Donna Leon - Beastly Things

‘Who’s he?’ Patta demanded, giving evidence that he had not read the reports on the case.

‘Nava’s predecessor.’

‘What’s she got, this Borelli woman – a thing for veterinarians?’

Brunetti was tempted to smile at hearing Patta so unthinkingly ask this very interesting question.

‘I’ve no idea, sir. I’m merely curious in a general way.’

‘In a general way?’ Patta repeated slowly. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, sir, that I don’t have a clear idea yet of how all of these people are connected or of what continues to hold them together. But something does, because no one is telling me anything.’ Speaking more to himself than to Patta, Brunetti said, ‘All I need is the way in.’

Patta set his palms firmly on his desk. ‘All right, bring her in and see what she has to say. But, remember, I want to know anything you learn about Papetti before you act on it.’

‘Of course, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said and repaired to the outer office, where he saw the face of Signorina Elettra rising behind the screen of her computer.

‘I’ve accessed the files of the ULSS office in Treviso, sir, since they keep the same records the slaughterhouse does,’ she said. ‘It was easier than trying to get into those of the macello .’ Thoughtfully, she added, ‘Besides, in the unlikely event that any traces of my presence were left, it’s always better to leave them in a government agency than in a private business.’

Not wanting to offend Signorina Elettra, who was perhaps waiting for him to query her use of ‘accessed’ or ‘always’, perhaps even ‘unlikely event’, Brunetti limited himself to a mild ‘Tell me.’

‘I’ve gone back four years, sir, and to make it easier to read, I’ve put it into a graph.’ She nodded to the screen.

She moved the mouse, clicked, clicked again, and a line graph appeared, above which was written ‘Preganziol’. The months of the year were listed at the top; the side held numbers that ascended from 0 to 100.

The line began, in January four years before, at three and zigzagged its way to four the following month, then wiggled back to three the next. This pattern continued for the next two years. In the third year it followed the same erratic path upwards to five before sinking back to three, where it remained until November, when it catapulted up to eight and, rising steadily, finished the year at twelve. The line jumped off from January and hit thirteen, stayed there for a month, and then in March moved up to fourteen. The chart ended that month.

‘So whatever this number reflects,’ Brunetti said, ‘it moved upward suddenly at about the time Nava began working at the macello and continued to do so…’ He leaned forward and tapped at the end of the line, ‘… until the month before his death.’

Signorina Elettra scrolled the page down, allowing Brunetti to read the caption: Percentage of animals rejected by the competent authority as unfit for slaughter .

‘Unfit for slaughter.’ Which probably meant the same thing as ‘Unfit for human consumption.’ So there it was. The cowardly dog had defied the robbers, but this cowardly dog had not managed to turn on the robbers and save anyone, and the family where he had been living had not been able to take him back in and love him again, even though he still wasn’t very brave.

‘So he was doing his job,’ Brunetti said, then added, to Signorina Elettra’s confusion, ‘just like the dog.’ But he quickly added something she did understand, so clear was it made by the graph: ‘And his predecessor was not.’

‘Unless we’re back in Exodus and plagues were unleashed upon the land and pestilence upon the herds the day he started working there,’ she added.

‘Unlikely,’ Brunetti observed, then asked, ‘Anything else about Signorina Borelli?’

‘Aside from the list of her properties, I now have some information about her investments and her bank accounts.’

‘Plural?’

‘Here in the city, one in Mestre where her salary is deposited, and one in the postal banking system.’ She smiled and said, with badly disguised contempt, ‘People seem to believe that no one would think to look there.’

‘And what else?’ he asked, so familiar with her manner that he knew there were still treats to be revealed.

‘Meucci. Not only has he made three phone calls to Signorina Borelli’s telefonino in the last two days, but it turns out that he is not a veterinarian at all.’

‘What?’

‘He spent four years at Padova, took and passed most of the exams, but seems not to have taken the last four, and there’s no record that he took his degree from the university or that he passed – or ever applied to take – the state exams.’

Brunetti was about to ask how it was possible for the provincial department of health to give him a job as a veterinarian at a slaughterhouse or by what means he had set up a private practice, but he stopped himself in time. Few weeks passed without the revelation of some fake doctor or dentist; why should the species of the patient make fraud any less likely?

He decided on the instant. ‘Call his office and find out if he’s there: ask if you can bring your cat in or something like that – just find out if he’s there. If he is, send Foa and Pucetti over to ask him if he’d like to come in to talk to me.’

‘I’d be delighted, sir,’ she said, then, ‘Have a look at the papers about Signorina Borelli, why don’t you?’

Brunetti took the folder, intending to go to his office to read through the papers, but instead he went to the officers’ room to give more precise instructions to Foa and Pucetti, telling Pucetti to be careful to address Meucci as ‘Signore’ and not ‘Dottore’. After that, still carrying the file, he went down to the bar at Ponte dei Greci and had a coffee and two tramezzini .

Back in the office, he called Paola and asked what they were going to have for dinner. To please her, he asked how she was feeling about having orchestrated the non-renewal of her colleague’s contract.

‘Like Lucrezia Borgia,’ she said and laughed.

Brunetti spent some time looking for a tape recorder, which he found in the back of his bottom drawer. He checked that it worked and placed it very conspicuously on his desk. He opened the file then and began to read but had got as far only as the prices paid for Signorina Borelli’s apartment in Mestre and the first one in Venice when he heard a sound at his door.

Looking up, he saw Pucetti and, beside him, Meucci. If he were a tyre, then some of the air had been let out of him; this was most evident in his face, where the eyes seemed to have grown larger. His cheeks had sagged and hung loose above the soft little mouth. Less flesh pressed against the retaining wall of his collar.

His body seemed smaller, as well, but that might have been because of the dark woollen jacket that had replaced his voluminous lab coat.

Pucetti waited at the door while Meucci entered. The door closed; the only sound was the officer’s retreating footsteps.

‘Come in, Signor Meucci,’ Brunetti said coolly. He leaned across the desk and clicked on the tape recorder.

The man came slowly forward, as timidly as a young wildebeest forced to step into tall grass. As he approached Brunetti’s desk, his eyes moved around the room in search of the danger he knew was there. Slowly he lowered himself into a chair. Brunetti thought the noise was a sigh, but then he realized it was the sound of Meucci’s flesh-crammed clothing as it rubbed against the sides and back of the chair.

Brunetti observed the man’s hands, which remained fixed to the arms of the chair. The stained fingers were wrapped under the arms and so the hands looked like normal hands, however swollen with fat.