Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

‘How is she?’

‘Fine. Her son’s growing up, and I don’t think she much likes working in a bank.’

‘Who could?’ Paola asked, but it was more a ritual response than a serious question. She returned to his original unexplained statement and asked, ‘How does seeing Franca suggest it’s a post-lapsarian universe? It usually has the opposite effect, on all of us.’

Slowly slipping the flowers one by one into the vase, Brunetti played back her comment a few times, searching for some hidden and possibly rancorous meaning and finding none at all. She observed his pleasure in meeting this old, dear friend, and she shared the joy he took in her company. At that realization, his heart gripped tight for an instant, and he felt a sudden flush of heat in his face. One of the irises fell to the counter. He picked it up, put it in with the others, and set the vase carefully aside, safely back from the edge.

‘She said something about being afraid for Pietro if she talked to me about moneylenders.’

Paola stopped what she was doing and turned to look at him. ‘Moneylenders?’ she asked. ‘What have they got to do with anything?’

‘Rossi, that man from the Ufficio Catasto who died, he had the phone number of a lawyer in his wallet, a lawyer who had taken on a number of cases against them.’

‘A lawyer where?’

‘In Ferrara.’

‘Not that one they murdered?’ she asked, looking up at him.

Brunetti nodded, interested that Paola would so casually assume that Cappelli had been murdered by ‘them’, and then added, ‘The magistrate in charge of the investigation excluded moneylenders and seemed very interested in persuading me that the killer actually got the wrong man.’

After a long pause, during which Brunetti watched the play of thought reflect itself in her face, she asked, ‘Is that why he had his number, because of moneylenders?’

‘I’ve no proof. But it’s coincidental.’

‘Life’s coincidental.’

‘Murder’s not.’

She folded her hands on top of the pile of discarded pea pods. ‘Since when is this murder? Rossi, I mean.’

‘Since I don’t know when. Maybe since never. I just want to find out about this and see why Rossi called him, if I can.’

‘And Franca?’

‘I thought, because she works in a bank, she might know about moneylenders.’

‘I thought that’s what banks are supposed to do, lend money.’

‘They often don’t, at least not on short notice and not to people who might not pay it back.’

‘Then why ask her?’ From the immobility of her posture, Paola might have been an examining magistrate.

‘I thought she might know something.’

‘You said that. But why Franca?’

He had no reason, save that she was the first person whose name had occurred to him. Besides, it had been some time since he’d seen her and he’d wanted to do so, nothing more than that. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and shifted his weight to his other foot. ‘No real reason,’ he finally said.

She unlatched her fingers and went back to shelling the peas. ‘What did she tell you, and why is she afraid for Pietro?’

‘She mentioned, even showed me, two people.’ Before Paola could interrupt, he said, ‘We met in San Luca, and there was this couple there. They’re in their sixties, I’d say. She said they lent money.’

‘And Pietro?’

‘She said there might be a connection to the Mafia and money laundering, but she didn’t want to say anything more than that.’ He saw from Paola’s brief nod that she shared his opinion that the mere mention of the Mafia would be enough to make any parent fear for any child.

‘Not even to you?’ she asked.

He shook his head. She glanced up at him, and he repeated the gesture.

‘Serious, then,’ Paola said.

‘I’d say so.’

‘Who are the people?’

‘Angelina and Massimo Volpato.’

‘You ever heard of them?’ she asked

‘No.’

‘Who have you asked about them?’

‘No one. I just saw them twenty minutes ago, before I came home.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Find out whatever I can about them.’

‘And then?’

‘That depends on what I learn.’

There was silence then Paola said, ‘I was thinking about you today, about your work.’ He waited. ‘It was when I was washing the windows, and that’s what made me think of you,’ she added, surprising him.

‘Why the windows?’

‘I was washing them, and then I did the mirror in the bathroom, and that’s when I thought of what you do.’

He knew she’d continue, even if he said nothing, but he also knew she liked to be encouraged, so he asked, ‘And?’

‘When you clean a window,’ she said, eyes on his, ‘you have to open it and pull it toward you, and when you do that, the angle of the light that’s coming through it changes.’ She saw that he was following, so she continued, ‘So you get it clean. Or you think you do. But when you close the window, the light comes through from the original angle, and then you see that the outside’s still dirty, or that you missed a patch on the inside. That means you have to open it and clean it again. But you can never be sure it’s really clean until you close it again or until you move so that you see it from a different angle.’

‘And the mirror?’ he asked.

She looked up at him and smiled. ‘You see a mirror only from one side. No light comes from behind, so when you clean it, it’s clean. There’s no trick of perception.’ She looked back down at her work.

‘And?’

Still looking at the peas, perhaps to hide her disappointment in him, she explained, ‘That’s what your work’s like, or how you want it to be. You want to clean mirrors, want everything to be two-dimensional and easy to take care of. But every time you begin to take a look at something, it turns out to be like the windows: if you change perspective or you look at things from a new angle, everything changes.’

Brunetti considered this for a long time and then added, hoping to lighten the mood, ‘But in both cases, I’ve always got to clean up the dirt.’

Paola said, ‘You said that; I didn’t.’ When Brunetti made no response, she dropped the last peas into the bowl, and got to her feet. She walked to the counter and set the bowl down. ‘Whichever it is you do, I suppose you’d prefer to do it on a full stomach,’ she said.

Stomach indeed full, he started to do it that afternoon, as soon as he got back to the Questura. He began, a better place than most, with Signorina Elettra.

Smiling, she greeted his arrival, today dressed in something that looked tantalizingly nautical: navy blue skirt, a square-yoked silk blouse. He caught himself thinking that all she lacked was a little sailor hat until he saw a stiff white cylindrical cap sitting on the desk beside her computer.

‘Volpato,’ he said before she could ask him how he was. ‘Angelina and Massimo. They’re in their sixties.’

She pulled forward a sheet of paper and began to write.

‘Living here?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Any idea where?’

‘No,’ he answered.

‘That’s easy enough to check,’ she said, making a note. ‘What else?’

‘I’d like financial records most of all: bank accounts, any investments they might have, property registered in their names, anything you can find.’ He paused while she wrote and then added, ‘And see if we have anything on them.’

‘Phone records?’ she asked.

‘No, not yet. Just the financial stuff.’

‘For when?’

He looked down at her and smiled. ‘When do I always want everything?’

She pushed back her cuff and glanced down at the heavy diver’s watch on her left wrist. ‘I should be able to get the information from the city offices this afternoon.’