A Venetian Reckoning (8 page)

Order was restored before lunch, but
only just. By tacit adult agreement, they asked Chiara no more questions about
Signora Trevisan and her daughter. Throughout the meal, much to Paola's
disapproval, Brunetti continued to reach an occasional, sudden hand out to
Chiara, in her usual place beside him. Each motion brought on new peals of
gleeful fear and left Paola wishing she had sufficient authority to send a commissario
of police to his room without lunch.

9

A well-fed Brunetti left the house
directly after lunch and walked back to the Questura, stopping along the way
for a coffee in the hopes that it would pull him out of the sleepiness induced
by good food and the continuing warmth of the day. Back in his office, he
pulled off his coat and hung it up, then went over to his desk to see what had
arrived during his absence. As he hoped, the autopsy report was there, not the
official one but one that must have been typed by Signorina Elettra from notes
dictated over the phone.

The pistol that killed Trevisan was
of small calibre, a .22 target pistol, not a heavy weapon. As had been surmised
before, one of the bullets had severed the artery leading from Trevisan's
heart, so death had been virtually instantaneous. The other had lodged in his
stomach. It would appear, from the entrance wounds, that whoever shot him had
been standing no more than a metre from him and, from the angle, it would seem
that Trevisan had been sitting when he was shot, his killer standing above him
and to his right.

Trevisan had eaten a full meal
shortly before he was killed, had drunk a moderate amount of alcohol, certainly
not enough to fuddle his senses in any way.

A bit overweight, perhaps, Trevisan
appeared to have been in good health for a man of his age. There were no signs
of his ever having had a serious illness, though his appendix had been removed,
and he had had a vasectomy. The pathologist saw no reason why he would not have
lived, barring serious illness or accident, at least another twenty yean.

'Two decades stolen,' Brunetti said
under his breath when he read that and thought of the vast expanse of things a
man could do with twenty years of life: watch a child mature, even watch a
grandchild grow; achieve success in business; write a poem. And Trevisan would
now never have the chance to do any of these things, to do anything at all. One
of the most savage elements in murder, Brunetti had always believed, was the
way it mercilessly cut off possibility and stopped the victim from ever again
achieving anything. He had been raised a Catholic so he was also aware that, to
many people, the greatest horror lay in the fact that the victim was prevented
the chance to repent. He remembered the passage in the
Inferno
where
Dante speaks to Francesca da Rimini and hears her tell him how she was 'torn
unshriven to my doom'. Though he did not believe, he was not untouched by the
magic of belief, and so he realized what a fearful prospect this would be for
many men.

Sergeant Vianello knocked on the door
and came in, one of the Questura's plain blue folders in his right hand. 'This
man was dean,' he said without introduction and placed the folder on
Brunetti's desk. 'As far as we're concerned, he might as well never have
existed.

The only record any of us has for him
is his passport, which he renewed-' Vianello began and then opened the folder
to check the date. 'Four years ago. Aside from that, nothing.’

In itself, this was not surprising:
many people managed to go through their entire lives without ever coming to the
attention of the police until they became the occasional victims of random
violence: drunk drivers, robbery and assault, the panic of a burglar. Few of them,
however, were ever the victims of what appeared so strongly to be a
professional murder.

‘I have an appointment to speak to
his widow this afternoon,' Brunetti said. 'At four.'

Vianello nodded. There's nothing on
the immediate family, either.'

'Strange, wouldn't you say?'

Vianello considered this and
answered, 'It's normal enough that people, even a whole family, might never
come to our attention.'

Then why does it feel so strange?'
Brunetti asked.

'Because the pistol was a .22
calibre?' They both knew it was the gun used by many professional killers.

'Any chance of tracing it?’

'Beyond the type, not much,’ Vianello
said. 'I've sent a copy of the information on the bullets to Rome and Geneva.'
They both also knew how unlikely this was to produce any useful information.

'At the railway station?'

Vianello repeated what the officers
had learned the night before. 'Doesn't help much, does it, dottore?'

Brunetti shook his head, men asked,
'What about his office?'

'By the time I got there, most of
them had left for lunch. I spoke to one secretary, who was actually in tears,
and to the lawyer who seemed to have taken charge,' Vianello said, paused a
moment, and added, 'who was not'

‘In tears?' Brunetti asked, looking
up and looking interested.

'Yes. Not in tears. In fact, he
seemed relatively undisturbed by Trevisan's death.'

'What about the circumstances?'

"That it was murder?'

'Yes.'

'That seemed to unsettle him. I got
the impression that he didn't much care for Trevisan, but that the fact he was
murdered shocked him.'

'What did he say?'

'Nothing, really,' Vianello answered
and then explained, it was all in what he didn't say, all those things we say
when someone dies, even if we didn't like them: that it was a tremendous loss,
that he felt great sympathy for the family, that no one could replace him.' He
and Brunetti had heard these responses for years, so often that they were no
longer surprised when they realized that the speaker was lying. What remained
surprising, however, was for someone not to bother to say these things at all.

'Anything else?' Brunetti asked.

'No. The secretary said the entire
staff would be at work tomorrow - they'd been told they didn't have to go back
this afternoon, out of respect - so I’ll go back and talk to them men.’ Before
Brunetti could ask, Vianello said, 'I called Nadia and told her to ask around.
She didn't know him, but she thinks he might once have handled - this is at
least five years ago - the will of that man who had the shoe store on Via
Garibaldi. She's going to call the widow. And she said she'd ask in the
neighbourhood'

Brunetti nodded at this. Though
Vianello's wife was not on the payroll, she was often an excellent source of
the kind of information that was never entered in official files. ‘I’d like to
do
a
financial check on him,’ Brunetti said The usual
things: bank accounts, tax returns, property. And see if you can get an idea of
the law practice, how much it brings in a year.’ Though these were routine
questions, Vianello made note of them.

'Should I ask Elettra to see what she
can find?' Vianello asked

This question always conjured up in
Brunetti the image of Signorina Elettra, swathed in heavy robes and wearing
a
turban
- the turban was always brocade, with heavy encrustations of opulent stones
pinned to the front — peering into the screen of her computer, from which rose
a
thin
column of smoke. Brunetti had no idea how she did it, but she invariably
managed to ferret out financial, and often personal, information about victims
and suspects which surprised even their families and business associates.
Brunetti was of the opinion that no one could elude her and sometimes wondered
— or was it worried? - that she would use her not inconsiderable powers to have
a look into the private lives of the people with whom and for whom she worked.

'Yes, see what she can come up with.
I'd also like a list of his clients' 'All of them?' ‘Yes.'

Vianello nodded and made another
note, though he knew how difficult this would be: it was almost impossible to
get lawyers to name their clients. The only people who gave the police more
trouble on this front were whores.

'Anything else, sir?'

'No. I'll see the widow in,' he
began, looking at his watch, 'a half-hour. If she tells me anything that we can
use, I’ll come back here; otherwise, I'll see you tomorrow morning.'

Taking this as leave to go, Vianello
put his notebook back in his pocket, got to his feet, and went back down to the
second floor.

Brunetti left the Questura five
minutes later and started up towards Riva degli Schiavoni, where he got on to
the No. 1 vaporetto. He got off at Santa Maria del Giglio, made a left at the
Hotel Ala, crossed two bridges, cut to his left, down a small
calle
that led to the Grand Canal, and stopped at the
last door on the left. He rang the bell marked Trevisan', and when the door
clicked open, walked up to the third floor.

At the top of the stairs, a door
stood open, and in it stood a grey-haired man with a substantial stomach
expertly disguised by the expensive cut of his suit As Brunetti reached the top
of the stairs, the man asked, without extending his hand, 'Commissario
Brunetti?' ‘Yes. Signor Lotto?'

The man nodded but still did not
extend his hand. 'Come in, then. My sister is waiting for you.' Though Brunetti
was three minutes early, the man managed to make it sound like Brunetti had
kept the widow waiting.

The entrance hall was lined on both
sides with mirrors and gave the illusion that the small area was crowded with
many duplicates of Brunetti and Signora Trevisan's brother. The floor was
patterned with gleaming squares of alternating black and white marble,
inducing in Brunetti the feeling that he and his reflection were moving about
on a chess board and thus forcing him to view the other man as an opponent.

'I appreciate Signora Trevisan's
agreeing to see me,' Brunetti said.

'I told her not to,' her brother said
brusquely. 'She shouldn't see anyone. This is terrible.' The look he gave
Brunetti made him wonder if the man was referring to Trevisan's murder or
Brunetti's presence in the house of mourning.

Cutting in front of Brunetti, the
other man led him down another corridor and into a small room off to the left.
It was difficult to tell what purpose the room was meant to serve: there were
no books, no television, and the only chairs in the room were straight-backed
and stood in the four corners. Two windows on one wall were covered with dark
green drapes. In the centre stood a round table and on it a vase of dried
flowers. Nothing more and no clue as to purpose or function.

'You can wait here,' Lotto said and
left the room. Brunetti stood still for a moment, then walked over to one of
the windows and pulled back the drape. Beyond him lay the Grand Canal, sunlight
playing on its surface, and off to the left Palazzo Dario, the golden tiles of
the mosaic that covered its facade catching the light that shot up from the
water below, only to shatter it into fragments and sprinkle it back on the
waters of the canal. Boats floated by; minutes went with them.

He heard the door behind him open,
and he turned to greet the widow Trevisan. Instead, a young girl with dark hair
that fell to her shoulders came into the room, saw Brunetti standing by the
window, pulled back, and left as quickly as she had entered, pulling the door
closed behind her. A few minutes after this, the door was opened again, but
this time it was a woman in her early forties who came into the room. She wore
a simple black woollen dress and shoes with heels that raised her almost to
Brunetti's height. Her face was the same shape as the girl's, her hair also
shoulder length and the same dark brown, though the woman's colour showed signs
of assistance. Her eyes, wide-spaced like her brother's, were bright with
intelligence and what Brunetti thought was curiosity rather than unshed tears.

She came across the room to Brunetti
and extended her hand. 'Commissario Brunetti?'

'Yes, signora. I'm sorry we have to
meet in circumstances such as these. I'm very grateful you consented to speak
to me.'

‘I want to do anything that will help
you find Carlo's murderer.' Her voice was soft, the accent slightly brushed
with the swallowed aspirants of Florence.

She looked around her, as if noticing
the room for the first time. 'Why did Ubaldo put you in here?' she asked, then
added, turning towards the door, 'Come with me.'

Brunetti followed her out into the
corridor, where she turned right and opened another door. He followed her into
a much larger room, this one with three windows that looked back up towards
Campo San Maurizio and which appeared to be an office or a library. She led him
towards two deep armchairs and took her place in one, indicating the second
with her hand.

Brunetti sat, started to cross his
legs, but realized the chair was too low to make that comfortable. He propped
both elbows on the arms of the chair and joined his hands across his stomach.

'What is it you'd like me to tell
you, commissario?' Signora Trevisan asked.

'I'd like you to tell me if, during
the last few weeks, months perhaps, your husband seemed in any way uncomfortable
or nervous or if his behaviour had changed in any way that seemed peculiar to
you.'

She waited to see if there was
anything else to the question, and when there seemed not to be, she paused for
a moment, considering. Finally, she answered, 'No, I can't think of anything.
Carlo was always very much caught up in his work. What with the political
changes of the last few years, the opening up of new markets, he's been
especially busy. But, no, during the last few months he hasn't been nervous in
any special way, not more than his work would normally warrant'

'Did he ever speak to you about any
case he was working on, or perhaps a client, which gave him particular trouble
or caused him undue concern?'

'No, not really'

Brunetti waited.

'He had one new client,' she finally
said. 'A Dane who was trying to open an import business — cheese and butter, I
think - who found himself caught up in the new EC regulations. Carlo was trying
to find a way for him to transport his products through France, rather than
through Germany. Or perhaps it was the other way. He was very busy with this,
but I can't say that he was upset about it.'