by Donna Leon
Brunetti looked at Vianello, who shrugged.
‘If that’s the way he thinks, there’s nothing we can do about it,’ Brunetti said.
Vianello followed him towards the embarcadero of the Number One. The Inspector could get home more quickly by taking the Number Two, so Brunetti took this as a sign that Vianello wanted to continue the conversation.
People hurried towards them, most of them keeping to the left but some swerving closer to the water to get past faster and arrive a few seconds earlier at the buses that would take them to their homes on the mainland.
They passed the taxis bobbing in the water. Finally Vianello said, ‘I suppose I can understand him. After all, the calli aren’t lined with whores, and we don’t get called to go out to the Chinese factories and arrest everyone. Or their whorehouses, for that matter.’
‘And we don’t have drunk drivers,’ Brunetti offered.
‘That’s for the Polizia Stradale, Guido,’ Vianello said with false reproach.
Undeterred, Brunetti added, ‘Or arson. People don’t set fire to factories.’
‘That’s because we don’t have any factories any more. Only tourism,’ said a dispirited Vianello, quickening his steps at the sound of the approaching vaporetto. The Inspector flashed his warrant card at the uniformed young woman on the boat landing.
The gate slid shut just behind them and they went inside to sit. Neither of them spoke until they passed under the Scalzi bridge, when Vianello said, ‘You think he’s jealous?’
On the left, the church of San Geremia slid towards them, and after a moment they could see, ahead of them on the right, the columned façade of the Natural History Museum.
‘He’d be crazy if he weren’t, don’t you think?’ Brunetti asked.
* * *
Only when he reached the door to his apartment did Brunetti realize how profoundly tired he was. He felt like a billiard ball that had been sliding around all day, first to this side and then to that. He’d learned too much and travelled too much, and now all he wanted to do was sit quietly and eat his dinner while listening to his family discuss subjects that had nothing to do with crime or death. He wanted a peaceful, uncontentious evening.
However much this might have been Brunetti’s wish, it was not that of his lady wife, something he realized at the first sight of her and by the greeting she gave him when he went into her study.
‘Ah, there you are,’ she said with a broad smile that was perhaps too graced with teeth. ‘I want to ask you a legal question.’
Brunetti sat on the sofa, and only then did he say, ‘After eight at night, I function only as a private legal consultant and expect to be paid for my time and for any information I might provide.’
‘In prosecco?’
He kicked off his shoes and extended himself to his full length on the sofa. He pummelled a pillow until its shape suited him, and lay back. ‘Unless it is a serious or a non-rhetorical question, in which case I am to be paid in champagne.’
She removed her glasses, placed them on the open pages of the book she had been reading, and left the room. Brunetti closed his eyes and let his mind wander through the day in search of something restful he could contemplate until Paola’s return. He found himself remembering the teddy bear in Teo’s hand, its stomach fur rubbed or chewed away by childish adoration. Brunetti emptied his mind of everything else and considered the bear, which led him to the bears his children had loved and then to the one he could still remember having, though where he came from and where he went were mysteries long removed from his memory.
The clink of glass on glass brought him back from childhood to adult life. The fact that his eyes opened to a bottle of Moët in the hand of his wife did a great deal to ease the transition.
She filled the second glass and came towards the sofa. He pulled back his feet to give her room and took the glass she offered him. He held it toward her and joyed in the sound the glasses made as they touched, then took the first sip. ‘All right,’ he said as she sat down beside him, ‘tell me.’
She shot him a look, tried to inject it with surprise, but when his expression remained unmoved, she abandoned the attempt and drank some of her wine. She pushed herself back in the sofa and let her left hand fall on to his calf. ‘I want to know whether it’s a crime to know that something illegal is going to take place and not report it.’
He took another sip of champagne, decided not to try to distract her with compliments for it, and considered her question. In similar manner to that with which he had conjured up Teo’s teddy bear, though casting his net much farther into the past, he ran through those elements of criminal law he had studied at university.
‘Yes and no,’ he finally said.
‘When is it a yes?’ she asked.
‘For example, if you are some sort of public official, you have to inform the authorities.’
‘And ethically?’ she asked.
‘I don’t do ethical,’ Brunetti said and returned to his champagne.
‘Is it right to stop a crime from being committed?’ she asked.
‘You want me to say yes?’
‘I want you to say yes.’
‘Yes.’ Then Brunetti added, ‘Ethically. Yes.’
Paola considered this in silence, then got up and went over to fill both of their glasses. Still silent, she came back and handed him his and sat down again. Out of the habit of decades, her left hand returned to his leg.
Sitting back in the sofa she crossed her legs, then took another sip of champagne. Looking at the painting on the far wall, the portrait of an English naturalist holding a tufted grouse they had found years ago in, of all places, Seville, she said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what this is all about?’
He looked at his wife, not at the naturalist and not at the tufted grouse, and said, ‘No, I’m not.’
‘Why?’
‘In the immediate sense, because I’ve had a long day and I’m very tired, and I don’t have room in my brain or in my sensibility for anything that might lead to trouble. And from the way you ask, I suspect that possibility exists.’
‘And in the larger sense or longer sense, why don’t you want to hear about it?’ she asked.
‘Because if it does lead to trouble, I’ll learn about it sooner or later, so there’s no need for you to tell me about it now.’ He leaned forward and placed his hand on hers. ‘I really can’t do this now, Paola.’
She turned up her palm, gave his a strong squeeze, and said, ‘Then I’ll go and start dinner, shall I?’
18
BRUNETTI WOKE A few times in the night, thinking about what Paola had asked him and trying to imagine what it might mean, what she was up to, for he knew she was up to something. He knew the signs from long exposure and long experience: once she started on one of what he thought of as her missions, she grew intense, sought specific information rather than concepts or ideas, and seemed to lose her sense of irony and humour. Over the years, she had had attacks of zeal, and they had often led to trouble. Brunetti sensed that another one was on the way.
Each time he woke, he had but to sense the presence of the inert lump beside him to marvel anew at her gift of plunging into sleep, no matter what was happening around her. He thought of the nights he had spent lying awake and worrying about his family or his job or his future or the future of the planet, or simply kept awake by the inability to digest his dinner. While beside him rested a monument to peace and tranquillity, motionless, barely breathing.
He woke again a bit before six and decided it was useless to try to go back to sleep. He went down to the kitchen and made himself coffee, heated milk to pour into it, and went back to bed.
Having finished the Agamemnon and in need of a break before continuing that familiar family saga, Brunetti did what he often did in such circumstances: he picked up the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and, much in the way devout Christians were said to consult the Bible, opened it at random. It was rather like playing a slot machine, he had to
admit: sometimes what came up was sententious pap that led to nothing and certainly provided no riches. But sometimes the words came at him like a stream of coins, flooding out of the trough in the slot machine and splashing across his feet.
He opened to Book Two and found this: ‘Failure to read what is happening in another’s soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend to the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.’ He looked up from the book and out the window, where the curtain was only half drawn; he was conscious of the light, not from the approaching dawn, but from the ambient illumination with which the city was filled.
He considered the words of the wise emperor, but then he thought of Patta, of whom many things could be said, among which was the undeniable fact that he was happy. Yet if ever man had been made who was unconscious of the motions of his own soul, that man was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta.
In no way deterred by the failure of the book to spin up a winning combination, Brunetti opened to Book Eleven. ‘No thief can steal your will.’ This time he closed the book and set it aside. Again, he gave his attention to the light in the window and the statement he had just read: neither provided illumination. Government ministers were arrested with frightening frequency; the head of government himself boasted, in the middle of a deepening financial crisis, that he didn’t have financial worries and had nineteen houses; Parliament was reduced to an open shame. And where were the angry mobs in the piazzas? Who stood up in Parliament to discuss the bold-faced looting of the country? But let a young and virginal girl be killed, and the country went mad; slash a throat and the press was off and running for days. What will was left among the public that had not been destroyed by television and the penetrant vulgarity of the current administration? ‘Oh, yes, a thief can steal your will. And has,’ he heard himself say aloud.
Brunetti, trapped in the mixture of rage and despair that was the only honest emotion left to the citizenry, pushed back the covers and got out of bed. He stayed under the shower for a long time, indulging in the luxury of shaving there without giving a thought to the consumption of water, the energy expended to heat it, nor yet to the fact that he was using a disposable razor. He was tired of taking care of the planet: let it take care of itself for a change.
He went back to the bedroom and dressed in a suit and tie, but then he remembered where it was he and Vianello were going that morning and replaced the suit in the closet and put on a pair of brown corduroy trousers and a heavy woollen jacket. He searched around on the floor of the closet until he found a pair of Topsiders with thick rubber waffle soles. He had little idea of the proper attire for a slaughterhouse, but he knew a suit was not it.
It was seven-thirty before he left the house, stepping out into an early morning crispness that gave promise of clean air and growing warmth. These really were the best days of the year, with the mountains sometimes visible from the window in the kitchen, the nights cool enough to summon a second blanket from the closet.
He walked, stopped to get a newspaper – La Repubblica and not either of the local papers – and then in Ballarin for a coffee and a brioche. The pasticceria was busy, but not yet crowded, so most people could still find a place to stand at the bar. Brunetti took his coffee to the small round table, placed the paper to the left of his cup, and studied the headlines. A woman about his age, with hair the colour of marigolds, set her cup not far from his, studied the same headlines while sipping at her coffee, looked at him, and said, speaking Veneziano, ‘It makes a person sick, doesn’t it?’
Brunetti held up his brioche and tilted it in the equivalent of a shrug. ‘What can we do?’ had come from his lips before he remembered the words of Marcus Aurelius. The thief, it seemed, had stolen his will during the short time since he had left his home. Thus, as if he had intended his first remark as a rhetorical flourish, he looked at her directly and said, ‘Other than to vote, Signora.’
She looked at him as if she had been stopped on the street by one of the patients from Palazzo Boldù, some raving lunatic who would now reveal the Secret of the Ages. Disgust at his own moral cowardice swept Brunetti, forcing him to add, ‘And throw small coins at them if we see them on the street.’
She considered this and, seeming gratified that this man had so quickly come to his senses, set her cup in her saucer and carried it over to place it on the bar. She smiled at him, wished him good day, paid, and left.
At the Questura, he went directly to the officers’ room, but none of the day shift had arrived. In his own office, he checked for new files, but his desk was as he had left it the day before. He used his new computer to check the other newspapers, but they had no further information about the murdered man nor about the progress of the case, nor had they bothered to print the photo that had been sent to them. Interest in the dead man had been supplanted by the news that the decomposing body discovered in a shallow grave near Verona two days before had turned out to be that of a woman who had been missing for three weeks. She was young, and her photo showed her to have been attractive, so her death had blotted out the other.
Vianello’s entrance cut short his reflections. ‘Foa’s assistant’s waiting,’ he said, then by way of explanation, ‘He’s not on till the afternoon. There’s a car at Piazzale Roma.’ Brunetti saw that the Inspector, too, had given some thought to their destination and was wearing a pair of much-laundered jeans, a brown leather jacket, and a pair of shoes that looked as if they were made for walking in rough country.
Brunetti glanced over the surface of his desk, wondering if there was anything he should be taking with him, but he could think of nothing. Cowardly delay: his search was no more than cowardly delay. ‘Right. Let’s go,’ he said and started down towards the boat.
It took them an hour to get to Preganziol, what with the seemingly stationary agglomeration of cars and buses at Piazzale Roma and the dense traffic on the Ponte della Libertà and in the outskirts of Mestre. Traffic didn’t begin to move at a steady pace until they passed under the autostrada and started north on Highway 13.
They passed the entrances to Villa Fürstenberg and Villa Marchesi and then found themselves running parallel to the train tracks. They slowed to go through Mogliano Veneto, and then passed another villa; the name sped by too fast for Brunetti to read it. Their driver looked neither right nor left: the villa could have been a circus tent or an atomic reactor, and still he would not have taken his eyes from the road. They crossed a small stream, passed another villa, and then the driver turned to the right and into a narrow two-lane road, eventually drawing to a stop in front of what looked like an industrial park.
The world in front of them was a world of cement, chain-link fences, anonymous buildings, and moving trucks. The buildings for the most part were naked: unpainted, flat-roofed rectangles with very few windows; each was surrounded by an apron of stained cement, and most of those were surrounded by fences. The only brightness came from the lettering on some of the trucks and an open-sided kiosk where workers stood, drinking coffee and beer.
The driver turned to speak to Brunetti. ‘This is it, sir,’ he said, pointing to a gate in the metal fence around one of the buildings. ‘Here on the left.’ Only then, seeing him full face, did Brunetti notice the smear of a broad, glossy scar that could have been caused only by a burn; it began above his left eye and widened as it ascended until it disappeared, broad as three fingers, under the brim of his hat.
Brunetti opened the door. As soon as he was outside, he heard the noise: a distant growling sound that might have come from New Year’s noisemakers or from the exultation of passionate lovers, or even from a badly played oboe. Brunetti, however, knew what it was, and if he had not, the iron-strong smell would have told him what went on behind those gates.
Vezzani had called Brunetti while he was in the car: the Director was not there, so he had explained to his assistant that two officers from Venice were on their way. She would meet them. When Brunetti conveyed this message to Vianello,
the Inspector repeated, ‘she’ and shrugged.
The driver sounded the horn a few times: Brunetti doubted that it would be heard. But after a few seconds, and as in a film, a new sound began, rougher and more mechanical than the other, and the two sides of the gate began to open inwards.
Brunetti waited until the gates had stopped moving to decide whether to get back into the car or to walk through the gate. The metallic odour grew stronger. The gates and the noise of the mechanism propelling them stopped at the same moment, leaving audible only the original sound, now louder. One high-pitched squeal that must have come from a pig rose above all the other noises, then ended as quickly as it had begun, as though the sound had run into a wall. Yet this in no way diminished the level of noise: perhaps it resembled the noise from a playground of excited children let out to play, but there was nothing playful in the sound. And no one was going to be let out.
Brunetti turned towards the car just as Vianello got out of the back seat and walked over to join him. Brunetti was vaguely conscious that something was odd, and it was only when he glanced down and saw that the ground was covered with gravel that he realized Vianello’s footsteps were obliterated by the sounds coming from beyond the open gates.
‘I told the driver to go and get a coffee and that we’d call him when we’re finished,’ the Inspector said. Then, in answer to Brunetti’s expression, he added, neutrally, ‘The smell.’
As they walked towards the gate, Brunetti was amazed that he could feel the gravel slide beneath his feet while he could not hear the sound his feet made. When they passed through the gate, a door opened in the building just to their right, a large rectangle built from cement blocks, roofed with aluminium panels. A small woman paused a moment in the doorway, then came down the two steps and walked towards them, her footsteps also eliminated by the sounds that came from behind her.