Friends In High Places by Donna Leon
‘So we’re the last, and that makes it important that nothing happens to the family name or to our honour.’ Keeping his eyes on Brunetti’s, he asked, ‘Do you understand?’
‘Of course,’ Brunetti said. He had no idea of what ‘honour’ meant, especially to a member of a family that had carried a name for more than eight hundred years. ‘We have to live with honour,’ was all he could think of to say.
Dolfin nodded repeatedly. ‘That’s what Loredana tells me. She’s always told me that. She says it doesn’t matter that we’re not rich, not at all. We still have the name.’ He spoke with the emphasis people often give to the repetition of phrases or ideas they don’t really understand, conviction taking the place of reason. Some sort of mechanism seemed to have been triggered in Dolfin’s mind, for he lowered his head again and started to recite the history of his famous ancestor, Doge Giovanni Dolfin. Brunetti listened, strangely comforted by the sound, carried back by it to a period of time in his childhood when the women of the neighbourhood had come to their house to recite the rosary together and he found himself caught up in the murmured repetition of the same prayers. He let himself be carried back to those other whisperings, and he stayed there until he heard Dolfin say, ‘. . . of the Plague in 1361’.
Dolfin looked up then, and Brunetti nodded his approval. ‘It’s important, a name like that,’ he agreed, thinking that this would be the way to lead him on. ‘A person would have to be very careful to protect it.’
‘That’s what Loredana told me, just the very same thing.’ Dolfin gave Brunetti a look filled with dawning respect: here was another man who could understand the obligations under which the two of them lived. ‘She told me, especially this time, that we had to do anything we could to maintain and protect it.’ His tongue stumbled over the last words.
‘Of course,’ Brunetti prompted, ‘“especially this time”.’
Dolfin went on: ‘She said that man at the office had always been jealous of her because of her position.’ When he saw Brunetti’s confusion, he explained, ‘In society.’
Brunetti nodded.
‘She never understood why he hated her so much. But then he did something with papers. She tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t understand. But he made up false papers that said Loredana was doing bad things in the office, taking money to do things.’ He put his palms flat on the desk and pushed himself half out of the chair. Voice raised to an alarming volume, he said, ‘Dolfins do not do things for money. Money means nothing to the Dolfins.’
Brunetti raised a calming hand, and Dolfin lowered himself back into his chair. ‘We do not do things for money,’ he said forcefully. ‘The whole city knows that. Not for money.’
He continued: ‘She said everyone would believe the papers and there would be a scandal. The name would be ruined. She told me . . .’ he began and then corrected himself, ‘No, I knew that myself; no one had to tell me that. No one can lie about the Dolfins and not be punished.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘Does that mean you’d take him to the police?’
Dolfin flicked a hand to one side, with it flicking aside the idea of the police. ‘No, it was our honour, and so we had the right to take our own justice.’
‘I see.’
‘I knew who he was. I’d been there sometimes, to help Loredana when she did the shopping in the morning and had things to carry home. I’d go and help her.’ He said this last with unconscious pride, the man of the family announcing his prowess.
‘She knew where he was going that day, and she told me that I should follow him there and try to talk to him. But when I did, he pretended not to understand what I was saying and said it had nothing to do with Loredana. He said it was that other man. She warned me that he’d lie and try to make me believe it was someone else in the office, but I was ready for him. I knew he was really out to get Loredana because he was jealous of her.’ He put on his face the expression he’d seen people use when they said things he was later told had been clever, and Brunetti again had the impression he’d been taught to recite this lesson, as well.
‘And?’
‘He called me a liar and then he tried to push past me. He told me to get out of the way. We were in that building.’ His eyes grew wide with what Brunetti thought was the memory of what had happened but which turned out to be the scandal of what he was about to say. ‘And he used tu when he talked to me. He knew I was a count, and he still called me tu.’ Dolfin glanced over at Brunetti, as if to ask if he had ever heard of such a thing.
Brunetti, who never had, shook his head as if in silent astonishment.
When Dolfin seemed disposed to say nothing more, Brunetti asked, his real curiosity audible in the question, ‘What did you do?’
‘I told him he was lying to me and wanted to hurt Loredana because he was jealous of her. He pushed me again. No one’s ever done that to me.’ From the way he spoke, Brunetti was convinced Dolfin thought the physical respect people must have shown him was a response to his title rather than to his size. ‘When he pushed me, I stepped back and my foot hit a pipe that was there, on the floor. It twisted and I fell down. When I got up, the pipe was in my hand. I wanted to hit him, but a Dolfin would never hit a man from behind, so I called him, and he turned around. He raised his hand then, to hit me.’ Dolfin stopped talking here, but his hands clenched and unclenched in his lap as though they’d suddenly taken on an existence independent of his own.
When he looked again at Brunetti, time had clearly passed in his memory, for he said, ‘He tried to get up after that. We’d been by the window and the shutter was open. He’d opened it when he came in. He crawled over to it and pulled himself up. I wasn’t angry any more,’ he said, his voice dispassionate and calm. ‘Our honour was saved. So I went over to see if I could help him. But he was afraid of me, and when I came toward him, he stepped backwards and he hit his legs on the sill and he fell backwards. I reached out and tried to grab him, really I did,’ he said, repeating the gesture as he described it, his long, flat fingers closing repeatedly, hopelessly, on the empty air, ‘but he was falling and falling and I couldn’t hold him.’ He pulled his hand back and covered his eyes with the other. ‘I heard him hit the ground. It was a very loud noise. But then someone was at the door to the room and I became very afraid. I didn’t know who it was. I ran down the steps.’ He stopped.
‘Where did you go?’
‘I went home. It was after lunchtime, and Loredana always worries if I’m late.’
‘Did you tell her?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Did I tell her what?’
‘What had happened?’
‘I didn’t want to. But she could tell. She saw it when I couldn’t eat. So I had to tell her what happened.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said she was very proud of me,’ he answered, his face radiant. ‘She said I had defended our honour and what had happened was an accident. He pushed me. I swear by God that’s the truth. He knocked me down.’
Giovanni cast a nervous look at the door and asked, ‘Does she know I’m here?’
When he saw Brunetti shake his head in response, Dolfin put one immense hand to his mouth and tapped the side of his clenched fingers repeatedly against his lower lip. ‘Oh, she’s going to be so angry. She told me not to go to the hospital. She said it was a trap. And she was right. I should have listened to her. She’s always right. She’s always been right about everything.’ He placed his hand gently on top of the place on his arm where he had received the injection but said nothing further. He ran his fingers lightly back and forth over the spot.
In the ensuing silence, Brunetti wondered how much truth there had been in what Loredana Dolfin had told her brother. Brunetti had no doubt now that Rossi had learned about the corruption in the Ufficio Catasto, but he doubted that it concerned the honour of the Dolfin family.
‘And when you went back?’ he asked. He was beginning to be concerned about the increasing restlessness of Dolfin’s move
‘That other one, the one who took drugs, he was there when it happened. He followed me home and asked people who I was. They knew me because of my name.’ Brunetti heard the pride with which he said that, and then the man went on. ‘He came back to the apartment, and when I came out to go to work, he told me he’d seen everything. He said he was my friend and wanted to help me keep out of trouble. I believed him, and we went back there together and started to clean the room upstairs. He said he would help me do that, and I believed him. And when we were there, the policemen came, but he said something to them, and they went away. When they were gone, he told me that if I didn’t give him money, he’d bring the policemen back and show them the room, and I’d be in a lot of trouble, and everyone would know what I did.’ Dolfin stopped speaking here as he considered what the consequences of this would have been.
‘And?’
‘I told him I didn’t have any money, that I always gave it to Loredana. She knew what to do with it.’
Dolfin pushed himself up to a half-standing position and turned his head from side to side, as if listening for some sound to emerge from the back of his neck.
‘And?’ Brunetti repeated in that same bland voice.
‘I told Loredana, of course. And then we went back.’
‘We?’ Brunetti asked instantly and immediately regretted both the question and the impulse that made him ask it.
Until Brunetti spoke, Dolfin had continued turning his head from side to side. Brunetti’s question, or his tone, however, stopped him. As Brunetti watched, Dolfin’s trust in him evaporated, and he saw the other man adjust to finding himself in the camp of the enemy.
After at least a minute had passed, Brunetti asked, ‘Signor Conte?’
Dolfin shook his head firmly.
‘Signor Conte, you said that you went back to the building with someone else. Will you tell me who that person was?’
Dolfin propped his elbows on the table and, lowering his head, covered his ears with the palms of his hands. As Brunetti began to speak to him again, Dolfin shook his head violently from side to side. Angry with himself for having pushed Dolfin into a place from which there was no retrieving him, Brunetti got to his feet and, knowing he had no choice, went to phone Conte Dolfin’s sister.
25
SHE ANSWERED WITH the name, ‘Cà Dolfin’, nothing else, and Brunetti was so surprised by the sound, like a trumpet voluntary containing nothing but discordant notes, that it took him a moment to identify himself and explain the purpose of his call. If she was at all disturbed to hear what he had to say, she disguised it well and said only that she would call her lawyer and be at the Questura in a short time. She asked no questions and demonstrated no curiosity whatsoever at the announcement that her brother was being questioned in connection with murder. It could have been an ordinary business call, some confusion about a line on a blueprint, for all the response she made. Not being a descendant, at least as far as he knew, of a Doge, Brunetti had no idea how such people dealt with murder in the family.
Brunetti never wasted an instant considering the possibility that Signorina Dolfin had had anything to do with something so vulgar as the enormous bribery system Rossi must have discovered washing in and out of the Ufficio Catasto: ‘Dolfins do not do things for money.’ Brunetti believed this absolutely. It had been dal Carlo, with his studied uncertainty about whether someone in the Ufficio Catasto would be able to take a bribe, who had set up the system of corruption Rossi had discovered.
What had poor, stupid, fatally honest Rossi done – confronted dal Carlo with his evidence, threatened to denounce him or report him to the police? And had he done it with the door left open to the office of that Cerberus in a twinset, both her hairstyle and her hopeless longing dating back twenty years? And Cappelli? Had his phone calls with Rossi hastened his own death?
He had no doubt that Loredana Dolfin had already coached her brother in what he was to say should he be questioned: after all, she had warned him against going to the hospital. She would not have called it a ‘trap’ unless she had known how he had got that telltale bite on his forearm. And he, poor creature, had been so driven by his fear of infection that he had ignored her warning and had fallen into Brunetti’s trap.
Dolfin had stopped talking just at the time when he began to use the plural. Brunetti was sure of the identity of the second part of that fatal ‘we’, but he knew that, once Loredana’s lawyer got to speak to Giovanni, all chance of filling in that blank would disappear.
Less than an hour later, his phone rang, and he was told that Signorina Dolfin and Avvocato Contarini had arrived. He asked that they be shown up to his office.
She came first, led by one of the uniformed officers who stood guard at the front door of the Questura. Behind her trailed Contarini, overweight and always smiling, a man ever able to find the right loophole to ensure that his clients benefited from every technicality of the law.
Brunetti did not offer to shake hands with either of them but turned and led them back into the office. He retreated behind his desk.
Brunetti looked across at Signorina Dolfin, who sat, feet pressed together, back straight as an arrow but not touching the back of her chair, hands neatly folded on top of her purse. She returned his look but remained silent. She looked no different than when he had seen her in her office: efficient, ageing, interested in what was going on but not fully involved in whatever it might be.
‘And what is it you think you’ve discovered about my client?’ Contarini asked, smiling amiably.
‘In a recorded session made here in the Questura this afternoon, he has admitted killing Francesco Rossi, an employee of the Ufficio Catasto where,’ Brunetti said with a bow of his head in her direction, ‘Signorina Dolfin works as a secretary.’
Contarini seemed uninterested. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.
‘He also said that he later went back to the same place in the company of a man called Gino Zecchino, and together they destroyed the evidence of his crime. Further, he said that Zecchino subsequently attempted to blackmail him.’ So far nothing Brunetti said seemed to be of much interest to either of the two people across from him. ‘Zecchino was later found murdered in that same building, as was a young woman who still remains unidentified.’
When he judged that Brunetti had finished, Contarini pulled his briefcase up on to his lap and opened it. He sorted through papers and Brunetti felt the hairs on his arms rise when he realized how similar his fussy actions were to those of Rossi. With a little snort of pleasure, Contarini found the paper he was looking for and pulled it out. He extended it across the desk toward Brunetti, ‘As you can see, Commissario,’ he said, pointing to the seal at the top of the paper but not letting go of it, ‘this is a certificate from the Ministry of Health, dated more than ten years ago.’ He pulled his chair closer to the desk. When he was sure that Brunetti’s attention was directed at the paper, he continued, ‘which declares that Giovanni Dolfin is . . .’ and paused, gracing Brunetti with yet another smile, a shark preparing to get down to business. Though it was upside down, he began to read the text out slowly to Brunetti: ‘“a person with special needs who is to receive special preference in obtaining employment and is never to be discriminated against because of any inability to perform tasks beyond his powers.”’
He moved a finger down the paper until it pointed to the last paragraph, which he read out, as well. “ ‘The person above named, Giovanni Dolfin, is declared not to be in complete possession of his intellectual faculties and hence is not to be subjected to the full rigour of the law.”’
Contarini let go of the paper and watched it flutter quietly to the surface of Brunetti’s desk. Smiling still, he said, ‘That’s a copy. For your files. I assume you’re familiar with such documents, Commissario?’
Brunetti’s family were passionate Monopoly players, and here it was to the life: a Get Out of Gaol Free card.
Contarini closed his briefcase and got to his feet. ‘I’d li
‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, reaching for his phone.
The three of them sat in silence until Pucetti knocked at the door.
‘Officer Pucetti,’ Brunetti said, touched to see that the young man was out of breath, having run up the stairs in answer to Brunetti’s summons, ‘please take Avvocato Contarini down to room seven to see his client.’
Pucetti snapped a salute. Contarini got to his feet and looked enquiringly at Signorina Dolfin, but she shook her head and remained where she was. Contarini said polite things and left, smiling all the way.
When he was gone, Brunetti, who had stood up at Contarini’s departure, sat down again and looked across at Signorina Dolfin. He said nothing.
Minutes passed until finally she said, in an entirely ordinary voice, ‘There’s nothing you can do to him, you know. He’s protected by the state.’
Brunetti was determined to remain silent and curious to see how far this would drive her. He did nothing at all, didn’t move objects around on his desk or put his hands together: he simply sat, looking across at her with a neutral expression.
A few more minutes passed, and then she asked, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘You’ve just told me, Signorina,’ he conceded.
Like two sepulchral statues they sat, until at last she said, ‘That’s not what I mean.’ She glanced away and out the window of his office, then back at Brunetti, ‘Not to my brother. I want to know what you’re going to do to him.’ For the first time, he saw emotion on her face.
Brunetti had no interest in playing with her, so he did not feign misunderstanding. ‘You mean dal Carlo?’ he asked, not bothering with a title.
She nodded.
Brunetti weighed it all, and not a little part of it was the realization of what might happen to his home if the Ufficio Catasto were forced into honesty. ‘I’m going to feed him to the wolves,’ Brunetti said, glad to say it.