began, looking across at Brunetti. He took out his handkerchief, wiped his face and forehead, and then his hands. ‘She tore off the bandages while the nurse was gone, and took out the drip.’ He shook his head.
Brunetti’s thoughts fled to Cato, that noblest of noble Republicans. When life proved intolerable, he cut open his stomach, and when his friends tried to save him, he ripped out his viscera because death was preferable to a life without honour.
‘I’m going home,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I won’t do it.’ And then he was gone.
Dottoressa Zeno left them and went over to talk to the technicians. ‘Won’t do what?’ Vianello asked.
‘The autopsy, I assume,’ Brunetti said, wishing Vianello had not asked.
That stopped Vianello in his tracks.
‘This means the case is. .’ Brunetti began but could not bring himself to use the word ‘dead’. ‘It’s over,’ he said. Without the testimony of Signorina Montini — and there was never any reason to believe she would have testified — there was no evidence against Gorini. Mistakes happen, all sorts of errors abound in the hospitals: people suffer and die as a result.
‘We don’t know if it was only the cholesterol tests she was changing.’
‘You think she’d put people in danger?’
No, Brunetti did not, but that was hardly a secure enough protection for the people whose lab work she had handled. ‘They’ll have to redo all the tests she did,’ Brunetti said, thinking that this was an order only Patta, or perhaps the director of the hospital, could give. As to making any move against Gorini, that was impossible. Signorina Montini’s death had removed any risk he ran, and it was unlikely she would have kept a written record of what she was doing. Certainly she would not keep such a document in the home she shared with Gorini, nor at work, the place where she was betraying her honour.
‘The only thing we can do is call the police in Aversa and Naples,’ Brunetti said resignedly, ‘and tell them he’s here.’
28
As Brunetti had both known and feared, it proved impossible to persuade Vice-Questore Patta that the laboratory tests performed by Signorina Montini should be repeated. His superior had already dismissed the idea of investigating Signor Gorini or his dealings with his clients. The man — Patta had this on good authority — had been very helpful in treating the wife of a member of the city council, and thus the idea of causing him trouble — in the face of a complete absence of evidence — was unthinkable.
When Brunetti refused to abandon the idea of redoing the tests, Patta demanded, ‘Do you have any idea how much money ULSS loses every year?’ When Brunetti did not answer, Patta said, ‘And you want to add to it because of some wild theory you have that a faith healer corrupted this woman into falsifying medical reports?’
‘A faith healer with a long criminal record, Dottore,’ Brunetti added.
‘A long history of accusation of crime,’ Patta corrected. ‘I don’t think you, of all people, Commissario, should have to be reminded that they are not the same thing.’ Patta gave a friendly smile here, as if this were a joke with an old friend who had never understood the difference.
Brunetti was having none of it. ‘If this woman was tampering with test results, Vice-Questore, then the tests have to be redone.’
Patta gave another smile, but there was no humour in his voice when he said, ‘In the absence of any evidence that this woman was involved in criminal behaviour — regardless of what you suspect, Commissario — I think it would be irresponsible on our part to spread needless alarm among the people whose tests she might have performed.’ He paused in reflection and then added, ‘Or to weaken in any way the public’s faith in government institutions.’
As so often happened when Brunetti dealt with Patta, he was forced to admire the skill with which his superior could transmute his own worst failings — in this case blind ambition and an absolute refusal to perform any action that did not benefit him directly — into the appearance of probity.
Not bothering to explain or prepare for the change in subject, Brunetti said, ‘I’m going to Fontana’s funeral tomorrow morning, sir.’
The temptation proved too strong for Patta, who asked, ‘In hopes of seeing the murderer there?’ He smiled, inviting Brunetti to share the joke.
‘No, sir,’ Brunetti said soberly. ‘So that his death isn’t treated as something insignificant.’ Good sense and the instinct of survival stopped Brunetti from adding, ‘too’ to his sentence. He got to his feet, said something polite to the Vice-Questore, went upstairs and made two disappointing calls to his colleagues in Aversa and Naples, and then went home and spent the rest of the day and evening reading the
The funeral took place in the church of Madonna dell’Orto, the parish into which Fontana’s mother had been born and which had always been the spiritual centre of her life. Brunetti and Vianello arrived ten minutes before the Mass began and took seats in the twelfth row. Vianello wore a dark blue suit and Brunetti dark grey linen. He was glad of the jacket, for this was the first place he had felt cool since stepping into the house where he had found Lucia and Zinka.
The heat of the day had kept at bay the morbidly curious and the habitual attenders of funerals, so there were only about fifty people present, seated sparsely and in sad separation in the rows in front of them. After doing his rough count of those present, Brunetti realized they averaged only one person for each year of Fontana’s life.
Brunetti and Vianello were too far back to see who sat in the first rows, reserved for family and close friends, but they would soon file from the church after the coffin and reveal themselves.
The music began: some sort of dreary organ theme that would have suited an elevator in a very respectable, if not necessarily wealthy, neighbourhood. Noise from behind slipped under the sound of the organ; Brunetti and Vianello stood and turned to face it.
A flower-draped coffin on a wheeled bier came down the aisle, pulled along by four black-suited men who looked extraneous to any emotional weight this scene might have. Would the mother have hired mutes if they had been available, Brunetti wondered? When the coffin stopped in front of the altar, everyone in the church sat and the Mass began. Brunetti was attentive for the first minutes, but the ceremony was duller now than it had been when he, as a boy, had attended the funerals of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles. The words were spoken in Italian: he missed the magical incantation of the Latin. Suddenly aware of the silence, he wondered if the absence of the tolling of the death bell during the Mass, the sound that had accompanied so many members of his family to their last resting place, most recently his mother, was also planned in this modern — and banal — ceremony.
As he stood and sat, knelt briefly only to rise to his feet again, moved on the tides of memory, Brunetti reflected on this strange death. Signorina Elettra had ‘accessed’ the files of the Tribunale and had managed to trace Signor Puntera’s legal history. Both the case of the contested warehouses and the injured worker had been assigned to Judge Coltellini, and in both cases long delays had resulted from the absence or temporary misplacing of files and pertinent documents. Further, other cases that had been assigned to the judge’s docket had experienced similar delays. In all of them, Signorina Elettra’s researches had ascertained, one party in the cause stood to profit from these delays. The judge, however, owned her own home, which she had bought three years ago, though not from Signor Puntera.
The bank of which Signor Fulgoni was the director, it turned out, had granted a loan to Signor Puntera at very favourable rates, and Signor Marsano was a lawyer in a firm that had once represented a client in a case brought, unsuccessfully, against Signor Puntera. Signor Puntera’s tax return listed the rent he received from each of their apartments, as well as that occupied by the Fontanas, at four hundred and fifty Euros a month or about 20 per cent of the rent they might be expected to pay.
The priest circled the coffin, dipping his aspergillum repeatedly into the holy water and sprinkling it across the surface. Brunetti saw how perfectly the rituals of pre-Christian Rome — priests mumbling incantations that put evil spirits to flight, searching for the future in the organs of sacrificed animals — blended with those of the new Italy —
