Donna Leon - Fatal Remedies

The Ministry of Health stepped in at this point. The Interfar factory was closed, the premises sealed, while inspectors opened and examined boxes, bottles and tubes. All the medicines in the central part of the factory were determined to be exactly what their labels stated them to be, but an entire section of the warehouse contained shipping crates filled with packages of substances which proved, upon examination, to have no medicinal value whatsoever. Three crates were filled with plastic bottles labelled as cough medicine. Upon examination, they were discovered to be made up of a mixture of sugar water and antifreeze, a combination which would prove harmful, perhaps lethal, to anyone who took it.

Other crates contained hundreds of boxes of medicines long past their expiry date; still others packages of gauze and sutures whose wrappings crumbled at a touch, so long had they been sitting unused in warehouses somewhere. Sandi provided the bills of lading and invoices which were to accompany these crates to their final destinations in lands racked by famine, war and pestilence, as well as a list of the prices to be paid for them by the international aid agencies so willing to distribute them to the suffering poor.

Removed from involvement in the case by a direct order from Patta, himself obeying one from the Minister of Health, Brunetti followed the investigation in the newspapers. Bonaventura admitted to some involvement in the sale of false medicines, though he insisted that the original plan and instigation had been Mitri’s. When he’d bought Interfar, he’d hired much of his staff from the factory Mitri had been forced to sell: they had brought the rot and corruption with them, and Bonaventura had found himself helpless to stop them. When he had protested to Mitri, his brother-in-law had threatened to call in his personal loan and withdraw his wife’s money from the factory, actions which would surely have led Bonaventura to financial ruin. Victim of his own weakness, then, and helpless in the face of Mitri’s superior financial strength, Bonaventura had had no choice but to continue with the production and sale of these false medicines. To have protested would have caused bankruptcy and disgrace.

From all that he read, Brunetti inferred that, should Bonaventura’s case ever reach trial, he would be subjected to a fine, not a particularly heavy one, for the labels of the Ministry of Health had never actually been changed or tampered with. Brunetti had no idea what law was broken by the sale of expired medicines, especially if that sale took place in some other country. The law was clearer on the falsification of medicines, but again the issue grew complicated by the fact that the medicines were not sold or distributed in Italy. All of this, however, he dismissed as worthless speculation. Bonaventura’s crime was murder, not tampering with packages: the murder of Mitri and the murder of anyone who died as a result of the medicines he sold.

In this belief Brunetti stood alone. The papers were now fully convinced that Palmieri had killed Mitri, though nowhere was a retraction made of the original theory that his killer was a fanatic inflamed and encouraged to murder by Paola’s action. The presiding magistrate decided not to press criminal charges against Paola, so the case was filed in the archives of the State.

A few days after Bonaventura was sent home, where he was to remain under house arrest, Brunetti sat in the living-room of his home, engrossed in Arrian’s account of the campaigns of Alexander, when the phone rang. He lifted his head, listening to see if Paola would pick it up in her study. When it stopped after the third ring, he went back to his book and to Alexander’s evident desire that his friends prostrate themselves before him as though he were a god. The charm of the book quickly tugged Brunetti back to that far-away place, that distant time.

‘It’s for you,’ Paola said from behind him. ‘A woman.’

‘Hm?’ Brunetti asked, looking up from the pages, but not yet fully there either in the room or in the present.

‘A woman,’ Paola repeated, standing by the door.

‘Who?’ Brunetti asked, slipping a used boat ticket into his book and setting it beside him on the sofa.

He was just pushing himself to his feet when Paola said, ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t listen to your calls.’

He froze, bent over like an old man with a bad back. ‘Madre di Dio,’ Brunetti exclaimed. He stood and stared across at Paola, who remained at the door, giving him a strange look.

‘What is it, Guido? Did you hurt your back?’

‘No, no. I’m fine. But I think I’ve got it. I think I’ve got him.’ He walked to the armadio and took out his coat.

When she saw him, Paola asked, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going out,’ he said, offering no explanation.

‘What’ll I tell this woman?’

‘Tell her I’m not here,’ he answered and, a moment after he spoke, that was true.

Signora Mitri let him in. She wore no make-up and the roots of her hair showed grey at the parting. She wore a shapeless brown dress and seemed to have grown even stouter in the time since he had last seen her. As he came close to shake her hand, he caught a faint whiff of something sweet, vermouth or Marsala.

‘You’ve come to tell me?’ she said when they were seated in the sitting-room, facing one another across a low table on which stood three soiled glasses and an empty bottle of vermouth.

‘No, Signora, I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything.’

Her disappointment pulled her eyes closed and drew her hands towards one another. After a moment, she glanced across at him and whispered, ‘I’d hoped…’

‘Have you read the papers, Signora?’

She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She shook her head.

‘I need to know something, Signora,’ Brunetti said. ‘I need you to explain something to me.’

‘What?’ she asked neutrally, not really interested.

‘You said, when we last spoke, that you listened to your husband’s conversations.’ When she made no acknowledgement that he had spoken he added, ‘With other women.’

As he had feared, her tears started, trailing down her cheeks and dropping on to the thick fabric of her dress. She nodded.

‘Signora, could you tell me how you did this?’

She looked up at him, her eyes pulled together in complete confusion.

‘How did you listen to the calls?’

She shook her head.

‘How did you do it, Signora?’ She didn’t answer and he went on. ‘It’s important, Signora. I need to know this.’

As he watched, her face blushed red with embarrassment. He’d told too many people that he was like a priest, that all secrets were safe with him, but he knew this to be the lie it was, so he didn’t try to convince her. Instead, he waited.

Finally she said, ‘The detective. He attached something to the phone in my room.’

‘A tape-recorder?’ Brunetti asked.

She nodded, her face growing even redder.

‘Is it still there, Signora?’

Again, she nodded.

‘Could you get it for me, Signora?’ She didn’t acknowledge having heard him, so he repeated, ‘Could you get it for me? Or tell me where it is?’

She put one hand over her eyes, but the tears continued to spill out from under it.

Brunetti waited. Finally, with her other hand, she pointed over her left shoulder, towards the back of the apartment. Quickly, before she had time to change her mind, Brunetti got up and went out into the hall. He walked down the corridor, past a kitchen on one side, a dining-room on the other. At the back, he glanced into one room and saw a man’s suit rack standing against the wall. He opened the door opposite and found himself in a teenager’s dream room: white chiffon flounces surrounded the lower part of the bed and dressing-table; one wall was entirely covered with mirrors.