by Donna Leon
‘And where do I come into this, if I might ask?’ Galvani asked.
Brunetti glanced at the judge. ‘The first thing we need to do is establish the source of these payments. Since both men worked at the school board, that’s the first place I would like to look.’
Galvani nodded, and Brunetti continued. ‘You’ve been on the bench for decades here, sir, and I know you’ve had reason during those years to examine the workings of some of the city bureaucracies,’ Brunetti said, not a little proud of his delicacy in describing what the conservative press often described as Galvani’s ‘mad crusade’ against city administrations. ‘So I hoped you would have some familiarity with the school board and the way it works.’ Galvani met this remark with a cool, appraising glance, and Brunetti added, ‘Really works, that is.’
The judge’s nod was minimal, but it was sufficient to encourage Brunetti to go on. ‘Or if you could suggest some reason, or perhaps some person, that might be able to explain these payments. Or perhaps the existence of some irregularity that might be better left undetected.’
‘“Irregularity?”’ Galvani asked. At Brunetti’s nod, the judge smiled. ‘How elegantly you put it.’
‘For want of a better word,’ Brunetti explained.
‘Of course,’ the judge said, sat back in his chair, and smiled again. On a face so ugly, Galvani’s smile was strangely sweet. ‘I know very little about the school board, Commissario. Or, more accurately, I know but do not know, which seems to be the way most of us go through life: believing things because someone has hinted at them or suggested them, or because such an explanation is the only one that corresponds with other things we know.’ He took another small sip from his glass and set it down.
‘The school board, Commissario, is the equivalent of the dead-letter office for civil servants, or, if you prefer, the elephants’ graveyard: the place where the hopelessly incompetent have always been sent or, on the other hand, a place to stick someone until a more lucrative position can be found for them. At least it was that way until four or five years ago, when even the administration of this city had to acknowledge that certain positions there should be given to professionals with some understanding of the way children can be helped to learn. Before that time, positions there served as political plums, though they were relatively small plums. And that was a reflection of how little . . . how can I say this without saying it? . . . how little opportunity there was for the people who worked there to augment their salaries.’ It seemed to Brunetti that Galvani’s phrasing was no less elegant than his own.
The judge raised his glass but set it down untouched. ‘If you’re thinking that Signora Battestini’s bank accounts could have been created to receive bribes paid to her husband or son in connection with the place where they worked, I’d suggest you reconsider your hypothesis.’ He sipped, set the glass down, and added, ‘You see, Commissario, the accumulation of such a relatively small sum over such a long period hardly speaks of the sort of graft I’m used to encountering in this city.’ Leaving no time for Brunetti to register the implications of this remark, the judge went on, ‘But, as I said, it is a department in which I have never had to involve myself, so perhaps it is merely that things are done on a smaller scale there.’ Again, that smile. ‘And one must always keep in mind that corruption, like water, will always find a place, however insignificant, to collect.’
For an instant, Brunetti found himself wondering if his own basilisk-eyed observations on local government would sound so profoundly dark to someone less well versed in their workings than he. Turning from this reflection as well as from the opportunity to comment on the judge’s remarks, Brunetti asked only, ‘Do you know who was in charge of the department during those years?’
Galvani closed his eyes, propped his elbows on the table, and lowered his forehead on to his palms. He remained like that for at least a minute, and when he looked up and across at Brunetti, he said, ‘Piero De Pra is dead; Renato Fedi now runs a construction firm in, I think, Mestre; and Luca Sardelli has some sort of job in the Assessorato dello Sport. To the best of my memory, they were the men who ran the office up until the professionals were brought in.’ Brunetti thought he had finished, but then Galvani added, ‘No one ever seems to stay in the job for more than a few years. As I said, it’s either a dumping ground or a launching pad, though in the case of Sardelli, he certainly wasn’t launched very far. But in either case, there seems to be very little to be had from the position.’
Brunetti made a note of the names. Two of them rang familiarly in his memory: De Pra because he had a nephew who had gone to school with Brunetti’s brother and Fedi because he had recently been elected as a deputy in the European Parliament.
Brunetti resisted the temptation to pose other offices and names to the judge and said only, ‘You’ve been very generous with your time, sir.’
Again, that childlike smile transformed the judge’s face. ‘I was glad to. I’ve wanted to meet you for some time, Commissario. It was my belief that anyone who provided so much discomfort to the Vice-Questore must be a man worth knowing.’ Telling Brunetti that he had already paid for their wine, the judge excused himself by saying it was time he was home for dinner, said goodbye, and left.
14
BRUNETTI WAS AT the ufficio postale at seven-thirty the next morning, located the person in charge of the postmen, showed his warrant card, and explained that he wanted to speak to the postino who delivered mail to the area in Cannaregio near the Palazzo del Cammello. She told him to go to the first floor and ask in the second room on the left, where the Cannaregio postini sorted their mail. The room was high-ceilinged, the entire space filled with long counters with sorting racks behind them. Ten or twelve people stood around, putting letters into slots or pulling them out and packing them into leather satchels.
He asked the first person he encountered, a long-haired woman with a strangely reddened complexion, where he could find the person who delivered the mail to the Canale della Misericordia area. She looked at him with open curiosity, then pointed to a man halfway along her table and called out, ‘Mario, someone wants to talk to you.’
The man called Mario looked at them, then down at the letters in his hands. One by one, merely glancing at the names and addresses, he slipped them quickly into the slots in front of him then walked over to Brunetti. He was in his late thirties, Brunetti guessed, his own height but thinner, with light brown hair that fell in a thick wedge across his forehead.
Brunetti introduced himself and started to take his warrant card out again, but the postino stopped him with a gesture and suggested they talk over a coffee. They walked down to the bar, where Mario ordered two coffees and asked Brunetti what he could do for him.
‘Did you deliver mail to Maria Battestini at Cannaregio . . .’
Mario cut him off by reciting the number of the house, then raised his hands as if in fake surrender. ‘I wanted to, but I didn’t do it. Believe me.’
The coffees came, and both men spooned sugar into them. While he stirred his, Brunetti asked, ‘Was she that bad?’
Mario took a sip, put the cup down and stirred in a further half-spoonful of sugar, and said, still stirring, ‘Yes.’ He finished the coffee and set the cup back on the saucer. ‘I delivered her mail for three years. I must have taken her, in that time, thirty or forty raccomandate, had to climb all those steps to get her to sign for them.’
Brunetti anticipated his anger at never having been tipped and waited for him to give voice to it, but the man simply said, ‘I don’t expect to be tipped, especially by old people, but she never even said thank you.’
‘Isn’t that a lot of registered mail?’ Brunetti asked. ‘How often did they come?’
‘Once a month,’ the postman answered. ‘Regular as a Swiss watch. And it wasn’t letters, but those padded envelopes, you know, the sort you send photos or CDs in.’
Or money, thought Brunetti, and asked, ‘Do you remember who they came from?’
‘
There were a couple of addresses, I think,’ Mario answered. ‘They sounded like charity things, you know, Care and Share, and Child Aid. That sort of thing.’
‘Can you remember any of them exactly?’
‘I deliver mail to almost four hundred people,’ he said by way of answer.
‘Do you remember when they started?’
‘Oh, she was getting them already when I started on that route.’
‘Who had the route before you?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Nicolò Matucci, but he retired and went back to Sicily.’
Brunetti left the subject of the registered packages and asked, ‘Did you bring her bank statements?’
‘Yes, every month,’ he said, and recited the names of the banks. ‘Those and the bills were the only things she ever got, except for some other raccomandate.’
‘Do you remember who those were from?’
‘Most of them came from people in the neighbourhood, complaining about the television.’ Before Brunetti could ask him how he knew this, Mario said, ‘They all told me about them, wanted to be sure that the letters were delivered. Everyone heard it, that noise, but there was nothing they could do. She’s old. That is, she was old, and the police wouldn’t do anything. They’re useless.’ He looked up suddenly at Brunetti and said, ‘Excuse me.’
Brunetti smiled and waved it away with an easy smile. ‘No, you’re right,’ Brunetti went on, ‘there’s nothing we can do, not really. The person who complains can bring a case, but that means that people from some department – I don’t know what its name is, but it takes care of complaints about noise – have to go in to measure the decibels of the noise to see if it’s really something called “aural aggression”, but they don’t work at night, or if they get called at night, they don’t come until the next morning, by which time whatever it was has been turned down.’ Like all policemen in the city, he was familiar with the situation, and like them, he knew it had no solution.
‘Did you ever bring her anything else?’ Brunetti went on.
‘At Christmas, some cards; occasionally – but I mean only once or twice a year – a letter, as well as the letters about the noise. But, aside from them, only bills and the statements from the banks.’ Before Brunetti could comment, Mario said, ‘It’s pretty much like that for all old people. Their friends have died, and because they’ve always lived here, their family and friends are here, too, so there’s never any reason to write. I bet some of the people I bring mail to are illiterate, anyway, and have their children take care of the bills for them. No, she wasn’t much different from the other old people.’
‘You pretended to think I thought you’d killed her,’ Brunetti said as they drifted towards the door of the bar.
‘No reason, really,’ the postino said in response to Brunetti’s unasked question, ‘except that there were so many people who couldn’t stand her.’
‘But that’s a stronger reaction than for her just not saying thank you,’ Brunetti said.
‘I didn’t like the way she treated the women who worked for her, especially the one who killed her,’ he said. ‘She treated them like slaves, really, seemed happy if she could make one of them cry; I saw her manage that more than once.’ Mario stopped at the entrance to the sorting room and put out his hand. Brunetti thanked him for his help, shook his hand, and went downstairs and out towards Rialto. He was almost at the front entrance when he heard his name called from behind and, turning, saw Mario walking towards him, his leather bag pulling heavily on his left shoulder, the young woman with the red face close behind him.
‘Commissario,’ he said, coming up to Brunetti and reaching behind to take the young woman by the arm and all but pull her forward. ‘This is Cinzia Foresti. She had that route before Nicolò did, up until about five years ago. I thought maybe you’d like to talk to her, too.’
The young woman gave a nervous half-smile, and her face, if possible, grew even redder.
‘You delivered to Signora Battestini?’ Brunetti asked.
‘And to the son,’ answered Mario. He patted the young woman on the shoulder and said, ‘I’ve got to get to work,’ then continued walking towards the front door.
‘As your colleague told you, Signorina,’ Brunetti said, ‘I’m curious about the mail that was delivered to Signora Battestini.’ Seeing that she was reluctant to talk, perhaps from shyness, perhaps from fear, he added, ‘Particularly about the bank statements that came every month.’
‘About them?’ she asked with what seemed like nervous relief.
Brunetti smiled. ‘Yes, and about the raccomandate that used to come from the neighbours.’
Suddenly she asked, ‘Am I allowed to talk to you about this? I mean, the mail is supposed to be private.’
He pulled out his warrant card and held it out for her to examine. ‘Yes, Signorina, it is, but in a case like this, where the person is dead, you may speak about it.’ He didn’t want to overplay his hand and suggest that she was obliged to; besides, he wasn’t sure if he could force her to speak to him without a court order.
She chose to believe him. ‘Yes, I took her the things from the banks, every month. And I was on that route for three years.’
‘Did you deliver anything else?’
‘To her? No, not really. Occasionally a letter or a card. And the bills.’
Prompted by her question, he asked, ‘And to the son?’
She shot him a nervous glance but said nothing. Brunetti waited. Finally she said, ‘Bills, mainly. And sometimes letters.’ After a very long pause, she added, ‘And magazines.’
Sensing her growing uneasiness, he asked, ‘Was there anything unusual about the magazines, Signorina? Or about the letters?’
She glanced around the vast open hall, moved a bit to the left to take them farther away from a man who was making a telephone call from the pay phone near the entrance, and said, ‘I think they were about boys.’
This time there was no mistaking her nervousness: the blush set her face aflame.
‘Boys? Do you mean little boys?’
She started to speak but then looked at her feet. From his greater height, he saw the top of her head shake in slow negation. He decided to wait for her to explain but then realized it would be easier for her to answer while she was not looking at him.
‘Young boys, Signorina?’
This time her head nodded up and down in affirmation.
He wanted to be sure. ‘Adolescents?’
‘Yes.’
‘May I ask how you know this, Signorina?’
At first he thought she wouldn’t answer but finally she said, ‘One day it rained, and my bag wasn’t completely under my slicker, so when I got to the house their mail was wet: the things on the top, that is. When I pulled it out of the bag, the cover came off the magazine and it fell on to the ground. I picked it up, and when I did, it opened and I saw a photo of a boy.’ She looked firmly at the ground between their feet, refusing to look at him when she spoke. ‘I have a little brother who was fourteen then, and that’s what he looked like.’ She stopped, and he knew there was no sense in asking her to describe the picture further.
‘What did you do, Signorina?’
‘I put the magazine in the garbage. He never asked about it.’
‘And the next month, when it came again?’
‘I put that in the garbage, too, and the next one. And then they stopped coming, so I guess he knew what I was doing.’
‘Was there only the one magazine, Signorina?’
‘Yes, but there were envelopes, too. The kind with “Photo” on the outside, telling you not to bend them.’
‘What did you do with them?’
‘After I saw the magazine, I always bent them before I pushed them into the letterbox,’ she said, anger mingled with pride.
He could think of no more questions, but she said, ‘Then he died, and after a while the mail stopped coming.’
Brunetti put out his hand. She took it. He said, speaking as a policeman
, ‘Thank you for talking to me, Signorina,’ and then couldn’t help but add, ‘I understand.’
She smiled nervously, and again her face grew red.
At the Questura, he left a note on Vianello’s desk, asking him to come up as soon as he got in. It was Wednesday, and Signorina Elettra seldom reached the office before noon on Wednesdays during the summer, a fact which the entire Questura had come to accept without expression of curiosity or disapproval. During the summer, her skin grew no darker, so she was not on the beach; she sent no postcards, so she was not away from the city. No one had ever come across her in the city on Wednesday morning; had this happened, the entire Questura would certainly have heard. Perhaps she simply stayed at home and ironed her linen shirts, Brunetti decided.
His thoughts kept returning to Signora Battestini’s son. Even though he knew the man’s name was Paolo, Brunetti kept thinking of him as Signora Battestini’s son. He had been forty when he died, had worked for a city office for more than a decade, yet everyone Brunetti spoke to referred to him as his mother’s son, as if his only existence were through her or by means of her. Brunetti disliked psychobabble and the quick, easy solutions it tried to provide to complex human tangles, but here he thought he detected a pattern so obvious it had to be mistaken: take a domineering mother, put her in a closed and conservative society, and then add a father who liked to spend his time in the bar with the guys, having a drink, and homosexuality in the only son is not the most unlikely result. Instantly Brunetti thought of gay friends of his who had had mothers so passive as almost to be invisible, married to men capable of eating a lion for lunch, and he blushed almost as red as had the woman from the post office.
Wishing to learn if Paolo Battestini had indeed been gay, Brunetti dialled the office number of Domenico Lalli, owner of one of the chemical companies currently under investigation by Judge Galvani. He gave his name, and when Lalli’s secretary proved reluctant to pass on the call, said it was a police matter and suggested she ask Lalli if he wanted to speak to him.