Donna Leon - Beastly Things

She considered that, then said, ‘No, not that I recall.’

‘Could you give me an idea of your duties at the macello in Preganziol?’ Brunetti asked, as if he’d heard enough about her activities on Sunday evening.

‘I’m Dottor Papetti’s assistant.’

‘And your duties, Signorina?’

Vianello filled the room with the sound of a turning page.

‘I plan the timetable for the workers, both the knackers and the cleaning crew; I keep track of the numbers of animals brought in to the macello , of the total quantity of meat that is produced each day; I keep the farmers current with the directives that come down from Brussels.’

‘What sort of directives?’ Brunetti interrupted to ask.

‘Methods of slaughtering, how the animals are to be brought in to the macello , where and how they are to be kept if they have to wait a day, or more, before slaughter.’ She looked at him and tilted her head to one side as if asking him if she should continue.

‘The matter of price, Signorina, of what a kilo of a particular cut of meat is worth: who determines that?’

‘The market,’ she answered immediately. ‘The market and the season and the quantity of meat available at any given time.’

‘And the quality?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said.

‘The quality of the meat, Signorina,’ Brunetti said. ‘Whether an animal is healthy and can be slaughtered. Who determines that?’

‘The veterinarian,’ she said, ‘not me.’

‘And how does he judge the health of an animal?’ Brunetti asked as Vianello turned another page.

‘That’s what he went to university for, presumably,’ she said, and Brunetti realized he had goaded her or come close to doing so, surprised at himself for choosing this word.

‘So that he can identify animals that are too sick to be slaughtered?’

‘I should certainly hope so,’ she said, but she said it too forcefully, making it sound false, not only to Brunetti but, he suspected, to herself.

‘What happens if he judges that an animal is not suitable to be slaughtered?’

‘Do you mean not healthy enough?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then the animal is given back to the farmer who brought it, and he is responsible for disposing of it.’

‘Could you tell me how that is done?’

‘The animal has to be slaughtered and destroyed.’

‘Destroyed?’

‘Burned.’

‘How much does this cost?’

‘I have no…’ she started to say, then realized how hollow that would sound and changed her sentence. ‘… way to give you a fixed sum for that. It would depend on the weight of the animal.’

‘But, presumably, it would be a significant sum?’ he asked.

‘I would think so,’ she agreed. Then, reluctantly, ‘As much as four hundred Euros.’

‘So it’s in the best interests of the farmers to bring only healthy animals to the macello ?’ Brunetti asked, making it a question, though it really was not.

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Dottor Andrea Nava was employed as the veterinarian at the macello ,’ Brunetti began.

‘Is that a question?’ she interrupted.

‘No, it is a statement,’ Brunetti said. ‘My question is what your relationship with him was.’

The question seemed not to surprise her in the least, but she paused a bit before she answered. ‘He was employed by the macello , as I was, so I suppose you would say we were colleagues.’

Brunetti folded his hands neatly on the desk in front of him, a gesture he had seen his professors use when a student failed to supply an adequate answer. He remembered, as well, the technique of the long silence, one that almost invariably proved successful with the most insecure students. He looked at Signorina Borelli, at the view from his window, and then back to her.

‘And that was the extent of it?’ he asked.

If he had only imagined her response to the thought of hiring a lawyer, this time he could watch her think the problem through. She wanted to stall him so as to have more time to work out how much she could admit, though surely she must have known this question was bound to be asked.

Finally she shrugged and gave a raffish smile. ‘Well, not really. We had sex a few times, but it was nothing serious.’

‘Where?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Where what?’ she asked, genuinely confused.

‘Where did you have sex?’

‘A couple of times at his place, the one above his office, and in the changing room at the macello .’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Once in my office.’ She tilted her chin to one side and gave his question the thought she believed it deserved. ‘I think that’s all.’

‘How long did this affair go on?’ Brunetti asked.

She looked up at him, either surprised or pretending to be. ‘Oh, it wasn’t an affair, Commissario. It was sex.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, accepting the reprimand. ‘How long did it go on?’

‘From a few months after he started work until about three months ago.’

‘What caused it to end?’ Brunetti asked.

She dismissed the question, perhaps even the answer, as uninteresting. ‘It stopped being fun,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be convenient for us both, but the first thing I knew, he was talking about us as a couple, with a future.’ She shook her head at this. ‘You’d think he’d forgotten he had a wife and child.’

‘You hadn’t forgotten it, Signorina?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ she said hotly. ‘That’s why married men are so convenient: you know either one of you can end it when you want, and no one’s hurt.’

‘But he didn’t see it that way?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘What did he want?’

‘I have no idea. As soon as he started talking about a future, I told him it was over. Finito . Basta .’ She moved around in her chair, rather like an angry chicken fluffing out its feathers. ‘I didn’t need that.’

‘You mean his attentions?’ Brunetti asked.

‘The whole thing: call them attentions if you want. I didn’t want to listen to his guilt and his remorse and how he was betraying his wife. And I wanted to be able to go out to dinner or for a drink without having the man I was with looking over his shoulder every second, as if he were a criminal.’ She sounded genuinely angry; Brunetti had no doubt that she was, and had been, though perhaps not for those reasons.

‘Or as if you were,’ Brunetti said.

That stopped her. She hesitated, and just as it became too late for her to ask what he meant, she finally forced herself to say it. ‘What do you mean?’

As if she had not spoken, Brunetti went on, ‘You said that one of his duties was to inspect the animals brought into the macello to see if they were healthy enough to be slaughtered.’

Taken aback by his change of pace, she agreed, ‘Yes.’

‘From the time Dottor Nava took the position as veterinarian at the macello , there was a sudden increase in the number of animals declared unfit to be slaughtered.’ He paused, and when she did not acknowledge the truth of this, he broke into the silence of her hesitation by saying, ‘Before he began to inspect the animals, the average rate of rejection – if I might call it that – was about three per cent, yet as soon as Dottor Nava began, that rate tripled, then quadrupled, and then went even higher.’

Brunetti studied her response: none was evident. ‘Can you explain that, Signorina?’

She brought her lips together, as if in consideration of his question, and then said, ‘I think you’ll have to ask Bianchi about that.’

‘You didn’t know about the increase?’ he asked with false surprise.