He went back to his office, marvelling at the skill with which Santomauro had suggested Mascari’s guilt. It all rested on such fragile premises: that the papers in the bank now looked like Mascari had been in charge of them; that people at the bank would not know or could be induced not to remember if anyone else had ever handled the accounts of the Lega; that nothing would be discovered about the murders of Mascari or Crespo.
At the Questura, he discovered that the papers of both the Banca di Verona and the Lega had been given to the police who went to collect them, and a trio of men from the Guardia di Finanza were even then going over them in search of any indication of who had overseen the accounts into which rents were paid and out of which cheques were written for the Lega’s charity works.
Brunetti knew that nothing was to be gained by going down and standing over them while they worked, but he couldn’t stop himself from wanting at least to walk past the room in which they had been placed. To prevent this, he went out for lunch, deliberately choosing a restaurant in the Ghetto, even though this meant a long walk there and back in the worst heat of the day. When he got back, after three, his jacket was soaked through, and his shoes felt as though they had melted to his feet.
Vianello came into his office only minutes after he got back. Without preamble, he said, ‘I’ve been checking the list of the people who receive cheques from the Lega.’
Brunetti recognized his mood. ‘And what have you found?’
‘That Malfatti’s mother has remarried and taken the name of her new husband.’
‘And?’
‘And she’s receiving cheques under that name and under her former name. What’s more, her new husband also receives a cheque, as do two of his cousins, but it looks like each of them is getting them under two separate names.’
‘What does that make the total for the Malfatti family?’
‘The cheques are all about five hundred thousand a month, so it makes it close to three million a month.’ Involuntarily, the question sprang from Vianello’s mouth, ‘Didn’t they ever think they’d be caught?’
Brunetti thought that too obvious to answer and so, instead, he asked, ‘What about the shoes?’
‘No luck here. You talk to Gallo?’
‘He’s still in Milano, but I’m sure Scarpa would have called me if they found anything. What are those men from Finance doing?’
Vianello shrugged. ‘They’ve been in there since the morning.’
‘Do they know what they’re supposed to be looking for?’ Brunetti asked, unable to keep the impatience out of his voice.
‘Some sign of who handled it all, I think.’
‘Would you go down there and ask them if they’ve found anything? If Ravanello’s involved, I want to move on him as soon as possible.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Vianello said and left the office.
While he waited for Vianello to come back, he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, more for something to do with his hands than from any hope that it would make him feel any cooler.
Vianello came back, and the answer was written on his face. ‘I just spoke to their captain. He said that, so far, from what they can tell, it looks like Mascari was in charge.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Brunetti snapped.
‘It’s what they told me,’ Vianello said very slowly, voice level, and then added, after a long pause, ‘sir.’ Neither spoke for a moment. ‘Perhaps if you were to speak to them yourself, you’d get a clearer idea of what it means.’
Brunetti looked away and rolled down his sleeves. ‘Let’s go downstairs together, Vianello.’ It was as close as he could come to an apology, but Vianello seemed to accept it. Given the heat in the office, it was probably all he was going to get.
Downstairs, Brunetti went into the office where three men in the grey uniforms of the Guardia di Finanza were working. The men sat at a long desk covered with files and papers. Two small pocket calculators and a laptop computer stood on the desk, one man in front of each. In concession to the heat, they had removed their woollen jackets, but they still wore their ties.
The man at the computer looked up when Brunetti came in, peered over his glasses for a moment, then looked back down and tapped some more information into the keyboard. He looked at the screen, glanced down at one of the papers beside the keyboard, punched some more keys, then looked at the screen again. He picked up the sheet of paper from the pile to the right of the computer, placed it face down on the left, and started to read more numbers from the next sheet of paper.
‘Which of you is in charge?’ Brunetti asked.
A small red-headed man looked up from one of the calculators and said, ‘I am. Are you Commissario Brunetti?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Brunetti answered, coming to stand beside him and extending his hand.
‘I’m Captain de Luca.’ Then less formally, taking Brunetti’s hand, he added, ‘Beniamino.’ He waved his hand over the papers. ‘You wanted to know who was in charge of all of this at the bank?’
‘Yes.’
‘It looks, right now, like it was all handled by Mascari. His key codes have been tapped into all of the transactions, and what look like his initials appear on many of the documents we’ve got here.’
‘Could that have been faked?’
‘What do you mean, Commissario?’
‘Could someone else have changed these documents to make it look like Mascari had handled them?’
De Luca thought about this for a long time, then answered, ‘I suppose so. If whoever did it had a day or two to work on the files, I suppose he could have done it.’ He considered this for a while, as if working out an algebraic formula in his head. ‘Yes, anyone could have done it, if he knew the key codes.’
‘In a bank, how private are those access codes?’
‘I would imagine they aren’t private at all. People are always checking one another’s accounts, and they need to know the codes in order to get into them. I would say it could be very easy.’
‘What about the initials on the receipts?’
‘Easier to forge than a signature,’ de Luca said.
‘Is there any way to prove that someone else did it?’
Again, de Luca considered the question for a long time before he answered. ‘With the computer entries, not at all. Maybe the initials could be shown to be false, but most people just scribble them on things like this; often it’s difficult to tell them apart or, for that fact, to recognize your own.’
‘Could a case be made that the records had been changed?’
De Luca’s look was as clear as his answer. ‘Commissario, you might want to make that case, but you wouldn’t want to make it in a courtroom.’
‘So Mascari was in charge?’
De Luca hesitated this time. ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. It looks like it, but it is entirely possible that the records were changed to make it look like he was.’
‘What about the rest of it, the process of selection for apartments?’
‘Oh, it’s clear that people were chosen to get apartments for reasons other than need and, in the case of those who received money, that poverty didn’t have much to do with a lot of the grants.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘In the first case, the letters of application are all here, divided into two groups: those who did get apartments and those who were turned down.’ De Luca paused for a moment. ‘No, I’m overstating the case. A number of the apartments, a large number of them, went to people who seemed to have real need, but the letters of application for almost a quarter of the applications come from people who aren’t even Venetian.’
‘The ones who were accepted?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes. And your boys haven’t even finished checking on the complete list of tenants.’
Brunetti glanced towards Vianello, who explained, ‘They’ve gone through about half of the list, and it looks like a lot of them are rented to young people who live alone. And who work nights.’
Brunetti nodded. ‘Vianello, when you have a complete report on everyone on both lists, let me have it.’
