Donna Leon - About Face

‘And in the morning?’ she asked, switching off her light.

‘I’ll go and talk to Patta.’

‘What will you tell him?’

Brunetti turned on to his right side, though to do so, he had to pull his arm free of her hand. He rose up and pounded his pillow a few times, then pulled himself over so that he could put his left hand on the inside of her arm. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he said, and then they slept.

The newspapers latched on to the story and would not let it go. They sank their teeth into it and shook it, for it had just what their public loved: wealthy people caught in apparent misbehaviour; the younger wife caught with the lover; violence, sex, and death. On the way to the Questura, Brunetti saw again the photo of the young Franca Marinello; in fact, he saw a number of photos of her and wondered how it was possible that the press could have found so many and so soon. Did her university classmates sell them? Her family? Friends? When he got to his office, he opened the papers and read through the story as it was presented in all of them.

Amidst the tumble of words, there were more photos of her at various social functions during the last few years, and speculation was rife about what would have driven an attractive young woman to have tampered with — they drew themselves short of talking about ‘God’s gift’, limiting themselves to ‘her natural appearance’ — in order to end up looking the way she did. Various psychologists were inter-viewed: one of them said she was a symbol of a consumerist society, never satisfied with what it had, always looking for some symbolic achievement to validate its worth; while another, in L’Osservatore Romano , a woman, saw it as a sad example of the way women were driven to attempt any means to make themselves younger or more attractive so as to compete for the approval of men. Sometimes, the psychologist said, with badly disguised glee, these attempts failed, though that failure seldom served as sufficient warning to those still willing to pursue the evanescent goal of physical beauty.

A different journalist speculated about the nature of Franca Marinello’s relationship with Terrasini, whose criminal past was splattered across the pages. They had become a well known couple, it was said by a number of unnamed people, and had been seen at the best restaurants in the city and often at the Casinò.

Cataldo, it seemed, had been selected to play the role of the betrayed husband. Entrepreneur, former city councillor, well regarded by his fellow businessmen of the Veneto, he had ended his former marriage of thirty-five years in order to marry Franca Marinello, a woman more than thirty years his junior. Neither he nor Marinello was available for comment, nor had a warrant been issued for her arrest. The police were still questioning witnesses and waiting for the results of the autopsy.

Brunetti, one of the witnesses to the crime, had certainly not been questioned, nor, it turned out when he phoned both Griffoni and Vasco, had they. ‘And who the hell is supposed to be questioning us?’ he could not stop himself from asking out loud.

He closed the papers and, realizing it was nothing more than a gesture of protest and, as such, self-indulgent and meaningless, tossed them into the wastepaper basket — and felt better for having done it. Patta did not come in until after lunch, but when he arrived Signorina Elettra phoned Brunetti, and he went downstairs.

Signorina Elettra was at her desk and said, when he came in, ‘I see I didn’t find enough about her, or about Terrasini. Or I didn’t find it soon enough.’

‘You’ve read the papers, then?’

‘I looked at them and found them more disgusting than usual.’

‘How is he?’ Brunetti asked, nodding towards Patta’s door.

‘He’s just finished speaking to the Questore, so I suspect he’ll want to see you.’

Brunetti knocked on the door and went in, knowing that Patta’s mood usually had a one-note overture. ‘Ah, Brunetti,’ the Vice-Questore said when he saw him. ‘Come in.’

Well, it was more than one note, but they had all been in a minor key, so that meant a subdued Patta and that meant a Patta who was up to something and not certain about whether he could get away with it and even more uncertain about whether he could count on Brunetti to help him with it.

‘I thought you might like to speak to me, sir,’ Brunetti said in his most deferential voice.

‘Yes, I do,’ Patta said expansively. He waved Brunetti to a seat, waited until he was comfortable, and said, ‘I’d like you to tell me about this incident in the Casinò.’

Brunetti was growing more and more uneasy: a civil Patta always had that effect on him. ‘I was there because of the man, Terrasini. His name had come up’ — Brunetti thought it best not to mention the photo Guarino had sent him, and Patta would never be curious enough to ask — ‘in my investigation into Guarino’s death. The chief of security at the Casinò called me and told me he had come in, so I went over. Commissario Griffoni came with me.’

Patta sat, all but regal, behind his desk. He nodded and said, ‘Yes. Go on.’

‘Soon after we came in, Terrasini had a sudden losing streak and, when it looked like he might cause trouble, the head of security and his assistant intervened and started to take him downstairs.’ Patta nodded again, understanding so well how important it was that trouble be removed quickly from the public eye.

‘He had been at the table with a woman, and she followed them.’ Brunetti closed his eyes, as if reconstructing the scene, then continued. ‘They took him to the bottom of the first flight of steps, and I suppose they judged he wasn’t going to give them any trouble because they let go of his arms and waited to see if he had cooled down. Then they started up the steps, back to the gaming rooms.’

He looked at Patta, who liked it when people did so when speaking to him. ‘Then, for no reason I can understand, Terrasini pulled out a pistol and aimed it up at us, or at the two security men — I don’t know which.’ This was certainly true enough: he had not known whom Terrasini was pointing his gun at.

‘Griffoni and I both had our guns in our hands by then, and when he saw them he must have changed his mind, because he lowered his and gave it to Signora Marinello.’

Brunetti found it encouraging that Patta seemed not to find it unusual that Brunetti should refer to her formally like this. He went on. ‘Then — it was only a few seconds later — he turned to her and raised his hand as if he were going to hit her. Not slap her, sir, but hit her. He had his hand in a fist. I saw that.’

Patta looked as if he was hearing a story with which he was already familiar.

‘And then she shot him. He fell, and she shot him again.’ Patta asked nothing about this, but Brunetti said, anyway, ‘I don’t know why she did that, sir.’

‘Is that all?’

‘That’s all I saw, sir,’ Brunetti said.

‘Did she say anything?’ Patta asked, and Brunetti prepared to answer, but Patta specified, ‘When you spoke to her in the Casinò? About why she did it?’

‘No, sir,’ Brunetti answered honestly.

Patta pushed himself back in his chair and crossed his legs, showing a sock blacker than night and smoother than a maiden’s cheek. ‘We have to be cautious here, Brunetti, as I think you can understand.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘I’ve spoken to Griffoni, and she confirms your story, or you confirm hers. She said exactly what you did, that he gave her the gun and then pulled his fist back to hit her.’

Brunetti nodded.

‘I spoke to her husband today,’ Patta said, and Brunetti disguised his astonishment with a small cough. ‘We’ve known one another for years,’ Patta explained. ‘Lions Club.’