by Donna Leon
‘How did they know who he was?’ Brunetti asked.
‘At the time, they didn’t, but they paid attention to him, as would anyone meeting an unfamiliar man on the steps of their building at that time of night. Some weeks later, they met her in a restaurant, having dinner with the same man, and when they went over to say hello to her she had no choice but to introduce them. Antonio Terrasini.’
‘And how did you come to learn all of this?’ Brunetti inquired with false lightness.
‘When I asked about Cataldo, I got told this as an extra. Twice.’
‘Why is everyone so eager to repeat gossip about her?’ Brunetti asked in a neutral tone that allowed her to include herself in the category or not.
She looked away from him and out the window again before she answered. ‘It probably has nothing to do with her specifically, sir. There’s the trope of the older man who marries a much younger wife: folk wisdom says it’s only a matter of time before she betrays him. And there’s the fact that people just like to gossip, especially when it’s someone who keeps aloof from them.’
‘And she does?’
‘It would seem so, sir.’
Brunetti said only, ‘I see.’ The snow was entirely gone from the roof of the church by now; he thought he could see steam rising from the tiles.
‘Thank you, Signorina.’
Franca Marinello and Antonio Terrasini. A woman about whom he thought he knew something and a man about whom he wanted to know a great deal more. Who was it who said that she had been working to impress Brunetti? Paola?
Was it that easy, he wondered? Just talk to him about books and sound like you know what you’re talking about, and Brunetti falls into your hands like a ripe fig? Tell him you’re in love with Cicero and then go out to dinner with . . . with whom and to do what, Brunetti wondered? What was that expression the Americans were always using to describe men like Terrasini? Rough something. Rough time? Rough taste? Rough traffic? The expression would not come, no matter how many times he tried to summon it. Rough something. In the photo, Terrasini did not look rough: he looked slick.
Thinking back over the evening he had spent with Franca Marinello, Brunetti was forced to admit that her face, even after the hours opposite her, would still occasionally shock him. If she found something he said amusing, he could read it only in her eyes or in the tone of her response. Occasionally he had succeeded in making her laugh, but even then her face had remained as immobile as when she spoke of her loathing of Marc Antonio.
She was still in her thirties, and her husband was twice her age. Did she not want, at times, the company of a younger man, the feel of a stronger body? Had he been so concerned with her face that he had forgotten about the rest of her?
But still, why this thug? Brunetti kept coming back to this question. He and Paola knew enough about the workings of the city to have a good idea which of the wives of the powerful and wealthy sought the solace of arms other than their husbands’. But all of that was usually carried out among acquaintances and friends: discretion was thus assured.
Then what of all of her talk of being worried about kidnapping? Perhaps Brunetti had been too eager to dismiss her story of the computer intruder; and perhaps the signs of tampering had not been left by Signorina Elettra but by some other person curious to learn the extent of Cataldo’s wealth. Terrasini’s past certainly suggested that he would not mind having a try at kidnapping, but computer exploration hardly seemed the way he would begin things.
Years ago, Conte Falier had observed that he had never met anyone who could resist flattery. Brunetti had been younger then and had taken this as a comment on a technique of which the Conte approved, but as the years passed and he knew the man better, Brunetti realized that it was nothing more than another of the Conte’s merciless observations about the nature of human activity. ‘And Cataldo’s wife was working to impress you,’ he heard Paola’s voice again. If he eliminated all sympathy for the woman, how much of what she told him would he still believe? Was he to be seduced by the fact that she had read Ovid’s Fasti and he had not?
21
Brunetti called down to the squad room and asked for Vianello. The Ispettore was out of the office, but someone passed the phone to Pucetti. By now everyone knew that when Vianello was not present, Brunetti would want Pucetti. ‘Come up for a moment, would you?’ Brunetti asked.
It seemed only seconds after Brunetti replaced the phone that Pucetti was there, swinging around the door and into his office, fresh-cheeked, as though he had run, or flown, up the steps. ‘Yes, Commissario?’ he said, eager, all but straining at the leash that might get him out of the office or at least out of whatever it was he had been doing downstairs.
‘Gilda Landi,’ Brunetti said.
‘Yes, sir?’ Pucetti asked with no sign of surprise, only curiosity.
‘She is a civilian employee of the Carabinieri. Well, I assume she’s a civilian and I assume it’s the Carabinieri, but maybe not. Perhaps the Ministry of the Interior. I’d like you to see if you can find out where she works and, if possible, what she does.’ Pucetti raised a hand in a vestigial salute, and left.
Though there was no reason to do it, aside from the fact that he had spent so much of the morning thinking about another woman, Brunetti called Paola and said he could not come home for lunch. She asked no questions, a reaction which bothered Brunetti more than if she had complained. Alone, he left the Questura and walked down into Castello, where he had a bad meal in the worst sort of tourist trap and left feeling both cheated and somehow justified, as if he had paid for having been dishonest with Paola.
When he got back, he stopped in the officers’ squad room, but there was no sign of Pucetti. He went to Signorina Elettra’s office, where he found her at her computer, Pucetti standing behind her, eyes intent on the screen.
When Pucetti saw Brunetti come in, he said, ‘I had to ask her, sir. There was no way I could do that alone. There was one place where if I had . . .’
Brunetti stopped him by holding up a hand. ‘Good. I should have told you to ask.’ Then, to Signorina Elettra, who had glanced at him, ‘I didn’t want to burden you with anything else. I had no idea it would be so . . .’ He allowed his voice to trail off.
He smiled at them, and the idea came to him that they were, in a sense, his surrogate children at the Questura, Vianello their uncle. And what did that make Patta? The dotty grandfather and Scarpa the wicked stepbrother? He pulled himself back from these thoughts and asked, ‘Did you find her?’
Pucetti moved back, leaving the stage to Signorina Elettra.‘I started with the Ministry of the Interior,’ she said. ‘It’s easy to get into a certain level of their system.’ She was being calmly descriptive and made no attempt to show off by criticizing the laxity with which some agencies guarded their information. ‘After a time, I began to find some places were blocked off to me, and so I had to go back and find other means of access.’ Reading Brunetti’s expression, she said, ‘But the details of how I did it don’t matter, do they?’
Brunetti glanced at Pucetti and saw the look the younger man gave her when she said this. He had last seen that expression on the face of a drug addict when he had smacked a needle out of his hand and crushed it under his heel.
‘. . . special squadron set up to examine the Camorra’s control of the garbage industry, and it turns out that Signorina Landi works for the Ministry of the Interior and has done so for some time.’
Suspecting that this was the least of what she had to say, he asked, ‘What else did you learn about her?’
‘She is a civilian, and she is also an industrial chemist with a degree from Bologna.’
‘And her job?’ Brunetti asked.
‘From the little I could see before the . . . she does the chemical analysis of what the Carabinieri find or manage to sequester.’
‘What were you about to say?’ Brunetti asked.
She gave Brunetti a long look, then glanced aside at Pucetti before answering, ‘I f
ound it before the connection was interrupted.’
With a start, Brunetti turned towards the door to Patta’s office; Signorina Elettra, seeing this, said, ‘Dottor Patta has a meeting in Padova this afternoon.’
Recalling her hesitation, Brunetti asked, ‘What does that mean to an ignorant person, that the connection was interrupted?’
She considered this briefly before answering him. ‘It means that they’ve got a warning system that shuts everything down the instant it detects an unauthorized access.’
‘Can they trace it?’
‘I doubt it,’ she said in a more confident voice. ‘And if they did, it would lead to a computer at the offices of a company owned by a member of parliament.’
‘Are you telling me the truth?’ he asked.
‘I try always to tell you the truth, Commissario,’ she said, not indignantly, but close.
‘Only try?’ he asked.
‘Only try,’ she answered.
Brunetti chose to let this lie, but he could not pass up the opportunity to take a bit of wind out of her sails. ‘Cataldo’s computer people reported an attempt to break into their system.’
That stopped her, but after a moment’s reflection she said, ‘That trail leads back to the same company.’
‘You seem remarkably nonchalant about this, Signorina,’ Brunetti observed.
‘No, I’m not, not really. I’m glad you told me about it, though: I won’t make the same mistakes again.’ And that, her tone signalled, was that.
‘Does this Signorina Landi work in the same unit as Guarino did?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes. From what I managed to see, there are four men and two women, plus Dottoressa Landi and another chemist. The unit’s based in Trieste, with another group working in Bologna. I don’t know the names of the others and found her only because I had a specific name to look for.’
Silence fell. Pucetti looked back and forth between them but said nothing.
‘Pucetti?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Do you know where he was killed, sir?’
‘Marghera,’ Signorina Elettra answered for him.
‘That’s where he was found, Signorina,’ Pucetti corrected in a deferential voice.
‘Other questions, Pucetti?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Who moved the body, and when will the autopsy be done, why was there so little in the newspaper, and what was he doing wherever it was he was killed?’ Pucetti said, not managing to keep his voice calm as he recited this list.
Brunetti saw the look, and then the smile, that Signorina Elettra gave the young officer when he finished. However interesting it would be to have the answers to that list of questions, Brunetti realized that the first one was, at least for the present, the most important: where had Guarino been killed?
He left these thoughts and turned to Signorina Elettra. ‘Would it be possible to contact this Dottoressa Landi?’
She did not respond immediately, leaving Brunetti to wonder if those same alarms would sound were she now to try to find something as simple as a phone number. She glanced at him and her eyes moved to distant focus as she planned some cyber manoeuvre he could never hope to understand.
‘It’s all right,’ she finally said.
‘Which means?’ Brunetti asked, sparing Pucetti the need to ask.
‘I’ll get you her number.’ She rose to her feet, Pucetti quick to pull back her chair. ‘I’ll call you when I have it, sir,’ she said, then added, ‘There’s no risk.’ Pucetti and Brunetti left the office.
Twenty minutes later, good as her word, she called with Signorina Landi’s telefonino number, but when he dialled it, the client was unavailable. There was no invitation to leave a message.
To distract himself, Brunetti pulled towards him the oldest pile of papers that had accumulated on his desk and began to read through them, forcing himself to concentrate. One of Vianello’s informers had recently told the Ispettore that he should pay attention to some of the shops in Calle della Mandola that had recently changed hands. If this was money laundering, as the informer suggested, then it was not his concern: let the Guardia di Finanza worry about money.
Besides, it was a street he seldom used, so it was difficult for him to cast his visual memory along it and register the changes of merchandise in the windows. The antique book store was still there, as were the pharmacy, and the optician. The other side of the street was more difficult, for it was there that changes had taken place. There were shops selling trendy olive oil and bottled sauces, glass, then the fruit vendor and the flower shop that was the first to put out lilacs in the spring. They could ask around, he supposed, but it was all rather like the question about Ranzato: were they meant to walk up and down the street, calling on the Camorra to come out of hiding?
He thought of an article he had read months before in one of Chiara’s animal magazines about some sort of toad that had been imported into Australia. Taken there to combat a pest or insect that was endangering the sugar cane crop, this toad – was it the cane toad? – had no natural predators and thus increased relentlessly as it spread north and south. Its poison, it was discovered only after its numbers had shot past control, was strong enough to kill dogs and cats. Cane toads could be stabbed, pierced, run over by cars and still not be killed. Only the crows, it seemed, had learned how to kill them by flipping them over and devouring their viscera.
Did he need a more perfect comparison with the Mafia? Brought back to life by the Americans after the war to control the perceived Communist menace, it had got out of control and, as with the cane toad, its expansion north and south could not be stopped. It could be pierced and stabbed, but it would spring back to life. ‘We need crows,’ Brunetti said out loud, looked up, and saw Vianello at the door.
‘It’s the autopsy report,’ Vianello said in an ordinary voice, as though he had not heard Brunetti speak. He handed Brunetti a manila envelope and, even before Brunetti nodded to him, took a seat in front of his desk.
Brunetti slit open the envelope and slid out the photos, surprised to see that they were no bigger than postcards. He put them on his desk and removed some sheets of paper, placing them to the side of the photos. He looked at Vianello, who had noticed how small the photos were.
‘Economy measure, I suppose,’ Vianello observed.
Brunetti tapped the edges straight on his desk and began to look through the crime-scene photos, passing them to Vianello after he had studied each one. Postcard size: indeed, what better postcards for the new Italy? His mind fled to the possibility of an entire new line of tourist posters and souvenirs: the squalid shack in which Provenzano had been arrested, the illegal hotel complexes inside national parks, the twelve-year-old Moldavian prostitutes at the sides of the road?
Or perhaps they could create a deck of playing cards. Bodies? Reduce the size of one of the photos of Guarino and they could begin a deck composed of the bodies found only in the last few years. Four suits: Palermo, Reggio Calabria, Naples, Catania. A joker? And who would that be, filling in wherever he was needed? He thought of the cabinet minister rumoured to be in their pocket – he would do nicely.
A light cough from Vianello put an end to Brunetti’s grim flight of fancy. Brunetti handed him another photo, and then another. Vianello took them with increasing interest, all but snatching at the last of them. When Brunetti looked across at his assistant, he saw that his face was grim with shock. ‘These are scene of crime photos?’ he asked, as if he needed Brunetti’s assurance to be able to believe it.
Brunetti nodded. ‘You were there?’ Vianello asked, though it was not really a question.
At Brunetti’s repeated nod, Vianello tossed the photos face up on to Brunetti’s desk. ‘Gesù Bambino, who are these clowns?’ Vianello stabbed an angry forefinger on to one of the photos, where the toes of three different pairs of shoes could be seen. ‘Whose feet are these?’ he demanded. ‘What are they doing so close to the body if it’s being photographed?’ He jabbed his finger on the imprints left by a p
air of knees. ‘And whose are these?’
He shoved the photos around and found one taken from a distance of two metres, showing the two Carabinieri standing behind the body, apparently in conversation. ‘Both of them are smoking,’ Vianello said. ‘So whose cigarette butts are going to be in the evidence bags, for the love of God?’
The Ispettore lost all patience and pushed the photos back towards Brunetti. ‘If they’d wanted to contaminate the scene, they couldn’t have done a better job.’
Vianello pressed his lips together and retrieved the photos. He lined them up in a row, then switched them around so that they could be read, left to right, as the camera approached the body. The first showed a radius of two metres around the body, the second a radius of one. In both photos, Guarino’s outstretched right hand was clearly visible in the bottom left of the photo. In the first photo, his hand lay on a clear field of dark brown mud. In the fourth, a cigarette butt was visible about ten centimetres from his hand. Guarino’s head and chest filled the last photo, blood soaked into the collar and front of his shirt.
Vianello could not prevent himself from appealing to the gold standard. ‘Alvise couldn’t make a worse mess.’
Brunetti finally said, ‘I think that’s probably it: the Alvise factor. It’s simple human stupidity and error.’ Vianello started to say something, but Brunetti did not stop. ‘I know it would be more comfortable, somehow, to blame it on conspiracy, but I think it’s just the usual mess.’
Vianello considered this then shrugged, saying, ‘I’ve seen worse.’ After a time, he asked, ‘What does the report say?’
Brunetti opened the papers and started to read through them, passing each one to Vianello as he finished reading it. Death had indeed been instant, the bullet having ripped through Guarino’s brain before emerging from his jaw. The bullet had not been found. There followed some speculation about the calibre of the gun used in the crime, and it ended with the bland statement that the mud on Guarino’s lapels and knees was different in composition and bore higher traces of mercury, cadmium, radium, and arsenic than did the mud under his body.
