Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

Like magnets to a file, he and Vianello moved towards the windows and found two empty chairs. There was some sort of sound system in the room, and there were microphones in front of the judge and on the lawyers’ tables, but there was something wrong with the connection, for the voices that emerged from the two speakers set high on the walls were distorted to incomprehensibility by static. The court stenographer sat just beneath the judge: she was either able to understand through the noise or close enough to the voices to hear them. She typed away at her machine as though she were on some other, cooler, planet.

Brunetti watched, familiar with the scene and the actors in it. He told himself he was on a plane and this was another scene to observe without headphones. He watched the theatrical tossing back of the sleeve of a gown, the wide arc of an arm as the speaker hammered home a conclusive argument, or chased away a fly. The other lawyer splashed a look of astonishment across his face; the first lawyer shot his hands up in the air, as if incapable of finding a better way to express his disbelief. Brunetti let himself wonder if the judges ever tuned out the sound and simply observed the gestures, if they learned to discern the truth or falsity of what was being said by the gestures that accompanied the unheeded words. Further, in a city this small, each of those lawyers had a reputation according to which his honesty could be calibrated, and so perhaps all an experienced judge needed to do was read the name of the accusing and defending lawyers to know where truth lay.

After all, much of what was being said was lies, or at least evasions and interpretations. The business of the law was not the discovery of the truth, anyway, but the imposition of the power of the state upon its citizens.

Brunetti’s eyes returned to the woman lawyer, who had not moved, and then the heat overcame them, and they closed. A nudge from his left startled him awake. He looked at Vianello, who turned his eyes in the direction of the judge’s table.

Two gowned figures approached the judge, who leaned forward and said a few words which did not come through, in however distorted a fashion, the loudspeakers. As if wanting to cooperate with Brunetti’s conceit that this was all a mime, the judge tapped the face of his watch. The two lawyers spoke simultaneously; the judge shook his head. He reached to the left and gathered up some papers, stood, and walked from the courtroom, leaving the lawyers in front of the dais.

They turned to face one another and spoke briefly. One opened a case file and showed the other a paper. The second lawyer took it and read it, both of them undisturbed by the sound of chairs being pushed back as the spectators got to their feet and started to file out of the courtroom. Brunetti and Vianello also stood, the better to let people move past them, then sat again when their row was empty.

The second lawyer moistened his lips, then raised his eyebrows in a gesture of reluctant acceptance. He took the paper and went back to where his client was sitting. He placed the paper on the desk in front of the man and pointed to it. The other man placed a finger on the paper and moved it back and forth along the lines, as if expecting his finger to transmit the text to him. At a certain point, his finger gave up and his hand fell flat on the surface of the sheet covering — accidentally or intentionally — the text that he had just read.

He looked at his lawyer and shook his head. The lawyer spoke, and the man glanced away. Time passed, the lawyer said something else as he grabbed up the paper and took it back to his colleague. He handed him the now-wrinkled sheet of paper, and the two lawyers turned and left the room, leaving the second lawyer’s client sitting alone at the table.

Brunetti and Vianello got to their feet and moved towards the door. ‘The loser was Manfredi,’ said Brunetti, ‘so that means Penzo won.’

‘I wonder what was on the paper,’ Vianello said.

‘Manfredi’s as crooked as they come,’ Brunetti said in a voice heavy with long experience, ‘so it was probably something that proved he or his client has been lying.’

‘And Penzo can prove it.’

‘One would like to think,’ said Brunetti, reluctant to believe in the integrity of a lawyer until he had had direct experience of the person. ‘Let’s talk to him.’ They found the lawyer at the end of the corridor, where he stood looking out of a window, his robe tossed on the windowsill, his arms lifted from his body in what Brunetti was sure was a vain attempt to find relief from the heat. Seeing Penzo from the back, Brunetti was struck by how thin the man was: hips no wider than a boy’s, his shirt puffed in damp, empty folds from shoulder to waist.

‘Avvocato Penzo?’ Brunetti said.

Penzo turned, a look of mild inquiry on his face. Like his body, his face was narrow, an effect created by the hollows under his cheekbones, which in turn made his nose, quite a normal nose, seem disproportionately large. His eyes were the colour of milk chocolate and were encircled by the sort of small wrinkles that come from years of squinting into the sun.

‘ Sì ?’ he inquired, glancing from Brunetti to Vianello and back again, recognizing them immediately as policemen. ‘What is it?’ the lawyer asked politely, and Brunetti liked that he did not make a joke about their being policemen, as many people would.

As if he had not noticed Penzo’s expression, Brunetti said, ‘I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti, and this is Ispettore Lorenzo Vianello.’

Penzo turned, retrieved his robe from the windowsill, and draped it over his arm. ‘How may I help you?’ he asked.

‘We’d like to talk to you about a client of yours,’ Brunetti said.

‘Of course. Where shall we do it?’ Penzo asked, glancing around the corridor. It was no longer crowded now, during lunchtime, but there were still people walking by now and again.

‘We could go to Do Mori and have a drink,’ Brunetti suggested. Vianello breathed an audible sigh of relief, and Penzo smiled in agreement.

‘Could you give me five minutes to get rid of this,’ Penzo said, raising the arm that held the robe, ‘and I’ll meet you at the entrance?’

It was agreed and Brunetti and Vianello turned away towards the stairs.

As they walked down, Brunetti asked, ‘Who do you think he’s calling?’

‘His wife, probably, to say he’ll be late for lunch,’ Vianello said, declaring his partisanship for the lawyer.

Neither of them spoke again until they stood outside. The sun had blasted all life from Campo San Giacometto. The florist’s and the two stands that sold dried fruit were closed; even the water trickling from the fountain looked beaten down by the heat. Only the stall that huddled under the protection of the long arcade was open.

Brunetti and Vianello stepped into the shadow of the arcade and waited. Penzo arrived quickly, carrying a briefcase.

‘What did you show your colleague, Avvocato?’ Vianello asked, then excused himself for his curiosity.

Penzo laughed out loud, an infectious sound. ‘His client was claiming damages for whiplash he says he experienced in a road accident. My client was driving the other car. My colleague’s client claimed he was incapacitated for months and couldn’t work and because of that lost the chance of promotion at his job.’

Curious now, Brunetti asked, ‘How much was he claiming?’

‘Sixteen thousand Euros.’

‘How long was he out of work?’

‘Four months.’

‘What did he do?’ Vianello interrupted.

‘Excuse me?’ Penzo asked.

‘What sort of work did he do?’

‘A cook.’

‘Four thousand a month,’ Vianello said appreciatively. ‘Not bad.’