Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

‘Grassi,’ Vianello answered.

Brunetti picked up the phone and asked to be connected to the police in Treviso. When he was put through, he identified himself and asked to talk to the person who was in charge of investigating the Iacovantuono case. It took a few minutes before the man he spoke to told him that it had been filed as an accidental death.

‘Do you have the name of the man who reported finding the body?’

The phone was put down for a while, then the officer was back. ‘Zanetti,’ he said. ‘Walter Zanetti.’

‘Who else lives in the building?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Only the two families, sir. The Iacovantuonos live on the top floor, the Zanettis below.’

‘Does anyone named Grassi live there?’

‘No. Only those two families. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s nothing, nothing. We had a mix-up here with our records, couldn’t find Zanetti’s name. That’s all we need. Thank you for your help.’

‘Glad to do it, sir,’ the policeman said and hung up.

Before Brunetti could explain, Vianello asked, ‘She doesn’t exist?’

‘If she does, she doesn’t live in that building.’

Vianello considered this for a while, then enquired, ‘What do we do about it, sir?’

‘Tell Treviso.’

‘You think it happened there?’

‘The leak?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew Vianello couldn’t mean anything else.

Vianello nodded.

‘There or here. It doesn’t matter where. It’s enough that it happened.’

‘It doesn’t mean they knew he was coming in here today.’

‘Then why call?’ Brunetti demanded.

‘Just to plant the idea. In case.’

Brunetti shook his head. ‘No. The timing’s too good. For God’s sake, he was coming into the building when you got the call.’ Brunetti hesitated for a moment, then he said, ‘Who did they ask for?’

‘The operator said they wanted to talk to the person who had gone up to Treviso to talk to him. I think he tried you and when you weren’t there he put the call through to us. Pucetti gave it to me because I was the one who went to Treviso with you.’

‘How did she sound?’

Vianello cast his mind back to the conversation. ‘Worried, like she didn’t want to cause him trouble. She said that once or twice, that he had suffered enough, but she had to tell us what she knew.’

‘Very civic-minded.’

‘Yes.’

Brunetti went over to the window and looked down at the canal and at the police boats nestling up against the dock in front of the Questura. He remembered the look on Iacovantuono’s face when he’d asked him about the insurance and he felt his face grow red again. He’d reacted like a child with a new toy, running off at the first impulse, not pausing long enough to reflect or to check the information they did have available to them. He knew it was by now standard policy to suspect the spouse in any case of suspicious death, but he should have trusted his instinct about Iacovantuono, should have played his memory back across his halting voice, his palpitant fear for his children. He should have trusted that and not gone snapping wildly at the first accusation that came springing out of the quiet air.

There was no way he could apologize to the pizzaiolo because any explanation would only increase his own guilt and embarrassment. ‘Any chance of tracing the call?’ he asked.

‘There was noise in the background. Sounded like street noise. I’d guess it was made from a phone booth,’ Vianello said.

If they were smart enough to make the call – or well-informed enough, a cold voice added in Brunetti’s mind – then they would be careful enough to make it from a public phone. ‘Then that’s all, I suppose.’ He lowered himself into his chair, suddenly feeling very tired.

Without bothering to say anything, Vianello left the office and Brunetti addressed himself to the papers on his desk.

He began to read a fax from a colleague in Amsterdam, inquiring if there was any chance that Brunetti could speed up a request from the Dutch police for information about an Italian who had been arrested there for killing a prostitute. Because the man’s passport gave his permanent address as Venice, the Dutch authorities had contacted the police of that city to learn if he had any previous convictions. The original request had been sent more than a month ago and so far no answer had been received.

Brunetti’s hand was just reaching to call down to see if the man had a record when the phone rang… and it began. He had, in a sense, known it was going to happen, had even tried to prepare himself for it by thinking of a strategy with which to deal with the press. But even though he had done this, he was still completely surprised by it when it came.

At the beginning, the journalist, one he knew, one who worked for Il Gazzettino, said that he was calling to check on a report that Commissario Brunetti had resigned from the police. When Brunetti said that this came as a complete surprise to him, that he had never thought of resigning, the journalist, Piero Lembo, asked how he planned, then, to deal with his wife’s arrest and the conflicts it created between her situation and his position.

Brunetti answered that as he was in no way involved in the case, he saw no possibility of a conflict.

‘But certainly you’ve got friends at the Questura,’ Lembo said, though he managed at the same time to sound sceptical about the likelihood of that. ‘Friends in the magistratura. Wouldn’t that affect their judgement or the decisions they make?’

‘I think that’s unlikely,’ Brunetti lied. ‘Besides, there’s no reason to believe there will be a trial.’

‘Why not?’ Lembo demanded.

‘A trial usually attempts to determine guilt or innocence. That’s not in question here. I think there will be a judicial hearing and a fine.’

‘And then what?’

‘I’m not sure I understand your question, Signor Lembo,’ Brunetti said, looking out of the windows of his office, where a pigeon was just landing on the roof of the building across the canal.

‘What will happen when the fine is imposed?’

‘That’s a question I cannot answer.’

‘Why not?’

‘Any fine will be imposed on my wife, not on me.’ He wondered how many times he would have to make this same reply.

‘And what is your opinion of her crime?’

‘I have no opinion.’ At least not one he was going to give to the press.

‘I find that strange,’ Lembo said and added, as if the use of his title would loosen Brunetti’s tongue, ‘Commissario.’

‘As you will.’ Then, in a louder voice, Brunetti said, ‘If you have no further questions, Signor Lembo, I’ll wish you a good afternoon,’ and replaced the phone. He waited long enough for the line to be cut and picked it up, dialling the switchboard. ‘No more calls for me today,’ he said and hung up.

He called down to the clerk in the records office and gave the name of the man in Amsterdam, asking that they check to see if he had a file and, if so, to fax it to the Dutch police immediately. He expected to have to listen to a protest about the enormous load of work, but none came. Instead, he was told it would go out that afternoon, assuming, of course, that the man did prove to have a criminal record.

Brunetti spent the rest of the morning answering his mail and writing reports on two cases he was conducting at the moment, in neither of which he had achieved any great success.

A little past one, he got up from his desk and prepared to leave the office. He went downstairs and across the front hall. No guard stood at the door, but that wasn’t at all strange during the lunch-break, when the offices were closed and no visitors were allowed into the building. Brunetti pressed the electric switch that released the large glass door, then pushed it open. The cold had seeped into the vestibule and he pulled up his collar in response, tucking his chin into the protection of the heavy cloth of his overcoat. Head lowered, he stepped outside and into the firestorm.