Falling in Love (25 page)

‘He called me after he put them on the train. He said he’s heard rumours from people who work at the theatre – he didn’t say what they were, but I think we know – and he wants to keep her out of the city until this is settled.’

Brunetti was relieved that the girl was, if not safe, at least far from Venice. ‘Then Alvise can be the one to check the tapes from the parking garage.’

Signorina Elettra went silent, and he waited while she assessed the level of difficulty that task would pose for Alvise. After a moment, she said, ‘All right. He should be able to do that.’

‘Will they come to your computer or will someone bring them?’ he asked.

Did he hear her sigh? ‘They’ll send them by computer, Commissario.’

‘Can you find him a place where he can watch them?’

‘Bocchese’s assistant is on vacation: Bocchese would probably let Alvise use his desk and computer. He likes him.’

‘Bocchese likes Alvise, or his assistant does?’ Brunetti asked automatically, always interested in any alliances in the Questura.

‘Bocchese does.’

‘Good. Why don’t you ask Bocchese first, so he can start as soon as the tapes arrive?’

‘Yes, Dottore. I’ll call him now,’ she said and broke the connection.

Brunetti remembered a time, at the beginning of his career, when, in order to find someone who was staying in the city, they had only to contact the hotels and
pensioni
with a description of the person and, if known, the nationality. There couldn’t have been more than a hundred places to call. Now it was impossible to trace anyone through the warren of hotels, rental apartments, cruise ships,
pensioni
, bed and breakfasts, both legal and illegal. No one knew how many there were or where they were, who ran them, or how many guests they had. She could be anywhere, Brunetti reflected.

He lapsed into a long reverie, stretched back in his chair, hands behind his head, as he thought about desire and violence. Flavia had tried to explain the strange desires of fans, but they had sounded entirely passive to him: they wanted to be well thought of by the people they admired. And who did not? Perhaps life had been too generous to him, for the only woman he had ever desired to the point of pain at the thought of not having was Paola, the woman he had married and who was now part of himself. For her, and for his children with her, he willed the good: he couldn’t remember which philosopher had defined love this way, but he thought it was as perfect a definition as he had ever heard.

What happened to passion when it wasn’t returned or valued, or even acknowledged? What strange thing could it turn into? What happened when the desired object told you to get lost? What happened when all that ardour had no place to go?

A knock at his door pulled him free of these thoughts and caused the front feet of his chair to crash to the floor. ‘
Avanti,’
he called out. He looked up and saw Signorina Elettra, again dressed in her businesswoman costume of shirt and waistcoat, though today’s shirt was black, while the waistcoat was golden silk brocade covered with what looked like hand-embroidered bees. Words made superfluous by the beauty of the brocade, Brunetti could do nothing more than nod approvingly.

He noticed that she carried papers in one hand.

She held them up. ‘These just came.’

‘And they are?’ he asked.

‘Information about the necklace.’

It took Brunetti a moment to recall the necklace left on Flavia’s dressing table. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘I sent photos around.’

‘And?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I had an answer from a jeweller in Paris within a few hours, saying he made the necklace thirty-eight years ago for a certain Doctor Lemieux.’ Before Brunetti could comment on the feat of memory, she added, ‘He still remembers the stones.’

‘What else did he tell you?’

‘The doctor had it made as a gift. The jeweller thinks it was for his wife, although after all this time he’s not sure. He did remember that the doctor told him he’d brought the stones back from Colombia a long time ago. Not the highest quality, but very good. That’s what the jeweller said.’

‘Did he tell you how much the doctor paid for it?’

‘He said it took his best workman a month to make it. The gold and work would cost about twenty thousand euros today.’

‘What?’

‘Twenty thousand euros.’

‘And the stones?’

She came across the room and set a photo on the desk in front of him. Green stones lay strewn about on a smooth beige background. The quality of the colour reproduction was such that they could have been dark green sweeties, for all he knew. Some were square, some rectangular, some larger, some smaller, but all had the bevelled edges of the stones in Bocchese’s photo.

She tapped at it with her forefinger and said, ‘The jeweller took a photo of the stones he was given.’

‘Where’s the necklace?’

‘It’s still in Bocchese’s safe.’ Before he could ask, she said, ‘I called him and asked him to tell me their shapes and sizes.’

‘They’re the same stones?’

Brunetti had known her long enough to sense she was keeping something back, probably the best part. He thought about the satisfaction she was sure to take and so asked, ‘And their value?’

‘The jeweller said that, in today’s market, they’d be worth about forty thousand euros.’ She paused, smiled, and added, ‘Each.’

24

‘That makes it worth a half a million euros,’ said the astonished Brunetti, thinking of how he had carried the necklace through the city in a shopping bag and left it on the kitchen table overnight. Half a million euros.

More practical of mind, Signorina Elettra asked, ‘What now?’

Summoned from his reflections, he said, ‘We should find who Doctor Lemieux had the necklace made for,’ using the plural with her, as he always did, as if promising to float in the ether above her shoulder as she searched her computer for what he asked her to discover. ‘And then we need to know who owns it now.’ She glanced at him, saying nothing, and he asked, ‘Where does he live?’

‘Paris. At least he did when he had the necklace made.’

Accustomed as he was to playing fast and loose in his own country, Brunetti was punctilious when dealing with the police in others. ‘Then we have no choice but to contact the police there and tell them . . .’ he began, then stopped speaking as he thought what this would entail. ‘We can tell them that a piece of jewellery found in the course of another investigation has been traced to him, and that we’d like . . .’ Again, he failed to finish, stopped, and said, ‘They won’t give us this information, will they?’

She shrugged and asked, ‘Would we give it to them?’

‘Perhaps, but not for weeks,’ Brunetti answered, then added, ‘If then.’ He stared at the wall of his office and saw only a wall.

After a long time, Signorina Elettra said, ‘Someone there owes me a favour.’ Perhaps to prevent the embarrassment of having to answer any detailed question he might ask, she added, ‘I gave him some information a few years ago.’ Brunetti prayed she would tell him no more.

Silence settled around them, protective and calm.

Confining himself to the necessary, Brunetti said, ‘We’d need to know who owns it now and, if possible, where that person is.’ He considered the blandness of what he had just said and added, ‘No need to mention what we’re working on: routine matter.’ Few people were as good at making things sound routine as was she. ‘You might try to find out if the necklace has ever been reported stolen.’ In response to her sudden glance, he said only, ‘You never know.’

Signorina Elettra returned to taking notes on the back of the photo of the stones. That finished, she looked at him and asked, making a vague gesture towards some other part of the building, ‘What do we do with it now – leave it in Bocchese’s safe?’

Now certain of its value, Brunetti was uneasy about leaving the necklace with Bocchese. In the past, seized drugs and weapons had gone missing from Bocchese’s office, but the safe had – so far as Brunetti knew – never been robbed. But half a million euros?

Brunetti could think of no secure place where he could put it. They had no safe in their house: ordinary people didn’t have safes because they didn’t have things to put in safes.

His father-in-law had one, he knew, where he kept family papers and his wife’s jewellery. ‘Leave it there,’ he said.

When Signorina Elettra left his office, Brunetti found himself at a loss for what to do until she called in her favour and got the information. To pass the time, he decided to find Vianello and explain
Tosca
to him. It seemed less arduous than the attempt to understand the workings of the mind that made their presence at tonight’s performance necessary.

He explained the plot of the opera to Vianello at the bar at the bridge, standing at the counter with a glass of wine while he spoke. Bambola, the Senegalese barman, listened along with Vianello as Brunetti recounted the story: sexual blackmail, torture, murder, deceit, betrayal, all leading to and topped off by suicide. Vianello listened attentively to the end, then asked, ‘How is it that the police have the power to execute a prisoner?’

Bambola took a long swipe at the counter, rinsed the cloth, and raised a hand to capture Vianello’s attention. ‘It’s like that in my country, too, Ispettore. If you do something they don’t like, they take you away and that’s the end of it.’ Then, perhaps disapprovingly, ‘But nothing so public as the way you police do it here.’

Vianello and Brunetti exchanged a glance but said nothing. They went back to the Questura, but Brunetti, glancing at his watch, decided to go home for lunch and give Alvise enough time to watch the videos from the parking garage.

‘But you’ve already seen it,
Papà
,’ Chiara insisted, setting her fork down and taking her attention away from her gnocchi with
ragù
. ‘Why do you want to see it again?’

‘Because it’ll probably be different,’ Raffi interrupted and said, to the general surprise of everyone else at the table.

‘Since when are you an expert?’ Chiara asked. Brunetti, struck by the words, backed up to relisten to the tone and found it more weighted with curiosity than sarcasm.

Raffi set down his own fork and took a sip of water. ‘It’s common sense, isn’t it? If I hear a band give two concerts, they’re not going to be the same, are they? Even if they play the same songs. So why not opera?’

‘But the story’s always the same,’ Chiara said. ‘The same things always have to happen.’

Raffi shrugged. ‘They’re not machines, are they? They have good days; they have bad days. Just like other singers.’

Well, Brunetti thought, at least Raffi hadn’t said ‘real’ singers. Perhaps there was hope.

Apparently satisfied with that explanation, Chiara turned to her mother and asked, ‘Why aren’t you going?’

Paola’s smile was her most bland, which was often her most dangerous. ‘You’re going to Lucia’s to study, and Raffi’s helping Franco get his boat back into the water this afternoon and staying for dinner.’ She got to her feet and took their plates as they handed them to her, put them in the sink and returned with an enormous platter of grilled vegetables.

‘I’m not sure that’s an answer,
Mamma
,’ Chiara said.

‘You’ll understand some day when you’re married and have kids,
stella
,’ Brunetti told her.

Her attention swivelled to him.

‘You get to be home alone, Chiara,’ Brunetti said.

‘What’s so great about that?’ Chiara asked.

Paola, who was facing her at the table, gave her a level, adult look. She tasted a thin wheel of zucchini, approved her own cooking, and took another bite. She set her elbow on the table and cupped her chin in her palm. ‘It means I do not have to prepare dinner, or serve it, or wash the dishes after it, Chiara. It means I can have bread and cheese and a salad, or no salad, or no bread and cheese, and make myself whatever I want to eat. But more importantly, it means I can eat when I want to, and I can read while I’m eating, and then I can go back to my study and lie on the sofa and read all evening.’ When she saw Chiara get ready to speak, Paola held up her hand and continued. ‘And it means I can come in here and get myself a glass of wine or a glass of grappa or make myself a coffee or a cup of tea or just have a glass of water, and I don’t have to talk to anyone or do anything for anyone. And then I can go back to my book, and when I’m tired, I’ll go to bed and read there.’

‘And that’s what you want to do?’ Chiara asked in a voice so small she could have been an ant standing under a leaf.

In a much warmer voice, Paola said, ‘Yes, Chiara. Once in a while, that’s what I want to do.’

With the back of her fork, Chiara mashed at a piece of carrot until it was an indistinguishable blob on her plate. Finally, in a voice that had grown a bit stronger, she asked, ‘But not always?’

‘No, not always.’

On the way back, Brunetti marvelled at the way Paola managed so successfully to teach her children the ways of the world with a grace and charity that often left him at a loss for words. As a child, it would never have occurred to him that his mother had a real life of her own. By definition, she was his mother. After all: that was her position and job in the cosmos, a planet circling the gravitational centre of her sons.