by Donna Leon
Suddenly, Flavia Petrelli appeared at the far end of the courtyard, and he watched her progress, all but imperial, across its open space. No one recognized her, but every man she passed noticed her. She had changed into a long purple dress which swirled from side to side as she walked. Over her shoulder she had draped a fur, nothing so prosaic as mink. As he watched her cross the courtyard, he was reminded of a passage he had read, years ago, that described a woman’s entrance into a hotel. So secure was she in her wealth and position that she had shrugged her mink from her shoulders without looking, certain that there would be a servant there to catch it. Flavia Petrelli had no need to read about such things in a book: she had that same absolute certainty about her place in the world.
He watched as she passed into one of the arched stairwells that led to the upper floors. She took the steps, he noticed, two at a time, a haste which was entirely at odds with both the dress and the fur.
Seconds later, she appeared at the top of the steps, and her face grew tense when she saw him outside the room. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, walking quickly towards him.
‘Nothing. A nurse came in.’
She entered the room without bothering to knock. Minutes later, the nurse emerged, carrying an armful of bedding and an enamel pan. He waited a few minutes more, then knocked on the door and was told to enter.
When he came into the room, he saw that the head of the bed had been raised minimally, and Brett was lying up, head cushioned by pillows. Flavia stood beside her and held the cup to her lips, while she drank through a straw. The effect of her face was less shocking now, either because he had had time to grow accustomed to it or because he could see that parts of it were unbruised.
He stooped down and picked up his briefcase from where he had left it and approached the bed. Brett took one hand out from under the covers and slid it across the bed towards him. He covered it briefly with his own. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘I’ll come back tomorrow, if I may.’
‘Please. I can’t explain now, but I will.’
Flavia began to object but cut herself off short. She gave Brunetti a smile that began as a professional one but surprised both of them by becoming entirely natural. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said, surprising both of them again with the sincerity of her voice.
‘Until tomorrow, then,’ he said, giving Brett’s hand a squeeze. Flavia remained at the bedside while he let himself out of the room. He took the steps she had used and turned left at the bottom, into the covered portico that ran alongside the open courtyard. An old woman wrapped in an army overcoat sat in a wheelchair at the side of the corridor, knitting. At her feet three cats fought over the body of a mouse.
* * * *
Chapter Four
As he walked back towards the Questura, Brunetti found himself troubled by what he had seen and heard. She would heal, he realized; her body would become well and return to what it had been before. Signora Petrelli believed she would be all right, but his experience told him that the effects of violence such as this would linger, perhaps for years, if only as a real and sudden fear that would come on her unexpectedly. Well, perhaps he was wrong and Americans were tougher than Italians, and perhaps she would emerge the same person, but he couldn’t stifle his concern for her.
When he entered the Questura, one of the uniformed officers approached him. ‘Dottor Patta is looking for you, sir,’ he said, keeping his voice low and neutral. It seemed that everyone in the place kept their voices low and neutral when they spoke of the Vice-Questore.
Brunetti thanked him and proceeded towards the steps at the back of the building, the quickest way to his office. The intercom was ringing as he entered. He set his briefcase down on top of the desk and picked up the receiver.
‘Brunetti?’ Patta asked, quite unnecessarily, even before Brunetti could say his name. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he answered, flicking through the papers that had accumulated on his desk in the hours he had been gone.
‘I’ve been trying to get you on the phone all morning, Brunetti. We’ve got to make a decision about the Stresa conference. Come down to my office right now,’ he ordered, then tempered it with a very grudging, ‘would you?’
‘Yes, sir. Immediately’ Brunetti hung up, leafed through the rest of the papers, opening one letter and reading it through twice. He walked over to stand by the window and again read through the report of the attack at Brett’s house, then left and went down to Patta’s office.
Signorina Elettra was not at her desk, but a low bowl overflowing with yellow freesias filled the room with a scent almost as sweet as her presence.
He knocked and waited to be told to enter. A muffled sound told him to do so. Patta was posed in the frame created by one of the large windows in his office, gazing across at the eternally scaffolded fa ç ade of the church of San Lorenzo. What little light came in managed to glimmer from the radiant points on Patta’s body: the tips of his shoes, the gold chain that ran across the front of his vest, and the tiny ruby that flickered dully in his tie-pin. He glanced at Brunetti and crossed the room to his desk. As he did, Brunetti was struck by how much his progress across the room strove to imitate Flavia Petrelli’s through the hospital. The contrast lay in her complete indifference to the effect she might be making; to Patta, that was the purpose of his every motion. The Vice-Questore took his place behind die desk and gestured to Brunetti to take a chair in front of him.
‘Where have you been all morning?’ Patta asked without preamble.
‘I went to speak to the victim of an attempted robbery,’ Brunetti explained. He kept his remarks as vague and, he hoped, as meaningless as possible.
‘That’s why we have men in uniform.’
Brunetti made no response.
Turning his attention to the business at hand, Patta asked, ‘What about the Stresa conference? Which of us is going to attend?’
Two weeks before, Brunetti had received an invitation to a conference being organized by Interpol, to be held at the resort town of Stresa on Lago Maggiore. Because it would allow him to renew friendships and contacts with police officers from the various members of the Interpol network and because the programme offered training in the latest computer techniques for the storage and retrieval of information, Brunetti wanted to attend. Patta, who knew Stresa to be one of the most fashionable resorts in Italy, possessed of a climate that invited escape from the damp chill of a late Venetian winter, had suggested that it might be better were he to go instead. But as the invitation was specifically directed to Brunetti and bore a handwritten note to him from the organizer of the conference, Patta had found it hard to convince Brunetti to renounce his right to go. With great reluctance, Patta drew the line just short of ordering him not to attend.
Brunetti crossed his legs and pulled his notebook from his pocket. As always, the pages were blank of anything that pertained to police business, but Patta, as always, failed to realize this. ‘Let me check the dates,’ Brunetti said, flicking through the pages. ‘The sixteenth, isn’t it? Until the twentieth?’ His pause was dramatic, orchestrated to Patta’s mounting impatience. ‘I’m not sure any longer that I’m free that week.’
‘What dates did you say?’ Patta asked, flipping his desk calendar forward a few weeks. ‘Sixteenth to the twentieth?’ His pause was even more dramatic than Brunetti’s had been. ‘Well, if you can’t do it, I might be able to go. I’d have to reschedule a meeting with the Minister of the Interior, but I think I might be able to do so.’
‘That might be better, sir. Are you sure you can allow the time?’
Patta’s glance was illegible. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s settled, then,’ Brunetti said with false heartiness.
It must have been something in his tone, or perhaps in his alacrity, that triggered alarm bells in Patta. ‘Where were you this morning?’
‘I told you, sir, speaking to the victim of a reported robbery attempt.’
‘What v
ictim?’ Patta asked, voice heavy with suspicion.
‘A foreigner who lives here.’
‘What foreigner?’
‘Dottoressa Lynch,’ Brunetti answered and watched Patta’s face register the name. For a moment, his face was blank, but then his eyes narrowed as he pulled up the memory of who she was. As Brunetti watched, he registered the precise moment when Patta remembered not only who, but what, she was.
‘The lesbian,’ he muttered, showing what he thought of her with the contempt with which he pronounced the word. ‘What happened to her?’
‘She was attacked in her home.’
‘Who did it? Some butch dyke she picked up in a bar?’ When he saw the effect his words had on Brunetti, he moderated his tone and asked, ‘What happened?’
‘She was attacked by two men,’ Brunetti explained, and added, ‘neither of whom appeared to be a “butch dyke”. She’s in hospital.’
Patta struggled to prevent himself from remarking on this and instead asked, ‘Is this why you’re too busy to attend the conference?’
‘The conference isn’t until next month, sir. I’ve got a number of cases current.’
Patta snorted to express his disbelief then suddenly asked, ‘What did they take?’
‘Apparently nothing.’
‘Why? If it was a robbery?’
‘Someone stopped them. And I don’t know that it was a robbery.’
Patta ignored the second part of what Brunetti said and jumped on the first. ‘Who stopped them, that singer?’ he asked, suggesting that Flavia Petrelli sang on street corners for coins rather than at La Scala for a fortune.
When Brunetti didn’t rise to this, Patta continued, ‘Of course it was robbery. She’s got a fortune in that place.’ Brunetti was surprised, not by the raw envy in Patta’s voice, which seemed his normal response to wealth, but by the fact that he had any idea of what was in Brett’s apartment.
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said.
‘There’s no perhaps about it,’ Patta insisted. ‘If it was two men, it was robbery.’ Did women, Brunetti prevented himself from asking, busy themselves naturally with other crimes? Patta looked directly at him. ‘That means it belongs to the robbery squad. Leave it to them. This isn’t a social club here, Commissario. We’re not in business to help your friends when they get into trouble, especially not your lesbian friends,’ he said in a tone that conjured up scores of them, as if Brunetti were a latter-day St Ursula, eleven thousand young women following in his train, all virgin and all lesbian.
Brunetti had had years to accustom himself to the fundamental irrationality of much of what his superior said, but there were times when Patta still managed to amaze him with the breadth and passion of some of his wilder pronouncements. And anger him. ‘Will that be all, sir?’ he asked.
‘Yes, that will be all. Remember, this is a robbery, and it’s to be handled—’ He broke off at the sound of the telephone. Irritated by the noise, Patta grabbed the receiver and shouted into the mouthpiece, ‘I told you not to put through any calls.’ Brunetti waited to see him slam the phone down but, instead, Patta pulled it closer to his ear, and Brunetti saw shock register.
‘Yes, yes, I’m certainly here,’ Patta said. ‘Put him through.’
Patta sat a little bit higher in his chair and ran one hand through his hair, as if he expected the caller to look through the receiver and see him. He smiled, smiled again, and waited for the voice at the other end. Brunetti heard the far-off rumble of a man’s voice, and then Patta answered, ‘Good morning, sir. Yes, yes, very well, thank you. And you?’
An answer of some sort filtered through to Brunetti. As he watched, Patta reached for the pen that lay at the side of his desk, forgetting the Mont Blanc Meisterstück in his jacket pocket. He grabbed at a piece of paper and pulled it in front of him. ‘Yes, yes, sir. I’ve heard about it. In fact, I was just discussing it now.’ He paused and more words floated to him over the phone, arriving at Brunetti as no more than a dim murmur.
‘Yes, sir. I know. It’s terrible. I was shocked to hear of it.’ Another pause to wait for the voice to say something else. His eyes flashed to Brunetti and then as quickly away. ‘Yes, sir. One of my men has already spoken to her.’ There was a sharp eruption of words from the other end. ‘No, sir, of course not. It’s someone who knows her. I told him, specifically, not to disturb her, merely to see how she was and to speak to her doctors. Of course, sir. I realize that, sir.’
Patta picked up the pen by its point and tapped it rhythmically on the desk. He listened. ‘Of course, of course, I’ll assign as many men as necessary, sir. We know of her generosity to the city.’
He shot another look at Brunetti, then glanced down at the tapping pen, forcing himself to lay it flat on the desk.
He listened for a long time, staring at the pen. Once or twice, he tried to speak, but the distant voice cut him off. Finally, hand clenched on the phone, he managed to say, ‘As soon as possible. I’ll keep you informed myself. Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Yes.’ He didn’t have time to say goodbye; the voice at the other end was gone.
He put the phone down gently and looked at Brunetti. ‘That, as I suppose you realize, was the mayor. I don’t know how he found out about this, but he did.’ He made it clear that he suspected Brunetti of having called and left an anonymous message in the mayor’s office.
‘It seems the Dottoressa,’ he began, pronouncing the word in a tone that called into question the quality of instruction of both Harvard and Yale, the schools from which Dottoressa Lynch had taken her degrees, ‘is a friend of his, and,’ he added, after a pregnant pause, ‘a benefactor of the city. So the mayor wants this looked into and settled as quickly as possible.’
Brunetti remained silent, knowing how dangerous it would be for him to make any sort of suggestion at this point. He glanced down at the paper on Patta’s desk then up at his superior’s face.
‘What are you working on now?’ Patta asked, which, Brunetti realized, meant that he was to be given the investigation.
‘Nothing that can’t wait.’
‘Then I want you to look into this.’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, hoping that Patta wouldn’t suggest any specific steps.
Too late. ‘Go over to her apartment. See what you can find out. Talk to her neighbours.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said and stood, hoping to cut him off.
‘Keep me up to date on this, Brunetti.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I want this settled quickly, Brunetti. She’s a friend of the mayor’s.’ And, Brunetti knew, any friend of the mayor’s was a friend of Patta’s.
* * * *
Chapter Five
Back in his office, he called down and asked Vianello to come up. After a few minutes, the sergeant came in and lowered himself heavily into the chair in front of Brunetti’s desk. He took a small notebook from his uniform pocket and gave Brunetti an inquisitive glance.
‘What do you know about gorillas, Vianello?’
Vianello considered the question for a moment and then asked, unnecessarily, ‘The kind in the zoo or the kind that get paid to hurt people?’
‘The kind that get paid.’
Vianello paused for a moment, running through lists he appeared to keep filed in his mind. ‘I don’t think there are any here in the city, sir. But in Mestre there are four or five of them, mostly Southerners.’ He paused for a moment, nipping through more lists. ‘I’ve heard that there are a few in Padua and some who work in Treviso and Pordenone, but they’re provincials. The real ones are the boys in Mestre. Trouble with them here?’
Because the uniformed branch had done the initial investigation and conducted the interviews with Flavia, Brunetti knew Vianello had to be aware of the attack. ‘I spoke to Dottoressa Lynch this morning. The men who attacked her told her not to attend a meeting with Dottor Semenzato.’
‘At the museum?’ Vianello asked.
‘Yes.’
Vianello considered this for
a moment. ‘Then it wasn’t a robbery?’
‘No, it would seem not. Someone stopped them.’
‘Signora Petrelli?’ Vianello asked.
The Swiss bank secret wouldn’t last a day in Venice. ‘Yes. She drove them off. But it didn’t seem they were interested in taking anything.’
‘Short-sighted on their part. It would be a good place to rob.’
At this, Brunetti broke down. ‘How do you know that, Vianello?’