Donna Leon - Beastly Things

If this was the taste of victory, Brunetti did not like it, but still he said, ‘In the presence of your lawyer, you confirm and sign the transcript of what you’ve just told me about the way you and Signorina Borelli paid the veterinarians at the slaughterhouse to approve as healthy animals that were not. And about how she began an affair with Dottor Andrea Nava in hopes of being able to persuade him to do the same.’ He gave Papetti a chance to acknowledge understanding or compliance, but the man remained motionless, his face blank.

‘You’ve also explained Signorina Borelli’s decision to threaten him by revealing the affair to his wife, and Dottor Nava’s response to that.’ He waited for Papetti’s nod, and at that he said, ‘I also want you to sign the transcript of what you told me about her call to you and the help you gave her in disposing of the body of Dottor Nava.’

Brunetti stopped and looked at Papetti’s lawyer, who might as well not have been in the room for all the attention he seemed to be paying to what was going on around him. ‘You will sign this account, and your lawyer will sign it as a witness.’ That, to Brunetti, seemed clear enough.

‘And if she claims we were having an affair?’ Papetti asked in a tight voice.

‘I’ve a statement that confirms what you’ve said about what was going on at the slaughterhouse, and Signorina Borelli’s lack of sexual interest in you,’ Brunetti said and saw the shock on both men’s faces.

‘Thus the newspapers could report that the police have excluded that possibility,’ Brunetti offered. ‘For we do.’

As if someone had walked over his grave, Torinese raised his head and asked, ‘Could report or will report?’

‘Will report,’ Brunetti guaranteed.

‘What else?’ Torinese asked.

‘Do I want or do I give?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Want.’

All Brunetti wanted was enough to convict Borelli of having killed Dottor Nava. The rest – the diseased meat, the corrupted veterinarians, the farmers and their contaminated earnings – he would gladly hand over to the Carabinieri, who had the NAS for such things: they could handle it better than he. And the boys in Finance could be given a chance to pick the bones of their illegal earnings.

‘I want her,’ he said.

Torinese turned to his client and asked, ‘Well?’

Papetti nodded. ‘I’ll tell them anything they want.’

Brunetti would not allow the ambiguity of this and said instantly, ‘If you lie, in your own favour, or against her, I’ll toss you to your father-in-law so fast you won’t have time to raise your hands to protect yourself.’

Vianello’s head snapped up at Brunetti’s tone, the other two at his words.

Torinese got to his feet. ‘Is that all?’ he asked. Brunetti nodded. He looked at Brunetti and, after some time, the lawyer nodded in return, a gesture Brunetti could not interpret.

‘If you’ll go downstairs with Inspector Vianello,’ Brunetti said, ‘he’ll bring you the printed statement as soon as it’s ready. When you sign it, you can both go.’

There was much shuffling of feet, then chairs scraped against the floor. But no one spoke and no one shook hands. Torinese put his tape recorder in his briefcase. The three men left the office; Brunetti walked over and closed the door, then went to his desk and called Signorina Elettra and told her he wanted Patta to have a magistrate issue an order for the arrest of Signorina Giulia Borelli.

In the afternoon, Bocchese called to say that the crime squad had spent most of the morning at the apartment on the Rio del Malpaga. There was no sign of anything suspicious in the apartment itself, which Bocchese said looked like the sort of place that would be rented to tourists by the week, but in the ground floor entranceway, which had a wooden door opening on the canal, they had found traces of blood and, on one of the steps leading down to the water, twin furrows in the algae covering it. Yes, the technician answered, the marks might have been left by the feet of a body being dragged down the steps. The furrows were being tested for traces of what might be leather; he had already retrieved Dottor Nava’s shoe from the evidence room and, if they did find traces of leather that had survived the rise and fall of repeated tides, he would check to see if the marks on the shoe and on the steps matched.

They were dredging the canal just in front of the door, and a diver was on the way to have a look farther out in the water. Anything else?

Brunetti thanked him and hung up.

Not for an instant did it occur to Brunetti that she would attempt to flee: she might want to run from the legal risk, but a woman like her would never leave her property behind. She owned three apartments, had bank accounts, probably had more money stashed somewhere else: a woman ruled by greed would not take the chance of losing all of that or losing control over it. Where could she go? There was no indication that she spoke another language nor that she had some other passport, so she could not slip away to another country to establish a new life. She would stay and she would try to get away with it, even if it meant having to pay the huge costs of a defence lawyer. Brunetti did not doubt that she would attempt to embroil Papetti in the murder. But Papetti’s father-in-law, believing that the crime was only murder and not the far more heinous crime of betraying his daughter, would surely not baulk at hiring the best defence lawyers for his daughter’s husband.

Half an hour later, as Brunetti still stood at the window, his phone rang.

It was Bocchese. ‘We found a telefonino on the bottom step, Commissario. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he went into the water. Anyone could see it in the daylight, lying there.’

But not at night, Brunetti thought. ‘Is it his?’ he asked.

‘Probably.’

‘Is it still working?’

‘Of course not. The water would stop it instantly,’ Bocchese said.

‘Can you retrieve the information from it to tell when that happened?’

‘No,’ Bocchese said, dashing Brunetti’s hopes of constructing an accurate chronology of the events of the night of Nava’s murder.

‘But…’ Bocchese said in a voice that sounded, to Brunetti, almost flirtatious.

‘But what?’

‘You really don’t understand these things, do you?’ Bocchese asked.

‘What things?’ Brunetti asked, wondering what procedural possibility he had overlooked.

‘Everything.’ Bocchese made no attempt to disguise his exasperation. ‘Computers, telefonini . Everything.’

Brunetti refused to answer.

In a voice suddenly grown more accommodating, Bocchese said, ‘Then let me tell you. If his phone was connected to his network – and phones are – even yours – then his connection to it would have been broken within the first three minutes after the phone went into the water.’ Before Brunetti could suffer the embarrassment of having been so close, Bocchese went on, ‘But the network will have the records of all the calls he made, or received, up until that time.’ He let Brunetti think about that for a moment and then asked, ‘Will that be enough?’

Brunetti closed his eyes, flooded with gratitude though with no idea where to direct it. ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Thanks.’

THE DAY AFTER Giulia Borelli was arrested for the murder of Dottor Andrea Nava, whose telefonino had stopped working ten minutes before Signorina Borelli telephoned to Alessandro Papetti, who was on the other side of Venice when he answered, Vianello and Brunetti drove out to Mestre to attend the funeral of Dottor Nava. Because there was heavy traffic, Brunetti and Vianello reached the church only a few minutes before the funeral was to begin. The driver slowed to a stop half a block away and the two men got out, then walked quickly to the church and up the stairs, hurrying under the gaze of the saints and angels looking down on them. Entering, it took them some time to adjust to the dimmer light; at the front of the church, six dark-suited men were just setting the coffin in place on the wooden trestles before the altar.