Doctored Evidence

by Donna Leon

  Remorseless, Brunetti turned to the sobbing woman and said, ‘You heard her, Graziella. She’s not going to be very patient with you if I have to tell her about Poppi and about the poison, is she?’

  Graziella pulled off her hat and wiped at her mouth and nose with it, but she seemed incapable of stopping her sobs. She took off her glasses and set them on the surface of a stove and wiped at her face, then looked at Brunetti with her naked eyes, which were crossed and virtually sightless.

  He fought back pity and said, ‘What else did she tell you, Graziella? About the money.’

  The sobbing stopped, and she took a final wipe at her face. Blindly, she put her hand out and began to feel around for the glasses. Brunetti watched her hand come close, move away, come close; he resisted the desire to help her. Finally her hand landed on the glasses and, careful to use both hands, she replaced them.

  ‘What did she tell you, Graziella?’ Brunetti repeated. ‘Where did Paolo get the money?’

  ‘From someone at work,’ she said. ‘She was so proud of him. She said it was a bonus he got for being so clever. But she was nasty when she said that, like she didn’t mean it and like Paolo had done something bad to get it. But I didn’t care about that because she said the money was going to be mine some day. So it didn’t matter how he got it. Besides, she said everything he did was under the protection of the Madonna, so it wasn’t wrong, was it?’

  Brunetti ignored her question and asked, ‘Did you know where it was, in which banks?’

  She hung her head, looking down at the floor between their feet, and nodded.

  ‘Do you know how it got there?’

  Silence. She kept her head lowered, and he wondered what sluggish assessment she was making of his question and how much of the truth she would decide to tell him.

  She surprised him by answering his question literally. ‘I put it there.’

  This made no immediate sense to him but, displaying no confusion, he asked, ‘How?’

  ‘After Paolo died, I went to see her every month and she gave me the money, and I took it to the banks.’ Of course, of course, he had never thought to ask or to wonder about the precise physical details of how the deposits were made, thinking that they had to be arcane transfers discoverable only by Signorina Elettra’s arts.

  ‘And the receipts?’

  ‘I took them back to her. Every month.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  Silence.

  Raising his voice, he repeated, ‘Where are they now?’

  Her voice was low, but by bending down he could make it out. ‘She told me to burn them.’

  ‘Who?’ he asked, though he had a good idea.

  ‘She did.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The lawyer,’ she finally said, refusing to give Marieschi’s name.

  ‘And did you do this?’ he asked, wondering if she realized that she would have thus destroyed proof that the money had ever existed.

  She looked up at him, and he saw that the lenses were soaked with the tears that had fallen while her head was lowered, and her eyes were even more out of focus.

  ‘Did you burn them, Signorina?’ he asked, no softness in his voice.

  ‘She said it was the only way I could be sure I’d get the money because the police might be suspicious if they came and found the receipts,’ she said, her sense of loss audible in every word.

  ‘And then afterwards, Signorina, what happened when you went to the banks to try to get it?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘The people at the banks – I knew them all – told me that the accounts had been closed.’

  ‘And why did you think Avvocatessa Marieschi took it?’ he asked, introducing the name for the first time.

  ‘Because Zia Maria told me she was the only other person who knew about the money. And that I could trust her.’ She said this with audible disgust. ‘Who else could it be?’

  Brunetti looked across at the silent Vianello and raised his chin in interrogation. Vianello closed his eyes for a moment and shook his head: that was it; there was nothing else to be learned from her.

  Brunetti didn’t bother to say anything to her but turned away and started towards the door.

  Behind him, however, he heard Vianello’s voice. ‘Why did you kill the dog, Signorina?’ Brunetti stopped but didn’t turn around.

  Such a long time passed that anyone but the stolid Vianello would have abandoned the wait and left. Finally, consonants wetter than ever, she spat out, ‘Because people love dogs.’ After a short pause, Brunetti heard Vianello’s steps behind him and he continued walking towards the door to the shop.

  19

  ‘WELL,’ BRUNETTI ASKED as they stepped out into Calle Lunga San Barnaba, ‘what did you think?’

  ‘I’d say she’s what my kids are being taught at school to call “differently abled”.’

  ‘Retarded, you mean?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes. There’s the look of her, the way she howled when she couldn’t get her way, and an almost total lack of normal human reactions or feelings.’

  ‘Sounds like half the Questura,’ Brunetti said.

  It took a second for this to register, but then Vianello laughed so hard he had to stop walking and lean against the wall of a building until he stopped. Feeling not a little proud of the remark, Brunetti made a note to tell Paola and wondered if Vianello would tell Signorina Elettra.

  When Vianello had regained control of himself, Brunetti continued down towards the Ca’ Rezzonico vaporetto stop. ‘You think she could have had anything to do with her aunt’s death?’

  Vianello’s answer was immediate. ‘I don’t think so. She started to scream when you asked her about the accounts and threatened to have her fired if she didn’t answer. She didn’t seem at all troubled when you talked about her aunt.’

  Brunetti was of the same opinion, but he was nonetheless glad to have it confirmed by the inspector. ‘We’ll have to get a list of everyone who worked with him while he was at the school board,’ he said, then corrected himself, ‘at least who was working there when the payments started.’

  ‘If the records have been computerized,’ Vianello said, ‘it ought to be easy.’

  ‘I’m surprised she isn’t giving you homework to do every night,’ Brunetti said with a smile. When Vianello failed to respond, he demanded, ‘She isn’t, is she?’

  They reached the imbarcadero and stepped inside, glad of the shade. Vianello scratched his head. ‘Not exactly, sir. But you know she’s given me a computer. That is, the Department has given me a computer. And occasionally she suggests I try certain things on it.’

  ‘Would I understand?’ Brunetti asked.

  Vianello gazed across at Palazzo Grassi, where more long lines of tourists waited in front of another temple to art. ‘I doubt it, sir,’ the inspector finally admitted. ‘She says you have to learn these things by trying different ways of doing them or different ways of thinking about them. So you really need a computer to work with all the time.’ He looked at Brunetti, then dared to add, ‘And you have to have a sort of feeling for computers, too.’

  Brunetti wanted to defend himself by saying that his children had a computer and his wife used one, but he thought this beneath his dignity and so made no response. He contented himself with asking, ‘When can we have the names?’

  ‘At the latest by tomorrow afternoon,’ Vianello said. ‘I’m not sure I would be able to get them, and Signorina Elettra said she had an appointment this afternoon.’

  ‘Did she say where she had this appointment?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then let’s leave it until tomorrow,’ Brunetti suggested, looking at his watch. There was no purpose to be served by returning to the Questura, and he found himself suddenly exhausted by the events of the day. He wanted nothing more than to go home, have a meal with his family, and think of things other than death and greed. Vianello was more than willing to agree and stepped on to the Number One that was going towards the Lido, leav
ing his superior to wait for the one that would be along in two minutes to take him to his own home.

  But when the vaporetto pulled up at his normal stop, San Silvestro, Brunetti remained on board and got off at the next, Rialto. It was only a few steps back along the canal to the city hall at Ca’ Farsetti and then down the calle beside it to the building where the school board had its offices. Brunetti showed his warrant card to the portiere and was told that the main office of the Ufficio di Pubblica Istruzione was on the third floor. Never comfortable in elevators, he chose to take the stairs. On the third floor, a sign directed him to the right and along a narrow corridor, at the end of which stood the glass-doored offices of the school board. Inside he found himself in a large open space, four times the size of his own office. Orange plastic chairs lined the walls on either side of him; facing the door stood a battered wooden desk, and behind the desk sat an equally battered-looking woman, though something told him that her look was the result of choice, rather than chance.

  There was no one else in the room, so Brunetti approached her. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty: her make-up was applied with sufficient abandon to disguise the evidence that would have allowed him to make that distinction. Though lipstick had enlarged her mouth, it had also managed to seep into and spread out from the many thin wrinkles under her lower lip, giving her mouth the suggestion of youthful promise at the same time that it gave evidence of years of heavy smoking. Her eyes were dark green, a mysterious emerald, but they glittered so brightly as to suggest either contact lenses or drugs. She had no eyebrows, nothing more than a pair of thin brown lines arching across her forehead in steep curves seemingly chosen at random.

  Brunetti smiled as he approached her desk. Her lips moved in return and she asked, ‘You the water-cooler man?’ Her voice was entirely without inflection or emphasis; it could as easily be coming from a machine as from that exaggerated mouth.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you the water-cooler man?’ her voice played back.

  ‘No. I’m here to speak to the Director.’

  ‘You’re not the water-cooler man?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  He watched as this information was processed somewhere behind those emerald eyes. The fact that her expectation had been confounded appeared momentarily to prove too much for her, forcing her to close her eyes. He noticed that she had two tiny silver studs emerging from her left temple, but he refused to wonder about their origin, still less their purpose.

  Her eyes opened. Perhaps she opened them; he was not at all certain. ‘Dottor Rossi is in his office,’ she said, raising a hand with long green fingernails and waving in the general direction of a door that stood behind her left shoulder.

  Brunetti thanked her, decided not to tell her he hoped the water-cooler man would arrive soon, and walked to the door. Beyond it stretched a short corridor, doors to the left and a row of windows on the right giving on to a small inner courtyard, on the opposite side of which were more windows.

  Brunetti walked down the hall, reading the names and titles on the signs beside the doors. The offices were silent, apparently abandoned. At the end of the corridor, he turned right: this time there were offices on both sides, though none of them that of the Director.

  He turned right again; at the end of this corridor he found a sign that read, DOTTORE MAURO ROSSI, DIRETTORE. He knocked. A voice called, ‘Avanti,’ and Brunetti went in. The man sitting at the desk looked up, seemed puzzled at the arrival of a stranger in his office, and asked, ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti, Dottore. I’ve come to ask some questions about a man who used to work here.’

  ‘Commissario of police?’ Rossi asked, and at Brunetti’s nod, pointed him to a chair in front of his desk. As Brunetti approached, Rossi stood and extended his hand. When Rossi reached his full height, Brunetti saw the bulk of the man, easily half a head taller than he was himself. Though he was more heavily built than Brunetti, there was no suggestion of fat. Rossi looked in his mid-forties; his hair, still thick and dark, fell across his forehead as he moved his head. His skin was rugged with good health, and he moved gracefully for so large a man.

  The office projected the same powerful sense of masculinity: a row of silver sports trophies stood on top of a glass-fronted bookcase; silver-framed photos of a woman and two children stood on the left side of the desk; five or six framed certificates hung on the walls, one of them the embossed parchment conferring a doctorate upon Mauro Rossi.

  When he was seated, Brunetti said, ‘It’s about someone who worked here until about five years ago, Dottore: Paolo Battestini.’ Rossi nodded for Brunetti to continue but gave no sign that he recognized the name.

  ‘There are some things we’d like to know about him,’ Brunetti said. ‘He worked here for more than a decade.’ When Rossi remained silent, Brunetti asked, ‘Could you tell me if you knew him, Dottore?’

  Rossi considered the question, then answered, ‘Perhaps. I’m not really sure.’ Brunetti tilted his head in a request for clarification, and Rossi explained, ‘I was in charge of the schools in Mestre.’

  ‘From here?’ Brunetti interrupted.

  ‘No, no,’ Rossi said, smiling to excuse his oversight in not having specified. ‘I was working in Mestre then. It was only two years ago that I was appointed here.’

  ‘As Director?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And so you moved here?’

  Rossi smiled again and pursed his lips at the continuing confusion. ‘No, I’ve always lived in the city.’ It surprised Brunetti that the other man continued to speak in Italian: at this point in a conversation, most Venetians would slip into Veneziano, but perhaps Rossi wanted to maintain the dignity of his position. ‘So the transfer was a double blessing because it meant I didn’t have to go out to Mestre every day,’ Rossi went on, breaking into Brunetti’s reflections.

  ‘The Pearl of the Adriatic,’ Brunetti said with some sarcasm.

  Rossi nodded in the true Venetian’s dismissal of that ugly upstart, Mestre.

  Brunetti realized they had wandered astray from his original question and returned to it. ‘You said perhaps you knew him, Dottore. Could you explain what you mean?’

  ‘I suppose I must have known him, actually,’ Rossi answered, then added, seeing Brunetti’s confusion, ‘That is, in the way one knows people who work in the same office or department. You see them or read their names, but you never get to know them personally or speak to them.’

  ‘Did you have occasion to come here, to this office while you were working in Mestre?’

  ‘Yes. The man I replaced as Director was here, and so when I was in charge in Mestre, I had to come in once a week for conferences because the central directorship is here.’ Anticipating Brunetti’s next question, Rossi said, ‘I don’t remember ever meeting someone with that name or talking to him. That is, when you say his name, it sounds familiar, but I don’t have a picture of him in my mind. And then, by the time I was transferred here, he must have already left, that is, if you say he left five years ago.’

  ‘Have you ever heard people here speak of him?’

  Rossi shook his head in silent negation then said, ‘Not that I recall, no.’

  ‘Since his mother’s death, has anyone spoken of him?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘His mother?’ Rossi asked, and then his face registered the connection. ‘That woman who was killed?’ he asked. Brunetti nodded.

  ‘I didn’t make the connection,’ Rossi said. ‘It’s not an uncommon name.’ Rossi’s voice changed and he asked, ‘Why are you asking about him?’

  ‘It’s a case of eliminating a possibility, Dottore. We want to be sure there was no connection between him and his mother’s death.’

  ‘After five years?’ Rossi asked. ‘You say he left here five years ago?’ His tone suggested he thought Brunetti might be better occupied asking questions about something else.

  Br
unetti ignored this and said, ‘As I said, we’re trying to eliminate possibilities, rather than make connections, Dottore. That’s why we’re asking.’ He waited for Rossi to question this, but he did not. When Rossi moved back in his chair, Brunetti observed that he did not use his hands, only the strength of his legs.

  Brunetti leaned back in his own chair, threw up his open palms in a gesture of defeat, and said, ‘To tell the truth, Dottore, we’re at a bit of a loss about him. We have no idea what sort of man he was.’

  ‘But his mother is the one who got killed, isn’t she?’ Rossi asked, like one who had taken it upon himself to remind the police of what they were meant to be doing.

  ‘Indeed,’ Brunetti answered and smiled again. ‘It’s nothing more than habit, I suppose. We always try to learn as much as we can about victims and the people around them.’

  As if remembering, Rossi asked, ‘But wasn’t there something in the papers when it happened about a foreign woman, a Russian or something?’

  ‘Romanian,’ Brunetti said automatically. Some sense registered that Rossi did not like being corrected, and so he added, ‘Not that it matters, Dottore. We had hoped to find some reason why she might have resented or disliked Signora Battestini,’ then, before Rossi said anything, he went on, ‘The son might have offended her in some way.’

  ‘She came to work for Signora Battestini after her son died, didn’t she?’ Rossi asked, as if to add this fact to the others that rendered Brunetti’s questions futile.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ Brunetti said, repeating his open-handed gesture less dramatically, and got to his feet. ‘I don’t think there’s anything else I need to ask you about him, Dottore. Thank you very much for your time.’

  Rossi stood. ‘I hope I was able to be of some help,’ he said.

  Brunetti’s smile grew even broader, ‘I’m afraid you were, Dottore,’ he said, then continued seamlessly, seeing Rossi’s surprise, ‘in that you eliminated a possibility for us. We’ll have to concentrate our attention on Signora Battestini again.’