by Donna Leon
Entering, he saw the office with her eyes: a desk covered with small landslides of papers, a telephone, a ceramic mug with a badger — given to him last Christmas by Chiara — filled with pencils and pens, an empty glass. The walls, he noticed for the first time, needed paint. A photo of the President of the Republic hung alone behind his desk, to its left a crucifix Brunetti had never cared enough about to take down. Last year’s calendar had still not been removed from one wall, and the door to the wardrobe hung open, his scarf trailing on to the floor. Brunetti took her coat and hung it in the armadio, kicking the scarf inside while he was there. She placed her gloves inside her hat and handed them to him. He put them on the shelf, closed the door, and went across to his desk.
‘I like to see where people work,’ she said, glancing around as he pulled out a chair for her. When she was seated, he asked whether she would like a coffee and at her refusal he took the chair beside hers and turned to face her.
She continued to gaze around the room, then out of the window, and Brunetti took the opportunity to study her. She was dressed simply in a camel-coloured sweater and a dark skirt that came halfway down her calves. Her shoes were low-heeled and looked comfortably worn in. She held a leather purse on her lap; the only jewellery she wore was a wedding ring. He noticed that the warmth had caused the flood of colour to recede from her cheeks.
‘Is that why you’re here?’ Brunetti finally asked: ‘to see where I work?’
‘No, not at all,’ she answered and leaned aside to place her purse on the floor. When she looked up, he thought he saw a certain tension in her face, but then he abandoned the idea: her emotions registered only in her voice, rich and deep and as lovely as any he had ever heard.
Brunetti crossed his legs and put an interested half-smile on his face. He had outwaited masters, and he could outwait her if he had to.
‘It’s really about my husband that I’ve come,’ she said. ‘His business.’
Brunetti nodded, saying nothing.
‘Last night at dinner, he told me that someone has been trying to get into the records of some of his companies.’
‘Do you mean a break-in?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew she did not.
Her lips moved and her voice softened. ‘No, no, not at all. I should have been clearer. He told me that one of his computer people — I know they have titles, these people, but I don’t know what they are — told him yesterday that there was evidence that someone had broken into their computers.’
‘And stolen something?’ Brunetti asked. Then he said, meaning it, ‘I have to confess that I’m probably not the right person to bring this to. I mean I don’t have a very sophisticated understanding of what people can do with computers.’ He smiled to show his good faith.
‘But you know the law, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘About things like this?’ Brunetti asked, and at her nod, was forced to say, ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. A magistrate would be a better person to ask, or a lawyer.’ Then, as if the idea had just come to him, he said, ‘Surely, your husband must have a lawyer he could ask.’
She looked at her hands, neatly folded in her lap, and said, ‘Yes, he does. But he told me he doesn’t want to ask him. In fact, after he told me about this, he said in essence that he doesn’t want to do anything about it.’ She looked up at Brunetti.
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Brunetti said, meeting her eyes.
‘The man who told him, this computer person, said that all the person did was open some files that held his bank statements and property holdings, as if they were trying to find out what he owned and what it was worth.’ Again, she looked at her hands, and when Brunetti followed her glance, he saw that they were the hands of a young woman. ‘The man told him,’ she went on, ‘that it could have been an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza.’
‘May I ask why you’re here, then?’ he asked, his curiosity not at all forced.
Her lips were full, red, and as he watched, her top teeth rubbed across the bottom one nervously in a kind of harmless chewing. The young hand brushed away a strand of pale hair that had strayed across her cheek, and he caught himself wondering if her skin still had normal sensitivity or if she had known it was there only because it had fallen across her eye.
After some time — and Brunetti had the feeling she had to find the right way to explain it even to herself — she said, ‘I’m worried about why he doesn’t want to do anything about it.’ Before Brunetti could ask, she went on, ‘What happened is illegal. Well, I assume it is. It’s an invasion, in a way; a break-in. My husband told the computer man he would take care of it, but I know he’s not going to do anything about it.’
‘I’m still not sure I understand why you’ve come to talk to me,’ Brunetti said. ‘I can’t do anything about it unless your husband makes a formal denuncia. And then a magistrate would have to examine the facts, the evidence, and see if a crime has taken place and, if so, what sort of crime, or how serious a crime.’ He leaned forward and said, speaking as to a friend, ‘And all of that would take some time, I’m afraid.’
‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I don’t want that to happen. If my husband doesn’t want to pursue it, that’s his decision. What I’m afraid of is why he doesn’t want to.’ Her glance was level when she said, ‘And I thought I could ask you.’ She did not explain further.
‘If it’s the Guardia di Finanza,’ Brunetti began after some time, seeing no reason not to speak honestly, at least about this, ‘then it would be about taxes, and that’s another area where I have no competence.’ At her nod, he went on, ‘Only your husband and his accountants know about that.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she quickly agreed. ‘I don’t think there’s anything to worry about there.’
That, Brunetti understood, could mean a number of things. Either her husband did not cheat on his taxes, which Brunetti was not prepared to believe, or his accountants were experts at making it appear that he did not, an altogether more likely explanation. Or, just as easily, given Cataldo’s wealth and position, he knew someone in the Guardia di Finanza who could make any irregularities disappear. ‘Can you think of another possibility?’ he asked.
‘It might be any number of things,’ she said with a seriousness that Brunetti found troubling.
‘Such as?’ he inquired.
She waved his question away then reunited her hands, latching her fingers, and said, looking across at him. ‘My husband is an honest man, Commissario.’ She waited for him to comment, and when he did not, she repeated, ‘Honest.’ She gave Brunetti more time to comment, and still he did not. ‘I know that sounds an unlikely thing to say about a man as successful as he is.’ Suddenly, just as if Brunetti had voiced opposition, she said, ‘It sounds like I’m talking about his business dealings, but I’m not. I don’t know much about them, and I don’t want to. That’s his son’s concern — his right — and I don’t want to be involved. I can’t speak of what he does in business. But I know him as a man, and I know he’s honest.’
Brunetti listened, part of him making a list of men he himself knew to be honest men, all of them driven to dishonesty by the various depredations of the state. In a country where false bankruptcy was no longer a serious crime, it took little for a man to be considered honest.
‘. . he were a Roman, he would be considered an honour-able man,’ she concluded, and Brunetti had little difficulty in reconstructing the parts that his own thoughts had distracted him from hearing.
‘Signora,’ he began, deciding to try to establish a more formal tone, ‘I’m still not sure I can be of any help to you here.’ He smiled to show his good will, adding, ‘It would help me immeasurably if you told me, specifically, what it is you’re afraid of.’
She began, in a gesture he thought entirely unconscious, to rub the skin of her forehead with her right hand. She turned and looked out the window as she did it, and Brunetti, not without a twinge of discomfort, watched the trail of whitened skin that was left behind by each stroke.
She surprised him by getting suddenly to her feet and going over to the window, then surprised him again by asking, without glancing back, ‘That’s San Lorenzo, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She continued to gaze across the canal at the eternally unrestored church. Finally she said, ‘He was put on the grill and roasted to death, wasn’t he? They wanted him to renounce his faith, I believe.’
‘So the story has it,’ Brunetti answered.
She turned then and came back towards him, saying, ‘So much suffering, these Christians. They really loved it, couldn’t have enough of it.’ She sat and looked at him. ‘I think that’s one of the reasons I admire the Romans so much. They didn’t like to suffer. They seem not to have minded dying, were really quite noble about it. But they didn’t enjoy pain — at least if they had to suffer it themselves — not the way the Christians did.’
‘Have you finished with Cicero and moved on to the Christian era, then?’ he asked ironically, hoping to lighten her mood.
‘No,’ she said, ‘the Christians really don’t interest me. As I said, they like suffering too much.’ She stopped talking and gave him a long, level look, and then said, ‘At the moment, I’m reading Ovid’s Fasti. I never did before, never saw the need.’ Then, with special emphasis, as if the words were being forced from her and as if to suggest she thought Brunetti might want to go home and begin reading it, she added, ‘Book Two. Everything’s there.’
Brunetti smiled and said, ‘It’s been so long that I don’t even remember if I’ve ever read it. You must forgive me.’ It was the best he could think of to say.
‘Oh, there’s nothing to forgive, Commissario, in not having read it,’ she said, her mouth hinting at a smile. Then, her voice suddenly different and her face returned to immobility, she added, ‘Nothing to forgive in what’s there, either.’ Again, that long look. ‘You might want to read it some time.’
Then, with no transition, as if this incursion into Roman culture had not taken place or she had seen his growing restlessness, she said, ‘It’s kidnapping that I’m afraid of.’ She nodded a few times as if to confirm it as the truth. ‘I know it’s foolish, and I know Venice is a place where it never happens, but it’s the only explanation I can come up with. Someone might have done it because they wanted to know how much Maurizio might be able to pay.’
‘If you were kidnapped?’
Her surprise was completely unfeigned, ‘Who’d want to kidnap me?’ As if hearing herself, she hastened to add, ‘I thought of his son, Matteo. He’s the heir.’ Then, with a shrug that Brunetti could describe only as self-effacing, she added, ‘Even his ex-wife. She’s very rich, and she has a villa out in the countryside near Treviso.’
Speaking lightly, Brunetti said, ‘It sounds as if you’ve been thinking about this a great deal, Signora.’
‘Of course I have. But I don’t know what to think. I don’t know anything about all of this: that’s why I came to you, Commissario.’
‘Because it’s my line of work?’ he asked, smiling.
If nothing else, his tone broke her mounting tension: she relaxed visibly. ‘You could say that, I suppose,’ she said with a small laugh. ‘I suppose I needed someone I trust who can tell me I’m worrying about nothing.’
The plea was there: Brunetti could not have ignored it had he wanted to. Luckily, though, he had an answer to give her. ‘Signora, as I told you, I’m not an expert on these things, certainly not on the way the Guardia di Finanza chooses to conduct its business. But I think in this case the correct answer to who’s been trying to break in could also be the most obvious one, and the Finanza seems to be it.’ Unable to bring himself to the lie direct, Brunetti could do no more than tell himself that it could be the Finanza.
‘La Finanza?’ she asked in the voice of every patient who has ever received the less-bad diagnosis.
‘I think so. Yes. I don’t know anything about your husband’s businesses, but I’m sure they must be protected against anything except the most expert invasion.’
She shook her head and raised her shoulders in an admission of ignorance. Brunetti chose his words carefully. ‘It’s been my experience that kidnappers are not sophisticated people; much of what they do is impulsive.’ He saw how attentively she was following what he said. ‘The only people,’ he continued, ‘who could do something like this would have to have the technical skills to get past whatever barriers are in place at your husband’s companies.’ He smiled, then permitted himself a small ironic snort. ‘I must confess this is the only time in my career I’ve ever been happy to suggest to someone they’ve been the target of an exam by the Finanza.’
‘And the first time in the history of this country when someone’s been relieved to hear it,’ she finished, and this time she laughed. Her face took on the same mottled pattern Brunetti had seen when she first came in from the cold, and he realized she was blushing.
Signora Marinello got to her feet quickly, bent to retrieve her purse, then put out her hand. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Commissario,’ she said, keeping his hand in hers while she spoke.
‘He’s a lucky man, your husband,’ Brunetti said.
‘Why?’ she asked, and he thought she meant it.
‘To have someone so concerned about him.’
Most women would smile at a compliment like this, or feign false modesty. Instead she pulled back from him and gave him a level gaze that was almost fierce in its intensity. ‘He’s my only concern, Commissario.’ She thanked him again, waited while he retrieved her things from the armadio, and left the room before Brunetti could move to the door to open it for her.
Brunetti took his normal seat behind his desk, resisting the temptation to phone Signorina Elettra and ask if her foray into the computers of Signor Cataldo’s businesses could have been detected. To do so would require that he explain his curiosity, and that was something he preferred not to do. He had not lied: a search by the Finanza was far more likely than an attempt by some putative kidnapper to gain information about Cataldo’s wealth. A search by the Finanza, however, was far less likely than the one he had asked Signorina Elettra to perform, but that was hardly information that would have comforted Signora Marinello. He had to find a way to warn Signorina Elettra that her deft hand had faltered while inside Cataldo’s computer systems.
Though it made sense that a wife should be worried to learn that her husband’s business interests were being tampered with, Brunetti thought her reaction had been excessive. Everything she had said to Brunetti that evening at dinner had revealed a sensible, intelligent woman: her response to her husband’s information suggested a different person entirely.
After a while, Brunetti decided he was spending too much time and energy on something that was not related to any of his current cases. In order to make a clean break with it before getting back to work, he would go and have a coffee or perhaps un’ombra to clear his mind.
Sergio saw him come in and, instead of his usual smile, narrowed his eyes and moved his chin minimally to the right, in the direction of the booths near the window. In the last one, Brunetti made out the back of a man’s head; narrow skull, short hair. The angle was such that he could see, opposite the first man and facing him, the halo of another man’s head; wider, with longer hair. He recognized those ears, pressed down and out by years spent under a policeman’s cap. Alvise: and that identified the back of Lieutenant Scarpa’s head. Ah, so much for the idea that Alvise would return to the flock and mingle again as an equal with his fellow officers.
Approaching the bar, Brunetti gave Sergio an equally minimal nod and asked quietly for a coffee. Something in Alvise’s expression must have alerted Scarpa, who turned and saw Brunetti. Scarpa’s face remained impassive, but Brunetti saw that Alvise’s face was crossed by something stronger than surprise — guilt, perhaps? The machine hissed, then a cup and saucer rattled and slid across the zinc bar.
None of them spoke; Brunetti nodded at the two men, turned back to the bar and ripped
open a packet of sugar. He poured it into his coffee and stirred it around slowly, asked Sergio for the newspaper, and spread the Il Gazzettino on the counter beside him. He decided to wait them out and settled in to read.
He glanced at the first page, where the world outside Venice was referred to, then skipped over to page seven, lacking the mental energy — and the stomach — to endure the five pages of political chatter; one could hardly call it news. The same faces had been appearing and the same things happening, the same promises made — with a few minimal variations in cast and title — for the last forty years. The lapels of their jackets expanded and narrowed as fashion dictated, but those same front trotters remained in the trough. They opposed this, and they opposed that, and by their selfless efforts they vowed to bring the current government crashing down. So that what? So that, next year, he could stand at the bar and drink a coffee and read the same words, now in the mouths of the new opposition?
It was almost with relief that he turned the page. The woman convicted of infanticide, still at home, still crying out her innocence through the mouths of yet another legal team. And who now responsible in her mind for the murder of her son — extraterrestrials? More flowers placed at the curve in the road where four more teenagers had died a week before. Yet more uncollected garbage filling the streets in the suburbs of Naples. Another worker crushed to death by heavy equipment at his workplace. Another judge transferred away from the city where he had begun an investigation of a cabinet minister.
Brunetti slid the Venezia section out from under the first. A fisherman from Chioggia, arrested for assault after coming home drunk and attacking a neighbour with a knife. Yet more protests against the damage done by the cruise ships using the Giudecca Canal. Two more vendors going out of business at the fish market. Another five-star hotel to open next week. The mayor denounces the increased number of tourists.
Brunetti pointed down to the last two articles. ‘Lovely: the city administration can’t give out licences for hotels fast enough, and when they’re not busy with that, they’re denouncing the number of tourists,’ he said to Sergio.