Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

Almost before he could think, Dorandi blurted out, ‘Their wives joined them later. They were travelling on business, the men, and their wives joined them.’

‘Did they buy tickets from your agency?’

‘How do I know?’

Brunetti placed the papers, face up, on the desk in front of him, leaving them in plain sight, open to Dorandi if he chose to try to read them. He drew a deep breath. ‘Signor Dorandi, shall we start again with this? I’ll repeat my question and this time I’d like you to consider your answer before you give it to me.’ He paused a long time, then asked, ‘Did the men who bought tickets to Bangkok through your agency travel with women or not?’

Dorandi took a long time to answer, but finally said ‘No’ and nothing more.

‘And these tours you arrange with “tolerant hotel management” and “convenient location” – Brunetti’s voice was absolutely neutral, not a trace of emotion audible in it – ‘are they for the purpose of sex?’

‘I don’t know what they do when they get there,’ Dorandi insisted. ‘It’s not my business.’ He pulled his head down into the too-wide neck of his jacket, rather in the manner of a turtle under attack.

‘Do you know anything about the sort of hotels where these particular tourists go?’ Before Dorandi could answer, Brunetti put his elbows on the desk, cupped his chin in his palm and looked down at the list.

‘They have tolerant managements,’ Dorandi said eventually.

‘Does that mean they allow prostitutes to work there, perhaps even provide them?’

Dorandi shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Girls? Not women, girls?’

Dorandi glared across the desk at him. ‘I don’t know anything about the hotels except the prices. What my clients do there isn’t my business.’

‘Girls?’ Brunetti repeated.

Dorandi waved a hand angrily in the air. ‘I told you, it’s none of my business.’

‘But it’s our business now, Signor Dorandi, so I would prefer an answer.’

Dorandi looked at the wall again, but found no convenient solution there. ‘Yes.’ he said.

‘Is that the reason you choose them?’

‘I choose them because they offer me the best price. If the men who go there decide to take prostitutes back to their rooms in those hotels, that’s their business.’ He tried but could not restrain his anger. ‘I sell travel packages. I don’t preach morality. I’ve checked every word of those ads with my lawyer, and there’s nothing at all even remotely illegal in them. I’m not breaking any law.’

‘I’m sure of that,’ Brunetti couldn’t stop himself from saying. Suddenly, he didn’t want to be here any more. He stood. ‘I’m afraid we’ve taken up rather a lot of your time, Signor Dorandi. I’ll leave you now, but we might like to speak to you again.’

Dorandi didn’t bother to answer. Nor did he get to his feet when Brunetti and Vianello left the room.

As they crossed Campo Manin, Vianello and Brunetti knew without discussing it that they would go and speak to the widow now, while they were still out, rather than go back to the Questura. To get to the Mitris’ apartment, which was in Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, they walked back to Rialto and took the number 1 towards the station.

They chose to stand outside, preferring the coldness of the open deck to the damp air trapped inside the passenger cabin. Brunetti waited until they had passed under the Rialto before he asked Vianello, ‘Well?’

‘He’d sell his mother for a hundred lire, wouldn’t he?’ Vianello answered, making no attempt to disguise his contempt. He paused for a long time, then demanded, ‘Do you think it’s television, sir?’

At a loss, Brunetti asked, ‘That what’s television?’

‘That lets us get so distanced from the evil we do.’ He saw he had Brunetti’s attention and continued, ‘That is, if we watch it, there on the screen, it’s real, but it isn’t actually, is it? I mean, we see so many people getting shot and hit, and we watch us,’ here he paused, smiled a little and explained, ‘the police, that is. We watch us discovering all sorts of terrible things. But the cops aren’t real, nor are the things. So maybe, if we watch enough of them, the true horrors, when they happen or when they happen to other people, don’t seem real, either.’

Brunetti was a bit confused by Vianello’s language, but he thought he understood what he meant – and that he agreed – so he answered, ‘They’re how far away, those girls he knows nothing about, fifteen thousand kilometres? Twenty? I’d say it’s probably very easy not to see what happens to them as being real, or if it is, it probably isn’t very important to him.’

Vianello nodded. ‘You think it’s getting worse?’

Brunetti shrugged. ‘There are days when I think everything’s getting worse, then there are days when I know they are. But then the sun comes out and I change my mind.’

Vianello nodded again, this time adding a muffled, ‘Uh huh.’

‘And you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I think it’s worse,’ the sergeant answered with no hesitation. ‘Like you, though, I have days when everything’s fine: the kids jump all over me when I get home or Nadia’s happy and it’s contagious. But on the whole, I think the world’s getting worse as a place to be.’

Hoping to lighten his uncharacteristic mood, Brunetti said, ‘Not much other choice, is there?’

Vianello had the grace to laugh at this. ‘No, I guess there isn’t. For good or bad, this is all we’ve got.’ He paused for a moment, watching the palazzo that held the Casino draw near. ‘Maybe it’s different for us because we have kids.’

‘Why?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Because we can see ahead to the world they’re going to live in and can look back on the one we grew up in.’

Brunetti, a patient reader of history, recalled the countless times the ancient Romans had fulminated against the various ages in which they lived, always insisting that the generation of their own youth or of their parents’ had been far superior in every way to the one in which they now found themselves. He recalled their violent screeds against the insensitivity of the young, their sloth, their ignorance, their lack of respect for and deference to their elders, and he found himself greatly cheered by this memory. If every age thinks this way, then perhaps each is wrong and things aren’t getting worse. He didn’t know how to explain this to Vianello and felt awkward about quoting Pliny, afraid the sergeant would not recognize the writer or would be embarrassed at being made to show that he did not.

Instead, he tapped him warmly on the shoulder as the boat pulled in to the San Marcuola stop and they both got off, walking single file down the narrow calle to make way for the people who hurried towards the embarcadero.

‘Nothing we’re going to solve, is it, sir?’ Vianello commented when they got to the wider street behind the church and could walk side by side.

‘I doubt it’s something anyone can solve,’ Brunetti said, aware of how vague a response he had chosen, unsatisfied with it even as he made it.

‘May I ask you a question, sir?’ The sergeant started walking again. Both of them knew the address, so they had some idea of the location of the house. ‘It’s about your wife, sir.’

Brunetti knew from the tone of the question what it was bound to be. ‘Yes?’

Keeping his eyes straight ahead of them, though no one was any longer coming towards them on the narrow calle, Vianello asked, ‘Did she tell you why she did it?’

Brunetti walked on, keeping in step with his sergeant. He glanced aside at him and answered, ‘I think it’s in the arrest report.’