Friends in High Places - [Commissario Brunetti 09]

by Donna Leon

  What had Signor Rossi discovered at the Ufficio Catasto? Payments made so that some incriminatingly accurate blueprint could be made to disappear from a file and another one, more inventive, could be put in its place? Bribes paid to a building inspector? The idea that a civil servant would be shocked by any of this, even more, that he would call the police, made Brunetti want to laugh out loud. What was wrong with them over at the Ufficio Catasto, that they would hire a man as innocent as this?

  For the next few minutes, while Brunetti waited for Rossi to call him back, he attempted to work out what good might come to him were he to help Signor Rossi with whatever he had discovered. With a pang of conscience - though a very small one - Brunetti realized he had every intention of making use of Signor Rossi, knew that he would go out of his way to help the young man and give special attention to whatever problem he had, knowing that, in return, a debt would be chalked up to his own account. This way, if nothing else, any favour he asked in return would be charged against his account, not against Paola’s father’s.

  He waited ten minutes, but the phone did not ring. When it did, half an hour later, it was Signorina Elettra, his superior’s secretary, asking if he wanted her to bring up the photos and list of articles of jewellery that had been found out on the mainland, in the caravan of one of the gypsy children who had been arrested two weeks ago. The mother insisted that the pieces were all hers, that they had been in the family for generations. Given the value of the jewellery, that seemed a most unlikely claim. One piece, Brunetti knew, had already been identified by a German journalist as stolen from her apartment more than a month ago.

  He glanced at his watch and saw that it was after five. ‘No, Signorina, don’t bother. It can wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘All right, Commissario,’ she said. ‘You can pick them up when you come in.’ She paused and he heard the rustle of papers at the other end of the line. ‘If there’s nothing else, I’ll go home, then.’

  ‘The Vice-Questore?’ Brunetti asked, wondering how she dared leave more than an hour early.

  ‘He left before lunch,’ she answered, her voice neutral. ‘He said he was going to lunch with the Questore, and I think they were going back to the Questore’s office afterwards.’

  Brunetti wondered what his superior would be getting up to when speaking to his own superior. Patta’s excursions into the fields of power never resulted in anything good for the people who worked in the Questura: usually his attempt to flaunt his single-minded energy resulted in new plans and directives that were imposed, vigorously enforced, and then ultimately abandoned when they proved to be futile or redundant.

  He wished Signorina Elettra a pleasant evening and hung up. For the next two hours, he waited for the phone to ring. Finally, a bit after seven, he left his office and went downstairs into the officers’ squad room.

  Pucetti was at the duty desk, a book open in front of him, chin propped on two fists as he looked down at the pages.

  ‘Pucetti?’ Brunetti said as he came in.

  The young officer looked up and, seeing Brunetti, was instantly on his feet. Brunetti was glad to see that, for the first time since he’d come to work at the Questura, the young officer managed to resist the impulse to salute.

  ‘I’m going home now, Pucetti. If anyone calls for me, a man, please give him my home phone number and ask him to call me there, would you?’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ the young officer answered, and this time he saluted.

  ‘What are you reading?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I’m not reading, sir, not really. I’m studying. It’s a grammar book.’

  ‘Grammar?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Russian.’

  Brunetti looked down at the page. Sure enough, Cyrillic letters ran across the page. ‘Why are you studying Russian grammar?’ Brunetti asked, and then added, ‘If I might ask, that is.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Pucetti said with a small smile. ‘My girlfriend’s Russian, and I’d like to be able to talk to her in her own language.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a girlfriend, Pucetti,’ Brunetti said, thinking of the thousands of Russian prostitutes flooding into Western Europe and striving to keep his voice neutral.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, his smile broader.

  Brunetti risked it. ‘What is she doing here in Italy? Working?’

  ‘She’s teaching Russian and mathematics at my kid brother’s high school. That’s how I met her, sir.’

  ‘How long have you known her?’

  ‘Six months.’

  ‘That sounds serious.’

  Again, the young man smiled, and Brunetti was struck by the sweetness of his face. ‘I think it is, sir. Her family’s coming here this summer, and she wants them to meet me.’

  ‘So you’re studying?’ he asked, nodding down at the book.

  Pucetti ran a hand through his hair. ‘She told me they don’t like the idea of her marrying a policeman: both of her parents are surgeons, you see. So I thought it might help if I could speak to them, even a little bit. And since I don’t speak German or English, I thought maybe it would show them I’m not just a dumb cop if I could speak to them in Russian.’

  ‘That sounds very wise. Well, I’ll leave you to your grammar,’ Brunetti said.

  He turned to leave, and from behind him, Pucetti said, ‘Das vedanya.’

  Knowing no Russian, Brunetti could not respond in kind, but he said goodnight and left the building. The woman’s teaching mathematics, and Pucetti’s studying Russian to be good enough to please her parents. On his way home, Brunetti considered this, wondering if, in the end, he himself was nothing but a dumb cop.

  On Fridays Paola did not have to go to the university, and so she usually spent the afternoon preparing a special meal. All of the family had come to expect it, and that night they were not disappointed. She had found a leg of lamb at the butcher’s behind the vegetable market and served it with tiny potatoes sprinkled with rosemary, zucchini trifolati, and baby carrots cooked in a sauce so sweet that Brunetti could have continued to eat them for dessert, had that not been pears baked in white wine.

  After dinner he lay, not unlike a beached whale, in his usual place on the sofa, permitting himself just the smallest glass of Armagnac, merely a whisper of liquid in a glass so small as barely to exist.

  When Paola joined him after dismissing the children to their homework with the life-endangering threats they had come to anticipate, she sat down and, far more honest in these things than he, poured herself a healthy swig of Armagnac. ‘Lord, this is good,’ she said after the first sip.

  As if in a dream, Brunetti said, ‘You know who called me today?’

  ‘No, who?’

  ‘Franco Rossi. The one from the Ufficio Catasto.’

  She closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. ‘Oh, God, and I thought it was all over or had gone away.’ After a while she asked, ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He wasn’t calling about the apartment.’

  ‘Why else would he call you?’ Before he could answer, she asked, ‘He called you at work?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what’s so strange about it. When he was here, he didn’t know I worked for the police. He asked me, well, he sort of asked me what I did, and all I said was that I’d studied law.’

  ‘Do you usually do that?’

  ‘Yes.’ He offered no other explanation, and she asked for none.

  ‘But he found out?’

  ‘That’s what he said. Someone he knew told him.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was calling on his telefonino, and since it sounded like he was going to tell me something he didn’t want made public, I suggested he call me back from a public phone.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He didn’t call.’

  ‘Maybe he changed his mind.’

  To the extent that a man can shrug when he is filled with lamb and lying on his back, Brunetti shrugged.

  ‘If it’s important, he�
��ll call back,’ she said.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Brunetti said. He considered having the slightest little sip more of Armagnac, but instead dropped off to sleep for half an hour. When he woke, all thought of Franco Rossi had fled, leaving him only with the desire for that sip of Armagnac before he went down the hall to bed.

  * * * *

  5

  As Brunetti had feared, Monday was to bring him the results of Vice-Questore Patta’s lunchtime conversation with the Questore. The summons came at about eleven, soon after Patta’s arrival at the Questura.

  ‘Dottore?’ Signorina Elettra called from the door of his office, and he glanced up to see her standing there, a blue folder in one hand. For a moment he wondered if she had chosen the folder to match the colour of her dress.

  ‘Ah, good morning, Signorina,’ he said, waving her toward his desk. ‘Is that the list of the stolen jewellery?’

  ‘Yes, and the photos,’ she answered, handing him the file. ‘The Vice-Questore asked me to tell you he’d like to speak to you this morning.’ Her voice held no hint that peril lurked in the message, so Brunetti did no more than nod in acknowledgement. She remained where she was, and he opened the file. Four colour photos were stapled to the page, each of a single piece of jewellery, three rings and an elaborate gold bracelet containing what looked like a row of small emeralds.

  ‘It looks like she was prepared for a robbery,’ Brunetti said, surprised that anyone would go to the trouble of having what looked like studio photos taken of her jewellery and immediately suspicious of insurance fraud.

  ‘Isn’t everyone?’ she asked.

  Brunetti looked up, making no attempt to hide his surprise. ‘You can’t mean that, Signorina.’

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t mean it, especially as I work here, but I certainly can mean it.’ Before he could question her, she added, ‘It’s all people talk about.’

  ‘There’s less crime here than in any other city in Italy. Just look at the statistics,’ he said hotly.

  She did not roll her eyes to the heavens but contented herself with saying, ‘Surely you don’t think they represent what really happens here, Dottore?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How many break-ins or robberies do you think actually get reported?’

  ‘I just told you. I’ve seen the crime statistics. We all have.’

  ‘Those statistics aren’t related to crime, sir. Surely you should know that.’ When Brunetti refused to rise to the bait, she asked, ‘You don’t really believe that people bother to report crimes here, do you?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not all of them, but I’m sure most people do.’

  ‘And I’m sure most people don’t,’ she said with a shrug that softened her posture but did nothing to soften her voice.

  ‘Can you give me some reason why you believe this?’ Brunetti asked, laying the folder down on his desk.

  ‘I know three people whose apartments have been robbed in the last few months who haven’t reported it.’ She waited for Brunetti to speak, and when he didn’t, she added, ‘No, one of them did. He went down to the Carabinieri station next to San Zaccaria and told them his apartment had been robbed, and the sergeant in charge told him to come back the next day to report it because the lieutenant wasn’t there that day, and he was the only one who could handle robbery reports.’

  ‘And did he go?’

  ‘Of course not. Why bother?’

  ‘Isn’t that a negative attitude to have, Signorina?’

  ‘Of course it’s negative,’ she shot back with far more impudence than she usually directed at him. ‘What sort of attitude do you expect me to have?’ At the heat of her tone, the comfort usually provided by her presence fled the room, leaving Brunetti feeling the same tired sadness he felt whenever he and Paola had an argument. In an attempt to free himself of this sensation, he looked down at the photos and asked, ‘Which piece did the gypsy woman have?’

  Signorina Elettra, equally relieved by the change of atmosphere, leaned over the photos and pointed to the bracelet. ‘The owner’s identified it. And she’s got the original receipt which describes it. I doubt that it will make any difference or be much use, but she said she saw three gypsies in Campo San Fantin the afternoon her place was robbed.’

  ‘No,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘It won’t be any use.’

  ‘What is?’ she asked rhetorically.

  In ordinary circumstances, Brunetti would have made a light remark to suggest that the laws were no different for the gypsies than for anyone else, but he didn’t want to endanger the easy mood that had been restored between them. Instead, he asked, ‘How old is the boy?’

  ‘His mother says he’s fifteen, but of course there are no documents, no birth certificate and no school records, so he could be any age from fifteen to eighteen. So long as she maintains he’s fifteen, he can’t be prosecuted, and he’s guaranteed a few more years of getting away with anything he wants to.’ Brunetti once again noted the quick flame of her anger and did his best to turn away from it.

  ‘Hmm,’ he muttered, closing the file. ‘What does the Vice-Questore want to talk to me about? Do you have any idea?’

  ‘Probably something that came out of his meeting with the Questore.’ Her voice revealed nothing.

  Brunetti sighed audibly and got to his feet; though the issue of the gypsies remained unresolved between them, his sigh was enough to bring a smile to her lips.

  ‘Really, Dottore, I have no idea. All he did was ask me to tell you he’d like to see you.’

  ‘Then I’ll go and see what he wants.’ He paused at the door to allow her to go through first, then side by side they went down the stairs and toward Patta’s office and her own small alcove just outside of it.

  Her phone was ringing as they entered, and she leaned across her desk to answer it. ‘Vice-Questore Patta’s office,’ she said. ‘Yes, Dottore, he is. I’ll put you through.’ She pressed one of the buttons at the side of the phone and replaced the receiver. Looking up at Brunetti, she pointed at Patta’s door. ‘The Mayor. You’ll have to wait until . . .’ The phone rang again, and she picked it up. From the quick look she gave him, Brunetti guessed that it was a personal call, so he picked up that morning’s edition of Il Gazzettino that lay folded on her desk and went over to the window to have a look at it. He glanced back for an instant, and their eyes met. She smiled, wheeled her chair around, pulled the receiver closer to her mouth, and started to talk. Brunetti stepped out into the corridor.

  He had picked up the second section of the paper, which he hadn’t had time to read that morning. The top half of the first page was dedicated to the ongoing examination - it was so half-hearted that one could hardly call it an investigation - of the process by which the contract for the rebuilding of the La Fenice Theatre had been awarded. After years of discussion, accusation, and counter-accusation, even those few people who could still keep the chronology straight had lost all interest in the facts and all hope in the promised rebuilding. Brunetti unfolded the paper and glanced at the articles at the bottom of the page.

  To the left was a photo; he recognized the face but couldn’t place it until he read the name in the caption: ‘Francesco Rossi, city surveyor, in a coma after falling from scaffolding.’

  Brunetti’s hands tightened on the pages of the newspaper. He glanced away and then back to the story below the photo.

  Francesco Rossi, a surveyor in the employ of the Ufficio Catasto, fell on Saturday afternoon from the scaffolding in front of a building in Santa Croce, where he was conducting the inspection of a restoration project. Rossi was taken to the emergency room at the Ospedale Civile, where his condition is given as ‘riservata’.

  Long before he became a policeman, Brunetti had abandoned any belief he had ever had in coincidence. Things happened, he knew, because other things had happened. Since becoming a policeman, he had added to this a conviction that the connections between events, at least such events as it became his duty to consider, were seldom innocen
t. Franco Rossi had failed to make much of an impression on Brunetti, save for that one moment of near-panic when he had raised his hand defensively as if to press away Brunetti’s invitation that he step out on to the terrace to have a look at the windows below. In that one instant, and for that one instant, he had ceased to be the dedicated, colourless bureaucrat able to do little more than recite the regulations of his department and had become, for Brunetti, a man like himself, filled with the weaknesses that make us human.

  Not for a moment did it occur to Brunetti that Franco Rossi had fallen from that scaffolding. Nor did he waste his time considering the possibility that Rossi’s attempted phone call concerned some minor problem at his office, someone detected trying to get a building permit approved illegally.