Donna Leon - Beastly Things

‘Did she tell you what happened?’

‘No. Nothing. She asked me to open the door and then to help her push him down the steps.’

‘And you did.’

‘I didn’t have any choice, did I?’ Papetti asked and looked down again, silent.

Papetti licked his lips, sucked them into his mouth, then licked them again. ‘We’ve known one another a long time.’

Calmly, Brunetti asked, ‘And that gave her that much power over you?’

Papetti opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. He gave a small cough and said, ‘I once… I once did something indiscreet.’ And then he stopped.

‘With Signorina Borelli?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have an affair with her?’

Papetti’s eyes widened in shock. ‘Good God, no.’

‘What happened?’

Papetti closed his eyes and said, ‘I tried to kiss her.’

Brunetti shot a glance at Vianello, who raised his eyebrows.

‘That’s all?’ Brunetti asked.

Papetti looked at him. ‘Yes. But it was enough.’

‘Enough for what?’

‘For her to get the idea.’ When Brunetti failed to understand, Papetti said, ‘About telling my father-in-law.’ Then after a moment, he added, ‘Or she planned it and that’s why she asked for a ride home. She said her car was in for servicing.’ Papetti ran both hands across his scalp. ‘Or it really was. I don’t know.’ Then, fiercely, ‘I’m a fool.’

Brunetti said nothing.

Voice unsteady, Papetti said, ‘He’d kill me.’ Then he asked, ‘What else could I do?’

It seemed to Brunetti that he had passed his entire life hearing people ask that same question. Only once, about fifteen years ago, had a man who had strangled three prostitutes said, ‘I liked it when they screamed.’ Though it had chilled Brunetti’s blood to hear it then, and still did to remember it, the man had at least spoken the truth.

‘After you put the body in the water, what did you do, Signor Papetti?’ he asked, deciding there was no way to prove or disprove Papetti’s story. What was not in question was the woman’s power over him.

‘I went back to Piazzale Roma and got my car and went home.’

‘Have you seen Signorina Borelli since then?’

‘Yes. At the macello .’

‘Has either of you spoken about this?’

Puzzled, Papetti asked, ‘No, why should we?’

‘I see,’ Brunetti answered. Turning to Torinese, Brunetti said, ‘If you have anything to say to your client, Avvocato, my colleague and I can leave you here for a while.’

Torinese shook his head, then said, ‘No, I have nothing to say.’

‘Then I would like to ask Dottor Papetti,’ Brunetti went on, ‘to tell me something more about the way things work at the macello .’ Torinese, he noticed, was understandably surprised by his question. His client had just confessed to helping to dispose of the body of a murder victim, and the police wanted to know about his job. To prevent Papetti from wasting time and energy by looking surprised too, Brunetti said, ‘Certain suspicions have arisen about the safety of the meat being produced there.’

‘Suspicion is not the same thing as information,’ Torinese interjected, making one of those distinctions that earn lawyers hundreds of Euros an hour.

‘Thank you for that point of law, Avvocato,’ Brunetti answered.

The lawyer looked across at Brunetti as if in search of clarification. ‘Forgive me for being vulgar, Commissario, but am I correct in assuming that we are involved in a bargaining session here?’ Knowing his gesture would not appear on the tape, Brunetti gave a small nod. ‘In which case I would like to know what sort of an offer you might be making my client in return for whatever information he might have to give you.’

Brunetti had to compliment the man on the eloquence of his vagueness: ‘assuming’, ‘would like’, ‘might’, and ‘might’ again. For a moment, he considered decapitating Torinese and using his smoked head as a bookend, so perfect did he find his attention to the niceties of language. Casting away that thought, he said, ‘The only offer I can make is the continued goodwill of your client’s father-in-law.’

That stopped them. Papetti’s mouth dropped open, and Brunetti thought he was going to begin to cry again. Instead, he looked at Torinese, as if waiting for him to speak, then back at Brunetti. ‘I don’t know what…’ he started to say.

Torinese gave his client a quick look and tried to take over. ‘If you could clarify your statement, Commissario, I’m sure both my client and I would be very pleased.’

Brunetti waited for the colour to return to Papetti’s face; when it did, he said, careful to speak to Torinese, ‘I’m sure your client understands my meaning. The last thing, the very last thing, I would like to see happen is for Dottor Papetti’s father-in-law to misunderstand the nature of his relationship with any of the employees at the macello .’ Papetti stared at him, face blank, mouth open just the least little bit.

Brunetti gave him the merest glance and returned his attention to the lawyer. ‘That Dottor Papetti’s father-in-law would confuse professional intimacy with intimacy of another kind: I dread the possibility that something like that might happen.’ He smiled to show his opinion of the rashness of men and of how terribly prone to it some of them were. ‘Such a misunderstanding might upset Signor De Rivera, to make no mention of his daughter, Dottor Papetti’s wife, and I would never want to feel in any way responsible for the possible consequences of that error.’ He turned to Papetti and gave him a smile that was an exercise in compassionate fellow feeling. ‘I couldn’t live with myself were that to happen.’

Papetti’s right hand lifted and moved towards his head, but he caught it in time and returned it to his thigh. Ignoring the glance Torinese shot him, he said, ‘She started an affair with Dottor Nava after he began to work at the slaughterhouse.’

‘She started it?’ Brunetti asked, placing special emphasis on the personal pronoun.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘To get a hold on Nava. She knew he was married, and it was obvious that he was a decent man.’ Papetti shook his head at his lawyer to stop him from speaking. ‘We had to pay the ones who came before him; not all that much, but still we paid them. She wanted to save money, so she began the affair, and then, when she was sure that Nava was deeply involved with her,’ he began, leaving the three other men in the room to imagine what this might entail, ‘she told him she was going to tell his wife that they were lovers unless he changed his behaviour at the macello .’

‘Changed it how?’ Brunetti asked to nudge him along.

‘Stopped condemning so many animals as unhealthy.’

‘Why would she want to do that?’ Brunetti asked, aware that Torinese’s head was moving back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match.

‘Because she was…’ Papetti began but was cut short by a savage glance from Brunetti. ‘Because she and I,’ he amended, ‘were paid by the farmers to see that most of the animals brought in for slaughter would be accepted.’

No one spoke, all of them waiting to see how much more he would reveal. ‘There was a certain amount of money involved.’ Before anyone could ask, he said, ‘A lot of money.’

‘What was your share?’ Brunetti asked, using a soft voice and asking in the plural.

‘Twenty-five per cent,’ Papetti said.

‘Of?’

‘Of the price the farmers got if the sick animals weren’t condemned and could be slaughtered.’

Though Torinese tried to disguise it, Brunetti could see that he was startled, perhaps even something stronger than that.