Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

He stepped aside and let Vianello take his place. Though the water made it possible for him to speak in his normal voice, Vianello whispered when he asked, ’Why’s she washing her hands?’

Like the noble Romans, Brunetti thought as he shoved past Vianello and pushed open the door. As he ran by one of the desks, he ripped the receiver from a phone, and then yanked the cord from it. Just as he reached her, the woman slumped forward over the edge of the sink, and he saw the red — pink, really — swirling down into the drain.

He grabbed her, pulled her back and laid her on the floor, then used the phone cord as a tourniquet around her right arm. Vianello knelt beside him with another piece of phone cord, and tied off the left.

The face of the woman on the floor was pale, her hair shoulder length and more white than brown. She wore no makeup, but little could have been done to alleviate the plainness of those heavy features and pocked skin.

‘Get someone,’ Brunetti said, and Vianello was gone. He looked at her wrists: the cuts were deep, but they were horizontal, rather than vertical, which left some room for hope. The tourniquets had stopped the bleeding, though some blood had seeped on to the floor.

Her eyes opened. Her lashes and eyebrows were sparse, the eyes a dusty brown. ‘I didn’t want to do it,’ she said. The continuing rush of the water made it difficult to hear her.

Brunetti nodded, as if he understood. ‘We all do things we regret, Signora.’

‘But he asked me,’ she said and closed her eyes for so long that Brunetti feared she was gone. But then she opened them again and said, ‘And I was afraid he’d. . he’d leave me if I didn’t do it.’

‘Don’t worry about that now, Signora. Lie quietly. Someone will be here soon.’ They were in the middle of a hospital: why was it taking so long?

He heard footsteps, looked up, and saw Rizzardi. The doctor came over and knelt on the other side of the woman. He sighed, almost moaned, when he saw her there. ‘Elvira,’ he said, ‘what have you done?’ Brunetti noted that he used the familiar ‘tu’ when speaking to her. He sounded like a parent, disappointed in a child who has failed at something.

‘Dottore,’ she said and opened her eyes. She smiled. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble.’

Rizzardi leaned down and placed one of his hands over hers. ‘You’ve never caused a moment’s trouble, Elvira. Quite the opposite. The only reason I have any faith in this lab is because you’re here.’

She closed her eyes again and tears trickled from the outer edges. They spurred Rizzardi to say, ‘Don’t cry, Elvira. Nothing’s going to happen. You’ll be all right.’

‘He’ll leave me,’ she said, eyes still closed and tears running into her ears.

‘No, once he knows what you’ve done, he’ll want to help you,’ Rizzardi said, then glanced at Brunetti, as if to ask if he were saying the right lines.

‘He won’t be able to use the lab results now,’ she said. ‘People won’t believe he helps them.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked up at Rizzardi. ‘But he does, Dottore. He really does.’ She smiled, and for an instant her face was transformed into something approaching beauty. ‘He helped me.’

There was a great deal of noise behind them. Brunetti looked up and saw three green-jacketed aides blocking the door with a wheeled stretcher. They banged it repeatedly against the sides of the door until one slipped around to the front and guided it through. Two of them came quickly over to the woman on the floor and the men kneeling beside her, forcing them aside with the press of their bodies.

Brunetti and Rizzardi got to their feet. Almost maddened by its sound, Brunetti took two steps to the sink and turned off the water. Vianello, who had come in with the attendants, went to stand beside Rizzardi. The third aide came over, pushing the stretcher. He did something with a lever and the stretcher sank almost to the ground, then he joined his colleagues and together they lifted the woman on to it. Another motion of the switch raised her slowly to waist height. The first one took a tube running from a bottle of clear liquid hanging above the stretcher and inserted the needle into a vein in her arm.

Rizzardi stepped forward then and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding it for some time, either to take her pulse or to convey whatever reassurance he could. ‘Get her to emergency,’ he said.

One of the attendants started to say something, but the first one, who seemed to be in charge, said, ‘He’s a doctor.’

As Rizzardi started to unwrap his fingers from her wrist she opened her eyes again and said, ‘Will you come with me, Dottore?’

Rizzardi smiled at her, and Brunetti realized how seldom he had seen the doctor smile in all the years he had known him. ‘Of course,’ he said, and the attendants started towards the door.

Brunetti’s first thought was the Contessa. He didn’t know exactly how Gorini had profited from the lab tests Signorina Montini must have altered, but he knew she had done it to his profit, and for love, so that he would not leave her. If Gorini was capable of this, then Brunetti wanted to keep his mother-in-law away from him.

‘I can’t let Paola’s mother see him.’ Vianello, who knew of Brunetti’s conversation, understood. Brunetti took out his telefonino , found the number for Palazzo Falier and was quickly put through to her.

‘Ah, Guido, how lovely to hear your voice. How are Paola and the kids?’ she asked, as if she did not speak to her daughter at least twice a day.

‘Fine, fine. But I’m calling about that other thing.’

After the briefest of pauses, she said, ‘Oh, you mean that Gorini man?’

‘Yes. Have you done anything about contacting him?’

‘Only indirectly. As it turns out, a friend of mine, Nuria Santo, has been going to him for months, and she says she’d be happy to introduce me to him. She’s convinced he saved her husband.’

‘Oh, how?’ Brunetti inquired, speaking in his mildest voice and allowing signs of only the most modest curiosity.

‘Something about his cholesterol. She said it doesn’t make any sense: Piero eats like a bird, never eats cheese, doesn’t like meat, but his bad cholesterol — I think there’s a bad one and a good one. .’ The Contessa paused and then added, ‘Isn’t it strange that nature should be so Manichaean?’ Brunetti ignored the remark, told himself to be patient and listen, and she continued, ‘Whatever it is they count, it was up near the stars, and the good one was no help at all. Nuria told me that during one of his consultations Gorini recommended some herbal tea — it costs the earth — that he guaranteed would bring it down, and it did, so now she’s convinced he’s a saint and she’s spreading the word among all of our friends.’

‘Do you have an appointment with him?’ Brunetti asked in what he hoped was a conversational tone.

‘Next Tuesday,’ she said and laughed. ‘He’s a clever devil, isn’t he? Makes people wait a week before he’ll talk to them.’

‘Donatella, I’d like you not to go.’

Warned, perhaps, by the change in his voice as much as by his words, the Contessa asked, ‘Is this something I should tell Nuria?’

How to warn off this other woman without frightening his prey? ‘Maybe you could suggest she cancel her appointment.’

The Contessa was silent for some time, and then she asked, ‘Can you tell me about it?’

‘Not now. But I will.’ He realized how quickly he was speaking, hastening her to go.

‘Good. I’ll tell her. Thank you, Guido,’ she said and replaced the phone.

Looking at Vianello, Brunetti asked, ‘You didn’t hear any of it, did you?’