by Donna Leon
‘By now, in the police garage.’ He waited to see what Bonaventura would ask and, when he remained silent, added,
‘The boxes were in the back.’
Bonaventura tried to disguise his shock, tried and failed.
‘Not sent to Sri Lanka, either,’ Brunetti said, then added, ‘Do you think you could help me find those shipping invoices now, Signor Bonaventura?’
‘Certainly.’ Bonaventura bowed his head to the task. Idly, aimlessly, he moved papers from one side of his desk to the other, then stacked them all in a pile and went through them one by one. ‘That’s strange,’ he said, looking up at Brunetti after he had gone through the lot, ‘I can’t find them here,’ He got to his feet. If you’ll wait, I’ll ask my secretary to get them for me.’
Before he could take his first step towards the door, Brunetti got to his feet. ‘Perhaps you could call her,’ he suggested.
Bonaventura turned his mouth up in a smile. ‘It’s really the foreman who has them, and he’s back at the loading dock.’
He started to move past Brunetti, who put out a hand and placed it on his arm. ‘I’ll come with you, Signor Bonaventura.’
‘That’s really not necessary,’ he said with another motion of his mouth.
‘I think it is,’ was all Brunetti answered. He had no idea what his legal rights were here, how much authority he had to detain or follow Bonaventura. He was outside Venice, even beyond the borders of the province of Venezia, and no charges had been contemplated, much less brought, against Bonaventura. But none of that mattered to him. He stepped aside and let Bonaventura open the door of his office, then followed him down the corridor, away from the front of the building.
At the back, a door opened out on to a long cement loading dock. Two large trucks were backed up to it, rear doors open, and four men were wheeling dollies filled with cartons from doors further down the dock into the open backs of the trucks. They looked up when they saw the two men emerge from the door but then went back to their work. Below them, between the trucks, two men stood and talked, hands in the pockets of their jackets.
Bonaventura walked over to the edge of the loading dock. When they looked up at him, he called down to one of them, ‘De Luca’s truck’s been found. The shipment’s still in it. This policeman wants to see the shipping invoices.’
He had barely finished the word ‘policeman’, when the taller of the two men sprang away from the other and reached inside his jacket. His hand came out carrying a pistol, but the instant Brunetti saw him move, he ducked back inside the still-open door and pulled his own pistol from its holster.
Nothing happened. There was no noise, no shot, no shouting. He heard footsteps, the slamming of what sounded like a car door and another; then a large motor spring into life. Instead of going out on to the dock again to see what was happening, Brunetti ran back through the corridor and out of the front door of the building, where his driver was waiting, motor running to keep the car warm, while he read Il Gazzettino dello Sport.
Brunetti pulled open the passenger door and leaped into the car, seeing the driver’s panic disappear when he recognized him. ‘A truck, going out of the far gate. Swing round and follow it.’ Even before Brunetti’s hand reached the car phone, the driver had tossed his paper into the back seat and had the car in gear and spinning round towards the back of the building. As they rounded the corner, the driver pulled the wheel sharply to the left, trying not to hit one of the boxes that had fallen from the open doors of the truck. But he couldn’t avoid the next one and their left wheels passed over it, splattering it open and spewing small bottles in a wide wake behind them. Just beyond the gates Brunetti could see the truck moving off down the highway in the direction of Padova, its rear doors flapping open.
The rest was as predictable as it was tragic. Just beyond Resana, two Carabinieri vehicles were drawn up across the road, blocking traffic. In an attempt to get past them, the driver of the truck swerved to the right and on to the high shoulder of the road. Just as he did, a small Fiat, driven by a woman on the way to pick up her daughter at the local asilo, slowed at the sight of the police block. The truck, as it came back on to the road, swung into the other lane and slammed into her car broadside, killing her instantly. Both men, Bonaventura and the driver, had been wearing their seat-belts, so neither was hurt, though they were severely shaken by the crash.
Before they could free themselves from their seat-belts, they were surrounded by Carabinieri, who pulled them down from the truck and flung them face forward against its doors. They were quickly surrounded by four Carabinieri carrying machine-guns. Two others ran to the Fiat but saw there was nothing to be done.
Brunetti’s car pulled up and he got out. The scene was absolutely silent, unnaturally so. He heard his own footsteps approaching the two men, both of whom were breathing heavily. Something metal clanged to the ground from the direction of the truck.
He turned to the sergeant. ‘Put them in the car,’ was all he said.
* * * *
24
There was some discussion about where the men should be taken for questioning, whether back to Castelfranco, which had territorial jurisdiction over the scene of their capture, or back to Venice, from which city the investigation had begun. Brunetti listened to the police discuss this for a few moments, then cut into the conversation with a voice of iron: ‘I said put them in the car. We’re taking them back to Castelfranco.’ The other policemen exchanged glances, but no one contradicted him and it was done.
Standing in Bonino’s office, Bonaventura was told he could call his lawyer, and when the other identified himself as Roberto Sandi, the foreman of the factory, he was told the same. Bonaventura named a lawyer in Venice with a large criminal practice and asked that he be allowed to call him. He ignored Sandi.
‘And what about me?’ Sandi asked, turning to Bonaventura.
Bonaventura refused to answer him.
‘What about me?’ Sandi said again.
Still, Bonaventura remained silent.
Sandi, who spoke with a pronounced Piedmontese accent, turned to the uniformed officer next to him and demanded, ‘Where’s your boss? I want to talk to your boss.’
Before the officer could respond, Brunetti stepped forward and said, I’ll be in charge of this,’ even though he wasn’t sure of that at all.
‘Then it’s you I want to talk to,’ Sandi stated, looking at him with eyes that glimmered with malice.
‘Come now, Roberto,’ Bonaventura suddenly broke in, placing his hand on Sandi’s arm. ‘You know you can use my lawyer. As soon as he gets here we can talk to him.’
Sandi shook off his hand with a muttered curse. ‘No lawyer. Not yours. I want to talk to the cop.’ He addressed Brunetti: ‘Well? Where can we talk?’
‘Roberto,’ Bonaventura said in a voice he tried to make menacing, ‘you don’t want to talk to him.’
‘You don’t tell me what to do any more,’ Sandi spat. Brunetti turned, opened the door to the office, and took Sandi into the hall. One of the uniformed officers followed them outside and led them down the corridor. Opening a door to a small interview room, he said, ‘In here, sir,’ and waited for them to enter.
Brunetti saw a small desk and four chairs. He sat down, waiting for Sandi. When the latter was seated, Brunetti glanced across at him and said, ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ Sandi asked, still filled with the anger Bonaventura had provoked.
‘What do you want to tell me about the shipments?’
‘How much do you already know?’ Sandi demanded.
Ignoring the question, Brunetti inquired, ‘How many of you are involved in it?’
‘In what?’
Instead of answering immediately, Brunetti propped his elbows on the table, folded his hands, and rested his mouth on the backs of his knuckles. He remained like that for almost a minute, staring across at Sandi, then repeated, ‘How many of you are involved in it?’
‘In what?’ Sandi asked again, th
is time allowing himself a small smile, the sort children use when they ask a question they think will embarrass the teacher.
Brunetti raised his head, placed his hands on the desk, and pushed himself to his feet. Saying nothing, he went to the door and knocked on it. A face appeared beyond the wire-mesh screen. The door opened and Brunetti left the room, closing the door behind him. He signalled the guard to remain there and went back up the corridor. He peered into the room where Bonaventura was being held and saw that he was still there, though no one was with him. Brunetti stood at the one-way window for ten minutes, watching the man inside. Bonaventura sat sideways to the door, trying not to look at it or to respond to the sound of footsteps when people walked by.
Finally Brunetti opened the door without knocking and went in. Bonaventura’s head shot round. ‘What do you want?’ he asked when he saw Brunetti.
‘I want to talk to you about the shipments.’
‘What shipments?’
‘Of drugs. To Sri Lanka. And Kenya. And Bangladesh.’
‘What about them? They’re perfectly legitimate. We’ve got all the documents at the office.’
Brunetti had no doubt of that. He stayed by the door, leaning back against it, one foot propped up behind him, arms folded over his chest. ‘Signor Bonaventura, do you want to talk about this or do you want me to go back and have a word with your foreman again?’ Brunetti made his voice sound very tired, almost bored.
‘What’s he been saying?’ Bonaventura asked before he could stop himself.
Brunetti stood and watched him for a time, then said again, ‘I want to talk about those shipments.’
Bonaventura decided. He folded his arms in imitation of Brunetti. ‘I’m not saying anything until I see my lawyer.’
Brunetti left and went back to the other room, where the same officer was standing outside. He stepped away from the door when he saw the commissario and opened it for him.
Sandi looked up at Brunetti when he came in. Without preamble he said, ‘All right. What do you want to know?’
‘The shipments, Signor Sandi?’ Brunetti asked, naming him for the microphones hidden in the ceiling, and came to sit opposite him. ‘Where do they go?’
‘To Sri Lanka, like the one last night. And Kenya, and Nigeria. Lots of other places.’
‘Always medicines?’
‘Yes, just like you’ll find in that truck.’
‘What kind of medicines are they?’
‘A lot of it’s for hypertension. There’s some cough syrup. And mood elevators. They’re very popular in the Third World. I think they can buy them without a prescription. And antibiotics.’
‘How much of it is good?’
Sandi shrugged this away, uninterested in such details. ‘I don’t have any idea. Most of it is outdated or discontinued, things we can’t sell in Europe any more, at least not here in the West.’
‘What do you do? Change the labels?’
‘I’m not sure. No one told me about that. All I did was ship it.’ Sandi’s voice had the calm assurance of the practised liar.
‘But surely you must have some idea,’ Brunetti urged, softening his voice as if to suggest that a man as clever as Sandi would have figured it out. When Sandi didn’t respond to this, Brunetti made his voice less soft: ‘Signor Sandi, I think it’s time you started telling me the truth.’
Sandi considered this, staring at an implacable Brunetti. ‘I suppose that’s what they do,’ he finally said. With a toss of his head in the direction of the room where Bonaventura sat, he added, ‘He also owns a company that collects expired medicines from pharmacies. For disposal or destruction. They’re supposed to be burned.’
‘What happens?’
‘Boxes get burned.’
‘Boxes of what?’
‘Old papers. Some are just empty boxes. Enough to get the weight right. No one much cares what’s inside, so long as the weight’s right.’
‘Isn’t someone supposed to watch what they do?’
Sandi nodded. ‘There’s a man from the Ministry of Health.’
‘And?’
‘He’s been taken care of.’
‘So these things, these drugs, that don’t get burned, they’re taken to the airport and sent to the Third World?’
Sandi nodded.
‘It gets sent?’ Brunetti repeated, needing a recording to be made of Sandi’s answers.
‘Yes.’
‘And paid for?’
‘Of course.’
‘But it’s already outdated or expired?’
Sandi seemed offended by the question. ‘A lot of those things last much longer than the Ministry of Health says. A great deal of it’s still good. Probably lasts longer than what’s written on the package.’
‘What else gets shipped?’
Sandi watched him with clever eyes but said nothing.
‘The more you tell me now, the better it will be for you in the future.’
‘Better how?’
‘The judges will know that you were willing to help us and that will count in your favour.’
‘What guarantee do I have?’
Brunetti shrugged.
Neither man spoke for a long time, then Brunetti asked, ‘What else did you ship?’
‘Will you tell them I helped you?’ Sandi asked, not content until he could cut a deal.
‘Yes.’
‘What guarantee do I have of that?’
Brunetti shrugged again.
Sandi lowered his head for a moment, traced a figure on the surface of the desk with his finger, then looked up. ‘Some of the stuff in the shipments is useless. Nothing. Flour, or sugar, or whatever it is they use when they make placebos. And coloured water or oil in the ampoules.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘Where is all this made?’
‘There.’ Sandi raised a hand to point into the distance, towards where Bonaventura’s factory might or might not be. ‘There’s a crew that comes in at night and works. They make the stuff up, label it, and box it. Then it gets taken to the airport.’
‘Why?’ Brunetti asked and, when he saw that Sandi didn’t understand his question, added, ‘Why placebos? Why not the real medicine?’
‘The hypertension medicine - especially that - is very expensive. The raw material or chemical or whatever it is. And some of the stuff for diabetes, or at least I think it’s that. So to cut costs they use the placebos. Ask him about it,’ he said, pointing in the direction where he had left Bonaventura.
‘And at the airport?’
‘Nothing. Everything’s just as it should be. We put it on planes and it gets delivered at the other end. There’s never any trouble there. Everything’s been taken care of.’
‘Is all this commercial?’ Brunetti asked, possessed of a new idea. ‘Or is some of it given away?’
‘We sell a lot of it to the charity agencies, if that’s what you’re asking. The UN, things like that. We give them a discount and take the rest off taxes. As charity.’
Brunetti stopped himself from showing any reaction to what he was hearing. It sounded as though Sandi knew far more than how to drive a truck to the airport. ‘Does anyone from the UN check the contents?’
Sandi gave a snort of disbelief. ‘All they care about is getting their picture taken when they deliver the stuff to the refugee camps.’
‘Do you send the same things to the camps that you send in the regular shipments?’
‘No, most of that’s for diarrhoea and amoebic dysentery. And a lot of cough syrup. When they’re so thin, that’s what they have to worry about, those things.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti ventured. ‘How long have you been doing this?’
‘A year.’
‘In what capacity?’
‘Foreman. I used to work for Mitri, in his factory. But then I came up here.’ He grimaced at this, as if the memory caused him pain or regret.
‘Did Mitri do the same thing?’
Sandi nodded. ‘He did until he sold his fac
tory.’
‘Why would he sell it?’
Sandi shrugged. ‘I heard that he had an offer he couldn’t refuse. That is, that wasn’t safe to refuse. That some big people wanted to buy it.’
Brunetti understood perfectly what he meant and was surprised to see that, even here, Sandi was afraid to name directly the organization these ‘big people’ represented. ‘So he sold it?’
Sandi nodded. ‘But he recommended me to his brother-in-law.’ Mention of Bonaventura called him back from the realms of memory. ‘And I damn the day I started to work for him.’