Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

When he arrived at the Questura the following morning, the officer on duty told Brunetti that Ispettore Vianello wanted to speak to him. In the squad room, Vianello stood talking to Zucchero, but the young officer moved away when he saw Brunetti come in.

‘What is it?’ Brunetti asked when he reached Vianello’s desk.

‘I’ve been calling the Fontanas in the phone book and one of them, Giorgio, said the dead man was his cousin. When I asked if we could go and talk to him, he said he’d rather come here.’

‘Did it sound like he had anything to tell us?’

Vianello made an open-handed gesture of uncertainty. ‘That’s all he said, that he’d come in now and talk to us.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘That you’d be here by nine.’

‘Good,’ Brunetti said. ‘Come up with me.’ Vianello’s phone rang, and at a nod from Brunetti, he answered it with his name. He listened a moment, then said, ‘Good. Would you show him the way up to Commissario Brunetti’s office, please.’

He hung up and said, ‘He’s here.’

Quickly, they went upstairs. Brunetti threw open the windows, but that made little difference; the room remained sultry with trapped heat and stale air. A few minutes later, Zucchero knocked on the door jamb and said, ‘There’s a visitor for you, Commissario: Signor Fontana.’ He saluted neatly and stepped back.

Araldo Fontana had been described as a small, undistinguished man, as though he were a minor character in a dull novel. Brunetti had had a chance to see the real Fontana the day before, but cowardice — there is no better word for it — had kept him from asking Rizzardi to show him.

The man who came into Brunetti’s office looked like a character who had tried, and failed, to free himself from the pages of the same novel. He was of medium height, medium build, and had hair that was neither light nor dark brown, nor was there much of it. He stopped inside the door, stepped away from it quickly when Zucchero closed it behind him, and asked, ‘Commissario Brunetti?’

Brunetti walked over to shake his hand.

‘Giorgio Fontana,’ the man said. His grip was light and quickly gone. He looked at Vianello, then walked over and extended his hand to him. Vianello took it, saying, ‘We spoke before. I’m Vianello, the Commissario’s assistant.’

Vianello pointed to the chair beside his, then waited until the other man was seated before taking his own chair. Brunetti returned to his place behind his desk.

‘I’m very glad you came to speak to us, Signor Fontana,’ Brunetti said. ‘We’d begun a search for your cousin’s relatives, and you’re the first we’ve managed to contact.’ Brunetti spoke as though to suggest the police had already found the names, which was not the case. He gave what he hoped was a smile both grateful and gracious and said, ‘You’ve saved us time by coming to talk to us.’

Fontana moved his lips in something that might have been a smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m the only one,’ he said. Seeing their glances, he went on, ‘My father was Araldo’s father’s only brother, and I’m his only child. So I’m all the family you have to look for,’ he concluded with a very small smile.

‘I see,’ said Brunetti. ‘Thank you for telling us. We’re grateful for any help you can give us.’

‘What sort of help?’ Fontana asked, almost as if he feared they were going to ask him for money.

‘Telling us about your cousin, his life, his work, any friends of his. Anything you think it might be important for us to know.’

Fontana gave his nervous smile again, looked back and forth between them, at his shoes, and then, eyes still lowered, asked, ‘Will this be in the papers?’

Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a quick glance; Vianello’s lips tightened in the half-grimace one gives at the discovery of something that might prove interesting.

‘Everything you tell us, Signore,’ Brunetti said in his most official voice, the one he used when it served his purposes to assert something other than what he knew to be the truth, ‘will be kept in strictest confidence.’

His reassurances caused no visible signs of relaxation in Fontana, and Brunetti began to suspect this was a man who did not know how to relax or, if he did, would not be capable of doing it in the presence of another person.

Fontana cleared his throat but said nothing.

‘I’ve spoken to your aunt, but in this painful time, it seemed unkind to ask her to speak about her son.’ Effortlessly, he transformed those things he had neglected to do into reality and said, ‘This afternoon, we have appointments with some of his friends.’

‘Friends?’ Fontana asked, as if uncertain about the meaning of the word.

‘The people who worked with him,’ Brunetti clarified.

‘Oh,’ Fontana said, averting his eyes.

‘Do you think colleagues would be a more accurate word, Signore?’ Vianello interrupted to ask.

‘Perhaps,’ Fontana finally said.

Brunetti asked, ‘Did he talk about the people he worked with?’ When Fontana did not answer the question, he said, ‘I’m afraid I have no idea how close you were to your cousin, Signor Fontana.’

‘Close enough,’ was the only response he got.

‘Did he talk about work with you, Signore?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, not much.’

‘Could I ask you,’ Brunetti began with an easy smile, ‘what you did talk about, then?’

‘Oh, things, family things,’ was his sparse reply.

‘His family or yours?’ Vianello asked in a soft voice.

‘They’re the same family,’ Fontana said with some asperity.

Vianello leaned forward and smiled in Fontana’s direction. ‘Of course, of course. I meant did you talk about your side of the family or his?’

‘Both.’

‘Did he talk about your aunt, his mother?’ Brunetti asked, puzzled that they could have spent so much time talking about so small a family.

‘Seldom,’ Fontana said. His eyes moved back and forth between them, and he always looked at the person who asked him a question, attentive to him while he answered, as if he had been taught this as a child and it was the only way he knew how to behave.

‘Did he ever talk about himself?’ Brunetti asked in a voice he worked at keeping low and steady and warm with interest.

Fontana looked at Brunetti for a long time, as if searching for the trap or the trick that was sure to come. ‘Sometimes,’ he finally answered.

If they kept at it this way, Brunetti realized, they would still be here for the first snow, and Fontana would still be looking back and forth between them. ‘Were you close?’ he finally asked.

‘Close?’ he repeated, as if he had already forgotten being asked this question.

‘In the way of friendship,’ Brunetti explained with no end of patience. ‘Could you talk openly to one another?’

At first Fontana stared at him, as if puzzled at this novel way for two men to interact. But after some thought he said, in a lower voice, ‘Yes.’

‘Did he talk about his private life with you?’ Brunetti asked, imitating the voice of the priest who had heard his first confession, decades ago. He thought he saw Fontana relax minimally and said, ‘Signor Fontana, we want to find who did this.’ Fontana nodded a few times, and Brunetti repeated, ‘Did he talk about his life?’

Fontana looked from Brunetti to Vianello and then he looked at his knees. ‘Yes,’ he said in a voice that was barely audible.

‘Is that why you’ve come to talk to us, Signor Fontana?’ Brunetti asked, wishing he had thought to ask this earlier.

Eyes still lowered, Fontana said, ‘Yes.’

Brunetti had no idea which part of Fontana’s life, personal or professional, could have caused his death, but no trace of this uncertainty was audible in his voice when he said, ‘Good. I think the reason for his death might be there.’