GB_23: By Its Cover: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery Page 16

  ‘Was it something about his clients?’ Brunetti asked, convinced that the comments of tourists were often a window on the real world.

  ‘No. It came out of the blue.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Some time ago he had a phone call at home. A man, who knew his name, said they were making a survey of all the people who worked in the tourist industry.’

  ‘They?’ Brunetti asked and sipped at his wine.

  ‘That’s what he asked: who they were. The man said he was “La Finanza”.’ Paola saw his look and answered it. ‘That’s right, “La Finanza”.’

  ‘What’s the Guardia di Finanza want from him?’

  ‘The man said he thought he might be interested in subscribing to some magazines.’

  ‘What sort of magazines?’

  ‘He described five of them and said he was sure Bruno would want to subscribe to at least one of them.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘What do you think he did? He agreed.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s at risk, Guido. He’s at risk like all of us. How many of us obey the law all the time? When we go to dinner in a restaurant, do you get a ricevuta fiscale?’

  ‘Not if I know the people, no,’ Brunetti answered indignantly, as if he’d been asked if he were a shoplifter.

  ‘That’s against the law, Guido. You’re at risk too. In your case, they’d probably give you a break once you told them you were a policeman,’ she said, then added, ‘But they don’t give breaks to people who aren’t members of the club.’

  ‘Like Bruno?’ he asked.

  ‘Like him and all the other people who are honest but who can’t live honestly. His rent has been tripled in the last ten years, and fewer and fewer people want to stay on the Lido. So he’s breaking the law to survive, earning money and not paying tax on it. Whoever called him knew that. And used it.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘About four months ago.’

  Brunetti took another sip of his wine but left the artichokes where they were. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘The magazines come by courier, and he has to pay the courier every time. So he has no idea who they’re coming from.’

  ‘What magazines are they?’

  ‘The history of the Guardia Costiera, the contribution of the Navy to our society. That sort of thing.’

  He knew them well. Every police station in the country had them lying around, unread, unreadable histories of different branches of the state services.

  ‘Did this person give any other information?’ he asked. ‘Other than to say he was calling for “La Finanza”?’

  ‘No, nothing. And the phone he called from had the number blocked.’

  Brunetti sat back. ‘So there’s only the courier, who gets the money. And he could come from anywhere.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asked.

  ‘Because he paid them. Because the two possibilities are that it’s a fraud – which I think it is – or that the Finanza is actually doing this. Bruno believed it was the Finanza. And paid what he believed was blackmail in order to be left alone.’

  There was nothing he could say and nothing he could ask.

  ‘That’s how we live now, Guido. If some organ of the state calls and threatens us, or we believe it’s an organ of the state, we pay them. That’s what we’re reduced to, paying blackmail money to the state to stay safe from it.’

  Brunetti refused to rise to the bait. He wanted to eat his artichokes in peace, finish his wine, and go back to the kitchen to see what was waiting for him in the oven. He did not want to get involved in this, did not even want to comment on it. How else did she expect Bruno to react to a threat like this?

  He looked at the remaining artichokes, wondering what he should do. To eat them was to suggest lack of interest in what Paola had said; not to eat them was to have to talk. He picked up his plate and glass and went back to the kitchen. In the oven, he found an oval dish covered with aluminium foil. He touched the side with an exploratory finger, felt that he could safely pull it out. He did, then peeled back the foil.

  Two tiny quails lay between a pile of fresh peas and an even larger pile of tiny roasted new potatoes, the whole dish redolent of the cognac in which the quails had been baked. The woman might be a troublemaker, but she knew how to cook. Shoving his remaining artichokes to one side, he transferred everything in the dish to his plate, then set it on the table. He took the wine from the fridge. He’d stick with white. He retrieved Il Gazzettino from the living room, where he had left it that morning. Back in the kitchen, he placed the newspaper to the side of his plate and continued reading where he had left off. Like the food, that morning’s news should not be leftovers for the following day: best to consume them while they were still warm.

  When he had finished, he put his plate in the sink and ran hot water on it, then found a bottle of cognac and grabbed two glasses. He went down to Paola’s study with what he thought of as a peace offering, though there was no need to establish peace.

  She looked up and smiled as he came in, either at his return or at the bottle he brought with him. This time, she pulled back her feet to give him more room and set her book aside. ‘I hope you liked them,’ she said.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said and held up the bottle. ‘I thought I’d continue with the theme of cognac.’

  She reached for the glass he offered her. ‘That’s very kind, Guido.’ She took a sip and nodded her thanks.

  ‘I came to tell you what’s happened,’ he said, sitting at her feet.

  His second glass of cognac stood untouched in front of him when he finished telling Paola about Franchini’s murder and the books they had found in his apartment.

  ‘But why would anyone kill him?’ she asked, and in response, he repeated the remark Franchini’s brother had made.

  That stopped her. She started to speak but, apparently finding no words, looked away and raised a hand into the air, only to let it drop.

  ‘I believe him,’ Brunetti said. ‘I can’t explain why I do, but I do. He kept crying, even after he told me.’ Brunetti passed on the other things Franchini’s brother had told him: the blackmailing, Aldo’s fierce desire to rise in the world, talk of some new plan, and his happiness at having found someone to hunt with.

  ‘And now he’s dead,’ Paola said.

  ‘Yes.’ In all these years, she had never asked him for details of the deaths he investigated. That someone was dead by the hand of another person was more than enough horror for Paola.

  She set her glass on the table in the manner she had when she was finished drinking. Brunetti noticed that the glass was almost full. So, he was surprised to see when he looked at the cognac he no longer wanted, was his own.

  ‘What do you do now?’

  ‘Tomorrow afternoon I have an appointment to speak to a woman who knew him.’

  ‘Knew him how?’ Paola asked.

  ‘That’s one of the questions I’ll ask her,’ Brunetti said simply.

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Why her ex-companion assaulted him.’

  Her curiosity was evident in the look she gave him.

  ‘It was about six months ago. They had some sort of run-in, and Franchini ended up in the hospital with a broken nose. He didn’t press charges. The man who hit him’s in jail now for something else. So he didn’t do it.’

  ‘At least that’s something,’ Paola said, then asked, ‘Why talk to her?’

  ‘To get her to tell me more about Franchini. All he is to me now is a former priest who sat in a library for years, reading the Fathers of the Church, but who, his brother said, was not an honest man. And whose house was filled with stolen books.’ He paused for a moment and then added, ‘I want to see if her story is the same as his brother’s and which one is true.’

  ‘But can’t they both be?’ Paola asked.

  Brunetti considered this for some time and finally asked, ‘Why
not?’

  17

  Brunetti kept this in mind the following afternoon as he crossed the Piazza on his way to Florian’s. He’d had lunch with Paola and the kids; by mutual agreement they had ignored last night’s conversation in favour of trying to arrive at a general decision about where to go for a vacation that summer. ‘Assuming your boss doesn’t make you stay in the city to keep an eye out for pickpockets,’ Chiara had observed, warning Brunetti that he was perhaps too open with his comments about his job.

  ‘More likely it’ll be boat licences and speeding on the Canal Grande,’ Paola had suggested as he got to his feet. He leaned down to kiss the top of her head. ‘I’ll call if I’m going to be late,’ he told her.

  Though they had all talked about it, they had – as was ever the case – failed to agree where to spend their vacation. Paola didn’t much care where they went, so long as she could loll around all day, reading, then go out to dinner in the evening. The children were content if they had a beach and could go swimming all day. Brunetti wanted the chance to walk long distances surrounded by mountains, come back in the afternoon and fall asleep over a book. Trouble lay ahead, he feared. Terrible thing, giving children the vote.

  He came into the Piazza from the Merceria and cut across it in a diagonal that took him towards Florian’s. He paused in the centre of the Piazza and turned to look at the façade of the Basilica. How absurd it was, how excessive, a building thrown together from bits and pieces of loot from Byzantium. What men in their right minds could have designed what he was looking at: the doors, the domes, the light glinting off golden tiles? Hoping to break the building’s spell, he took his phone and dialled Signorina Elettra’s number, struck by the oddness of making a phone call while looking at copies of the horses pillaged from Constantinople almost a thousand years before. Signorina Elettra, who had not appeared in the office that morning, did not answer, leaving him to meet Signora Marzi without the advantage to be had from information about her life and doings.

  Inside the café he was struck, as he always was, by the elegant dilapidation of the place. The tablecloths were spotless; the waiters gleamed in white jackets and provided quick and friendly service. But the paint on the walls was faded and chipped, streaked with the marks from the backs of the chairs that had rubbed against them for decades. The velvet on the settees, smoothed by generations of tourists, reminded him of the bald patches on his children’s long-abandoned teddy bears.

  He told the waiter he was expecting a female guest and said she would ask for him by name. He went into the first room on the left and said he’d order when his companion arrived, then returned to the front door and selected that day’s Gazzettino from the newspapers available for guests.

  The story of Franchini’s murder was at the bottom right of the front page of the second section and said only that he had been found dead ‘in mysterious circumstances’ and that the police were conducting an investigation. The victim’s name and age were given correctly, and it was reported that he had formerly been a priest and had worked at a school in Vicenza. Brunetti wondered how they had learned all of this so quickly, which member of the police had spoken to them, and with what authority.

  ‘Signor Brunetti?’ a woman’s voice asked.

  He set the paper on the next table and got to his feet. ‘Signora Marzi?’ he asked, extending his hand.

  She was tall, almost as tall as he, her hair a bit too blonde and her makeup more heavily applied than the hour warranted. Her eyes were so dark as almost to be black and were lined with mascara above and below. Her eyebrows had been plucked thin, then returned to their natural width by a black pencil that created the inverted ‘V’ so often seen in the eyebrows of cartoon characters.

  Her nose was short and turned up at the end: two faint creases began under it and ran vertically to the top of her mouth. She could be anywhere in her forties; the years would increase or decrease depending on lighting and makeup, and probably on her mood. In either case, she was a woman most men would find attractive.

  ‘Please,’ he said, motioning her to the padded bench to his left and pulling out the table so she could slip behind it. She sat, rose for a moment to smooth out her skirt, and sat again. On a man, the double-breasted jacket of the dark grey suit she wore would have been traditional, almost boring: on a woman, especially one with hair as short as hers, it was faintly provocative. There was no disguising the quality of the fabric or the cut of the suit. Under it, she wore a round-necked black sweater and a single strand of pearls. This was not a woman who bought her clothing in Coin. She placed her handbag on the empty space to her right and looked out the window into the Piazza. Lowering her eyes, she studied the objects on the table as if she had never before seen a menu or an envelope containing sugar.

  Brunetti caught the waiter’s eye. When he came to the table, Brunetti said, ‘Un caffè.’ The waiter turned his attention to the woman, who nodded. ‘Due,’ Brunetti said.

  When the waiter’s footsteps had disappeared, she raised her eyes to Brunetti’s and asked, ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me what happened that afternoon in Viale Garibaldi.’

  ‘After half a year?’ she asked. She gave him a steady look, licked at her lips, looked away.

  Brunetti shrugged. ‘Police work is like that. We settle something, and then something else happens and we have to go back and re-examine the original incident.’

  ‘What’s happened to make that necessary?’

  She had paid no particular attention to the newspaper, so it was likely she had not read about Franchini’s murder. He felt no obligation to mention it to her: let her talk as though the man were still alive.

  ‘Nothing that affects you in any way, Signora,’ he said, uncertain that this was true. ‘I’d like you to tell me what happened.’ He was careful not to ask about specific events or persons. He wanted her to believe he was interested only in the facts, as if he were simply double-checking the existing report.

  She looked up and again met Brunetti’s glance. ‘I sometimes walk down the Viale to get the vaporetto. I like it because it’s so wide and open, and there are trees.’ Brunetti nodded, as would any Venetian. ‘That morning, I saw someone I knew and stopped to talk to him. After I left, my ex-companion showed up and there was some sort of trouble between them. I wasn’t there and didn’t see what happened.’ Then, a note of exasperation slipping into her voice, she said, ‘I’ve already told the police all about this.’ Before Brunetti could comment, the waiter returned and set their coffees and two small glasses of water in front of them. He moved the ceramic bowl with the sugar packets a centimetre closer to the woman, nodded to Brunetti, and left the room.

  Brunetti poured sugar into his coffee and stirred it. He took a sip, replaced the cup. ‘You said you knew the person?’

  Instead of answering, she pulled the bowl closer. She took an envelope and tore it open slowly, poured it into her coffee and stirred it. Then she looked at Brunetti as if she had answered his question and were waiting for a different one.

  ‘You said you knew the person?’

  A trio of women, wearing hooded sweatshirts and running shoes, came in and moved chairs around until they all fitted at the table nearest the window. They spoke noisily in a language Brunetti did not recognize until one of them caught his glance and shushed the others to lower their voices.

  He turned back to Signora Marzi, who said, ‘He lived in the neighbourhood. People told me about him.’ She folded her hands in her lap, her coffee apparently forgotten. Brunetti waited for her to say something else. Her right hand slid free of the other and began to finger the fabric of the tablecloth as though she were trying to decide if it were of a quality worth buying.

  Brunetti finished his coffee, sat back and crossed his arms.

  Looking up from the tablecloth, she said, ‘I told you: I didn’t see what happened.’

  ‘How did you hear about it?’ Brunetti asked.

  She seemed gen
uinely surprised by the question. ‘You called me.’ Seeing his momentary confusion she explained: ‘The police.’ Making no attempt to disguise her exasperation, she went on, ‘I’d already made a number of complaints about him, so they called me when they arrested him.’ Then, truculently, ‘Don’t you people keep records?’

  ‘The man was hurt,’ he told her, ignoring her provocation.

  ‘My ex-companion is a very strong man,’ she said.

  ‘You said you knew the man on the bench.’

  ‘Why are you asking me all of this?’

  ‘I don’t understand why your companion would hit a man just because you spoke to him.’

  Signora Marzi opened her purse and pulled out a cotton handkerchief covered with small pink roses. She used it to wipe at the corners of her mouth, even though she had yet to touch her coffee. The bright pink lip gloss she had been wearing when she came in had all but disappeared. She refolded the handkerchief and replaced it, opening the bag long enough for Brunetti to recognize the discreet Hermès logo on the inner lining.

  ‘It’s enough that I was talking to him,’ she finally said. Again, she moistened her lips.

  ‘Had you spoken to him before?’

  ‘Someone told me he was a priest, so I thought I could trust him,’ she offered by way of answer. She did not seem the type of woman who would trust a priest – or anyone, for that matter – but he nodded in understanding.

  ‘Was it something you couldn’t trust your friends with?’ he asked.

  She folded her hands in her lap again. ‘I wanted to talk to someone about him.’ Brunetti worked out the pronoun.

  ‘I see. And did the priest help you?’ he asked, failing to say that it seemed a strangely intimate subject to discuss with a man she barely knew. Standing in front of a park bench.

  Her glance was quick and suspicious, as if she feared he knew far more than he was saying. She shook her head. ‘No. He didn’t help. He said he wasn’t a priest any more and didn’t have any advice to give me.’