Through a Glass Darkly (26 page)

‘Why did you try six times?'

‘What other choice is there? Even if I want to tell them to cancel the service, I still have to speak to them and tell them to do so and send the final bill to the bank.'

‘And when is it that you are going to explain the connection with Marghera?' he asked, aware suddenly of how tired he was and how much he longed not to be involved in this conversation.

She removed her glasses, the better to see him or the better to fix him with her basilisk eye. ‘Because the same people work in both places,
Guido. The same people set up the programs and work on the safety systems. At the end of all of this, I was told, by the human being I finally managed to talk to, that I had to send the expiry date of the card to a fax number because their system did not allow her to take the information over the phone.'

Brunetti rested his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. ‘I still don't get the connection,' he said.

‘Because the person who failed to put the fax number on the letter they sent me could just as easily be the man whose job it is to turn a handle or a knob at one of the factories in Marghera and who, instead of turning it like this,' she said and waited for him to open his eyes. When he did, he saw her grab a giant, invisible wheel and turn it to the right. ‘Turns it like this,' she continued, turning her hands to the left. ‘And there goes Marghera, and there goes Venice, and there go all of us.'

‘Oh come on,' he said, tired and irritated by her histrionics, ‘you're being a catastrophist.'

‘Just like Vianello?' she asked.

Brunetti no longer remembered how he had been dragged into this, but he no longer cared what he said. ‘In his wilder moments, yes. You do.'

A tense silence had replaced the eager humour of her first remarks. Brunetti leaned down and fished up that week's
Espresso
. He flipped it open and found himself looking at the movie reviews. Doggedly he concentrated on
reviews of films he would never, even in his wildest moments, think of seeing. Having finished reading these, he fanned through the pages and came to the lead story: the Marghera trial. He shut the magazine and let it drop to the floor.

‘All right,' he said. ‘All right.' He let some time pass and said, ‘I've had a long day, Paola. And I don't want to spend what little is left of it arguing with you.'

His eyes closed, he heard her rather than saw her come close, and then he felt her weight on the sofa beside him. ‘I'll go make dinner,' she said. Her weight shifted, and then he felt her lips on his forehead.

An hour later, as they sat down to dinner, Brunetti watched his children as the family ate and drank, and he listened to them complain about their teachers and the pressure of homework that seemed never to ease.

‘If you want to go to the university,' he said, ‘then homework's the price you have to pay.'

‘And if I don't go,' Chiara asked, ‘then what?' Brunetti failed to detect defiance in her words; he noticed that Paola had tuned into the question.

‘Then I suppose you try to find a job,' Brunetti answered in a voice he attempted to make sound factual rather than critical. The choice seemed obvious enough to him.

‘But everyone's always saying that there aren't any jobs,' Chiara complained.

‘And that's what's always in the papers,' Raffi added, his fork poised over his swordfish steak. ‘Look at Kati and Fulvio,' he said, naming the older brother and sister of his best friend. ‘Both of them are
dottori
, and neither one of them has a job.'

‘That's not true,' Chiara said. ‘Kati's working in a museum.'

‘Kati is selling catalogues at the Correr, you mean,' Raffi said. ‘That's not a job, not after six years at the university. She'd make more money if she sold shoes at Prada.' Brunetti wondered if Raffi considered that a better job.

‘Prada's not the smartest place in the world to work if you want to get a job as an art historian,' Chiara said.

‘Neither is the bargain basement at the Correr Museum,' her brother shot back.

Brunetti, who had seen the last exhibition there and paid more than forty Euros for the catalogue, hardly saw the museum shop as a bargain basement, but he kept this thought to himself and, instead, asked, ‘What about Fulvio?'

Raffi looked down at his fish, and Chiara reached out to take some more spinach, though her knife and fork had been neatly lined up on her plate before. Neither answered, and the atmosphere filled with a palpable awkwardness. Brunetti pretended he had noticed nothing and said, ‘Well, he's sure to find something. He's a bright boy.' Then, to Paola, he said, ‘Would you pass me
the spinach? If Chiara decides to leave any, that is.'

As she passed the dish to him, Paola gave every indication she had registered the response to Fulvio's name by ignoring it and saying, ‘It's the same with my students. They write their theses, get their degrees, begin to call themselves
dottore
, and then think they're lucky if they can find a job as a substitute teacher in some place like Burano or Dolo.'

‘Plumbing,' Brunetti interrupted, holding up a hand to gather their attention. ‘That's what I tell my children to study: plumbing. There's always work to be had. Lots of interesting company and plenty of work. Nothing good can come of reading all those books, sitting in libraries, talking about ideas: it's bad for the brain. No, give me a real man's job: fresh air, good pay, honest hard work.'

‘Oh,
Papà
,' Chiara said, as usual, the first to get it, ‘you are so silly sometimes.' Brunetti feigned not to understand her and tried to convince her that she should stop studying mathematics and learn to weld. Dessert interrupted his performance, and by then the ghost of whatever Fulvio was up to had been driven from the feast.

It was not until they were in bed, Brunetti exhausted by his day, that he asked, ‘What about Fulvio?'

The light was already out, so he felt rather than saw her shrug. ‘My guess is drugs,' Paola said.

‘Using them?'

‘Could be,' she answered, not at all persuaded.

‘Then selling them,' he said and turned on to his right side to face her dim outline.

‘More likely.'

‘Poor boy,' Brunetti said, adding, ‘poor everyone.' He shifted on to his back and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Do you have any idea if . . .' he began, wondering at the extent of the boy's sales and whether it was a matter he should interest himself in professionally. And who would Fulvio's customers be? The very question released the worm that was forever poised and ready to begin crawling towards every parent's heart.

‘If what you want to know is whether Raffi is interested, I think we can be fairly sure he isn't. He doesn't use drugs.'

The policeman in Brunetti wanted to know why Paola could say this: what was her source, and how reliable? Had she questioned Raffi himself, or had he volunteered the information, or was her witness some other person with knowledge of the case or the suspects? He stared at the ceiling, and as he watched, one of the lights shining in from the other side of the
calle
was extinguished, leaving him in comforting darkness. How foolish, how rash to believe a mother's word as to the innocence of her only son.

He stared at the ceiling, afraid to question her. The window was ajar, and through it came the bells of San Marco, telling them that it was
midnight, time to be asleep. Over it, he heard Paola say, ‘It's all right, Guido. Don't worry about Raffi.' He closed his eyes in momentary relief, and when he opened them again, it was morning.

ON HIS WAY
to the Questura the following morning, Brunetti began to consider how best to raise the subject of Fasano with Signorina Elettra. He did not understand the reason for her apparent regard for the man: she usually had enough sense to hold politicians in utter contempt, so why had she chosen to stand up in defence of this one? Given the peculiarities of Signorina Elettra's prejudices, it might be nothing more than the fact that Fasano had not yet made an official declaration of his desire to enter into politics, and until such time she might be willing to continue to treat him as human.

Brunetti had been seeing Fasano's photo and reading his name in the
Gazzettino
for years. He was tall, athletic, photogenic, was said to be a
good speaker and a well-regarded employer. Brunetti had met him and his wife at a dinner some years before and had a vague memory of him as being affable and of her as an attractive blonde, but he could summon up little more than that. He might have talked with her about a play they had both seen at the Goldoni, or perhaps it had been a film: he could not retrieve the memory.

He went into Ballarin and asked for a coffee and a brioche, still trying to recall anything else about the man that the waves of gossip had washed up into his memory over the years. Brunetti had the brioche halfway to his mouth when it occurred to him that the best way to gather information would be to go and talk to the man. He stood for a few seconds, brioche poised in the air, his head tilted to one side. A man eased by him to get to the bar and Brunetti caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Quickly he finished the brioche and the coffee, paid, and started back toward Fondamenta Nuove and the 42.

The route from the Sacca Serenella ACTV
embarcadero
was by now familiar to Brunetti. At the end of the cement walkway, instead of turning to the right and to De Cal's factory, he went to the left and approached the other building, which he had previously ignored. Built of brick, the factory had a high peaked roof with a double row of skylights. As with most of the
fornaci
, the entrance was through a set of sliding metal doors.

As he approached, he recognized Palazzi standing in front of the building, smoking. ‘Good morning,' Brunetti said to the workman and raised a hand in greeting. ‘Looks like it'll be a nice day.'

Palazzi returned an amiable enough smile, dropped his cigarette and stepped on it, grinding it into the earth with his toe. ‘Habit,' he said when he saw Brunetti watching this. ‘I used to work in a chemical plant, and we had to be careful with cigarettes.

‘I'm surprised they let you smoke there at all,' Brunetti said.

‘They didn't,' Palazzi said and smiled again. At the sign of Brunetti's answering grin, he asked, tilting his head backwards, towards the field that ran from the factories down to the water, ‘You find anything out there?'

‘No results yet,' Brunetti said.

‘You expecting to find anything?'

Brunetti shrugged. ‘The guy in the lab'll tell me.'

‘What're you looking for?'

‘No idea,' Brunetti admitted.

‘Just curious?' Palazzi asked, taking out his cigarettes. He shook some forward in the packet and held them out towards Brunetti, who shook his head.

When Brunetti said nothing, Palazzi repeated, ‘Just curious?'

‘Always curious.'

‘Because of Tassini?'

‘Partly, yes.'

‘What's the other part?'

‘Because people don't like it that I come out here.'

‘And ask questions?'

Brunetti nodded.

Palazzi lit his cigarette and pulled deeply on it, leaned his head back and let out a long series of perfect smoke rings that slowly expanded to the size of haloes before evaporating in the soft morning air. ‘Tassini asked a lot of questions, too,' Palazzi said.

‘About what?' The sun had grown warmer since Brunetti got off the boat. He unbuttoned his jacket.

‘About everything,' Palazzi said.

‘Such as?'

‘Such as who kept the records of what sort of chemicals came in and went out and whether any of us knew anyone in the other factories who had kids with . . . kids with problems.'

‘Like his daughter?' Brunetti asked.

‘I suppose so.'

‘And?'

Palazzi tossed his half-smoked cigarette beside the shreds of the other one and ground it out, too, then rubbed at the space with his toe until all sign of the cigarettes had been obliterated. ‘Tassini didn't work with us until a couple of months ago. He was over at De Cal's for years, so we all knew him. Then, when the night man here retired, well, I suppose the boss thought it made sense to get him to work here, too. Not all that much for
l'uomo di notte
to do,
after all.' Palazzi's voice softened. ‘We knew about his daughter by then. From the guys at De Cal's. But like I told you yesterday, no one much wanted to listen to him or talk to him or get involved in his ideas.' Brunetti nodded to make it clear that he understood their reluctance, hoping to make Palazzi feel less uncomfortable about speaking of Tassini like this so soon after his death.

After a reflective, or respectful, pause, Palazzi added, ‘And we all sort of felt sorry for him.' In response to Brunetti's inquisitive glance, he added, ‘Because he was so clumsy: he was pretty much useless around the
fornace
. But all
l'uomo di notte
has to do is toss things in and stir them around, then keep an eye on the
miscela
and stir it whenever it's necessary.'

‘Did he ask questions about anything else?' Brunetti asked.

Palazzi thought about this. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and studied the toes of his shoes. Finally he looked at Brunetti and said, ‘About a month ago, he asked me about the plumber.'

‘What about him?'

‘Who he was – the one for the factory – and when was the last time he did any work here.'

‘Did you know?' When Palazzi nodded, Brunetti asked, ‘What did you tell him?'

‘I told him I thought it was Adil-San – they're over by the Misericordia. It's their boat that comes out for pick-ups or when anything goes wrong: that's what I told him.'