Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

He looked down at his watch and saw that it was after six; certainly a full commissario, particularly one who was still officially on something called administrative leave, could go home.

On the way, he continued to mull it over, once even stopping to pull out the list of countries and study it again. He went into Antico Dolo and had a glass of white wine and two cuttlefish, but he was so preoccupied that he barely tasted them.

He returned before seven to an empty house. He went into Paola’s study and pulled down their atlas of the world, then sat on the shabby old sofa with the book open on his knees, contemplating the multicoloured maps of the various regions. He shifted lower in the sofa and rested his head against the back.

Paola found him like that half an hour later, deeply asleep. She called his name once, then again, but it wasn’t until she went and sat beside him that he woke.

Sleeping during the day always left him dull and stupid, with a strange taste in his mouth.

‘What’s this?’ she said, kissing his ear and pointing down at the book.

‘Sri Lanka. And here’s Bangladesh, Egypt, Kenya, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria,’ he said, turning the pages quietly.

‘Let me guess – the itinerary for our second honeymoon tour through the poverty capitals of the world?’ she asked with a laugh. Then, seeing his smile, she went on, ‘And I get to play Lady Bountiful, bringing along pockets full of small coins to toss to the local population as we visit the sights?’

‘That’s interesting,’ Brunetti said, closing the book but leaving it on his knees. ‘That the first thing you think of, too, is poverty.’

‘It’s either that or civil unrest in most of those places.’ She paused for a moment, then added, ‘Or cheap Imodium.’

‘Huh?’

‘Remember when we were in Egypt and had to get Imodium?’

Brunetti remembered the trip to Egypt, a decade ago, when both of them had come down with fierce diarrhoea and had lived for two days on yoghurt, rice, and Imodium. ‘Yes,’ he answered. He thought he remembered, but he wasn’t sure.

‘No prescription, no questions and cheap, cheap, cheap. If I’d had a list of the things my neurotic friends take, I could have done my Christmas shopping for the next five years.’ She saw that he didn’t share the joke, so she returned her attention to the atlas. ‘But what about those countries?’

‘Mitri received money from them, large amounts. Or his companies did. I don’t know which because it all went to Switzerland.’

‘Doesn’t all money, in the end?’ she asked with a tired sigh.

He shook himself free of the thought of those countries and placed the atlas beside him on the sofa. ‘Where are the kids?’ he asked.

‘They’re having dinner with my parents.’

‘Should we go out, then?’ he asked.

‘You’re willing to take me out again, be seen with me?’ she asked lightly.

Brunetti wasn’t sure how much she was joking so he answered, ‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere you like.’

She sprawled against him, pushing her legs out in front of her, beside his longer ones. ‘I don’t want to go far. How about a pizza at Due Colonne?’

‘What time will the kids be back?’ he asked, placing his hand on hers.

‘Not before ten, I’d say,’ she answered, glancing down at her watch.

‘Good,’ he said, raising her hand to his lips.

Neither the next day nor the day after that did Brunetti learn anything about Palmieri. An article appeared in Il Gazzettino remarking that there had been no progress in the Mitri case but making no mention of Paola, so Brunetti concluded that his father-in-law had indeed been speaking to people he knew. The national press was similarly silent; then eleven people were burned to death in an oxygen chamber in a hospital in Milan, and the story of Mitri’s murder was abandoned in favour of denunciations of the entire national health system.

As good as her word, Signorina Elettra gave him three pages of information about Sandro Bonaventura. He and his wife had two children, both at university; a house in Padova, and an apartment in Castelfranco Veneto. The factory there, Interfar, as Bonaventura had said, was in his sister’s name. The money to purchase it, a year and a half ago, was paid over one day after a large withdrawal was made from Mitri’s account in a Venetian bank.

Bonaventura had worked as a director of one of Mitri’s factories until he had taken over the directorship of the one that his sister owned. And that was all: an Urtext of middle-class success.

On the third day, a man was caught robbing the post office in Campo San Polo. After five hours of questioning, he admitted to the robbery of the bank at Campo San Luca. He was the same man whose photo Iacovantuono had identified the first time and whom, after his wife’s death, he had failed to recognize. While he was being questioned, Brunetti went down and had a look at him through the one-way glass in the door of the room where the interrogation was taking place. He saw a short, stocky man with thinning brown hair; the man Iacovantuono had described the second time had red hair and was at least twenty kilos lighter.

He went back up to his office and called Negri in Treviso, who was handling the case of Signorina Iacovantuono’s death – the case that wasn’t a case – and told him they had an arrest for the bank robbery and that he looked nothing like the man Iacovantuono had identified the second time.

After he gave this information, Brunetti asked, ‘What’s he doing?’

‘He goes to work, comes home and feeds his children, then to the cemetery every other day to put fresh flowers on her grave,’ Negri answered.

‘Is there another woman?’

‘Not yet.’

‘If he did it, he’s good,’ Brunetti stated.

‘I found him absolutely convincing when I spoke to him. I even sent a team to protect them, to keep an eye on the house, the day after she died.’

‘They see anything?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Let me know if something turns up,’ Brunetti said.

‘Not likely, is it?’

‘No.’

Usually Brunetti’s instinct warned him when someone was lying or trying to hide something, but with Iacovantuono he had had no idea, no sense of warning or suspicion. Brunetti found himself wondering which he wanted to be true: did he want to be right, or did he want the little pizza cook to be a murderer?

His phone rang while his hand was still on it and pulled him away from speculation he knew to be idle.

‘Guido, it’s della Corte.’

Brunetti’s mind flashed to Padova, to Mitri and to Palmieri. ‘What is it?’ he asked, too excited to dredge up polite formulas and all thought of Iacovantuono driven from his mind.

‘We might have found him.’

‘Palmieri?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘North of here. It looks like he’s driving a truck.’

‘A truck?’ Brunetti repeated stupidly. It seemed too banal for a man who might have killed four people.

‘He’s using a different name. Michele de Luca.’

‘How did you find him?’

‘One of our blokes on the drug squad asked around and one of his little people told him. He wasn’t sure, so we sent someone up there and he came back with a fairly positive identification.’

‘Is there any chance that Palmieri might have seen him?’

‘No, this guy’s good.’ Neither spoke for a while, then della Corte asked, ‘Do you want us to bring him in?’

I’m not sure that’s going to be very easy.’

‘We know where he’s living. We could go in at night.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Castelfranco Veneto. He’s driving a truck for a pharmaceutical factory called Interfar.’