Anonymous Venetian

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti shook himself free from this speculation, looked towards the door, and saw that Vianello was gone.

  He was quickly replaced by Signorina Elettra, who came through the door that Vianello had left open. ‘You wanted to see me, Commissario?’

  ‘Yes, Signorina,’ he said, waving her to the seat beside his desk. ‘Vianello just went downstairs with the lists you gave me. It seems a number of the people on one of them are paying far more in rent than what the Lega is declaring, so I want to know if the people on the second list are really getting the money the Vega says it’s giving them.’

  As he spoke, Signorina Elettra wrote quickly, head bent down over her notebook.

  ‘I’d like to ask you, if you aren’t busy with anything else - what is it you’re working on down in the Archives this week?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ she asked and half rose to her feet. Her notebook fell to the floor, and she bent to pick it up. ‘I beg your pardon, Commissario,’ she said when she had the notebook open on her lap again. ‘In the Archives? I was trying to see if there was anything there about Avvocato Santomauro or perhaps Signor Mascari.’

  ‘And what luck have you had?’

  ‘None, unfortunately. Neither of them has ever been in trouble with the police. Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘No one in the building has any idea of the way things are filed down there, Signorina, but I’d like you to see what you can find about the people on those lists.’

  ‘On both, Dottore?’

  She had prepared them, so she knew that they contained more than two hundred names. ‘Perhaps you could begin with the second one, the people who receive money. The list has their names and addresses, so you can check at the city hall and find out which of them are registered here as residents.’ Though it was a holdover from the past, the law which required all citizens to register officially in the city where they resided and to inform the authorities of any change in address made it easy to trace the movements and background of anyone who came under official scrutiny.

  ‘I’d like you to check the people on that list, find out if any of them have criminal records, either here or in other cities. Other countries, though I have no idea of what you’ll be able to find.’ Signorina Elettra nodded as she took notes, suggesting that all of this was child’s play. ‘Also,’ he continued, ‘once Vianello finds out who’s paying rent under the table, then I’d like you to take those names and do the same.’ She looked up a few seconds after he finished speaking. ‘Do you think you could do this, Signorina? I have no idea what happened to the old files after we began to switch over to computers.’

  ‘Most of the old files are still down there,’ she said. ‘They’re a mess, but some things are still to be found in them.’

  ‘Do you think you could do this?’ She had been here less than two weeks, and already it seemed to Brunetti that she had been there for years.

  ‘Certainly. I find myself with a great deal of time on my hands,’ she said, leaving an opening wide enough for Brunetti to herd sheep through.

  He gave in to the impulse and asked, ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘They’re having dinner tonight. In Milano. He’s having himself driven over there this afternoon.’

  ‘What do you think will happen?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew he shouldn’t.

  ‘Once Burrasca’s arrested, she’ll be on the first plane. Or perhaps he’ll offer to drive her back to Burrasca’s after dinner - he’d enjoy that, I think, driving up with her and finding the cars from the Finance Police. She’ll probably come back with him tonight if she sees them.’

  ‘Why does he want her back?’ Brunetti finally asked.

  Signorina Elettra glanced up at him, puzzled by his density. ‘He loves her, Commissario. Surely, you must realize that.’

  * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The heat usually robbed Brunetti of all appetite, but that night he found himself really hungry for the first time since he had eaten with Padovani. He stopped at Rialto on the way home, surprised to find some of the fruit and vegetable stalls still open after eight. He bought a kilo of plum tomatoes so ripe the vendor warned him to carry them carefully and not put anything on top. At another stall, he bought a kilo of dark figs and got the same warning. Luckily, each warning had come with a plastic bag, so he arrived at home with a bag in each hand.

  When he got inside, he opened all the windows in the apartment, changed into loose cotton pants and a T-shirt, and went into the kitchen. He chopped onions, dropped the tomatoes in boiling water, the more easily to peel them, and went out on the terrace to pick some leaves of fresh basil. Working automatically, not really paying attention to what he was doing, he prepared a simple sauce and then put water on to cook the pasta. When the salted water rose to a rolling boil, he threw half a package ofpenne rigate into the water and stirred them around.

  As he did all of this, he kept thinking of the various people who had been involved in the events of the last ten days, not trying to make any sense of the jumble of names and faces. When the pasta was done, he poured it through a colander, tossed it into a serving bowl, then poured the sauce on top of it. With a large spoon, he swirled it round, then went out on to the terrace, where he had already taken a fork, a glass and a bottle of Cabernet. He ate from the bowl. Their terrace was so high that the only people close enough to see what he was doing would have to be in the bell tower of the church of San Polo. He ate all the pasta, wiping the remaining sauce up with a piece of bread, then took the bowl inside and came out with a plate of freshly washed figs.

  Before he started on them, he went back inside and picked up his copy of Tacitus’ Annals of Imperial Rome. Brunetti picked up where he had left off, with the account of the myriad horrors of the, reign of Tiberius, an emperor for whom Tacitus seemed to have an especial distaste. These Romans murdered, betrayed, and did violence to honour and to one another. How like us they were, Brunetti reflected. He read on, learning nothing to change that conclusion, until the mosquitoes began to attack him, driving him inside. On the sofa, until well after midnight, he read on, not at all troubled by the knowledge that this catalogue of crimes and villainies committed almost two thousand years ago served to remove his mind from those that were being committed around him. His sleep was deep and dreamless, and he awoke refreshed, as if he believed that Tacitus’ fierce, uncompromising morality would somehow help him through the day.

  * * * *

  When he got to the Questura the following morning, he was surprised to discover that Patta had found time, before he left for Milano the previous day, to request of the instructing judge a court order that would provide them with the records of both the Lega della Moralità and the Banca di Verona. Not only that, but the order had been delivered to both institutions that morning, where the officials in charge had promised to comply. Though both institutions insisted it would take some time to prepare the necessary documents, neither had been precise on just how long that would be.

  By eleven, there was still no sign of Patta. Most of the people who worked in the Questura bought a newspaper that morning, but in none of them was there mention of Burrasca’s arrest. This fact came as no surprise, neither to Brunetti nor the rest of the staff, but it did a great deal to increase the eagerness, to make no mention of the speculation, about the results of the Vice-Questore’s trip to Milano the evening before. Rising above all of this, Brunetti contented himself with calling the Guardia di Finanza to ask if his request for the loan of personnel to check the financial records of both the bank and the Lega had been granted. Much to his surprise, he learned that the instructing judge, Luca Benedetti, had already called and suggested that the papers be examined by the Financial Police as soon as they were produced.

  When Vianello came into his office shortly before lunch, Brunetti was sure he had come to report that the papers had not arrived or, more likely, that some bureaucratic obstacle had suddenly been discovered by both the bank and the Lega, and delivery
of the papers would be delayed, perhaps indefinitely.

  ‘Buon giorno, Commissario,’ Vianello said when he came in.

  Brunetti looked up from the papers on his desk and asked, ‘What is it, Sergeant?’

  ‘I’ve got some people here who want to talk to you.’

  ‘Who?’ Brunetti asked, placing his pen down on the papers in front of him.

  ‘Professore Luigi Ratti and his wife,’ Vianello answered, offering no explanation save the terse, ‘from Milano.’

  ‘And who are the professor and his wife, if I might ask?’

  ‘They’re the tenants in one of the apartments in the care of the Lega, have been for a little more than two years.’

  ‘Go on, Vianello,’ Brunetti said, interested.

  ‘The professor’s apartment was on the part of the list I had, so I went to speak to him this morning. When I asked him how he had come by the apartment, he said that the decisions of the Lega were private. I asked him how he paid his rent, and he explained that he paid two hundred and twenty thousand lire into the Lega’s account at the Banca di Verona every month. I asked him if I might take a look at his receipts, but he said he never kept them.’

  ‘Really?’ Brunetti asked, even more interested now. Because there was never any telling when some agency of the government would decide that a bill had not been paid, a tax not collected, a document not issued, no one in Italy threw out any official form, least of all proof that some sort of payment had been made. Brunetti and Paola, in fact, had two complete drawers filled with utility bills that went back a decade and at least three boxes filled with various documents stuffed away in the attic. For a person to say he had thrown away a rent receipt was either an act of sovereign madness, or a lie. ‘Where is the professor’s apartment?’

  ‘On the Zattere, with a view across to the Giudecca,’ Vianello said, naming one of the most desirable areas in the city. Then he added, ‘I’d say it’s six rooms, the apartment, though I saw only the entrance hall.’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty thousand lire?’ Brunetti asked, thinking that this was what Raffi had paid for a pair of Timberlands a month ago.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Vianello said.

  ‘Why don’t you ask the professor and his wife to come in, then, Sergeant? By the way, what is the professor a professor of?’

  ‘I don’t think of anything, sir.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said and screwed the cap back on to his pen.

  Vianello went over to the door and opened it, then stepped back to allow Professore and Signora Ratti to come into the office.

  Professore Ratti might have been in his early fifties, but he was keeping that fact at bay to the best of his ability. He was aided in the attempt by the ministrations of a barber who cut his hair so close to the scalp that the grey would be mistaken for blond. A Gianni Versace suit in dove-grey silk added to the youthful look, as did the burgundy silk shirt which he wore open at the throat. His shoes, which he wore without socks, were the same colour as the shirt, made of woven leather that could have come only from Bottega Veneta. Someone once must have warned him about the tendency of the skin under his chin to wattle, for he wore a knotted white silk cravat and held his chin artificially high, as if compensating for a careless optician who had put the lenses in his bifocals in the wrong places.

  If the professor was fighting a holding action against his age, his wife was engaged in open combat. Her hair bore an uncanny resemblance to the colour of her husband’s shirt, and her face had the tautness that came only from the vibrancy of youth or the skill of surgeons. Blade-thin, she wore a white linen suit with a jacket left open to display an emerald-green silk shirt. Seeing them, Brunetti wondered how they managed to walk around in this heat and still look fresh and cool. The coolest part of them was their eyes.

  ‘You wanted to speak to me, Professore?’ Brunetti asked, rising from his chair but making no attempt to shake hands.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Ratti said, motioning to his wife to sit in the chair in front of Brunetti’s desk and then going, unasked, to pull a second from where it stood against the wall. When they were both comfortable, he continued, ‘I’ve come to tell you how much I dislike having the police invade the privacy of my home. Even more, I want to complain about the insinuations that have been made.’ Ratti, like so many Milanesi, elided all of the R’s in his speech, a sound which Brunetti could not help associating with actresses of the more pneumatic variety.

  ‘And what insinuations are those, Professore?’ Brunetti asked, resuming his seat and signalling to Vianello to stay where he was, just inside the door.

  ‘That there is some irregularity pertaining to my tenancy.’

  Brunetti glanced across at Vianello and saw the sergeant raise his eyes towards the ceiling. Not only the Milano accent but now big words to go with it.

  ‘What makes you believe this insinuation has been made, Professore?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Well, why else would your police push their way into my apartment and demand that I produce rent receipts?’ As the professor spoke, his wife was busy running her eyes around the office.

  ‘ “Push”, Professore?’ Brunetti asked in a conversational voice. ‘ “Demand”?’ Then, to Vianello, ‘Sergeant, how did you gain access to the property to which the professor has ...’ he paused, ‘tenancy?’

  ‘The maid let me in, sir.’

  ‘And what did you tell the maid who let you in, Sergeant?’

  ‘That I wanted to speak to Professore Ratti.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said and turned his attention back to Ratti. ‘And how was the “demand” made, Professore?’

  ‘Your sergeant asked to see my rent receipts, as if I’d keep such things around.’

  ‘You are not in the habit of keeping receipts, Professore?’

  Ratti waved a hand, and his wife gave Brunetti a look of studied surprise, as if to suggest what an enormous waste of time it would be to keep a record of a sum so small.

  ‘And what would you do if the owner of the apartment were ever to claim that you had not paid the rent? What proof would you offer?’ Brunetti asked.

  This time, Ratti’s gesture was meant to dismiss the possibility of that ever happening, while his wife’s look was meant to suggest that no one would ever think of questioning her husband’s word.

  ‘Could you tell me just how you pay your rent, Professore?’

  ‘I don’t see how that is any business of the police,’ Ratti said belligerently. ‘I’m not used to being treated like this.’

  ‘Like what, Professore?’ Brunetti asked with real curiosity.

  ‘Like a suspect.’

  ‘Have you been treated like a suspect before, by other police, that would make you familiar with what it feels like?’

  Ratti half rose in his seat and glanced over at his wife. ‘I don’t have to put up with this. A friend of mine is a city councillor.’ She made a slight gesture with her hand, and he slowly sat back down.

  ‘Could you tell me how you pay your rent, Professore Ratti?’

  Ratti looked directly at Brunetti. ‘I deposit the rent at the Banca di Verona.’

  ‘At San Bartolomeo?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how much is that rent, Professore?’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ the professor said, dismissing the sum.

  ‘Is two hundred and twenty thousand lire the sum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Brunetti nodded. ‘And the apartment, how many square metres is it?’

  Signora Ratti interrupted here, as if driven past her power to put up with such idiocy. ‘We have no idea of that. It’s adequate for our needs.’

  Brunetti pulled the list of the apartments held in trust by the Lega towards him and flipped to the third page, then ran his finger down the list until he came to Ratti’s name. ‘Three hundred and twelve square metres, I think. And six rooms. Yes, I suppose that would be adequate for most needs.’

  Signora Ratti was on him in a flash. ‘And what is tha
t supposed to mean?’

  Brunetti turned a level glance on her. ‘Just what I said, Signora, and no more. That six rooms ought to be adequate for two - there are only two of you, aren’t there?’

  ‘And the maid,’ she answered.

  ‘Three, then,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘Still adequate.’ He turned away from her, face unchanged, and returned his attention to her husband. ‘How was it that you came to be given one of the apartments of the Lega, Professore?’

  ‘It was very simple,’ Ratti began, but it seemed to Brunetti that he had begun to bluster. ‘I applied for it in the normal fashion, and I was given it.’