Drawing Conclusions (28 page)

Usually people surprised us, he reflected, with the bad they did, when some dark impulse slipped the leash and brought them, and others, to ruin. And then how easy it became to find in the past the undetected symptoms of their malice. How, then, find the undetected symptoms of goodness?

When he got to his office, he tried the phone book again and found that Morandi was listed, but the phone rang
unanswered until the eighth ring, when a man’s voice said he was not at home but could be reached on his
telefonino
. Brunetti copied the number and dialled it immediately.

‘
Sì
,’ a man’s voice answered.

‘Signor Morandi?’

‘
Sì
.
Chi è?
’

‘Good day, Signor Morandi. This is Guido Brunetti. We spoke two days ago in the room of Signora Sartori.’

‘You’re the pension man?’ Morandi asked, and Brunetti thought he heard rekindled hope, knew he heard civility, in his voice.

Without answering the question, Brunetti said, ‘I’d like to speak to you again, Signor Morandi.’

‘About Maria’s pension?’

‘Among other things,’ Brunetti answered blandly. He waited for the question, the suspicion about what those other things could be. But they did not come.

Instead, Morandi asked, ‘When can we talk? Do you want me to come to your office?’

‘No, Signor Morandi; I don’t want you to trouble yourself. Perhaps we could meet somewhere nearer to you.’

‘I live behind San Marco,’ he said, unaware that Brunetti knew much more about his house than its location. ‘But I have to be at the
casa di cura
at five-thirty; perhaps we could meet near there?’

‘In the
campo
?’ Brunetti suggested.

‘Good. Thank you, Signore,’ the old man said. ‘Fifteen minutes?’

‘Good,’ Brunetti said and hung up. There was enough time, so he first went down to the evidence room and then started towards the
campo
. The late autumn sun smacked him in the back of the head but cheered him by doing so.

The old man sat on one of the benches in front of the the
casa di cura
, bent forward from the waist, tossing something to a
mini-flock of sparrows dancing around his feet. Oh God, was Brunetti to find himself seduced by a few breadcrumbs tossed to hungry birds? He steeled himself and approached the older man.

Morandi heard him coming, tossed the rest of whatever he had in his hands to the birds, and pushed himself to his feet. He smiled, all memory of their first meeting erased or ignored, and put out his hand; Brunetti took it and was surprised at how weak the other man’s grasp was. This close, he was much taller than the old man. Looking down, Brunetti could see the pink skin of his head shining through the strands of dark hair pasted across it. ‘Shall we sit down?’ Brunetti asked.

The old man bent, bracing himself with one hand, and lowered himself slowly on to the bench. Brunetti left a space between them and sat, and the birds scuttled up to Morandi’s feet. Automatically, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out some pieces of grain, which he tossed far out into the
campo
. Startled by the motion of his arm, some of the birds took flight, only to land amidst the grains just as the ones that had decided to run arrived. They did not squabble or dispute but all set to picking up as much as they could.

Morandi glanced at Brunetti and said, ‘I come here most days, so they know me by now.’ As he spoke, the birds began to approach, but he sat back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘No more. I have to talk to this gentleman now.’ The birds peeped their protest, waited a moment, then abandoned him in a group on the arrival of a white-haired woman on the other side of the
campo
.

‘I think I should tell you, Signor Morandi,’ Brunetti began, believing it best to clear his conscience, ‘I wasn’t there about the pension.’

‘You mean she’s not going to get an increase?’ he asked, leaning forward and turning to Brunetti.

‘There was no mistake: she’s already getting her pension for those years,’ Brunetti said.

‘So there won’t be an increase?’ Morandi asked again, unwilling to believe what he heard.

Brunetti shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, Signore.’

Morandi’s shoulders sank, then he pushed himself upright against the back of the bench. He looked across the
campo
, dappled in the afternoon sun, but to Brunetti it seemed as though the old man was looking across a wasteland, a desert.

‘I’m sorry to have got your hopes up,’ Brunetti said.

The old man leaned aside and placed a hand on Brunetti’s arm. He gave it a weak squeeze and said, ‘That’s all right, son. It’s never been right since she first started to get it, but at least this time we were able to hope a little bit.’ He looked at Brunetti and tried to smile. There were the same broken veins, the same battered nose and ridiculous hair, but Brunetti wondered where the man he had seen in the
casa di cura
had gone, for surely this was not the same one.

The anger or fear or whatever it was had disappeared. Here in the sunlight, Morandi was a quiet old man on a park bench. Perhaps, in the manner of a bodyguard, Morandi reacted only in defence of whom he was sent to guard and for the rest was content to sit and toss seeds to the little birds.

What then to make of his criminal record? After how many years did a record cease to matter?

‘Are you a policeman?’ Morandi surprised him by asking.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said. ‘How did you know?’

Morandi shrugged. ‘When I saw you there in the room, that was the first thing I thought, and now that you tell me you weren’t there for the pension, that’s what I go back to thinking.’

‘Why did you think I was a policeman?’ Brunetti wanted to know.

The old man glanced at him. ‘I thought you’d come. Sooner or later,’ he said, speaking in the plural. He shrugged, placed his palms on his thighs, and said, ‘I didn’t think it would take you this long, though.’

‘Why? How long has it been?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Since she died,’ Morandi answered.

‘And why did you think we’d come?’

Morandi looked at the backs of his fingers, at Brunetti, and then again at his hands. In a much softer voice, he said, ‘Because of what I did.’ That said, he stiffened his elbows and leaned forward, arms braced on his thighs. He wasn’t getting ready to get to his feet, Brunetti could see: he looked at the ground. Suddenly the birds were back, looking up at him and peeping insistently. Brunetti thought he didn’t see them.

The old man, with visible effort, pulled himself up and leaned against the back of the bench once again. He looked at his watch and abruptly got to his feet. Brunetti stood. ‘It’s time. I have to go and see her,’ Morandi said. ‘Her doctor came at five, and the sisters said I could see her after he spoke to her. But only for a few minutes. So she doesn’t have to worry about anything he said.’

He turned and walked in the direction of the
casa di cura
, just on the other side of the
campo
. The building had only the front door, so Brunetti could easily have waited in the
campo
, but he fell into step with Morandi, who seemed not to notice or, if he did, to mind.

This time, in deference to the other man’s age, Brunetti took the elevator, though he hated them and felt trapped inside. The Toltec waited in front of the elevator, smiled at Morandi, nodded to Brunetti, and took the old man’s arm to lead him through the door of the nursing home and down the corridor.

Left alone, Brunetti went into a small sitting room that had a view of the front door. He sat on a precarious chair and picked up the single magazine –
Famiglia cristiana
– that lay on a table. At a certain point, he found himself confronted with the need to choose between reading the Pope’s catechism lesson for the week or the recipe for a cheese and ham pie. The ingredients were just being slipped
into the oven when he heard footsteps coming into the room.

One strand of Morandi’s hair had come loose and snaked down on to the shoulder of his jacket. He looked at Brunetti with stunned eyes. ‘Why do they have to tell the truth?’ he asked as he came in, voice harsh and desolate. Brunetti got quickly to his feet and took the man under the arm, holding him up and leading him to the overstuffed sofa.

Morandi sat in the centre, made his right hand into a fist, and pounded it a few times into the seat next to him. ‘Doctors. To hell with them all. Sons of bitches, all of them.’ With each phrase, his face grew more mottled as his fist came crashing down on to the cushion, and with each phrase he came more to resemble the man Brunetti had seen in Signora Sartori’s room.

Finally spent, he fell against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Brunetti returned to his chair, closed the magazine and put it back on the table. He waited, wondering which Morandi would open his eyes, the soft-hearted San Francesco or the enraged enemy of doctors and bureaucrats?

Time passed, and Brunetti used it to construct a scenario. Morandi expected the police to come and find him after Signora Altavilla’s death: and for what reason other than guilt? At the memory of those bruises, Brunetti turned his eyes to Morandi’s hands: broad and thick, the hands of a worker. If the sight of a stranger in Signora Sartori’s room or the thought that a doctor would tell the truth could catapult him into such anger, how was he likely to respond to … to what, exactly? What form had Signora Altavilla’s dangerous honesty taken? Had she encouraged him to confess their help in the deceit of Madame Reynard without considering its effect on Signora Sartori?

Brunetti’s mind ran into a wall.
Oddio
, what if Madame Reynard’s will had not been falsified? What if the handwriting had indeed been hers, and she had really wanted her
lawyer – who certainly would have been as courteous and helpful as Lucifer himself – to have it all? The fact that Cuccetti was a liar and a thief in the eyes of half of Venice meant nothing if the old woman had sincerely wanted him to inherit her estate. Must only the good be rewarded?

Why, then, the apartment, and whence the Dillis and the Tiepolos and the Salanthé? Brunetti looked at the old man, who appeared to have fallen asleep, and the desire swept over him to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he told the truth.

Silently, so as not to disturb the sleeping man, Brunetti pulled from his pocket Signora Altavilla’s key ring, which he had taken from the evidence room before leaving the Questura. He trapped it between his palms and used his thumbnail to prise open the metal ring, then slid the third key – the one that fitted neither door – towards the narrow opening. He slipped it along and slowly, slowly, urged it until it came free in his hand. Leaning forward, he laid the key on Morandi’s right thigh, then returned the key ring to his pocket, folded his arms, and pushed himself back in his chair.

He thought it invasive to look at the sleeping man, so he turned his eyes to the window and the wall on the opposite side of the canal while he thought about monkeys. He had recently read an article that explained experiments devised to test the inherent sense of justice in a species of monkey, Brunetti could not remember which. Once each member of the group was accustomed to receiving the same reward for the same action, they grew angry if one of their band received a greater reward than his peers. Though the cause of their agitation was nothing
more than the difference between a piece of cucumber and a grape, it seemed to Brunetti that they were reacting in a very human way: unmerited reward was offensive even to those who lost nothing by it. Add to this the presumption of deceit or theft on the part of the winner of the grape, and the sense of outrage became stronger. In the case of Avvocato Cuccetti, all that had ever existed was the presumption of theft, nothing more, though he had been rewarded with considerably more than a grape. Enough time had passed, however, for there to be no legal consequences even if the presumption were confirmed. Even if he could be proven to have stolen the grape, there was to be no giving it back.

Morandi had not been surprised at the arrival of a policeman: he thought the police were bound to come because of what he had done. Because of Madame Reynard’s will? Because he went to see Signora Altavilla? Because he tried to reason against her terrible honesty? Or because he put his hands on her shoulders and tried to shake some sense into her? Or pushed her to the ground, having seen or not seen the radiator?

People occasionally rang the bell, and the Toltec went to open the door for them, but they were all preoccupied with other things and did not bother to look into the room. Had they done so, what would they have seen? Another of the residents of the home, fallen away from the worries of the day – and was that his son sitting with him?

‘What do you want?’ the old man asked in a dead level voice.

Brunetti looked at Morandi and saw that he was fully awake and held the key in one hand. He rubbed it between his thumb and index finger, as though it were a coin and he was testing to see if it were counterfeit or not.

‘I’d like to know about the key,’ Brunetti said.

‘So she did have it,’ Morandi said with quiet resignation.

‘Yes.’

The old man shook his head in evident regret. ‘I was sure she did, but she told me it wasn’t there.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Brunetti told him.

‘What?’

‘She’d given it to someone else.’

‘Her son?’

‘A friend.’

‘Oh,’ Morandi said, resigned, then added, ‘she should have given it to me.’

‘Did you ask her for it?

‘Of course,’ Morandi said. ‘That’s why I went there; to get it back.’

‘But?’

‘But she wouldn’t give it to me. She said she knew what it was and that it wasn’t right for me to have it, or to have them.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘Did Signora Sartori tell her?’

The old man gave himself a shake, the way Brunetti had seen dogs do. It started with his head and gradually enveloped his shoulders and part of his arms. Two more strands of hair broke free of his scalp and draped themselves across the lapel of his jacket. Brunetti did not know if he was trying to shake away Brunetti’s question or the answer it required. After he stopped moving, the old man still did not speak.