Donna Leon - Doctored Evidence

'Who, the son?'

'Yes. That's where he started. The father worked in the personnel office, and God knows no one's going to ask for a bribe there.'

'And the dates?'

Vianello picked up the papers and looked through them. 'The payments started after he had been there for four years.' He looked across at Brunetti. "That's more than enough time for him to have become familiar with the way things worked.'

'If that's how they worked.'

'Commissario,' Vianello said, an unwonted note of asperity in his voice, 'it's a city office, for God's sake. How else do you think things work?'

'Who was in charge of the office when the payments began?'

Without having to consult the papers, Vianello answered, 'Renato Fedi. He was named head of the department about three months before the accounts were opened.'

'And went on to bigger and better things,' Brunetti chimed in. But then asked, 'Who was in charge when Battestini started working there?'

'Piero De Pra was there when he started, but he's dead now. Luca Sardelli took over when De Pra died, but he lasted only two years himself before he was transferred to the Sanitation Department. Before it was privatized,' he added.

'Any idea why he was transferred?'

Vianello shrugged. ‘From the little I've heard about him, I'd guess he's one of those nonentities who just gets shifted around from office to office because he's made it his business to make friends with everyone, so no one has the courage to fire him. They just keep him around until they see a convenient spot to move him, and they get rid of him.'

Resisting the strong impulse to repeat his remark about the Questura, Brunetti contented himself with asking, instead, 'And he's at the Assessorato dello Sport now?'

'Yes.'

'Any idea what he does?' 'No.'

'Find out’ Brunetti said. Before Vianello could acknowledge the command, Brunetti asked, 'And Fedi?'

'He followed Sardelli, stayed there two years, and then left the civil service to take over his uncle's construction company. He's run it since then.'

'What sort of things do they do?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes’ Vianello answered. 'Restorations. Of schools, among other things.'

Brunetti cast his memory back to his conversation with Judge Galvani, trying to remember if there had been anything in the judge's reference to Fedi that he had overlooked, some tone, or a suggestion that he take a closer look at the man, but he could remember nothing. It occurred to him then that Galvani was not a friend and owed him no favours, so perhaps he would not have made the suggestion, even if there were reason to do so. He felt a moment's hot exasperation: why did it always have to be like this, with no one willing to do anything unless there were personal gain to be had from it or because some favour had to be repaid?

He drew his attention back to Vianello, who was saying,'… has grown steadily for the last five years'.

'I'm sorry, Vianello,' he said, ‘I was trunking about something else. What did you say?'

'That his uncle's company won a contract to restore two schools in Castello when Fedi was in charge of the school board, and that it's grown steadily since then, especially after he took over.'

'How do you know this?'

'We looked at the papers in his office and his tax returns for those years.'

For a moment, he was tempted to ask angrily if this meant Vianello and Signorina Elettra had somehow found the time that morning to go to Fedi's office and ask to please examine their client records and tax returns, and this without bothering to get an order from a judge. Instead, he said, 'Vianello, this has got to stop.'

'Yes, sir,' the inspector said perfunctorily, then added, 'My guess is that the tenders for the work that went to the uncle's company would have been evaluated by Battestini. He was working in that job then.'

With acute awareness of the hopeless irony of the question, Brunetti asked, 'Can you find out if he did examine them?'

Gracious in victory, Vianello did no more than nod. 'His signature or initials have got to be on the original bid if he was the person who checked it for the school board.' He forestalled Brunetti's next question by saying, 'No, sir, we don't have to go and look at the papers. There's a code on the offer, indicating who examined it and checked that it met the school's requirements, so all we have to do is find Fedi's bid and see who handled it.'

Ts there any way you can check the costs to see if they were…' Imagination failed Brunetti, and he left the sentence unfinished.

'The easiest way, I think, would be to check the other bids and compare what they offered in terms of cost and time. If Fedi's uncle's bid was much higher or provided less, then that would suggest we've found the explanation.'

From the enthusiasm with which he spoke, Brunetti had no doubt what Vianello thought the likely result would be. But Brunetti had spent many years in contemplation of the genius with which Italians robbed the state, and he doubted that someone as successful as Fedi, were he to have given this contract to his uncle by illegal means, would have been so artless as to have left an easy trail. 'Check to see about overruns, too, and whether they were ever questioned,' he suggested, displaying two decades of experience of the city administration.

Vianello got to his feet and left. Brunetti toyed for a moment with the idea of going downstairs to observe them at work – he knew better than to delude himself into thinking he could help in any way – but knew it would be better to leave them to it. Not only would it be faster that way, but it would also spare his conscience the need to contemplate the ever-expanding illegality of Signorina Elettra and Vianello's investigative techniques.

After more than an hour, Brunetti's impatience conquered his good sense, and he went downstairs. When he entered her office, expecting to find Signorina Elettra and Vianello peering at the computer, he was surprised to find them gone, though the blank screen still glowed with suspended life. Pacta's door was closed: in fact, Brunetti was suddenly aware that he had seen no sign of his superior for some days and wondered if Patta had indeed moved to Brussels and begun working for Interpol, and no one had noticed. Once he allowed this possibility to slip into his mind, Brunetti found himself helpless to avoid considering its consequences: which of the various time-servers poised on the slippery pole of promotion would be chosen to replace Patta?

The geographical inwardness of Venice was reflected in its social habits: the web of narrow colli connecting the six sestieri mirrored the connections and interstices linking its inhabitants to one another. Strada Nuova and Via XXII Marzo had the broad directness of the ties of family: anyone could follow them clearly. Calle Lunga San Barnaba and Barbaria de le Tole, straight still but far narrower and shorter, were in their way like the bonds between close friends: there was little chance of losing the way, but they didn't lead as far. The bulk of the calli that made movement possible in the city, however, were narrow and crooked, often leading to dead ends or to branches that took the unsuspecting in the opposite direction to the way they wanted to go: this was the way of protective deceit, these the paths that had to be followed by those without access to more direct ways of reaching a goal.

In the years he had been in Venice, Patta had been unable to find his way alone through the narrow calli, but he had at least learned to send Venetians ahead to lead him through the labyrinth of rancours and animosities that had been built up over the centuries, as well as around the obstacles and wrong turnings created in more recent times. No doubt any replacement sent by the central bureaucracy in Rome would be a foreigner – as anyone not born within earshot of the waters of the laguna was a foreigner – and would flail about hopelessly in pursuit of straight roads and direct ways of getting somewhere. Aghast at the realization,