Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

‘I think it was three or four hundred million lire,’ she answered.

‘I see. Thank you,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Did your husband say anything else that night, after he spoke to your brother?’

‘Well.’ She paused and, Brunetti thought, tried to remember. ‘He said the factory was losing money. From the way he spoke, I think Paolo might have had money invested in it privately.’

‘Aside from yours?’

‘Yes. With just a note from Paolo. Nothing official.’ When Brunetti was silent, she continued, ‘I think Paolo wanted to have more control over the way they did things.’

‘Did your husband give you any idea of what he was going to do?’

‘Oh, no.’ She was clearly surprised by the question. ‘He never told me about things like that.’ Brunetti wondered what sort of things he did tell her about but thought it best not to ask. ‘Afterwards he went to his room and the next day he didn’t mention it, so I thought, or I hoped, that he and Sandro had settled things.’

Brunetti responded instantly to her reference to ‘his room’, surely not the stuff of happy marriages. He worked his voice into a lower tone: ‘Please forgive me for asking you this, Signora, but could you tell me what sort of terms you and your husband were on?’

‘Terms?’

‘You said he went to “his room”, Signora,’ Brunetti replied in a soft voice.

‘Ah.’ The quiet sound escaped her entirely involuntarily.

Brunetti waited. Finally he said, ‘He’s gone now, Signora, so I think you can tell me.’

She looked across at him and he saw the tears form in her eyes. ‘There were other women,’ she whispered. ‘For years, other women. Once I followed him and waited outside her house, in the rain, for him to come out.’ Tears flowed down her face, but she ignored them. They began to drop on to the front of her blouse, leaving long oval marks on the fabric. ‘Once I had him followed by a detective. And I started to listen to his phone calls. Sometimes I’d play them back, hear him talking to other women. The same things he used to say to me.’ Tears cut her off and she paused a long time, but Brunetti forced himself not to speak. Finally she went on, ‘I loved him with my whole heart. From the first day I saw him. If Sandro did this…’ Her eyes filled with tears again, but she brushed them away with both palms. ‘Then I want you to know it and I want him to be punished. That’s why I want to talk to Sandro.’ She stopped, looking down.

‘Will you come and tell me what he says?’ she asked, eyes still on her hands, which lay quite still in her lap.

‘I don’t think I can do that until it’s all over, Signora. But then I will.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, looking up, then down again. Suddenly she got to her feet and walked towards the door. Brunetti was there before her and opened it. He stepped back to allow her to pass through ahead of him. ‘I’ll go home, then,’ she said and, before he could say anything, she walked out of the door, down the corridor and towards the entrance hall of the police station.

He went back to the desk of the officer whose phone he had used and, without bothering to ask permission, called Signorina Elettra again. As soon as she heard his voice, she told him the technician was already on the way to the Castelfranco morgue to take tissue samples, then asked him to give her a fax number. He put down the phone and went to the front desk, where he had the sergeant in charge write down the number. After giving it to Signorina Elettra, he remembered he had not called Paola that morning, so he dialled his home number. When no one answered, he left a message, saying that he was delayed in Castelfranco, but would be back later in the afternoon.

He sat down after that and lowered his head into his hands. A few minutes later he heard someone say, ‘Excuse me, Commissario, but these just came in for you.’

He looked up and saw a young officer standing in front of the desk he had requisitioned. In his left hand he held the distinctive curling papers of a fax, quite a few of them.

Brunetti tried to smile at him and extended his hand to take the proffered papers. He set them on the desk and smoothed them as best he could with the edge of his hand. He read through the columns, glad to discover that Signorina Elettra had put an asterisk next to any call made between any of the numbers, then put the papers into three separate piles: Palmieri, Bonaventura, Mitri.

In the ten days before Mitri’s murder, there had been repeated calls back and forth between Palmieri’s telefonino and the Interfar phone, one of them lasting seven minutes. The day before the crime, at nine twenty-seven at night, a call was made from Bonaventura’s home phone to Mitri’s. This conversation went on for two minutes. On the night of the murder, at almost the same time, a call lasting fifteen seconds had been made from Mitri’s phone to Bonaventura’s. After that, there had been three from the factory to Palmieri’s telefonino and a number between Bonaventura’s and Mitri’s homes.

He stacked the papers and went back down the hall. When he was let into the small room where he had last talked to Bonaventura, he found him sitting opposite a dark-haired man who had a small leather briefcase on the table beside him and a notebook in matching leather open in front of him. He turned round and Brunetti recognized Piero Candiani, a criminal lawyer from Padova. Candiani wore rimless glasses; behind them Brunetti saw a pair of dark eyes which combined in startling fashion, particularly in a lawyer, both intelligence and candour.

Candiani got to his feet and extended his hand. ‘Commissario Brunetti,’ he acknowledged and shook hands.

‘Avvocato.’ Brunetti nodded in the direction of Bonaventura, who hadn’t bothered to get to his feet.

Candiani pulled out the remaining chair and waited for Brunetti to sit before resuming his own. Without preamble he said, flicking a negligent hand towards the ceiling, ‘I assume our conversation is now being recorded.’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti acknowledged. Then, to save time, he recited the date and time, and gave their three names in a loud voice.

‘I understand you’ve already spoken to my client,’ Candiani began.

‘Yes. I asked him about certain shipments of medicines which Interfar has been making to foreign countries.’

‘Is this about EEC regulations?’ Candiani asked.

‘No.’

‘Then what?’

Brunetti glanced across at Bonaventura, who now sat with his legs crossed, one arm draped over the back of his chair.

‘It’s about shipments to Third World countries.’

Candiani wrote something in his notebook. Without raising his head he asked, ‘And what interest do the police have in these shipments?’

‘It would seem that many of them contained medicines which are no longer good. That is, they’ve expired or, in some cases, they contain useless substances which have been camouflaged to look like real medicines.’

‘I see.’ Candiani turned a page. ‘And what evidence do you have in support of these accusations?’

‘An accomplice.’

‘Accomplice?’ Candiani asked with barely disguised scepticism. ‘And may I ask who this accomplice is?’ The second time he pronounced the word, he gave it the heavy emphasis of doubt.

‘The foreman of the factory.’

Candiani glanced across at his client, and Bonaventura shrugged his shoulders in confusion or ignorance. He pressed his lips together and, with a quick flickering of his eyes, blinked away the possibility. ‘And you’d like to ask Signor Bonaventura about this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that all you want?’ Candiani glanced up from his notebook.