Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

Suddenly Danilo stood upright, and the old woman he had become disappeared. ‘How does she do it?’ Brunetti asked.

‘People know her. And him. They’re always in the campo, one of them, in the morning, and people know where to find them.’

‘How do they know?’

‘How do people ever know anything?’ Danilo asked by way of response. ‘Word gets around. People who need enough to pay their taxes, or who gamble, or who can’t meet the expenses for their business until the end of the month. They sign a paper saying they’ll pay them back in a month, and the interest has always been added to the sum. But these are people who will have to borrow more money to pay that money back. Gamblers don’t win; people never get any better at running their businesses.’

‘What amazes me,’ Brunetti said after a moment’s reflection, ‘is that all of this is legal.’

‘If they’ve got the paper, drawn up by a notary and signed by both parties, nothing is more legal.’

‘Who are the notaries?’

Danilo named three of them, respectable men with wide practices in the city. One of them worked for Brunetti’s father-in-law.

‘All three?’ Brunetti asked, unable to hide his astonishment.

‘You think the Volpatos declare what they pay them? You think they pay taxes on what they earn from the Volpatos?’

Brunetti was not in the least surprised that notaries would sink to being part of something as squalid as this; his surprise was only at the names of the three men involved, one of them a member of the Knights of Malta and another a former city councillor.

‘Come on,’ Danilo encouraged him, ‘let’s have a drink, and you can tell me why you want to know all this.’ Seeing Brunetti’s expression, he amended this to, ‘Or don’t tell me.’

Across the calle at Rosa Salva, Brunetti told him no more than that he was interested in the moneylenders in the city and their twilight existence between the legal and the criminal. Many of Danilo’s clients were old women, and most of them were in love with him, so he was often the recipient of their endless streams of gossip. Amiable and patient, always willing to listen to them as they talked, he had over the years accumulated an Eldorado of gossip and innuendo and in the past had proven an invaluable source of information for Brunetti. Danilo named a few of the most famous moneylenders to Brunetti, describing them and cataloguing the wealth they had managed to accumulate.

Sensitive to both Brunetti’s mood and his sense of professional discretion, Danilo kept up his stream of gossip, aware that Brunetti would ask him no more questions. Then, with a quick glance at his watch, Danilo said, ‘I’ve got to go. Dinner’s at eight.’

Together they left the bar and walked as far as Rialto, chatting idly about ordinary things. At the bridge they separated, both hurrying home for dinner.

The scattered pieces of information had been rattling about in Brunetti’s mind for days now, and he’d been prodding them and toying with them, trying to work them into some sort of coherent pattern. People at the Ufficio Catasto, he realized, would know who was going to have to do restorations or would have to pay fines for work done illegally in the past. They’d know how much the fines were. They might even have had some say in deciding how much the fines should be. Then all they’d have to do would be find out what sort of financial shape the owners were in – there was never any trouble in finding that out. Surely, he reflected, Signorina Elettra was not the only genius in the city. Then to anyone who complained that they didn’t have enough money to pay the fine, all they had to do was suggest they go and have a talk with the Volpatos.

It was high time to visit the Ufficio.

When he arrived at the Questura the next morning, a bit after eight thirty, the guard at the door told him a young woman had come in earlier, asking to speak to him. No, she hadn’t explained what it was she wanted and, when the guard told her Commissario Brunetti had not arrived yet, had said she’d go and have a coffee and come back. Brunetti told the young man to bring her up when she did.

In his office, he read the first section of the Gazzettino and was thinking about going out to get a coffee when the guard appeared at his door and said that the young woman had returned. He stepped aside and a woman who seemed little more than a girl slipped into the room. Brunetti thanked the guard and told him he could return to duty. The officer saluted and closed the door as he left. Brunetti gestured to the young woman, who still stood by the door as if fearful of the consequences of coming any farther into the room.

‘Please, Signorina, make yourself comfortable.’

Leaving it to her to decide what to do, he walked slowly around his desk and took his normal place.

Slowly she crossed the room and sat on the edge of the chair, her hands in her lap. Brunetti gave her a quick glance then bent to move a paper from one side of his desk to the other to give her some time to relax into a more comfortable position.

When he looked back at her, he smiled in what he thought might be a welcoming way. She had dark brown hair cut as short as a boy’s and wore jeans and a light blue sweater. Her eyes, he noticed, were as dark as her hair, surrounded by lashes so thick that at first he thought they were false until he noticed that she wore no makeup at all and dismissed the idea. She was a pretty girl in the way most young girls are pretty: delicate bones, short straight nose, smooth skin, and a small mouth. Had he seen her in a bar having a coffee, he wouldn’t have looked twice at her, but seeing her here, the thought came to him of how lucky he was to live in a country where pretty girls were so thick upon the ground and far more beautiful ones a normal enough event.

She cleared her throat once, twice, and then said, ‘I’m Marco’s friend.’ Her voice was extraordinarily beautiful, low and musical and rich with sensuality, the sound one would expect from a woman who had lived a long life filled with pleasure.

Brunetti waited for her to explain, but when she said nothing further, Brunetti asked, ‘And why have you come to speak to me, Signorina?’

‘Because I want to help you find the people who killed him.’

Brunetti kept his face expressionless while he processed the information that this must be the girl who had called Marco from Venice. ‘Are you the other rabbit, then?’ he asked kindly.

His question startled her. She pulled her closed hands up towards her chest and automatically pursed her lips into a narrow circle, making herself look, indeed, very like a rabbit.

‘How do you know about that?’ she asked.

‘I saw his drawings,’ Brunetti explained, then added, ‘and I was struck both by his talent and by the obvious affection he had for the rabbits.’

She bowed her head and at first he thought she had begun to cry. But she did not; instead, she raised her head again and looked at him. ‘I had a pet rabbit when I was a little girl. When I told Marco about that, he told me how much he hated the way his father used to shoot and poison them on their farm.’ She stopped here, then added, ‘They’re pests when they’re outside. That’s what his father said.’

Brunetti said, ‘I see.’

Silence fell but he waited. Then she said, as if no mention had been made of the rabbits, ‘I know who they are.’ Her hands tortured one another in her lap, but her voice remained calm, almost seductive. It occurred to him that she had no idea of its power or its beauty.

Brunetti nodded to encourage her, and she continued, ‘Well, that is, I know the name of one of them, the one who sold it to Marco. I don’t know the name of the people he gets it from, but I think he’d tell you if you frightened him enough.’