A Question of Belief cb-19

by Donna Leon

  He nodded to the pilot, Foa, stepped on board, and took Griffoni’s hand. Her tan made her hair seem even blonder, and her short skirt showed an expanse of bronzed leg. She looked like anything but a commissario di polizia on duty. Foa unmoored the boat and went back into the cabin. He started the engine.

  ‘Vianello?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘He’s back already. Waiting for us at the victim’s home. It took him less than three hours.’

  Brunetti smiled. Even if it ruined Vianello’s vacation plans to have to return to Venice, to do so on a Coastguard patrol boat at full throttle across the Adriatic was some compensation. ‘I bet he loved it.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’ she asked and he heard the envy in her voice.

  The boat turned left into the Canale di Cannaregio, passed at moderate speed under both bridges and out into the laguna. Griffoni explained that she had spoken with Dottor Rizzardi, who said he would try to get back from his house in the Dolomites by that evening. If he could not, then it would be the following morning.

  Griffoni had not seen the body, which had been taken to the morgue before Scarpa called her to tell her about the crime. Brunetti asked carefully about Scarpa’s behaviour and his response to the news that both he and Vianello were returning from vacation to take over the case.

  ‘I didn’t tell him,’ Griffoni said.

  ‘So he thinks the case is his?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘His and mine, but since I’m only a woman, I obviously don’t count.’ They had chosen to stay out on the deck in the hope of catching the breeze created by their motion, so the wind carried some of their words away. Brunetti took another look at her. Though she was decidedly a woman, Brunetti would never preface that noun with the adjective ‘only’. ‘So my arrival will surprise him,’ Brunetti said, not without satisfaction.

  ‘I hope it upsets him, too,’ she said with the sort of malice that acquaintance, however brief, with Lieutenant Scarpa so often provoked.

  The water in this part of the laguna was surprisingly choppy, and both of them were forced to grab the railing to keep from being tossed about. Foa nevertheless put the boat to full throttle in the open water, drowning out other sound and the possibility of conversation. Brunetti glanced to the left, his eye hopping from Murano to Burano and to the bell tower of Torcello, barely visible in the muggy air.

  They turned right, passed a canal and turned into the next. Brunetti saw the man leading the camel and asked, ‘What are we doing in the Misericordia?’

  ‘His home is up ahead, on the left.’

  ‘Oddio,’ Brunetti exclaimed. ‘It’s not Fontana, is it?’

  ‘I told you his name when I called,’ insisted Griffoni.

  Brunetti remembered the clicks and noises on the phone line and said, ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You know him?’ she asked, interested.

  ‘No. But I know about him.’

  ‘Worked at the Tribunale, didn’t he?’ she asked.

  Feeling the boat begin to slow, Brunetti said only ‘Yes’, before moving forward to take the mooring rope. Foa stopped on the right side of the canal, and Brunetti stepped up to the pavement and tied the rope to a metal ring. He extended a hand to Griffoni and helped her from the boat; Foa said he would find a bar to get out of the sun and told them to call him when they were finished.

  She led the way: down to the first bridge, across it and up the calle to the first right. Then the third house on the right: a large brown portone with a panel of names and bells beside it.

  Griffoni had a key and let them in to what turned out to be a large courtyard filled with potted palms and bushes, the far side already shady in the late afternoon. Motion there caught his eye. A young officer, one of the new recruits, jumped to his feet and saluted the two commissari. Brunetti noticed then that scene of crime tape divided the courtyard into two parts, in the farther of which stood the young man. He and Griffoni slipped under the tape and approached. ‘Where was he?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Over there, Commissario,’ the young officer said, pointing back towards the stairway that led up to the door to the building.

  Brunetti and Griffoni walked over to the steps; Brunetti’s eyes were drawn to a bloodstain on the pavement that looked as if it had been formed around three sides of a rectangle. The chalk-drawn figure of a man emerged from the stain, its feet pointing towards them. From the angle at which Brunetti saw it, the figure looked surprisingly small.

  ‘Where’s the statue?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Bocchese had it taken to the lab,’ Griffoni said. ‘It was only a nineteenth-century marble copy of a Byzantine lion.’ The remark confused Brunetti, but he chose not to ask about it.

  He looked back at the portone that opened into the calle and saw that the bloodstain was about fifteen metres from it, so someone could have been waiting in the courtyard. Or Fontana could have been pushed inside. Or he had gone inside with someone he knew.

  ‘What time did it happen?’ Brunetti asked Griffoni.

  ‘No one’s sure. We haven’t questioned the people in the building yet, but one man told Scarpa he and his wife came home just after midnight, and didn’t see anything.’ Waving her arm back at the portone and sweeping it in a line that ended at the bloodstain, she said, ‘There was no way they could not have seen him. So: some time after midnight.’

  ‘Until seven-thirty,’ Brunetti said. ‘Long time.’

  Griffoni nodded in agreement. ‘That’s one of the reasons I wanted Rizzardi to do the autopsy.’

  ‘What did Scarpa tell you?’ asked Brunetti.

  ‘He said the wife of this couple told him Fontana lived with his mother. She’s very religious, goes to Mass every day and out to the cemetery once a week to tend her husband’s grave. That her son was devoted to her and it’s such a pity that he should be cut off in the prime of life. Usual story: once a person is dead, people start falling over themselves saying what a fine person he was and what a loss to the world, and how wonderful his entire family is.’

  ‘Which means, according to you?’

  Griffoni smiled and answered, ‘What it would mean to anyone who pays attention to what people are really saying when they’re talking about how wonderful other people are: that she’s a dragon and probably made her son’s life a living misery.’ They were some distance from the young recruit and spoke in low voices; Brunetti regretted this, for it would delay the young man’s exposure to one of the basic truths his profession would eventually reveal to him: never trust anything that is said about a dead person.

  Brunetti took another look at the scene of the crime, the tape, the chalked figure. He called over to the young officer, ‘Did you come with Lieutenant Scarpa?’

  ‘No, sir. I was on patrol over by San Leonardo and got a call telling me to come here.’

  ‘Who was here when you arrived?’

  ‘There was the Lieutenant, sir. Scarpa. And Officers Alvise and Portoghese. And three technicians from the crime squad. And the photographer.’ His voice trailed off, but it was obvious that he had not finished.

  ‘Who else?’ Brunetti said in an encouraging tone.

  ‘There were four people who lived in the building, or who acted like they did. One of them had a dog. And then some people standing over by the portone.’

  ‘Did you get their names?’

  ‘I thought about it, sir. But I figured, since there was a ranking officer and two other officers who are senior to me, well, I figured they’d already done that. And it didn’t seem my place to ask if they had.’

  Brunetti took a closer look at the young man. He glanced at his nametag: ‘Zucchero,’ he read. ‘Are you Pierluigi’s son?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he answered.

  ‘I never met your father,’ Brunetti said, ‘but everyone here speaks of him with respect.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. He was a good man.’

  ‘Ispettore Vianello?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Upstairs talking to the mother, Commissario. He got here about
half an hour ago.’

  Brunetti stepped back from the young man and turned in a circle to study the inside of the courtyard. One wall ran along the street; opposite it, on the other side of the scene of crime tape, stood three doors made of metal grillework, all of them closed.

  ‘What are those?’ Brunetti asked, pointing to the doors.

  ‘The storerooms for the apartments, sir.’ Then Zucchero pointed to a fourth grillework door on one of the side walls, also closed, half hidden behind a line of potted palms. ‘There’s another one over there, sir.’

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ Brunetti said.

  The three of them walked over to the single door, which stood in the shade cast by two of the palms. Brunetti noticed that a metal chain had been run through the bars of the door and through a metal hasp that had been nailed into the wooded door frame. ‘Lieutenant Scarpa had all the padlocks replaced, sir. But I’ve got the keys.’ Moving past Brunetti, Zucchero stuck his hands through the bars and switched on a light which allowed them to see inside.

  The room was empty, the floor swept clean, but not recently, for tiny patches of powdered stucco had fallen since the last cleaning and stood out like dusty islands in a cement sea. The walls were entirely bare, save for the occasional patch where the whitewash was flaking off.

  Brunetti reached in to switch off the light, and they crossed the courtyard to the first of the other doors. The sun reached halfway up the wall and, falling through the grating at an angle, brightened the first metre of the pavement. Made from large terracotta tiles, the pavement was raised two steps above the surface of the courtyard, reducing the humidity and perhaps protecting against the risk of acqua alta. Zucchero opened the lock and pulled open the door. Brunetti lowered his head and stepped inside, found the light and switched it on.

  In contrast to the stark emptiness of the other, this storeroom exploded with things: boxes, suitcases, knapsacks, old paint tins, plastic buckets with rags erupting from them, empty jam and pickle jars. At the end, he read the history of childhood: a collapsible wooden baby cot, its plastic bottom sheet draped across it so that only the round metal castors and the bottom of the legs were visible. A hanging mobile of animals and bells had crash-landed on a bookcase. Two cardboard boxes contained a zoo of soft animals, all the worse for wear. Two unopened boxes of Pampers stood beside the mobile, perhaps awaiting the arrival of another child.

  Brunetti stepped back and bumped into Griffoni. He apologized, standing back so she could leave, then he switched off the light, and Zucchero saw to closing the door.

  Griffoni chose not to go into the third storeroom when Zucchero removed the chain and opened the door. It was identical in size to the other, about three metres in width and extending at least five towards the back wall. Inside, shelves holding boxes ran from floor to ceiling on both sides. The boxes were all the same size and made of plain brown cardboard: these were boxes meant to store things, not boxes brought home from the supermarket and pressed into service. Each bore a neat hand-printed label in the centre of the side that faced out from the shelf. ‘Zia Maria’s Tea Set’, ‘Handkerchiefs’, ‘Winter shoes’, ‘Woollen scarves’, ‘Araldo’s books’. And so it went, the detritus of life ordered and sealed in boxes and nothing to be discarded if it might some time be used or needed again.

  Brunetti turned away from the room and the life it held, switched off the light, and followed Zucchero to the fourth storeroom, Griffoni again close behind them, all of them silent.

  When Zucchero let them into the last, Brunetti switched on the light and saw that it was the same size as the previous storeroom and had similar shelving. It too gave evidence of many lives or, at least, that many lives had passed through the hands of the owners. Most of the shelves on the left side held empty bird cages, at least twenty of them. They were wooden and metal, all sizes, all colours. Some of them still held their water bottles, dry now, with dark stains showing the level of water when they had been placed in the storeroom. All of the doors were closed, and none of the little wooden swings moved. They had been wiped clean, but the dusty, acid smell of bird filled the space. There was one stack of boxes, these too the sort one bought to store things in. Labelled in a different hand, they contained ‘Lucio’s sweaters’, ‘Lucio’s boots’, and ‘Eugenia’s sweaters’.

  The other side held wine racks; not shelves, racks that began about thirty centimetres from the ground and ran almost to the ceiling. Brunetti walked over and read the labels; he recognized and approved of some of them, saw that others had detached themselves from the bottles and hung loose. Griffoni asked, ‘In this humidity, with that other smell?’

  Brunetti put out a finger and rubbed one of the corks, which had herniated the metal foil. A rough white film covered the top of the cork. He pulled out the bottle. ‘Nineteen eighty,’ he said, and slid the bottle back, both of them wincing at the sound of glass scraping on metal.

  At the far end of the room they saw a sofa and at one end a standard lamp that must have fallen victim to redecoration. Over the back of the sofa was draped a hand-knitted afghan in violent reds and greens, and at the other end stood a square table with a greying crocheted doily in the centre.

  Without bothering to comment on any of the things, Brunetti said to Griffoni, ‘Let’s go up and see how much Vianello has got out of her so far.’ This would have sounded — to anyone unfamiliar with the Ispettore’s uncanny ability to lure even the most recalcitrant witness — slightly menacing; but it was merely what anyone who knew Vianello would expect him to have achieved.

  Brunetti nodded to Zucchero, who saluted and moved back into the shadow.

  ‘It’s on the second floor,’ Griffoni said, leading him up the stairs to the main entrance, which was open. Inside, they paused at the bottom of the oval staircase that led to the upper floors. The steps were marble, broad and low, at the top a skylight: nothing else would explain the light that flooded down, illuminating and heating the area around them.

  ‘Were you up there before?’ Brunetti asked, staring at the skylight.

  ‘No, Scarpa went up to talk to her when he found out that Fontana lived with his mother. He didn’t call me until after he’d spoken to her.’

  Brunetti nodded, and the young officer left them, staring back across the courtyard. Turning to Griffoni, Brunetti asked, ‘Why do you think he waited so long?’

  ‘Power,’ she answered, then more reflectively, ‘So long as he can control or limit what other people know, he knows more than they do and feels as if he has power over them or what they do.’ She shrugged, adding, ‘It’s a common enough technique.’

  ‘I’d say in some places it’s standard operating procedure,’ Brunetti added and started up the stairs.

  The landing of the second floor had only two doors; a policeman stood outside one of them. He saluted when he saw Brunetti and Griffoni and said, ‘Ispettore Vianello is still inside.’

  Brunetti indicated the other door, but the officer said, ‘That side of the building’s not been restored, sir. All three apartments are empty.’ Then, before Brunetti could ask, he added, ‘We checked them, sir.’

  Brunetti nodded his thanks and tapped on the door twice, but when he saw it was ajar he pushed it open and went into the apartment. The light evaporated, and all he saw was a dim glow at the end of what must have been a long corridor. Unconsciously, Griffoni took a step closer to him until her arm was touching his in the near-darkness. They stood still until their eyes adjusted and they could begin to make out the objects lining the corridor. Brunetti saw the outline of a door on his right and opened it, hoping to allow some light to filter into the corridor, but the room was dark, and all he could make out were four thin vertical bars of gold. It took Brunetti a moment to realize they were cracks of light at the edges of the shutters closed over two windows. Here, as well, he saw the dim shadows of objects standing about in the room, but it was impossible to distinguish what they were.

  He pulled the door closed and began to pat the wal
l of the corridor in search of a light switch. When he found one and pressed it, the difference was minimal, for it illuminated only a single overhead light halfway down the corridor. The objects emerged closer to visibility: narrow tables, low trunks, a few standing lamps, a suitcase — all crowded back against the walls.

  They heard the murmur of a voice, perhaps more than one, from the end of the corridor, and both of them set off at the same moment. They passed another door on the right and another on the left. Ordinarily the darkness would have provided some relief from the heat, but that was not the case here. If air be stagnant, then stagnant air grew in that hall. It pressed itself against them as they moved, reluctant to let them pass and interested only in adding to their discomfort. The dampness wrapped itself around them and stroked their exposed flesh.

  They stopped in front of a door which was ajar, and Brunetti was about to call Vianello’s name when he recalled that the woman was a widow, had lived alone with her only son, who had just been killed. ‘You call him,’ he told Griffoni softly.

  ‘Ispettore Vianello?’ Griffoni said into the crack between the door and the jamb.

  Her voice was answered by the sound of a chair scraping on the floor, and Vianello appeared at the door and pulled it fully open. Like Brunetti, he was dressed for vacation, in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Whatever his clothing lacked in seriousness was more than made up for by the expression on his face and by the voice in which he said, ‘Commissario Griffoni. Commissario Brunetti. I’d like to present you to Signora Fontana, the mother of the victim.’ The Inspector’s voice grew softer with the final word.

  He stepped slowly back from the doorway and turned towards two chairs that sat in the middle of the room, both with their backs to what appeared to be a row of windows obscured by maroon velvet curtains.