by Donna Leon
'You pretended to think I thought you'd killed her,' Brunetti said as they drifted towards the door of the bar.
'No reason, really,' the postino said in response to Brunetti's unasked question, 'except that there were so many people who couldn't stand her.'
'But that's a stronger reaction than for her just not saying thank you,' Brunetti said.
‘I didn't like the way she treated the women who worked for her, especially the one who killed her’ he said. 'She treated them like slaves, really, seemed happy if she could make one of them cry; I saw her manage that more than once.' Mario stopped at the entrance to the sorting room and put out his hand. Brunetti thanked him for his help, shook his hand, and went downstairs and out towards Rialto. He was almost at the front entrance when he heard his name called from behind and, turning, saw Mario walking towards him, his leather bag pulling heavily on his left shoulder, the young woman with the red face close behind him.
'Commissario’ he said, coming up to Brunetti and reaching behind to take the young woman by the arm and all but pull her forward. 'This is Cinzia Foresti. She had that route before Nicolo did, up until about five years ago. I thought maybe you'd like to talk to her, too.'
The young woman gave a nervous half-smile, and her face, if possible, grew even redder.
'You delivered to Signora Battestini?' Brunetti asked.
'And to the son’ answered Mario. He patted the young woman on the shoulder and said, 'I've got to get to work’ then continued walking towards the front door.
'As your colleague told you, Signorina’ Brunetti said, 'I'm curious about the mail that was delivered to Signora Battestini.' Seeing that she was reluctant to talk, perhaps from shyness, perhaps from fear, he added, 'Particularly about the bank statements that came every month.'
'About them?' she asked with what seemed like nervous relief.
Brunetti smiled. 'Yes, and about the raccomandate that used to come from the neighbours.'
Suddenly she asked, 'Am I allowed to talk to you about this? I mean, the mail is supposed to be private.'
He pulled out his warrant card and held it out for her to examine. 'Yes, Signorina, it is, but in a case like this, where the person is dead, you may speak about it.' He didn't want to overplay his hand and suggest that she was obliged to; besides, he wasn't sure if he could force her to speak to him without a court order.
She chose to believe him. 'Yes, I took her the things from the banks, every month. And I was on that route for three years.'
'Did you deliver anything else?'
'To her? No, not really. Occasionally a letter or a card. And the bills.'
Prompted by her question, he asked, 'And to the son?'
She shot him a nervous glance but said nothing. Brunetti waited. Finally she said, 'Bills, mainly. And sometimes letters.' After a very long pause, she added, 'And magazines.'
Sensing her growing uneasiness, he asked, 'Was there anything unusual about the magazines, Signorina? Or about the letters?'
She glanced around the vast open hall, moved a bit to the left to take them farther away from a man who was making a telephone call from the pay phone near the entrance, and said, ‘I think they were about boys.'
This time there was no mistaking her nervousness: the blush set her face aflame.
'Boys? Do you mean little boys?'
She started to speak but then looked at her feet. From his greater height, he saw the top of her head shake in slow negation. He decided to wait for her to explain but then realized it would be easier for her to answer while she was not looking at him.
'Young boys, Signorina?'
This time her head nodded up and down in affirmation.
He wanted to be sure. 'Adolescents?' 'Yes.'
'May I ask how you know this, Signorina?'
At first he thought she wouldn't answer but finally she said, 'One day it rained, and my bag wasn't completely under my slicker, so when I got to the house their mail was wet: the things on the top, that is. When I pulled it out of the bag, the cover came off the magazine and it fell on to the ground. I picked it up, and when I did, it opened and I saw a photo of a boy.' She looked firmly at the ground between their feet, refusing to look at him when she spoke. ‘I have a little brother who was fourteen men, and that's what he looked like.' She stopped, and he knew there was no sense in asking her to describe the picture further.
'What did you do, Signorina?'
‘I put the magazine in the garbage. He never asked about it.'
'And the next month, when it came again?'
'I put that in the garbage, too, and the next one. And then they stopped coming, so I guess he knew what I was doing.'
'Was there only the one magazine, Signorina?'
'Yes, but there were envelopes, too. The kind with "Photo" on the outside, telling you not to bend them.'
'What did you do with them?'
'After I saw the magazine, I always bent them before I pushed them into the letterbox’ she said, anger mingled with pride.
He could think of no more questions, but she said, Then he died, and after a while the mail stopped coming.'
Brunetti put out his hand. She took it. He said, speaking as a policeman, 'Thank you for talking to me, Signorina’ and then couldn't help but add, ‘I understand.'
She smiled nervously, and again her face grew red.
At the Questura, he left a note on Vianello's desk, asking him to come up as soon as he got in. It was Wednesday, and Signorina Elettra seldom reached the office before noon on Wednesdays during the summer, a fact which the entire Questura had come to accept without " expression of curiosity or disapproval. During the summer, her skin grew no darker, so she was not on the beach; she sent no postcards, so she was not away from the city. No one had ever come across her in the city on Wednesday morning; had this happened, the entire Questura would certainly have heard. Perhaps she simply stayed at home and ironed her linen shirts, Brunetti decided.
His thoughts kept returning to Signora Battestini's son. Even though he knew the man's name was Paolo, Brunetti kept thinking of him as Signora Battestini's son. He had been forty when he died, had worked for a city office for more than a decade, yet everyone Brunetti spoke to referred to him as his mother's son, as if his only existence were through her or by means of her. Brunetti disliked psychobabble and the quick, easy solutions it tried to provide to complex human tangles, but here he thought he detected a pattern so obvious it had to be mistaken: take a domineering mother, put her in a closed and conservative society, and then add a father who liked to spend his time in the bar with the guys, having a drink, and homosexuality in the only son is not the most unlikely result. Instantly Brunetti thought of gay friends of his who had had mothers so passive as almost to be invisible, married to men capable of eating a lion for lunch, and he blushed almost as red as had the woman from the post office.
Wishing to learn if Paolo Battestini had indeed been gay, Brunetti dialled the office number of Domenico Lalli, owner of one of the chemical companies currently under investigation by Judge Galvani. He gave his name, and when Lalli's secretary proved reluctant to pass on the call, said it was a police matter and suggested she ask Lalli if he wanted to speak to him.
A minute later he was put through. 'What now, Guido?' Lalli asked, having served Brunetti in the past as a source of information about the gay population of Mestre and Venice. There was no anger in the voice, simply the impatience of a man who had a large company to run.
'Paolo Battestini, worked for the school board until five years ago, when he died of AIDS.'
'All right,' Lalli said. 'What, specifically, do you want to know?'
'Whether he was gay, whether he liked adolescent boys, and whether there was anyone else he might have shared this taste with.'
Lalli made a disapproving noise and then asked, 'He the one whose mother was murdered a few weeks ago?'
'Yes.'
'These things connected?' 'Maybe. That's why I'm asking you to see what
you can find out.' 'Five years ago?'
'Yes. It seems he subscribed to a magazine that had photos of boys in it.'
'Unpleasant,' came Lalli's unsolicited comment. 'And stupid. They can get all they want on the Internet now, though they still all ought to be locked up.'
Lalli, Brunetti knew, had been married as a young man and now had three grandchildren in whom he took inordinate pride. Fearing that he would now have to listen to an account of their latest triumphs, Brunetti said, 'I'd be grateful for anything you could tell me.'
'Hummm. I'll ask around. The school board, huh?'
'Yes. You know someone there.'
‘I know someone everywhere, Guido,' Lalli said tersely and without the least hint of boasting. 'I'll call you if I learn anything,' he said and, not bothering to say goodbye, hung up.
Brunetti tried to think of anyone else he could ask about this, but the two men who might have been able to help were on vacation, he knew. He decided to wait to see what information Lalli could provide before trying to get in touch with the others. That decision made, he went downstairs to see if there were any sign of Vianello.
15
Vianello had not yet come in. And as he was leaving the officers' room, Brunetti found himself face to face with Lieutenant Scarpa. After a significant pause, during which his body effectively blocked the doorway, the lieutenant stepped back and said, ‘I wonder if I might have a word with you, Commissario.'
'Of course’ Brunetti said.
'Perhaps in my office?' Scarpa suggested.
'I have to get back to my own office, I'm afraid’ Brunetti said, unwilling to concede the territorial advantage.
‘I think it's important, sir. It's about the Battestini murder.'
Brunetti manufactured a noncommittal expression and asked, 'Really? What about it?'
The Gismondi woman’ the lieutenant said and then refused to say more.
Though the mention of her name stirred Brunetti's curiosity, he said nothing. After a long time, his silence won, and Scarpa went on, 'I've checked the recordings of phone calls made to us, and I've found two calls in which she threatens her’
'Who threatens whom, Lieutenant?' inquired Brunetti.
'Signora Gismondi threatens Signora Battestini.'
'In a phone call to the police, Lieutenant? Wouldn't you say that was a bit rash of her?'
He watched Scarpa maintain control of himself, saw the way his mouth tightened at the corners and how he rose a few millimetres on the balls of his feet. He thought of what it would be like to be the weaker person in any exchange with Scarpa and didn't like the thought.
'If you could spare the time to listen to the tapes, sir, you might understand what I mean’ Scarpa said.
'Can't this wait?' Brunetti asked, making no attempt to disguise his own irritation.
As if the sight of Brunetti's impatience were enough to satisfy him, a more relaxed Scarpa said, 'If you'd prefer not to listen to the person who admits that she was probably the last one to see the victim alive threaten her, sir, that is entirely your own affair. I had, however, thought it would warrant closer attention.'
'Where are they?' Brunetti asked.
Feigning incomprehension, Scarpa asked, 'Where are what, sir?'
As he resisted the impulse to hit Scarpa, Brunetti realized how frequently this desire overtook him. He considered Patta a complacent time-server, a man capable of almost anything to protect his job. But it was the existence of the human weakness implicit in that 'almost' that kept Brunetti from disliking Patta in any but a superficial sense. But he hated Scarpa, shied away from him as he would from entering a dark room from which emerged a strange smell. Most rooms had lights, but he feared there existed no way to illuminate the interior of Scarpa, nor any certainty that what lay inside, if it could be seen, would provoke anything other than fear.
Brunetti's unwillingness to respond was so evident that Scarpa turned, muttering, 'In the lab,' and started towards the back stairway.
Bocchese was nowhere evident in the laboratory, though the prevailing odour of cigarette smoke suggested that he was not long gone. Scarpa went over to the back wall, where a large cassette player sat on a long wooden counter. Beside it lay two ninety-minute tapes, each bearing dates and signatures.
Scarpa picked one up, glanced at the writing, and slipped it into the machine. He picked up a pair of headphones and placed them over his ears, then pressed the PLAY button, listened for a few seconds, pushed STOP, fast-forwarded the tape and played it again. After three more attempts to find the right spot, he stopped the tape, rewound it a little, then handed the headphones to Brunetti.
Strangely reluctant to have anything that had been in such intimate contact with Scarpa's body touch his own, Brunetti said, 'Can't you just play it?'
Scarpa yanked the headphones from the socket and pressed PLAY.
'This is Signora Gismondi, in Cannaregio. I called before.' Brunetti recognized her voice, but not the tone, tight with anger.
'Yes, Signora. What now?'
'I told you an hour and a half ago. She's got the television on so loud you can hear it from here. Listen,' she said. The voices of two people who sounded as if they were having an argument drew close, then moved away. 'Can you hear that? Her window is ten metres away, and I can hear it like it's in my own house.'
'There's nothing I can do, Signora. The patrol is out on another call.'
'Has the call lasted an hour and a half?' she asked angrily.
‘I can't give you that information, Signora.'
'It's four o'clock in the morning,' she said, her voice moving close to hysteria or tears. 'She's had that thing on since one o'clock. I want to get some sleep.'
‘I told you the last time you called, Signora. The patrol's been given your address and they'll come when they can.'
'This is the third night in a row this has happened, and I haven't seen any sign of them,' she said, her voice shriller.
'I don't know anything about that, Signora.'
'What do you expect me to do, go over there and kill her?' Signora Gismondi shouted down the phone.
'I told you, Signora’ came the dispassionate voice of the police operator, 'the patrol will come when it can.' One of them hung up the phone and the tape wound on with a soft hiss.
An equally dispassionate Scarpa turned to Brunetti and said, 'In the next one, she actually threatens to go over and kill her.'
'What does she say?'
' "If you don't stop her, I'll go over there and kill her.'"
'Let me hear it’ Brunetti said.
Scarpa inserted the other tape and fast-forwarded it to the middle, hunted around until he found the right place, and played the call for Brunetti. He had quoted Signora Gismondi exactly, and Brunetti shivered when he heard her, voice almost hysterical with rage, say, 'If you don't stop her, I'll go over there and kill her.'
The fact that the call was made at three-thirty in the morning and was the fourth she had made in the same night suggested clearly to Brunetti that it was rage, not calculation, animating her voice, though a judge might not see it quite like that.
'There is also her history of violence’ added Scarpa casually. 'When that is added to these threats, I think it makes a strong case for us to question her again about her movements that morning’
'What history of violence?' Brunetti asked.
'Eight years ago, while she was still married, she attacked her husband and threatened to kill him.'
'Attacked him how?'
'The police report says she threw boiling water at him.'
'What else does the report say?' Brunetti asked.
'It's in my office if you care to read it, sir.'
'What else does it say, Scarpa?'
The surprise in Scarpa's eyes was evident, as was his instinctive step back from Brunetti. 'They were in the kitchen, having an argument, and she threw the water at him.'
'Was he hurt?'
'Not badly. It landed on his shoes and trousers
.'
'Were charges pressed?'
'No, sir, but a report was filed’
Suddenly suspicious, Brunetti asked, 'Who decided not to press charges?'
"That's hardly important, sir.'
'Who?' Brunetti's voice was so tight it sounded almost like a bark.
'She did’ Scarpa said after a pause he deliberately made as lengthy as possible.
'What charges didn't she press?'
Brunetti watched as Scarpa considered mentioning the report again and made note of the instant when he decided not to bother. 'Assault’ the lieutenant finally said. 'For what?'
'He broke her wrist, or she said he did.'