Donna Leon - Beastly Things

‘He wasn’t my responsibility,’ Meucci said. For a moment, Brunetti imagined that the other man could not know Nava was dead and so casually say such a thing. But then he realized that Meucci must know – who in Venice could not, especially someone who had formerly held the man’s job?

‘I see,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Could you tell me what your duties were?’

‘Why do you want to know that?’ Meucci asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.

‘So as to understand what it was Dottor Nava did,’ Brunetti answered blandly.

‘Didn’t they tell you that out there?’

‘Out where?’ Brunetti inquired mildly and glanced aside at Vianello, as if to suggest he remember Meucci’s question.

Meucci tried to disguise his surprise by turning to throw his half-finished cigarette out the window. ‘At the slaughterhouse,’ he forced himself to answer when he turned back to Brunetti.

‘When we were there, do you mean?’ Brunetti asked pleasantly.

‘Weren’t you?’ was the only thing the doctor could think to ask.

‘Surely you know that already, Dottore,’ Brunetti said with a small smile and pulled his notebook from his pocket. He opened it and made a note, then looked at the doctor, who already had another lighted cigarette in his hand.

‘What can you tell me about Dottor Nava?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I told you I never met him,’ Meucci said, anger held in check, but just barely.

‘That’s not what I’m asking, Dottore,’ Brunetti said, gave another tiny smile, and made another note.

Brunetti’s prod seemed to work, for Meucci said, ‘After I left the macello , I had nothing further to do with it.’

‘Or with anyone working there?’ Brunetti asked with mild curiosity.

Meucci hesitated only a moment before he said, ‘No.’

Brunetti made another note.

This time, Meucci slammed the windows closed after tossing away his cigarette. Turning back to Brunetti he asked, ‘Do you have permission to be here, asking me these questions?’

‘Permission, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked, raising his eyebrows.

‘An order from a magistrate.’

Surprise took possession of Brunetti’s face. ‘Why, no, Dottore, I don’t.’ Then, with a relaxed smile, he added, ‘It never occurred to me to get one. In fact, I thought of the Doctor as a colleague of yours, so I thought you would be able to tell me more about him. But now that you’ve made it clear that there was never any contact between you, I’ll leave you to get to your patients.’ Because he had never relaxed enough to sit down, Brunetti could not emphasize his departure by getting to his feet. Instead, he put the cap on his pen and returned notebook and pen to his pocket, thanked the doctor for his time, and left the office.

In the waiting room, the large dogs stood up when the two men came in; the third one slept heavily on. Brunetti took his notebook from his pocket and waved it in the air as they walked in front of the dogs, but they did no more than wag their tails at them. The two women ignored them.

‘MAYBE HE’S SUCH a bad liar because animals can’t tell the difference,’ Vianello suggested as they started back towards the Questura. To make it absolutely clear, he added, ‘If you can lie to them or not, that is.’

They walked for some time before Brunetti said, ‘Chiara’s always telling me they have other senses and can read our moods. They even use dogs to detect cancer, I think.’

‘Sounds strange to me.’

‘The more I live, the more most things sound strange to me,’ Brunetti observed.

‘What did you think of him?’ the Inspector asked with a flick of his head back towards Meucci’s office.

‘There’s no question he was lying, but I’m not sure what he was lying about.’

‘He lies a lot,’ Vianello said.

This caused Brunetti to stop. ‘You didn’t tell me you knew him.’

Vianello looked surprised that Brunetti would take him so seriously. ‘No,’ he said, starting to walk again, ‘I meant that I know his type. He lies to himself, I’m sure, about smoking, probably tells himself he doesn’t smoke much at all.’

‘And the stains on his fingers?’

‘Gitanes,’ Vianello answered. ‘They’re famous for being strong, so only a few of them would be enough to cause it.’

‘Of course,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘What else is he lying about?’

‘He’s probably convinced himself that he doesn’t eat much; that he’s fat because he has some hormonal disorder, or thyroid condition, or dysfunction of some gland we have in common with the animals, so he’d know about it.’

‘They’re all possible, aren’t they?’ Brunetti, who didn’t believe it for an instant, inquired.

‘Anything’s possible,’ Vianello answered with heavy emphasis on the second word. ‘But it’s far more likely that he’s fat because he eats too much.’

‘And was he lying about Nava?’

‘That he didn’t know him?’

‘Yes.’

At the foot of a bridge, Vianello turned to Brunetti. ‘I think so. Yes.’ Brunetti remained silent, encouraging the Inspector to continue. ‘It’s not so much that he was lying about knowing him – though I think he was – as that he was lying about everything about the macello . I got the feeling that he wanted to distance himself in every way possible.’

Brunetti nodded. What Vianello said merely put into words his own sense of their meeting with Meucci.

‘And you?’ Vianello asked.

‘It’s hard to believe they never met,’ Brunetti said. ‘They’re both veterinarians, so they’d go to the same professional meetings. And if Nava was qualified to take on a job like that, then there must be some common background.’ As Vianello started up the bridge, Brunetti added from behind him, ‘And Nava must have had questions about the job.’

He fell into step beside the Inspector, saying, ‘It’s obvious he already knew we’d been to the macello and talked to people there. So why did he deny knowing it?’

‘How stupid does he think we are?’ Vianello burst out.

‘Probably very,’ Brunetti said, almost without thinking. Being underestimated, he had learned – however unflattering it might be – always conveyed an advantage. If the person doing the underestimating wasn’t very bright to begin with – and Brunetti had a sense that Meucci was not – that increased the advantage.

He took his phone from his pocket and dialled Signorina Elettra’s number. When she answered, he said, ‘I wonder if your friend Giorgio could take an interest in a veterinarian named Gabriele Meucci?’

Giorgio. Giorgio: the man at Telecom, though surely not the man who came to install the phone. Giorgio, who appeared not to have a surname, nor a history, nor any human characteristics other than a slavish need to fulfil Signorina Elettra’s every whim and an ability to retrieve or trace any phone call she requested, regardless of country of origin, name of caller, or destination. Did one light a candle to Giorgio; did one send him a case of champagne at Christmas? It hardly mattered to Brunetti, who wanted only to continue to believe in the existence of Giorgio, for to doubt Giorgio’s existence created the possibility that the illegal, invasive buccaneering in the telephone records of private citizens and state organizations that had been going on for more than a decade had not been Giorgio’s doing but, instead, had had its detectable – and flagrantly criminal – origin in emails originating from a computer traceable to the office of the Vice-Questore of the city of Venice.

‘I have to speak to him about something else,’ she said blandly. ‘I could certainly ask.’

‘So kind,’ Brunetti said and flipped closed his phone.