by Donna Leon
When he opened them, they were opposite the bridge, jammed even at this hour under its weight of milling tourists, all trying to have a photo taken at the place where so many people had paused for the last time before being taken off to imprisonment, torture, or death.
Farther along here, the snow was almost gone, and by the time he got off at San Zaccaria, there was so little left as to make his boots an encumbrance as well as an affectation.
The guard at the front door greeted him with a lazy salute. He asked for Vianello, but the Ispettore was not yet in. Nor had the Vice-Questore arrived — no surprise to Brunetti, who imagined Patta at home, still in his pyjamas, hoping someone would write him a note explaining that he was late for work because of the snow.
He went to Signorina Elettra’s office.
When he came in, she said with no introduction, ‘You didn’t tell me you saw a photo of him.’ She wore a black dress and an orange silk jacket the colour a Buddhist monk would wear: it stood in sharp contrast to the soberness of her voice.
‘Yes,’ he answered soberly. ‘I did.’
‘Was it very bad? For him?’ she asked, a question which filled Brunetti with relief because of its admission that she had only learned of the photo and not seen it.
Brunetti resisted the impulse to make things sound better than they were. Instead, he said, ‘It was instant. He must have been taken completely by surprise.’
‘How can you say that?’ she asked.
He remembered Guarino, lying on the ground: his jaw. ‘You don’t have to know. Believe me and leave it at that.’
‘What was he?’ she asked.
The question troubled Brunetti because of the answers that came tumbling into his head. He was a Carabiniere. He was a man Avisani trusted implicitly. He was investigating the illegal transport of garbage, though Brunetti knew little more about the investigation than that. He was interested in a man of short temper who gambled and did not like to lose and whose name might be Antonio Terrasini. He was separated from his wife.
As he listed these things in his mind, Brunetti was forced to realize that he did not doubt anything Guarino had told him. He had evaded and avoided answering certain questions, but Brunetti found himself believing that what he had said was true.
‘I think he was an honest man,’ Brunetti said.
She made no reply to that but then said, ‘It doesn’t change anything — having the photo — does it?’ Brunetti made a noise of negation. She went on, ‘But it does, somehow. Makes it more real.’
Signorina Elettra was seldom at a loss for words: Brunetti failed to find the right thing to say to her. Perhaps there was none.
‘That’s not what I wanted to tell you, though,’ she began, but before she could explain, they heard footsteps approaching and turned to see Patta, but a Patta dressed as might have been Captain Scott had he had time and opportunity to outfit himself in the shops of the Mercerie. Patta’s beige parka had a fur-lined hood and was carelessly left open to show the lining. Under it he wore a Harris tweed jacket and a burgundy turtleneck that looked like cashmere. His boots were rubber gumboots like the ones Raffi had called Brunetti’s attention to in the window of Duca d’Aosta just the week before.
The snow, which had enhanced the mood of almost everyone Brunetti had met on the way to work, appeared to have had the opposite effect on Patta. The Vice-Questore nodded to Signorina Elettra — he never nodded curtly to her, but this was not a friendly nod — and said to Brunetti, ‘Come into my office.’
Brunetti followed him and waited while his superior disburdened himself of his parka. Patta laid it, lining out — the better to display the distinctive Burberry plaid — on one of the chairs in front of his desk and pointed to the other one for Brunetti.
‘Is this going to be trouble?’ Patta said with no preamble.
‘You mean the murder, sir?’
‘Of course I mean the murder. A Carabiniere — a maggiore, for God’s sake — gets himself murdered in our territory. What’s going on here? Are they going to try to pass it on to us?’
Brunetti waited to see if these were rhetorical questions, but Patta’s confusion and indignation seemed sufficiently real for him to venture, ‘No, I don’t know what’s going on, sir. But I doubt they want us to get involved. The captain I spoke to there yesterday — I think he was the one who called you — he made it clear that they’re claiming jurisdiction.’
Patta’s relief was visible. ‘Good. Let them have it. I don’t understand how this could happen to a Carabinieri officer. He seemed like a sensible person. How could he let himself get killed like that?’
Like the Furies circling the head of a guilt-crazed Orestes, sarcastic responses crowded on to Brunetti’s tongue, but he drove them off and said, instead, ‘There’s no telling how it happened, sir. There could have been more than one of them.’
‘But still. .’ Patta said and let his voice drift away from this unspoken reproach for carelessness.
‘If you think it’s best for us, sir. .’ Brunetti began, his voice a symphony of uncertainty, ‘. . but perhaps. . no, better let them have it.’
Patta was on him like a ferret. ‘What is it, Brunetti?’
‘When I spoke to him, sir,’ Brunetti began with affected reticence, ‘Guarino told me he had a suspect for that murder in Tessera.’ Then, before Patta could ask, he added, ‘The man with the trucking company. Before Christmas.’
‘I’m not an idiot, Brunetti. I read the reports, you know.’
‘Of course, sir.’
‘Well, what did he say? This Carabiniere?’
‘He told me he didn’t give the name of his suspect to his colleagues, sir,’ Brunetti said.
‘That’s impossible,’ Patta said. ‘Of course he’d give it to them.’
‘I’m not sure he trusted them entirely.’ This could well be true, though Guarino had never said it.
Brunetti watched as Patta decided to pretend to be surprised at such a thing. Before he could express his disbelief, Brunetti went on. ‘He as much as told me that.’ This was a lie.
‘He didn’t give you the name, did he?’ Patta asked sharply.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti offered, with no explanation.
‘Why?’ It was almost a shout.
Patta, Brunetti knew, would not understand it if Brunetti were to suggest Guarino had trusted him because he recognized in him another honest man. Instead, he answered, ‘He suspected his investigation was being interfered with: he said it had happened in the past. Perhaps he thought we’d be more likely to run a careful investigation. And perhaps find the killer.’ Brunetti was tempted to suggest more, but caution prevailed and he left it to Patta to consider the advantages. When Patta did not respond, Brunetti went for broke, saying, ‘I have no choice but to give them the name, then, do I, sir?’
Patta studied the surface of his desk, a priest reading the runes. ‘Did you believe him about the suspect?’ he finally asked.
‘I did, yes.’ There was no need to tell Patta about the photo, about the trip to the Casinò: Patta was not a detail man.
‘Do you think we can continue this without their knowing what we’re doing?’ Patta’s use of the plural was enough to tell Brunetti that his superior had already decided to pursue the investigation: now what Brunetti had to do was ensure that it be left to him to do so.
‘Guarino thought we’d have the advantage because of our local knowledge, sir.’ Brunetti spoke as though neither Patta nor Scarpa was Sicilian.
In a contemplative voice, Patta said, ‘I’d like to be able to do that.’
‘What, sir?’
‘Take this right out of the mouths of the Carabinieri. First, Mestre took that murder investigation away from us, and now the Carabinieri want to take this, too.’ The speculative man had been replaced by the man of action, one who had buried the memory of his original delight when he believed the investigation was not to be theirs. ‘They’ll see they can’t do that, not while I’m Vice-Questore in this cit
y.’
Brunetti was glad Patta managed to restrain the impulse to slam his fist down on his desk: it would have been a gesture too far. What a pity Patta had not worked in the historical archive of some Stalinist state: how he would have loved altering the photos, airbrushing out the old and replacing them with the new. Or writing, and then rewriting, the history books: the man had a call.
‘. . and Vianello, I suppose,’ Brunetti heard Patta conclude and dragged himself away from the delights of speculation.
‘Of course, sir. If that’s what you think is best,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet, a motion prompted by Patta’s tone, not whatever it was he had been saying that Brunetti had not heard.
He stood, waiting for Patta’s final remark, but he failed to make it and Brunetti went out to Signorina Elettra’s office. In a voice that might well have carried into Patta’s office, Brunetti said, ‘If you have a moment, Signorina, I have a few things I’d like to ask you to take care of.’
‘Of course, Commissario,’ she said formally, turning her head in the direction of Patta’s office. ‘I have some things to finish for the Vice-Questore. I’ll come up when I’m free.’
20
The first thing Brunetti noticed when he entered his own office was the light streaming in through the window. Beyond it he saw the glistening roof of the church, tiny patches of snow still clinging to it and, beyond that, the burnished sky. Now that the snow had drawn the pollution from the atmosphere, the mountains would be visible from the kitchen, should he get home while there was still light enough to see them.
He went over to the window and studied the play of light on the roof while he waited for Signorina Elettra to arrive. She had caught Guarino’s interest, and he felt himself blush at the thought of how he had resented her response to it. There was no better word to describe it: resented. Each had tried to learn about the other, and Brunetti had stifled their attempts. He placed both hands flat on the windowsill and contemplated his fingers, but that did not help him feel any better about the way he had behaved. He distracted himself with the memory of Guarino’s wry acceptance of his own secretary’s resemblance to Signorina Elettra. Her name had been an exotic one, as well, something operatic: Leonora, Norma, Alcina? No, it had been one of those droopy, suffering ones: Lord, there were so many of those.
Gilda, that was it. Gilda Landi. Or had she been one of those false trails people were always laying in spy novels? No, Guarino had been caught entirely off guard and had spoken quite impulsively of the — what was the word — indomitable? No, formidable, Signora Landi. A civilian, then.
Brunetti heard Signorina Elettra come in and turned to see her sit down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. She glanced in his direction but, in truth, she was looking beyond him and at the roof and the patch of clear sky beyond.
He took his place behind his desk and asked, ‘What was it you wanted to tell me, Signorina?’
‘This Terrasini,’ she said. ‘Antonio. It seems to be his real name.’ She had a manila file with her but made no attempt to open it.
Brunetti nodded.
‘He’s a member of a branch of the Terrasini family in Aspromonte, a cousin of one of the bosses.’
The news set Brunetti’s imagination running, but however much he managed to make possible connections with Guarino’s death, he always ran into the blank fact that he had no reason to question the man, let alone to arrest him. Guarino had never explained the photograph to Brunetti, and now never would.
‘How did you find this out?’ he asked her.
‘He’s in the files, sir. He was arrested the first few times using that name, but he’s also been arrested using an assortment of aliases.’ She glanced at Brunetti and said, ‘What I don’t understand is why he’d use his real name to go to the Casinò.’
‘It might be that they take more care in examining documents than we do,’ he suggested. He had spoken ironically, but as soon as he heard himself, he realized he was probably telling the truth.
‘What sort of things has he been arrested for?’ he asked.
‘The usual,’ she answered. ‘Assault, extortion, selling drugs, rape — this in the early stages of his career.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, ‘Since then he’s moved on to association with the Camorra. And twice for murder. But neither of those cases made it to trial.’
‘Why?’
‘In one case, the chief witness disappeared, and in the other the chief witness retracted his testimony.’
Comment being superfluous, Brunetti asked, ‘Where is he now, in jail?’
‘He was, but he was released with the indulto, though he’d been inside only a few months.’
‘For what?’
‘Assault.’
‘When was he let out?’
‘Fifteen months ago.’
‘Any idea where he’s been since then?’
‘In Mestre.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Living with his uncle.’
‘And what does his uncle do?’
‘Among other things, he owns a few pizzerias: one in Treviso, one in Mestre, and one here, up near the train station.’
‘Among what other things?’
‘He has a shipping line — trucks that bring fruit and vegetables up from the South.’
‘And take back?’
‘I haven’t been able to find that out, sir.’
‘I see. Anything else?’
‘He has, in the past, rented trucks to Signor Cataldo.’ Her face was motionless when she said this, almost as though she had never heard the name before.
‘I see,’ Brunetti remarked, then asked, ‘and what else?’
‘The nephew, sir: Antonio. It would seem, but this is only at the level of rumour, that he is involved with Signora Cataldo.’ Her voice could not have been more level or dispassionate.
There were times when Signorina Elettra annoyed Brunetti almost past bearing, but he thought of the way he had behaved when caught in the crossfire of flirtation between her and Guarino and so said only, ‘The first wife or the second?’
‘The second.’ She paused, then added, ‘People couldn’t wait to tell me.’
‘What, exactly?’
‘That he’s taken her to dinner at least once; when the husband was away.’
‘That could be easily explained,’ Brunetti said.
‘I’m sure it could be, sir, especially if her husband and his uncle have common business interests.’
He knew she had more, and he knew it would be more damning, but he would not ask.
After it became apparent that Brunetti was not going to speak, she said, ‘He was also seen leaving their apartment — well, to be fair, the building in which they have an apartment, at two in the morning.’
‘Seen by whom?’
‘By people who live there.’
‘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.
