Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

Griffoni smiled and said something to him that, though it was virtually incomprehensible, with only a few words peeping out enough for him to grasp, was an exact imitation of Patta’s voice speaking in his native dialect and thus far more accurate than his own imitation had been. She came across the room and sat in the chair in front of his desk. ‘He says he’s from Palermo, but his accent is pure San Giuseppe Jato,’ she said, with the same disapproval a lord would use should his butler attempt to play polo. As ever, she spoke in an Italian the purity of which he envied.

In the years she had worked at the Questura he had learned very little about her private life or background, but he had no doubt that she came from what his maternal grandmother had always referred to as gente per bene , with its strong suggestion that the people so defined were not only well intentioned but wealthy. Beyond this, she was intelligent and cooperative, and the few times they had worked together, he had been impressed by her seriousness and lack of interest in becoming the hero of the investigation, a weakness to which some of his other colleagues were prone. She was also possessed of physical courage, a quality Brunetti admired.

‘You know anything about the investigation?’ he

asked.

‘You mean the mayor and the Guardia di Finanza?’

‘Yes.’

She shrugged. ‘They’ll find certain irregularities in the bookkeeping, an enormous amount of money will not have been accounted for, and they will not be able to find it, people will say things and trade accusations, one of the accused will weep for the press, and for a few months the people in the office will be very cautious. And then things will go back to normal.’

Letting the subject of political corruption retreat for the moment, Brunetti gave in to his curiosity at her arrival and asked, ‘Can I help you with something?’

‘Not at all,’ she answered with a quick shake of her head. ‘In fact, it’s the opposite. I’ve come up because I’d like to try to help you with something.’

Brunetti lifted his chin in an interrogative gesture. He had no idea what she could mean. For months she had been dealing with a suspicious fire which had gutted a former factory that the owner planned to turn into

a luxury hotel. Though the official investigation had declared it an accident, doubts remained, especially after one of Griffoni’s informants told her that the son of the expert who had written the report had been hired as manager of a hotel in the chain that was interested in transforming the factory.

How, he asked himself, could her investigation be of help to him? ‘Tell me more,’ he said, turning from the computer screen to face her directly.

‘It’s none of my business,’ she said, suddenly sounding hesitant.

‘What isn’t?’

‘Your friendship with Vianello.’

Where did that come from? he wondered, and what business of hers was his friendship with Vianello? To give himself time to think about how to respond, he turned back to the computer and closed all of the open windows, then pushed another key and watched the screen grow dark.

He turned back to her. ‘But you’re choosing to make it your business?’ he asked in a voice wiped clean of everything save mild curiosity.

She started to speak, but all she managed to produce was a hesitant vowel sound, perhaps ‘a’, which

could have served for allora or adesso , or, for all he knew, amico .

‘He’s helped me, you know,’ she said. ‘With Scarpa. And with the others.’

‘Helped you how?’ Brunetti asked. Then, because there could be no doubt of the universal desire to help against Lieutenant Scarpa, he added, ‘With the others, I mean.’

She studied his face for a long time, as if trying to make up her mind about something, or about him. ‘You mean you don’t know? You’ve never noticed the way some people here talk to me?’ she asked.

He thought of Signorina Elettra, and his impulse was to lie, and then he started to recall other things he might have noticed or sensed, references and undertones he had chosen not to interpret in a particular way.

Then, to goad him, ‘Or about me?’

Books often described how beautiful women became when they were angry: how wrong her face proved that to be. Her mouth was a tight line, her strong nose suddenly sharp and too big. And her eyes lacked all warmth, all willingness to understand.

‘Because you’re Neapolitan, you mean?’

She made a puffing noise replete with disgust. ‘If it were only that,’ she said. ‘I’m used to being thought of as a terrone: every cousin has to be a Camorrista, my brother has to be under house arrest; and every investigation I make has to be half-hearted, at best, since my only purpose is to be a spy and see that nothing is ever done to harm the Camorra.’ Brunetti had been with her when shots were fired and a man killed, but he had never seen her like this. Her cool dispassion and sense of irony were gone, replaced by an anger he could feel as a force coming across his desk.

He frowned and then asked, ‘Do you think you’re exaggerating?’

‘Of course I’m exaggerating,’ she said sharply. But she paused long enough for some of the anger to melt from her face. ‘There’s no way I can escape it up here. It’s in the northern air.’

Confronted with his own hypocrisy and how it would colour anything he chose to say, Brunetti opted for silence. How could he tell this woman she was imagining things when his own distrust of southerners was as strongly rooted as his teeth? Like them, it had been formed in childhood, and he had been equally unconscious of the growth of both.

Had she sensed it in him, too? Brunetti no sooner concluded that, if she had, she would hardly have mentioned the subject to him, than he recalled just how subtle a person she was, and was again uncertain. How strange, prejudice: so comforting until someone noticed it.

He ran his hands over his face and back through his hair as a visual signal of wiping the slate free of a digression. ‘Where did Vianello go?’ he asked.

‘Downstairs. I just spoke with him.’

Brunetti smiled and waved a hand to dismiss her answer. ‘No. I mean where did the idea of my friendship with him go?’ Seeing the faint relief signalled by her more relaxed posture, he added, ‘We were distracted, I think.’

She blushed, she actually blushed, and with it her full beauty flowed back into possession of her, or she of it. ‘Sorry, Guido, but you really have no idea.’ For a moment, he was afraid she was going to pick it up again, but she said no more.

‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘You asked him to ask Nadia to do some work for you.’ Before Brunetti could explain or avoid explanation, she said, ‘No, he didn’t want to tell me. I could see something was bothering him, so I asked him, and I wouldn’t let it go until he told me.’ When she saw that Brunetti believed her, she went on. ‘All he told me was that you wanted her to ask some people about this man who died.’

‘Davide Cavanella,’ Brunetti supplied, still not liking the way her original description of his request had sounded.

‘And he’s afraid he offended you by refusing.’

‘He told you, but he didn’t tell me,’ Brunetti said, hearing the petulance in his voice.

She smiled again. ‘He said he doesn’t want to let you down. Or hurt your feelings. He’d do anything for

you: you know that. But that applies to him, and not to his wife.’

‘You make it sound like a conflict of loyalties,’ he said, hoping to surprise her.

Ignoring his affronted tone, she said, ‘Of course it is. Vianello has his wife and his children, and then he