The Golden Egg cgb-22

by Donna Leon

  He handed the book to Pucetti, saying, ‘All right, check the Anagrafe, or the school, and call the parroco.’

  ‘How old was he?’ Pucetti asked, sitting down in front of one of the three computers in the room.

  ‘Rizzardi guessed him to be in his early forties.’

  Pucetti raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought he was much younger.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess it was the way you talked about him.’ Pucetti shook his head and typed in the address for the Comune di Venezia.

  Quickly he found the site of the Ufficio Anagrafe, but there seemed to be no way to search for the name of a person. Pucetti switched to another page, typed in the name, ‘Davide Cavanella’, glanced at the paper Brunetti had given him and copied the man’s address, but in the absence of a Codice Fiscale number the search could not progress.

  Brunetti bent over the screen and asked Pucetti to scroll back to the opening page. When he saw the phone number, he picked up the phone and dialled it.

  He gave his name and rank and said that he was calling to try to identify the dead man who had been found in San Polo the day before. He offered the woman he was speaking to the opportunity to call him back at the Questura, but she said that would not be necessary, and what was the man’s name?

  ‘Davide Cavanella, and he was probably in his early forties.’

  ‘Then,’ she said, ‘he would have been born in the seventies.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’re computerized back to the fifties,’ she said, a note of pride audible in her voice. ‘So if he was born here, we’ll have him.’

  Brunetti contented himself with making a polite noise while he left her to it. The sounds she made came through the phone, a combination of humming and clicks of displeasure or surprise. After a few minutes, she spoke to him in the voice of a person whose attention was somewhere else. ‘I can’t find him, Commissario. Are you sure of the spelling? Cavanella with a final A?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Davide?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Again a hum-filled pause, some soft clicks in the background, and then she was back. ‘I’m sorry, Commissario, but he wasn’t born in Venice or Mestre; not between 1965 and 1975, he wasn’t.’

  ‘Can you check the entire province?’ Brunetti asked.

  This was the point when most bureaucrats tired of the novelty of answering questions for the police. Usually, they’d happily answer a few questions, do simple research if asked, but once things became complicated and time-consuming, they started naming supervisors and the need to get authorization or citing rules Brunetti always suspected they invented that instant.

  ‘I’m not authorized to do that, Commissario,’ she answered in a different voice, the voice he knew so well. ‘Not without an order from a magistrate.’

  Brunetti thanked her and hung up.

  Pucetti looked up, pulling his eyebrows together in interrogation.

  ‘Nothing, neither here nor in Mestre, from 1965 to 1975,’ Brunetti explained. Pucetti shrugged, as if this were the sort of answer bureaucracy always gave. ‘Can you,’ Brunetti began and then foundered on the appropriate verb. Get into? Access? Open? The real verb was ‘break into,’ but Brunetti was reluctant to use it, not wanting the corruption of subordinates added to his conscience. ‘Get further information from the social services?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Pucetti said, and Brunetti didn’t know if he was serving as an occasion of sin or as the person who lightened the weights carried by a racehorse. ‘I can even do it with this thing,’ he said, waving dismissive fingers over the keys and adding a noise that condemned the computer to ignominy. ‘It’s easy to find who’s collecting pensions.’ Then, in a voice from which all boasting was absent, Pucetti added, ‘Once you know how to do it.’ Brunetti nodded, his face impassive. ‘I’ll have a look around, sir,’ Pucetti said and turned to the screen.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered and said he would be in his office.

  Upstairs, he turned on his own computer and started a search through the phone books of the provinces of Friuli and Treviso, but there were no listings for anyone with the surname Cavanella.

  He called down to the front desk and asked the man on duty there to connect him with the office that saw to the sending of the hearse.

  This was quickly done, the roster was checked, and within minutes Brunetti found himself talking to the pilot.

  ‘The call came from the Carabinieri a little before six, Commissario,’ the pilot, Enrico Forti, told him. ‘All they said was that a woman had called to say she had found her son dead in his bed and that we were to pick him up and take him to the hospital. That’s the routine, sir.’

  ‘And when you got there?’

  ‘She was at the door. People always are: I guess they hear us coming. The motor, you know.’

  ‘A woman with red hair?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How was she?’ Brunetti asked.

  After a moment, Forti said, ‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean, sir.’

  ‘How did she behave? Was she crying? Did she have trouble talking?’

  The pilot was slow to answer Brunetti’s questions. Finally he said, ‘You have to understand, sir, that we answer all sorts of calls. Death hits people differently. You never know how it’ll affect them.’

  Brunetti waited.

  ‘She was upset: you could see that. She said she had gone into his room and found him, and he was dead, and she called 118, and they told her we’d come.’

  ‘And so?’ Brunetti asked, trying to sound interested and not impatient.

  ‘She was crying. She let us in and took us up to the apartment and back to his room. And he was in his bed, just like she said. It was pretty ugly: it always is when they die like that, sir. So we covered him and put him in the carrier, and we took him down to the boat and to the hospital. For Dottor Rizzardi.’

  ‘Did she ask to go with you?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No, sir. She just stood there while we took him out, and then she closed the door before we took him to the boat.’

  ‘Do you remember what the room looked like?’ Brunetti asked.

  Forti paused to remember and then said, ‘It was awfully small, sir, and with only one tiny window, and the house opposite is very close, so there wasn’t much light. Not that there would be, not that early.’ He glanced at Brunetti, then added, ‘It’s in my report, sir.’

  ‘Did the Carabinieri send a squad, do you know?’

  ‘Probably not, sir. We called them and told them it looked like an accident, so I doubt they’d bother.’

  On the tip of Brunetti’s tongue was the temptation to remind Forti that doing one’s job – and checking the scene of an unaccounted death was included in that – was not dependent on whether it was a bother or not, but instead he thanked him for his information and hung up.

  He found the phone number of the dry cleaner’s in his notebook and dialled; the phone was picked up on the fifth ring. ‘Lavasecco,’ a woman’s voice answered, not bothering with the name.

  ‘Buon dì, Signora,’ he said, ‘This is Commissario Brunetti.’

  Instead of greeting him, she said, ‘Your wife’s jacket and three pairs of your slacks are ready, Commissario. But your grey jacket has a stain on the right sleeve that didn’t come out, so we’re putting it through again.’

  ‘Ah,’ said a momentarily confused Brunetti. ‘Thank you, Signora, but that’s not what I wanted to ask you about.’

  ‘Davide?’

  ‘Yes. I saw him in your shop over the years, and I wanted to come by and talk to you about him, you and your colleague.’

  ‘Renata doesn’t come in until after lunch, Commissario, if you want to talk to us both. This is a slow period for us: everyone’s got their winter things back already, and it’s too soon for them to be wearing them again. All we get these days is linen. People mostly wash their summer things themselves. Must be the fina
ncial crisis.’

  In recent months, criminals had taken to blaming their activities on the financial crisis. The Euro sank; salaries remained the same. What else could I do but rob the bank? Brunetti wondered what next would be blamed on the financial crisis. Bad taste?

  ‘Of course, Signora. Thank you,’ Brunetti said, checked his watch, spent an hour reading through some of the papers on his desk, and then went home for lunch.

  8

  Clouds gathered as they were having lunch, so before leaving to go to the dry cleaner’s, Brunetti took a grey pullover from his drawer and slipped it on under his jacket. As he kissed Paola goodbye, she asked, ‘Is this the first sign of winter?’

  ‘A bit early for that, I’d say,’ Brunetti answered. ‘But I think it’s the hardening up of autumn.’

  ‘Nice phrase,’ she said, stepping back from him and studying his face. ‘Did you make it up?’

  Puzzled, Brunetti had to think about that. ‘I must have,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember having heard anyone say it.’

  ‘Not bad,’ she commended him and moved towards her study.

  As he opened the door to the calle, Brunetti felt that autumn had grown even harder while they were at lunch. He was glad of the sweater and wished he had thought to take a scarf, as well. He didn’t have to think about

  how to get to the dry cleaner’s but followed what he thought of as his own GPS – Guido’s Personal System – and was there in ten minutes.

  When he entered, he was enveloped in the familiar smell: slightly sharp, vaguely chemical, but so familiar as not to cause alarm. Two women clients stood in front of the counter, the owner behind it, making change from the cash register. A paper-wrapped parcel lay flat on the counter between them. Half visible behind the curtain that separated the back room stood the tall woman he had seen ironing there for years. Her short hair was as well coloured as it was cut, the same blonde it might once have been. Surely more than sixty, her body had remained thin and agile, perhaps due to the bending and lifting her job required of her.

  ‘God knows what his mother’s suffering,’ he heard the woman who was paying say just as he walked in.

  The woman to her left made a puffing noise, as if lifting a heavy weight, but said no more. The first woman turned towards her, and Brunetti watched her decide to say no more. She took her change, thanked the woman behind the counter, and picked up her parcel.

  As she reached the door, the owner said, ‘Next Tuesday, Signora.’

  Her parcel rustled as she opened the door, and then she was gone.

  When the door was closed, the second client said, ‘God knows if the mother’s suffering, I’d say.’ She was full-bodied and round-faced, with plump red cheeks: in a fairy tale, she’d be the good grandmother.

  As if she had not heard the remark, the owner said, ‘It was a green silk suit, wasn’t it? And your husband’s brown jacket?’

  The woman accepted the change of subject and asked, ‘How do you do it, Signora? How do you remember everything? I brought them here in April.’

  ‘I like the suit,’ she answered. ‘And your husband’s

  had that jacket for a long time.’ Before her client could interpret that as a criticism, she added, ‘You never see quality like that any more: it’ll last another ten years.’ She went to take the clothing from the racks at the back of the shop.

  The client smiled, placed a pink receipt on the counter, and opened her purse.

  The owner came back, folded the suit and the jacket, wrapped them in light blue paper, and taped the parcel neatly closed. She took the money from the woman and after a polite exchange of goodbyes, the woman left.

  Her comment remained in the space left by her departure. Before Brunetti could speak, the curtain was pulled fully open and Renata, whose name Brunetti had learned only some hours before, emerged.

  She nodded to him but spoke to her colleague. ‘I heard her. How could she say something like that? The poor boy isn’t buried yet, and she’s talking like that about his mother. She doesn’t deserve that.’

  ‘People have always talked about her like that,’ her colleague answered with heavy resignation. ‘But with her son dead, you’d think they could stop it.’

  As though only mildly curious, Brunetti asked, ‘Like what?’

  The women exchanged a long look; in it Brunetti read the struggle between the desire to remain silent out of some sort of female solidarity and the urge to gossip.

  Renata opted for gossip by leaning forward and grasping the edges of the narrow counter. Bracing her weight on stiff arms, she settled in for the long haul.

  He saw the glance the owner gave her. Nothing at all was to be gained in getting involved in the affairs of other people. Authority existed only to cause trouble, to impale you on the thorns of bureaucracy, to make you lose time at work, and in the end to force you to hire a lawyer and spend years freeing yourself of the consequences of any revelation of information. The State was your Enemy.

  As if unaware of all of this, Brunetti addressed the owner directly. ‘Signora, at the moment all we know is that he died in his sleep. It looks as if it was an accidental death. I tried to speak to his mother, but she didn’t – or perhaps she couldn’t – answer me.’ When it seemed they had no questions, he shook his head to suggest confusion, or resignation in the face of things we could not understand. ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he began, ignoring the look they exchanged and hoping to pull the conversation temporarily away from the mother, ‘but it’s always been our assumption – my wife’s and mine, that is – that you let him stay here out of what I suppose I can only call the goodness of your hearts.’ He smiled his approval of their action. ‘I think that was very generous of you. No, it was more than that.’

  ‘He was just a poor creature,’ Renata said, then looked at her employer as if to ask belated permission for her comment. At the other woman’s nod, she went on. ‘It was Maria Pia’s idea to let him help.’ The other woman made a gesture, as if to dismiss the remark, but Renata went on. ‘It wasn’t easy,’ she continued, then turned to Maria Pia and asked, ‘Was it?’

  ‘No, I suppose it wasn’t. But he needed something to do.’ She glanced quickly at Brunetti, at the other woman, then back at Brunetti. Keeping her eyes on his, she asked, ‘It wasn’t against the law, was it, letting him stay here?’

  Believing there probably was a law that made it illegal to allow someone to pretend to work in your place of business, Brunetti said, ‘Of course not, Signora.’ He smiled at the absurdity of the idea, waved it away negligently. ‘It was a kind thing for you to do.’ To establish his position as a sympathetic supporter of her behaviour and to dispel any question of legal peril, he added, ‘Any decent person would approve. Any decent person would have done the same thing.’

  She smiled in evident relief: if a commissario of police said it was not illegal, then it could not be, could it?

  ‘How did he . . .’ Brunetti began, wondering how to phrase it. ‘How did he begin here?’

  Maria Pia smiled. ‘He used to come in with his mother sometimes. And stand there and watch the things going around in the machines,’ she said, pointing to the round glass window of the cleaning machine that had been in motion every time Brunetti came here.

  ‘And then Pupo saw him,’ Renata said. The women exchanged a smile that conveyed nothing but sadness.

  ‘Pupo?’ Brunetti inquired.

  ‘The cat,’ Maria Pia said. ‘Didn’t you ever see him here?’

  Brunetti shook his head.

  She pulled out a telefonino and switched it on, pressed buttons, summoning up memories and the images that captured them. Finding what she wanted, she came around the counter and stood beside him. ‘Here,’ she said, flicking photos across the screen as though she had done this all her life. He looked at the small rectangle and saw a photo of her holding an enormous cat in her arms, the largest cat he had ever seen. Its ears made it look like a lynx.

  ‘What’s that?’

>   ‘They’re called Maine Coon Cats,’ Maria Pia said, pronouncing the name in Italian, smoothing her hand across the surface of the phone and showing him more photos of the same enormous animal. He stood on the counter, slept on the ironing board, stood with his paws on either side of the window of the machine, intent on the spinning clothing. Then he appeared in the arms of Davide Cavanella.

  ‘Pupo,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Davide was the only person he really liked. Other than us,’ she said.

  ‘Not our husbands and not our children,’ Renata added. ‘Only Davide.’

  ‘It was one of the reasons we let him stay here,’ Maria Pia said, abandoning the pretence that he’d worked there.

  ‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Pupo was already ten when Davide came. Then last year he got sick with an ugly disease. Davide was his doctor: Pupo let him give him the shots.’ Brunetti raised his eyebrows and Maria Pia went on: ‘We showed him how to do it, and Pupo didn’t seem to mind when he did it.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then we had to take him to the vet and have him . . .’ Unable to name the disease that killed Pupo, neither could she name what they had had to do.

  Looking at the photo of the two of them together, Maria Pia finished the story. ‘Davide never came back after that.’ She switched off the phone and put it in her pocket.

  ‘I think some of our clients didn’t approve of his being here, anyway,’ Renata said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Before her employer could speak, she went ahead: ‘Like that Signora Callegaro. With her green suit and her husband’s jacket he’s too cheap to get cleaned more than once a year.’ She pushed herself away from the counter, to stand up straight while making her denunciation. ‘The stuff’s been here all summer, and she comes in now. To sniff around.’ And then, almost spitting, ‘Spy.’

  She turned to Brunetti. ‘She complained about him once.’ She stopped speaking, but a quick glance showed Brunetti that her employer’s face was calm.