Death in a Strange Country (23 page)

‘And what about the
American, sir?’

‘We’ll go through the
usual procedures. We’ll see if any of our bad boys talk about if or suddenly
seem to have more money than they should.’

‘And if they don’t?’

‘The Americans are
looking into it, as well,’ Patta said, as if that put an end to it.

‘I beg your pardon, sir.
How can the Americans look into something here in Venice?’

Patta narrowed his eyes. ‘They
have their ways, Brunetti. They have their ways.’

Brunetti was in no doubt
as to that, but he was in some doubt as to whether those ways would necessarily
be directed towards finding the murderer. ‘I’d prefer to continue with this,
sir. I don’t believe it was a mugging.’

‘I’ve decided it was, Commissario,
and that’s how we’re going to treat it.’

‘What does that mean,
sir?’

Patta tried astonishment.
‘It means, Commissario, and I want you to pay attention to this, it means
precisely what I said, that we are going to treat it as a murder that happened
during a robbery attempt.’

‘Officially?’

‘Officially,’ Patta
repeated, then added, with heavy emphasis, ‘and unofficially.’

There was no need for
Brunetti to ask what that meant

Gracious in his victory,
Patta said, ‘Of course, your interest and enthusiasm in this will be
appreciated by the Americans.’ Brunetti thought it would make more sense for
them to appreciate success, but this was not an opinion that could be offered
now when Patta was at his most quixotic and had to be handled with greatest
delicacy.

‘Well, I’m still not
convinced, sir,’ Brunetti began, letting doubt and resignation struggle in his
voice. ‘But I suppose it’s possible. I certainly found nothing about him that
would suggest anything else.’ That is, if he discounted the odd few hundred
million in cocaine.

‘I’m glad you see it that
way, Brunetti. I think it shows that you’re growing more realistic about police
work.’ Patta looked down at the papers on his desk. ‘They had a Guardi.’

Brunetti, left behind by
his superior’s chamois-like leap from one subject to another, could only ask, ‘A
what?’

‘A Guardi, Commissario.
Francesco Guardi. I would think you’d at least recognize the name: he’s one of
your most famous Venetian painters.’

‘Oh, sorry, sir. I
thought it was a kind of German television.’

Patta gave a firm and
disapproving ‘No,’ before he looked down at the papers on his desk. ‘All I have
is a list from Signor Viscardi. A Guardi, a Monet, and a Gauguin.’

‘Is he still in hospital,
this Signor Viscardi?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, I believe so. Why?’

‘He seems pretty certain
about which paintings they had, even if he didn’t see the men who took them.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I’m, not suggesting
anything, sir,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Maybe he had only three paintings.’ But if
all he had were three paintings, this case would not have moved so quickly to
the top of Patta’s list. ‘What does Signor Viscardi do in Milan, if I might
ask?’

‘He directs a number of
factories.’

‘Directs, or owns and
directs?’

Patta made no attempt to
disguise his irritation. ‘He’s an important citizen, and he has spent an
enormous amount of money on the restoration of that
palazzo.
He’s an
asset to the city, and I think we should see that, if nothing else, the man is
safe while he’s here.’

‘He and his possessions,’
Brunetti added.

‘Yes, and his
possessions.’ Patta repeated the word but not the dry tone. ‘I’d like you to
see to this investigation, Commissario, and I expect Signor Viscardi to be
treated with every respect.’

‘Certainly, sir.’
Brunetti got up to leave. ‘Do you know what sort of factories he directs, sir?’

‘I believe they
manufacture armaments.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And I don’t want you
bothering the Americans any more, Brunetti. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’ It certainly
was clear, but the reason was not.

‘Good, then get to it. I’d
like this sorted out as quickly as possible.’

Brunetti smiled and left
Patta’s office, wondering what strings had been pulled, and by whom. With
Viscardi, it was pretty easy to figure out: armaments, enough money to buy and
restore a
palazzo
on the Grand Canal - the mingled odours of money and
power had come wafting out of every phrase Patta spoke. With the American, the
scents were less easy to trace back to their source, but that difficulty made
them no less tangible than the others. But it was clear that the word had been
passed to Patta: the death of the American was to be treated as a robbery gone
wrong, nothing more. But from whom?

Instead of going up to
his office, he went back down the stairs and into the main office. Vianello had
returned from the hospital and was at his desk, leaning back in his chair,
telephone pressed to his ear. When he saw Brunetti come in, he cut the
conversation short and hung up.

‘Yes, sir?’ he said.

Brunetti leaned against
the side of Vianello’s desk. ‘This Viscardi, how did he seem when you spoke to
him?’

‘Upset He’d been in a
ward all night, had just managed to get himself put into a private room...’

Brunetti interrupted. ‘How’d
he manage that?’

Vianello shrugged. The
Casin
ò
was not the only public
institution in the city that carried a
‘Non Nobis’
sign in front of it.
The hospital’s, although visible only to the wealthy, was no less real. ‘I
suppose he knows someone there or knows someone to call. People like him always
do.’ From Vianello’s tone, it didn’t sound like Viscardi had made a hit

‘What’s he like?’ Brunetti
asked.

Vianello smiled, then
grimaced. ‘You know. Typical Milanese. Wouldn’t say ‘R’ if he had a mouthful of
them,’ he said, eliding all of the ‘R’s in the sentence, imitating perfectly
this Milanese affectation in speech, so popular among the most
arriviste
politicians
and the comedians who delighted in mocking them. ‘First thing he did was tell
me how important the paintings are, which, I suppose, means how important he
is. Then he complained about having to spend the night in a ward. I think that
meant he was afraid of picking up some low-class disease.’

‘Did he give you a
description of the men?’

‘He said that one of them
was very tall, taller than I am.’ Vianello was one of the tallest men on the
force. ‘And the other one had a beard.’

‘How many were there, two
or three?’

‘He wasn’t sure. They
grabbed him when he went in, and he was so surprised that he didn’t see, or he
doesn’t remember.’

‘How badly is he hurt?’

‘Not bad enough for a
private room,’ Vianello said, making no attempt to disguise his disapproval

‘Could you be a bit more
specific?’ Brunetti asked with a smile.

Vianello took no offence
and answered, ‘He’s got a black eye. That will get worse today. Someone really
gave him a good shot there. And he’s got a cut lip, some bruises on his arms.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I agree; hardly seems
like the sort of thing to require a private room. Or a hospital at all.’

Vianello responded
immediately to Brunetti’s tone. ‘Are you thinking what I think you are, sir?’

‘Vice-Questore Patta
knows what the three missing paintings are. What time did the call come in?’

‘Just a little past
midnight, sir.’

Brunetti looked at his
watch. ‘Twelve hours. The paintings are by Guardi, Monet, and Gauguin.’

‘Sorry, sir, I don’t know
about that sort of thing. But do the names mean money?’

Brunetti gave a very
affirmative nod. ‘Rossi told me that the place was insured. How’d he come to
know that?’

‘The agent called us at
about ten and asked if he could go and have a look at the
palazzo.’

Vianello took a pack of
cigarettes from his desk and lit one. ‘Rossi told me these Belgian kids think
Ruffolo was there.’ Brunetti nodded. ‘Ruffolo’s just a little runt of a guy,
isn’t he, sir? Not very tall at all.’ He blew out a thin stream of smoke, then
waved it away.

‘And he certainly didn’t
grow a beard while he was in prison,’ Brunetti observed.

‘So that means that
neither of the men Viscardi says he saw could have been Ruffolo, doesn’t it,
sir?’

‘That certainly would
seem to be the case,’ Brunetti said. ‘I asked Rossi to go over to the hospital
and ask Viscardi if he recognizes a picture of Ruffolo.’

‘Probably won’t,’
Vianello remarked laconically.

Brunetti pushed himself
away from the desk. ‘I think I’ll go and make a few phone calls. If you’ll
excuse me, officer.’
 
                     
 

‘Certainly, sir,’
Vianello said, then added, ‘Zero two,’ giving Brunetti the dialling prefix for
Milan.

* *
* *

14

In his office, Brunetti took a spiral-bound notebook
from his desk and began to leaf through it. For years he had been telling
himself, then promising himself, that he would take the names and numbers in
this book and arrange them in some sort of order. He renewed the vow each time,
such as now, he had to hunt through it for a number he had not called in months
or years. In a way, paging through it was like strolling through a museum in
which he saw many familiar paintings, allowing each to summon up the flash of
memory before he passed on in search of the one he had come to see. Finally he
found it, the home number of Riccardo Fosco, the Financial Editor of one of the
major weekly news magazines.

Until a few years ago,
Fosco had been the bright light of the news media, unearthing financial
scandals in the most unlikely places, had been one of the first to begin asking
questions about the Banco Ambrosiano. His office had become the centre of a web
of information about the real nature of business in Italy, his columns the
place to look for the first suggestions that something might not be right with
a company, a buy-out, or a takeover. Two years ago, as he emerged from that
same office at five in the afternoon, on his way to meet friends for a drink,
someone in a parked car opened up with a machine gun, aimed carefully at his
knees, shattering them both, and now Fosco’s home was his office, and walking
was something he did only with the help of two canes, one knee permanently
stiffened and the other with a range of motion of only thirty degrees. No
arrest had ever been made in the crime.

‘Fosco,’ he said,
answering as he always did.

‘Ciao,
Riccardo. It’s Guido
Brunetti.’

‘Ciao,
Guido. I haven’t heard
from you in a long time. Are you still trying to find out about the money that
was supposed to save Venice?’

It was a long-standing
joke between them, the ease with which the millions of dollars - no one ever
knew exactly how much - that had been raised by UNESCO to ‘save’ Venice had
disappeared in the offices and deep pockets of the ‘projectors’ who had rushed
forward with their plans and programmes after the devastating flood of 1966.
There was a foundation with a full working staff, an archive full of
blueprints, there were even fund-raising galas and balls, but there was no more
money, and the tides, unimpeded, continued to do whatever they chose with the
city. This story, with threads leading to the UN, to the Common Market, and to
various governments and financial institutions, had proven too complicated even
for Fosco, who had never written about it, fearing that his audience would
accuse him of having turned to fiction. Brunetti, for his part, had worked on
the assumption that, since most of the people who had been involved in the
projects were Venetian, the money had indeed gone to save the city, though
perhaps not in the manner originally intended.