Donna Leon - About Face

Dottoressa Landi turned off the engine and got out of the car without saying anything. Indeed, she had not spoken since they set out, and Brunetti had remained just as quiet, busy watching her hands and what little scenery they passed.

Inside, a waiter showed them to a table in a corner. Another waiter moved around the room, which held about a dozen tables, putting down silver and napkins, shifting chairs closer to or farther from the tables. The scent of roasting meat came from the kitchen, and Brunetti recognized the penetrating odour of fried onions.

She asked for a caffé macchiato, Brunetti the same.

She draped her parka over the back of her chair and sat, not bothering with the business of waiting for someone to help her. He chose the place opposite her. The table was set for lunch, and she carefully shifted the napkin to the side, placed the knife and fork on top of it, then rested both arms on the table.

‘I don’t know how to do this,’ Brunetti began, hoping to save time.

‘What are our options?’ she asked. Her face was neither friendly nor the opposite, her gaze level and dispassionate, as though she were a jeweller given something to assess, about to rub it on the touchstone of her intelligence to see how much gold it contained.

‘I give one piece of information and then you give one, and then I give another, and so forth. Like laying down cards in a game,’ Brunetti suggested, not entirely serious.

‘Or else?’ she asked with mild interest.

‘Or else one of us tells everything they know, and then the other does the same.’

‘That gives a tremendous advantage to the second person, doesn’t it?’ she asked, but in a warmer voice.

‘Unless the first person lies, too,’ Brunetti answered.

She smiled for the first time and grew younger. ‘Shall I go first, then?’ she asked.

‘Please,’ Brunetti said. The waiter brought the coffees and two small glasses of water. The Dottoressa added no sugar to her coffee, he noticed. Instead of drinking it, she looked into the cup and swirled it around.

‘I spoke to Filippo after he went to see you.’ She paused after that, then added, ‘He told me what you talked about. The man he wanted you to help him identify.’ Her eyes met his, then returned to the study of the foam on the top of her coffee. ‘We worked together for five years.’

Brunetti drank his coffee and set the cup on the saucer.

Suddenly she shook her head, saying, ‘No, it won’t work this way, will it? My doing all the talking?’

‘Probably not,’ Brunetti said and smiled.

She laughed for the first time, and he saw that she was really an attractive woman disguised by worry. As if relieved to be starting all over again, she said, ‘I’m a chemist, not a policewoman. But I told you that, didn’t I? Or you knew it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So I try to leave all of the police stuff to them. But after all these years, I’m still learning things, even if I don’t realize it. Even if I’m not paying attention.’ Nothing she had said so far suggested that she and Guarino had been more than colleagues. Then why was she bothering to explain how it was she knew so much about ‘police stuff’?

‘I’m sure it’s impossible not to hear things,’ Brunetti agreed.

‘Of course,’ she said, then her voice changed and she asked, ‘Filippo told you about the shipments, didn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s how we met,’ she said in a voice that had moved into a softer register. ‘They sequestered a shipment that was going south. This was about five years ago. I did the chemical analysis of what they found, and when they traced it back to where it was picked up, I did the analysis of the ground and water around it.’ After some time, she said, ‘Filippo was in charge of that case, and he suggested I be transferred to his unit.’

‘Friendships have started in stranger ways,’ Brunetti volunteered.

Her glance was sudden and long. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said and finally drank her coffee.

‘What was it?’ Brunetti asked and at her inquisitive glance, added, ‘In the shipment.’

‘Pesticides, hospital waste, and outdated pharmaceuticals.’ A pause, and then, ‘But not on the bills of lading.’

‘What did they say?’

‘The usual: urban garbage, just as if they were compressed bales of orange peel and coffee grounds from under the kitchen sink.’

‘Where were they going?’

‘To Campania,’ she said. ‘To the incinerator.’ Then, as if to be sure he understood the full import of what she had said, she repeated: ‘Pesticides. Hospital waste. Outdated pharmaceuticals.’ She took a small sip of water.

‘Five years ago?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And since then?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Nothing’s changed, except that there’s far more of it.’

‘Where does it go now?’ he asked.

‘Some gets burned, some gets put in dumps.’

‘And the rest?’

‘There’s always the sea,’ she told him, as though this were the most natural thing to say.

‘Ah.’

She picked up her spoon and set it carefully beside her cup. ‘It’s just like Somalia, where they used to drop it. If there’s no government, then they can do what they want.’

A waiter approached their table, and Dottoressa Landi asked for another coffee. Brunetti knew he could not drink another one before lunch and so asked for a glass of mineral water. Not wanting to be interrupted by the waiter’s return, Brunetti said nothing, and she seemed glad of the silence. Time passed. The waiter returned and replaced their drinks.

When he was gone, she asked, leaping from one subject to another, ‘He came to ask you about the man in the photo, didn’t he?’ Her voice had grown calm, almost as if being able to list the things she had found had worked some sort of exorcism.

Brunetti nodded.

‘And?’

Well, here it was, Brunetti realized, that moment when he had to call upon his experience of life, personal and professional, and decide whether to trust this young woman or not. He knew his weakness for women in distress — though perhaps he did not know its full extent — but he also knew that his instincts were often correct. She had obviously decided that he was to be the posthumous beneficiary of Guarino’s trust, and he saw no reason to suspect her.

‘His name is Antonio Terrasini,’ he began. She did not react to the name, nor did she ask how he had discovered this. ‘He’s a member of one of the Camorra clans.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you know anything about the photo?’

She made a business of stirring her coffee, then set the spoon on her saucer. ‘The man who was killed. .’ she began, then gave Brunetti a stricken look and put her hand to her mouth.

‘Ranzato?’ Brunetti volunteered.

She nodded by way of answer, then forced herself to say, ‘Yes. Filippo said he took it and sent it to him.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No, only that.’

‘When did you see him last?’ Brunetti asked.

‘The day before he went down to talk to you.’

‘Not after?’

‘No.’

‘Did he call you?’

‘Yes, twice.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That he’d spoken to you and thought he could trust you. Then, the second time, that he had spoken to you again and sent you the photo.’ She paused, decided to say it. ‘He said you were very insistent.’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, and they lapsed into silence.

He saw her looking at her spoon, as if trying to decide whether to pick it up and move it around. Finally, she asked, ‘Why kill him?’ and Brunetti realized she had agreed to this meeting in order to ask that question. He had no answer to give.

Voices came from the other side of the room, but it was nothing more than a discussion among the waiters. When Brunetti looked back at her, he saw that she was as relieved as he by the distraction. Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that he had twenty minutes to reach the next train back to Venice. He caught the waiter’s eye and asked for the bill.