Through a glass, darkly cgb-15

by Donna Leon

  'Do you know Signor De Cal?'

  Fasano smiled and said, 'Our families have had factories side by side for more than a hundred years, Commissario.'

  'Yes, of course,' answered a chastened Brunetti. 'Did he ever say anything about Tassini or about having trouble with him?'

  'You've met Signor De Cal?' Fasano asked.

  'Yes.'

  'Then can you imagine the workman who would give him any real trouble?'

  'No.'

  'De Cal would probably have eaten him alive if Tassini had so much as suggested he was responsible for the little girl.' Fasano leaned back against his desk, bracing his hands on either side of him. "That's another reason why Tassini had to keep telling other people, I think. He couldn't say anything to De Cal. He must have been afraid to.'

  'It sounds as if you've given his accusations some thought, Signore,' Brunetti said.

  Fasano shrugged. 'I suppose I have. After all, we work around these materials all the time, and the idea that they might be harmful to me, or to us, is one I don't like.'

  'You don't sound like you believe they are, if I might say so’ Brunetti observed.

  'No, I don't’ Fasano said. 'I've read the scientific papers and the reports, Commissario. The danger, I repeat, is over there.' Half turning, he pointed to the north-west.

  'One of my inspectors believes it's killing us’ Brunetti said.

  'He's right’ Fasano said forcefully. But he said no more, for which Brunetti was almost thankful.

  Fasano pushed himself away from his desk, 'I'm afraid I have to go back to work’ he said.

  Brunetti expected him to walk around and sit at the desk, but Fasano picked up the vase and went and stood by the door to his office. 'I want to grind off a few imperfections’ he said, making it clear that Brunetti was not invited to join him.

  Brunetti thanked him for his time and left the factory, heading back towards the pier.

  24

  Brunetti took the 42 back to Fondamenta Nuove and then, because it was near, walked towards the Fondamenta della Misericordia. He stopped for a coffee and asked where Adil-San was, learning not only where to find them but that they were honest and busy and that the owner's son had recently married a girl from Denmark he had met at university, and it wasn't expected to last. No, not because of the girl, even if she was a foreigner, but because Roberto was a donnaiolo, and they never change, do they, they never stop chasing women? Nodding his head in acknowledgement or appreciation of this information, Brunetti left the bar and took the first right, following the canal until he saw the sign on the opposite side. Up and down a bridge and then back and into the plumbers' office, where he found a young woman sitting behind a computer.

  She looked up and smiled when he came in, asking what she could do for him. Her mouth was perhaps too big, or her lipstick too dark, but she was lovely, and Brunetti found himself flattered by her attention. 'I'd like to speak to the manager, please’ he said.

  'Is this about an estimate, sir?' she asked, her smile growing warmer and suggesting to Brunetti that perhaps her mouth was really just the right size.

  'No. I'd like to ask him about a client,' he said taking his warrant card from his wallet.

  She looked at it, at him, then back at the photo. 'I've never seen one of these before,' she said. 'It's just like on television, isn't it?'

  'A bit, I suppose. But not as interesting,' Brunetti said.

  She looked at the card again, then handed it back to him. 'I'll go and tell him, all right, Commissario?' she asked and got to her feet. Thicker in the waist than he had expected, she was still pleasant to watch as she crossed the room and pushed open a door without bothering to knock.

  In a moment she was back at the door. 'Signor Repeta can see you now, Commissario,' she said.

  When Brunetti entered, a man about his own age was just getting to his feet behind his desk. He came towards Brunetti. Like the girl in the outer office, he had a large mouth; her dark eyes, as well.

  'Your daughter?' Brunetti asked, waving towards the door, which was now shut.

  The man smiled. Is it that obvious?' he asked. Like her, his entire face softened when he smiled, and he had the same thickness of build.

  'The mouth and eyes’ Brunetti said.

  ' "Signor Repeta," she always calls me when we're working,' the man said with a smile. He wore a pair of black woollen trousers and a pink shirt with sleeves rolled back to the elbows, exposing the thick forearms of a worker. He motioned Brunetti to a chair, retreated behind his desk and asked, 'What can I do for you, Commissario?'

  'I'd like to know what sort of work you do for the Vetreria Regini,' Brunetti said.

  It was obvious that the question puzzled Repeta. After a moment, he answered, 'What I do for all of the vetrerie I have a contract with,' he said.

  'Which is?'

  'Oh, of course,' Repeta said. 'There's no way you'd know that, is there? Sorry.' He brushed his right hand through his greying hair, leaving part of it standing up in spikes. 'We service their water systems and dispose of the waste from the grinding room.'

  Brunetti gave a layman's smile and held up his palms, men asked, 'What does that mean to someone like me, Signore?'

  Like many men wrapped up in their work, Repeta struggled to find the words with which to make things clear. 'I suppose all the service part means is that we make sure they can turn the water in the factory on and off and adjust the rate of flow in the grinding shop.'

  'Doesn't sound very complicated’ Brunetti said, but he said it gently, as though both of them took the same delight in its simplicity.

  'No,' Repeta admitted with a smile, 'it's not complicated, not at all. But the tanks are.'

  'Why?'

  'We've got to see that the water flows from one to the next slowly enough to allow for sedimentation.' He saw the look on Brunetti's face and picked up a letter lying on his desk. He glanced at it, flipped it over, and picked up a pencil. 'Here, look’ he said, and Brunetti moved his chair over next to the desk.

  Quickly, with the ease of familiarity, Repeta drew a row of four equally sized rectangles. A line, presumably meant to indicate a pipe, led from a point near the top of one to the next, and then another led to the third; after the last one, it slanted down and disappeared off the bottom of the drawing.

  Pointing to the first rectangle, Repeta said, 'Look, the water from the molatura flows out of the grinding shop and into the first tank, carrying away everything that's been ground off. The heavy particles begin to sink to the bottom, while the water flows to the next one, where more of it drops down and is deposited. And so on and so on’ he said, tapping the point of the pencil against the third and fourth rectangles.

  'At the end of it, all of the particles have settled to the bottom of the tanks, and the water that flows out of the last one’ he said, trailing the pencil along the diagonal line that flowed off the page, 'goes into the drain.'

  'Clean water?' Brunetti asked.

  'Clean enough.'

  Brunetti studied the drawing for a moment and then asked, 'What happens to the sediment in the tanks?'

  'That's the second part of what we do,' Repeta said, pushing the paper away from him and returning his attention to Brunetti. 'They call us when they've drained the tanks and we go out and take the sediment away.'

  'And?'

  'And deliver it—well, it's really a kind of heavy sludge—we deliver it to the company that disposes of it.'

  'How?'

  "They fuse it, melt the glass particles and the minerals get fused into the glass’

  'What minerals are there?' Brunetti asked, interested now.

  'As many as are used in making glass’ answered Repeta. 'Cadmium, cobalt, manganese, arsenic, potassium.'

  'How do they get into the water?'

  'Because they're in the glass. When it's ground, the particles are carried away by the water and out into the tanks.' He put the paper back in front of him and pointed with the pencil to the first rectangl
e, then tapped it all along the row. 'The water also keeps the powder from getting into the lungs of the men doing the grinding.'

  'How many vetrerie do you do this for?'

  'More than thirty, I'd say, but I'd have to look at my client list.'

  'And how often do you make pick-ups?'

  "That depends on how much work they have. Maybe every three months, maybe six. We go out whenever they call us. It depends.'

  'Does that mean the same day?' Brunetti asked, thinking of a plugged sink in the kitchen, running over.

  'No,' Repeta said and laughed. "They usually call us and make an appointment a week before they need us. That also gives us the chance to schedule five or six pick-ups in one day.' Repeta glanced across to see that Brunetti was following and added, 'Saves us money, doing it that way. The charge for the trip is standard, no matter how much we pick up. I mean, we charge according to the weight of what we take away, but the charge for the pick-up is always the same, so it's best for them to have us come only when their tanks are full.'

  'One of the men I spoke to said he saw one of your boats out at the Vetreria Regini two months ago,' Brunetti said. 'Was it a pick-up?'

  Repeta shook his head at that. 'I don't know,' he said, shoving his chair back and moving around the desk. 'Let me ask Floridana.' He was gone before Brunetti could say anything.

  While he waited for Repeta, Brunetti looked around the office: travel posters, no doubt from an agency; a window so dusty it allowed only minimal light and sound to filter in; and three metal filing cabinets. No computer and no phone, which surprised Brunetti.

  Repeta came in, a sheet of paper in his hand. 'No’ he said as he approached Brunetti. It seems they needed someone to fix a leak.'

  'What sort of leak?'

  He passed the paper to Brunetti. 'One of the tanks. That's why they called us.' The words on the paper meant little to Brunetti, and he handed it back.

  Repeta went back behind his desk. He closed his eyes, saying, 'Let me think about the way their tanks are.' His face became completely expressionless and remained that way for some time, and then he opened his eyes. 'Yes, I remember. The tanks are raised up on metal feet, about five centimetres from the ground, but they're flush against the wall at the back.' He looked at the receipt again. 'From this, I'd guess that a seam, probably at one of the angles, came loose or corroded.' He showed Brunetti the paper again, saying, 'See? It says they had to solder a leak in the back of the third tank. That's probably what it was.'

  'Does your invoice say who did the work?' Brunetti asked.

  'Yes. Biaggi. He's one of our best.' Brunetti, who had once paid a plumber one hundred and sixty Euros to replace a faucet, was unsure what that might mean.

  'Would it be possible for you to ask him exactly what he did?' Brunetti asked, remembering Tassini's coordinates.

  Repeta gave him a strange look but got to his feet again and went to the outer office. Brunetti returned to the study of the travel posters, aware of how little desire he had to spend time on a tropical beach.

  After a few minutes, Repeta was back, saying, 'He's out in the shop. Be here in a minute.'

  While they waited, Brunetti asked about the disposal of other substances from the vetrerie, asking if Repeta also disposed of the acids. Those, he learned, were handled by an even more specialized firm, one that transferred the liquid to tanker trucks for delivery to facilities in Marghera that saw to the disposal of toxic substances.

  Before Brunetti could learn any more, he heard a voice from behind him.

  'You wanted me, Luca?'

  Say 'plumber', and this was the man who would appear on the inner eye. Not particularly tall, but thick from shoulder to hip—thick of nose as well; slightly balding, rough skinned, with enormous hands and forearms, Biaggi stood at the door. He smiled at Repeta, as though amiability were his usual condition.

  'Come in, Pietro’ Repeta said. 'This man wants to know what you did out at Fasano's place last time you went.'

  Biaggi took a few steps into the room and nodded to Brunetti. He tilted his chin and studied the ceiling, as if searching there for a copy of the invoice. He pursed his lips in a surprisingly feminine gesture, brought his chin back down and said, 'The third tank had a leak, and his manager needed us to solder it. His boss was on vacation or something. Anyway, he couldn't be reached, so the manager called us. Good thing he did, too, because they could have had a real problem if they'd waited a couple more days.'

  'Why is that?' Brunetti inquired.

  'Water was already leaking all over the floor: grey stuff, so it was coining from the sediment, or at least from the new water coming into the tank that still had sediment in it.'

  'What did you do?' Repeta asked.

  'Usual stuff: turn off the water of the molatura. We sent the guys out for a coffee and told them to come back in an hour. No use having them standing around doing nothing or trying to help.'

  'Who was with you?' Repeta asked.

  'Dondini.'

  'What did you have to do?' Brunetti interrupted to ask. Before Biaggi could begin to explain, Repeta told him to come and sit down, which he did, spreading himself into a chair and seeming even larger once he was seated.

  'First thing I saw was that it was going to take a long time, more than an hour.' He looked at Brunetti, smiled, and said, 'Before you start thinking this is the way plumbers think, Signore, let me tell you it was true. Those tanks are too close to the ground, so you can't get under them, and they're fixed to the walls, so you can't get behind them to have a look. Only way to work on them is to drain them and see what's going on.'

  'Even with all the sludge in them?' Brunetti asked, pleased with himself for sounding in command of the subject.

  Biaggi smiled. 'We had to drain it first. Luckily, it had only been a month or so since we were out there, so the sediment wasn't very high. Most of what was in it was water, so we turned it off in the grinding shop; then we bailed it into the next tank until we got down about forty centimetres. That's where the leak was.'

  'In the soldering on the angles?' Repeta asked.

  'No,' Biaggi answered. 'It looks like they used to drain the tank out of the back, straight through the wall. Or else it was used for something else before they put it there to filter the water from the molatura. I figure that's why they had to change the position of the pipes.' Biaggi dismissed the subject. 'None of my business, is it?' he asked Brunetti, who shook his head in agreement.

  'I don't know who did the job, but it was a mess,' Biaggi continued. 'Someone had cut a round plate out of tin or something, then they soldered a kind of flange thing on to the back, so the circle could be swung back and forth over the opening of the pipe to open and close it. But they didn't know what they were doing when they put the pipe in: they didn't use enough solder, and so it had started to leak.'

  'And what did you do?' Brunetti asked.

  'I closed it off.'

  'How?' Brunetti asked.

  'I pried off the circle thing and covered over the hole in the pipe. I used plastic and a good adhesive, so it'll last as long as that tank will’ Biaggi said proudly.

  'And the other tanks? Did they have the same problem?'

  Biaggi shrugged. 'I got called to fix a leak, not to check their whole system.'

  'Just where was this hole?' Brunetti asked.

  Biaggi repeated his gesture in attempting to recall the tanks, then said, 'About forty centimetres down, maybe a little less.'

  'What sort of liquid would there be at that depth, Signor Biaggi?' Brunetti asked.

  'Well, if they're at full production, and a lot of water is coming in,' he began, then added for clarification, 'that would be if the water was running for three or more people in the molatura—in that case, with full flow, it would be water with a lot of sediment in it.'

  'And if there were less work going on?' Brunetti asked.

  Again, Biaggi made that very feminine pursing of his lips. "There'd still be a fair amount of sediment in it.'r />
  'Where did the old pipe go?' Brunetti asked.

  Again, Biaggi played the scene back, then said, 'The angle was bad from where I had to stand, so I couldn't see into it, how far it went or where it went. Into the back wall. That's all I'm sure of. But it's sealed now. There's no chance it will leak again.

  'Could you say how long ago the original work was done?' Brunetti asked.

  'You mean the soldering?'

  'Yes.'

  'No, not exactly. Ten years ago. Maybe more, but that's just a guess. No way to tell, really.'

  Biaggi glanced at his wristwatch, leading Brunetti to say. 'Just one more question, Signore. Would it be possible for someone to find that pipe?'

  The question confused the man and he asked, 'You mean the opening in the tank?'

  'Yes.'

  'But why would anyone want to do that?'

  'Oh, I don't know,' Brunetti answered easily. 'But if they wanted to, could they find it there in the tank?'

  Biaggi looked at his employer, who nodded. He looked at his watch again, rubbed his hands together, making a dry, sandpapery noise, and finally said, 'If he knew it was there, I suppose he could find it with his hand, by hunting around. The water's off at both ends at night, so I guess if he opened the drain at the end and let the water run out, he could have a look, at least down to the level of the sediment. Then, when he wanted to fill it up again, all he'd have to do is close the drain again and go into the other room and turn the water on and wait until the tanks were full again. Easy.'

  With a smile he attempted to make reassuring, Brunetti said, I'm sorry, but I've just thought of another last question, but I promise it really will be the last.'

  Biaggi nodded, and Brunetti said, 'Did they give you any idea of how long the tank had been leaking?'

  'A month or so, I'd say’ came Biaggi's quick response.

  'You seem very sure of that’ Brunetti observed.

  'I am. It looked like someone tried to fix it. That is, it looks like someone tried to solder the disc into place over the hole in the pipe, but there was no way that was going to work. When I asked about it, the manager said the guys had been complaining about the wet floor for a couple of weeks.' He gave Brunetti an interrogative smile, as if to ask if he'd answered enough questions, and Brunetti smiled in return, got to his feet, and held out his hand.