Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

Brunetti, having done his fair share of it, thought it must be true of all parents, not just mothers, but he said nothing.

‘Whenever I got away from that or asked about what he was doing in recent years, whether he was successful at work, she always managed to pull the conversation back into the past and talked about when he was a little boy or a student.’

‘She certainly didn’t want to talk about last night,’ Griffoni said.

Vianello slipped a white envelope from the pocket of his shirt and opened it. He pulled out a small photo, full face, the sort of thing that would be used for a passport or carta d’identità, and showed it to them. A man in sober late middle age looked back at the three of them. His hair was thinning, he had a few age spots on his left cheek, and had the sort of unremarkable face that would make a viewer assume immediately that the subject was a civil servant with a long history of working at the same job. His face was expressionless, as though he’d grown tired of waiting for the picture to be taken and had forgotten about his smile.

‘What a sad man,’ Griffoni said with real compassion. ‘To be so sad and then to die like that. God, it’s unbearable.’ This last she said with real passion.

‘We don’t know that he was sad,’ Brunetti insisted.

She placed the tip of her finger on the bridge of Fontana’s nose and said, ‘Just look at him. Look at those eyes. And he lived with that woman for fifty-two years.’ She made a motion that was halfway between a shrug and a shudder. ‘Poor man,’ she said.

Brunetti remembered then what Signorina Elettra had said of him: ‘Poor little man.’ Was he being presented, Brunetti wondered, with an example of feminine intuition, and he too dull to understand?

‘She said something we need to check,’ Brunetti said.

‘What?’ Griffoni asked.

‘The family. Remember what she said, that she was sure that her side of the family wouldn’t give a photo to the press?’ Both of them nodded.

‘I’d like to find out about her husband’s family, who there is, and what they have to say about Araldo and his mother. Should be easy enough to find them,’ Brunetti concluded.

‘I’ll see what I can find,’ Vianello said.

‘Zucchero,’ Brunetti called over to the young man.

‘Yes, Commissario?’ he said, approaching.

‘How much longer will you be here?’

‘Until my shift finishes at eight, sir.’

‘There’s no reason for you to stay,’ Brunetti said decisively. ‘Instead, I’d like you to see if any of the people who live near here heard anything last night. After midnight. Then, when you get back to the Questura, see if you can find Alvise. Find out if they got the names of the people who were here when they arrived.’ The young man nodded. ‘But don’t let him know that’s what you want to know. Do you understand?’ This time Zucchero nodded and smiled.

‘You know Alvise, then?’ Brunetti could not stop himself from asking.

‘He was part of my orientation team, Commissario,’ the young officer answered neutrally.

‘I see,’ Brunetti answered in the same tone.

He turned back to Griffoni and Vianello, saying, ‘Let’s get something to eat.’

They went into the first bar they came to and asked for a plate of tramezzini . When Vianello bit into the first one, he glanced at his watch and said, ‘Nadia’s probably just beginning to shell the shrimps.’

The others were busy eating, so he went on, ‘We got them at the beach this morning, when the fishing boats came in. Two kilos. Ten Euros, and some of them were still alive.’

‘Just like in the tourist brochures,’ Griffoni said and took a long drink of mineral water. ‘Is there traditional dancing in local costume?’

Vianello laughed and answered, ‘Just about. There’s a tourist village about three kilometres up the coast where they have all that.’

‘But not where you are?’

‘No,’ he said with surprising abruptness.

‘Where are you staying?’ Griffoni asked with real curiosity.

‘Oh, a little village to the north of Split.’

‘How’d you find it?’

‘A friend.’ Vianello got up and went over to the bar to get three more glasses of water.

Brunetti took the opportunity to say, keeping his voice low, ‘From what he told me, I’d guess it belongs to a relative of someone who. . gives him information. He married a Croatian woman, and they rent the cottage out to friends.’

When he rejoined them, Vianello said, voice suddenly grown stern, ‘Everyone’s forgotten about my aunt.’

Brunetti was about to protest that they had a murder to deal with, but he was forced to admit that Vianello was right: they had forgotten about his aunt even before they left for vacation. It could be blamed on short staffing or the difficulty of staking out Gorini’s house, or even on the dubious legality of what they were doing, but those were only excuses, and Brunetti knew it.

‘What was your cousin going to do while you were on vacation?’ he asked Vianello.

‘He’s taking his mother to Lignano for two weeks,’ Vianello answered.

‘All right. We’ve got two weeks, then, to see what we can find out about the way this Stefano Gorini works.’

‘Even with this going on?’ Vianello asked, sounding almost contrite, waving his hand in the general direction of the palazzo from which they had just emerged.

‘Yes. But we need a woman.’

‘Excuse me,’ Griffoni interrupted, setting down the uneaten half of her sandwich.

‘To go to him for a consultation,’ Brunetti said, ‘or whatever it’s called.’

‘Because we’re more gullible?’ she asked neutrally.

Brunetti took the risk of saying, ‘Don’t start, Claudia’, hoping she would take it well.

She did, and smiled. ‘Sorry. I sometimes forget who I’m with.’

‘He’ll be less suspicious of a woman.’

‘Entrapment?’ Vianello suggested, warning them both of the possibility, and the effect such an accusation could have on any case that might eventually be brought against Gorini.

‘We need a woman who isn’t officially connected with the police, then,’ Brunetti said.

‘An older woman,’ Vianello added.

‘Definitely,’ Griffoni agreed.

‘You got any ideas?’ Vianello asked.

Though there were no clouds in the sky, surely they would have parted to allow the rays of Illumination to descend and encircle Brunetti’s head as he said, ‘My mother-in-law.’

‘Oh, Guido, how incredibly ridiculous. I think the heat’s got to you, really I do.’ His mother-in-law, it seemed, was going to present obstacles to her enlistment. She sat opposite him, dressed in a white linen shirt worn over black silk slacks. She had recently had her hair cut boyishly short, and Brunetti could not shake the idea that, seen from the back, she would look like a white-haired adolescent. Her motions were still quick and decisive, definitely the gestures of a younger person. The fact that he often had trouble keeping up with her when they walked Brunetti attributed to her small size: this made it easier for her to pass through crowded streets, and there was no other kind in Venice any more.

He sat, late that same afternoon, his second spritz on the low table in front of him, watching the reflection of the setting sun in the windows of the palazzo opposite Palazzo Falier. It was the first time he had relaxed all day; Brunetti put this down to the drinks and to the lofty ceilings that kept the rooms cool no matter what the outside temperature, and to the breeze that played perpetually through the windows. He sat and watched the curtains fluttering in and out, in and out, and thought of how he could convince her to consult Signor Gorini.