‘I’d like to know how many of the people on this list pay their rent in the same way and how much they pay. More importantly, I want to know if any of them know the person or persons to whom they actually give the money.’
‘So that’s it?’ Vianello asked, understanding at once. He paged through the list. ‘How many are there, sir? Far more than a hundred, I’d say.’
‘One hundred and sixty-two.’
Vianello whistled. ‘And you say this Canale’s paying a million and a half a month?’
‘Yes.’
Brunetti watched Vianello repeat the same calculation he had made when he first saw the list. ‘Even if it’s only a third of them, it would be well over half a billion a year, wouldn’t it?’ Vianello asked, shaking his head, and again Brunetti couldn’t tell if his response was astonishment or admiration for the enormity of the thing.
‘Do you recognize any of the names on the list?’ Brunetti asked.
‘One of them sounds like the man who owns the bar on the corner near my mother’s house: same name, but I’m not sure if it’s the right address.’
‘If it is, then perhaps you could talk to him casually.’
‘Not wearing my uniform, you mean?’ Vianello asked with a smile that seemed more like his old self.
‘Or send Nadia,’ Brunetti joked, but as soon as he said it, he realized this might not be a bad idea. The appearance of uniformed policemen to question people who were, in some degree, in illegal possession of apartments was sure to affect any answers they gave. Brunetti was certain that all of the accounts would be in order, sure that proof would exist that the rents had been paid into the proper bank account each month, and he had no doubt that proper receipts would exist. If Italy was nothing else, it was a place where documented evidence always existed, and that in abundance; what was often illusory was the reality it was meant to reflect.
Vianello saw it as quickly as he did, and said, ‘I think there might be a more casual way to do this.’
‘Asking neighbours, you mean?’
‘Yes, sir. I think people would be reluctant to tell us if they were involved in anything like this. It could mean they’d lose their apartments, and anyone would lie to avoid that.’ Vianello, he had no doubt, would lie to save his apartment. After sober reflection, Brunetti realized he would, too, as any Venetian would.
‘Then I suppose it’s better to ask around in the neighbourhoods. Send women officers to do it, Vianello.’
Vianello’s smile was one of pure delight.
‘And take this. It should be easier to check,’ Brunetti said, pulling the second list from the file and handing it to him. ‘These are people who are receiving monthly payments from the Lega. See if you can find out how many of them live at the addresses listed for them, and then see if you can find out if they’re among what used to be called the deserving poor.’
‘If I were a betting man,’ Vianello, who was, said, ‘I’d bet ten thousand lire that most of them don’t live at the addresses given here.’ He paused a moment, flipped at the list with the tips of his fingers, and added, ‘And I’d make another one that many of them are neither deserving nor poor.’
‘No bet, Vianello.’
‘I didn’t think there would be. What about Santomauro?’
‘According to everything Signorina Elettra could find, he’s clean.’
‘No one’s clean,’ Vianello shot back.
‘Careful, then.’
‘That’s better.’
‘There’s something else. Gallo spoke to the manufacturer of the shoes that were found with Mascari, and he gave him a list of the stores in the area where the shoes were sold. I’d like you to get someone going round the stores on the list and see if they can find anyone who remembers selling them. They’re size forty-one, so it’s possible that whoever sold them might remember who they sold them to.’
‘What about the dress?’ Vianello asked.
Brunetti had received the report two days ago, and the results were just as he had feared. ‘It’s one of those cheap things you can buy at the open-air markets anywhere. Red, some sort of cheap synthetic material. Couldn’t have cost more than forty thousand lire. The tag’s been ripped out of it, but Gallo’s trying to trace it back to the manufacturer.’
‘Any chance of that?’
Brunetti shrugged. ‘There’s a much better chance with the shoes. At least we know the manufacturer and the stores where they were sold.’
Vianello nodded. ‘Anything else, sir?’
‘Yes. Call the Finance Police and tell them we’re going to need one of their best people, more than that if they’ll let us have them, to take a look at whatever papers we get from the Banca di Verona and from the Lega.’
Surprised, Vianello asked, ‘You actually got Patta to ask for a court order? To make a bank give up papers?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, managing neither to smile nor to preen.
‘This business must have upset him more than I thought. A court order.’ Vianello shook his head at the marvel of it.
‘And could you ask Signorina Elettra to come up here?’
‘Of course,’ Vianello said, getting to his feet. He held up the lists. ‘I’ll divide up the names and get to work.’ He walked over to the door, but before he left, he asked the same question Brunetti had been asking himself all morning, ‘How could they risk something like this? All it needs is one person, one leak, and the whole thing would come tumbling down.’
‘I have no idea; well, none that makes sense.’ To himself, he reflected that it might be no more than yet another manifestation of a kind of group madness, a frenzy of risk-taking that had abandoned all sane limits. In recent years, the country had been shaken by arrests and convictions for bribery at all levels, from industrialists and builders to cabinet ministers. Billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions of lire had been paid out in bribes, and so Italians had come to believe that corruption was the normal business of government. Hence the behaviour of the Lega della Moralita and the men who ran it could be seen as absolutely normal in a country run mad with venality.
Brunetti shook himself free from this speculation, looked towards the door, and saw that Vianello was gone.
He was quickly replaced by Signorina Elettra, who came through the door that Vianello had left open. ‘You wanted to see me, Commissario?’
‘Yes, Signorina,’ he said, waving her to the seat beside his desk. ‘Vianello just went downstairs with the lists you gave me. It seems a number of the people on one of them are paying far more in rent than what the Lega is declaring, so I want to know if the people on the second list are really getting the money the Vega says it’s giving them.’
As he spoke, Signorina Elettra wrote quickly, head bent down over her notebook.
‘I’d like to ask you, if you aren’t busy with anything else – what is it you’re working on down in the Archives this week?’ he asked.
‘What?’ she asked and half rose to her feet. Her notebook fell to the floor, and she bent to pick it up. ‘I beg your pardon, Commissario,’ she said when she had the notebook open on her lap again. ‘In the Archives? I was trying to see if there was anything there about Avvocato Santomauro or perhaps Signor Mascari.’
‘And what luck have you had?’
‘None, unfortunately. Neither of them has ever been in trouble with the police. Absolutely nothing.’
‘No one in the building has any idea of the way things are filed down there, Signorina, but I’d like you to see what you can find about the people on those lists.’
‘On both, Dottore?’
She had prepared them, so she knew that they contained more than two hundred names. ‘Perhaps you could begin with the second one, the people who receive money. The list has their names and addresses, so you can check at the city hall and find out which of them are registered here as residents.’ Though it was a holdover from the past, the law which required all citizens to register officially in the city where they resided and to inform the authorities of any change in address made it easy to trace the movements and background of anyone who came under official scrutiny.
‘I’d like you to check the people on that list, find out if any of them have criminal records, either here or in other
