by Donna Leon
Brunetti wanted to defend himself by saying that his children had a computer and his wife used one, but he thought this beneath his dignity and so made no response. He contented himself with asking, 'When can we have the names?'
'At the latest by tomorrow afternoon,' Vianello said. 'I'm not sure I would be able to get them, and Signorina Elettra said she had an appointment this afternoon.'
'Did she say where she had this appointment?'
'No.'
'Then let's leave it until tomorrow,' Brunetti suggested, looking at his watch. There was no purpose to be served by returning to the Questura, and he found himself suddenly exhausted by the events of the day. He wanted nothing more than to go home, have a meal with his family, and think of things other than death and greed. Vianello was more than willing to agree and stepped on to the Number One that was going towards the Lido, leaving his superior to wait for the one that would be along in two minutes to take him to his own home.
But when the vaporetto pulled up at his normal stop, San Silvestro, Brunetti remained on board and got off at the next, Rialto. It was only a few steps back along the canal to the city hall at Ca' Farsetti and then down the calle beside it to the building where the school board had its offices. Brunetti showed his warrant card to the portiere and was told that the main office of the Ufficio di Pubblica Istruzione was on the third floor. Never comfortable in elevators, he chose to take the stairs. On the third floor, a sign directed him to the right and along a narrow corridor, at the end of which stood the glass-doored offices of the school board. Inside he found himself in a large open space, four times the size of his own office. Orange plastic chairs lined the walls on either side of him; facing the door stood a battered wooden desk, and behind the desk sat an equally battered-looking woman, though something told him that her look was the result of choice, rather than chance.
There was no one else in the room, so Brunetti approached her. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty: her make-up was applied with sufficient abandon to disguise the evidence that would have allowed him to make that distinction. Though lipstick had enlarged her mouth, it had also managed to seep into and spread out from the many thin wrinkles under her lower lip, giving her mouth the suggestion of youthful promise at the same time that it gave evidence of years of heavy smoking. Her eyes were dark green, a mysterious emerald, but they glittered so brightly as to suggest either contact lenses or drugs. She had no eyebrows, nothing more than a pair of thin brown lines arching across her forehead in steep curves seemingly chosen at random.
Brunetti smiled as he approached her desk. Her lips moved in return and she asked, 'You the water-cooler man?' Her voice was entirely without inflection or emphasis; it could as easily be coming from a machine as from that exaggerated mouth.
‘I beg your pardon?' he asked.
'Are you the water-cooler man?' her voice played back.
'No. I'm here to speak to the Director.'
'You're not the water-cooler man?'
'No, I'm afraid not.'
He watched as this information was processed somewhere behind those emerald eyes. The fact that her expectation had been confounded appeared momentarily to prove too much for her, forcing her to close her eyes. He noticed that she had two tiny silver studs emerging from her left temple, but he refused to wonder about their origin, still less their purpose.
Her eyes opened. Perhaps she opened them; he was not at all certain. 'Dottor Rossi is in his office,' she said, raising a hand with long green fingernails and waving in the general direction of a door that stood behind her left shoulder.
Brunetti thanked her, decided not to tell her he hoped the water-cooler man would arrive soon, and walked to the door. Beyond it stretched a short corridor, doors to the left and a row of windows on the right giving on to a small inner courtyard, on the opposite side of which were more windows.
Brunetti walked down the hall, reading the names and titles on the signs beside the doors. The offices were silent, apparently abandoned. At the end of the corridor, he turned right: this time there were offices on both sides, though none of them that of the Director.
He turned right again; at the end of this corridor he found a sign that read, DOTTORE MAURO ROSSI, DIRETTORE. He knocked. A voice called, 'Avanti,' and Brunetti went in. The man sitting at the desk looked up, seemed puzzled at the arrival of a stranger in his office, and asked, 'Yes, what is it?'
'I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti, Dottore. I've come to ask some questions about a man who used to work here.'
'Commissario of police?' Rossi asked, and at Brunetti's nod, pointed him to a chair in front of his desk. As Brunetti approached, Rossi stood and extended his hand. When Rossi reached his full height, Brunetti saw the bulk of the man, easily half a head taller than he was himself. Though he was more heavily built than Brunetti, there was no suggestion of fat. Rossi looked in his mid-forties; his hair, still thick and dark, fell across his forehead as he moved his head. His skin was rugged with good health, and he moved gracefully for so large a man.
The office projected the same powerful sense of masculinity: a row of silver sports trophies stood on top of a glass-fronted bookcase; silver-framed photos of a woman and two children stood on the left side of the desk; five or six framed certificates hung on the walls, one of them the embossed parchment conferring a doctorate upon Mauro Rossi.
When he was seated, Brunetti said, 'It's about someone who worked here until about five years ago, Dottore: Paolo Battestini.' Rossi nodded for Brunetti to continue but gave no sign that he recognized the name.
'There are some things we'd like to know about him,' Brunetti said. 'He worked here for more than a decade.' When Rossi remained silent, Brunetti asked, 'Could you tell me if you knew him, Dottore?'
Rossi considered the question, then answered, 'Perhaps. I'm not really sure.' Brunetti tilted his head in a request for clarification, and Rossi explained, 'I was in charge of the schools in Mestre.'
'From here?' Brunetti interrupted.
'No, no,' Rossi said, smiling to excuse his oversight in not having specified. 'I was working in Mestre then. It was only two years ago that I was appointed here.'
'As Director?'
'Yes.'
'And so you moved here?'
Rossi smiled again and pursed his lips at the continuing confusion. 'No, I've always lived in the city.' It surprised Brunetti that the other man continued to speak in Italian: at this point in a conversation, most Venetians would slip into Veneziano, but perhaps Rossi wanted to maintain the dignity of his position. 'So the transfer was a double blessing because it meant I didn't have to go out to Mestre every day,' Rossi went on, breaking into Brunetti's reflections.
'The Pearl of the Adriatic,' Brunetti said with some sarcasm.
Rossi nodded in the true Venetian's dismissal of that ugly upstart, Mestre.
Brunetti realized they had wandered astray from his original question and returned to it. 'You said perhaps you knew him, Dottore. Could you explain what you mean?'
‘I suppose I must have known him, actually,' Rossi answered, then added, seeing Brunetti's confusion, 'That is, in the way one knows people who work in the same office or department. You see them or read their names, but you never get to know them personally or speak to them.'
'Did you have occasion to come here, to this office while you were working in Mestre?'
'Yes. The man I replaced as Director was here, and so when I was in charge in Mestre, I had to come in once a week for conferences because the central directorship is here.' Anticipating Brunetti's next question, Rossi said, ‘I don't remember ever meeting someone with that name or talking to him. That is, when you say his name, it sounds familiar, but I don't have a picture of him in my mind. And then, by the time I was transferred here, he must have already left, that is, if you say he left five years ago’
'Have you ever heard people here speak of him?'
Rossi shook his head in silent negation then said, 'Not that I recall, no
.'
'Since his mother's death, has anyone spoken of him?' Brunetti asked.
'His mother?' Rossi asked, and then his face registered the connection. 'That woman who was killed?' he asked. Brunetti nodded.
‘I didn't make the connection’ Rossi said. ‘It's not an uncommon name.' Rossi's voice changed and he asked, 'Why are you asking about him?'
‘It's a case of eliminating a possibility, Dottore. We want to be sure there was no connection between him and his mother's death.'
'After five years?' Rossi asked. 'You say he left here five years ago?' His tone suggested he thought Brunetti might be better occupied asking questions about something else.
Brunetti ignored this and said, 'As I said, we're trying to eliminate possibilities, rather than make connections, Dottore. That's why we're asking.' He waited for Rossi to question this, but he did not. When Rossi moved back in his chair, Brunetti observed that he did not use his hands, only the strength of his legs.
Brunetti leaned back in his own chair, threw up his open palms in a gesture of defeat, and said, 'To tell the truth, Dottore, we're at a bit of a loss about him. We have no idea what sort of man he was.'
'But his mother is the one who got killed, isn't she?' Rossi asked, like one who had taken it upon himself to remind the police of what they were meant to be doing.
'Indeed,' Brunetti answered and smiled again. 'It's nothing more than habit, I suppose. We always try to learn as much as we can about victims and the people around them.'
As if remembering, Rossi asked, 'But wasn't there something in the papers when it happened about a foreign woman, a Russian or something?'
'Romanian’ Brunetti said automatically. Some sense registered that Rossi did not like being corrected, and so he added, 'Not that it matters, Dottore. We had hoped to find some reason why she might have resented or disliked Signora Battestini’ then, before Rossi said anything, he went on, 'The son might have offended her in some way.'
'She came to work for Signora Battestini after her son died, didn't she?' Rossi asked, as if to add this fact to the others that rendered Brunetti's questions futile.
'Yes, she did’ Brunetti said, repeating his open-handed gesture less dramatically, and got to his feet. ‘I don't think there's anything else I need to ask you about him, Dottore. Thank you very much for your time.'
Rossi stood. ‘I hope I was able to be of some help’ he said.
Brunetti's smile grew even broader, 'I'm afraid you were, Dottore’ he said, then continued seamlessly, seeing Rossi's surprise, 'in that you eliminated a possibility for us. We'll have to concentrate our attention on Signora Battestini again.'
Rossi accompanied Brunetti to the office door. He leaned down a little to reach the handle and pulled open the door. He put out his hand, and Brunetti took it: two city officials, shaking hands after a few minutes of helpful cooperation. With repeated thanks for the doctor's time, Brunetti pulled the door closed behind him and started back towards the stairway, wondering how it was that Dottore Rossi knew that Paolo Battestini, whom he said he did not know, was dead and that Flori Ghiorghiu had come to work for his mother only after that event.
It was after eight when he got home, but Paola had decided to delay dinner at least until half-past on the assumption that he would have called if he was going to be much later.
His sober mood was matched by that of the other three members of his family, at least when they first sat down. But by the time the kids had eaten two helpings of orecchiette with cubes of mozzarella di bufala and pomodorini, they were ready to cheer in delight as Paola broke open the salt crust within which she had baked a branzino, revealing the perfect white flesh.
'What happens to the salt, Mamma?' Chiara asked as she poured some olive oil on her own helping of fish.
'I put it in the garbage.'
Ts it true that the Indians used to put fish bones around corn to make it grow better?' she asked, pushing them to one side of her plate.
'Dot Indians or Feather Indians?' Raffi asked.
'Feather Indians, of course,' Chiara answered, oblivious to the racist overtones of Raffi's question. 'You know corn didn't grow in India.'
'Raffi,' Paola said, 'will you take the garbage down tonight and put it in the entrance hall? I don't want this fish stinking up the house.'
'Sure. I told Giorgio and Luca I'd meet them at nme-thirty. I'll take it down when I go.'
'Did you put your things in the washing machine?' she asked.
He rolled his eyes. 'You think I'd try to get out of this place without doing it?' He turned to his father and, in a voice that proclaimed male solidarity, said, 'She's got radar.' Then he spelled the last word out, slowly, letter by letter, just to make clear the nature of the regime under which he lived.
'Thanks,' Paola said, certain of her powers and impervious to all reproach.
When Chiara offered to help with the dishes, Paola told her she'd do them herself because of the fish. Chiara took this as a reprieve rather than as an affront to her domestic skills and went to take advantage of Raffi's absence to use the computer.
Brunetti got up as she was finishing the dishes and pulled the Moka out of the cabinet.
'Coffee?' Paola asked. She knew his habits well enough to know he usually had coffee after dinner only in restaurants.
'Yes. I'm beat’ he confessed.
'Maybe it would be better just to go to bed early’ she suggested.
‘I don't know if I can sleep in this heat’ he said.
'Let me finish these’ she offered, 'and then we can go out and sit on the terrace for a while. Until you get sleepy.'
'All right’ he agreed, put the pot back and opened the next cabinet. 'What's good to drink in this heat?' he asked, surveying the bottles that filled two shelves.
'Sparkling mineral water.'
'Very funny’ Brunetti said. He reached deep into the cabinet for a bottle of Galliano way at the back. He rephrased his question. 'What's good to drink while sitting on the terrace, watching the sun fade in the west, while sitting beside the person you adore most in the universe and realizing that life has no greater joy to offer than the company of that person?'
Draping the dishtowel over the handle of the drawer where the knives and forks were kept, she gave him a long glance that ended in a quizzical grin. 'Non-sparkling mineral water might be better for a man in your condition’ she said and went out on the terrace to wait for him to join her.
He found himself afflicted, the next morning, with the lethargy that often came upon him when a case seemed to be going nowhere. Added to this was the penetrating heat that had already taken a grip on the day by the time he woke. Even the cup of coffee Paola brought him did nothing to lift the oppression of his spirits, nor did the long shower he permitted himself, taking advantage of the fact that both children had already left for the Alberoni, and thus there was no chance of their angry banging on the bathroom door should he use more water than their ecological sensibilities permitted. Two decades of habitual morning grumpiness had established Paola's rights to that mood, so he knew there was little joy to be had in her conversation.
He left the apartment directly after his shower, faintly annoyed with the universe. As he walked towards Rialto, he decided to have another coffee at the bar on the next corner. He bought a paper and was reading the headlines as he walked in. He went to the counter and, eyes still on the paper, asked for a coffee and a brioche. He paid no real attention to the familiar sound of the coffee machine, the thud and the hiss, nor to the sound of the cup being set in front of him. But when he looked up, he saw that the woman who had been serving him coffee for decades was gone; that, or she had been transformed into a Chinese woman half her age. He looked at the cash register, and there was another Chinese, this one a man, standing behind it.
He had seen this happening for months, this gradual taking over of the bars of the city by Chinese owners and workers, but this was the first time it had occurred in one of the places he frequented.
He resisted the impulse to ask where Signora Rosalba had gone, and her husband, and instead added two sugars to his coffee. He walked over to the plastic case but saw that the brioche were different from the fresh ones with mirtillo he had eaten for years; the tag on the case explained that they were manufactured and frozen in Milano. He finished his coffee, paid, and left.
It was still early enough for the boats not yet to be crowded with tourists, so he took the Number One from San Silvestro, standing on deck and reading the Gazzettino. This did little to alleviate his mood. Nor did the sight of Scarpa standing at the bottom of the stairs when he walked into the Questura.
Brunetti passed by him silently and started up the steps. From behind, he heard Scarpa call, 'Commissario, if I might have a word ...'
Brunetti turned and looked down on the uniformed man. 'Yes, Lieutenant?'
'I'm calling Signora Gismondi in for questioning again today. Since you seem so interested in her, I thought you might want to know.'