by Donna Leon
‘What now?’ Vianello asked. ‘What do you think he’ll do?’
‘Try to get in touch with Ravanello and Santomauro, I’d say.’
‘Do you want to warn them?’
‘No,’ Brunetti answered immediately. ‘But I want to know where they are, and I want to see what they do. I want them watched.’ The launch swung into the canal that led to the Questura, and Brunetti climbed back on deck. When they pulled up to the small dock, he jumped ashore and waited while Vianello followed him. As they passed through the front door, the officers on guard stared at the sergeant’s bloody shirt but said nothing. When the other officers came off the boat, the guards crowded round and asked for an explanation.
At the second landing, Vianello went off towards the bathroom at the end of the corridor, and Brunetti went up to his own office. He called the Banca di Verona and, using a false name, asked to speak to Signor Ravanello. When the man he spoke to asked him what this was in regard to, Brunetti explained that it was about the estimate the banker had asked for on a new computer. He was told that Signor Ravanello was not in that morning but could be reached at home. Asked, the man supplied the banker’s home number, and Brunetti dialled it immediately, only to find it busy.
He found the number of Santomauro’s office, dialled it, and, giving the same false name, asked if he could speak to Avvocato Santomauro. The lawyer, his secretary explained, was busy with another client and could not be disturbed. Brunetti said he would call back and hung up.
He dialled Ravanello’s number again, but still it was busy. He pulled the phone book from his bottom drawer and looked up Ravanello’s name, curious to find the address. From the listing, he guessed that it would have to be in the vicinity of Campo San Stefano, not far from Santomauro’s office. He considered how Malfatti would get there: the obvious answer was the traghetto, the public gondola that plied the waters back and forth between Ca’ Rezzonico and Campo San Samuele on the opposite side of the Grand Canal. From there, it was only minutes to Campo San Stefano.
He dialled the number again, but still it was busy. He called the operator and asked her to check the line and, after waiting less than a minute, was told that the line was open though not in contact with any other number, which meant the phone was either out of order or had been left off the hook. Even before he hung up, Brunetti was mapping out the fastest way to get there: the launch was best. He went down the stairs and into Vianello’s office. The sergeant, wearing a clean shirt, looked up when Brunetti came in.
‘Ravanello’s phone is off the hook.’
Vianello was out of his chair and on the way to the door before Brunetti said anything else.
Together, they went downstairs and out into the blanketing heat. The pilot was hosing down the deck of the launch but, seeing the two men come running out the front door, he tossed the hose to the sidewalk and jumped to the wheel.
‘Campo San Stefano,’ Brunetti called to him. ‘Use the siren.’
Klaxon shouting out its double-noted call, the boat pulled away from the dock and once again out into the bacino. Boats and vaporetti slowed to allow it to speed past them; only the elegant black gondolas paid it no heed: by law, all boats had to defer to the slow passage of the gondola.
Neither of them spoke. Brunetti went down into the cabin and consulted a city guide to see where the address was located. He was right: the apartment was directly opposite the entrance to the church that gave the campo its name.
As the boat neared the Accademia bridge, Brunetti went back on deck and told the pilot to cut the siren. He had no idea what they would find at San Stefano, but he would like their arrival there to go unannounced. The pilot switched the siren off and pulled the boat into the Rio del Orso and over to the landing stage on the left side. Brunetti and Vianello climbed up on to the embankment and walked quickly through the open campo. Lethargic couples sat at tables in front of a cafe, hunched over pastel drinks; everyone walking in the campo looked to be carrying the heat like a palpable yoke across their shoulders.
They quickly found the door, between a restaurant and a shop that sold Venetian paper. Ravanello’s bell was on the top right of the two rows of names. Brunetti rang the one below it then, when there was no answer, the one under that. When a voice answered, asking who it was, he declared, ‘Polizia,’ and the door snapped open immediately.
He and Vianello went into the building, and, from above them, a high, querulous voice called out, ‘How did you get here so fast?’
Brunetti started up the stairs, Vianello close behind him. On the first floor, a grey-haired woman, little taller than the banister over which she leaned, called down again, ‘How did you get here so fast?’
Ignoring her question, Brunetti asked, ‘What’s wrong, Signora?’
She moved back from the banister and pointed above her. ‘Up there. I heard shouting from Signor Ravanello’s, and then I saw someone run down the steps. I was afraid to go up.’
Brunetti and Vianello swept past her, taking the stairs two at a time now, both of them with their pistols in their hands. At the top, light spilled out of the apartment on to the broad landing in front of the open door. Brunetti crouched low and moved to the other side of the door, but he moved too quickly to be able to see anything inside. He looked back at Vianello, who nodded. Together they burst into the apartment, both bent low. As soon as they were through the door, they moved to either side of the room, making of themselves two separate targets.
But Ravanello was not going to shoot at them: one glance at him was enough to show that. His body lay across a low chair that had fallen to its side in the fight that must have taken place in this room. He lay on his side, facing the door, staring with unseeing eyes, eternally removed from any curiosity about these men who had burst suddenly and without invitation into his home.
Not for an instant did Brunetti suspect that Ravanello might still be alive: the marmoreal weight of his body rendered that impossible. There was very little blood: that was the first thing Brunetti noticed. Ravanello appeared to have been stabbed twice, for there were two bold red patches on his jacket, and some blood had spilled to the floor beneath his arm, but hardly enough to suggest that its passing had taken his life with it.
‘Oh Dio,’ he heard the old woman gasp behind him, turned and found her at the door, one fist clenched in front of her mouth, staring across at Ravanello. Brunetti moved two steps to his right and into her line of vision.
She looked up at him with chilled eyes. Could it be she was angry with him for having blocked her sight of the body?
‘What did he look like, Signora?’ he asked.
She shifted her eyes to his left, but couldn’t see around him.
‘What did he look like, Signora?’
Behind him, he heard Vianello moving around, going off into another room of the apartment, then he heard the phone being dialled and Vianello’s voice, soft and calm, reporting to the Questura what had happened, asking for the necessary people.
Brunetti walked directly towards the woman and, as he had hoped, she retreated before him out into the corridor. ‘Could you tell me exactly what you saw, Signora?’
‘A man, not very tall, running down the steps. He had a white shirt. Short sleeves.’
‘Would you know him if you saw him again, Signora?’
‘Yes.’
So would Brunetti.
Behind them, Vianello appeared from the apartment, leaving the door open. ‘They’ll be here soon.’
‘Stay here,’ Brunetti said, moving towards the stairs.
‘Santomauro?’ Vianello asked.
Brunetti waved his hand in acknowledgement and ran down the steps. Outside, he turned left and hurried up to Campo San Angelo and, beyond it, Campo San Luca and the lawyer’s office.
It was like wading through a heavy surf, pushing his way through the late-morning crowds of people who gawked in front of shop windows, paused to talk to one another, or stood in the momentary relief of a cool breeze escaping from
an air-conditioned shop. Down through the narrow confines of Calle della Mandorla he raced, using his elbows and his voice, careless of the angry stares and sarcastic remarks created by his passing.
In the open space of Campo Manin, he broke into a trot, though every step brought sweat pounding out on to his body. He cut round the bank and into Campo San Luca, crowded now with people meeting for a drink before lunch.
The downstairs door that led up to Santomauro’s office was ajar; Brunetti pushed himself through it and took the steps two at a time. The door to the office was closed, the light below it gleaming out into the dim hallway. He took out his gun and pushed the door open, moving quickly to the side in a protective crouch, just as he had when entering Ravanello’s office.
The secretary screamed. Like a character in a comic book, she covered her mouth with both hands and let out a loud shriek, then pushed herself backwards and toppled from her chair.
Seconds later, the door to Santomauro’s office opened, and the lawyer came rushing from his office. In a glance, he took it all in: his secretary cowering behind her desk, butting her shoulder repeatedly against the top as she tried, vainly, to crawl under it, and Brunetti, rising to his feet and putting his gun away.
‘It’s all right, Louisa,’ Santomauro said, going to his secretary and kneeling down beside her. ‘It’s all right, it’s nothing.’
The woman was incapable of speech, beyond thought or reason. She sobbed, turned towards her employer and stretched out her hands to him. He put an arm round her shoulder and she pressed her face against his chest. She sobbed deeply and gasped for breath. Santomauro bent over her, patting her on the back and speaking softly to her. Gradually, the woman calmed and after a moment pushed herself back from him. ’Scusi, Avvocato,’ was the first thing she said, her formality restoring full calm to the room.
Silent now, Santomauro helped her to her feet and towards a door at the back of the office. When he closed it behind her, Santomauro turned to face Brunetti. ‘Well?’ he said, voice calm but no less lethal for that.
‘Ravanello’s been killed,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I thought you’d be next. So I came here to try to stop it.’
If Santomauro was surprised at the news, he gave no sign of it. ‘Why?’ he asked. When Brunetti didn’t answer, he repeated the question, ‘Why would I be next?’
Brunetti didn’t answer him.
‘I asked you a question, Commissario. Why would I be next? Why, in fact, would I be in any danger at all?’ In the face of Brunetti’s continuing silence, Santomauro continued. ‘Do you think I’m somehow involved in all of this? Is that why you’re here, playing cowboy and Indians and terrifying my secretary?’
‘I had reason to believe he would come here,’ Brunetti finally explained.
‘Who?’ the lawyer demanded.
‘I’m not at liberty to tell you that.’
Santomauro bent down and picked up the secretary’s chair. He righted it and pushed it into place behind her desk. When he looked back at Brunetti, he said, ‘Get out. Get out of this office. I am going to make a formal complaint to the Minister of the Interior. And I am going to send a copy of it to your superior. I will not be treated as a criminal, and I will not have my secretary terrified by your Gestapo techniques.’
Brunetti had seen enough anger in his life and in his career to know that this was the real thing. Saying nothing, he left the office and went down into Campo San Luca. People pushed past him, rushing home for lunch.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brunetti’s decision to return to the Questura was an exercise of the power of the will over that of the flesh. He was closer to home than to the Questura, and he wanted only to go there, shower, and think about things other than the inescapable consequences of what had just happened. Unsummoned, he had burst violently into the office of one of the most powerful men in the city, terrorizing his secretary and making it clear, by his explanation of his behaviour, that he assumed Santomauro’s guilty involvement with Malfatti and the manipulation of the accounts of the Lega. All of the good will he had, however spuriously, accumulated with Patta during the last weeks would be as of nothing in the face of a protest from a man of Santomauro’s stature.
And now, with Ravanello dead, all hope of a case against Santomauro had vanished, for the only person who might implicate Santomauro was Malfatti; his guilt in Ravanello’s death would render worthless any accusation he might make against Santomauro. It would come, Brunetti realized, to a choice between Malfatti’s and Santomauro’s stories; he needed neither wit nor prescience to know which was stronger.
When Brunetti got there, he found the Questura in tumult. Three uniformed officers huddled together in the lobby, and the people on the long line at the Ufficio Stranieri crowded together in a babble of different languages. ‘They brought him in, sir,’ one of the guards said when he saw Brunetti.
‘Who?’ he asked, not daring to hope.
‘Malfatti.’
‘How?’
‘The men waiting at his mother’s. He showed up at the door about half an hour ago, and they got him even before she could let him in.’
‘Was there any trouble?’
‘One of the men who was there said that he tried to run when he saw them, but as soon as he realized there were four of them, he just gave up and went along quietly.’
‘Four?’
‘Yes, sir. Vianello called and told us to send more men. They were just arriving when Malfatti showed up. They didn’t even have time to get inside, just got there and found him at the door.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Vianello had him put in a cell.’
‘I’ll go see him.’
When Brunetti went into the cell, Malfatti recognized him immediately as the man who had thrown him down the steps, but he greeted Brunetti with no particular hostility.
Brunetti pulled a chair away from the wall and sat facing Malfatti, who was lying on the cot, back propped up against the wall. He was a short, stocky man with thick brown hair, features so regular as to make him almost immediately forgettable. He looked like an accountant, not a killer.
‘Well?’ Brunetti began.
‘Well what?’ Malfatti’s voice was completely matter of fact.
‘Well, do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?’ Brunetti asked imperturbably, just the way the cops on television did.
‘What’s the hard way?’
‘That you say you know nothing about any of this.’
‘About any of what?’ Malfatti asked.
Brunetti pressed his lips together and glanced up at the window for a moment, then back at Malfatti.
‘What’s the easy way?’ Malfatti asked after a long time.
‘That you tell me what happened.’ Before Malfatti said a word, Brunetti explained, ‘Not about the rents. That’s not important now, and it will all come out. But about the murders. All of them. All four.’
Malfatti shifted minimally on the mattress, and Brunetti had the impression that he was going to question that number, but then Malfatti thought better of it.
‘He’s a respected man,’ Brunetti continued, not bothering to explain whom he meant. ‘It’s going to come down to his word against yours, unless you’ve got something to link him to you and to the murders.’ He paused here, but Malfatti said nothing. ‘You’ve got a long criminal record,’ Brunetti continued. ‘Attempted murder and now murder.’ Before Malfatti could say a word, Brunetti continued in an entirely conversational voice, ‘There’s not going to be any trouble proving that you killed Ravanello.’ In answer to Malfatti’s surprised glance, he explained, ‘The old woman saw you.’ Malfatti looked away.
‘And judges hate people who kill police, especially policewomen. So I don’t see it any other way but a conviction. The judges are bound to ask me what I think,’ he said, pausing to be sure he had Malfatti’s complete attention. ‘When they do, I’ll suggest Porto Azzurro.’
All criminals knew the name of the prison,
the worst in Italy and one from which no one had ever escaped; even a man as hardened as Malfatti could not disguise his shock. Brunetti waited a moment, but when Malfatti said nothing, he added, ‘They say no one knows which are bigger, the cats or the rats.’ Again, he paused.
‘And if I do talk to you?’ Malfatti finally asked.
‘Then I’ll suggest to the judges that they take that into consideration.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s all.’ Brunetti hated people who killed police, too.
Malfatti took only a moment to decide. ‘Va bene,’ he said, ‘but I want it in the record that I volunteered this. I want it put down that, as soon as you arrested me, I was willing to give you everything.’
Brunetti got to his feet. ‘I’ll get a secretary,’ he said and went to the door of the cell. He signalled to a young man who sat at a desk at the end of the hall, who came into the room with a tape recorder and a pad.
When they were ready, Brunetti said, ‘Please give your name, place of birth, and present residence.’
‘Malfatti, Pietro. Twenty-eight September, 1962. Castello 2316.’
It went on like this for an hour, Malfatti’s voice never displaying any greater involvement than it did when answering that original question, though the story that emerged was one of mounting horror.
The original idea could have been Ravanello’s or Santomauro’s: Malfatti had never cared enough to ask. They had got his name from the men on Via Cappuccina and had contacted him to ask if he would be willing to make the collections for them every month in return for a percentage of the profit. He had never been in doubt as to whether he would accept their offer, only about the percentage he would get. They had settled at twelve, though it had taken Malfatti almost an hour of hard bargaining to get them to go that high.
It was his hopes of increasing his own take that had led Malfatti to suggest that some of the legitimate earnings of the Lega be paid out in cheques to people whose names he would supply. Brunetti cut off Malfatti’s grotesque pride in this scheme by asking, ‘When did Mascari find out about this?’