Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

by Donna Leon

  Spirits buoyed by this resolve, he went to the Questura, where he read his way through the newspaper accounts of Malfatti’s arrest, all of which mentioned Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta as their chief source of information. The Vice-Questore was variously quoted as having ‘overseen the arrest’ and having ‘obtained Malfatti’s confession’. The papers placed the blame for the Banca di Verona scandal at the feet of its most recent director, Ravanello, and left no doubt in the readers’ minds that he had been responsible for the murder of his predecessor before becoming himself the victim of his vicious accomplice, Malfatti. Santomauro was named only in the Corriere della Sera, which quoted him as expressing shock and sorrow at the abuse which had been made of the lofty goals and high principles of the organization he felt himself so honoured to serve.

  Brunetti called Paola and, even though he knew the answer would be no, asked if she had read the papers. When she asked what was in them, he told her only that the case was finished and that he would tell her about it when he got there Friday night. As he knew she would, she asked him to tell her more, but he said it could wait. When she allowed the subject to drop, he felt a flash of anger at her lack of perseverance; hadn’t this case almost cost him his life?

  Brunetti spent the rest of the morning preparing a five-page statement in which he set forth his belief that Malfatti was telling the truth in his confession, and he went on to present his own exhaustively detailed and closely reasoned account of everything that had happened from the time Mascari’s body was found until the time Malfatti was arrested. After lunch, he read it through twice and was forced to see how all of it rested on no more than his own suspicions: there was not a shred of physical evidence linking Santomauro to any of the crimes, nor was it likely that anyone else would believe that a man like Santomauro, who looked down upon the world from the empyrean moral heights of the Lega, could be involved in anything as base as greed or lust or violence. But still he typed it out on the Olivetti standard typewriter that stood on a small table in a corner of his room. Looking at the finished pages, the whited-out corrections, he wondered if he should put in a requisition slip for a computer for his office. He found himself caught up in this, planning where it could go, wondering if he could get his own printer or if everything he typed would have to be printed out down in the secretaries’ office, a thought he didn’t like.

  He was still considering this when Vianello tapped at his door and came in, followed by a short, deeply tanned man in a wrinkled cotton suit. ‘Commissario,’ the sergeant began in the formal tones he adopted when addressing Brunetti in front of civilians. ‘I’d like to present Luciano Gravi.’

  Brunetti approached Gravi and extended his hand. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Signor Gravi. In what way may I be of help to you?’ He led the man over to his desk and pointed to a chair in front of it. Gravi looked around the office and then took the chair. Vianello sat in the chair beside him, paused a moment to see if Gravi would speak and, when he did not, began to explain.

  ‘Commissario, Signor Gravi is the owner of a shoe store in Chioggia.’

  Brunetti looked at the man with renewed interest. A shoe store.

  Vianello turned to Gravi and waved a hand, inviting him to speak. ‘I just got back from vacation,’ Gravi began, speaking to Vianello but then, when Vianello turned to face Brunetti, turning his attention towards him. ‘I was down in Puglia for two weeks. There’s no sense in keeping the store open during Ferragosto. No one wants to shop for shoes, anyway. It’s too hot. So we close up every year for three weeks, and my wife and I go on vacation.’

  ‘And you just got back?’

  ‘Well, I got back two days ago, but I didn’t go to the store until yesterday. That’s when I found the postcard.’

  ‘Postcard, Signor Gravi?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘From the girl who works in my shop. She’s on vacation in Norway, with her fiancé. He works for you, I think. Giorgio Miotti.’ Brunetti nodded; he knew Miotti. ‘Well, they’re in Norway, as I said, and she wrote to tell me that the police were curious about a pair of red shoes.’ He turned back to Vianello. ‘I have no idea what they must have been talking about for them to think of that, but she wrote on the bottom of the card that Giorgio said you were looking for someone who might have bought a pair of women’s shoes, red satin, in a large size.’

  Brunetti found that he was holding his breath and forced himself to relax and breathe it out. ‘And did you sell those shoes, Signor Gravi?’

  ‘Yes, I sold a pair of them, about a month ago. To a man.’ He paused here, waiting for the policemen to remark on how strange it was that a man would buy those shoes.

  ‘A man?’ Brunetti asked obligingly.

  ‘Yes, he said he wanted them for Carnevale. But Carnevale isn’t until next year. I thought it strange at the time, but I wanted to sell the shoes because the satin was torn away from the heel on one of them. The left one, I think. Anyway, they were on sale, and he bought them. Fifty-nine thousand lire, reduced from a hundred twenty. Really a bargain.’

  ‘I’m sure it was, Signor Gravi,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘Do you think you’d recognize the shoes if you saw them again?’

  ‘I think so. I wrote the sale price on the sole of one of them. It might be there.’

  Turning to Vianello, Brunetti said, ‘Sergeant, could you go and get those shoes back from the lab for me? I’d like Signor Gravi to take a look at them.’

  Vianello nodded and left the room. While he was gone, Gravi talked about his vacation, describing how clean the water in the Adriatic was, so long as you went far enough south. Brunetti listened, smiling when he thought it required, keeping himself from asking Gravi to describe the man who bought the shoes until Gravi had identified them.

  A few minutes later, Vianello was back, carrying the shoes in their clear plastic evidence bag. He handed the bag to Gravi, who made no attempt to open it. He moved the shoes around inside the bag, turning first one and then the other upside-down and peering at the sole. He held them closer, smiled, and held the bag out to Brunetti. ‘See, there it is. The sale price. I wrote it in pencil so whoever bought it could erase it if they wanted to. But you can still see it, right there.’ He pointed to faint pencil markings on the sole.

  At last Brunetti permitted himself the question. ‘Could you describe the man who bought these shoes, Signor Gravi?’

  Gravi paused for only a moment and then asked, voice respectful in the face of authority, ‘Commissario, could you tell me why you’re interested in this man?’

  ‘We believe he can provide us with important information about an on-going investigation,’ Brunetti answered, telling him nothing.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ Gravi answered. Like all Italians, he was accustomed not to understand what he was told by the authorities. ‘Younger than you, I’d say, but not all that much. Dark hair. No moustache.’ Perhaps it was hearing himself say it that made Gravi realize how vague his description was. ‘I’d say he looked pretty much like anyone else, a man in a suit. Not very tall and not short, either.’

  ‘Would you be willing to look at some photos, Signor Gravi?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Perhaps that would help you recognize the man?’

  Gravi smiled broadly, relieved to find it all so much like television. ‘Of course.’

  Brunetti nodded to Vianello, who went downstairs and was quickly back with two folders of police photos, among which, Brunetti knew, was Malfatti’s.

  Gravi accepted the first folder from Vianello and laid it on top of Brunetti’s desk. One by one, he leafed through the photos, placing them face down on a separate pile after he looked at them. As Vianello and Brunetti watched, he placed Malfatti’s picture face down with the others and continued until he reached the bottom of the pile. He looked up. ‘He’s not here, not even someone who looks vaguely like him.’

  ‘Perhaps you could give us a clearer idea of what he looked like, Signore.’

  ‘I told you, Commissario, a man in a suit. All these men,’ he said, pointing to the p
ile of photos that lay before him, ‘well, they all look like criminals.’ Vianello stole a look at Brunetti. There had been three photos of police officers mixed in with the others, one of them of Officer Alvise. ‘I told you, he wore a suit,’ Gravi repeated. ‘He looked like one of us. You know, someone who goes to work every day. In an office. And he spoke like an educated man, not a criminal.’

  The political naivety of that remark caused Brunetti to wonder, for a moment, if Signor Gravi was really an Italian. He nodded to Vianello, who picked up the second folder from where he had set it on the desk and handed it to Gravi.

  As the two policemen watched, Gravi leafed through a smaller stack of photos. When he got to Ravanello’s, he paused and looked up at Brunetti. ‘That’s the banker who was killed yesterday, isn’t it?’ he asked, pointing down at the photo.

  ‘He’s not the man who bought the shoes, Signor Gravi?’ he asked.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Gravi answered. ‘If it had been, I would have told you when I came in.’ He looked at the photo again, a studio portrait that had appeared in a brochure which carried photos of all of the officers of the bank. ‘It’s not the man, but it’s the type.’

  ‘The type, Signor Gravi?’

  ‘You know, suit and tie and polished shoes. Clean white shirt, good haircut. A real banker.’

  For an instant, Brunetti was seven years old, kneeling beside his mother in front of the main altar of Santa Maria Formosa, their parish church. His mother looked up at the altar, crossed herself, and said, voice palpitant with pleading and belief, ‘Maria, Mother of God, for the love of your Son who gave His life for all of us unworthy sinners, grant me this one request, and I will never ask a special grace of you in prayer for as long as I may live.’ It was a promise he was to hear repeated countless times in his youth, for, like all Venetians, Signora Brunetti always placed her trust in the influence of friends in high places. Not for the first time in his life, Brunetti regretted his own lack of faith, but still he prayed.

  He returned his attention to Gravi. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the other man who might have bought these shoes from you, but if you could come with me, perhaps you could help us by taking a look at him in the place where he works.’

  ‘You mean literally take part in the investigation?’ Gravi’s enthusiasm was childlike.

  ‘Yes, if you’d be willing.’

  ‘Certainly, Commissario. I’d be glad to help you in any way I can.’

  Brunetti stood, and Gravi jumped to his feet. As they walked towards the centre of the city, Brunetti explained to Gravi what he wanted him to do. Gravi asked no questions, content only to do as told, a good citizen helping the police in their investigation of a serious crime.

  When they got to Campo San Luca, Brunetti pointed out the doorway that led up to Santomauro’s office and suggested to Signor Gravi that he have a drink in Rosa Salva and allow Brunetti five minutes before he came upstairs.

  Brunetti went up the now familiar stairway and knocked on the door to the office. ’Avanti,’ the secretary called out, and he went in.

  When she looked up from her computer and saw who it was, she couldn’t resist the impulse that brought her half-way out of her chair. ‘I’m sorry, Signorina,’ Brunetti said, putting both hands up in what he hoped was an innocent gesture. ‘I’d like to speak to Avvocato Santomauro. It’s official police business.’

  She seemed not to hear him, looked at him with her mouth open in a widening O, either of surprise or fear, Brunetti had no idea which. Very slowly, she reached forward and pressed a button on her desk, keeping her finger on it and getting to her feet but staying safely behind her desk. She stood there, finger still on the button, staring at Brunetti, silent.

  A few seconds later, the door was pulled open from inside, and Santomauro came into the outer office. He saw his secretary, silent and still as Lot’s wife, then saw Brunetti by the door.

  His rage was immediate and fulminant. ‘What are you doing here? I called the Vice-Questore and told him to keep you away from me. Get out, get out of my office.’ At the sound of his voice, the secretary backed away from her desk and stood against the wall. ‘Get out,’ Santomauro said again, almost shouting now. ‘I will not be subjected to this sort of persecution. I’ll have you…’ he began but stopped as another man came into the office behind Brunetti, a man he didn’t recognize, a short man in a cheap cotton suit.

  ‘The two of you, get back to the Questura where you came from,’ Santomauro shouted.

  ‘Do you recognize this man, Signor Gravi?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Santomauro stopped at this, though he still didn’t recognize the little man in the cheap suit.

  ‘Could you tell me who he is, Signor Gravi?’

  ‘He’s the man who bought the shoes from me.’

  Brunetti turned away from Gravi and looked across the office at Santomauro, who seemed now to have recognized the little man in the cheap suit. ‘And what shoes were they, Signor Gravi?’

  ‘A pair of red women’s shoes. Size forty-one.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Santomauro fell apart. Brunetti had observed the phenomenon often enough to recognize what was happening. The arrival of Gravi when Santomauro believed himself to have triumphed over all risk, when the police had not responded to the accusations in Malfatti’s confession, had fallen so suddenly, from the very heavens themselves, that Santomauro had neither the time nor the wit to create some sort of story to explain his purchase of the shoes.

  At first, he shouted at Gravi, telling him to get out of his office, but when the little man insisted that he would know Santomauro anywhere, knew that he was the man who had bought those shoes, Santomauro collapsed sideways against his secretary’s desk, arms wrapped around his chest, as if he could that way protect himself from Brunetti’s silent gaze and from the puzzled faces of the other two.

  ‘That’s the man, Commissario. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Well, Avvocato Santomauro?’ Brunetti asked and signalled with his hand for Gravi to remain silent.

  ‘It was Ravanello,’ Santomauro said, his voice high and tight and close to tears. ‘It was his idea, all of it. About the apartments and the rents. He came to me with the idea. I didn’t want to do it, but he threatened me. He knew about the boys. He said he’d tell my wife and children. And then Mascari found out about the rents.’,

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. Records at the bank. Something in the computer. Ravanello told me. It was his idea to get rid of him.’ None of this made any sense to two of the people in the room, but neither of them said anything, riveted by Santomauro’s terror.

  ‘I didn’t want to do anything. But Ravanello said we had no choice. We had to do it.’ His voice had grown softer as he spoke, and then he stopped and looked up at Brunetti.

  ‘What did you have to do, Signor Santomauro?’

  Santomauro stared at Brunetti and then shook his head, as if to clear it after a heavy blow. Then he shook it again but this time in clear negation. Brunetti knew these signs, as well. ‘I am placing you under arrest, Signor Santomauro, for the murder of Leonardo Mascari.’

  At the mention of that name, both Gravi and the secretary stared at Santomauro, as though seeing him for the first time. Brunetti leaned over the secretary’s desk and, using her phone, called the Questura and asked that three men be sent to Campo San Luca to pick up a suspect and escort him back to the Questura for questioning.

  Brunetti and Vianello questioned Santomauro for two hours, and gradually the story came out. It was likely that Santomauro was telling the truth about the details of the scheme to profit from the Lega apartments; it was unlikely that he was telling the truth about whose idea it was. He continued to maintain that it was all Ravanello’s doing, that the banker had approached him with all of the details worked out, that it was Ravanello who had introduced Malfatti to the scheme. All of the ideas, in fact, had been Ravanello’s: the original plan, the
need to get rid of the honourable Mascari, to run Brunetti’s car into the laguna. All of this had come from Ravanello, the product of his consuming greed.

  And Santomauro? He presented himself as a weak man, a man made prisoner to the evil designs of another because of the banker’s power to ruin his reputation, his family, his life. He insisted that he had not taken part in Mascari’s murder, had not known what was going to happen that fatal night in Crespo’s apartment. When he was reminded of the shoes, he said at first that he had bought them to wear during Carnevale, but when he was told that they had been identified as the shoes that were found with Mascari’s body, he said that he had bought them because Ravanello had told him to and that he had never known what the shoes were going to be used for.

  Yes, he had taken his share of the rents from the Lega apartments, but he had not wanted the money; he had wanted only to protect his good name. Yes, he had been in Crespo’s apartment the night that Mascari was killed, but it had been Malfatti who did the killing; he and Ravanello had then had no choice but to help in disposing of the body. The plan? Ravanello’s. Malfatti’s. As to Crespo’s murder, he knew nothing about it and insisted that the murderer must have been some dangerous client that Crespo took back to his apartment with him.

  He unfailingly presented the picture of a man much like many others, led astray by his lusts, then dominated by fear. Who could fail to feel some sympathy or compassion for a man such as this?

  And so it went for two hours, Santomauro maintaining his innocent complicity in these crimes, insisting that his only motivation had been concern for his family and a desire to spare them from the shame and scandal of his secret life. As Brunetti listened, he heard Santomauro become more and more convinced of the truth of what he was saying. And at that, Brunetti called off the questioning, sickened by the man and his posturing.