by Donna Leon
‘You’d never tell him anything important, would you, Signore?’ she asked.
Brunetti held up the back of his right hand to her and pointed at the tips of his fingers with the index finger of the other. ‘Not without bamboo shoots being driven under my nails,’ he said.
She looked relieved. ‘I wonder what he’s after.’ Signorina Elettra took a piece of paper from her desk and extended it towards Brunetti.
He saw that she had written the name of Fornari’s wife, followed by a date and two sums in Euros. ‘Since he’s been out, he’s been receiving a disability payment, and she’s being paid to take care of him.’
‘And the disability?’ he asked, wondering what sort of scam Fornari and his wife were using now.
‘His prison records state that he was released for medical reasons,’ she said.
‘Meaning?’
‘The records state that he has health problems that can be more easily treated if he’s at home with his family and able to get to the hospital for treatment.’
‘Any mention of what the problem is?’
‘It could be a serious illness,’ she said, sounding not the least bit convinced. ‘My experience working here, however, suggests the possibility that he’s figured out a way to have the social services pay both him and his wife a salary while he contracts out his drug business to the highest bidder.’
‘Can you get into …’ Brunetti began but quickly corrected himself. ‘That is, can you check his hospital records to see if they give a reason?’
‘I’d just started that, Signore,’ she said. ‘If you go upstairs, I’ll tell you when I find something.’
Signorina Elettra called a half-hour later. ‘I found his hospital file. It’s not good, and I was wrong.’
‘What is it?’
‘Lung cancer. The bad one. Well,’ she temporized, ‘one of the bad ones. It’s why they released him.’
‘Do the records give you an idea of what shape he’s in?’
‘No. They name the type of chemotherapy he’s being given and how many cycles he’s had, and that’s all.’
‘How long has it gone on?’
After a short delay, she said, ‘Since he was released. He had two long cycles of chemo, and then radiation. And now he’s been back in chemotherapy for the last three months. Once every three weeks.’ After a pause, she added, ‘His doctors decided he’s too weak to get there by himself, so he’s taken there by Sanitrans.’
‘When was he last in the hospital?’
He heard papers being turned, accompanied by a light humming sound. After some time, she was back, saying, ‘He had chemio last week, and he’s scheduled for another cycle in two weeks.’
‘And he’s kept all of his appointments?’
More paper noise, then, ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ Brunetti said. His response had come unsummoned: Fornari was a drug dealer and an ex-convict, but he was also a man with cancer.
After a long hesitation, she asked, ‘Had you thought of one possibility, Commissario?’
‘Such as?’
‘If he’s been in this business for a long time, then he has connections among his … colleagues. He could run the business from his telefonino. All he’d need is a reliable courier.’
‘It’s an interesting idea, Signorina, and I thank you for it,’ Brunetti said. Then he asked her to call him if she learned anything else, and replaced his phone.
He pulled open his bottom drawer, rested his heels on it, and leaned back as far as his chair would permit and studied the ceiling. For the first time, he noticed a beige blot about the size of a compact disc, though with tentacles, descending from the place where the wall above the window on the left met the ceiling. Above his office was the mansard where, centuries before, the servants had lived. Up there, the rooms on this side of the building served as a general deposit for old furniture and filing cabinets and were seldom visited. Low-ceilinged and wooden-floored, the rooms had few windows, and those very small. He had been there years before and had noted the state of the window frames, but his office was then on the other side of the building, so he had not seen a problem.
In Fornari, however, he did see a problem. A man going through the chemotherapy prescribed for a particularly vicious kind of tumour was hardly likely to be delivering drugs to another part of the city, nor standing in front of a school, in the cold, selling drugs. He was even more unlikely to find sufficient strength to accost, assault, and hurl a man down the steps of a bridge.
Brunetti reconsidered the spot on the wall. He was reluctant to see Fornari as a dead end, no matter how parlous his state of health. The wife. Colleagues. A telephone. How easy it would be for Fornari to send someone else.
He went over everything he had discovered about Gasparini, another man with a nice wife. At times it seemed to him as though Italy were a country filled with men who had nice wives. For heaven’s sake, he was a man with a nice wife.
He got to his feet, deciding in that instant to go and curiosare down at the far end of Castello. It would be better to go alone so that he and Fornari could have a quiet little talk, drug dealer to drug dealer.
17
He found the address in Calli, Campielli e Canali; near the wall of the Arsenale that ran along the Rio delle Gorne. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been in that neighbourhood, though he did remember that there was a large tree in Campo delle Gorne, and a friend of his had once tried to sell him a half-share in a boat that had a docking space along that wall.
He’d refused the offer, knowing then, with Raffi just born, that the concerns of life could not include a boat. Boats belonged to the frivolity and freedom of youth or to the endless, sometimes empty, hours of age. Most men had more than enough to occupy them with families and work. A boat was a girlfriend and not a wife.
As he studied the map in Calli, Campielli e Canali, he hoped it would reanimate his feet’s memory and take him there easily. He got lost only twice, and one time really didn’t count: at the end of Calle dei Furlani, he started to turn right but caught himself in time and turned left. A few minutes later, entering Campo Do Pozzi, he continued straight across and walked to a dead end before he admitted defeat and turned back to the campo and then to the left, down and out into Campo delle Gorne.
A tall, attractive blonde woman stood by the edge of the canal, looking down at something in the water, a robust white dog sitting side-saddle at her feet. Brunetti approached and said, not knowing how he knew she was English but so certain that she was that he addressed her in that language, ‘Is something wrong, Signora?’
‘It’s Martino’s tennis ball,’ she said. She smiled and added, ‘Nothing to be done, I’m afraid.’
Brunetti looked into the canal and saw the furry yellow ball, floating off to the left. ‘If I were thirty years younger, Signora, I’d dive in and get it for you,’ he said impulsively. If she had a dog, then she lived in the city: all the more reason for a bit of Italian galanteria.
She laughed aloud and years scattered from her. She turned to study his face. ‘If I were thirty years younger, I’d want you to,’ she said. Then, looking down at the dog, she said, ‘Come along, Martino: we can’t have everything we’d like.’
She gave Brunetti another smile and turned back towards the church of San Martino Vescovo.
Cheered by the encounter, Brunetti continued along the water and turned left into a narrow calle into which no light shone. The door was on his right, so low and broad as to seem almost square. He looked for a bell and, finding none, knocked a few times. He waited a moment, knocked again, and when there was still no response, made a fist and pounded out five sharp blows.
He heard a voice, then footsteps, and then the door was pulled back by a woman of about his own age, tall and too thin, who stepped out into the calle. ‘Are you here to see Gianluca?’ she asked in a voice that expressed hope. She had red hair that had gone white at the roots three centimetres ago. The skin around her nose and mouth repeated
the same colours, with small flecks peeling off irritated, reddened skin. Her eyes were lapis blue, so blue that for an instant Brunetti thought she must be wearing contact lenses, but she was not the sort of woman to bother with such things.
‘Yes, I am,’ Brunetti answered, without a smile.
She seemed not to expect one and stepped back inside, holding the door open. ‘Come in. He’s upstairs.’
Brunetti passed in front of her, careful not to say anything, and found himself in a damp corridor, a wooden staircase on one side. This might well have been one of the houses built for the workers in the Arsenale at the turn of the last century: many of them had been transformed into bijoux bed and breakfasts; this one had not. He climbed the stairs, heard her coming up behind him.
When he reached the first-floor landing, she said from behind, ‘To the right.’ He turned and saw another door, this one a proper rectangle, standing slightly ajar, light and heat emerging from it.
‘Go in,’ she said and moved up behind him, forcing Brunetti towards the door. He pushed it open without asking permission and entered a low room with a beamed ceiling, though not beamed in the way he was accustomed to seeing. These beams were worm-eaten and encrusted with dark remnants of the smoke that must have poured from the sort of coal-burning stove he remembered his grandparents had used. There were two windows, close together, but whatever stood on the other side of the glass was obscured by the humidity that covered and trickled down the surface.
The condensation made Brunetti all the more conscious of the heat that seemed to pour from the walls as well as from the two electric heaters that stood in front of the sofa on which half lay, half sat a pale-faced man with long, lank hair. It was almost noon, yet no light came through the windows: Brunetti didn’t know if it was due to the narrowness of the calle or the height of the surrounding buildings. He knew only that he was in a trap, or a cave, or a prison cell.
The man looked across at him. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Guido.’
‘Did they send you?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered, putting as much impatience as he could into the monosyllable.
‘What do they want?’ The man’s voice was a smoker’s voice, slimy and unpleasant.
Brunetti smiled, pulled over a chair, and sat without being asked. ‘What do you think they want, Signor Fornari?’
Brunetti turned to look over his shoulder and saw the woman standing at the door. ‘Does she have to be here?’ he asked roughly.
‘No,’ Fornari said. ‘Get out.’
The woman obeyed and surprised Brunetti by closing the door quietly.
When Brunetti glanced back at the other man, it looked as though he had fallen asleep. His face was flushed, either by the heat or by whatever drugs he was being given. Or perhaps by the illness itself.
Fornari might once have been handsome. His nose was thin and fine, the arch of his brows strangely elegant. Well-defined full lips contradicted the cadaverous cheeks above them.
He opened his eyes, grey and faintly cloudy, and asked, ‘Will they wait?’
‘You should know better than to ask that, Signor Fornari,’ Brunetti said with exaggerated politeness.
‘I’ve always paid them on time. I’ve been a good client,’ he insisted.
The wetness of the voice, as though some soggy thing were trapped in his throat, set Brunetti’s teeth on edge. ‘That was then,’ Brunetti said impassively. ‘This is now.’
When he had drifted away, Fornari’s head had tipped to his right side, and now he had to struggle to push himself upright. Brunetti saw his hands, little more than claws, push at the seat of the sofa, drag a pillow from behind his back. He thought of the man’s voice and quelled the impulse to move close enough to help him.
‘My wife took the money last night. You got it, didn’t you?’
Brunetti confined himself to nodding.
‘So why did they tell her they’re getting a new supplier?’
‘For the Albertini, you mean?’ Brunetti asked.
Fornari flashed him a surprised look. He was weak, but he was no fool. He nodded, but his expression was wary.
Brunetti put on a shrewd face and said, ‘We’ve got someone who can take care of both. The Albertini and Marco Polo. Besides, look at you. How much longer do you think you can run things?’ Then he added, not bothering to disguise his contempt, ‘You think no one’s noticed your wife? You think she’s able to do this?’ Then, raising his voice and taking it closer to anger, Brunetti asked, ‘You think we’d take the chance of using her? Might as well hire a circus clown.’ He forced out a small, deprecating laugh, as though Fornari had told him a joke that wasn’t very funny.
‘Is that why there was no delivery today?’ Fornari asked, all suspicion vanished.
‘What do you think?’ Brunetti demanded.
‘Then what happens to us?’ Fornari asked, voice wobbling towards panic. He was interrupted by an enormous cough that pulled him forward to the edge of the sofa. There followed another and another and then an extended series of long, choking noises that made Brunetti want to flee the room.
The door opened and the woman was there, a clean white towel in her hands. She bent over the choking man and turned him towards the back of the sofa and on to his side. She wedged the towel between his face and the sofa, then lifted his legs and put them on the seat.
The coughing continued, wet and horrible and filled with the approach of death. Nothing, no one, could survive the power of that cough; lungs could not remain in place with that savage force filling the room. Brunetti got to his feet and went out into the corridor. He closed the door and stood there for what seemed a long time, listening to a life being coughed away.
Finally, with gasps and pauses and long moments of silence, the coughing slowed to a stop. Brunetti unclasped his fists and pulled his hands from his pockets. After another few minutes, the woman emerged from the room. She looked at Brunetti, making no attempt to veil her contempt for his weakness. ‘He’s asleep. You can go.’
He started down the steps, the woman close behind him as though she wanted to be sure she saw the last of him. When they got to the bottom, he waited for her. She walked past without looking at him and opened the door.
‘What did they tell you when you took the money last night?’ he asked.
‘That they didn’t want me. They’ve got someone new to do the deliveries. I’m fired.’ Her face screwed up, as though she were going to cry, but then she breathed a long sigh, almost of relief.
Anger or impatience coloured her voice. ‘I told you, I’m fired.’ Then, with the same suspiciousness as the man, she asked, ‘Didn’t they tell you?’
He shrugged, as though it was the sort of thing that happened in all big companies: failure of information transfer from one division to another; no prompt updating of human resources policy; delayed termination notice.
He walked in front of her, again without excusing himself, and left the apartment. She didn’t bother to slam the door.
18
As he started back towards the Questura, Brunetti thought over his conversation with Patta. Luckily, he had told the Vice-Questore only that there was a possibility of a connection between Gasparini and the drug dealer. The coughing shadow he had just spoken to was not the person who had accosted Gasparini on the bridge, nor did his wife seem to be a person capable of such a thing. Fornari lacked the strength to make a phone call: he could never have organised the attack on Gasparini.
So here it was: the one obvious connection between victim and suspect coughed away. He needed to go back to the beginning, start from there, looking at things he might have dismissed while considering Professoressa Crasera’s son’s possible involvement in drugs.
He took his phone and dialled Griffoni’s number.
‘Sì,’ she answered.
‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
She was at her desk, which he saw had been moved and now faced the wall. Though this forc
ed her to look at the cracks and peeling paint from a distance of little more than half a metre, it allowed her visitor the luxury of not having to sit in the open doorway. By serpenting past the back of her chair, another person could now sit in the other chair, as small as a stool, and talk to her with the door closed. Yet departure had to be negotiated by the two people sharing the office to decide who was to move first.
Brunetti stopped at the open door and swivelled his head to study the tiny space. ‘Putting the desk there gives the room a sense of grandeur,’ he said and slipped past her to sit in the guest chair.
Smiling, she closed the door and turned to him. ‘What is it?’ she asked. When he hesitated, she added, ‘You sounded stressed on the phone.’
He had decided to tell her without preliminaries. ‘I went to see Fornari. He’s dying of lung cancer in a pit of a house in Castello and could no more attack anyone than he could rise up on angel wings and fly to the hospital for chemotherapy.’
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘With evidence that Gasparini was attacked but no one to suspect for it.’
‘You’re excluding a random attack?’ she asked.
‘Absolutely,’ he said and resisted the impulse to add, This is Venice, after all.
She moved forward in her chair, as though preparing to stand, but abandoned the attempt and turned to face him more fully. He noticed that she was wearing a black T-shirt and a black woollen jacket. The single strand of pearls looked real; he knew the blonde of her hair was.
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘That you don’t think it was random.’
‘Why?’
‘Because then there’s a motive. And once there’s a motive, there will be evidence leading back to it.’
Brunetti believed the same thing. ‘There’s knowing and then there’s finding,’ he said.
She leaned against the back of her chair and picked up a notebook and pen. ‘Tell me everything you’ve learned.’
It took him a long time to tell her: what Professoressa Crosera had told him, this time in greater detail; her refusal to allow him to speak to their son and his chance meeting with the boy, and the boy’s aggressive behaviour. He finished with his visit to Fornari and his wife and the misery of the place, though it had been, he realized only now, clean and tidy. There had been no mess or clutter, and Fornari had worn freshly ironed pyjamas. It was the cough, Brunetti admitted, but only to himself, that had dirtied the place.