A Question of Belief cb-19

by Donna Leon

  She glanced at him but did not bother to answer. She leaned forward and sipped at her spritz, her first, and set the glass back on the table. Small wrinkles radiated out from her eyes, but the skin was taut over her cheekbones and under her chin. From Paola, Brunetti knew that this was the result of genes and not the surgeon’s knife.

  ‘And it might help this old woman,’ he said.

  ‘One old woman helping another?’ she inquired lightly.

  He laughed, knowing that her age was a subject about which she was not sensitive. ‘No, not at all. It’s more a case of a woman of the upper classes helping one of the worthy poor.’

  ‘And me without my lorgnette and tiara.’

  ‘No, I’m serious, Donatella. No one is going to help this woman. Someone’s manipulating her, but she’s refused to listen to her family, so they can’t help her. Her banker apparently can’t talk any sense into her. And if she knew we were investigating this Gorini — which is entirely against the rules, probably even illegal — I’m sure she’d break off relations with Vianello. And that would hurt him terribly, I know.’

  ‘So it becomes the responsibility of the aristocracy to save a member of the lower orders?’ she asked, her voice enclosing that last phrase in ironic quotation marks.

  ‘Something like that, I suppose,’ Brunetti said and took another sip of his drink.

  ‘Do you have proof that this Gorini person is a charlatan?’

  ‘He has a long record of dishonesty.’

  ‘Ah,’ she whispered, ‘not unlike our own dear leaders.’

  Brunetti let that pass.

  ‘Would you like another drink?’ she asked, seeing the level of his glass.

  ‘No. I want to go home and get something to eat, call Paola, and go to bed. I spent hours on trains today.’ He chose not to tell her about the murder investigation that was beginning: she could read about that tomorrow.

  ‘Do you think this Signor Gorini is a bad man?’ she asked.

  He consulted the opposite windows and was relieved to see that the light had faded even more. ‘To date, there’s been no suggestion that he’s violent,’ he finally said. ‘He’s never been accused of that. But, yes, I do think he’s a bad man. He sees where there’s a weakness, and he goes for that. In the past, he’s defrauded the state, but it seems he’s realized it’s easier to defraud people. The state will defend itself, but it has little time to defend the citizen.’ He thought about stopping here but decided not to and added, ‘And less interest.’

  ‘And this from an employee of the state,’ she said.

  Had he been less tired, Brunetti would have been quite happy to banter with her about this, as they had countless times in the past. Paola’s sardonic vision of the world had come from her father: he was sure of that. But it was her mother who had passed on the sense of irony with which she tempered what she saw.

  Brunetti put his hands on the arms of his chair and was pushing himself upright when she surprised him by saying, ‘All right.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘All right. I’ll do it. I’ll go and talk to this man and see what he’s up to. But you have to find a way for me to justify my visit to him: I can’t just walk in from the street and say I saw his name on the doorbell and thought perhaps he could find an astrological solution for all my problems, can I?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Brunetti agreed, lowering himself back into the chair. ‘I’ll have Signorina Elettra see if there is a place where he advertises or where interested people can find out more about him.’

  ‘In the computer?’ she asked, unable to disguise her astonishment.

  ‘It’s the new age, Donatella.’

  The first thing he did when he got home was throw open all of the windows and step out on to the terrace where the hot air, he hoped, would follow him. The curtain brushed against his leg as it flowed outside, chasing the escaping air, a sign that his wish was coming true. After about ten minutes, Brunetti went back inside a cooler apartment.

  Believing that they would be away for two weeks, Paola had cleared out the refrigerator. He opened it, found some onions in the bottom drawer. Two containers of plain yoghurt. A piece of vacuum-packed parmigiano. He opened a cabinet and found a small jar of pesto, a six-pack of canned tomatoes, and a jar of black olives.

  He called Paola’s telefonino number. She answered by saying, ‘Fry the onions, then add the tomatoes and olives. They don’t have any pits. Make sure you put the parmigiano in a new plastic bag, one of the zip-lock ones.’

  ‘I miss you desperately, too,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Don’t get smart with me, Guido Brunetti, or I’ll tell you it’s 14 degrees and I’m wearing a sweater in the house.’ He started to defend himself but she added, ‘And there’s a fire in the stove.’

  ‘I know a lot of lawyers who handle divorce work, you know.’

  ‘And we went for a walk this afternoon; three hours, full sun, and the Ortler is still covered with snow.’

  ‘All right, all right. I’ll beat Patta into confessing and come up tomorrow.’

  ‘Tell me about the phone call. Who was it that got killed?’ she asked, all humour fled from her voice.

  ‘A man who works at the Tribunale. It could have been a mugging that went wrong.’

  She had been married to this man for more than twenty years and so she asked, ‘ “Could have been”? Does that mean that it probably was a mugging or that Patta is going to try to pass it off as one?’

  ‘It could have been. He was killed in the courtyard of his home, and no one found him until this morning. I don’t know yet what Patta will do.’

  ‘Do you have any ideas?’

  ‘Only vague ones,’ he said. Because Paola had asked about the murder case, Brunetti felt no need to tell her that he had enlisted her mother into helping the police investigate what might be another crime. In order to stay away from that subject, he asked, ‘How are the kids?’

  ‘Tired. I’ve fed them and they’re trying to stay awake until ten. I think they still believe it’s only little kids who go to bed before that.’

  ‘Oh, to be a little kid,’ Brunetti exclaimed.

  ‘All right. Make the sauce and eat. Then go to bed. It will be well after ten by then.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I hope it stays sunny and cool enough to make you wear a sweater all the time.’

  ‘How is it there?’

  ‘Hot.’

  ‘Go and eat, Guido.’

  ‘I will,’ he answered, said goodbye and hung up the phone.

  18

  The next day, if anything, was hotter, and Brunetti woke shortly after six to damp sheets and a muddled sense of having been awake often in the night. In the absence of the representatives of the Water Police, he permitted himself the luxury of a long shower, first hot and then cold and then hot again. Worse, he allowed himself to shave in the shower, an act of ecological excess which would have earned him the loud condemnation of both his children.

  He didn’t bother with coffee at home but stopped in the first bar he passed, then went into Ballarin for a cappuccino and a brioche. He had picked up the papers at his edicola and laid the second section of Il Gazzettino on the round table in the pasticceria. Sipping, he studied the headline, ‘Courthouse Clerk Found Murdered’. Well, that was fair enough. The article was surprisingly clear: it gave the time of the discovery of the body and the probable cause of death.

  But then it slipped into what Brunetti thought of as ‘Gazzettino Mode’. The victim’s fellow workers spoke of his many virtues, his seriousness, his devotion to the cause of justice, his poor mother, a widow who had now to bear the death of her only son. And then, as ever, there came the sly insinuation — oh so carefully draped in the sober garb of innocent speculation — about what might have caused this terrible crime. Could the victim have been involved in some practice that had brought his death upon him? Had his job at the Tribunale provided him with access to information that had proven dangerous? Nothing was sta
ted, but everything was implied.

  Brunetti refolded the paper, paid, and continued through the growing heat to work. When he got there, well before eight, he made a list of things he needed to check: the first was the autopsy, which should have been done the previous day. Then there was the question of the relatives on Fontana’s side: perhaps Vianello had managed to find them. He also needed to know the names of the people involved in the various cases where Judge Coltellini had so long delayed her decisions. And how was it that Fontana and his mother were asked to pay Signor Puntera such a derisory rent?

  He went to his open window, where the curtain hung limp, dead, and consulted with the façade of the church of San Lorenzo about how best to begin.

  Suddenly overcome with impatience, Brunetti called the Ospedale Civile and learned that Dottor Rizzardi would be there all morning. He asked that the doctor be told he was on his way, and left the Questura. By the time he reached Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, his jacket and shirt were glued to his back, and the sides of his feet rubbed uncomfortably against the inside of his shoes. To traverse the open campo was to question his own sanity at having decided to walk.

  He went to Rizzardi’s office but was told that the doctor was still in the morgue. The very word dispersed some of the heat; the air that swirled around him when he pushed open the door drove off the rest of it. His shirt and jacket still clung to him, but the sensation was now coolly sinister instead of irritating.

  Rizzardi, he was relieved to see, stood at a sink, already washing his hands. The fact that the sinks in the room were so deep and their fronts so low had always filled Brunetti with a vague uneasiness, but he had never wanted to ask about it.

  ‘I thought I’d come over,’ Brunetti said. He glanced around: three draped figures lay in a row to Rizzardi’s left. ‘I wanted to ask you about Fontana.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rizzardi said, wiping his hands on a thin green towel. Carefully, he wiped each finger on one hand separately, then transferred the towel to the other hand and repeated the task. ‘He was killed by three blows to the head, so if anyone over there is thinking he died in a fall, they can forget about it: he didn’t fall three times.’ The doctor stopped drying his hands. ‘There’s a bruise on his left temple suggesting that he was hit there, perhaps even with a fist.’

  ‘Was it the statue?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘That killed him?’ Rizzardi asked. When Brunetti nodded, the doctor said, ‘Beyond question. There was blood and brain matter on it, and the shape of the wounds perfectly matches the configuration of the head of the statue.’ Brunetti shied away from asking where the statue had ended up. Rizzardi folded the towel in half horizontally and laid it over the edge of the sink. ‘One reconstruction could be that someone hit him — that would account for the bruise — and he fell against the statue.’ Rizzardi bent down and held his hand about forty centimetres above the ground. ‘The head of the lion is only about this high, so he would have fallen against it with some force.’

  He stood up, adding, ‘Then all he’d have to do is lift his head again and hit it against the statue. It would have been easy enough.’

  ‘How long would it have taken him to die?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘From what I saw, any of the blows could have killed him, but it would have taken some time for the blood to fill the brain and block off body function.’

  ‘No chance at all?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘If he’d been found sooner?’

  Rizzardi turned and leaned back against the sink, crossed his ankles, then folded his arms across his chest. Because Rizzardi was wearing only a light cotton shirt and trousers under his cotton gown, Brunetti, almost painfully conscious of the cold, wondered if he was trying to keep himself warm by standing like that. He watched Rizzardi process his question as if he were reviewing the information that would provide an answer.

  ‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘Not likely. Not after the second, and third, blows. There are marks — really a faint bruising — on both sides of the chin and neck where he was held.’ To illustrate, Rizzardi held his hands up and made as if to crush something between them. ‘But either the killer was wearing gloves or he covered his hands with something, I’d say.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The bruises. If he’d been barehanded, the bruises would have been deeper, cleaner at the edges, but there was a kind of padding effect. If he’d been barehanded, the nails would have broken the skin, no matter how short they were.’ He raised his hands, as if to repeat the gesture, but let them fall to his sides.

  He pulled off his lab coat and draped it over the sink, aligning it perfectly with the towel. ‘There’s something else,’ Rizzardi said.

  His voice caught Brunetti’s attention.

  ‘Semen.’ As he said this, Rizzardi turned his eyes in the direction of the three draped forms, but since it was also the same direction as the door to the refrigerated room where bodies were kept, Brunetti ignored the gesture.

  He had read historic accounts of the spontaneous ejaculation of hanged men; perhaps this was a similar case. Or perhaps he had been with a woman before returning home. Given his mother’s character, it would make sense that Fontana, poor thing, would keep such things far from her.

  When Brunetti’s silence had gone on sufficiently long, Rizzardi said, ‘It was in his anus.’

  ‘Oddio,’ Brunetti exclaimed as the pieces of reality scrambled around in his mind and came out looking like something else entirely.

  ‘Enough to identify the man?’

  ‘If you find the man,’ Rizzardi answered.

  ‘Will the sample tell us anything about him?’ Brunetti asked.

  What does a shrug sound like, and does it sound the same when it is heard above the hum of a refrigerator? Whatever it was, that was what Brunetti thought he heard when Rizzardi raised and dropped his shoulders. ‘Blood type, but for anything else, you need a sample from the other man.’

  ‘How long will it take to know the blood type?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘It shouldn’t take long,’ Rizzardi began. ‘But. .’

  ‘But this is August,’ Brunetti finished for him.

  ‘Exactly. So it could take a week.’

  ‘Or more?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Can you hurry them up?’

  ‘I’m sure that, even as we speak, every police officer in this country is asking the same question of every medico legale, and that doctor is asking it of the laboratory.’

  ‘I suppose that means you can’t?’ Brunetti asked.

  Rizzardi took a few steps away from the sink and stopped at the head of one of the draped figures. A sudden chill radiated out from the centre of Brunetti’s still-damp back. ‘I once sent DNA samples to the lab,’ the doctor said. ‘It was for a case in Mestre — and there were no results for two weeks.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said. He turned slightly, making the gesture seem an entirely casual one, and took a few steps towards the door to the corridor. He gave a short cough that could have been brought on by the cold, and said, ‘Ettore, I want to ask you something and I want you to believe I have a good reason to ask.’

  Rizzardi’s glance was level. ‘What? Or who?’

  ‘Signorina Montini. Elvira.’

  Brunetti waited. Absently, Rizzardi reached a hand towards one end of the draped figure, and Brunetti felt his chest tighten, but all the doctor did was straighten out a wrinkle in the cloth. Keeping his eyes on the draped form, Rizzardi said, ‘She’s the best worker here. She’s done me a lot of favours over the years. More than a decade.’

  ‘I admire your loyalty, Ettore, but she might be involved with someone she shouldn’t be involved with.’

  ‘Who?’

  Brunetti shook his head. ‘I’m not sure yet.’

  ‘But you will be?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘Will you promise me something?’ Rizzardi asked, finally looking at him. In all these years, Rizzardi had never asked him a
favour.

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘Will you warn her if there’s time?’

  Brunetti had no idea what that might come to mean — what trimming of the law, what compromise of the rules. ‘If there’s time. Yes.’

  ‘All right,’ Rizzardi said, his face relaxing, but not by much. ‘It’s been about a year since her colleagues started to notice that something was wrong, or at least that long that they’ve spoken to me about it. She’s moody, unhappy, or sometimes overly happy, but the mood never lasts more than a few days. In the past, her work was always perfect: she was the model the other people in the lab set their standards by.’

  ‘And now?’

  Rizzardi turned away from the draped form and, keeping it between himself and Brunetti, started to walk towards the door. Just short of it, he stopped, and turned back to meet Brunetti’s glance. ‘But now she comes in late, or doesn’t come in at all. And she makes mistakes, mixes up samples, drops things. Nothing she’s done has ever been serious enough to cause a patient harm, but people are beginning to suspect that’s next. One of the men who works with her told me it’s as if she doesn’t have the courage to quit and wants to get herself fired.’ Rizzardi stopped.

  ‘What’s she like?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘She’s a good woman. Introverted, lonely, not very attractive. But good. At least that’s what I’d say. But who knows anything?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Brunetti confirmed. ‘Thanks for telling me.’ Then, feeling obliged to honour a promise he did not understand, he added, ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  ‘Good,’ Rizzardi said and opened the door. He went out, leaving the door open, and Brunetti was quick to follow him into the greater warmth of the corridor.

  Brunetti walked slowly towards the exit, past the bar filled with people wearing pyjamas or street clothing. When he reached the grassy courtyard that had once been the monks’ cloister, he went and sat on the low wall on the far side. Like a diver coming up to the surface, Brunetti needed to acclimatize himself to the greater temperature before daring to go out under the sun again. As he sat, his thoughts turned to the dead Fontana, recalibrating everything. He would never know the man’s feelings for his mother: for any man, they were never simple. But his attentions to Judge Coltellini now had to be viewed in a different light or from a different angle. This was no case of star-crossed love, nor spurned affections. What was it Signorina Elettra had said? That he seemed grateful to her, the way a supplicant was grateful to the Madonna when his prayer was answered? But if his answered prayer had nothing to do with the magic of romance, then what did it have to do with? Brusca’s words floated back to him: if you eliminate sex, sex, sex, you are left with money, money, money.