A Question of Belief cb-19

by Donna Leon

  ‘Now what, sir?’

  ‘You two go and have a drink in the campo, and I’ll go into San Tomà and stand in front of the estate agency and look for a new apartment.’

  ‘Hot work, Commissario,’ the girl said with sympathy.

  Brunetti nodded his thanks for the thought.

  Luckily, he had remembered to bring his telefonino with him, so they agreed to keep in contact. He went back to the campo and put himself in front of the window of the estate agency. By this time of the afternoon, the sun was directly behind Brunetti and starting to burn its way slowly through his clothing. It was so intense that he turned first to expose one shoulder, then the other, like San Lorenzo on the grill.

  The one advantage was that the angle of light turned the agency window into a giant mirror, in which he soon saw the approaching reflection of an old woman with a brown bag over her shoulder. But her hands no longer grasped the straps and the bag hung ignored at her side. She walked towards him while Brunetti studied the photo of a mansard apartment in Santa Croce, a mere half-million Euros for sixty square metres. ‘Lunacy,’ he whispered.

  The woman turned to the right, then left into the calle going down to the embarcadero. Brunetti dialled Pucetti’s number, and when the officer answered, said, ‘She’s going back towards the boat stop. Why don’t you and your friend stop on the doorstep of two thousand nine hundred and eighty-nine for a long embrace?’

  ‘I’ll suggest it to her this very instant, sir,’ Pucetti said and hung up. Brunetti moved away from the window and into the calle leading towards Goldoni’s house, where he could at least stand in the shade. A few minutes later, Pucetti and the young woman appeared, no longer walking hand in hand.

  ‘S. Gorini, sir,’ Pucetti. ‘There’s only one name at that number.’

  ‘Shall we go back to the Questura, then?’ Brunetti suggested.

  ‘We’re still on duty, sir,’ Pucetti said.

  ‘I think we’ve all had enough of following people in this heat, officers,’ he said. Their relief was evident in the loosening of their bodies. He smiled at the girl for the first time and said, ‘So let’s see if you can follow a commissario di polizia back to the Questura without being noticed.’

  8

  Perhaps encouraged by the deference showed to his powers by the young woman, whose full name turned out to be Bettina Trevisoi, Brunetti decided to see what he could find out about S. Gorini by himself. The first thing he discovered, though he had to go only as far as the phone directory, was that the S stood for Stefano. But even with the full name, all Google provided was a wide variety of products and offers to introduce him to young girls. Because he had one of his own at home, Brunetti did not feel in need of another, and so he spurned the cyber-proposals, tempting as others might have found them.

  Google having failed him, Brunetti was left to think of other places where reference to a person might be found. There must be a way to discover if he were renting the apartment or if he owned it: probably in some office of the Commune. If he owned it, then he might have a mortgage, and that might lead to his bank and thus provide an idea of his finances. There must be a way to find out if the city had granted him any licences or if he had a passport. Airline files might show if he travelled within Italy or to other countries, and how frequently. If he had any of the special cards offered by the railway, there would be a list of the train tickets he purchased. Copies of his phone bills, for both home phone and telefonino, would give an idea of who his friends and associates were. They would also show if he were running a commercial enterprise from that address. And credit card records often proved veritable mines of information.

  He sat in front of the computer, these possibilities assaulting his imagination one after the other. He marvelled at how the most basic services of modern life exposed a person to easy scrutiny and how effectively they eliminated privacy.

  But, more importantly, he marvelled at how incapable he was of finding even the first of these things. He knew all of this information must be hidden inside his computer, but he lacked the skills to discover it. He turned to Pucetti; Probationer Trevisoi stood by his side. ‘It’s a waste of time to try to check him out ourselves,’ Brunetti said, careful to use the plural.

  He watched as Pucetti fought down the impulse to object. In the last years, the young officer had learned a great deal from Signorina Elettra about the ways to slip around the roadblocks on the information highway. Pucetti glanced at the young woman at his side, and Brunetti could almost hear the creaks in his masculinity as he forced himself to nod. ‘Maybe we better ask Signorina Elettra to have a look,’ Pucetti finally agreed.

  Pleased by the young officer’s response and considering that Trevisoi was young, attractive and female, Brunetti stood and offered the chair to Pucetti. ‘Better to have two people taking a look,’ Brunetti said. Then, to Trevisoi, he added, ‘Pucetti’s one of our information-retrieval experts.’

  ‘Information retrieval, sir?’ she said so innocently that Brunetti began to suspect there was perhaps more behind those dark eyes than he had originally believed.

  ‘Spying,’ he clarified. ‘Pucetti’s very good at it, but Signorina Elettra’s better.’

  ‘Signorina Elettra’s the best,’ Pucetti said as he flicked the screen back into life.

  On his way to that person’s office, Brunetti decided to restrain himself from repeating Pucetti’s praise. When he entered, Signorina Elettra was just emerging from the office of her superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta. Today she wore a black T-shirt and a pair of loose black linen slacks and, below them, a pair of yellow Converse sneakers, sockless. She gave a welcoming smile. ‘Have a look,’ she said, moving to her chair and pointing to the screen of her computer. Perhaps as a concession to the heat, her hair was tied back from her face by a green ribbon.

  He came to stand behind her and looked at the screen. On it he saw what looked like a page from a catalogue of computers, neat row after neat row and all of them, to Brunetti, looking identical. Were they, he wondered, finally going to order one for him to use in his office? There was no other reason she would bother to show him such things, was there? He was touched by her thoughtfulness.

  ‘Very nice,’ he said, in a noncommittal voice from which all trace of personal greed had been removed.

  ‘Yes, they are, aren’t they? Some of them are almost as good as mine.’ Pointing to one of the computers on the screen, she said something about numbers Brunetti could understand, like ‘2.33’ and ‘1333’, and words like ‘mega-hertz’ and ‘giga-bytes’, that he could not.

  ‘Now look at this,’ she said and scrolled down the screen to a list of prices that were keyed to the models shown above them. ‘See the price of that one?’ she asked, pointing to the third number.

  ‘One thousand, four hundred Euros,’ he read. She made a noise of assent, saying nothing, so he asked, ‘Is that a good price?’ He was complimented by the thought that the Ministry of Justice might be willing to spend that much on him, but modesty sealed his lips.

  ‘It’s a very good price,’ she said. She hit a few keys; the image disappeared from the screen and was replaced by a long list of names and numbers. ‘Now look at this,’ she said, pointing to one of the items on the list.

  ‘Is that the same computer?’ he asked when he read the model name and number.

  ‘Yes.’

  Brunetti ran his eyes over to the number at the right. ‘Two thousand, two hundred?’ he asked. She nodded but did not comment.

  ‘Where did the first price come from?’

  ‘An on-line company in Germany. The computers come fully programmed in Italian, with an Italian keyboard.’

  ‘And the others?’ he asked.

  ‘The others have been ordered and paid for already,’ she said. ‘What I showed you is the purchase order.’

  ‘But that’s crazy,’ Brunetti said, unconsciously using the word and tone his mother habitually used to comment on the price of fish.

  Saying
nothing, Signorina Elettra scrolled back to the top of the list, where she arrived at the letterhead: ‘Ministro del Interno’.

  ‘They’re paying eight hundred Euros more?’ he asked, not sure whether to be astonished or outraged, or both.

  She nodded.

  ‘How many did they buy?’

  ‘Four hundred.’

  It took him only seconds. ‘That’s three hundred and twenty thousand Euros more,’ he said. She said nothing. ‘Haven’t these people ever heard about buying in quantity? Isn’t the price supposed to come down when you do?’

  ‘If the government is doing the buying, I think the rules are different, sir,’ she answered.

  Brunetti took a step back from the computer and walked around to the front of her desk. ‘In a case like this, who’s doing the buying? Who specifically, that is?’

  ‘Some bureaucrat in Rome, I’d assume, sir.’

  ‘Does anyone check what he does? Compare prices or offers?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said with audible negligence, ‘I’m sure someone does.’

  Time passed, during which Brunetti considered the possibilities. The fact that one person could order an item that cost eight hundred Euros more than an identical item did not mean that another person would object to the higher price, especially when it was government money that was being spent, and especially when only those two people were privy to the bidding process.

  ‘Isn’t anyone concerned about this?’ Brunetti heard himself asking.

  ‘Someone must be, Commissario,’ she answered. Then, with almost militant brightness, she asked, ‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’

  He explained quickly about Vianello’s aunt and the withdrawals she had been making, then gave her the name and address of Stefano Gorini, asking her if she had time to find out something about him.

  Signorina Elettra made a note of the name and address and asked, ‘Is this the aunt who’s married to the electrician?’

  ‘Ex-electrician,’ Brunetti corrected, then, ‘Yes.’

  She gave him a sober glance and shook her head. ‘I think it’s like being a priest or a doctor,’ she said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Being an electrician, sir. I think once you do it, you have a sort of moral obligation to keep on doing it.’ She gave him time to consider this, and when he made no comment, she said, ‘Nothing’s worse than darkness.’

  From long experience as a resident of a city where many houses still had wires that had been installed fifty or sixty years ago, Brunetti grasped what she meant and had no choice but to say, ‘Yes. Nothing worse.’

  His ready agreement seemed to cheer her, and she asked, ‘Is it urgent, sir?’

  Given the fact that it probably wasn’t legal, either, Brunetti said, ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Then I’ll have a look tomorrow, sir.’

  Before he left, he said, indicating her computer, ‘While you’re in there, could you see what you can find out about an usher at the Courthouse, Araldo Fontana?’ Brunetti did not give her the name of Judge Coltellini, not from compunction at sharing police information with a civilian employee — he had long since set aside the things of a child — but because he did not want to burden her with a third name, and Brusca’s apparent defence of the man had made Brunetti more curious about him.

  But he could not stop himself from asking, ‘Where did you get that information about the computers, Signorina?’

  ‘Oh, it’s all in the public record, sir. You just have to know where to look.’

  ‘And so you sort of go trolling through the files by yourself to see what you can see?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said with a smile, ‘I suppose you could phrase it that way. “Trolling.” I quite like that.’

  ‘And you never know what you’re going to fish up, I suppose.’

  ‘Never,’ she said. Then, pointing to the paper where she had written the names he wanted her to check, she said, ‘Besides, it keeps me in training for interesting things like this.’

  ‘Isn’t the rest of your work interesting, Signorina?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I’m afraid much of it isn’t, Dottore.’ She propped her chin in her cupped palm and tightened her lips in a resigned grimace. ‘It’s hard when so many of the people I work for are so very dull.’

  ‘It’s a common enough plight, Signorina,’ Brunetti said and left the office.

  9

  By the time he reached his office the next day, Brunetti was resigned to the fact that he was not soon going to have his own computer, though he found it more difficult to resign himself to the temperature of his office when he arrived. The family had, the night before, discussed where they were to go for their yearly vacation, Brunetti apologizing that the uncertainty of work had kept him this long without knowing when he would be free. He had quickly squashed all discussion of going to the seaside: not in August with millions of people in the water and on the roads and in the restaurants. ‘I will not go to Puglia, where it is forty degrees in the shade, and where the olive oil is all fake,’ he remembered saying at one point.

  In retrospect, he accepted the possibility that he might have been too firm. In his defence of his own desires, he had been emboldened by the fact that Paola never much cared where they went: her only concern was what books she should take and whether wherever they went had a quiet place for her to lie in the shade and read.

  Other men had wives who begged them to go out dancing, travel the world, stay up late and do irresponsible things. Brunetti had managed to marry a woman who looked forward to going to bed at ten o’clock with Henry James. Or, when driven by wild passions she was ashamed to reveal to her husband, with Henry James and his brother.

  Like the president of a banana republic, Brunetti had offered democratic choice and then rammed his own proposal past all difference of opinion or opposition. A cousin of his had inherited a farmhouse in Alto Adige, above Glorenza, and had offered it to Brunetti while he and his family went to Puglia. ‘In the heat, eating fake olive oil,’ Brunetti muttered, though no less grateful to his cousin for the offer. And so the Brunettis were to go to the mountains for two weeks; thinking of it, Brunetti’s spirit flooded with relief at the mere thought of sleeping under a quilt and having to wear a sweater in the evening.

  Vianello and his family had rented a house on the beach in Croatia, where he planned to do nothing but swim and fish until the end of the month. While they were both away, their unofficial investigation into Stefano Gorini would go on vacation, as well.

  Brunetti spent the first part of the morning using the computer in the officer’s squad room to check the trains to Bolzano and to consult the various tourist sites in Alto Adige. Then he went back to his own office and called a few colleagues to see if they had ever come into contact with Stefano Gorini. He had more success with the train schedule.

  A bit after twelve-thirty, he dialled his home number. Paola answered on the third ring, saying, ‘If you can get here in fifteen minutes, there’s prosciutto and figs and then pasta with fresh peppers and shrimp.’

  ‘Twenty,’ he said and hung up.

  To walk it that quickly on a hot day, he feared, would kill him, so he went out to the riva and was lucky enough to step directly on to a Number Two. At San Tomà he caught a Number One that pulled up after two minutes, and got off at San Silvestro. It had taken longer than it would by foot, but he had been spared crossing the city in the middle of the day.

  Inside the apartment, Paola and the kids sat at the table in the kitchen: the terrace was a broiler during the day and could be used only after sunset. Brunetti hung up his jacket, wondering if he should wring it out first, and took his place at the table.

  He glanced at the faces and wondered if the apathy he saw there was the result of his behaviour about their vacation or merely the heat. ‘How’d you spend your morning?’ he asked Chiara.

  ‘I went over to Livia’s and tried on some of the new things she got to go back to school,’ Chiara answered, carefully trim
ming the fat from her prosciutto and passing it silently to Raffi’s plate, she apparently having decided that vegetarians can eat the ham but not the fat.

  ‘Autumn things? Already?’ Paola asked, putting a plate of prosciutto and black figs in front of Brunetti. She rested her hand on his shoulder when she leaned down with the plate, allowing Brunetti to believe that at least one member of the family looked forward to the vacation.

  ‘Yes,’ Chiara said, mouth full of fig. ‘When we were in Milano to visit her sister last week — Marisa: she’s at Bocconi — they took me shopping with them. The stuff there is much better than what you find here. Here it’s all for teenies or old ladies.’

  His daughter had gone to Milano, Brunetti reflected, site of the Brera Gallery, site of Leonardo’s Cenacolo, site of the greatest Gothic cathedral in Italy, and she had gone shopping. ‘Did you find anything you liked?’ he asked and ate half a fig. His daughter was perhaps a philistine, but the fig was sweet perfection.

  ‘No, Papà, I didn’t,’ she said in the descending measures of tragedy. ‘Everything’s crazy expensive.’ She trimmed another piece of prosciutto and used the point of her knife to transfer the fat to Raffi, who was busy with his lunch and apparently uninterested in tales of shopping.

  ‘I had my own money, but Mamma would have gone crazy if I’d spent two hundred Euros on a pair of jeans.’

  Paola glanced up from her antipasto. ‘No, I wouldn’t have gone crazy, but I would have sent you to a work camp for the rest of the summer.’

  ‘How are we supposed to get out of the financial crisis if no one spends any money?’ Chiara demanded, sure proof that she had spent a day in the company of a student at Italy’s best business school.

  ‘By working hard and paying our taxes,’ Raffi said, thus putting an end to any lingering doubts Brunetti might have had that his son’s flirtation with Marxism was at an end.

  ‘Would that it were that easy,’ Paola said.