Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

Still silence. ‘Are you there, Dottore?’ he asked in a hearty voice.

‘Yes, yes, I am,’ Carraro said in his new, softer voice.

‘Good. I knew you’d be happy to hear my news.’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘While I have you on the line,’ Brunetti said, managing to make it clear he had not just thought of it, ‘I wonder if I could ask you a favour.’

‘Of course, Commissario.’

‘In the next day or so, a man might come into the Emergency Room with a bite on his hand or his arm. He’ll probably say it’s a dog bite, or he might try to say his girlfriend did it to him.’ Carraro remained silent. ‘Are you listening, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked, voice suddenly much louder.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. The instant this man comes in, I want you to call the Questura, Dottore. The instant,’ he repeated, and gave Carraro the number. ‘If you’re not there, I expect you to leave word for whoever takes your place that he is to do the same thing.’

‘And what are we supposed to do with him while we wait for you to get here?’ Carraro asked with a return to his normal tone.

‘You are to keep him there, Dottore, lying to him and inventing some form of treatment that will take long enough for us to get to the hospital. And you are not to allow him to leave the hospital.’

‘And if we can’t stop him?’ Carraro demanded.

Brunetti had little doubt that Carraro would obey him, but he thought it best to lie. ‘We’ve still got power to examine the hospital records, Dottore, and our investigation of the circumstances surrounding Rossi’s death isn’t over until I say so.’ He allowed steel to penetrate his voice with the last phrase, that hollow lie, paused a moment, and then said, ‘Good, then, I look forward to your cooperation.’

After that, there was nothing for the men to do except exchange pleasantries and say goodbye.

That left Brunetti at a loose end until the papers came out the next morning. But it also left him restless, something he always dreaded because the feeling spurred him to rashness. It was difficult for him to resist the urge to, as it were, put the cat among the pigeons and stir things up. He went downstairs, to Signorina Elettra’s office.

The sight of her, elbows on her desk, chin propped up on her fists, head bent over a book, led him to ask as he came in, ‘Am I interrupting anything?’ She looked up, smiling, and shook away the very idea with a sideways motion of her head.

‘Do you own your apartment, Signorina?’

Accustomed as she was to Brunetti’s sometimes odd behaviour, she displayed no curiosity and answered ‘Yes,’ leaving it to him, if he pleased, to explain the question.

He’d had time to think about it, and so he added, ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter, though.’

‘It does to me, sir, quite a bit,’ she remarked.

‘Ah, yes, I’m sure it does,’ he said, realizing the confusion that would result from his remark. ‘Signorina, if you’re not busy, I’d like you to do something for me.’

She reached for a pad and pencil, but he stopped her.

‘No,’ he said, when he saw what she was doing, ‘I want you to go and talk to someone.’

He had to wait more than two hours for her to come back, and when she did, she came directly up to his office. She entered without knocking and approached his desk.

‘Ah, Signorina,’ he said, inviting her to take a seat. He sat next to her, eager, but silent.

‘You’re not in the habit of giving me a Christmas present, are you, Commissario?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he answered. ‘Am I about to begin to do so?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she said emphatically. ‘I’ll expect a dozen, no, two dozen white roses from Biancat and, I think, a case of prosecco.’

‘And when would you like this present to arrive, Signorina, if I might ask?’

‘To avoid the Christmas rush, sir, I think you might send them around next week.’

‘By all means. Consider it done.’

‘Too kind, Signore,’ she said with a gracious nod of acceptance.

‘No more than my pleasure,’ he answered. He allowed six beats to pass and then asked, ‘And?’

‘And I asked in the bookstore in the campo, and the owner told me where they lived, and I went and talked to them.’

‘And?’ he prodded.

‘They may be the most loathsome people I’ve ever met,’ she said in an uninterested, aloof tone. ‘Let’s see, I’ve worked here for more than four years, and I’ve come in contact with quite a few criminals, though the people in the bank where I used to work were probably worse, but these two were in a class by themselves,’ she said with what seemed like a real shudder of disgust.

‘Why?’

‘Because of the combination of greed and piety, I think.’

‘In what way?’

‘When I told them that I needed money to pay my brother’s gambling bills, they asked me what I had to put up as security, and I told them I had an apartment. I tried to sound a bit nervous about saying that, the way you told me. He asked me the address, and I gave it to him, then he went into the other room, and I heard him talking to someone.’

She stopped here for a moment and then added, ‘It must have been a telefonino. There were no phone jacks in the two rooms I was in.’

‘What happened then?’ Brunetti asked.

She tilted her chin and raised her eyes to the top of the armadio on the other side of the room. ‘When he came back, he smiled at his wife, and that’s when they began to talk about the possibility of their being able to help me. They asked how much I needed, and I said fifty million.’

It was the sum they had agreed on: not too much and not too little, just the sort of sum a gambler might rack up in a night’s rash gambling and just the sort of sum he would believe he could easily win back, if only he could find the person to pay off the debt and thus get him back at the tables.

She turned her eyes to Brunetti. ‘Do you know these people?’

‘No. All I know is what a friend told me.’

‘They’re terrible,’ she said, voice low.

‘What else?’

She shrugged. ‘I suppose they did what they usually do. They told me that they needed to see the papers for the house, though I’m sure he was calling someone to make sure I really did own it or that it was listed in my name.’

‘Who could that be?’ he asked.

She looked down at her watch before answering, ‘It’s not likely there was still anyone at the Ufficio Catasto, so it must be someone who has instant access to their records.’

‘You do, don’t you?’ he asked.

‘No, it takes me a while to break… to get into their system. Whoever could give him that information immediately had to have direct access to the files.’

‘How were things left?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I’m to go back tomorrow with the papers. They’ll have the notary come to the house at five.’ She stopped and smiled across at him. ‘Imagine that: you can die before a doctor will make a house call, but they’ve got a notary on twenty-four-hour call.’ She raised her eyebrows at the very notion. ‘So I’m supposed to go back at five tomorrow, and we’ll sign all the papers, and they’ll give me the cash.’

Even before she stopped speaking, Brunetti had raised one finger and was waving it back and forth in silent negation.

There was no way he’d permit Signorina Elettra to get that close to these people again. She smiled in silent acknowledgement of his command and, he thought, relief.

‘And the interest? Did they say how much it would be?’

‘They said we’d talk about that tomorrow, that it would be on the papers.’ She crossed her legs and folded her hands on her lap. ‘So I guess that means we don’t get to talk about it,’ she said with finality.