A Question of Belief cb-19

by Donna Leon

  Back in his office, a wilted Brunetti stood by the window in search of any passing breeze and considered new connections and the possibilities they might create. Penzo and Fontana as loving friends: whatever that meant. Or as lovers: he did not exclude that possibility. Fontana and Judge Coltellini as adversaries over the whereabouts of legal documents. Fontana as the other side of two ‘battaglie’ of words with his fellow tenants. And then Signor Puntera, wealthy businessman and owner of the palazzo, with a finger in this and that and therefore many reasons to want accommodating friends at the Courthouse.

  He gave up on any hope of solace from the heat and went down to Signorina Elettra’s office. Her door was closed. He knocked and, at a sound, entered. Into Paradise. It was cool, and it was dry, and he felt an automatic shiver, whether of cold or delight he did not know. She sat behind her computer wearing a light blue cardigan that appeared to be — could this be in August? — cashmere.

  He stepped inside and quickly shut the door. ‘How did he manage it?’ he demanded. Then, unable to restrain his surprise, ‘Did you help him?’

  ‘Please, Commissario,’ she said in an indignant voice. ‘You know my feelings about air conditioning.’ Indeed, he did. They had had a near falling-out over the subject, he maintaining that it was necessary for some people and in some circumstances — in which he silently included his own home in the months of July and August — while she argued that it was wasteful and thus immoral.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Lieutenant Scarpa,’ she said with unveiled contempt, ‘has a friend who rebuilds air conditioners; he had him bring one over here this morning and install it in the Vice-Questore’s office.’ Sitting up straighter, she added, ‘I told him I had no need of one: enough cold air floods in here every time the door opens.’

  At this, the door behind Signorina Elettra’s desk slammed back against the wall and, instead of cold air, Patta erupted into the room. ‘There you are. I’ve been calling your office for hours. Get in here.’ He did not shout: he did not have to. The force of his anger almost reversed the effect of the air conditioning.

  The Vice-Questore turned and started back into his office, but because the door had slammed shut from the force with which he had opened it, he had to open it again.

  Brunetti had time to cast a glance at Signorina Elettra, but she raised her hands in an empty gesture and shook her head. Brunetti followed Patta into his office and closed the door.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ Patta demanded when he was standing behind his desk. He sat but did not wave Brunetti to a chair, which meant that things were bad and Patta was serious.

  Brunetti drew closer to the desk, careful to keep his hands at his sides. ‘What’s wrong, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Patta repeated, then again, should anyone hiding behind his filing cabinet not have heard him the first time, repeated, ‘What’s wrong?’ Then, sure that everyone had heard, he said, ‘What’s wrong is that I’ve had two phone calls this morning, both of them reporting your all but criminal behaviour. That’s what’s wrong.’

  ‘May I ask who called you, sir?’ Brunetti asked, already fearing the worst.

  ‘I was called by Signora Fulgoni’s husband, who said his wife was much disturbed by the tenor of your interrogation.’ Patta raised a hand to wave away any attempt Brunetti might make to explain or defend his behaviour. ‘Worse, he told me that you dared to go downstairs and question a child.’ The thought of the consequences of this pulled Patta up from his chair; he leaned over his desk and said, voice booming against the low hum of the air conditioner, ‘A child, Brunetti. Do you know how much trouble this could cause me?’

  ‘Who was the second call from, sir?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘That’s what I was about to tell you. From the Director of Social Services, saying she’d had a complaint about police harassment of a child and asking me what was going on.’ Brunetti stifled the desire to ask who had filed the complaint, knowing that Patta would not tell him.

  Patta lowered himself into his chair and said, voice calmer, ‘Luckily, her husband is in the Lions Club with me, so I know them fairly well. I assured her that it was a complete misunderstanding, and she appeared to believe me. At least there will be no formal investigation.’ His relief was palpable. ‘That’s one less thing to worry about.’

  Brunetti stood still, deciding that the best tactic was to let the waves of Patta’s anger break against him until the tide turned, and then to offer an explanation.

  ‘Fulgoni is a bank director,’ Patta said. ‘Do you have any idea how influential a man like that can be? He’s also a friend of the Questore’s.’ Patta paused to let the full enormity of this sink in and then said in a calmer voice, ‘But I think I convinced him not to call and complain.’

  Patta closed his eyes and took a deep breath, the better to demonstrate to Brunetti just how harshly tried was his forbearance by this most recent example of his inferior’s rashness and irresponsibility, yet more evidence of how sorely tried he was by the perils of office.

  ‘Very well,’ Patta said tiredly. ‘Stop standing there. Sit down and tell me your version of what happened.’

  Brunetti did as told, careful to sit up straight with his legs together, hands on his knees: none of this passive-aggressive business of arms crossed over his chest. ‘I did speak to Signora Fulgoni, Vice-Questore: according to Lieutenant Scarpa’s report, she and her husband established the time before which the murder could not have taken place. I was curious as to whether they might have noticed anything unusual or out of place. I wanted to know about those four storerooms: someone could easily have hidden in there.’

  ‘Fulgoni didn’t say anything about that,’ Patta said with the suspicion of a man accustomed to being lied to. ‘He said you asked personal questions.’

  Brunetti plastered a look of astonishment across his face, as if offended at such a suggestion, if only he had the right to be. ‘No, sir. As soon as she answered my question about the time she and her husband arrived, I did nothing more than compliment her home and ask her if she was acquainted with the Fontanas. She said she was not, and Vianello and I left.’

  ‘And went downstairs to interrogate that child,’ Patta said with a full return to his former anger.

  Brunetti raised his hands to ward off unwarranted criticism. ‘That’s either a misunderstanding or an exaggeration, sir. We went downstairs and rang the bell. A child spoke through the door and I asked to speak to her mother. When the door opened, I saw a woman standing in the back of the apartment’ — he said, not finding it necessary to provide a physical description of the woman — ‘and assumed it was her mother. So I went in, hoping to speak to her, but as soon as I realized the woman was not the girl’s mother, Vianello and I left. Immediately, sir. Vianello can confirm this.’

  ‘I’m sure he would,’ Patta said with one of those flashes of sobriety that had for years kept Brunetti from being able to dismiss him as a complete fool.

  ‘How are we going to present this?’ Patta asked. ‘I’ve seen the autopsy report,’ he added. ‘I doubt it will be very long before the press get hold of it.’

  ‘Not from Rizzardi,’ Brunetti said so hotly that Patta shot him a warning glance.

  ‘Dottor Rizzardi is not the only person who works in the pathology laboratory, as you might recall, nor the only person to have access to the report,’ Patta said. ‘Once this is known, how do we play it?’

  Brunetti studied the legs of Patta’s desk, thinking about Signora Fontana and for how long she had kept herself from knowing certain things and how she had managed to do it. What did mothers dream of for their sons? And from their sons? A happy life? Grandchildren? Reasons to be proud of them? Brunetti knew women who wanted only that their sons stay free of drugs and out of jail; others who wanted them to marry a beautiful woman, make a fortune, and win social status; and some very few who simply wanted them to be happy. What had Signora Fontana permitted herself to want for her son?


  ‘Well?’ Patta’s voice summoned back Brunetti’s wandering thoughts.

  ‘Rizzardi told me that it will be some time before the lab tests are back, sir,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so I think we should look for whoever might have wanted to kill. .’

  Before Brunetti could name Fontana, Patta cut him short, saying, ‘He doesn’t sound like the sort of man anyone would want to kill. This could have been a street crime.’

  The temptation came to Brunetti to ask who, then, would so savagely have beaten the life out of him, but caution stayed the impulse and instead he said, ‘So it would seem, Vice-Questore. But someone did want to kill him, and someone has.’ He knew Patta well enough to know that he would now suggest that the police list the crime as a possible mugging, which Patta probably thought would tranquillize the people of the city. Consequently, Brunetti delivered a pre-emptive strike, saying, ‘It might be rash to speak of street crime, Vice-Questore. No one wants to come to a city where people get killed in muggings.’

  Though Patta was Sicilian, Brunetti knew the Vice-Questore had spent enough time among the politicians and what passed for high society in the city to have absorbed the Venetian faith in tourism. Sacrifice small children, round up the local population and sell them as slaves, slaughter all men of voting age, rape virgins on the altars of the gods: do all this, and more, but do not lay a hand upon a tourist or upon tourism. The sword of Mars was far less potent than their credit cards; their charges conquered all.

  ‘. . you paying attention to me, Brunetti?’

  ‘Of course, Signore. I was trying to think of a way we could place this in the press.’ Brunetti, too, had learned the language of accommodation.

  Patta folded his arms across his chest and looked at the surface of his desk, as clear of papers as his mind of uncertainty. ‘The results of the autopsy are going to be made public sooner or later, so I think what we have to say is that we are beginning to suspect that his death was linked to his private life.’

  ‘Without any evidence?’ Brunetti asked, his thoughts still on Fontana’s mother.

  ‘Of course there’s evidence. There’s the semen of another man.’

  ‘That’s not what killed him,’ Brunetti shot back rashly.

  Patta braced his elbows on the desk and pressed his lips against his folded hands, as if hoping to restrain whatever he wanted to say to Brunetti. The two men sat like that for some time, and then Patta asked, ‘Do you want to place this story in the papers, or shall I ask Lieutenant Scarpa to do it?’

  In his most moderate, reasonable voice, Brunetti said, ‘I think it would be better if the Lieutenant did it, sir.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to do it, Brunetti? After all, some of these reporters are your friends.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but if I ask them to print it, I’d have to tell them I don’t believe it. The Lieutenant is far more at ease speaking to the press.’ Brunetti smiled and rose from his chair. He went to the door, opened it, and closed it quietly, pulling on it to make sure it was securely closed: he didn’t want too much of the cold air of the Vice-Questore’s office to escape.

  24

  Leaving Patta’s office, Brunetti took the course of wisdom and did not pause to talk to Signorina Elettra. He went up to his own office and called the farmhouse where Paola and the children were staying. Paola picked up on the seventh ring, answering with her name.

  ‘It’s hot and damp and the back canals stink,’ he said by way of salutation, then, ‘Why aren’t you out walking?’

  ‘We were out all day, Guido. I was out on the patio, reading.’

  ‘Farmhouses aren’t supposed to have patios,’ Brunetti said grumpily.

  ‘Would it help if I said it’s the place where they used to slaughter pigs and the pavement slants down to a gutter where the blood was collected? And it still smells faintly of pigs’ blood when the sun shines on it directly, making it impossible for me to devote my full critical expertise to the nuanced dialogues of The Europeans?’

  ‘Are you lying?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make you feel better.’ Then, the demands of sentimentality dispatched, Paola asked, ‘How are things there?’

  ‘Someone important whose wife I questioned complained to Patta, so I had to listen to a quarter-hour of his paranoia this afternoon.’

  ‘What’s Patta afraid of?’ she asked.

  ‘God knows. Not being invited to the Lions Club Ball, it sounds to me. If they have one. I don’t understand him: he acts like he’s still living at the court of the Bourbons, and the greatest achievement he could aspire to is to be recognized by a prince. If he ever had lunch with your father, he’d probably expire of joy.’

  ‘My father’s not a prince,’ she observed.

  ‘Well, counts are in the same line of business.’

  ‘The monarchy was abolished in 1946,’ she said with the asperity of a historian.

  ‘You’d never know it from the bowing and scraping I’ve seen in my day,’ Brunetti replied.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, uninterested in Brunetti’s observations regarding the higher orders.

  ‘The man who was killed was described by two reliable witnesses as a good man. He argued with his neighbours, had trouble with a judge, and was probably gay.’

  ‘Rich and suggestive as that information is, I’m not sure it’s enough to help me identify the killer, if that’s why you called,’ she said.

  ‘No, it’s not much for anyone to work on, is it?’ Brunetti agreed. ‘I really called to tell you I miss you and the kids with all my heart and wish I were there.’

  ‘Get this settled and come up. We can always stay another week.’

  ‘And spoil the children?’ he asked with false horror.

  ‘And have a vacation,’ she corrected him. They exchanged further pleasantries and Brunetti set the phone down feeling refreshed.

  He began to run over his conversation with Signora Fulgoni. He had asked her to confirm when she and her husband had returned, and she had given him a time defined by the sounding of the midnight bell: few answers could be more precise. Then he had asked her how long they had been in the building, and her answer had been equally precise. It was when he asked her how they had found out about the apartment that her demeanour had changed.

  ‘Well, let’s just find out about that, shall we?’ he said out loud.

  Vianello, whom Brunetti found in the squad room, assured him that it would be a relatively simple task to find information about the rental contract because he had recently learned how to access — in the use of that euphemism he betrayed Signorina Elettra as his teacher — the files of the Commune. Good as his word, and using the names of Puntera and the Fulgonis, he had the date of the contract within minutes as well as the number of the file at the Uffico di Registri where a copy of it could be found.

  ‘Do we have to go over there to find out how much rent they’re paying?’ Brunetti asked.

  Vianello started to speak, hesitated, gave quite an embarrassed look, and said, ‘No, not really.’

  ‘I’m assuming the amount of the rent’s not in here,’ Brunetti said, tapping the screen with his fingernail.

  ‘No,’ Vianello said, then immediately corrected himself and said, ‘I mean yes.’

  ‘Which is it, Lorenzo?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘It’s in the contract, certainly, but it wouldn’t be in the computer files of the Uffico di Registri.’

  ‘Then where would it be?’

  ‘In Fulgoni’s tax declarations.’

  ‘They’re in there, too?’ Brunetti asked with a friendly nod in the direction of the computer, making it thus a metonym for information itself.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well?’ Brunetti said, waving an impatient hand at the screen.

  ‘I don’t know how to get to them,’ Vianello confessed.

  ‘Ah,’ Brunetti said and went back to his office. In
face of the likelihood that Patta was still in his office, Brunetti called Signorina Elettra and asked if she could check Pantera’s tax records and see what rent he was being paid for the three apartments in the palazzo on the Misericordia.

  ‘Nothing easier, Commissario,’ she said. He replaced the phone, fighting to prevent the casualness of her response from lessening his regard for Vianello.

  He stared at the wall for a few moments and then called her back. When she answered, he said, ‘While you’re having a look at that information, could you see if there’s a list of his legal expenses and the names of any lawyers he’s paid money to in the last few years? And any fines he might have paid for any of his companies. Or damages in a legal case. In fact, anything that connects him to lawyers or the courts.’

  ‘Of course, Signore,’ she said, and Brunetti gave silent thanks that the heavens had blessed him with this modern Mercury who so effortlessly carried messages between him and what he had come to think of over the years as Cyber-Heaven. A man of his age, with the prejudices of a person raised on paper, he was deeply unsettled by the idea that so much personal and private information was electronically available to any person able to find the way to it. Of course, he was perfectly willing to profit from Signorina Elettra’s depredations, but that did not stop him from viewing her activities as just that: depredations.

  Suddenly Brunetti was overcome by a wave of something approaching exhaustion. There was the heat, the solitude in which he was living, the need to defer to Patta in order to do what he thought right, and then there was the bloodstain on the pavement of the courtyard, the blood of that good man, Fontana.

  He left the Questura without speaking to anyone, took the Number One to San Silvestro, where he went into Antico Panificio and ordered a take-out pizza with hot sausage, ruccola, hot pepper, onion and artichokes, then went home and sat on the terrace and ate it while drinking two beers and reading Tacitus, the bleakness of whose vision of politics was the only thing he could tolerate in his current state. Then he went to bed and slept deeply and well.