Donna Leon - Doctored Evidence

Brunetti had to accept the fact that he did not want Patta to leave.

These reflections fell from him as the sound of Vianello's voice approached. The deep boom of his laugh was followed by the higher tones of Signorina Elettra's. Entering the office, they stopped when they saw Brunetti: the laughter ceased, and the smiles evaporated from their faces.

Providing no explanation for their absence, Signorina Elettra moved behind her computer and flicked it into life, then pressed a series of keys, after which two pages materialized on the screen, placed side by side. 'These are the bids from Fedi's uncle's company that were accepted while Fedi was in charge of the school board, sir’

He moved to stand beside her and saw at the top of both sheets the familiar letter heading of the city administration and below it thick paragraphs of dark type. She touched a key, and two more seemingly identical pages appeared. Another key made these vanish, replacing them with two more. Lacking the letterhead, these contained, on the left, a column of words or phrases and, opposite them, a matching column of numbers.

'That's the estimate, sir.'

He looked at the last page and read some of the words, ran his eyes to the right and saw what the objects or services would cost. At sea in ignorance, he had no idea what many of them were and no idea what any of them should cost.

'Have you compared this with the other bids?' he asked, looking away from the contract and back at Signorina Elettra.

'Yes.'

'And?'

'And his was cheaper,' she said with audible disappointment. 'Not only was it cheaper, but he guaranteed that the work would be done within the fixed period and offered to pay a penalty per day if it was not.'

Brunetti looked back at the screen, as if certain that closer examination of the words and the numbers would reveal to him whatever ruse Fedi had used to win the contract. But no matter how long he studied the pages, they refused to make sense to him. Finally he turned away from the screen and asked, 'And overruns?'

'None,' she said, tapping a few words into the computer and waiting while new documents appeared in place of the others. 'The entire project was finished on time,' she explained, pointing to what Brunetti assumed were the documents which proved this. 'What's more,' she went on, 'they were finished within the projected budget, and a civil engineer I phoned said the work was done well, far above the average quality of work performed for the city.' She saw how he reacted to this, so showed some reluctance in adding, 'The same is true of the two restorations they did to schools here in the city, sir.'

Brunetti looked from the screen to her face, to Vianello's face and then back at the screen. In the past he had often told himself to look at the evidence and not at what he wanted the evidence to be, yet here he was again, confronted with information which did not support what he wanted the truth to be, and his impulse was to assume that it did not really mean what it appeared to mean or to find other evidence that would discount it.

He saw it then, the trail he had insisted they follow, the trail that had not only led to this dead end but had taken the wrong turning from the very start. 'It's all wrong’ he said. 'What we've been doing, it's all wrong.'

He recalled the title of a book he had read some years ago and said it out loud: '"The March of Folly". That's what we've been doing: lumbering around after big game when what we should have been doing was thinking about the money.'

'And isn't that the money?' Vianello asked, pointing to the screen.

'I mean the money in the accounts’ Brunetti insisted. 'We've been looking at the total, not the money.'

Their expressions suggested they still didn't follow, and Vianello's indignant, 'To some of us, thirty thousand Euro is money’ confirmed it.

'Of course it's money’ Brunetti agreed, 'a lot of money, especially ten years ago. But it's the total we've been looking at, not the actual monthly payments. Someone with a good salary could have paid it and not missed it. Even if you were still single and lived at home, you could have paid it’ he surprised Vianello by saying.

Vianello began a blustering negative, but then he considered the conditions Brunetti had imposed, paused, and said, though grudgingly, 'Yes, if I still lived with my parents and had no interests, and never wanted to go out to dinner, and didn't care what I wore, then I suppose I could have done it’ Ungracious in defeat, he added, 'But it still wouldn't be easy. It was a lot of money.'

'But not enough to pay someone to keep quiet about the way a contract was approved for the complete restoration of these buildings’ Brunetti insisted. He jabbed his finger against the computer screen, where the final sum glowed in eerie enormity. 'A job as big as this one would have earned them millions of Euros. No blackmailer’ he said, finally naming the crime, 'would ask for so little, not with a contract this large at stake’

He looked at both of them, waiting to see signs that they agreed with his interpretation. Vianello's slow nod and Signorina Elettra's answering smile showed him that they did. 'We've’ he began, then corrected himself and confessed, 'no, I've been blinded into thinking it was a payment for something big, something important, like a contract. But what we're after here is something small, something mean and personal and private.'

'And probably nasty,' Vianello added.

Brunetti turned to Signorina Elettra. 'I've no idea what sort of information you can get about the people who were working at the school board when the payments started’ he said, judging it superfluous to add that he no longer cared how she got it, "and I'm not sure what sort of person we're looking for. Avvocatessa Marieschi said Signora Battestini told her it was her son who took care of her old age’ he began, then, raising his eyes in a parody of belief, added, 'with the help of the Madonna.' Both of them smiled at that, and he went on, 'We're looking for someone who worked there and who could pay a hundred thousand lire a month.'

'Perhaps’ Vianello interrupted, 'they were so rich the money didn't matter to them.'

Signorina Elettra turned to him and said, ‘I don't think that's the sort of person who works at the school board, Ispettore.'

For a moment, Brunetti feared that Vianello would be offended by the apparent sarcasm of her remark, but he seemed not to be. In fact, after considering it, the inspector nodded and said, 'What's strange, if you think about it, is that the amount never changed. Salaries have gone up, everything's become more expensive, yet the payments never changed.'

Interested by what he said, Signorina Elettra slid into her chair and typed in a few words, then a few more, and the pages of print on the screen were replaced by the records of the vanished bank accounts. She scrolled them down to the month of the conversion to the Euro. After she'd checked those for January, she went on to February. Looking up at Brunetti, she said, 'Look at this, Commissario. There's a difference of five centesimi between January and February.'

Brunetti bent to look at the screen and saw that, as she said, the payment for February was five centesimi more than that for January. She hit a key, and he saw March and April, both with the adjusted total. Signorina Elettra pulled a pocket calculator from her desk, the tiny one sent to every citizen in the country at the time of the Euro conversion. Quickly she did the sums, looked up, and said, 'The February total is the right amount.' She slipped the calculator back into her drawer and shut it. 'Five centesimi’ she said with awe, as in the face of the terrible.

'Either the person realized the error…' Vianello began, but Brunetti cut him off by finishing the sentence with the more likely explanation, 'or Signora Battestini corrected him.'