CB19 A Question of Belief (2010) (16 page)

None of the police officers said anything, so she suggested, ‘He must have gone out for a walk. Perhaps he couldn’t sleep in this heat.’ She glanced at their faces in turn, as if to see which one of them believed her.

‘Did you hear him go out?’ Griffoni asked.

Signora Fontana looked stricken. ‘Why do you ask me all these things? I told you: Araldo had his own life. I don’t know what he did. What else do you expect me to tell you?’ Her voice had reached a point familiar to Brunetti, perhaps to all three of them, where the person being interviewed begins to
see himself as a victim of persecution. It was but a step from there to anger and from anger to a truculent refusal to answer more questions.

Turning to Griffoni, Brunetti said, in a voice into which he pumped the tones of reprimand, ‘I think the Signora has answered more than enough of your questions, Commissario. This is a moment of unbearable grief, and I think she should be spared more questions.’

Griffoni, no fool, lowered her head and said something contrite.

Then, quickly, before Signora Fontana could respond, Brunetti addressed her directly, saying, ‘If there is anyone from your family you’d like to have here with you, Signora, please tell us and we’ll do what we can to contact them for you.’

The old woman shook her head, and again her curls did not move. As if barely able to force out the words, she said, ‘No one. No. I think to be alone is what I want.’

Brunetti got quickly to his feet, followed by Vianello and Griffoni. ‘If there is any way we can be of help to you, Signora, you have only to call the Questura. And, speaking personally, I join my prayers to yours that
il Signore
will help you find the way to get through this terrible time.’

He led the other two – who had the good sense not to say anything – from the room and out into the corridor.

‘That was close,’ Vianello said as they walked down the stairs. Brunetti was glad the Inspector had chosen to speak: had he done so himself, it might have sounded as if he had meant his reproach to Griffoni.

‘Clever of you to look so penitent, Claudia,’ Vianello added.

‘It’s a survival skill I’ve developed in the job, I think,’ she said.

When they stepped into the courtyard, Brunetti’s heart lifted to be again in the sunlight, regardless of the residual heat of the late afternoon. ‘What did you make of her answers?’ he asked Griffoni.

It took her a moment to formulate an answer. ‘I think she’s suffering terribly. But I also think she knows more about his death than she’s letting us know.’

‘Or letting herself know,’ continued Vianello.

‘What do you mean?’ Brunetti asked, remembering that the Inspector had had time alone with the woman before their arrival.

‘I don’t think there’s any doubt that she loved him,’ the Inspector said. ‘But I’d also say that she knows something she’s not telling us and that she feels guilty about whatever it is.’

‘But not guilty enough to tell us?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Quite the opposite,’ Vianello answered immediately. ‘I have the feeling she knows something about him that would interest us in some way.’ He thought about this and continued, ‘I let her talk, asked her questions about what sort of boy he’d been, how he did at school, that sort of thing. It’s what mothers always want to tell you about their children.’

Brunetti, having done his fair share of it, thought it must be true of all parents, not just mothers, but he said nothing.

‘Whenever I got away from that or asked about what he was doing in recent years, whether he was successful at work, she always managed to pull the conversation back into the past and talked about when he was a little boy or a student.’

‘She certainly didn’t want to talk about last night,’ Griffoni said.

Vianello slipped a white envelope from the pocket of his shirt and opened it. He pulled out a small photo, full face, the sort of thing that would be used for a passport or
carta d’identità,
and showed it to them. A man in sober late middle age looked back at the three of them. His hair was thinning, he had a few age spots on his left cheek, and had the sort of unremarkable face that would make a viewer assume immediately that the subject was a civil servant with a long history of working at the same job. His face was expressionless, as though he’d grown tired of waiting for the picture to be taken and had forgotten about his smile.

‘What a sad man,’ Griffoni said with real compassion. ‘To be so sad and then to die like that. God, it’s unbearable.’ This last she said with real passion.

‘We don’t know that he was sad,’ Brunetti insisted.

She placed the tip of her finger on the bridge of Fontana’s
nose and said, ‘Just look at him. Look at those eyes. And he lived with that woman for fifty-two years.’ She made a motion that was halfway between a shrug and a shudder. ‘Poor man,’ she said.

Brunetti remembered then what Signorina Elettra had said of him: ‘Poor little man.’ Was he being presented, Brunetti wondered, with an example of feminine intuition, and he too dull to understand?

‘She said something we need to check,’ Brunetti said.

‘What?’ Griffoni asked.

‘The family. Remember what she said, that she was sure that her side of the family wouldn’t give a photo to the press?’ Both of them nodded.

‘I’d like to find out about her husband’s family, who there is, and what they have to say about Araldo and his mother. Should be easy enough to find them,’ Brunetti concluded.

‘I’ll see what I can find,’ Vianello said.

‘Zucchero,’ Brunetti called over to the young man.

‘Yes, Commissario?’ he said, approaching.

‘How much longer will you be here?’

‘Until my shift finishes at eight, sir.’

‘There’s no reason for you to stay,’ Brunetti said decisively. ‘Instead, I’d like you to see if any of the people who live near here heard anything last night. After midnight. Then, when you get back to the Questura, see if you can find Alvise. Find out if they got the names of the people who were here when they arrived.’ The young man nodded. ‘But don’t let him know that’s what you want to know. Do you understand?’ This time Zucchero nodded and smiled.

‘You know Alvise, then?’ Brunetti could not stop himself from asking.

‘He was part of my orientation team, Commissario,’ the young officer answered neutrally.

‘I see,’ Brunetti answered in the same tone.

He turned back to Griffoni and Vianello, saying, ‘Let’s get something to eat.’

They went into the first bar they came to and asked for a plate of
tramezzini
. When Vianello bit into the first one, he glanced at his watch and said, ‘Nadia’s probably just beginning to shell the shrimps.’

The others were busy eating, so he went on, ‘We got them at the beach this morning, when the fishing boats came in. Two kilos. Ten Euros, and some of them were still alive.’

‘Just like in the tourist brochures,’ Griffoni said and took a long drink of mineral water. ‘Is there traditional dancing in local costume?’

Vianello laughed and answered, ‘Just about. There’s a tourist village about three kilometres up the coast where they have all that.’

‘But not where you are?’

‘No,’ he said with surprising abruptness.

‘Where are you staying?’ Griffoni asked with real curiosity.

‘Oh, a little village to the north of Split.’

‘How’d you find it?’

‘A friend.’ Vianello got up and went over to the bar to get three more glasses of water.

Brunetti took the opportunity to say, keeping his voice low, ‘From what he told me, I’d guess it belongs to a relative of someone who . . . gives him information. He married a Croatian woman, and they rent the cottage out to friends.’

When he rejoined them, Vianello said, voice suddenly grown stern, ‘Everyone’s forgotten about my aunt.’

Brunetti was about to protest that they had a murder to deal with, but he was forced to admit that Vianello was right: they had forgotten about his aunt even before they left for vacation. It could be blamed on short staffing or the difficulty of staking out Gorini’s house, or even on the dubious legality of what they were doing, but those were only excuses, and Brunetti knew it.

‘What was your cousin going to do while you were on vacation?’ he asked Vianello.

‘He’s taking his mother to Lignano for two weeks,’ Vianello answered.

‘All right. We’ve got two weeks, then, to see what we can find out about the way this Stefano Gorini works.’

‘Even with this going on?’ Vianello asked, sounding almost contrite, waving his hand in the general direction of the
palazzo
from which they had just emerged.

‘Yes. But we need a woman.’

‘Excuse me,’ Griffoni interrupted, setting down the uneaten half of her sandwich.

‘To go to him for a consultation,’ Brunetti said, ‘or whatever it’s called.’

‘Because we’re more gullible?’ she asked neutrally.

Brunetti took the risk of saying, ‘Don’t start, Claudia’, hoping she would take it well.

She did, and smiled. ‘Sorry. I sometimes forget who I’m with.’

‘He’ll be less suspicious of a woman.’

‘Entrapment?’ Vianello suggested, warning them both of the possibility, and the effect such an accusation could have on any case that might eventually be brought against Gorini.

‘We need a woman who isn’t officially connected with the police, then,’ Brunetti said.

‘An older woman,’ Vianello added.

‘Definitely,’ Griffoni agreed.

‘You got any ideas?’ Vianello asked.

Though there were no clouds in the sky, surely they would have parted to allow the rays of Illumination to descend and encircle Brunetti’s head as he said, ‘My mother-in-law.’

‘Oh, Guido, how incredibly ridiculous. I think the heat’s got to you, really I do.’ His mother-in-law, it seemed, was going to present obstacles to her enlistment. She sat opposite him, dressed in a white linen shirt worn over black silk slacks. She had recently had her hair cut boyishly short, and Brunetti could not shake the idea that, seen from the back, she would look like a white-haired adolescent. Her motions were still quick and decisive, definitely the gestures of a younger person. The fact that he often had trouble keeping up with her when they walked Brunetti attributed to her small size: this made it easier for her to pass through crowded streets, and there was no other kind in Venice any more.

He sat, late that same afternoon, his second
spritz
on the low table in front of him, watching the reflection of the setting sun in the windows of the
palazzo
opposite Palazzo Falier. It was the first time he had relaxed all day; Brunetti put this down to the drinks and to the lofty ceilings that kept the rooms cool no matter what the outside temperature, and to the breeze that played perpetually through the windows. He
sat and watched the curtains fluttering in and out, in and out, and thought of how he could convince her to consult Signor Gorini.

‘It would help Vianello,’ he said, though she had met the Ispettore only once, and then on the street for a total of two minutes.

She glanced at him but did not bother to answer. She leaned forward and sipped at her
spritz
, her first, and set the glass back on the table. Small wrinkles radiated out from her eyes, but the skin was taut over her cheekbones and under her chin. From Paola, Brunetti knew that this was the result of genes and not the surgeon’s knife.

‘And it might help this old woman,’ he said.

‘One old woman helping another?’ she inquired lightly.

He laughed, knowing that her age was a subject about which she was not sensitive. ‘No, not at all. It’s more a case of a woman of the upper classes helping one of the worthy poor.’

‘And me without my lorgnette and tiara.’

‘No, I’m serious, Donatella. No one is going to help this woman. Someone’s manipulating her, but she’s refused to listen to her family, so they can’t help her. Her banker apparently can’t talk any sense into her. And if she knew we were investigating this Gorini – which is entirely against the rules, probably even illegal – I’m sure she’d break off relations with Vianello. And that would hurt him terribly, I know.’

‘So it becomes the responsibility of the aristocracy to save a member of the lower orders?’ she asked, her voice enclosing that last phrase in ironic quotation marks.

‘Something like that, I suppose,’ Brunetti said and took another sip of his drink.

‘Do you have proof that this Gorini person is a charlatan?’

‘He has a long record of dishonesty.’

‘Ah,’ she whispered, ‘not unlike our own dear leaders.’

Brunetti let that pass.

‘Would you like another drink?’ she asked, seeing the level of his glass.

‘No. I want to go home and get something to eat, call Paola, and go to bed. I spent hours on trains today.’ He chose not to tell her about the murder investigation that was beginning: she could read about that tomorrow.

‘Do you think this Signor Gorini is a bad man?’ she asked.

He consulted the opposite windows and was relieved to see that the light had faded even more. ‘To date, there’s been no suggestion that he’s violent,’ he finally said. ‘He’s never been accused of that. But, yes, I do think he’s a bad man. He sees where there’s a weakness, and he goes for that. In the past, he’s defrauded the state, but it seems he’s realized it’s easier to defraud people. The state will defend itself, but it has little time to defend the citizen.’ He thought about stopping here but decided not to and added, ‘And less interest.’

‘And this from an employee of the state,’ she said.

Had he been less tired, Brunetti would have been quite happy to banter with her about this, as they had countless times in the past. Paola’s sardonic vision of the world had come from her father: he was sure of that. But it was her mother who had passed on the sense of irony with which she tempered what she saw.

Brunetti put his hands on the arms of his chair and was pushing himself upright when she surprised him by saying, ‘All right.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘All right. I’ll do it. I’ll go and talk to this man and see what he’s up to. But you have to find a way for me to justify my visit to him: I can’t just walk in from the street and say I saw his name on the doorbell and thought perhaps he could find an astrological solution for all my problems, can I?’