Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

The first indication was a sudden glare of light, then another and another. His lowered eyes saw feet approach, five or six pairs of them, until his path was blocked and he had to stop and look up to see what confronted him.

He was surrounded by a tight ring of five men holding microphones. Behind them, in a looser ring, danced three men with video cameras aimed at him, their red lights aglow.

‘Commissario. Is it true that you’ve had to arrest your wife?’

‘Will there be a trial? Has your wife hired a lawyer?’

‘What about divorce? Is that true?’

The microphones waved in front of him, but he stifled the impulse to brush them away with an angry hand. In the face of his obvious surprise, their voices mounted in a feeding frenzy and their questions drowned one another out. He heard only flashes of phrases: ‘Father-in-law’, ‘Mitri’, ‘free enterprise’, ‘obstruction of justice’.

He put his hands in the pocket of his coat, lowered his head again, and started to walk away. His chest came up against a human body, but he kept walking, twice treading heavily upon someone else’s feet. ‘Can’t just walk away’, ‘obligation’, ‘right to know…’

Another body placed itself in front of him, but he kept going, eyes on the ground, this time to avoid stepping on their feet. At the first corner he turned left and headed towards Santa Maria Formosa, walking steadily, giving no sign that he was fleeing. A hand grabbed his shoulder, but he shook it off, shook off as well the desire to rip the hand from his body and smash the reporter against the wall.

They followed him for a few minutes, but he neither slowed his pace nor acknowledged their presence. He turned suddenly right into a narrow calle. Strangers to Venice, some of the reporters must have been alarmed by how dark and cramped it was because none of them followed him. At the end, he turned left and along the canal, finally free of them.

From a phone in Campo Santa Marina he called home and learned from Paola that a camera crew was stationed in front of their apartment and three reporters had unsuccessfully tried to prevent her entering long enough to be able to interview her.

‘I’ll have lunch somewhere, then,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, Guido,’ she said. ‘I didn’t…’ She stopped, but he had nothing to say into her silence.

No, he supposed she hadn’t thought about the consequences of her actions. Strange, really, in a woman as intelligent as Paola.

‘What will you do?’ she asked.

‘I’ll go back this afternoon. You?’

‘I don’t have a class until the day after tomorrow.’

‘You can’t stay in the house all that time, Paola.’

‘God, it’s like being in prison, isn’t it?’ she asked.

‘Prison’s worse.’

‘Will you come home? After work?’

‘Of course.’

‘You will?’

He was going to say that he had nowhere else to go, but he realized she’d misunderstand him if he said it like that. Instead, he said, ‘There’s no place else I want to go.’

‘Oh, Guido,’ she said, then, ‘Ciao, amore,’ and put down the phone.

These sentiments, however, meant nothing in the face of the crowd that awaited his return to the Questura after lunch. Avian metaphors beat around him as he came down from Ponte dei Greci and walked towards the assembled members of the press: crows, vultures, harpies, crowding round the front of the Questura in a tight circle, they lacked only the putrefying corpse at their feet to make the picture complete.

One of them saw him and – traitor – giving no sign to his companions, slipped away from them and hurried towards Brunetti, his microphone jammed out before him like a cattle prod. ‘Commissario,’ he began, while still a metre from Brunetti, ‘has Dottor Mitri decided to bring civil charges against your wife?’

Smiling, Brunetti stopped. ‘You’ll have to ask Dottor Mitri, I believe.’ As he spoke, he saw the pack sense the absence of their colleague and turn in a kind of collective spasm towards the voices behind them. Instantly, they broke up and ran at him, microphones pressed ahead of them, as if to catch any words that might still float upon the air around Brunetti.

In the panic of their movement, one of the cameramen caught his foot in a cable and fell forward to the ground, his camera crashing down beside him. The lens popped free from the body of the shattered apparatus and went rolling, like a soda can kicked in a children’s game, to the edge of the canal. Everyone stopped, riveted by surprise or other emotions, and watched its progress towards the steps that led to the water. It approached the top step, gently rolled over the lip, touched lightly on the second, then the third and, with a quiet splash, sank into the green waters of the canal.

Brunetti took advantage of the moment of general inattention to resume his way to the front door of the Questura, but the reporters recovered just as quickly and moved to stop him. ‘Will you resign from the police?’ ‘Is it true your wife has a previous record of arrest?’ ‘… kept out of court?’

Smiling his most plastic smile, he moved along, not pushing them, but not letting their bodies prevent him from reaching his goal. Just as he got there, the door opened and Vianello and Pucetti emerged, standing on either side of it with their arms extended to prevent the reporters from entering.

Brunetti went in, Vianello and Pucetti following. ‘Savage, aren’t they?’ Vianello said, standing with his back against the glass door. Unlike Orfeo, Brunetti did not look back and did not speak, but started up the stairs to his office. He heard steps behind him and turned to see Vianello, taking the treads two at a time. ‘He wants to see you.’

Still wearing his coat, Brunetti went to Patta’s office, where he found Signorina Elettra at her desk, the day’s Gazzettino spread out before her.

He glanced down and saw that the front page of the second section carried a picture of him, one taken some years ago, and the photo of Paola which appeared in her carta d’identità. Looking up, Signorina Elettra said, ‘If you get much more famous, I’ll have to beg for an autograph.’

‘Is that what the Vice-Questura wants?’ he asked, smiling.

‘No, your head, I think.’

‘I imagined as much,’ he said and knocked at the door.

Patta’s voice came through: tones of doom. How much easier it would be if they could simply stop all the melodrama and have done with it, Brunetti found himself thinking. As he entered, a line from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena flashed through his memory – ‘If those who judge me are those who have already condemned me, I have no chance.’ Good lord, talk about melodrama.

‘You wanted to see me, Vice-Questore?’ he asked as he entered.

Patta sat behind his desk, face impassive. All he lacked was the black cap that English judges were said to put on top of their wigs when they condemned a prisoner to death. ‘Yes, Brunetti. No, don’t bother to sit down. What I have to say is very short. I’ve spoken about this to the Questore, and we’ve decided that you should go on administrative leave until it’s resolved.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘That, until this case is settled, there is no need for you to come to the Questura.’

‘Settled?’

‘Until a judgement is given and your wife pays a fine, or makes restitution to Dottor Mitri for the damage she has caused to his property and business.’

‘This is to assume she’s charged and convicted,’ Brunetti said, knowing how likely both were. Patta didn’t deign to answer. ‘And that could take years,’ Brunetti added, no stranger to the law.