Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

Vianello was standing outside his office when he got back, obviously waiting for him. ‘Come in, Sergeant. What is it?’

The sergeant followed Brunetti into the room, Iacovantuono, sir.’ When Brunetti didn’t respond, Vianello went on, ‘The people in Treviso have been asking around.’

‘Asking around about what?’ Brunetti enquired and waved the other man to a chair.

‘About his friends.’

‘And his wife?’ Brunetti asked. There could be no other reason for Vianello’s visit.

Vianello nodded.

‘And?’

‘It seems that woman who called was right, sir, though they still haven’t located her. They fought.’ He sat quietly and listened. Vianello continued, ‘One woman who lives in the next building said that he beat her, that she was in the hospital once.’

‘And was she?’

‘Yes. She fell down in the bathroom, or at least that’s what she said.’ Both of them had heard many women say that.

‘Did they check the times?’ he asked, knowing he didn’t have to explain further.

‘The man found her on the stairs at twenty to twelve, Iacovantuono arrived at work a little after eleven.’ Before Brunetti could say anything, Vianello continued, ‘No, no one knows how long she was lying there.’

‘Who’s been asking?’

‘That one we spoke to when we were up there the first time, Negri. When I told him about the phone call we had, he said he’d already begun talking to the neighbours. It’s routine for them, too. I told him we thought the call was false.’

‘And?’

Vianello shrugged. ‘No one saw him leave for work. No one knows exactly when he arrived. No one knows how long she was lying there.’

Though so many things had happened since he’d last seen him, Brunetti still had a clear memory of the face of the pizzaiolo, his eyes dark with grief. ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he finally told Vianello.

‘I know. But I thought you’d like to be put in the picture.’

Brunetti nodded his thanks, and Vianello went back down to the officers’ room.

Half an hour later, Signorina Elettra knocked on his door. She came in, holding a few sheets of paper in her right hand.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘There have been three murders similar to this in the last six years. Two were Mafia hits, or appear to have been.’ She came over to his desk and placed the first two papers side by side in front of him and pointed to the two names. ‘One in Palermo and one in Reggio Calabria.’

Brunetti read the names and the dates. One man had been found on the beach, another in his car. Both had been strangled with a thin piece of what was probably plastic-coated wire: no threads or fibres were found around the neck of either victim.

She put another piece of paper beside the other two. Davide Narduzzi had been killed in Padova a year ago and a Moroccan street vendor had been accused of the crime. He had disappeared, however, before he could be arrested. Brunetti read the details: it looked as if Narduzzi had been taken from the back and strangled before he could react. The same description fitted the two other murders. And that of Mitri.

‘The Moroccan?’

‘No trace.’

‘Why is this name familiar?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Narduzzi?’

‘Yes.’

Signorina Elettra placed the last piece of paper in front of Brunetti. ‘“Drugs, armed robbery, assault, association with the Mafia, and suspicion of blackmail,”‘ she read from the list of the accusations that had been brought against Narduzzi during his brief life. ‘Think of the sort of friends a man like this would have. No wonder the Moroccan disappeared.’

Brunetti had been reading quickly to the bottom of the page. ‘If he ever existed.’

‘What?’

‘Look at that,’ he said, pointing to one of the names on the list. Two years before, Narduzzi had been involved in a fight with Ruggiero Palmieri, a supposed member of one of the most violent criminal clans in northern Italy. Palmieri had ended up in the hospital, but had refused to press charges. Brunetti knew enough about men like this to be aware that such a matter would be settled privately.

‘Palmieri?’ Signorina Elettra asked. ‘It’s a name I don’t know.’

‘Just as well. He’s never worked – if that’s the right word – here. Thank God.’

‘You know him?’

‘I met him once, years ago. Bad. A bad man.’

‘Would he do this?’ she asked, tapping a finger on the other two papers.

‘I think that’s his job, eliminating people,’ Brunetti answered.

‘Then why would this other one, Narduzzi, cause trouble with him?’

Brunetti shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’ He read through the three brief reports again, then got to his feet. ‘Let’s see what you can find out about Palmieri,’ he said and went down to her office with her.

It wasn’t very much, unfortunately. Palmieri had gone into hiding a year ago, after being identified as one of three men involved in the robbery of an armoured car. Two guards had been wounded, but the thieves had not succeeded in getting the more than eight billion lire being transported in the truck.

Reading between the lines, Brunetti could see that no great expenditure of police energy or resource would have been made to find Palmieri: no one had been killed, nothing had been taken. But now they were dealing with murder.

Brunetti thanked Signorina Elettra and went down to Vianello’s office. The sergeant sat with his head lowered over a stack of papers, his forehead resting on his two cupped palms. No one else was in the room, so Brunetti watched him for a while, then approached the desk. Vianello heard him and looked up.

‘I think I’d like to call in some favours,’ Brunetti said with no introduction.

‘From whom?’

‘People in Padova.’

‘Good people or bad people?’

‘Both. How many do we know?’

If Vianello was flattered to be included in the plural, he gave no sign of it. He thought for a while and finally answered, ‘A couple. Of both sorts. What are we going to ask them?’

‘I’d like to know about Ruggiero Palmieri.’ He saw the name register with Vianello and watched as he began to search for the names of anyone, good or bad, who might be able to tell them something about him.

‘What sort of information do you want?’ Vianello asked.

‘I’d like to know where he was when these men died,’ said Brunetti, putting the papers Signorina Elettra had given him on Vianello’s desk. ‘And I’d like to know where he was the night Mitri was murdered.’

Vianello raised his chin in inquiry and Brunetti explained, ‘I’ve heard that he’s a paid killer. He had trouble with someone named Narduzzi a few years ago.’ Vianello nodded to show that he recognized the name.

‘Remember what happened to him?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Dead. But I forget how.’

‘Strangled, perhaps with an electrical cord.’

‘And these two?’ Vianello asked, nodding down at the documentation.

‘The same.’

Vianello put the papers on top of the ones on his own desk and read through them carefully. ‘I never heard of either one of these. The Narduzzi murder was about a year ago, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. In Padova.’ The police there had probably been glad to see the last of Narduzzi. Certainly the investigation had never stretched as far as Venice. ‘Can you think of anyone who might know something?’

‘There’s that man you worked with, the one from Padova.’

‘Delia Corte,’ Brunetti supplied. ‘I’d already thought of him. He probably knows some bad people he can ask. But I wondered if you knew anyone.’

‘Two,’ Vianello stated, offering no explanation.