23
Brunetti went over to the bar and was quickly back with two more glasses of white wine. He handed one to Vianello and drank some of his own.
‘Well?’ he asked Vianello.
The Inspector picked up the toothpick he had used to eat an artichoke and absently began to break it into small pieces, laying them one after the other on the plate beside Penzo’s uneaten sandwich. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘it looks like we have to examine his life.’
‘Fontana’s or Penzo’s?’
Vianello glanced up quickly. ‘Both, really, but we’ve already started with Fontana. First we find that he’s gay, and then we have a tearful account of his sad life from someone who may well turn out — unless I’m misreading all the signs — to have been his lover. So it might be wise to find out where Penzo was the night Fontana was killed.’
‘Does that mean you’re not persuaded by his tearful story?’ asked Brunetti in a tone more cynical than was his wont.
Breaking off another piece of toothpick, Vianello answered, ‘I was, and am, persuaded by it. It’s pretty obvious that he loved Fontana.’
‘But?’
‘People kill the people they love every day,’ Vianello said.
‘Exactly,’ Brunetti affirmed.
‘Does that mean we’re treating him as a suspect?’
‘It means we
‘I told you I think Penzo loved him,’ Vianello said, then paused a moment and went on in a voice that sounded almost disappointed, ‘but I don’t think he killed him.’
Brunetti was forced to agree with both propositions, but he finally gave voice to an uneasiness that had been created by their conversation with the lawyer, ‘You think that means Penzo was his lover?’
‘You heard the way he spoke,’ Vianello insisted.
‘Loving someone for forty years isn’t the same as being his lover,’ Brunetti said.
He saw Vianello’s look of rigid opposition, and before the Ispettore could speak, Brunetti added, ‘It’s not the same thing, Lorenzo.’ It came to Brunetti that he and Vianello surely loved one another, but this was not anything he could say, surely not to Vianello. Nor, he admitted, would he want Vianello to say it to him.
‘You can see them as different, if you want,’ Vianello said, sounding as if it were something he would choose not to do. ‘If it turns out that he wasn’t in Belluno that night, then what do we do?’
Brunetti could do nothing more than shrug off the possibility.
Back in his office, a wilted Brunetti stood by the window in search of any passing breeze and considered new connections and the possibilities they might create. Penzo and Fontana as loving friends: whatever that meant. Or as lovers: he did not exclude that possibility. Fontana and Judge Coltellini as adversaries over the whereabouts of legal documents. Fontana as the other side of two ‘
He gave up on any hope of solace from the heat and went down to Signorina Elettra’s office. Her door was closed. He knocked and, at a sound, entered. Into Paradise. It was cool, and it was dry, and he felt an automatic shiver, whether of cold or delight he did not know. She sat behind her computer wearing a light blue cardigan that appeared to be — could this be in August? — cashmere.
He stepped inside and quickly shut the door. ‘How did he manage it?’ he demanded. Then, unable to restrain his surprise, ‘Did you help him?’
‘Please, Commissario,’ she said in an indignant voice. ‘You know my feelings about air conditioning.’ Indeed, he did. They had had a near falling-out over the subject, he maintaining that it was necessary for some people and in some circumstances — in which he silently included his own home in the months of July and August — while she argued that it was wasteful and thus immoral.
‘What happened?’
‘Lieutenant Scarpa,’ she said with unveiled contempt, ‘has a friend who rebuilds air conditioners; he had him bring one over here this morning and install it in the Vice-Questore’s office.’ Sitting up straighter, she added, ‘I told him I had no need of one: enough cold air floods in here every time the door opens.’
At this, the door behind Signorina Elettra’s desk slammed back against the wall and, instead of cold air, Patta erupted into the room. ‘There you are. I’ve been calling your office for hours. Get in here.’ He did not shout: he did not have to. The force of his anger almost reversed the effect of the air conditioning.
The Vice-Questore turned and started back into his office, but because the door had slammed shut from the force with which he had opened it, he had to open it again.
Brunetti had time to cast a glance at Signorina Elettra, but she raised her hands in an empty gesture and shook her head. Brunetti followed Patta into his office and closed the door.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ Patta demanded when he was standing behind his desk. He sat but did not wave Brunetti to a chair, which meant that things were bad and Patta was serious.
Brunetti drew closer to the desk, careful to keep his hands at his sides. ‘What’s wrong, sir?’ he asked.
‘What’s wrong?’ Patta repeated, then again, should anyone hiding behind his filing cabinet not have heard him the first time, repeated, ‘What’s wrong?’ Then, sure that everyone had heard, he said, ‘What’s wrong is that I’ve had two phone calls this morning, both of them reporting your all but criminal behaviour. That’s what’s wrong.’
‘May I ask who called you, sir?’ Brunetti asked, already fearing the worst.
‘I was called by Signora Fulgoni’s husband, who said his wife was much disturbed by the tenor of your interrogation.’ Patta raised a hand to wave away any attempt Brunetti might make to explain or defend his behaviour. ‘Worse, he told me that you dared to go downstairs and question a child.’ The thought of the consequences of this pulled Patta up from his chair; he leaned over his desk and said, voice booming against the low hum of the air conditioner, ‘A child, Brunetti. Do you know how much trouble this could cause me?’
‘Who was the second call from, sir?’ Brunetti asked.
‘That’s what I was about to tell you. From the Director of Social Services, saying she’d had a complaint about police harassment of a child and asking me what was going on.’ Brunetti stifled the desire to ask who had filed the complaint, knowing that Patta would not tell him.
Patta lowered himself into his chair and said, voice calmer, ‘Luckily, her husband is in the Lions Club with me, so I know them fairly well. I assured her that it was a complete misunderstanding, and she appeared to believe me. At least there will be no formal investigation.’ His relief was palpable. ‘That’s one less thing to worry about.’
Brunetti stood still, deciding that the best tactic was to let the waves of Patta’s anger break against him until the tide turned, and then to offer an explanation.
‘Fulgoni is a bank director,’ Patta said. ‘Do you have any idea how influential a man like that can be? He’s also a friend of the Questore’s.’ Patta paused to let the full enormity of this sink in and then said in a calmer voice, ‘But I think I convinced him not to call and complain.’
Patta closed his eyes and took a deep breath, the better to demonstrate to Brunetti just how harshly tried was his forbearance by this most recent example of his inferior’s rashness and irresponsibility, yet more evidence of how sorely tried he was by the perils of office.
‘Very well,’ Patta said tiredly. ‘Stop standing there. Sit down and tell me your version of what happened.’
Brunetti did as told, careful to sit up straight with his legs together, hands on his knees: none of this passive-aggressive business of arms crossed over his chest. ‘I did speak to Signora Fulgoni, Vice-Questore: according to Lieutenant Scarpa’s report, she and her husband established the time before which the murder could not have taken place. I was curious as to whether they might have noticed anything unusual or out of place. I wanted to know about those four storerooms: someone could easily have hidden in there.’
‘Fulgoni didn’t say anything about that,’ Patta said with the suspicion of a man accustomed to being lied to. ‘He said you asked personal questions.’
