by Donna Leon
She gave him a tilt-chinned glance and said, ‘That’s what’s so strange. Now, I mean. Now that I think about what happened, I think that maybe he didn’t mean what happened to the animals.’ She leaned aside again and stroked the towel as though it were some sort of pet. ‘The first time he went there, we talked about it. I had to ask him because he loves … loved animals so much. And I remember his telling me that it was far less terrible than he feared it would be.’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t believe it at first, but he said he’d spent an hour there that morning, to see what went on. And it was less bad than he’d feared.’
An explosive sigh escaped her lips. ‘Maybe he was lying to spare me. I don’t know.’ Her voice had slowed perceptibly.
Brunetti didn’t know, either. He had no idea what sort of scene the knackers could have set for the inspecting veterinarian’s first day, nor did he know if the inspector would have to return to see the killing or if his only concern was to inspect the resulting meat. He thought of the sense of frenzied action, the shouting and kicking. ‘Do you remember anything else he said?’ Brunetti asked.
Even with the slowness of her reactions, her hesitation was visible. She touched her watch again, and for a moment he thought she was going to wind it, but then she said, eyes still on her watch, ‘Not to me.’
Brunetti was about to ask, when he thought better of it and lifted his chin towards Vianello.
‘To your son, Signora?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Yes. To Teo.’
‘Could you tell us what it was?’
‘He was telling Teo a bedtime story one night after he brought him home. This was about three weeks ago.’ She let that drift away. ‘He always did that when they came home.’ The last word stopped her. She coughed, then she went on. ‘It was always a story or a book about an animal. This one – he must have made it up because we don’t have any book like that – was about a dog who wasn’t very brave. Things frightened him: cats frightened him, other dogs did, too. In the story he’s kidnapped by robbers, who want to train him to help them. They train him to befriend people who are walking on the path through the forest. When the people see this big friendly dog start to walk along with them, they feel safe and keep walking deeper and deeper into the forest. The robbers tell him that, at a certain point, he has to run away, so then they can hurt the people and rob them.
‘But even though he’s a coward, he’s still a dog, and he can never let bad things happen to people. So after all that training, when the robbers finally take him out to help them rob someone, the dog acts like a real dog and turns on the robbers and barks and growls at them – he even bites one of them, though not very hard – until the police come and arrest them. And the man they were going to rob takes the dog back to his old home and tells the family what a good dog he is. They take him back in and they love him, even though he’s still not really a very brave dog.’
‘Why do you think of the story, Signora?’ Vianello asked gently when he understood that she was finished.
‘Because, when the story was over, Andrea told Teo that he should always remember the story and never let anyone do bad things to people because that’s the worst thing you can ever do.’ She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘But then I came into the room, and he stopped talking.’
She tried to laugh at herself, but it came out as a cough. ‘I mention it because he seemed so serious when he was telling the story. He really wanted Teo to learn that lesson: you never let bad things happen to people, even if the robbers threaten you.’
She gave in to temptation and grabbed the towel. She no longer tried to fold or straighten it but twisted it in her hands as though it were something she wanted to destroy.
However curious he might still have been about the Borelli woman, Brunetti knew it was folly to ask. Instead, he got to his feet and thanked Signora Doni. When she offered to show them to the door, he declined, and they left her to the rags of memory.
26
‘WHAT DID YOU make of her?’ Brunetti asked as they walked toward the unmarked car parked at the kerb.
‘My guess is she’s never going to forgive herself, or if she does, it will take a long time.’
‘For what?’
‘For not having listened to him.’
‘Not for having thrown him out?’
Vianello shrugged. ‘To a woman like that, it’s what he deserved. But not to listen to him when he asked her to: that’s what’s going to haunt her.’
‘I’d say it already does,’ Brunetti said.
‘Yes. And the rest of what she said?’
Brunetti got into the back seat with Vianello and told the driver to take them back to Piazzale Roma. As the car pulled away from the kerb, he said, ‘You mean his saying that taking the job there ruined everything?’
‘Yes,’ Vianello said, and then added, ‘I don’t think we should forget about the woman.’
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said, his memory running back over the conversation with Nava’s widow.
‘Then what else?’
‘Lots of things can ruin a job. You hate your boss or the people you work with. Or they hate you. You hate the work,’ Brunetti suggested, then added, ‘But none of that makes sense, if you think of the story he told his son.’
‘Couldn’t it just have been a story?’
‘Would you tell one of your kids a story like that?’ Brunetti asked.
Vianello considered this for a moment and then answered, ‘Probably not. I’m not good at stories with morals.’
‘Neither are most kids, I’d say,’ Brunetti added.
Vianello laughed at this. ‘Mine always like the ones where the well-behaved little girl ends up being eaten by the lion and the bad kids get to eat all the chocolate cake.’
‘Mine did, too,’ Brunetti agreed. Then, back to what was bothering him, he asked, ‘So why tell him such a story?’
‘Maybe because he knew his wife would be listening?’
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said.
‘In which case?’ Vianello asked.
‘In which case, he was trying to tell her something.’
‘Without having to tell her.’
Brunetti sighed. ‘How many times have we all done that?’
‘And what was he trying to tell her?’
‘That he was in a situation where he was being told to do bad things to people, and he thought it was wrong and didn’t want to do it.’
‘People, not animals?’ Vianello asked.
‘That’s what he said. If he’d wanted to talk about animals, he would have told a story about an animal that had to hurt other animals. Kids have literal minds.’
‘You think they care when they’re told not to do bad things to people?’ Vianello asked, sounding not at all convinced.
‘If they trust the person telling them, I think they do,’ Brunetti said.
‘So how does a veterinarian do bad things to people except by hurting their pets?’
‘It was the job at the macello that troubled him,’ Brunetti insisted.
‘You saw the butchers. It wouldn’t be easy to cause them pain.’
With that, the two men stopped talking. The ride continued, up on to the overpasses that led from Mestre to the bridge. Then in front of the rows of factories to the right, past the smokestacks that spewed out God knows what for human consumption.
A possibility came to Brunetti, and he said it aloud: ‘For human consumption.’
‘What?’ Vianello asked, his attention summoned back from the giant digital thermometer on the Gazzettino building.
‘For human consumption,’ Brunetti repeated. ‘That’s what he did at the macello. He inspected the animals that were brought in and he inspected the meat that they became. He decided what was acceptable to be sold as food; he declared it fit for human consumption.’ His mind on the story Nava had told his son, Brunetti repeated, ‘His job was to see that nothing bad happened to people.’
When Vianello said nothing, Brun
etti added, ‘To keep them from eating bad meat.’ Vianello didn’t grace this with an answer, and Brunetti asked, ‘How much does a cow weigh?’
Vianello still did not answer.
From the front seat, the driver said, ‘My brother-in-law’s a farmer, Commissario: a good cow weighs up to seven hundred kilos.’
‘How much of it can be turned into meat?’
‘I’m not sure, Commissario, but I’d guess about half.’
‘Think about it, Lorenzo,’ Brunetti said. ‘If he refused them or condemned them or did whatever it was a veterinarian is supposed to do, the farmer would lose everything.’
In the face of Vianello’s silence, Brunetti asked the driver, ‘How much do they get a kilo?’
‘I don’t know for sure, Commissario. My brother-in-law always calculates that a cow is worth fifteen hundred Euros. Maybe a bit more, but that’s the figure he uses.’
Turning to Vianello and responding to his continued lack of enthusiasm, Brunetti said, though he was aware of how disgruntled he sounded, ‘It’s the first thing we’ve had that might be a reason to kill him.’
It wasn’t until they were on the causeway and the city was in sight that Vianello permitted himself to say, ‘Even if Patta doesn’t like it as a possibility, I think I prefer assault.’
Brunetti returned his attention to the water on the right side of the car.
As soon as the boat pulled up in front of the Questura, Brunetti and Vianello stepped on to the landing and walked into the building. They entered Signorina Elettra’s office together, an arrival that seemed to register on her face as a twin delight.
‘You’ve come for Papetti?’ she asked, the question suggesting that, if they had, they’d come to the right place.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Tell us.’
‘Dottor Papetti is married to the daughter of Maurizio De Rivera,’ she said, which information Vianello greeted with a low whistle, Brunetti with a whispered ‘Ah.’
‘I take your noises as indication that you are aware of her father’s position and power,’ she said.
And who in the North-east was not? Brunetti asked himself. De Rivera was to construction what Thyssen was to steel: the family name sufficed to conjure the product, was almost synonymous with it. The daughter, his only child – unless some other had been slipped into the family while the gossip columnists were heavily sedated – had spent a good deal of her youth under the very public influence of various substances as illegal as they were harmful.
‘When was the fire?’ Vianello asked.
‘Ten, eleven years ago,’ Brunetti answered, referring to the fire in her apartment in Rome from which the daughter – he could no longer remember her name – had been saved at the cost of the lives of three firefighters. The public feeding frenzy had lasted months, during which she disappeared from the news, only to reappear a year or so later as a volunteer at some soup kitchen or shelter, apparently having undergone a transformative experience as a result of having been saved at the cost of three lives. But then she had again disappeared from the papers and thus from the public consciousness.
No transformative experience, however, had affected her father, nor his reputation. Speculation continued about his company’s repeated winning of contracts for municipal and provincial building projects, especially in the South. And it was in that part of the country that his company’s bid was also often the only one to be made.
There were other rumours about him, but those were only rumours.
After giving them time to consider this information, Signorina Elettra went on, ‘I’ve also found an internal memo in which Papetti requests that Borelli be hired, and at that salary.’ She seemed barely able to contain her delight at having discovered this.
‘If what I think what might be going on is actually going on, then, given what is said about his father-in-law, Signor Papetti is a very brave man,’ Vianello said.
‘Or a very stupid one,’ Brunetti countered.
‘Or both,’ suggested Signorina Elettra.
‘De Rivera’s never been convicted of anything,’ Vianello said in a neutral voice.
‘Neither have many of our politicians and cabinet ministers,’ Signorina Elettra added.
Brunetti was tempted to say that none of the three of them had ever been convicted, either, and what did that prove? Instead, he said, ‘Shall we merely agree that Papetti’s relationship with Signorina Borelli is one he might not want his father-in-law to hear about?’ Vianello nodded. Signorina Elettra smiled.
‘What else did you find out about him?’ Brunetti went on.
‘They live very well, he and his wife and their children.’
‘What’s her name? I’ve forgotten,’ Vianello interrupted.
‘Natasha,’ Signorina Elettra said evenly.
‘Of course,’ the Inspector said. ‘I knew it was something fake.’
As if the Inspector had not spoken, she went on. ‘He has almost two million Euros in various investments, their home is worth at least that, he drives one of their two Mercedes SUVs, and they often go on vacation.’
‘It could be De Rivera’s money,’ Brunetti suggested.
Primly, as if cautioning an over-eager student, Signorina Elettra said, ‘The accounts are in his name only. And they are not in this country.’
‘I stand corrected,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Signorina Borelli? Anything else about her?’
‘Though she was making less than twenty-five thousand Euros a year at Tekknomed, she somehow managed to buy, during the years she worked there, two apartments in Venice and one in Mestre. She lives in the one in Mestre and rents the ones in Venice to tourists.’
‘And Tekknomed chose not to bring charges against her when she left,’ said a reflective Brunetti. ‘She must have known a great deal about their accounts.’ Then, to Signorina Elettra, ‘Her bank accounts?’
‘I’m continuing my researches, Signore,’ she said primly.
‘Is there any evidence that her relationship with Papetti is sexual?’
She allowed herself a cool glance. ‘It’s impossible to find those things in the records, sir.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Continue your researches, then.’ To Vianello, he said, ‘I want to talk to Papetti.’
‘You have the endurance to go back to the mainland?’ Vianello asked with a smile.
‘I’d like to talk to him before more time passes.’
‘If you go, you should go alone,’ Vianello said. ‘It’s less threatening.’ He took a step towards Signorina Elettra and asked, ‘Do you think we could have a look at the records of the macello at Preganziol while the Commissario is away?’
Her response was an exercise in modesty. ‘I could try.’
Leaving them to it, Brunetti went downstairs and out to the boat.
27
BRUNETTI MARVELLED AGAIN at how it was possible for people to live like this: driving around in cars, getting stuck behind long columns of other cars, eternal victims of the vagaries of traffic. And the air, and the noise, and the overwhelming ugliness of what he passed. No wonder drivers were prone to violence: how could they not be?
Signorina Elettra had called and made an appointment with Dottor Papetti, explaining that Commissario Brunetti was on the mainland that day and could easily stop by to talk to him about Dottor Nava: luckily, Dottor Papetti had no appointments that afternoon and would be in his office. She explained that Dottor Brunetti knew the way to the slaughterhouse.
Though the driver took Brunetti the same way, he recognized little of what they passed, road-memory or road-skill not being a talent he had acquired. He thought he’d seen one of the villas, but from a distance many of them looked the same. He did, however, recognize the lane that led to the slaughterhouse and then the gates behind which it stood. And, though it seemed less strong now, Brunetti also recognized the smell that swept at him from the back of the building.
This time it was Dottor Papetti who met him at the
door. He was a tall man with receding hair that exaggerated the narrowness of his face and head. His eyes were round and dark and belonged on a fatter face. The lips were thin and drawn back in a formulaic smile. The shoulders of his suit were padded in a way that was out of fashion but that still managed to disguise his thinness. Brunetti glanced down and saw that his shoes were handmade; the narrowness of his feet probably made this necessary.
After surprising Brunetti with the strength of his handshake, Papetti suggested they go to his office. Papetti walked along beside him with the free-jointed motion of a heron in water; his head, on an inordinately long neck, shoved forward with every step. Neither man spoke; intermittent noises came from the back of the building.
Opening the door to his office, Papetti stepped back and said, ‘Commissario, please have a seat and tell me how I can help you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be here during your visit.’
Brunetti passed in front of him, saying, ‘I’m very glad you could find time to see me now, Dottor Papetti.’ Once both were seated, Brunetti added, in a voice from which he could not banish his gratitude, ‘I’m sure a man with your position has many responsibilities.’ Papetti smiled modestly in response to this: his smile made Brunetti remember a line he had read, he thought, in Kafka, about a man who had seen people laugh, ‘and thought he knew how to do it’.
‘Luckily,’ Papetti began, ‘well, luckily for you, two people cancelled meetings this afternoon, so I found myself with an opening in my schedule.’ He tried another smile. ‘It doesn’t often happen.’
His words at first created only a wild surmise, and then memory brought it to him: it was Patta’s voice the man was using. But was it Patta at his most cordial or his most devious?
‘As my secretary must have told you, I’d like to speak to you about Dottor Nava,’ Brunetti said, as one overburdened bureaucrat to another.
Papetti nodded, and Brunetti continued, ‘Since he worked for you, I thought you might be able to tell me something about him.’ Then, in a display of openness and candour, Brunetti said, ‘I’ve spoken to his widow, but there was very little she could tell me. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but they’ve been legally separated for some months.’ He waited to see what Papetti would say to this.