Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

Like the plagues inflicted upon the children of Egypt, moneylenders afflicted the children of Italy and caused them to suffer. Banks extended credit reluctantly and generally only with the guarantee of the sort of financial security that would obviate the need to borrow. Short-term credit for the businessman who had little cash at the end of the month or the salesman whose clients were slow in paying was virtually non-existent. And all of this was compounded by a habitual sloth in the paying of bills which could be said to characterize the entire nation.

Into this breach stepped, as everyone knew but few would say, the moneylenders, gli strozzini, those shadowy persons who were willing and able to lend at short notice and with little security from the borrowers. Their rates of interest more than compensated for any risk they might incur. And, in a sense, the idea of risk was academic at best, for the strozzini had methods which greatly reduced the possibility that their clients – if that is the right name for them – would fail to repay the money they had borrowed. Men had children, and children could disappear; men had daughters, and young girls might be raped; men had their lives, and these had been known to be lost. Occasionally the press carried stories which, without being entirely clear, managed nevertheless to suggest that certain actions, often unpleasant or violent, had resulted from the failure to repay borrowed money. But seldom did the people involved in these stories end up under prosecution or close police examination: a wall of silence hedged them safely round. Brunetti had to struggle to recall a case where enough evidence had been gathered to lead to a conviction for moneylending, a crime with a place in the statutes, however infrequently it appeared in the courtroom.

Brunetti sat at his desk and allowed his imagination and his memory to consider the many possibilities offered by the fact that Franco Rossi might have been carrying Sandro Cappelli’s office phone number in his wallet when he died. He tried to recall Rossi’s visit and to reconstruct his sense of the man. Rossi had been serious about his work: that was perhaps the most lasting impression he had left with Brunetti. A bit humourless, more earnest than seemed possible in a man so young, Rossi had still been likeable and eager to provide what help he could.

All of this thinking, in the absence of any clear idea of what was going on, got Brunetti nowhere, but it did manage to pass the time until Gavini called.

Brunetti answered on the first ring. ‘Brunetti.’

‘Commissario,’ Gavini said and identified himself. ‘I’ve been through both the client files and the phone logs.’ Brunetti waited for more. ‘No client named Franco Rossi is listed, but Sandro called Rossi’s number three times during the month before he died.’

‘Which one? At home or at work?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Does it make a difference?’

‘Everything might make a difference.’

‘At his office,’ Gavini offered.

‘How long did the calls last?’

The other man must have had the paper under his hand because he said, without hesitation, ‘Twelve minutes, then six, then eight.’ Gavini waited for Brunetti to respond, and when he didn’t, asked, ‘What about Rossi? Do you know if he called Sandro?’

‘I haven’t checked his phone records yet,’ Brunetti admitted, feeling not a little embarrassed. Gavini said nothing, and Brunetti went on: ‘I’ll have them by tomorrow.’ Suddenly he remembered that this man was a lawyer, not a fellow officer, which meant he had no responsibility to him and no need to share information with him.

‘What’s the name of the magistrate handling the case there?’ he asked.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’d like to talk to him,’ Brunetti said.

A long silence greeted this.

‘Do you have his name?’ Brunetti prodded.

‘Righetto, Angelo Righetto,’ came the terse reply. Brunetti decided to ask nothing at this point. He thanked Gavini, made no promise to phone him about any numbers Rossi might have called, and hung up, wondering about the chill in Gavini’s voice as he pronounced the name of the man in charge of the investigation of his partner’s murder.

He immediately called down to Signorina Elettra and asked her to get copies of all of the calls made from Rossi’s home number during the last three months. When he asked her if it would be possible to find out the number of Rossi’s extension at the Ufficio Catasto and check that, she asked if he wanted the last three months of calls.

While he had her on the line, he asked her if she could call Magistrato Angelo Righetto in Ferrara and connect him as soon as she did.

Brunetti pulled a piece of paper toward him and started making a list of the names of people he thought might be able to give him information about moneylenders in the city. He knew nothing about the usurers, at least nothing more real than his vague certainty that they were there, burrowed into the social fabric as deeply as maggots into dead meat. Like certain forms of bacteria, they needed the security of an airless, dark place in which to thrive, and certainly the fearful state into which their debtors were intimidated provided neither light nor air. In secrecy, and with the unspoken threat of the consequences of late payment or default ever present in the minds of their debtors, they prospered and grew fat. The wonder of it, to Brunetti, was his ignorance of their names, faces, and histories as well as, he realized as he looked down at the still blank piece of paper, any idea of who to ask for help about how he might try to drive them out into the light.

A name came to him, and he pulled out the phone book to find the number of the bank where she worked. As he looked, his phone rang. He answered it with his name.

‘Dottore,’ Signorina Elettra said, ‘I have Magistrato Righetto on the line, if you’d like to speak to him.’

‘Yes, Signorina, I would. Please put him through.’ Brunetti put down his pen and moved the paper to the side of his desk.

‘Righetto,’ a deep voice said.

‘Magistrato, this is Commissario Guido Brunetti, from Venice. I’m calling to ask what you can tell me about the murder of Alessandro Cappelli.’

‘Why are you interested in it?’ Righetto asked, no sign of great curiosity audible in the question. He spoke with an accent Brunetti thought might be from the Sud Tirol; definitely a northerner, at any rate.

‘I have a case here,’ Brunetti explained, ‘another death, that might be related to his, and I wonder what you’ve managed to discover about Cappelli.’

There was a long pause, and then Righetto said, ‘I’d be surprised if any other death was related to it.’ He allowed a brief pause for Brunetti to question him, but as Brunetti said nothing he went on, ‘It looks like we’re dealing with a case of mistaken identity here, not murder.’ Righetto halted for an instant and then corrected himself. ‘Well, murder, of course it’s that. But it wasn’t Cappelli they were trying to kill, and we’re not even sure they were trying to kill the other man so much as frighten him.’

Sensing that it was time he displayed an interest, Brunetti asked, ‘What happened, then?’

‘It was his partner, Gavini, they were after,’ the magistrate explained. ‘At least that’s what our investigation suggests.’

‘Why?’ Brunetti asked, openly curious.

‘It made no sense from the beginning that anyone would want to kill Cappelli,’ Righetto began, making it sound as though no importance whatsoever was to be given to Cappelli’s position as a declared enemy of usurers. ‘We’ve looked into his past, even checked the current cases he was working on, but there’s no indication at all of an involvement with anyone who would want to do something like this.’