Donna Leon - About Face

Brunetti had called ahead, and there was a launch waiting to take them to the Questura. But even inside the warm cabin of the boat, and with the heater turned on high, they did not grow warm.

Inside his office, he stood by the radiator, reluctant to call Avisani and justifying the delay until he felt warm again. Finally he went to his desk, found the number, and dialled it.

‘It’s me,’ he said, striving to sound natural.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘The worst,’ Brunetti said, immediately embarrassed by the melodrama.

‘Filippo?’ Avisani asked.

‘I’m just back from seeing his body,’ Brunetti said. No questions came. Into the silence, he said, ‘He was shot. They found him this morning at the petrochemical complex in Marghera.’

After a long pause, Avisani said, ‘He always said it was a possibility. But I didn’t believe him. I mean, who could? But. . it’s different. When it happens. Like this.’

‘Did he tell you anything else?’

‘I’m a journalist, remember,’ came the immediate reply, just short of anger.

‘I thought you were his friend.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ Then, in a more sober voice, Avisani said, ‘It was the usual thing, Guido: the more he found out, the more obstacles he encountered. The magistrate in charge of the case was transferred, and the new one didn’t seem very interested. Then two of his best assistants were transferred. You know what it’s like.’

Yes, Brunetti thought, he did know what it was like. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘No, just that. It was nothing I could use: I’ve heard it too many times.’ The line went dead.

Like many people involved in police work, Brunetti had long ago realized that the tentacles of the various mafias penetrated deep into every aspect of life, including most public institutions and many businesses. It would be impossible to count the number of policemen and magistrates who had found themselves transferred to some provincial dead end just at the point when their investigations began to uncover embarrassing links to the government. No matter how people tried to ignore it, the evidence of the depth and breadth of penetration was overwhelming. Had the news-papers not recently proclaimed the mafias, with 93 billion Euros in yearly earnings, the third largest enterprise in the country?

Brunetti had observed the Mafia and its close relatives, the N’Dragheta and the Camorra, grow ever more powerful, moving from the dark corners of his investigations until they were now the Prime Mover in the universe of crime. Like that French nobleman in the book he had read as a boy — The Scarlet Pimpernel . He tried to recall the poem describing those who tried to find and destroy him: ‘They seek him here, They seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.’

Or was the Lernean Hydra a better image, impossible to destroy because of its many heads? He remembered the joyous feeding frenzy of the press after the arrests of Riina, Provenzano, Lo Piccolo, the suggestion endlessly repeated that finally the government had been triumphant in its long battle against organized crime. As if the death of the president of General Motors or British Petroleum would bring those monoliths to their knees. Had no one ever heard of vice-presidents?

If anything, the arrests of those dinosaurs would give opportunities for younger men, university-trained men, better able to direct their organizations like the multinational corporations they had become. And, he could never forget, the arrests of two of those men had taken place at about the same time as the indulto , that beneficent wave of the legal wand that had set free more than 24,000 criminals, many of them the foot soldiers of the Mafia. Ah, how accommodating the law could be, when it was in the hands of those who best knew how to use it.

Brunetti decided it would be better to talk to Patta about Guarino, but when he arrived at the Questura, the guard at the entrance told him the Vice-Questore had left an hour before. Relieved, he went up to his office and called Vianello to ask him to come up. When the Inspector arrived, Brunetti told him about going out to Marghera and seeing Guarino, lying dead on his back in the field.

‘Where had they moved him from?’ Vianello asked immediately.

‘There’s no way of knowing. The men who found him walked around him as if they were at a picnic.’

‘Convenient,’ Vianello observed.

‘Before you begin with conspiracy theories,’ Brunetti — who had already begun to do so — said, but Vianello cut him short.

‘You trust this Ribasso?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Then not telling him you put a name to the man in the photo Guarino sent you doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Habit.’

‘Habit?’

‘Or territoriality,’ Brunetti compromised.

‘Lot of that around,’ Vianello observed, then added, ‘Nadia says it’s because of the goats.’

‘What goats? What are you talking about?’

‘Well, inheritance, really, who we leave the goats to or who gets them after we die.’ Had Vianello suddenly taken leave of his senses, or was Nadia using the garden behind their apartment for something other than flowers?

‘I think you better tell me in a way I can understand, Lorenzo,’ he said, welcoming the diversion.

‘You know Nadia reads, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and the verb forced his thoughts to another woman who read.

‘Well, she’s been reading an introduction to anthropology, or something like that. Sociology, maybe. She talks about it at dinner.’

‘Talks about what?’

‘Lately she’s been reading about inheritance rules and behaviour, as I said. Anyway, there’s this theory about why men are so aggressive and competitive — about why so many of us are bastards. She says it’s because we want to have access to the most fertile females.’

Brunetti propped his elbows on his desk and sank his head in his hands, moaning. He had wanted diversion, but not this.

‘All right, all right. But you needed the introduction,’ Vianello protested. ‘Once they get the most fertile females, they impregnate them, and that way they’re sure that the children who inherit the goats are really their own.’ Vianello looked across the desk to see if Brunetti was following, but he still had his head buried in his hands. ‘It made sense to me when she explained it, Guido. We all want our stuff to go to our kids, not to some cuckoo.’

Brunetti’s continuing silence — at least he had stopped moaning — forced Vianello to add, ‘So that’s why men compete. Evolution’s programmed it into us.’

‘Because of the goats?’ Brunetti raised his head to ask.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you mind if we talk about this some other time?’

‘As you will.’

Their light-heartedness seemed suddenly out of tune to Brunetti, who looked at the papers on his desk, at a loss what to say. Vianello got to his feet, said something about having to talk to Pucetti, and left. Brunetti continued to look at the papers.

His phone rang. It was Paola, reminding him that she had to attend the farewell dinner for a retiring colleague that evening and that the kids were attending a horror film festival and would not be there for dinner, either. Before he could ask, she told him she’d leave him something in the oven.

He thanked her, then asked, remembering the Conte’s request and his failure to pursue it, ‘Did your father say anything about Cataldo?’

‘The last time I spoke to my mother, she said she thought he was going to turn him down, but she didn’t know why.’ Then she added, ‘You know my father enjoys talking to you, so pretend you’re his concerned son-in-law and call him and ask. Please, Guido.’