Friends In High Places by Donna Leon
‘I feel sorry for her,’ Brunetti said. ‘For them both.’
Paola, head resting against the back of the sofa, closed her eyes and said, ‘So do I.’ After a long time, she asked, ‘Are you glad I kept my job?’
He gave this the consideration it deserved and answered, ‘Not particularly; I’m just happy you didn’t get fat.’
11
THE NEXT DAY, Patta did not appear at the Questura, and the only explanation he gave was to call Signorina Elettra and tell her what had, by then, become self-evident: he would not be there. Signorina Elettra asked no questions, but she did call Brunetti to tell him that the Vice-Questore’s absence left him in charge, the Questore being on vacation in Ireland.
At nine, Vianello called to say that he had already got Rossi’s keys from the hospital and been to see his apartment. Nothing seemed out of place, and the only papers were bills and receipts. He’d found an address book by the phone, and Pucetti was in the process of calling everyone listed in it. So far, the only relative was an uncle in Vicenza, who had already been called by the hospital and was taking care of the funeral. Bocchese, the lab technician, called soon after this to say he was sending one of the officers up to Brunetti’s office with Rossi’s wallet.
‘Anything on it?’
‘No, only his own prints and some that came off that kid who found him.’
Immediately curious about the possibility that there might be another witness, Brunetti asked, ‘Kid?’
‘The officer, the young one. I don’t know his name. They’re all kids to me.’
‘Franchi.’
‘If you say so,’ Bocchese said with little interest. ‘I’ve got his prints on file here, and they match the others on the wallet.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No. I didn’t look at the stuff inside, just lifted the prints.’
A young officer, one of the new ones Brunetti found it so difficult to call by name, appeared at his door. At Brunetti’s wave, he came in and placed the wallet, still wrapped in a plastic bag, on the desk.
Brunetti shifted the phone, clamping it under his chin, and picked up the envelope. Opening it, he asked Bocchese, ‘Any prints inside?’
‘I said those were the only prints,’ the technician said and hung up.
Brunetti put the phone down. A Carabiniere colonel had once remarked that Bocchese was so good that he could find fingerprints even on a substance as oily as a politician’s soul, and so he was given more latitude than most of the other people working in the Questura. Brunetti had long since become accustomed to the man’s constant irascibility; indeed, years of exposure had dulled him to it. His surliness was compensated for by the flawless efficiency of his work, which had more than once held up to the fierce scepticism of defence attorneys.
Brunetti zipped open the envelope and tilted the wallet on to the desk. It was curved, having taken on the shape of Rossi’s hip, against which it must have been kept for years. The brown leather was creased down the middle and a small strip of the binding had been rubbed away, exposing a thin grey cord. He opened the wallet and pressed it flat on his desk. A series of slots on the left side held four plastic cards: Visa, Standa, his identification card from the Ufficio Catasto, and his Carta Venezia that would qualify Rossi to pay the lower fare imposed on residents by the transport system. He pulled them out and studied the photo that appeared on the last two. It had been impressed into the cards by some sort of holographic process and so lapsed into invisibility when the light struck it from certain angles, but it was definitely Rossi.
On the right side of the wallet was a small change purse, its flap held closed by a brass snap. Brunetti opened it and poured the change out on to his desk. There were some of the new thousand-lire pieces, a few five-hundred-lire coins, and one of each of the three different sized one-hundred-lire coins currently in circulation. Did other people find it as strange as he did that there should be three different sizes? What could explain such madness?
Brunetti pulled apart the back section of the wallet and lifted out the banknotes. They were arranged in strict order, with the largest bills toward the back of the wallet, descending to the thousand-lire bills at the front. He counted the notes: one hundred and eighty-seven thousand lire.
He pulled the back section apart to see if he had overlooked anything, but there was nothing else. He slipped his fingers into the slot on the left side and pulled out some unused vaporetto tickets, a receipt from a bar for three thousand, three hundred lire, and some eight-hundred-lire stamps. On the other side he found another receipt from a bar, on the back of which was written a phone number. As it did not begin with 52, 27, or 72, he assumed it was not a Venice number, though no city code was given. And that was all. No names, no note from the deceased man, leaving a message to be read in the event that something happened to him, none of those things that never really are found in the wallets of people who may have died by wilful violence.
Brunetti put the money back into the wallet, the wallet back into the plastic bag. He pulled the telephone across the desk and dialled Rizzardi’s number. The autopsy should have been done by now, and he was curious to know more about that strange indentation on Rossi’s forehead.
The doctor answered the phone on the second ring, and they exchanged polite greetings. Rizzardi then said, ‘You calling about Rossi?’ When Brunetti said he was, Rizzardi said, ‘Good. If you hadn’t called me, I would have called you.’
‘Why?’
‘The wound. Well, the two wounds. On his head.’
‘What about them?’
‘One’s flat, and cement’s ground into it. That happened when he hit the pavement. But to the left of it there’s another one, tubular. That is, it was made by something cylindrical, like the pipes used to build the impalcatura they put up around the building, though the circumference seems smaller than the pipes I remember seeing on those things.’
‘And?’
‘And there’s no rust at all in the wound. Those pipes are usually filthy with all sorts of dirt and rust and paint, but the wound had no sign of any of those things.’
‘They could have washed it at the hospital.’
‘They did, but traces of metal in the smaller wound were ground into the bones of his skull. Only metal. No dirt, no rust, and no paint.’
‘What kind of metal?’ Brunetti asked, suspecting that there would have to be more than the absence of something to have inspired Rizzardi’s call.
‘Copper.’ When Brunetti made no comment, Rizzardi ventured, ‘It’s not my business to tell you how to run yours, but it might be a good idea to get a crime scene team over there today or as soon as you can.’
‘Yes, I will,’ Brunetti said, glad that he was in charge of the Questura that day. ‘What else did you find?’
‘Both arms were broken, but I suspect you know that. There were bruises on his hands, but that could have resulted from the fall.’
‘Do you have any idea how far he fell?’
‘I’m not really an expert on that sort of thing: it happens so infrequently. But I had a look at a couple of books, and I’d guess it was about ten metres.’
‘Third floor?’
‘Possibly. At least the second.’
‘Can you tell anything from the way he landed?’
‘No. But it looks like he tried to push himself forward for a while after he did. The knees of his pants are scraped raw, his knees too; there’s also some scraping on the inside of one ankle that I’d say came from dragging it on the pavement.’
Brunetti interrupted the doctor here. ‘Is there any way to tell which wound killed him?’
‘No.’ Rizzardi’s answer was so immediate that Brunetti realized he must have been waiting for the question. He waited for Brunetti to go on. But Brunetti could think of nothing better to ask than a vague, ‘Anything else?’
‘No. He was healthy and would have lived a long time.’
‘Poor devil.’
‘The man in the mo
Brunetti didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes, he was.’
12
BRUNETTI CALLED THE office of Telecom and identified himself as a police officer. He explained that he was trying to trace a phone number but lacked the city code, as he had only the last seven digits, and asked if Telecom could give him the names of the cities where this number existed. Without thinking of verifying the authenticity of his call, without so much as the suggestion that she call him back at the Questura, the woman asked him to hang on a moment while she consulted her computer, and put him on hold. At least there was no music. She was quickly back and told him that the possibilities were Piacenza, Ferrara, Aquilea, and Messina.
Brunetti then asked to be given the names of the people for whom those four numbers were listed, at which point the woman retreated behind Telecom rules, the law of privacy, and ‘approved policy’. She explained that she needed a phone call from the police or from some other organ of the state. Patiently, keeping his voice calm, Brunetti explained again that he was a commissario of police: she could call him at the Questura of Venice. When she asked for the number, Brunetti resisted the temptation to ask if she might not be better advised to check the number in the phone book to be sure she was in fact calling the Questura. Instead, he gave her the number, repeated his name, and hung up. The phone rang almost immediately, and the woman read out four names and addresses.
The names told him nothing. The Piacenza number was a car rental agency, that of Ferrara was for joint names that could be a business office or even a shop. The other two were, presumably, private residences. He dialled the Piacenza number, waited, and when the phone was answered by a man, said he was calling from the Venice police and would like them to check their records and see if they had rented a car to or were familiar with a man called Franco Rossi from Venice. The man asked Brunetti to hold on, covered the phone, and spoke to someone else. A woman then asked him to repeat his request. After he had, he was again told to wait a moment. The moment stretched into a few minutes, but eventually the woman came back and said she was sorry to report they had no record of a client by that name.
On the Ferrara number there was only a message announcing that he had reached the office of Gavini and Cappelli and asking him to leave his name, number, and the reason for his call. He hung up.
In Aquilea he reached what sounded like an old woman who said she had never heard of Franco Rossi. The Messina number was no longer in service.
He had found no driver’s licence in Rossi’s wallet. Even though many Venetians didn’t drive, he might still have had one: the absence of roads was hardly enough to prevent an Italian from exercising his lust for speed. He called down to the drivers’ licence office and was told that licences had been given to nine Franco Rossis. Brunetti checked Rossi’s identification card from the Ufficio Catasto and gave Rossi’s date of birth: no licence had been issued to him.
He tried the number in Ferrara again, but there was still no answer. His phone rang.
‘Commissario?’ It was Vianello.
‘Yes.’
‘We’ve just had a call from the station over in Cannaregio.’
‘The one by Tre Archi?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What is it?’
‘They responded to a call from a man who said there was a smell coming from the apartment above his, a bad smell.’
Brunetti waited; it took very little imagination to know what was coming: police commissari were not called about bad plumbing or abandoned garbage.
‘He was a student,’ Vianello said, cutting off further speculation.
‘What was it?’
‘It looks like an overdose. At least that’s what they said.’
‘How long ago did the call come in?’
‘About ten minutes.’
‘I’ll come along.’
When they left the Questura, Brunetti was surprised by the heat. Strangely enough, although he always knew the day and usually the date, he very often had to pause to recall whether it was spring or autumn. So when he felt the heat of the day, he had to shake himself free of this strange disorientation before he recalled that it was spring and that the growing heat was to be expected.
There was a different pilot that day, Pertile, a man Brunetti found antipatico. They climbed aboard, Brunetti and Vianello and the two men from the technical squad. One of them cast off and they headed out into the bacino and then quickly turned back into the Arsenale Canal. Pertile turned on the siren and sped through the dead calm waters of the Arsenale, cutting in front of a 52 vaporetto that was just pulling away from the Tana boat stop. ‘This isn’t a nuclear evacuation, Pertile,’ Brunetti said.
The pilot looked back at the men on deck, lowered one hand from the wheel, and the noise of the siren was cut off. It seemed to Brunetti that the pilot urged the boat to greater speed, but he stopped himself from saying anything. At the back of the Arsenale, Pertile swung sharply to the left and past the usual stops: the hospital, Fondamenta Nuove, La Madonna dell’Orto, San Alvise, and then turned into the beginning of the Cannaregio Canal. Just after the first boat stop, they saw a police officer standing on the riva and waving to them as they approached.
Vianello tossed him the rope, and he bent to fix it to an iron ring. When he saw Brunetti, the officer on the riva saluted, then extended a hand to help him from the boat.
‘Where is he?’ Brunetti asked as soon as his feet were again on firm ground.
‘Down this calle, sir,’ he said, turning away from Brunetti and into a narrow street that ran back from the water toward the interior of Cannaregio.
The others filed off the boat, and Vianello turned to tell Pertile to wait for them. Brunetti walking next to the officer, the others in single file behind them, they started down the narrow calle.
They didn’t have far to go, and they didn’t have any trouble in finding the right house: about twenty metres along, a small crowd of people stood clustered in front of a doorway, in which a uniformed officer stood, arms folded.
As Brunetti approached, a man broke away from the crowd but made no attempt to walk toward the policemen. He simply moved away from the others and stood still, hands on his hips, watching the police draw near. He was tall, almost cadaverous, and had the worst drinker’s nose Brunetti had ever seen: inflamed, enlarged, pitted, and virtually blue at the end. It made Brunetti think of faces he’d once seen in a painting by some Dutch Master – was it of Christ carrying His cross? – horrible, distorted faces boding nothing but pain and evil for all who came within their malignant compass.
In a low voice, Brunetti asked, ‘That the man who found him?’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered the policeman who had met the boat. ‘He lives on the first floor.’
They approached the man, who stuffed his hands into his pockets and started to rock back and forth on his heels, as if he had important work to get on with and resented the police for keeping him from it.
Brunetti stopped in front of him. ‘Good morning, sir. Is it you who called us?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I did. I’m surprised you took the trouble to get here so fast,’ he said, his voice as filled with rancour and hostility as his breath was with alcohol and coffee.
‘You live below him?’ Brunetti asked neutrally.
‘Yeah, I’ve been there for seven years, and if that shit, my landlord, thinks he can get me out by giving me an eviction notice, I’ll tell him where he can shove it.’ He spoke with the accent of Giudecca and, like many of the natives of that island, seemed to think that scurrility was as essential to speech as air to breathing.
‘How long has he lived here?’
‘Doesn’t live here any more, does he?’ the man asked and bent over to engage in a prolonged laugh that ended in a bout of coughing.
‘How long had he lived here?’ Brunetti asked when the man stopped coughing.
The man stood upright and took a closer look at Brunetti. In his turn, Brunetti
‘A couple of months. You’ll have to ask the landlord. I just saw him on the stairs.’
‘Did anyone come to visit him?’
‘I don’t know,’ the man said with sudden truculence. ‘I keep my business to myself. Besides, he was a student. I don’t have anything to say to people like that. Little shits, think they know everything.’
‘Did he behave like that?’ Brunetti asked.
The man considered this for a moment, surprised at having to examine a specific case to see if it conformed to his general prejudice. After a long time, he said, ‘No, but like I told you, I just saw him a few times.’
‘Give your name to the sergeant, please,’ Brunetti said and turned away, indicating the young man who had greeted the boat. He walked up the two steps that led to the front door, where he was saluted by the officer standing there. From behind him he heard the man he’d questioned call out, ‘His name was Marco.’
When Vianello approached, Brunetti asked him to see what he could learn from the people in the neighbourhood. The sergeant turned away and the officer stepped forward. ‘Second floor, sir,’ he said.
Brunetti looked up the narrow staircase. Behind him, the policeman snapped on the light, but the low-wattage bulb made little difference, as if reluctant to illuminate the general squalor. Paint and cement had flaked off the walls and been kicked into small dunes on either side by the people who used the stairs. Here and there, cigarette butts and bits of paper lay on top of or stuck out from the dunes.
Brunetti climbed the steps. The smell met him on the first landing. Close, dense, penetrating, it spoke of rot and vileness and something inhumanly unclean. As he drew closer to the second floor, the smell grew stronger, and Brunetti had a terrible moment in which he visualized the avalanche of molecules, falling over him, clinging to his clothing, cascading into his nose and throat, always carrying with it the horrible reminder of mortality.