Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

Avvocato,’ was the first thing she said, her formality restoring full calm to the room.

Silent now, Santomauro helped her to her feet and towards a door at the back of the office. When he closed it behind her, Santomauro turned to face Brunetti. ‘Well?’ he said, voice calm but no less lethal for that.

‘Ravanello’s been killed,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I thought you’d be next. So I came here to try to stop it.’

If Santomauro was surprised at the news, he gave no sign of it. ‘Why?’ he asked. When Brunetti didn’t answer, he repeated the question, ‘Why would I be next?’

Brunetti didn’t answer him.

‘I asked you a question, Commissario. Why would I be next? Why, in fact, would I be in any danger at all?’ In the face of Brunetti’s continuing silence, Santomauro continued. ‘Do you think I’m somehow involved in all of this? Is that why you’re here, playing cowboy and Indians and terrifying my secretary?’

‘I had reason to believe he would come here,’ Brunetti finally explained.

‘Who?’ the lawyer demanded.

‘I’m not at liberty to tell you that.’

Santomauro bent down and picked up the secretary’s chair. He righted it and pushed it into place behind her desk. When he looked back at Brunetti, he said, ‘Get out. Get out of this office. I am going to make a formal complaint to the Minister of the Interior. And I am going to send a copy of it to your superior. I will not be treated as a criminal, and I will not have my secretary terrified by your Gestapo techniques.’

Brunetti had seen enough anger in his life and in his career to know that this was the real thing. Saying nothing, he left the office and went down into Campo San Luca. People pushed past him, rushing home for lunch.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Brunetti’s decision to return to the Questura was an exercise of the power of the will over that of the flesh. He was closer to home than to the Questura, and he wanted only to go there, shower, and think about things other than the inescapable consequences of what had just happened. Unsummoned, he had burst violently into the office of one of the most powerful men in the city, terrorizing his secretary and making it clear, by his explanation of his behaviour, that he assumed Santomauro’s guilty involvement with Malfatti and the manipulation of the accounts of the Lega. All of the good will he had, however spuriously, accumulated with Patta during the last weeks would be as of nothing in the face of a protest from a man of Santomauro’s stature.

And now, with Ravanello dead, all hope of a case against Santomauro had vanished, for the only person who might implicate Santomauro was Malfatti; his guilt in Ravanello’s death would render worthless any accusation he might make against Santomauro. It would come, Brunetti realized, to a choice between Malfatti’s and Santomauro’s stories; he needed neither wit nor prescience to know which was stronger.

When Brunetti got there, he found the Questura in tumult. Three uniformed officers huddled together in the lobby, and the people on the long line at the Ufficio Stranieri crowded together in a babble of different languages. ‘They brought him in, sir,’ one of the guards said when he saw Brunetti.

‘Who?’ he asked, not daring to hope.

‘Malfatti.’

‘How?’

‘The men waiting at his mother’s. He showed up at the door about half an hour ago, and they got him even before she could let him in.’

‘Was there any trouble?’

‘One of the men who was there said that he tried to run when he saw them, but as soon as he realized there were four of them, he just gave up and went along quietly.’

‘Four?’

‘Yes, sir. Vianello called and told us to send more men. They were just arriving when Malfatti showed up. They didn’t even have time to get inside, just got there and found him at the door.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Vianello had him put in a cell.’

‘I’ll go see him.’

When Brunetti went into the cell, Malfatti recognized him immediately as the man who had thrown him down the steps, but he greeted Brunetti with no particular hostility.

Brunetti pulled a chair away from the wall and sat facing Malfatti, who was lying on the cot, back propped up against the wall. He was a short, stocky man with thick brown hair, features so regular as to make him almost immediately forgettable. He looked like an accountant, not a killer.

‘Well?’ Brunetti began.

‘Well what?’ Malfatti’s voice was completely matter of fact.

‘Well, do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?’ Brunetti asked imperturbably, just the way the cops on television did.

‘What’s the hard way?’

‘That you say you know nothing about any of this.’

‘About any of what?’ Malfatti asked.

Brunetti pressed his lips together and glanced up at the window for a moment, then back at Malfatti.

‘What’s the easy way?’ Malfatti asked after a long time.

‘That you tell me what happened.’ Before Malfatti said a word, Brunetti explained, ‘Not about the rents. That’s not important now, and it will all come out. But about the murders. All of them. All four.’

Malfatti shifted minimally on the mattress, and Brunetti had the impression that he was going to question that number, but then Malfatti thought better of it.

‘He’s a respected man,’ Brunetti continued, not bothering to explain whom he meant. ‘It’s going to come down to his word against yours, unless you’ve got something to link him to you and to the murders.’ He paused here, but Malfatti said nothing. ‘You’ve got a long criminal record,’ Brunetti continued. ‘Attempted murder and now murder.’ Before Malfatti could say a word, Brunetti continued in an entirely conversational voice, ‘There’s not going to be any trouble proving that you killed Ravanello.’ In answer to Malfatti’s surprised glance, he explained, ‘The old woman saw you.’ Malfatti looked away.

‘And judges hate people who kill police, especially policewomen. So I don’t see it any other way but a conviction. The judges are bound to ask me what I think,’ he said, pausing to be sure he had Malfatti’s complete attention. ‘When they do, I’ll suggest Porto Azzurro.’

All criminals knew the name of the prison, the worst in Italy and one from which no one had ever escaped; even a man as hardened as Malfatti could not disguise his shock. Brunetti waited a moment, but when Malfatti said nothing, he added, ‘They say no one knows which are bigger, the cats or the rats.’ Again, he paused.

‘And if I do talk to you?’ Malfatti finally asked.

‘Then I’ll suggest to the judges that they take that into consideration.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all.’ Brunetti hated people who killed police, too.

Malfatti took only a moment to decide. ‘Va bene,’ he said, ‘but I want it in the record that I volunteered this. I want it put down that, as soon as you arrested me, I was willing to give you everything.’

Brunetti got to his feet. ‘I’ll get a secretary,’ he said and went to the door of the cell. He signalled to a young man who sat at a desk at the end of the hall, who came into the room with a tape recorder and a pad.

When they were ready, Brunetti said, ‘Please give your name, place of birth, and present residence.’

‘Malfatti, Pietro. Twenty-eight September, 1962. Castello 2316.’

It went on like this for an hour, Malfatti’s voice never displaying any greater involvement than it did when answering that original question, though the story that emerged was one of mounting horror.

The original idea could have been Ravanello’s or Santomauro’s: Malfatti had never cared enough to ask. They had got his name from the men on Via Cappuccina and had contacted him to ask if he would be willing to make the collections for them every month in return for a percentage of the profit. He had never been in doubt as to whether he would accept their offer, only about the percentage he would get. They had settled at twelve, though it had