Wilful behaviour cgb-11

by Donna Leon

  'Two years,' she said, a phrase so simple as to give no indication of how well she spoke Italian.

  'Did you enjoy working for the Signora?'

  'She was a good woman,' Salima said. There was not a lot of work to do, and she was always as generous with me as she could be.'

  'Was she a poor woman, do you think?' She shrugged, as if any Western definition of poverty was bound to be absurd, if not insulting. 'In what way was she generous?'

  'She would give me food and sometimes she gave me extra money.'

  ‘I would imagine many employers are not generous,' Brunetti observed, hoping that this would somehow break through her formal reserve.

  But the attempt was too obvious, and she ignored his words, sat quietly and waited for his next question.

  'Did you have keys to her apartment?'

  She looked up at him, and he saw her consider the risk of telling the truth. His impulse was to reassure her that there would be no danger in telling him the truth, but he knew that to be a lie and so he said nothing.

  'Yes.'

  'How often did you go?'

  'I went to clean once a week. But sometimes I went in to bring her a meal. She didn't eat enough. And always smoking.' Her Italian was excellent, and he realized she must be from Somalia, a place where his father had fought, he with his machine-gun against men with spears.

  'Did she ever talk about the things in her apartment?'

  'They are harram’ she said, 'and she knew I didn't like to talk about them or look at them.'

  'I'm sorry, Signora, but I don't know what that means,' Brunetti confessed.

  'Harram, dirty. The Prophet tells us not to make pictures of people or animals. It is wrong, and they are unclean.'

  Thank you, I understand now’ he said, glad that she had explained, though he marvelled at the idea that anyone could think one of those delicate little dancing girls was unclean.

  'But did she ever talk about them?'

  'She told me that many people would value them, but I didn't want to look at them for fear of what it would do to me.'

  'Did you ever meet the girl Signora Jacobs called her granddaughter?'

  Salima smiled. 'Yes, I met her three or four times. She always called me "Signora" and spoke to me with respect. Once, when I was cleaning the bedroom, she made me a cup of tea and brought it to me. She remembered to put in a lot of sugar: I told her once that’s how my people like to drink it. She was a good girl’

  'Did you know that she was killed?'

  Salima closed her eyes at the thought of that good girl, dead, opened them and said, 'Yes.'

  'Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm her?'

  'How could I know that and not go to the police?' she asked with real indignation, the first emotion she had shown since he began to talk to her.

  'Signor Mario told me you were afraid of the police.' Brunetti said.

  'I am,' she said shortly. 'But that doesn't matter, not if I knew something. Of course I'd tell them.' 'So you know nothing?'

  'No. Nothing. But I think that's what killed the Signora.' 'Why do you say that?'

  'She knew she was going to die. Some days after the girl died she told me that she was in danger.' Her voice had returned to calm neutrality.

  'Danger?' Brunetti repeated.

  That’s the word she used. I knew about her heart and she was using her pills much more, taking many more of them every day.'

  'Did she say that was the danger?' Brunetti asked.

  Salima considered his question for a long time, as if holding it up to the light at a different angle and seeing it in a different manner. 'No. She said only that she was in danger. She didn't say from what.'

  'But you assumed it meant her heart?'

  'Yes.'

  'Could it have been something else?'

  Her answer was long delayed. 'Yes.'

  'Did she say anything else to you?'

  She pulled her lips together, and then he saw her tongue shoot out and moisten them. Her hands were folded primly on the edge of the table, and she looked down at them. She bowed her head and said something so softly that Brunetti couldn't hear.

  'I'm sorry, Signora. I didn't hear.'

  'She gave me something.'

  'What was that, Signora?'

  'I think it was papers.'

  ‘You only think?'

  'It was an envelope. She gave me an envelope and told me to keep it.' 'Until when?'

  'She didn't say. She just told me to hold on to it.' 'When did she give it to you?'

  He watched her count out the time. Two days after the girl died.'

  'Did she say anything?' 'No, but I think she was afraid.' 'What makes you say that, Signora?' She raised those perfect eyes to his and said, 'Because I am familiar with fear.'

  Brunetti glanced away. ‘Do you still have it?' 'Yes.'

  'Would you get it for me, Signora?'

  'You're police, aren't you?' she asked, head still bowed, her full beauty hidden from him, as if fearful of what it could provoke in a man with power over her.

  ‘Yes. But you've done nothing wrong, Signora, and nothing will happen to you.'

  Her sigh was as deep as the gulf between their cultures. 'What must I do for you?' she asked, her voice tired now, resigned.

  'Nothing, Signora. Only give me the papers and then I'll go. No more police will come to bother you.'

  She still hesitated, and he thought she must be trying to think of something she could have him swear by, something that would be sacred to both of them. Whatever it was she sought in that silence, she failed to find it. Without looking at him, she got silently to her feet and went to the chest of drawers.

  She pulled open the top drawer and from right on top pulled out a large manilla envelope that bulged with whatever was inside. Careful to hold it in both hands, she passed it to him.

  Brunetti thanked her and took it. With no hesitation, he unhooked the two metal wings that held it closed. It was not taped or glued, and he would not insult her by asking if she had ever opened it.

  He slipped his right hand inside and felt the soft crinkle of tissue paper extending from the top of what further exploration revealed were twin pieces of cardboard. At the bottom he felt another envelope, this one thick. He took his hand out and, using only the tips of his fingers, extracted whatever was held inside the sheets of cardboard. He slipped the tissue-clad paper from inside the cardboard and laid it on the table: it was a rectangle little larger than a book, perhaps the size of a small magazine. A small piece of paper was taped to the outside of the tissue paper, and on it a slanting hand, trained to write a script more angular than Italian, was written, This is for Salima Maffeki, a free gift of something that has long been in my personal possession’ It was signed 'Hedwig Jacobs' and bore a date three days before her death.

  Brunetti peeled back the tissue paper and opened it, as he would the doors of an Advent calendar. 'Oddio,' he said, exclaiming as he. identified the sketched figure which lay in his mother's arms. It could only be a Tiziano, but he did not have the expert's eye to be able to say more than that.

  She had turned towards him, not in curiosity at the drawing but at his exclamation, and he looked up to see her turn away from that than which nothing could be more harram, an image of their false god, this god so false that he could die. She turned as from obscenity.

  Brunetti folded the tissue paper carefully closed and slipped the drawing back inside the joined sheets of cardboard, saying nothing. He set it aside and pulled out the second envelope. It, too, was unsealed. He lifted the flap and took out a batch of what might have been letters, all neatly folded into three horizontal sections held together by an elastic.

  He opened the first: ‘I, Alberto Foa, sell the following paintings to Luca Guzzardi for the sum of four hundred thousand lire’ The paper was dated 11 January 1943 and contained a listing of nine paintings, all by famous artists. He opened two others and discovered that they, too, were bills of sale to Luca Guz
zardi, both bearing dates before Mussolini's fall. One of them referred to drawings; the other listed paintings and statues.

  Brunetti counted the remaining sheets of paper. Twenty-nine. With the three he had opened, a total of thirty-two bills of sale, no doubt all signed and dated and perfectly legitimate and, more importantly, legally binding proof that the objects in Signora Jacobs's possession had been the legitimate possessions of Luca Guzzardi, her lover, mad and dead this half-century.

  More interestingly, that they were the inheritance of Claudia Leonardo, Guzzardi's granddaughter, stabbed to death and dead intestate.

  He folded the three bills of sale and put them back on the pile, then caught them up in the elastic and slipped them back into their envelope.

  He put that and, very carefully, the Tiziano sketch back into the larger envelope. 'Signora,' he said, looking across at her. ‘I have to take this with me’

  She nodded.

  'Signora, you must believe me when I tell you that you are in no danger. If you like, I will bring my wife and my daughter here and you can ask them if I am an honest man. I think they'll tell you that I am, but I'll do that if you want me to.'

  'I believe you,' she said, still not looking at him.

  'Then believe this, Signora, because it's important. Signora Jacobs has given you a great deal of money. I don't know how much it is, and I won't know until I speak to a man who can tell me. But it is a great deal.'

  'Is it five million lire?' she asked with such longing that she must have believed that with that sum she could buy joy or peace or a place in paradise.

  'Why do you need that amount, Signora?'

  'My husband. And my daughter. If I can send them that much, then they can get out and come here. That’s why I'm here, to work and save and bring them.'

  'It will be more than that,' he said, though he had no idea of the value of the drawing; at least that, probably inestimably more.

  He turned his attention to the envelope and started to bend the metal flanges together to seal it again, so he didn't see her move. Her hands came up quickly and took one of his. Turning his hand palm down, she bowed over it and touched it with her forehead, pressing it there for long seconds. He felt her hands tremble.

  She released his hand and got to her feet.

  Brunetti stood and went to the door, the envelope dangling from one hand. At the door, he extended his hand to shake hers, but she shook her head and kept her hands at her sides, a modest woman who would not shake the hand of a strange man.

  23

  Brunetti walked away with knees he was surprised to find unsteady. He didn't know if it was the effect of the woman's strange gesture, one that had, he realized, created in him the obligation to see that she received the money that would bring her family to her, or whether his response was to the importance of

  the receipts she had given him.

  From a bar he called Lele Bortoluzzi and arranged to meet him at his gallery in twenty minutes, which is what he estimated it would take him to get there if he took the 82 from Rialto. When he arrived, the artist was talking to a client, an American who insisted on looking at all of his paintings, asking about the technique, the kind of paint, the light, Lele's mood when he painted each picture and who, after almost a quarter of an hour, left the gallery without buying anything.

  Lele came over to Brunetti, who stood in front of a seascape, and embraced him, then kissed him on both cheeks. The closest friend of Brunetti's late father, Lele had always displayed a paternal concern and affection for him, as if he could thus make up for Brunetti's father's inability to display whatever emotion he felt for his sons.

  With a nod of his head towards the painting, Brunetti said, Thaf s beautiful.'

  'Yes, it is, isn't it?' the artist replied without the least awkwardness. 'Especially that cloud on the left, there, just above the horizon’ He placed the tip of his right forefinger just above the canvas, then tapped the end of his nail on the cloud once, twice. 'It's the most beautiful cloud I've ever painted, really wonderful’

  It was unusual for Lele to comment on his own work, so Brunetti took a closer look at.the cloud, but all he saw was still a cloud.

  He put the manila envelope on the table, opened it and took out the wrapped drawing, careful to pull it out straight and not bend the cardboard. He laid it on the table and said. Take a look.'

  The painter slipped the tissue-covered drawing out from inside the cardboard, pulled back the paper, saw what it protected, and an involuntary, 'Mamma mia' escaped his lips. He looked at Brunetti, but the beauty of the drawing drew his eyes back to it again. Still staring at it, moving his eyes to every corner, following every line of the dead Christ's body, he asked, 'Where did you get this?'

  ‘I can't say’

  'Is it stolen?'

  ‘I don't think so,' Brunetti answered, then, after thinking for a while, he said more authoritatively, 'No, if s not.' 'What do you want me to do with it?' Lele asked. 'Sell it.'

  'You're sure it's not stolen?' the painter asked. 'Lele, if s not stolen, but I need you to sell it’ ‘I won't,' the painter said but before Brunetti could protest or question him, he added, ‘I’ll buy it’

  Lele picked it up and walked nearer to the light that filtered in through the door and windows. He held the drawing up closer to his eyes, then moved it away, then came back and set it down on the table. He brushed lightly across the bottom left hand corner of the drawing with the last finger of his right hand. The paper's right. It’s Venetian, sixteenth century.' He picked it up again and studied it for what seemed like minutes to Brunetti. Finally he set it down again and said, 'At a guess, I'd say it’s worth about two hundred million. But I have to check the prices on the last few auctions, and I know Pietro sold one about three years ago, so I can ask him what he got for it.'

  'Palma?' Brunetti asked, naming a famous art dealer in the city.

  'Yes. He'll lie, the bastard. He always does, but I can figure out what he really got from what he tells me. But it’s going to be somewhere between one hundred and fifty and two hundred.' Very casually, too casually, Lele asked, 'Is it yours?'

  'No, but I've been given it to sell.' This was, in a certain sense, true; no one had asked him to sell it, but it was certainly his to sell. Immediately he began to worry about the money, how to see that Salima got it, where to put it until she could find a way to use it. 'Can it be cash?' he asked.

  ‘It’ s always cash in things like this, Guido. It leaves no footprints in the snow.'

  Brunetti couldn't remember how many times he'd heard the painter say just this, and it was only now that he appreciated how true it was, and how very convenient. But then he wondered what he'd do with this much money. To put it in the bank could cause trouble: the Finanza would be interested in finding out how a senior police official suddenly came by so much cash. They had no safe in the house, and he could hardly imagine himself putting it in his sock drawer.

  How do you want me to pay you, and when?' the painter asked.

  'I'll let you know. Ifs not for me, but this person doesn't have any way to keep it’ Brunetti quickly ran through various possibilities, and at the end said, 'Why don't you keep it until I have some idea of how to get it to her.'

  Lele obviously had no interest in who the owner might be, not now that he considered himself the real owner of the drawing. 'Do you want some now?' he asked, and Brunetti realized the painter was eager to have some formal acknowledgement that he had bought the drawing.

  Ifs yours, Lele,' Brunetti said. ‘I’ll talk to you next week about what to do about the money’

  'Fine, fine,' Lele muttered, eyes drawn down again by the dead Christ.

  While he had the painter there, Brunetti decided to take advantage of his knowledge. He took out the other envelope and removed the various bills of sale. Choosing one at random, he handed it to Lele and asked, 'Tell me about this.'

  Lele took it, read it quickly, then went back and read through the declaration of sale and, ev
en more slowly, the list of paintings and drawings it named. 'Caspita’ he said, placing it flat on the table and taking more. He read two or three, laying each one flat on the table in front of him after he'd read it. When he placed the fourth one down, he said, 'So that's where they went.'

  'You recognize things?'

  'Some of them, yes. At least I think I do from the descriptions. Things like Tznik carnation tile" are too general, and I don't know much about Turkish ceramics, anyway, but something described as, "Guardi View of the Arsenale" I do recognize, especially when I see that it came from the Orvieto family’

  Pointing down at the opened sheets of paper, Lele asked, 'Are these the things in the old woman's apartment?'

  ‘Yes’ Brunetti wasn't completely sure, but there seemed no other explanation.

  'I hope it's guarded’ Lele said, causing Brunetti immediately to recall the thickness of the door that guarded Signora Jacobs's apartment and then Salima and the keys he had not thought of asking her to return to him.

  'I ordered an inventory,' Brunetti said.

  'And lead us not into temptation.'

  'I know, I know, but now that we have these,' Brunetti said, holding up the bills of sale, 'we know what's in there.' 'Or was’ Lele added drily.

  Though it was, he realized, a poor defence of the police, Brunetti explained, 'The two who were sent to do it, Riverre and Alvise, are idiots. They wouldn't know the difference between a Manet and the cover of Genie! After a pause he added, Though they'd probably prefer the second.'

  The aesthetic sensibilities of law enforcement professionals not being of vital interest to the painter, he asked, 'What will happen to it all?'

  Brunetti shrugged, a gesture that conveyed his uncertainty and his unwillingness to speculate with someone not involved with the investigation, even a friend as close as Lele. 'For the time being it will stay there, in her apartment.'

  'Until what?' Lele asked.

  The best Brunetti could think of to answer was, Until whatever happens.'

  At lunch that day, an unusually silent Brunetti listened as family talk swirled around him: Raffi said he needed a telefonino, which prompted Chiara to say that she needed one as well. When Paola demanded what either of them needed it for, both said it was to keep in touch with their friends or to use in case they were in danger.