Falling in Love (20 page)

‘
Maria Santissima
,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

Brunetti read the message Bocchese had attached, saying that the setting was at least forty years old, and thus the stones were likely to be genuine.

‘Where’d he get it?’ she asked.

‘Signora Petrelli gave it to me. Someone left it in her dressing room.’

She moved closer to the screen. ‘Left it?’

‘That’s what she told me.’

‘You want to know where it comes from?’

‘Yes. If possible.’

‘If it was stolen, it might well be: Interpol has a file of major pieces that are stolen.’ She raised a hand towards the stones but stopped herself from touching the screen, perhaps out of the same fear he had of leaving fingerprints on something so beautiful.

‘Is there any way you can check with jewellers?’ Brunetti asked.

She nodded, still looking at it. ‘Anyone who sold this would remember it, I’m sure.’ She removed her attention from the photo and said, ‘I have a list in here of jewellers where something as valuable as this might be sold. I’ll send the photo and ask if they bought or sold it within the last . . . ?’ She looked at Brunetti inquisitively.

‘I don’t think it’s necessary to specify,’ he answered. Brunetti, who had no special affinity with stones, would certainly not forget it; a jeweller, with a better idea of its worth and a finer sensibility for its beauty, would be even less likely to do so.

‘In this country or internationally?’

‘Everywhere, I think,’ Brunetti answered.

She nodded, then asked, ‘Anything else?’

‘You could tell me what will happen to the Lieutenant,’ he said mildly and smiled.

‘Ah,’ she said in response. ‘He’s bound to be well protected in Rome, so nothing is likely to happen to him.’

‘Protected by whom?’ Brunetti asked in the same mild tone, remembering that she’d said she wanted the Lieutenant’s head.

‘I refuse to speculate, Commissario,’ she said, then, turning towards a noise from behind him, added, ‘Perhaps you can ask the Vice-Questore about it, Dottore.’

With the gracious condescension to inferiors that so characterized his every interchange, Vice-Questore Patta gave his attention to his subordinates. He turned to Signorina Elettra and, his face softer, asked, ‘If you’re talking to him, does that mean you’re talking to me?’

‘Of course I’m talking to you, Dottore,’ she said amiably. ‘How could I not?’ Her voice could have been used to sell something: honey, washing powder.

‘What are you talking about?’ Patta asked, using the tone he reserved for her and not the one he used with Brunetti. Honey, washing powder.

Signorina Elettra waved in Brunetti’s direction: he took the cue and said, in his most sober voice, ‘I was telling Signorina Elettra how pleased I am that Officer Alvise is keeping an eye on the girl in the hospital.’

Like a lighthouse rotating towards a new ship, Patta turned his sleek head to face Brunetti and asked, ‘Girl?’ And then, ‘Alvise?’

‘It was very wise of the Lieutenant to think of it.’

‘You aren’t usually so complimentary about the Lieutenant, are you, Commissario?’ Though the Vice-Questore tried to disguise his self-satisfaction, traces of it showed in his voice.

Brunetti, finding self-satisfaction better than suspicion, risked a small, chastised grimace, added a slight shake of the head, and answered, ‘I have to admit that’s true, Dottore. But there are some times when credit has to be given, whoever makes the decision.’ He considered the wisdom of pulling his lips together and giving a small affirmative nod, but he thought this might be excessive and fought back the impulse.

Patta looked back at Signorina Elettra, but she was occupied with re-knotting her tie; Brunetti was amazed that this masculine activity could be so imbued with grace and delicacy. It was a dark grey tie with almost invisible red stripes, for heaven’s sake, and the person knotting it wore a black wool vest and pinstripe trousers: why did the motion of the cloth as she slipped it through the knot remind him of the way Paola used to remove her stockings, before stockings disappeared?

‘Are you here to see me?’ Patta’s question pulled Brunetti back to the office.

‘No, Dottore. I came to ask Signorina Elettra to try to trace a piece of jewellery for me.’

‘Stolen?’ Patta demanded.

‘Not that I know of, sir.’

‘Valuable?’

‘To the owner, I suppose,’ Brunetti answered. Then, before the clouds forming in Patta’s eyes at his answer could become inclement, he added, ‘I suppose most people place a greater value on what they own or like than other people do,’ he said, thinking of the value the Vice-Questore placed on the Lieutenant.

Signorina Elettra broke in to say, ‘I doubt it’s of great worth, Commissario, but I’ll see what I can find.’ She managed to sound both bored and faintly annoyed to be bothered with such trivia.

That she should speak to Brunetti in this manner seemed to please the Vice-Questore, so Brunetti allowed himself a surprised glance in her direction before saying, ‘If you have nothing else, Dottore, I’ll go back to my office.’

Patta nodded and turned towards his door. Behind his back, Signorina Elettra pulled her tie straight, glanced at Brunetti, and winked.

20

Once behind his desk, Brunetti had no idea what to do. He had little desire to congratulate himself about his nugatory victory over Patta, for he had, in the last years, ceased to enjoy baiting his superior, though he proved unable to stop himself from doing it. Colleagues of his in other cities and provinces continually told him of the sort of men and women they worked for, hinting – though never daring to say it outright – that some of them had given their allegiance to an institution other than the State, something that could not be said of the Vice-Questore.

Patta had given his, Brunetti had discovered over the years, to his family. Without reservation, without reflection or restraint: Brunetti liked him for it. Patta was vain and lazy, selfish and at times foolish, but these were not active failings. There was a great deal of bluster in the man, but there was no deep malice: that was left to Lieutenant Scarpa.

Patta’s motives, too, were easily read and just as easily understood: he sought the advancement of his career and the approval of his superiors. Most people did, Brunetti admitted; had he not had the cushion of his wife’s family’s wealth and power, he would hardly be as cavalier about his job, and his superior, as he was.

But why Patta’s loyalty to Scarpa, which was hardly likely to impress his superiors or advance his career? Brunetti had never seen them together outside the Questura, nor had anyone else ever mentioned having seen them in each other’s company. They were both from Palermo. Family ties? Old debts of patronage to be paid?

Brunetti pushed himself back in his chair, folded his arms, and stared across the
campo
. From there, the single round window near the top of the façade of the church of San Lorenzo stared back at him like that of a flat-faced Cyclops. Scarpa, to the best of his memory, had simply appeared one day, years ago: Brunetti had no memory of the Vice-Questore’s mentioning his arrival before it occurred. Nor did Brunetti have the impression that the men had known one another beforehand, though it was difficult to reconstruct those first months, when Lieutenant Scarpa was merely a tall, thin presence, more noticeable for the perfection of his uniform than for anything he did or said.

He recalled his recognition of the first symptom, observed when he chanced upon the two men in the corridor outside Signorina Elettra’s office, talking with deep nasality in a language that reminded him of Arabic, Greek, and – vaguely – Italian. He heard – or thought he heard – ‘tr’ transformed into ‘ch’ and verbs dislodged to the end of sentences. He understood nothing.

That had been at the beginning of the second investigation of the Casinò, so it would have been about eight years ago. And it was from then that Patta had become Scarpa’s paladin. And why was that?

No matter how sternly Brunetti stared at the Cyclops, it refused to answer him. Odysseus had hidden his men, and then himself, under the rams to outwit the Cyclops: Brunetti could think of no stratagem that would do the same for him.

There was a quick triple knock on his door and Griffoni let herself in, now among the people who took the liberty of not waiting for an answer. Perhaps in anticipation of a hot summer, she had had her hair cut very short, thus providing the Questura with another boyish woman, this one with a crown of golden curls and a black dress that fell just below her knees. At least she wasn’t wearing a tie.

Brunetti indicated the more comfortable of the two chairs facing him. ‘Looks good,’ he limited himself to saying, then asked, ‘Anything at the theatre?’

‘While I was talking to the
portiere
, three men came in and punched their time cards and left.’

‘And?’ Brunetti asked.

‘It reminded me of home,’ she said in a voice warmed by nostalgia.

Naples? ‘How so?’ he asked.

‘I had an uncle who was a cab driver but who had a friend in the office at Teatro San Carlo,’ she said, as though that explained everything.

‘And?’

‘And he was on the payroll as a stagehand, but all he had to do was drive by twice a day and check in and check out.’ She saw Brunetti’s surprise and said, ‘I know, I know. But there had been an audit, and they’d introduced the time cards to be sure that everyone on the payroll did at least check in and out.’

Brunetti, puzzled, said, ‘He didn’t work there?’

‘Good heavens, no. He had five kids, so he drove his taxi twelve hours a day, seven days a week.’ She smiled, and Brunetti realized she was enjoying this.

‘And checked in and checked out and was on the payroll?’ When she nodded, he asked, ‘And no one ever noticed?’

‘Well,’ she said hesitantly, ‘it wasn’t as if he were the only person doing it. And he never had a licence for the taxi, so the only job he had – officially, that is – was at the theatre.’

‘How many years did he . . . work at the theatre?’

She hesitated, looked down at her fingers and counted the years. ‘Twenty-seven.’ Then, after a moment, ‘And he drove the cab for thirty-six.’

‘Ah,’ Brunetti sighed and said the only thing that came to mind. ‘He must have come to know the city very well.’

‘In every sense,’ Griffoni said. She sat up straighter, as if to banish the temptation of idle chat. ‘The
portiere
told me that all sorts of people come in on the night of a performance, not just the cast and musicians: relatives of the singers, friends, understudies . He said there are times the lobby is so crowded that anyone could come in and he wouldn’t notice.’

Brunetti remembered the crowd that had been there the night he and Paola had waited for Flavia.

Claudia went on. ‘He told me the worst time is about an hour before a performance, when everyone comes in, especially with an opera like
Tosca
where there’s a chorus and a second chorus of children, so there’s madness when they start arriving.’ Before he could speak, she said, ‘It’s the same afterwards, when people come into that room outside his office and wait for the singers.’

‘What about the flowers?’ Brunetti asked.

‘The porter didn’t remember much: two men brought them. Her dresser and the woman who does the wigs didn’t notice anything until after the performance, when they saw the flowers in her dressing room. I spoke to some of the stage crew: no one saw anything unusual.’

‘But someone managed to get into her dressing room with the flowers.’

‘And the vases,’ she added: ‘at least if what the dresser told me is true.’

‘And someone managed to take more of them into one of the side boxes and toss them down at her,’ he said, recalling what he had seen. ‘How could that happen?’

‘Maybe an usher took them in. Who knows?’ Then she added, ‘If crazy people have friends, maybe a friend helped bring them.’

Seeing little chance of success here, Brunetti decided to change the subject. ‘What about Alvise?’

‘He introduced himself to the girl at the hospital and told her he was there to keep an eye on her and see that no one disturbed her.’ Griffoni hardly needed to tell Brunetti that secrecy was alien to Alvise.

‘How much time does he spend there?’ Brunetti asked.

‘He told me he’ll go during visiting hours: ten until one and then from four until seven.’

‘And the rest of the time?’

Griffoni could only shrug. Alvise was, after all, Alvise. ‘It hasn’t occurred to him that something might happen outside visiting hours.’

‘No,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘It wouldn’t, would it?’

‘Do you think she’s
safe
?’ Griffoni couldn’t stop herself asking.

‘That’s anyone’s guess, but I’m sure she feels safe, which probably helps her. And there’s no one else we can ask at the moment except Alvise.’

They lapsed into the comfortable silence that exists between colleagues who find that, over the years, they have become friends. The sound of a boat approaching from the right drifted into the room.