Donna Leon - Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

‘Which of you is in charge?’ Brunetti asked.

A small red-headed man looked up from one of the calculators and said, ‘I am. Are you Commissario Brunetti?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Brunetti answered, coming to stand beside him and extending his hand.

‘I’m Captain de Luca.’ Then less formally, taking Brunetti’s hand, he added, ‘Beniamino.’ He waved his hand over the papers. ‘You wanted to know who was in charge of all of this at the bank?’

‘Yes.’

‘It looks, right now, like it was all handled by Mascari. His key codes have been tapped into all of the transactions, and what look like his initials appear on many of the documents we’ve got here.’

‘Could that have been faked?’

‘What do you mean, Commissario?’

‘Could someone else have changed these documents to make it look like Mascari had handled them?’

De Luca thought about this for a long time, then answered, ‘I suppose so. If whoever did it had a day or two to work on the files, I suppose he could have done it.’ He considered this for a while, as if working out an algebraic formula in his head. ‘Yes, anyone could have done it, if he knew the key codes.’

‘In a bank, how private are those access codes?’

‘I would imagine they aren’t private at all. People are always checking one another’s accounts, and they need to know the codes in order to get into them. I would say it could be very easy.’

‘What about the initials on the receipts?’

‘Easier to forge than a signature,’ de Luca said.

‘Is there any way to prove that someone else did it?’

Again, de Luca considered the question for a long time before he answered. ‘With the computer entries, not at all. Maybe the initials could be shown to be false, but most people just scribble them on things like this; often it’s difficult to tell them apart or, for that fact, to recognize your own.’

‘Could a case be made that the records had been changed?’

De Luca’s look was as clear as his answer. ‘Commissario, you might want to make that case, but you wouldn’t want to make it in a courtroom.’

‘So Mascari was in charge?’

De Luca hesitated this time. ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. It looks like it, but it is entirely possible that the records were changed to make it look like he was.’

‘What about the rest of it, the process of selection for apartments?’

‘Oh, it’s clear that people were chosen to get apartments for reasons other than need and, in the case of those who received money, that poverty didn’t have much to do with a lot of the grants.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘In the first case, the letters of application are all here, divided into two groups: those who did get apartments and those who were turned down.’ De Luca paused for a moment. ‘No, I’m overstating the case. A number of the apartments, a large number of them, went to people who seemed to have real need, but the letters of application for almost a quarter of the applications come from people who aren’t even Venetian.’

‘The ones who were accepted?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. And your boys haven’t even finished checking on the complete list of tenants.’

Brunetti glanced towards Vianello, who explained, ‘They’ve gone through about half of the list, and it looks like a lot of them are rented to young people who live alone. And who work nights.’

Brunetti nodded. ‘Vianello, when you have a complete report on everyone on both lists, let me have it.’

‘It’s going to take at least another two days, sir,’ Vianello said.

‘There’s no longer any need to hurry, I’m afraid.’ Brunetti thanked de Luca for his help and went back up to his office.

It was perfect, he reflected, about as perfect as anyone could hope. Ravanello had spent his weekend all to good purpose, and the records now showed that Mascari had been in charge of the accounts of the Lega. What better way to explain those countless millions that had been pilfered from the Lega than to lay them at the feet of Mascari and his transvestites? Who knew what he had got up to when he travelled for the bank, what orgies he had not engaged in, what fortunes he had not squandered, this man who was too frugal to make a longdistance call to his wife? Malfatti, Brunetti was sure, was far from Venice and would not soon reappear, and he had no doubt that Malfatti would be recognized as the man who collected the rents and who had arranged that a percentage of the charity cheques be given back to him as a condition of their being granted in the first place. And Ravanello? He would reveal himself as the intimate friend who, out of mistaken loyalty, had not betrayed Mascari’s sinful secret, never imagining what fiscal enormities his friend had engaged in to pay for his unnatural lusts. Santomauro? No doubt there would be a first wave of ridicule as he was revealed to have been such a gullible tool of his banker friend, Mascari, but, sooner or later, popular opinion was bound to see him as the selfless citizen whose instinct to trust had been betrayed by the duplicity to which Mascari was driven by his unnatural lust. Perfect, absolutely perfect and not the slightest fissure into which Brunetti could introduce the truth.

That night, the high moral purpose of Tacitus provided Brunetti no consolation, nor did the violent destinies of Messalina and Agrippina serve as vindication of justice. He read the grim account of their much-merited deaths but could not rid himself of the realization that the evil spawned by these malevolent women endured long beyond their passing. Finally, well after two, he forced himself to stop reading and spent what remained of the night in troubled sleep, assailed by the memory of Mascari, of that just man, dispatched before his time, his death even more sordid than those of Messalina and Agrippina. Here, as well, evil would long endure his passing.

The morning was suffocating, as though a curse had been laid upon the city, condemning it to stagnant air and numbing heat, while the breezes abandoned it to its fate and went elsewhere to play. As he passed through the Rialto market on his way to work, Brunetti noticed how many of the produce vendors were closed, their usual spots in the ordered ranks of stalls gaping open like missing teeth in a drunkard’s smile. No sense trying to sell vegetables during Ferragosto: residents fled the city, and tourists wanted only panini and acqua minerale.

He arrived early at the Questura, reluctant to walk through the city after nine, when the heat grew worse and the streets even more crowded with tourists. He turned his thoughts from them. Not today.

Nothing satisfied him, not the thought that the illegal dealings of the Lega would now be stopped, and not the hope that de Luca and his men might still find some thread of evidence that would lead them to Santomauro and Ravanello. Nor did he have any hope of tracing either the dress or the shoes that Mascari had been wearing: too much time had already passed.

In the midst of this grim reverie, Vianello burst into his office without knocking and shouted, ‘We’ve found Malfatti!’

‘Where?’ Brunetti asked, getting up and moving towards him, suddenly filled with energy.

‘At his girlfriend’s, Luciana Vespa, over at San Barnaba.’

‘How?’

‘Her cousin called us. He’s on the list, been getting a cheque from the Lega for the last year.’

‘Did you make a deal?’ Brunetti asked, not at all disturbed by the illegality of this.

‘No, he didn’t even dare ask. He told us he wanted to help.’ Vianello’s snort told how much faith he put in this.

‘What did he tell you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Malfatti’s been there for three days.’