asked him to stay and talk to the workers and, if he could manage it, to De Cal. Had Tassini any enemies? Who else might have come to the factory at night? Was Tassini as clumsy as Grassi said?

  Saying that he would see Vianello back at the Questura, Brunetti went out to the riva and headed for the police launch. Foa was in the cabin, one of the wooden doors to the control panel open as he wrapped electrical tape around a wire. When he heard Brunetti's steps on the dock, the pilot looked up and nodded a greeting, shoved the wire into place and closed the panel. He switched on the engine.

  'I'd like to go to the Arsenale stop’ Brunetti said. He started to go down into the cabin, but as the boat swung out into the canal, he was stopped by the feel of the morning's softness on his face and decided to remain on deck. Though he tried to keep his mind blank, he was conscious of the way the breeze, and then the wind as they picked up speed, tugged at his jacket, at all his clothing, blowing away whatever still clung to him.