by Donna Leon
‘Let me see what I can find out,’ Brunetti said and picked up Signorina Elettra’s phone.
14
Because he was Venetian and had the rank of commissario, Brunetti was quickly put through to the Records Office. He explained his request to a man with a voice that sounded machine-generated, who proceeded to explain the process for requesting a copy of a patient report. So long as a magistrate submitted a formal request, the hospital would provide a copy of the services administered on a given day to the person named in the request.
Before he could pass this information to the others so that they could engage in universal rejoicing, the man added that those files, from fifteen years ago, existed only in paper form and would have to be searched for and found by someone familiar with the filing system.
‘Have you any idea of how long this might take?’ Brunetti asked.
In the long pause, he heard the real answer. The man, however, gave the official one: ‘It shouldn’t take more than a few days.’ Well, thought Brunetti, it shouldn’t take more than thirty years to build the dykes meant to protect the city against acqua alta, either. But he said, ‘If I were to have my friend, Dottor Rizzardi, call you and ask how long it will take, what answer would you give him?’ He put as much amiability as he could muster into his voice.
‘Is he a good friend?’ the man asked.
‘For more than thirty years.’ It was an exaggeration, but it was made in a worthy cause.
‘I’d tell him not to bother waiting,’ the man answered in a voice that was now recognizably human. Brunetti liked the fact that he made no attempt to excuse or justify what he said. He thanked him, and hung up.
He looked at the two women and shook his head. ‘Hopeless,’ he managed to say.
Griffoni, who was now sitting on the windowsill, having pushed herself up on to it while Brunetti was on the phone, jumped down and started towards the door. ‘I’ll be in my office. I have to write the report on the mugging,’ she said and left. Brunetti, telling Signorina Elettra he had calls to make, went upstairs to his office.
Signorina Elettra had found the name of the riding school near Preganziol, not far from Treviso. Using the internet as though he were an adept, he found the phone number, and, horses on his mind, typed in ‘dressage’ and read a general description of the sport, though he found it difficult to think of it as such. The grace and elegance of the horses and their riders reminded him of ballet. But art belonged to humans, didn’t it, not to animals?
He read quickly, growing more and more interested as he learned more. There were the top hats, white saddle blankets, boots, jackets, braided manes and flash nosebands: endless paraphernalia for man and beast. He studied a chart of the various tests imposed upon horse and rider, saw how they could move at an angle while appearing to move straight forward, looked at photos and prints of ‘capriole ’ and ‘levade ’. When he read that one of his favourite writers, Xenophon, had written about the systematic training of the horse, he knew he had been right to find it interesting.
He went back to Google and added ‘Claudia Griffoni’ to ‘dressage’, curious to see what he would find. A silver medal, as it turned out. Griffoni had won it for the Italian Olympic Team eighteen years before. In all of the time they had worked together, she had never mentioned much about her past, had definitely never spoken about horses, yet here she was, a silver medallist. His first thought was how important it was that this be kept from Patta, who was sure to tell Scarpa about it, a possibility that rendered Brunetti nervous.
Like many men on the force, Scarpa didn’t like women, although in his case it would be closer to the truth to say he disliked them. He went out of his way to show his disrespect for Signorina Elettra; she countered by ignoring him unless he addressed her directly, when the sweetness of some of the responses Brunetti had heard her give the Lieutenant had caused his insulin level to rise.
The Lieutenant especially didn’t like women with authority. He made a point of being slow to acknowledge any orders he received from Griffoni, but eventually he had no choice but to obey them, and her. Signorina Elettra, on the other hand, was, in the end, only a secretary, and he was a Lieutenant of police, and so it set his universe on end to have to do what she told him to do. Even now, he refused to believe that his patron, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, was completely in thrall to her powers and abilities and would, if asked to choose, happily chop up his Lieutenant for bait, should that be necessary to maintain his rapport with his secretary.
Better that a man with opinions such as these floating around in his head not learn that Commissario Griffoni not only knew how to ride a horse, but rode it in something as frivolous as dressage and, worse, had won an Olympic medal doing so. Brunetti feared that learning this might well unhinge the Lieutenant.
Brunetti dialled the number of the school and introduced himself, explaining that he was calling about someone who had kept a horse there fifteen years before and would like to speak to anyone who might have worked there at that time.
The woman who answered the phone said, ‘It’s Signora Enrichetta you need to talk to.’
‘And she is?’ Brunetti asked.
‘The owner. Now, that is. She took over when her husband died. She’s the only person who might know.’
‘Is she there?’
‘She might be out in the ring. Could you call back in ten minutes?’ she asked.
‘I’ll wait, if you don’t mind,’ Brunetti said, life having given him long experience of those ten minutes, after which too often no one was there to answer the phone when he called again.
‘All right,’ she said and set the phone down. Brunetti put his own phone face up on the desk and grabbed a stack of papers. Most of them concerned new regulations from the Ministry. One specified how officers were to secure their weapons at home: the gun in one locked box and the ammunition in another, the gun to be left unloaded at all times when it was in the house.
He had been reading similar regulations, it seemed, for decades. Yet often he read newspaper accounts of the children of officers who managed to get their hands on their parents’ guns and shoot some other member of the family, or themselves. Nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
The next contained new regulations for parking a service car when the officer driving it was not in service. Curious, Brunetti leafed through it, not to read the text but to see how many pages it was. Four. He set it aside.
He heard a voice speaking from the receiver on his desk. ‘Sì ?’ he answered.
‘Are you the policeman?’ a woman asked.
‘Yes. Are you Signora Enrichetta?’
‘Yes. My helper wasn’t too clear about the message. Could you tell me who you are and what it is you’d like?’
‘My name is Brunetti: I’m a commissario in Venice. I’m calling to get information about a girl who kept a horse at your stable about fifteen years ago.’
‘And you expect me to remember?’ she asked, but with amused surprise and not with the certainty that she would not remember.
‘I hope so,’ Brunetti said in his friendliest manner. ‘The girl’s name is Manuela Lando-Continui. Though she’s a woman now.’
‘Ah,’ she said, and then, ‘Manuela. Poor thing. I know about her. My husband liked her a great deal.’
‘Would it be possible for me to come out and talk to you?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ she answered. ‘But not until Monday. I’m sorry. We have a competition in Desenzano this weekend. It’s lucky you got me because we’re leaving in an hour: we’re taking two horses there.’
‘Then I’d like to come out on Monday,’ Brunetti said.
‘Good. We should be back on Sunday evening, so any time in the afternoon would be all right.’ Brunetti was just about to continue when the woman asked, ‘How is she?’
‘I haven’t spoken to her yet, b
ut her grandmother says she’s peaceful.’ It was the best Brunetti could think of to say.
‘Well, at least that’s something,’ the woman said, sounding not fully convinced. ‘I’ll see you Monday afternoon, then.’ She replaced the phone.
Remembering that Pietro Cavanis had failed to return his call, Brunetti took out his telefonino and found the number again.
The voice that answered on the seventh ring, a man’s, sounded fuzzy with sleep.
‘Signor Cavanis?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I think so,’ the man answered. ‘Tell me what you want, and that will give me time to remember who I am.’
‘I’d like to speak to you about Manuela Lando-Continui.’
‘You police?’ the man asked. ‘You sound it.’
‘Yes, I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti. I’ve been asked to look into the incident near Campo San Boldo.’
‘Yes, the incident,’ Cavanis said, still sounding dull with sleep. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘I’d like to talk to you about what happened.’
‘And if I say I don’t remember?’ Before Brunetti could answer, the man said, ‘Wait a minute.’ Brunetti heard the phone being set down, a rustle of paper, the scratching sound of a match and then a long sigh of satisfaction. There was a fumbling as the phone was picked up. ‘You were saying?’ the man asked.
‘I’d like to speak to you about what happened.’
‘Isn’t fifteen years a long time to take to get around to this?’ the man asked with counterfeit amiability, as if it were a serious question and not a reproach. Brunetti heard a clinking sound, followed by a rushing noise it took him a moment to identify. Ah, the day’s first drink. He wasn’t sure if he’d heard the swallowing noise or only imagined it.
‘Yes, it is a long time, but this is a new investigation. Would it be possible to talk to you?’ Brunetti asked, deciding to ignore the other man’s provocation.
‘Of course. But it will be to no purpose. I told you: I don’t remember anything, and the farther I get from it in time, the less I remember.’ He spoke with great insistence, Brunetti thought.
‘I’d still like to talk to you,’ Brunetti said, using his friendliest voice.
‘I’m not available this weekend. How about Monday?’
‘I’ve got a meeting in the afternoon,’ Brunetti said.
‘Tuesday?’ Cavanis suggested with the ease of a person who did not have to go to work and the rigour of one who did not think of the morning as a suitable time for a meeting.
‘Fine,’ Brunetti said. ‘Tell me where to meet you.’
Cavanis named a bar Brunetti was unfamiliar with, explaining that it was on Rio Marin, a few doors down from the gas office, heading away from the station. He suggested the late afternoon, but Brunetti said it would be more convenient to meet around noon; perhaps he could invite Signor Cavanis to join him for lunch? That seemed to convince the other man, who said he’d be there at twelve, and Brunetti, having heard a glass click against the phone a number of times, repeated that it was on Tuesday that they would meet.
‘If I’m not there, ask the owner of the bar to give you the keys and come across the canal – I’m just opposite the bar – and wake me up, all right? Green door. Second floor. Just come in and give me a few shakes.’ Brunetti, thinking that the invitation to lunch had struck some vein of humour, perhaps even amiability, in Cavanis, said he would. Cavanis replaced the phone without speaking, and that was that.
Because it was Friday afternoon and because he was bored and restless and felt himself growing thick with the anticipation of winter, Brunetti called Lolo and asked if he still had his sàndolo and if it was still in the water. When his friend said he did and it was, Brunetti suggested that they run away from home the next day and go out into the laguna and spend the day rowing.
‘And if we like that, then Sunday, too,’ Lolo said without hesitation.
Late on Saturday afternoon, Brunetti returned home to show Paola the four bandages on his hands and the blister on his left heel where his tennis shoe had rubbed repeatedly against the skin as he concentrated on relearning the shift and balance, thrust and dig that the single oar forced upon each of them. After dinner, he collapsed in front of the television and slept intermittently during the local news: fire in an apartment in Santa Croce, wildcat strike of the ticket sellers for the vaporetti, and a brief interview on the local channel with Sandro Vittori-Ricciardi, the man he’d seen at the Contessa Lando-Continui’s dinner, talking about his new project. Brunetti, however, was so exhausted by the late-autumn sun, cold wind off the water, and the hours spent rowing that the only thing he registered from these three segments was that the man had shaved off his beard and looked years younger as a result.
When Paola switched to a rerun of the first series of Downton Abbey, Brunetti pushed himself to his feet and made it as far as their bed before collapsing in a heap of exhausted muscle. He barely moved until he got up at eight to creak off and meet Lolo and climb back into the sàndolo.
There had been a freak acqua alta the night before, but the only remaining sign was the damp pavement next to the canale where Lolo tied up his boat. They spoke little as they headed out into the laguna, aware that words were an intrusion. Occasionally Brunetti called a warning about a log floating in the water, and they adjusted course. Brunetti saw two long-beaked birds sunning themselves, wings extended, on a tuft of grassy mud. He no longer remembered their name. ‘Isn’t it time they headed south?’ he called to Lolo, rowing at the back of the boat. They slipped past the birds, which ignored them.
‘They winter here now,’ Lolo said.
Stroke, cutting deep, then tilt and lift the oar from the water and slide it to the front, then dig it in again. Time after time, silently, with very little conscious effort; the endless flat expanse all around them, the sky gunmetal grey, the wind much too cold to justify being so playful with their sweating bodies.
At two, they decided to rest for a while and rowed to a stop at the side of the small canal that cut through a series of grass-covered semi-islands. From where he stood at the front, Brunetti turned in a half-circle to one side, then to the other. Spread out around them was the emptiness of the laguna : grass, water, tufts of reeds; no sound save their breathing, still heavy, and the far-off cawing of a bird. The day had lightened, but still the sun hid itself from them, though it managed to warm them now, out of the wind.
‘Guido,’ Lolo called from behind him. When he turned, Lolo tossed him a paper-wrapped sandwich. Brunetti was suddenly so hungry that he didn’t bother to look to see what was in the sandwich. He ate it in six bites, still standing, looked back at Lolo and said, ‘I’ve never eaten anything so good in my life. And I have no idea what it was.’
15
Monday morning brought paralysis, or something very near to it. Brunetti had gone to bed a happy man, one who had proved his stamina by six hours of rowing, come home bursting with pride in his prowess, eaten two plates of polpette with potatoes and porcini, four pieces of merluzzo with spinach, and then found room for a large slice of torta della provvidenza before retreating to his bed with the Argonautica and falling asleep before he’d finished two pages.
He woke a different person, a crippled old man who could barely push himself to the edge of his bed and whose body, as he walked towards the shower, made strong protests from a different place with every step. He was unable to step out of his pyjama bottoms, so he let them fall to the floor and left them there, gingerly removed the top, and reached into the shower to turn on the hot water. It finally arrived from five floors below, and he stepped into its healing warmth. He turned the nozzle to the right and moved to stand with his forehead pressed against the tiles, letting the water pound, splash, course, and flow across and down his back.
After five minutes, he felt some of the knots in his spine loosen, as the burn
ing in the muscles of his shoulders was replaced by the burning of the water and the steam that was slowly enveloping the entire bathroom. A few minutes more and he was able to contemplate the possibility that he would be able to reach his office that morning, though it would be wonderful to be able to phone Sanitrans and have himself picked up by two strong young men, propped in a chair, and carried down four flights of steps by them and not by these stumps that had once been his legs.
As if one of those young men had been summoned, someone called his first name from the door of the bathroom, but it was a high voice and sounded agitated. He hadn’t had enough of standing there, but he decided he was ready to make the effort of getting dressed and so turned off the water and stood in the growing silence.
‘Guido?’ a familiar voice said. ‘Are you all right?’
Through the dripping glass, he saw what he thought was Paola, standing in the doorway. ‘Of course I’m all right,’ he answered, wondering if he would have to put up with a comment about his use of hot water.
‘Oh, good,’ she said and was gone.
He stepped slowly out of the shower and took a towel, dried most of himself and left his lower legs and feet to take care of themselves. Wearing the towel, he went down to their room, where Paola was in bed, reading.
‘You came all that way to check?’ he asked.
She peered over her glasses at him. ‘It was a long time. I was concerned.’ That said, she returned to her book.
‘Concerned about what?’
Over the glasses again. ‘That you might have fallen.’
‘Ah,’ he said and reached for the drawer in which his underwear was kept. His back and right shoulder screamed at him, but he ignored them and, however slowly, began dressing, then pulled out a pair of socks and went over and sat on the bed. The tops of his feet were still wet, but he ignored that and pulled on the socks.