by Donna Leon
The doctor nodded, as if pleased that his opinion of Rizzardi’s skill had been confirmed. ‘Did he say what killed her?’ Carlotti asked. Brunetti was surprised that anyone who had seen the woman’s body could ask the question.
‘He said it was trauma of the blows to her head.’
Again that nod, again a diagnosis confirmed.
Brunetti took out his notebook and opened it to the pages where he’d made some notes of what Signora Gismondi had told him.
‘How long was she a patient of yours, Dottore?’
Carlotti’s response was immediate. ‘Five years, ever since the death of her son. She insisted that the doctor they both went to was responsible for his death, so she refused to go to him after the son died and asked to join my practice.’ He said it with a hint of regret.
‘And was there any basis to her claim that this other doctor was responsible?’
‘It’s nonsense. He died of AIDS.’
Suppressing his surprise, Brunetti asked, ‘Did she know this?’
‘Better to ask if she believed it, Commissario, because she didn’t believe it. But she must have known it.’ Neither found this difficult to make sense of.
‘Was he gay?’
‘Not publicly and not to the knowledge of my colleague, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that he was not. Nor was he a haemophiliac, nor a drug user, and he’d never had a transfusion, at least not that he could remember or the hospital had any record of.’
‘You tried to find out?’
‘My colleague did. Signora Battestini accused him of criminal negligence, and he tried to protect himself by finding out the source of the infection. He also wanted to know if there was any chance of Paolo’s having passed it on, but she refused to answer any questions about him, even when someone from the Public Health went to talk to her. When she became my patient, she said only that he had been murdered by the “doctors”. I made it clear I would not listen to such things and suggested she find another doctor. So she stopped saying it, at least she stopped saying it to me.’
‘And you never heard anything that suggested he might be gay?’
Carlotti shrugged. ‘People talk. All the time. I’ve learned not to pay much attention to it. Some people seemed to believe he was, others not. I didn’t care, so they stopped talking about him to me.’ He glanced at Brunetti. ‘So I don’t know. My colleague believes he was, but that’s because there seems no other way to explain his having the disease. But I repeat: I never met him, so I don’t know.’
Brunetti left it there and asked, ‘About Signora Battestini, then, Dottore. Is there anything you could tell me that might explain why someone would do this to her?’
The doctor pushed his chair back and stuck his legs out, unusually long legs in a man so much shorter than Brunetti. He crossed his ankles and scratched the back of his head with his left hand. ‘No, not really. I’ve been thinking about this since you called, in fact, since I found her, but I can’t think of anything. She was a person of a certain character . . .’ the doctor began, but before he could continue with this platitude, Brunetti interrupted him.
‘Please, Dottore. I’ve spent my life listening to people speak well of the dead or find ways to avoid speaking the truth about them. So I know about “a certain character”, and I know about “difficult”, and I know about “wilful”. I’d like you to remember that this is a murder investigation, and because it is, Signora Battestini is far beyond any harm your words might do to her. So could you please forget politeness and tell me honestly about her and about why someone might want to kill her?’
Carlotti grinned at this, then glanced towards the door to the waiting room, from which the voices of the two women could be heard speaking in soft, nervous voices. ‘I suppose it’s a habit we all have, doctors especially, always afraid we’ll be caught saying something we ought not to say about a patient, caught telling the truth.’
At Brunetti’s nod, he went on. ‘She was a nasty old shrew, and I never heard a good word said about her.’
‘Nasty in what way, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked.
The doctor considered before answering, as though he’d never stopped to think about why this woman was nasty or in what particular ways she was. His hand moved to his head and went back to scratching at the same spot. Finally he looked at Brunetti and said, ‘Maybe all I can do is give you examples. Like the women who worked for her. She never stopped complaining about them or telling me, or them, that the things they did weren’t done the right way. They used too much coffee to make her coffee, or they left lights on, or they should wash the dishes in cold water, not hot. If they tried to defend themselves, she’d scream at them, telling them they could go back where they came from.’
There was a cry from one of the children in the waiting room, but it stopped. Carlotti went on. ‘It doesn’t sound like a lot, I realize now, when I hear myself saying it, but it was terrible for them. They were probably all illegal, the women, so they couldn’t complain, and the last thing any of them wanted to do was go back to where they came from. And she knew it.’
‘Did you know any of them, Dottore?’
‘Know them how?’ he asked.
‘Speak to them about where they came from, about what they did before they came here.’
‘No. She wouldn’t let me, probably wouldn’t let anyone. If the phone rang while I was there, she demanded to know who it was, made them hand over the phone. Even if their telefonini rang, she wanted to know who was calling them, told them they couldn’t talk on the phone while she was paying them to work.’
‘And the last one?’
‘Flori?’ the doctor asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think she killed her?’ Dottor Carlotti asked.
‘Do you, Dottore?’
‘I don’t know. When I found her, the first thing I did was look for Flori’s . . . for her body. It never occurred to me that she could have done it: the only possibility I could think of was that she might have been another victim.’
‘And now, Dottore?’
The man seemed genuinely pained. ‘I read the papers, and I spoke to that other officer, and everyone seems sure she did it.’ Brunetti waited. ‘But I still can’t believe it.’
‘Why is that?’
The doctor hesitated for a long time, glancing at Brunetti’s face as if to see if this man who also spent his time with human weakness would understand. ‘I’ve been a doctor for more than twenty years, Commissario, and it’s part of my profession to notice things in people. It might seem as though all I need to pay attention to are physical things, but I’ve seen enough sick people to know that what’s wrong with the soul is often also wrong with the body. And I’d say that there was nothing wrong with Flori’s soul.’ He looked away, looked back, and said, ‘I’m afraid I can’t be more precise or professional than that, Commissario.’
‘And Signora Battestini? Do you think there was something wrong with her soul?’
‘Nothing more than greed, Commissario,’ Carlotti answered instantly. ‘The ignorance and stupidity, they didn’t come from the soul. But the greed did.’
‘Many old people have to be careful with their money,’ Brunetti suggested, playing devil’s advocate.
‘This wasn’t being careful, Commissario. This was obsession.’ Then he surprised Brunetti by slipping into Latin. ‘“Radix malorum est Cupiditas.” Not money, Commissario. That’s not the root of all evil. It’s the love of money. Cupiditas.’
‘Did she have much money to be greedy about?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ the doctor answered. One of the children in the outer room began to cry, that high-pitched wail that cannot be faked. Carlotti looked at his watch. ‘If you have no more questions, Commissario, I’d like to get on with seeing my patients.’
‘Certainly,’ Brunetti said, getting to his feet and returning his notebook to his pocket. ‘You’ve been more than generous with your time.’
As they walked
towards the door, Brunetti asked, ‘Did Signora Battestini ever receive visitors while you were there?’
‘No, no one ever came to see her that I can recall,’ the doctor said. He stood still as he searched his memory. ‘Once or twice, as I said, she’d get phone calls, but she’d always say she was busy and tell whoever it was to call back.’
‘Did she speak Veneziano to these people, do you remember, Dottore, when she talked to them?’
‘I don’t remember,’ Carlotti answered. ‘Probably Veneziano. She’d almost forgotten how to speak Italian. Some of them do.’ Then, for the sake of clarity, he added, ‘At least I never heard her speak it.’ He put his hand back to his head. ‘Once, about three years ago, she was on the phone when I came in. I had a key by then, you see, and I could let myself in if she didn’t hear the bell. The television was on – I could hear it down in the street – so I knew she wouldn’t hear me if I did ring, so I didn’t bother. I opened the door, but the sound had been lowered. The phone must have rung while I was coming up the steps, and she was talking to someone.’ He paused for a moment, then added, ‘I suppose that whoever it was had called her. She often said it cost too much to make phone calls. At any rate, she had turned the television down a bit and was talking to someone.’
Brunetti waited beside him, saying nothing, allowing him space and time for memory.
‘She said something about having hoped to hear from the person, whoever it was, but her voice was . . . oh, I don’t know . . . cruel or sarcastic or something between the two. And then she said goodbye and called the person something. I can’t remember now what it was. Dottore maybe, or Professore, something like that, and because she used a title, you’d think she would have spoken respectfully, but it was just the opposite.’ Brunetti watched him as he spoke, saw the memory take shape. ‘Yes, it was Dottore, but she was speaking in Veneziano. I’m sure of that.’
When it was clear that the doctor had no more to say, Brunetti asked, ‘Did you say anything about the conversation to her?’
‘No, no, I didn’t. In fact, the moment was so strange, perhaps because of her voice, or just some feeling I had about the way she was talking, that I stayed just outside the doorway and didn’t go in. There was something so strange in the air that I pulled the door closed and then made a business of putting the key in the lock and making a lot of noise with it when I opened the door. And I called her name and asked her if she was there before I went in.’
‘Could you explain why you did this?’ Brunetti asked, puzzled that this seemingly practical man should have had such a strong reaction.
The doctor shook his head. ‘No. It was just a feeling, something I picked up from the way she was speaking. I felt as though I’d come into the presence of . . . of something evil.’
The child’s screams had intensified while they had been talking. The doctor opened the door. He put his head through the opening and said, ‘Signora Ciapparelli, you can bring Piero in now.’
He stood back to let Brunetti leave and shook his hand; by the time Brunetti reached the door of the waiting room, the door to the office was closed and the child had stopped crying.
13
BACK IN HIS office, Brunetti dialled the number for Signorina Simionato, but again there was no answer. What puzzled him was the money in the four accounts. Not the total sum: many apparently poor people managed to accumulate hidden fortunes during long lives of daily privation: lira by lira, renunciation by renunciation, they amassed something to pass on to their relatives or to the Church. They must spend their lives counting, Brunetti realized, counting and saying no to anything that was not fundamentally necessary to physical survival. Pleasures went untasted, desires unheeded, as life passed by. Or worse, pleasure was transformed and could be had only by negation and the resultant accumulation, and desire was satisfied only by acquisition.
He’d observed this phenomenon sufficient times no longer to be surprised by it: what did surprise him was the sophistication of the money’s removal from the banks and then from the country. The sophistication and the speed. The transfers had been made on the Monday after her death, long before any legal action could have been taken regarding the will. This suggested that one – or both – of the women had only to learn of Signora Battestini’s death to make a move, and that in its turn suggested that the old woman had kept a close eye on the accounts and would have noticed any withdrawal when the monthly statements arrived.
He made a note to question the postman and check if the statements were delivered to her home. Though Brunetti had found no sign of them in the attic, four statements from different banks – five if he included her normal account at the Uni Credit – could certainly not have passed unobserved by even the most negligent of postmen.
In his youth, Brunetti had considered himself an intensely political man. He had joined and supported a party, rejoiced in its triumphs, convinced that its accession to power would bring his country closer to social justice. His disillusionment had not been swift, though it had been hastened by the presence of his wife, who had reached a state of political despair and black cynicism well before he allowed himself to follow her lead. He had denied, both in word and in belief, the first accusations of dishonesty and endemic corruption against the men he had been sure would lead the nation to a bright and just future. But then he had looked at the evidence against them, not as a true believer, but as a policeman, and his certainty of their guilt had been immediate.
Since then, he had stayed clear of politics entirely, bothering to vote only because to do so set an example for his children, not because he now believed it could make any difference. In the years during which his cynicism had grown, his former friendships with politicians had languished, and his dealings with them had become formal rather than cordial.
He tried to think of someone in the current administration whom he could trust and came up with no name. Shifting his attention to the magistracy, he did come up with one name, the judge in charge of the investigation into the environmental damage caused by the petrochemical complexes in Marghera. Not a young man, Judge Galvani was currently the object of a well-orchestrated campaign to force him into retirement.
Brunetti found his number in the list of city employees he had been issued some years ago and dialled it. A male secretary answered, said the judge was not available, then, when Brunetti informed him that it was a police matter, said he might be. When Brunetti said he was calling at the request of the Vice-Questore, the secretary admitted that the judge was there and transferred the call.
‘Galvani,’ a deep voice said.
‘Dottore, this is Commissario Guido Brunetti. I’m calling to ask if you could spare some time to speak to me.’
‘Brunetti?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I know your superior,’ Judge Galvani surprised him by saying.
‘Vice-Questore Patta, sir?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes. He seems to have no good opinion of you, Commissario.’
‘That’s unfortunate, sir, but I fear it’s out of my control.’
‘Indeed,’ the judge answered. ‘What would you like to talk to me about?’
‘I’d prefer not to say that on the phone, sir.’
Brunetti had often read the phrase ‘a pregnant pause’ in novels. This seemed to be one. At last Galvani asked, ‘When would you like to see me?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘It’s almost six,’ Galvani said. ‘I’ll leave here in about half an hour. Shall we meet at that place on the Ponte delle Becarie?’ he asked, describing an enoteca not far from the fish market. ‘At six-thirty?’
‘That’s very kind of you, sir,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m wearing . . .’ he began but Galvani cut him off.
‘I know who you are,’ the judge said and replaced the phone.
When Brunetti walked into the bar, he recognized Judge Galvani instantly. The older man stood at the counter, a glass of white wine in front of him. Short, squat, dressed in a suit that
was greasy at neck and cuffs, with the enlarged nose of the heavy drinker, Galvani looked like anything other than a judge: a butcher, perhaps, or a stevedore. But Brunetti knew that he had only to open his mouth and speak, in a beautifully modulated voice from which Italian flowed in the well-articulated consonants and vowels most actors only dream of pronouncing, for the real man to step forth from behind the physical disguise. Brunetti went to stand beside him and said, putting out his hand, ‘Good evening, Dottore.’
Galvani’s grip was firm, warm and brisk. ‘Shall we try to find a place to sit?’ he asked, turning towards the tables at the back of the room, most of them occupied at this hour. Just as he turned, three men got up from a table on the left, and Galvani headed for it quickly, Brunetti staying behind to order a glass of Chardonnay.
When he got to the table, Galvani was already seated, but he got halfway to his feet when Brunetti reached him. Though curious about the case against the petrochemical factories in Marghera, where two of his uncles had worked before dying of cancer, Brunetti said nothing, knowing that the judge could not and would not speak of it.
Galvani raised his glass to Brunetti, and took a sip. He set his glass down on the table and asked, ‘Well?’
‘It’s connected with the woman who was murdered last month, Maria Battestini. It seems that, at her death, she had a number of bank accounts with a total of more than thirty thousand Euros on deposit. The accounts were opened about ten years ago, when both her husband and son worked for the school board, and deposits were made until she died.’ Brunetti paused, picked up his glass but set it down untasted. He took the stem between thumb and forefinger and rotated it nervously. Galvani said nothing.
‘I am of the opinion that the woman accused of the murder of Signora Battestini did not kill her,’ Brunetti continued, ‘though I do not have any physical evidence to offer in support of that belief. If she didn’t kill her, then someone else did. So far the only anomaly in what we know about the dead woman is the existence of these bank accounts.’ Again he paused, but still he did not taste the wine.