Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

He kept his head lowered; she saw that as she looked across the room at him. ‘That’s the second thing I want to say, dear Guido whom I love with all my soul. That’s how we look at it, most women, that love isn’t lust and domination.’ She stopped here and glanced down at her right hand, idly picking at a rough piece of cuticle on the nail of her thumb. ‘That’s all, I think. End of sermon.’

The silence between them stretched out until Brunetti broke it, but tentatively.

‘Do you believe all men or just some men think like this?’ he asked.

‘Just some, I think. The good ones – like you’re a good man – they don’t.’ But before he could say anything, she added, ‘They don’t think like us, either, like women. I don’t think that the idea of love as lust and violence and the exercise of power – I don’t think that idea is as entirely alien to them as it is to us.’

‘To all women? Alien to all of you?’

‘I wish. No, not to all of us.’

He looked up at her. ‘Have we resolved anything, then?’

‘I don’t know. But I want you to know how serious I am about this.’

‘And if I were to ask you to stop, not to do anything more?’

Her lips pressed together as she pulled her mouth closed, a gesture he’d watched for decades. She shook her head without saying anything.

‘Does that mean you won’t stop or you don’t want me to ask you?’

‘Both.’

‘I will ask you and I do ask you.’ But before she could give an answer, he raised a hand towards her and said, ‘No, Paola, don’t say anything because I know what you’ll say and I don’t want to hear it. But remember, please, that I’ve asked you not to do this. Not for me or my career, whatever that means. But because I believe that what you’re doing and what you think should be done is wrong.’

‘I know,’ Paola said and pushed herself to her feet.

Before she moved away from the desk he added, ‘And I too love you with all my soul. And always will.’

‘Ah, that’s good to hear, and know.’ He heard the relief in her voice and from long experience he knew that some dismissive, joking remark would have to follow it. As had been the case for all the important years of his life, she did not disappoint. ‘Then it’s safe to put knives on the table for dinner.’

The next morning Brunetti did not take his usual route to the Questura but turned right after he crossed the Rialto Bridge. Rosa Salva, it was generally agreed, was one of the best bars in the city; Brunetti especially liked their small ricotta cakes. So he stopped there for coffee and a pastry, exchanged pleasantries with a few people he knew, nods with some he only recognized.

He left the bar, heading down Calle della Mandola towards Campo San Stefano, a route that would lead him eventually to Piazza San Marco. The first campo he crossed on his way was Campo Martin, where four workmen were lifting a large sheet of glass from a boat on to a wooden roller to transport it to the travel agency where it was to be installed.

Brunetti joined the other spectators who gathered to watch the men roll the plate of glass across the campo. The workmen had wadded towels between the glass and the wooden frame that held it upright. Two on either side, they rolled it towards the gaping hole that awaited it.

As the men crossed the campo, opinions rolled behind them from person to person. ‘Gypsies did it.’ ‘No, someone who used to work there came back with a gun.’ ‘I heard it was the owner who did it to collect the insurance.’ ‘What stupidity; it was hit by lightning.’ Typically, each of them was absolutely convinced of the truth of his version and had nothing but scorn for the alternatives.

When the wooden trolley reached the window, Brunetti pulled himself away from the small crowd and continued on his way.

Inside the Questura, he stopped at the large room where the uniformed officers worked and asked to see the crime reports of the previous night. Little had happened and none of it interested him in any way. Upstairs, he spent most of the morning in the seemingly endless process of moving papers from one part of his desk to another. His banker had told him, years ago, that all copies of any bank transactions, no matter how innocuous, had to be placed in an archive for ten years before they could be destroyed.

His eyes wandered away from the page, following his attention, and he found himself imagining an Italy entirely covered, to the height of a man’s ankles, with papers, reports, photocopies, carbon copies, tiny receipts from the bars, shops and pharmacies. And in this sea of paper, it still took a letter two weeks to get to Rome.

He was distracted from this train of thought by the arrival of Sergeant Vianello, who came to tell him that he’d managed to arrange a meeting with one of the petty criminals who sometimes gave them information. The man had told Vianello he had something interesting to exchange; but because the thief was afraid of being seen with anyone from the police, Brunetti had to meet him in a bar in Mestre, which meant he had to take the train to Mestre after lunch and a bus to the bar. It was not the kind of place a person went to in a taxi.

It all came to nothing, as Brunetti had secretly known it would. Encouraged by newspaper reports of the millions the government was giving to those who had turned on the Mafia and were testifying against it, the young man wanted Brunetti to advance him five million lire. The idea was absurd, the afternoon a dead loss, but at least it kept him in motion until well after four, when he got back to his office to find an agitated Vianello waiting for him.

‘What is it?’ Brunetti asked when he saw the expression on Vianello’s face.

‘That man in Treviso.’

‘Iacovantuono?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about him? Has he decided not to come?’

‘His wife’s been killed.’

‘How?’

‘She fell down the stairs in their apartment building and broke her neck.’

‘How old was she?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Thirty-five.’

‘Medical problems?’

‘None.’

‘Witnesses?’

Vianello shook his head.

‘Who found her?’

‘A neighbour. A man coming home for lunch.’

‘Did he see anything?’

Again, Vianello shook his head.

‘When did it happen?’

‘The man said he thinks she might still have been alive when he found her, a little before one. But he isn’t sure.’

‘Did she say anything?’

‘He called 113, but by the time the ambulance got there she was dead.’

‘Have they spoken to the neighbours?’

‘Who?’ Vianello asked.

‘The Treviso police.’

‘They haven’t spoken to anyone. I don’t think they’re going to speak to anyone.’

‘Why not, for the love of God?’

‘They’re treating it as an accident.’

‘Of course it would look like an accident,’ Brunetti exploded. When Vianello said nothing, Brunetti asked, ‘Has anyone spoken to the husband?’

‘He was at work when it happened.’

‘But has anyone spoken to him?’

‘I don’t think so, sir. Other than to tell him what happened.’

‘Can we get a car?’ Brunetti asked.

Vianello picked up the phone, punched in a number and talked for a moment. After he hung up he said, ‘There’ll be one waiting for us in Piazzale Roma at five thirty.’

‘Let me call my wife,’ Brunetti said. Paola wasn’t home, so he told Chiara to tell her that he had to go to Treviso and would probably be home late.

During his more than two decades as a policeman, Brunetti had developed an instinct that very often proved accurate and that allowed him to sense failure well before he encountered it. Even before he and Vianello set foot outside the Questura, he knew that the trip to Treviso was doomed and that any chance they had ever had of getting Iacovantuono to testify had died with his wife.