Doctored Evidence - Brunetti 13

by Donna Leon

  After he had sat at his desk for several minutes, his better self reached for the phone and called down to the officers' room, where a nervous-sounding Pucetti, after a long hesitation, told him Vianello was not there. Brunetti put the phone down, thinking of Achilles, sulking in his tent.

  His phone rang and, hoping it would be Vianello, he reached out quickly to answer it.

  'It's me, sir,' he heard Signorina Elettra say. 'I've got her phone calls.'

  'How did you do that?'

  'They decided to keep his wife in another day, so Giorgio went into the office.'

  'Is there anything wrong?' asked the uxorious Brunetti.

  'No, nothing. Her uncle is the primario there, and he thought it would be better if she stayed another day.' He heard it in her voice, the attempt to soothe away his concern for a woman he had never met. 'She's fine.'

  Signorina Elettra waited a moment in case he had further questions, and when he said nothing, then went on, 'He found my email and checked her number. In the month before her death, she called the central number for the school board - it was the only call she made -and the next day she had a call from the same number. There was only one other call, from her niece. Nothing else.'

  'How many days did he check?'

  The entire month up until she was killed.'

  Neither of them commented on the fact that, in her eighty-fourth year, Signora Battestini, who had spent all of those years living in the city, had received only two phone calls in the course of a month. Brunetti recalled that there had been no books in the boxes stored in her attic: her life had been reduced to a chair placed in front of a television and a woman who spoke almost no Italian.

  He recalled the boxes, how hurried his examination of them had been, and, thinking of this, he missed the next thing Signorina Elettra said to him. When he tuned back in, he heard her say,'... the day before she died'.

  'What?' he asked. ‘I was miles away.'

  'The call that came from the school board was the day before she died.'

  Her tone revealed her pride, but Brunetti could do little but thank her and hang up. While he had been speaking to her, an idea had slipped into his mind: the objects in Signora Battestini's attic needed closer attention. Blackmail had not presented itself as a motive until after he had taken his hurried look through them, but now, with blackmail as an anchor, he might pause and take a more leisurely trawl through them. Even if he still didn't know what he was looking for, he at least knew that there might be something to find.

  He reached for the phone to call Vianello to ask if he would go along with him to the Battestini house, but then he remembered

  Vianello's departure and his absence from the officers' room. Pucetti, then. He called down and, giving no explanation, asked the young officer to meet him at the front entrance in five minutes, adding that they would need a launch.

  The last time he had slipped into Signora Battestini's home like a thief, and no one had seen him: this time he would arrive like the very personification of law itself, and no one would question him, or so he hoped.

  Pucetti, who was waiting just outside the door to the Questura, had learned over the years not to salute Brunetti each time he saw him, but he had not yet learned to resist the impulse to stand up straighter. They climbed on to the launch, with Brunetti determined not to ask about Vianello. He told the pilot where to take them, then went down into the cabin: Pucetti chose to remain on deck.

  No sooner was he seated than the long passage describing Achilles in his tent returned to Brunetti, and memory supplied the bombastic catalogue of the offences and slights the warrior insisted he had suffered. Achilles had suffered the slights of Agamemnon: Brunetti had been slighted by his Patroclus. Brunetti's contemplation of Homer was interrupted by an expression Paola had picked up in her researches into American slang: 'dissed'. She had explained that this was the past tense of the verb 'to dis', a term used by American Blacks to refer to 'disrespect' and denoting a wide range of behaviour which the speaker perceived as offensive.

  Under his breath, Brunetti muttered, 'Vianello dissed me’ He gave a quick guffaw, and he went out on to the deck, his good spirits renewed.

  The launch pulled up to the riva, and they were quickly in front of the building. Brunetti glanced up and saw that both the shutters and the windows of Signora Battestini's apartment were open, though ho televised sound poured out. He rang the bell and saw that her name had been replaced by Van Cleve.

  A blonde head appeared at the window above him, and then a man's head appeared beside the woman's. Brunetti stepped back from the building and was about to call up to them to open the door, but -apparently the sight of Pucetti's uniform sufficed, for a moment later both heads disappeared, and the door to the building clicked open.

  The man and the woman, equally blonde and equally pale skinned and eyed, stood at the door to the apartment. Looking at them, Brunetti could not stop himself from thinking of milk and cheese and pale skies perpetually rilled with clouds. Their Italian was halting, but he managed to make it clear to them who he was and where he wanted to go.

  'No chiave’ the man said, smiling, and showing his empty hands to reinforce the message. The woman imitated his gesture of helplessness.

  'Va bene. Non importa’ Brunetti said, turning from them and starting up the stairs to the attic.

  Pucetti followed close behind. At the first turning, Brunetti looked back and saw the two of them still standing outside the door to what was now apparently their apartment, staring up at him, as curious as owls.

  When he reached the top of the steps, Brunetti pulled out a twenty-centesemi coin, sure he could use it to unthread the already-loosened screws in the flange. But as he reached the door, he found that the flange was hanging at an angle, loose from the jamb. The two screws he had so carefully turned back in place were also loose, and the door stood open a few centimetres.

  Brunetti put out a cautionary hand towards Pucetti, but he had already noticed and had moved to the right of the door, his hand reaching for his pistol. Both men froze, waiting for some sound from inside. They stood that way for minutes. Brunetti put his left foot in front of the bottom of the door and rested his full weight on it, thus blocking any attempt that might be made to push it open from the inside.

  After another few minutes, Brunetti nodded at Pucetti, moved his foot, reached forward and pulled the door open. He went in first, calling out, 'Police’ and feeling just the least bit ridiculous as he heard himself say it.

  The attic was empty, but even in the dim light they could see signs of the passage of the person who had been there before them. A trail of scattered objects told of curiosity turning to frustration and that in its turn transformed into anger, and then rage. The first boxes stood neatly unstacked near where Brunetti had left them, their flaps pulled open, contents set on the ground next to them. The next lay on their sides, their flaps ripped open. The third pile, where Brunetti had found the papers, had been pillaged: one box had been ripped in half, and a wide semicircle of papers arched over to the next pile. The last boxes, which had held her collection of religious kitsch, had suffered martyrdom: the bodies and limbs of saints lay strewed about in positions of impossible and ungodly promiscuity; one Jesus had lost his cross and stretched for it with open arms; a blue Madonna had lost her head in crashing against the back wall; another had lost her infant son.

  Brunetti took it all in, turned to Pucetti, and said, 'Call them and tell them to send the crime team. I want fingerprints taken of everything’ He placed his right hand on Pucetti's arm and pushed him towards the door: 'Go down and wait for them,' he said. Then, in violation of everything he had ever learned or taught about the need to preserve a crime scene from contamination, he added, 'I want to have a look before they get here.'

  Pucetti's confusion was so strong as almost to be audible as well as visible, but he did as he was told, slipping past the attic door, careful not to touch it, and went downstairs.

  Brunetti
stood, studying the scene and considering the consequences of the discovery of his fingerprints on so many of the papers, boxes and documents that lay in front of him. He could, if he chose, explain their presence by maintaining that he had used this time to examine the evidence. He could, just as easily, say that he had come up to the attic and examined the contents of some of the boxes during a previous, unauthorized, visit to the apartment.

  Brunetti took a step towards the boxes. In the gloom, he set his right foot on the glass ball containing the Nativity scene, slipped, and lost his footing. He landed on his other knee, landed on something that crumbled under his weight, pushing sharp fragments through the cloth of his trousers and into his skin. Stunned by the fall and the sudden pain, it took him a moment to raise himself to his feet. He looked first at his knee, where the first faint traces of blood were beginning to seep through the cloth, and then to the floor, to see what he had fallen on.

  It was a third Madonna. His knee had caught her in the stomach, crushing all life out of her but sparing her head and legs. She looked up at him with a calm smile and all-forgiving eyes. Instinctively, he bent to help her, at least to put the top and bottom parts somewhere safe. He went down on his good knee, wincing at the pain this motion caused the other, and reached with both hands to pick up the fragments. Amidst the pieces of crushed plaster was a flattened roll of paper. Puzzled, Brunetti looked at the bottom of the Madonna's feet and saw that there was a small oval opening closed with a cork, just like the bottom of a salt shaker. The paper had been rolled up into a tight cylinder and stuffed inside her.

  He dropped the head and legs into the pocket of his jacket and stepped out into the hallway. He moved to the window at the end and, grasping the top left corner of the paper with the tips of his fingers, used the back of the fingernails of his right to unroll it, hoping to leave no fingerprints. But the paper kept rolling up, preventing him from seeing what was written on it.

  He heard Pucetti on the stairs below him, calling out, They're on the way, sir’ When Brunetti saw him appear at the head of the steps, he called the young officer over. Kneeling again, he spread the paper open with the tips of the fingers of both hands and told Pucetti to put the very edge of his foot sideways on the top. When it was anchored to the ground, Brunetti used the tips of his little fingers to scroll it open again, anchoring the open sheet with his forefingers once it was done.

  The single sheet of paper bore the letterhead of the Department of Economics at the University of Padova and was dated twelve years previously. It was addressed to the Department of Personnel of the School Board of the City of Venice and stated, after a polite greeting, that, 'Unfortunately, there is no mention in the records of our department of a student named Mauro Rossi as having been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Economics; nor, in fact, do we have any record of a student of that name and with that birth date ever having enrolled in this faculty’ The signature was illegible, although there was no mistaking the seal of the university.

  Brunetti stared down at it, refusing to believe what it told him. He tried to recall the documents on the wall of Rossi's office, among them the large, framed parchment which proclaimed him as a Doctor of Philosophy - Brunetti had not bothered to read the name of the faculty granting the degree.

  The letter was addressed to the Director of the Personnel Department, but certainly directors did not open their own mail: that's what clerks and assistants were for. They opened, read, and made official note of the letters which certified that the claims made in a curriculum vitae were true. They filed the letters of recommendation, the marks gained on competitive exams, made note of all the pieces of the paper puzzle that, when put together, gave a picture of someone worthy of professional rank and promotion in the civil service.

  Or, he imagined, they might at times verify, perhaps according to some random system, some of the claims made on the hundreds, thousands of applications made for each civil service job. And upon discovering a false claim, they could make this deceit public and disqualify the person making it, perhaps banish them absolutely from the civil service system.

  Or they could, instead, use the information for their own purpose, their own gain.

  He had a momentary vision of the Battestini family gathered around their table or perhaps in front of the television. Papa Bear showed Mamma Bear what he and Baby Bear had brought home from work that day.

  He shook away this vision, picked the letter up by a corner, and got to his feet.

  'What's that, sir?' Pucetti asked, pointing to the letter.

  ‘It's the reason Signora Battestini was killed,' Brunetti answered and went down the steps to wait for the crime team, still holding the letter by one corner.

  Downstairs, he spoke to the Dutch couple, this time in English, and asked them if anyone had tried to get into the building since they had moved in. They said that the only person who had disturbed them was Signora Battestini's son, who had asked them to let him in two days ago, saying he had forgotten his keys - at least that is what they thought he said, they added with embarrassed smiles - and had to go upstairs to check on the windows in the attic. No, they had not asked for identification: who else would want to go up into the attic? He had been up there for about twenty minutes when they left to go to their Italian lesson, but he had not been there when they got back, or at least they had not heard him come down the stairs. No, they had not gone up to the attic to check: they were renting only this apartment, and they did not think it correct to go into other parts of the building.

  It took Brunetti a moment to realize that they were serious, but then he remembered that they were Dutch and believed them.

  'Could you describe her son to me?' Brunetti asked.

  'Tall,' the husband said.

  'And handsome,' the wife added.

  The husband gave her a sharp look but said nothing.

  'How old was he, would you say?' he asked the wife.

  'Oh, in his forties,' she said, 'and tall. He looked very athletic,' she concluded, then shot at her husband a look Brunetti could not decipher.

  'I see,' Brunetti said, then switched topics and asked, 'To whom do you pay your rent?'

  'Signora Maries . . .' the wife began, but the husband cut her off by saying, 'We're staying here because it belongs to a friend, so we don't pay anything, just the utilities.'

  Brunetti let that lie register and asked, 'Ah, so Graziella Simionato is a friend of yours?'

  Both their faces remained blank at the mention of the name. The husband recovered first and said, 'A friend of a friend, that is.'

  ‘I see,' Brunetti answered, toyed with telling them that he didn't care whether anyone paid taxes on their rent or not, but decided it was unimportant and let it go. 'Would you recognize her son if you saw him again?'

  He watched the struggle on both their faces, as their instinctive Northern European honesty and respect for law struggled with everything they had ever been told about the ways of these devious Latins. 'Yes’ both of them said at the same time, an answer which cheered Brunetti.

  He thanked them, said he would contact them if the identification became necessary, and then went downstairs and outside. A police launch stood at the side of the canal, Bocchese and two technicians humping their heavy equipment on to the riva.

  Brunetti walked towards the boat, the paper still dangling in front of him, as if it were a fresh fish he had just caught and wanted to give to Bocchese. When the technician saw Brunetti, he reached down and opened one of the cases on the pavement. From it he pulled a transparent plastic sleeve and held it open while Brunetti lowered the letter into it.

  'Up in the attic. Someone's gone through it and tossed things all over the place. I'd like a complete check: fingerprints, whatever you might find that would allow us to identify him.'

  'You know who it was?' Bocchese asked.

  Brunetti nodded. 'Can I take the boat?' he asked Bocchese.

  'If you send it back for us afterwards. We've got all thi
s stuff to carry’ he said, gesturing down at the cases at his feet.

  'All right’ Brunetti said. Before he stepped aboard, he turned back to Bocchese and said, 'By the way, there are none of my fingerprints on any of the stuff in that attic'

  Bocchese gave him a long, speculative glance and then said, 'Of course’ He bent down and picked up one of the cases and started towards the door of what had been Signora Battestini's house.

  23

  Brunetti resisted the impulse to ask the pilot to take him to Ca' Farsetti for an impromptu meeting with Rossi. The voice of good sense and restraint told him this was not the time for cowboy theatrics, one-to-one confrontations where there were no witnesses and no one to overhear save the two men involved. He had given in to that impulse in the past, and it had always worked against him, against the police, and ultimately against the victims, who had, if nothing else, the right to see their killers punished.