Brunetti plastered a look of astonishment across his face, as if offended at such a suggestion, if only he had the right to be. ‘No, sir. As soon as she answered my question about the time she and her husband arrived, I did nothing more than compliment her home and ask her if she was acquainted with the Fontanas. She said she was not, and Vianello and I left.’
‘And went downstairs to interrogate that child,’ Patta said with a full return to his former anger.
Brunetti raised his hands to ward off unwarranted criticism. ‘That’s either a misunderstanding or an exaggeration, sir. We went downstairs and rang the bell. A child spoke through the door and I asked to speak to her mother. When the door opened, I saw a woman standing in the back of the apartment’ — he said, not finding it necessary to provide a physical description of the woman — ‘and assumed it was her mother. So I went in, hoping to speak to her, but as soon as I realized the woman was not the girl’s mother, Vianello and I left. Immediately, sir. Vianello can confirm this.’
‘I’m sure he would,’ Patta said with one of those flashes of sobriety that had for years kept Brunetti from being able to dismiss him as a complete fool.
‘How are we going to present this?’ Patta asked. ‘I’ve seen the autopsy report,’ he added. ‘I doubt it will be very long before the press get hold of it.’
‘Not from Rizzardi,’ Brunetti said so hotly that Patta shot him a warning glance.
‘Dottor Rizzardi is not the only person who works in the pathology laboratory, as you might recall, nor the only person to have access to the report,’ Patta said. ‘Once this is known, how do we play it?’
Brunetti studied the legs of Patta’s desk, thinking about Signora Fontana and for how long she had kept herself from knowing certain things and how she had managed to do it. What did mothers dream of for their sons? And from their sons? A happy life? Grandchildren? Reasons to be proud of them? Brunetti knew women who wanted only that their sons stay free of drugs and out of jail; others who wanted them to marry a beautiful woman, make a fortune, and win social status; and some very few who simply wanted them to be happy. What had Signora Fontana permitted herself to want for her son?
‘Well?’ Patta’s voice summoned back Brunetti’s wandering thoughts.
‘Rizzardi told me that it will be some time before the lab tests are back, sir,’ Brunetti said.
‘And so?’
‘And so I think we should look for whoever might have wanted to kill. .’
Before Brunetti could name Fontana, Patta cut him short, saying, ‘He doesn’t sound like the sort of man anyone would want to kill. This could have been a street crime.’
The temptation came to Brunetti to ask who, then, would so savagely have beaten the life out of him, but caution stayed the impulse and instead he said, ‘So it would seem, Vice-Questore. But someone did want to kill him, and someone has.’ He knew Patta well enough to know that he would now suggest that the police list the crime as a possible mugging, which Patta probably thought would tranquillize the people of the city. Consequently, Brunetti delivered a pre-emptive strike, saying, ‘It might be rash to speak of street crime, Vice-Questore. No one wants to come to a city where people get killed in muggings.’
Though Patta was Sicilian, Brunetti knew the Vice-Questore had spent enough time among the politicians and what passed for high society in the city to have absorbed the Venetian faith in tourism. Sacrifice small children, round up the local population and sell them as slaves, slaughter all men of voting age, rape virgins on the altars of the gods: do all this, and more, but do not lay a hand upon a tourist or upon tourism. The sword of Mars was far less potent than their credit cards; their charges conquered all.
‘. . you paying attention to me, Brunetti?’
‘Of course, Signore. I was trying to think of a way we could place this in the press.’ Brunetti, too, had learned the language of accommodation.
Patta folded his arms across his chest and looked at the surface of his desk, as clear of papers as his mind of uncertainty. ‘The results of the autopsy are going to be made public sooner or later, so I think what we have to say is that we are beginning to suspect that his death was linked to his private life.’
‘Without any evidence?’ Brunetti asked, his thoughts still on Fontana’s mother.
‘Of course there’s evidence. There’s the semen of another man.’
‘That’s not what killed him,’ Brunetti shot back rashly.
Patta braced his elbows on the desk and pressed his lips against his folded hands, as if hoping to restrain whatever he wanted to say to Brunetti. The two men sat like that for some time, and then Patta asked, ‘Do you want to place this story in the papers, or shall I ask Lieutenant Scarpa to do it?’
In his most moderate, reasonable voice, Brunetti said, ‘I think it would be better if the Lieutenant did it, sir.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to do it, Brunetti? After all, some of these reporters are your friends.’
‘Thank you, sir, but if I ask them to print it, I’d have to tell them I don’t believe it. The Lieutenant is far more at ease speaking to the press.’ Brunetti smiled and rose from his chair. He went to the door, opened it, and closed it quietly, pulling on it to make sure it was securely closed: he didn’t want too much of the cold air of the Vice- Questore’s office to escape.
24
Leaving Patta’s office, Brunetti took the course of wisdom and did not pause to talk to Signorina Elettra. He went up to his own office and called the farmhouse where Paola and the children were staying. Paola picked up on the seventh ring, answering with her name.
‘It’s hot and damp and the back canals stink,’ he said by way of salutation, then, ‘Why aren’t you out walking?’
‘We were out all day, Guido. I was out on the patio, reading.’
‘Farmhouses aren’t supposed to have patios,’ Brunetti said grumpily.
‘Would it help if I said it’s the place where they used to slaughter pigs and the pavement slants down to a gutter where the blood was collected? And it still smells faintly of pigs’ blood when the sun shines on it directly, making it impossible for me to devote my full critical expertise to the nuanced dialogues of
‘Are you lying?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘To make you feel better.’ Then, the demands of sentimentality dispatched, Paola asked, ‘How are things there?’
‘Someone important whose wife I questioned complained to Patta, so I had to listen to a quarter-hour of his paranoia this afternoon.’
‘What’s Patta afraid of?’ she asked.
‘God knows. Not being invited to the Lions Club Ball, it sounds to me. If they have one. I don’t understand him: he acts like he’s still living at the court of the Bourbons, and the greatest achievement he could aspire to is to be recognized by a prince. If he ever had lunch with your father, he’d probably expire of joy.’
‘My father’s not a prince,’ she observed.
‘Well, counts are in the same line of business.’
‘The monarchy was abolished in 1946,’ she said with the asperity of a historian.
‘You’d never know it from the bowing and scraping I’ve seen in my day,’ Brunetti replied.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, uninterested in Brunetti’s observations regarding the higher orders.
‘The man who was killed was described by two reliable witnesses as a good man. He argued with his neighbours, had trouble with a judge, and was probably gay.’
‘Rich and suggestive as that information is, I’m not sure it’s enough to help me identify the killer, if that’s why you called,’ she said.
‘No, it’s not much for anyone to work on, is it?’ Brunetti agreed. ‘I really called to tell you I miss you and the kids with all my heart and wish I were there.’
‘Get this settled and come up. We can always stay another week.’
