A Venetian Reckoning (34 page)

'You know about them?' she asked, and
then, aware of how redundant the question was, asked, 'How did you find out?'

'My daughter saw one. Trevisan's
daughter gave it to her and said it might explain why someone would want to
have killed her father.'

'How old is your daughter?' she
asked.

'Fourteen.'

'I'm sorry,' Signora Ceroni said and
looked down at her hands. 'I'm really sorry.'

‘You know what's on the tapes?' he
asked. She nodded. 'Yes, I know.'

He made no attempt to keep his
disgust from his voice, 'And you helped Trevisan sell them?'

'Commissario,' she said, getting to
her feet, ‘I don't want to discuss this any further. If you have formal
questions to ask me, you can do it at the Questura, in the presence of my
lawyer.'

'You killed them, didn't you?' he
asked.before he thought about it

'I'm afraid I have no idea what
you're talking about’ she said. 'And now, if you have no further questions, I’ll
wish you good evening.’

'Was it you on the train, the woman
with the fur hat?'

She had started towards the door, but
when he asked her that, she faltered and came down heavily on her left foot.
She quickly regained her balance and her composure and continued towards the
door. She opened it and held it open for him.. 'Good evening, commissario.'

He paused in front of her at the
door, but her gaze was level and cool. He left without saying anything.

When he left the building, he walked
away from it without turning to look up towards what he thought must be her
windows. Instead, he crossed the bridge in front and turned right into the
first
calle.
There he stopped, wishing, not for the first
time, that he had a portable phone. He summoned up memory and waited until the
street map of the area that every Venetian carried around in his mind appeared
in his. As he thought about it, he realized that he would have to go down to
the second
calle
and then swing around to the left, to a narrow
calle
that
ran in at the back of her house if he was to get to where he wanted to be: at
the end of the
calle
on which she lived, provided with a clear view of
her front door.

When he got there, he stood, leaning
against a wall, tor more than two hours before she left the building. She
looked both ways when she stepped out, but Brunetti was hidden by the darkness
in which he stood. She turned right and he followed her, glad he was wearing
his brown shoes, the ones with the rubber heels and soles that muffled his
footsteps. Hers, striking out from the high heels of her shoes, left a trail as
easy to follow as if she were in constant sight.

Within minutes, he realized she was
moving in the direction of either the railway station or Piazzale Roma, keeping
to the back
calle
and
away from the vaporetd on the Grand Canal. In Campo Santa Margherita, she cut
off to the left, in the direction of Piazzale Roma and the buses that went
towards the mainland.

Brunetti stayed as far behind her as
he could without losing sound of her. It was after ten now, so there were few
people on the street and almost no sound to obscure the steady, determined
click of her heels.

When she came out into the Piazzale,
she surprised Brunetti by crossing it, walking away from all of the spaces
where the buses stopped. On the other side, she walked up the stairs and into
the municipal parking garage, disappearing through the large open doorway.
Brunetti hurried across the Piazzale but stopped outside the door, trying to
see into the dim interior.

A man sat inside the glass booth to
the right of the door. He looked up when Brunetti approached him. 'Did a woman
in a grey coat just come in here?'

'Who do you think you are, police?'
the man asked and glanced down at the magazine that lay open in front of him.

Wordlessly, Brunetti took his wallet
from his pocket and pulled out bis warrant card. He dropped it on the open
page. 'Did a woman in a grey coat come in here?'

'Signora Ceroni,' the man said,
looking up as he handed Brunetti's card back to him.

'Where's her car?'

'Fourth level. She'll be down in a
minute.'

Hie sound of a motor from the
circular ramp that led to the upper parking levels gave proof of this. Brunetti
turned away from the window and walked over to the doorway that led outside and
to the road to the mainland. He placed himself in the centre of the open door
and stood, hands at his side.

The car, a white Mercedes, came down
the ramp and turned towards,the door. The headlights caught Brunetti full in
the face, blinding him for a moment, forcing him to narrow his eyes to slits.

'Hey, what are you doing?
¹
the man called to Brunetti, climbing down from his chair and coming out of his
booth. He took a step towards Brunetti, but just then the car's horn shrieked
out, deafening in the enclosed space, and he jumped back, crashing against the
doorjamb. He watched the car cover the fifteen metres between itself and the
man in the doorway. He shouted again, but the man didn't move. He told himself
to run across and push the policeman out of the way, but he couldn't force
himself to move.

The horn sounded again, and the man
closed his eyes. The sharp squeal of the brakes forced him to open them, and as
he watched, the car swerved wildly on the oil-slick floor as it turned away
from the policeman, who still hadn't moved. The Mercedes sideswiped a Peugeot
Sedan parked in slot 17 and then swerved back towards the door, coming to a
stop less than a metre from the policeman. As the attendant watched, the
policeman walked up to the passenger door and opened it. He said something,
waited a moment, and climbed into the car. The car shot off and through the
door, turned left and towards the causeway, and the attendant, unable to think
of anything better to do, called the police.

27

As they started across the causeway;
towards the lights of Mestre and Marghera, Brunetti studied Signora Ceroni's
profile, but she ignored him and looked straight ahead, so he looked off to the
right, to the lighthouse of Murano and, even farther out, the lights of Burano.
'It's very clear tonight,' he said.
^‘
I think I can see Torcello out there.'

She sped up and was soon travelling
faster than any of the other cars on the causeway. 'If I turned the wheel to
the right’ we'd go over the edge and into the water,' she said.

‘I imagine you're right,’ Brunetti
answered.

She took her foot off the
accelerator, and they slowed down. A car swept past them on the left, 'When you
came to the agency,’ she said, 'I knew it was just a matter of waiting for you
to come back. I should have left then.'

'Where would you have gone?'

'Switzerland, and from there to
Brazil.'

'Because of business contacts in
Brazil?'

'I couldn't have used them, could I?'

Brunetti thought about this for a
moment before he answered, 'No, given the circumstances, I suppose you
couldn't. Then why Brazil?'

'I have money there.’

'And in Switzerland?’

'Of course. Everyone has money in
Switzerland,’ she snapped.

Brunetti, who didn't, knew what she
meant and so answered, 'Of course.' Then he asked, 'But you couldn't stay
there?'

'No. Brazil's better.’

'I suppose so. But now you can't go.’

She said nothing.

'Do you want to tell me about it?
We're not at the Questura, and you don't have your lawyer, I know, but I'd like
to know why’

'Is this police or just you?'

He sighed. 'I'm afraid there's no
difference, not any more.'

She looked at him men, not for the
words but for the sigh. 'What will happen?' she asked. 'To you?' 'Yes.'

'It depends on...' he began to say,
thinking that it would depend on what her reason had been. But men he remembered
that there were three of them, and so that wasn't true. Motive would matter
very little to the judges, not with three men dead, and all apparently in the
coldest of blood. ‘I don't know. It won't be good.'

'I don't think I care,' she said, and
he was surprised to hear the lightness with which she spoke.

'Why's that?'

'Because they deserved it, all of them.'

Brunetti was about to say that no one
deserved to the, but then he remembered the tape, and he said nothing.

"Tell me,' he said.

'You know I worked for them?'

'Yes.'

'No, not that I work for them now. I
mean for years, ever since I came to Italy.’

'For Trevisan and Favero?' he asked.

'No, not for them, but for men like them,
the ones who ran it before they sold it to Trevisan.'

'He bought it?' Brunetti asked,
surprised to hear her talk as though it were a store.

'Yes. I don't know how it happened.
But what I do know is that, one day, the men who were running the business were
gone, and Trevisan was the new boss.'

'And you were
...
?'

1 was what you would call
"middle management’’.’ She used the English term, voice heavy with irony.
'What does that mean?’

it means I was no longer peddling my
ass on the street' She glanced across at him then to see if she had shocked
him, but the look Brunetti gave her was as calm as his voice when he asked,
'How long did you do that?'

‘Work as a prostitute?' she asked.
'Yes.'

‘I came here as a prostitute,' she
said and then paused. 'No, that's not true. I came here as a young woman, in
love with my first lover, an Italian who promised to give me the world, if only
I'd leave my home and follow him here. I did, and he didn't

‘I told you I was from Mostar. That
means my family was Muslim. Not that anyone in my family ever saw the inside of
a mosque. Except for my uncle, but everyone thought he was crazy. I even went
to school with the sisters. My family said I'd get a better education, so I had
twelve years of Catholic schools.'

He noticed that they were driving
along the right side of the canal that flowed between Venice and Padua, the
road of the Palladian villas. Even as he recognized the road, one of the villas
appeared on the other side of the canal, its outline faintly visible in the
moonlight a single light burning in the window of an upper floor.

'The story is a cliche, so I won't
tell you about it I was in love, I came here, and within a month I was on the
streets, 'without a passport with no Italian, but I'd had six years of Latin
with the sisters, learning all the prayers, so k was easy for me to learn. It
was also easy to learn what I had to do to succeed. I've always been very
ambitious, and I saw no reason why I couldn't succeed at this.’

'And what did you do?’

'I was very good at my work. I kept
myself clean, and I became helpful to the man who controlled us.' 'Helpful in
what way?'

'I'd tell him about the other girls.
Twice, I told him about girls who were preparing to run away.' 'What happened
to them?'

They were beaten. I think he broke
some of the fingers of one of them. They seldom did us enough damage to make us
stop working. Bad business.'

'How else were you helpful?'

'I'd give them the names of clients,
and I think some of them were blackmailed. I was good at spotting the nervous
ones, and I'd ask them about themselves and, sooner or later, they all ended up
talking about their wives. If they looked like they'd be good targets, I'd
learn their names and then their addresses. It was very easy. Men are very
weak. I think it's vanity that does it'

After a few moments' silence,
Brunetti asked, 'And then what?'