Through a Glass Darkly (27 page)

‘And when were they last out here?' Brunetti asked, though he had no idea why he was pursuing this.

‘About two months ago, I think, around the time he started working here. The grinding shop was closed for a day while they worked on one of the sedimentation tanks.'

‘Did Tassini know about that?'

‘No: he was working nights, and they were finished and gone by the middle of the afternoon.'

‘I see,' Brunetti said, though he didn't.

Palazzi looked at his watch. Seeing him shift his weight prior to moving on, Brunetti asked, ‘Your boss around?'

‘I saw him come in a while ago. He's probably in his office. Would you like me to find out?'

‘No, thanks,' Brunetti said easily. ‘If you tell me where it is, I'll find him. It's nothing important, just some bureaucratic questions about Tassini and how long he worked here.'

Palazzi gave Brunetti a long look and said, ‘Odd that the police should send a commissario all the way out here to ask bureaucratic questions, isn't it?' He smiled and Brunetti wondered which of them had been conducting the interrogation.

He thanked Palazzi again, and the man turned and went back inside the factory. Brunetti followed him through the sliding doors and into the now-familiar gloom of the work space. The open rectangles of the furnaces glared at him from the far end of the room,
light-rimmed figures moving around in front of them. He stood and watched them for a few minutes, saw them bend carefully forward and slide the canes into the glaring light of the furnaces in the familiar rhythm. Something about the way they moved caught at his memory, but all he saw were men twirling the rods and inserting them into the fire, continuing to rotate them until they pulled them out, never pausing in the constant rotation: precisely what he had seen often over the last few days. He turned away.

Four doors stood along the right wall. Fasano's name was on the first. Just as he was about to knock, Brunetti realized what he had just seen in the glare of the furnaces. The
maestri
used their right hands to hold the end of the long rods, levering them from the position of greater strength. The glove and protective sleeves were worn on the left, the side closest to the fire. But Tassini had held his glass, and the phone, with his left hand, so he should have been wearing the sleeve and glove on the right.

Brunetti knocked, then entered at a shout. Fasano stood by the single window, bent close to something he held towards the light. He was in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, his attention devoted entirely to the object in his hands.

‘Signor Fasano?' Brunetti asked, though he recognized him from his photos and from their one meeting.

‘Yes,' Fasano answered, glancing across. ‘Ah,' he said when he saw Brunetti, ‘you're the
policeman who's been coming out here, aren't you?'

‘Yes. Guido Brunetti,' he said, choosing to make no reference to the long-ago dinner party.

‘I remember,' Fasano said. ‘At the Guzzinis', about five years ago.'

‘You have a good memory,' Brunetti said, which could mean either that he did or he did not recall the meeting.

Fasano smiled and walked over to his desk. He set the object on it – a tall filigree vase that tapered to a lily-like opening at the top – then came across and offered his hand to Brunetti.

‘How may I help you?' Fasano asked.

‘I'd like to ask you about Giorgio Tassini, if I might,' Brunetti said.

‘That poor devil who died over there,' he said, part question, part statement, pointing with his chin in the direction of De Cal's factory. ‘It's the first time anyone's been killed out here for as long as I can remember.'

‘“Out here,” meaning Murano, Signore?'

‘Yes. De Cal's never even had a serious accident before this,' Fasano said. Then he added, with something between relief and pride, ‘Nor have we.'

‘Tassini hadn't been working for you very long, had he?' Brunetti asked, ‘before this happened?'

Fasano gave him a nervous smile and then said, ‘I don't mean to be offensive, Commissario, but I'm not sure I understand why you're asking me these questions.' He paused, then
added, ‘Instead of De Cal, that is.'

‘I'm trying to get an idea of what Tassini did, Signore. Or, in fact, anything about him that might help me understand what might have happened. I've already spoken to Signor De Cal, and since Tassini also worked for you . . .' Brunetti let the sentence drift away.

Fasano looked away. Unconsciously mimicking Palazzi's uncertainty, he put his hands in his pockets and studied the floor for some time, then looked at Brunetti squarely and said, ‘He was working
in nero
, Commissario.' He took his hands out of his pockets and raised them in a consciously theatrical gesture. ‘You're going to find out sooner or later, so I might as well tell you.'

‘It's nothing that concerns me, Signor Fasano,' Brunetti said with easy grace. ‘I'm not interested in how he was paid, only in what may have caused his death; nothing else.'

Fasano studied Brunetti's face, obviously weighing how much he could trust this man. Finally he said, ‘My guess is that he was making glass.' When Brunetti did not respond, he clarified this by adding, ‘Objects, that is. Glasses, vases.'

‘Did he know how to?' Brunetti asked.

‘He'd been working next door for years, so I'm sure he'd have picked up the basic skills, yes.'

‘Did you ever see him working the glass? There or here?'

Fasano shook his head. ‘No, I saw almost
nothing of him here, after I hired him,' he said, sounding nervous when he used the word ‘hired'.

‘He worked nights,' Fasano went on quickly, ‘and I'm here only during the day. But it's what most of the men who work the night shift do. They make a piece or two during their shift, let it cool, then take it with them in the morning when they go home. It's pretty much accepted, at least here, by me.'

‘Why?'

Fasano smiled and said, ‘So long as they don't put the name of the
vetreria
on it or try to sell it as the work of one of the
maestri
, it's harmless enough. I suppose, over the years, we've all come to turn a blind eye to it, and it's now a sort of thirteenth pay packet for them, certainly for those working the way he was.' He thought about this for a while, then added, ‘And from what the men have told me, it sounded like Tassini had a hard time of it, what with his daughter and all, so why not let him do it?' When Brunetti did not comment, Fasano said, ‘Besides, without the help of a
servente
, there really wasn't much he could make except the most simple sort of plate or vase.'

‘Did the other workers know what he was doing?'

Fasano considered the question, then said, ‘My guess is that they would have known. The workers always know everything that's going on.'

‘You sound very untroubled by it.'

‘I told you,' Fasano said, ‘he deserved a bit of charity.'

‘I see,' Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Did he ever talk to you about his theory that his daughter's problems were the result of the working conditions here?'

‘I told you, Commissario: I spoke to him only when I hired him, and he was here just two months.'

With an easy smile, Brunetti said, ‘I'm sorry; I didn't express myself clearly. I know he was here only a short time. I suppose what I should have asked was whether you ever heard talk from anyone that he was saying such things?' When Fasano did not respond, Brunetti gave a complicit smile and said, ‘The workers always know what's going on.'

Fasano's hands went back into his pockets and he returned his attention to the tips of his shoes. His head still lowered, he finally said, ‘I don't like to say these things about him.'

‘There's nothing you can say that can do him any harm, Signore,' Brunetti said.

Fasano looked up at that. ‘Well, then, yes, I did hear talk. That he believed he had breathed in chemicals and minerals while he was working for De Cal and that that was the cause of his daughter's . . . of her problems.'

‘Do you think that's possible?'

‘You ask me a difficult question, Commissario,' Fasano said, trying to smile. ‘I've looked at the statistics for the workers out here, and I've never seen anything that would
suggest . . . well, that would suggest that what Tassini believed is possible.' He saw Brunetti's reaction and added, ‘I'm not a scientist and I'm not a doctor, I know, but this is something that concerns me.'

‘The health of the workers?' Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. Of course,' Fasano said with sudden heat, adding, ‘and mine.' He smiled to suggest he was joking. ‘But it's not working on Murano that puts them in danger, Commissario: it's working so near to Marghera. You read the papers; you know what's going on at the trial.' Then, with a rueful half-smile, he amended that to, ‘Or not going on.' He took a step to his left and raised a hand in the direction of what Brunetti thought was north-west. ‘The danger's over there,' he said; then, as if unwilling to leave Brunetti in any doubt, specified, ‘Marghera.'

He saw that he had Brunetti's attention and went on, ‘That's where the pollution comes from; that's what puts my workers at risk.' His voice had grown stronger. ‘Those are the people who dump and pour and pollute, toss anything they want into the
laguna
or ship it south to be spread on fields. Not here, believe me.'

Fasano stopped, as if he had realized how heated his voice had become. He tried to laugh off his enthusiasm but failed. ‘I'm sorry if I get excited about this,' he said. ‘But I've got kids. And to know what they're pumping into the atmosphere and the water, every day, well, it makes me . . . I suppose it makes me a little crazy.'

‘And there's nothing coming from here?' Brunetti asked.

Fasano answered with a shrug that dismissed the very possibility. ‘There was never much of a problem with pollution here. But now they've got us so closely watched and measured and weighed, well, there's no chance we could get away with polluting anything.' After a moment, he added, ‘For the sake of my children, I'd like to be able to say the same about Marghera, but I can't.'

Brunetti had built up, over the years, the habit of suspicion, especially when people spoke of their concern for the good of others, but he had to confess, if only to himself, that Fasano sounded very much like Vianello on the subject of pollution. And because of the trust Brunetti had come to invest in the Inspector, Fasano sounded sincere.

‘Could pollution from Marghera have been the cause of Tassini's daughter's problems?' Brunetti asked.

Fasano shrugged again, then said, almost reluctantly, ‘No, I don't think so. Much as I believe Marghera is slowly poisoning us all, I don't think it's responsible for what happened to the little girl.' Brunetti asked for no explanation, but Fasano went on to supply one. ‘I've heard about what happened when she was born.'

When it was obvious that Fasano would not elaborate, Brunetti asked, ‘Then why did he blame De Cal?'

Fasano started to answer, stopped himself and studied Brunetti's face for a moment, as if asking himself how far he could go with a person he did not know very well. Finally he asked, ‘He had to blame someone, didn't he?'

Fasano turned aside and walked back to his desk, where he bent over the vase he had placed there. It stood about fifty centimetres tall, its lines perfectly simple and clean. ‘It's beautiful,' Brunetti said spontaneously.

Fasano turned with a smile that softened his entire face. ‘Thank you, Commissario. Every once in a while, I like to see if I can still make something that isn't all squashed to one side or that has one handle that's bigger than the other.'

‘I didn't realize you actually worked the glass,' Brunetti said, making no attempt to disguise his admiration.

‘I spent my childhood here,' Fasano said, not without pride. ‘My father wanted me to go to university, the first person in our family, so I did, but I always spent my summers here, at the
fornace
.' He picked up the vase and turned it around twice, studying the surface. Brunetti noticed that it had the faintest cast of amethyst, so light as to be almost invisible in bright light.

Still turning the vase and keeping his eyes on it, Fasano said finally, as though he had been thinking about it since Brunetti had first posed the question, ‘He had to believe himself. Everyone here knows what happened when the little girl was born. I think that's why everyone was usually so patient with him. He had to
blame something, well, something other than himself, so he ended up blaming De Cal.' He set the vase down on his desk again. ‘But he never did anyone any harm.'

Brunetti stopped himself from suggesting that Tassini had done his daughter more than enough harm and said only, ‘Did Signor De Cal ever have any trouble with him?'

He watched Fasano consider how to answer this. Finally the man said, ‘I've never heard that he did.'

‘Do you know Signor De Cal?'

Fasano smiled and said, ‘Our families have had factories side by side for more than a hundred years, Commissario.'

‘Yes, of course,' answered a chastened Brunetti. ‘Did he ever say anything about Tassini or about having trouble with him?'

‘You've met Signor De Cal?' Fasano asked.

‘Yes.'

‘Then can you imagine the workman who would give him any real trouble?'

‘No.'

‘De Cal would probably have eaten him alive if Tassini had so much as suggested he was responsible for the little girl.' Fasano leaned back against his desk, bracing his hands on either side of him. ‘That's another reason why Tassini had to keep telling other people, I think. He couldn't say anything to De Cal. He must have been afraid to.'