Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

Brunetti drew closer to the desk, careful to keep his hands at his sides. ‘What’s wrong, sir?’ he asked.

‘What’s wrong?’ Patta repeated, then again, should anyone hiding behind his filing cabinet not have heard him the first time, repeated, ‘What’s wrong?’ Then, sure that everyone had heard, he said, ‘What’s wrong is that I’ve had two phone calls this morning, both of them reporting your all but criminal behaviour. That’s what’s wrong.’

‘May I ask who called you, sir?’ Brunetti asked, already fearing the worst.

‘I was called by Signora Fulgoni’s husband, who said his wife was much disturbed by the tenor of your interrogation.’ Patta raised a hand to wave away any attempt Brunetti might make to explain or defend his behaviour. ‘Worse, he told me that you dared to go downstairs and question a child.’ The thought of the consequences of this pulled Patta up from his chair; he leaned over his desk and said, voice booming against the low hum of the air conditioner, ‘A child, Brunetti. Do you know how much trouble this could cause me?’

‘Who was the second call from, sir?’ Brunetti asked.

‘That’s what I was about to tell you. From the Director of Social Services, saying she’d had a complaint about police harassment of a child and asking me what was going on.’ Brunetti stifled the desire to ask who had filed the complaint, knowing that Patta would not tell him.

Patta lowered himself into his chair and said, voice calmer, ‘Luckily, her husband is in the Lions Club with me, so I know them fairly well. I assured her that it was a complete misunderstanding, and she appeared to believe me. At least there will be no formal investigation.’ His relief was palpable. ‘That’s one less thing to worry about.’

Brunetti stood still, deciding that the best tactic was to let the waves of Patta’s anger break against him until the tide turned, and then to offer an explanation.

‘Fulgoni is a bank director,’ Patta said. ‘Do you have any idea how influential a man like that can be? He’s also a friend of the Questore’s.’ Patta paused to let the full enormity of this sink in and then said in a calmer voice, ‘But I think I convinced him not to call and complain.’

Patta closed his eyes and took a deep breath, the better to demonstrate to Brunetti just how harshly tried was his forbearance by this most recent example of his inferior’s rashness and irresponsibility, yet more evidence of how sorely tried he was by the perils of office.

‘Very well,’ Patta said tiredly. ‘Stop standing there. Sit down and tell me your version of what happened.’

Brunetti did as told, careful to sit up straight with his legs together, hands on his knees: none of this passive-aggressive business of arms crossed over his chest. ‘I did speak to Signora Fulgoni, Vice-Questore: according to Lieutenant Scarpa’s report, she and her husband established the time before which the murder could not have taken place. I was curious as to whether they might have noticed anything unusual or out of place. I wanted to know about those four storerooms: someone could easily have hidden in there.’

‘Fulgoni didn’t say anything about that,’ Patta said with the suspicion of a man accustomed to being lied to. ‘He said you asked personal questions.’

Brunetti plastered a look of astonishment across his face, as if offended at such a suggestion, if only he had the right to be. ‘No, sir. As soon as she answered my question about the time she and her husband arrived, I did nothing more than compliment her home and ask her if she was acquainted with the Fontanas. She said she was not, and Vianello and I left.’

‘And went downstairs to interrogate that child,’ Patta said with a full return to his former anger.

Brunetti raised his hands to ward off unwarranted criticism. ‘That’s either a misunderstanding or an exaggeration, sir. We went downstairs and rang the bell. A child spoke through the door and I asked to speak to her mother. When the door opened, I saw a woman standing in the back of the apartment’ — he said, not finding it necessary to provide a physical description of the woman — ‘and assumed it was her mother. So I went in, hoping to speak to her, but as soon as I realized the woman was not the girl’s mother, Vianello and I left. Immediately, sir. Vianello can confirm this.’

‘I’m sure he would,’ Patta said with one of those flashes of sobriety that had for years kept Brunetti from being able to dismiss him as a complete fool.

‘How are we going to present this?’ Patta asked. ‘I’ve seen the autopsy report,’ he added. ‘I doubt it will be very long before the press get hold of it.’

‘Not from Rizzardi,’ Brunetti said so hotly that Patta shot him a warning glance.

‘Dottor Rizzardi is not the only person who works in the pathology laboratory, as you might recall, nor the only person to have access to the report,’ Patta said. ‘Once this is known, how do we play it?’

Brunetti studied the legs of Patta’s desk, thinking about Signora Fontana and for how long she had kept herself from knowing certain things and how she had managed to do it. What did mothers dream of for their sons? And from their sons? A happy life? Grandchildren? Reasons to be proud of them? Brunetti knew women who wanted only that their sons stay free of drugs and out of jail; others who wanted them to marry a beautiful woman, make a fortune, and win social status; and some very few who simply wanted them to be happy. What had Signora Fontana permitted herself to want for her son?

‘Well?’ Patta’s voice summoned back Brunetti’s wandering thoughts.

‘Rizzardi told me that it will be some time before the lab tests are back, sir,’ Brunetti said.

‘And so?’

‘And so I think we should look for whoever might have wanted to kill. .’

Before Brunetti could name Fontana, Patta cut him short, saying, ‘He doesn’t sound like the sort of man anyone would want to kill. This could have been a street crime.’

The temptation came to Brunetti to ask who, then, would so savagely have beaten the life out of him, but caution stayed the impulse and instead he said, ‘So it would seem, Vice-Questore. But someone did want to kill him, and someone has.’ He knew Patta well enough to know that he would now suggest that the police list the crime as a possible mugging, which Patta probably thought would tranquillize the people of the city. Consequently, Brunetti delivered a pre-emptive strike, saying, ‘It might be rash to speak of street crime, Vice-Questore. No one wants to come to a city where people get killed in muggings.’

Though Patta was Sicilian, Brunetti knew the Vice-Questore had spent enough time among the politicians and what passed for high society in the city to have absorbed the Venetian faith in tourism. Sacrifice small children, round up the local population and sell them as slaves, slaughter all men of voting age, rape virgins on the altars of the gods: do all this, and more, but do not lay a hand upon a tourist or upon tourism. The sword of Mars was far less potent than their credit cards; their charges conquered all.

‘. . you paying attention to me, Brunetti?’

‘Of course, Signore. I was trying to think of a way we could place this in the press.’ Brunetti, too, had learned the language of accommodation.

Patta folded his arms across his chest and looked at the surface of his desk, as clear of papers as his mind of uncertainty. ‘The results of the autopsy are going to be made public sooner or later, so I think what we have to say is that we are beginning to suspect that his death was linked to his private life.’

‘Without any evidence?’ Brunetti asked, his thoughts still on Fontana’s mother.