fashionable. The colour of the cloth contrasted sharply with her pallid skin.
She looked up as the two men approached, and Brunetti noticed that her hair was that standard red so popular to women of Paola’s age. She wore little makeup, and so he was able to see the small lines at the corners of the eyes and mouth, lines brought on either by age or worry, Brunetti couldn’t tell which. She stood and took a step towards them. Brunetti stopped in front of her and held out his hand. ‘Signora Mascari, I’m Commissario Brunetti from the Venice police.’
She took his hand and gave it no more than the quickest of light touches. He noticed that her eyes seemed very bright, but he couldn’t tell if this was caused by unshed tears or the reflection from the glasses she wore.
‘I extend my condolences, Signora Mascari,’ he said. ‘I understand how painful and shocking this must be for you.’ She still made no acknowledgement that he had spoken. ‘Is there someone you would like us to call and have come here to be with you?’
She shook her head at this. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.
‘Perhaps we could step into Sergeant Gallo’s office,’ Brunetti said, reaching down to open the door. He allowed the woman to pass in front of him. He glanced backwards at Gallo, who raised his eyebrows in interrogation; Brunetti nodded, and the sergeant came into the office with them. Brunetti held a chair for Signora Mascari, who sat and looked up at him.
‘Is there something we could get you, Signora? A glass of water? Tea?’
‘No. Nothing. Tell me what happened.’
Sergeant Gallo took his place quietly behind his desk; Brunetti sat in a chair not far from Signora Mascari.
‘Your husband’s body was found in Mestre on Monday morning. If you’ve spoken to the people at the hospital, you know that the cause of death was a blow to the head.’
She interrupted him. ‘There were blows to the face, as well.’ After she said this, she looked away and stared down at her hands.
‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm your husband, Signora? Can you think of anyone who has ever menaced him or with whom he had a serious argument?’
She shook her head in immediate negation. ‘Leonardo had no enemies,’ she said.
Brunetti’s experience suggested that a man did not get to be the director of a bank without making enemies, but he said nothing.
‘Did your husband ever mention difficulties at his work? Perhaps an employee he had to fire? Someone who was turned down for a loan and who held him responsible?’
Again, she shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that. There’s never been any trouble.’
‘And your family, Signora? Has your husband ever had difficulties with anyone in your family?’
‘What is this?’ she demanded. ‘Why are you asking me these questions?’
‘Signora,’ Brunetti began, making what he hoped was a calming gesture with his hands. ‘The manner of your husband’s death, the very violence of it, suggests that whoever did it had reason to hate your husband a great deal, and so, before we can begin to look for that person, we have to have some idea of why he might have done what he did. So it is necessary that these questions be asked, painful as I know them to be.’
‘But I can’t tell you anything. Leonardo had no enemies.’ After repeating this, she looked across at Gallo, as if to ask him to verify what she said or to help her persuade Brunetti to believe her.
‘When your husband left the house last Sunday, he was on his way to Messina?’ Brunetti asked. She nodded. ‘Do you know the purpose of his trip, Signora?’
‘He told me it was for the bank and that he would be back on Friday. Yesterday.’
‘But he didn’t mention what the trip was about?’
‘No, he never did. He always said his work wasn’t very interesting, and he seldom discussed it with me.’
‘Did you hear anything from him after he left, Signora?’
‘No. He left for the airport on Sunday afternoon. He had a flight to Rome, where he had to change planes.’
‘Did your husband call you after that, Signora? Did he call you from Rome or from Messina?’
‘No, but he never did. Whenever he went on a business trip, he’d simply go wherever he was going and then come home, or he’d call me from his office in the bank if he went directly there when he got back to Venice.’
‘Was this usual, Signora?’
‘Was what usual?’
‘That he would go away on business and not get in touch with you?’
‘I just told you,’ she said, her voice going a bit sharp. ‘He travelled a bit for the bank, six or seven times a year. Sometimes he would send me a postcard or bring me a gift, but he never called.’
‘When did you begin to become alarmed, Signora?’
‘Last night. I thought he would go to the bank in the afternoon, when he got back, and then come home. But when he wasn’t home by seven, I called the bank, but it was closed. I tried to call two of the men he worked with, but they weren’t home.’ She paused here, took a deep breath, and then continued, ‘I told myself I’d got the day wrong or the time, but by this morning, I couldn’t fool myself any more, so I called one of the men who works at the bank, and he called a colleague in Messina, and then he called me back.’ She stopped talking here.
‘What did he tell you, Signora?’ Brunetti asked in a low voice.
She put one knuckle to her mouth, hoping, perhaps, to keep the words from coming out, but she had seen the body in the morgue, and so there was no use in that. ‘He told me that Leonardo had never been to Messina. And so I called the police. Called you. They told me… when I gave them a description of Leonardo… they told me that I should come out here. So I did.’ Her voice had grown increasingly ragged as she explained all of this, and when she finished, her hands were clutched desperately together in her lap.
‘Signora, are you sure there’s no one you’d like to call or have us call to come here to be with you? Perhaps you shouldn’t be alone at this time,’ Brunetti said.
‘No. No, there’s no one I want to see.’ Abruptly, she stood. ‘I don’t have to stay here, do I? Am I free to leave?’
‘Of course, Signora. You’ve been more than kind to answer these questions.’
She ignored this.
Brunetti made a small gesture to Gallo as he stood and followed Signora Mascari to the door. ‘We’ll have a car take you back to Venice, Signora.’
‘I don’t want anyone to see me arrive in a police car,’ she said.
‘It will be an unmarked car, Signora, and the driver won’t be in uniform.’
She made no acknowledgement to this, and the fact that she didn’t object probably meant that she would accept the ride to Piazzale Roma.
Brunetti opened the door and accompanied her to the stairs at the end of the corridor. He noticed that her right hand had a death grip on her purse, and the left was jammed into the pocket of her jacket.
Downstairs, Brunetti went out on to the steps of the Questura with her, out into the heat that he had forgotten. A dark blue sedan waited at the foot of the steps, motor running. Brunetti bent down and opened the door for her, held her arm as she stepped into the car. Once seated, she turned away from him and looked out of the window on the other side, though all she saw was traffic and the bleak facade of office buildings. Brunetti closed the door softly and told the driver to take Signora Mascari back to Piazzale Roma.
When the car disappeared into the flow of traffic, Brunetti went back to Gallo’s office. As he went in, he asked the sergeant, ‘Well, what did you think?’
‘I don’t believe in people who have no enemies.’
‘Especially middle-aged bank managers,’ Brunetti added.
‘And so?’ Gallo asked.
‘I’ll go back to Venice and see if there’s anything I can find out there, from my people. Now that we’ve got a name, we at least have a place to begin to look.’
‘For what?’ Gallo asked.
Brunetti’s answer was immediate. ‘First, we’ve got to do what we should have been doing from the beginning, find out where the clothing and the shoes he was wearing came from.’
Gallo took this as a reproach and answered just as quickly, ‘Nothing on the dress yet, but we’ve got the name of the manufacturer of the shoes and should have a list by this afternoon of the stores that sold them.’
Brunetti had not intended his remark as a criticism of the Mestre branch, but he let it stand. It could do no harm to spur Gallo and his men into finding out where Mascari’s clothing had come from, for surely those shoes and
