Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

‘How much?’

‘Two and a half million lire.’

‘A month?’

‘Yes, though sometimes I give him a few months in advance.’

‘Do you know who this man is?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, but I’ve seen him on the street here a few times.’

Brunetti realized there would be time to get a description later and let that pass. ‘And what about the Lega? How are they involved?’

‘When we told this man that we were interested in the apartment, he suggested a price, but we bargained him down to two and a half million.’ Ratti said this with ill-disguised self-satisfaction.

‘And the Lega?’ Brunetti asked.

‘He told us that we would receive application forms from the Lega and that we were to fill them out and return them, and that we would be able to move into the apartment within two weeks of that.’

Signora Ratti broke in here. ‘He also told us not to tell anyone about how we had got the apartment.’

‘Has anyone asked you?’

‘Some friends of ours in Milano,’ she answered, ‘but we told them we found it through a rental agency.’

‘And the person who gave you the number – do you know how he got it?’

‘He told us someone had given it to him at a party.’

‘Do you remember the month and year when you made that original call?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Why?’ Ratti asked, immediately suspicious.

‘I’d like to have a clearer idea of when this began,’ Brunetti lied, thinking that he could have their phone records checked for calls to Venice at that time.

Though he looked and sounded sceptical, Ratti answered. ‘It was in March, two years ago. Towards the end of the month. We moved in here at the beginning of May.’

‘I see,’ said Brunetti. ‘And since you’ve been living in the apartment, have you had anything to do with the Lega?’

‘No, nothing,’ Ratti said.

‘What about receipts?’ Brunetti asked.

Ratti shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘We get one from the bank every month.’

‘For how much?’

‘Two hundred and twenty thousand.’

‘Then why didn’t you want to show it to Sergeant Vianello?’

His wife broke in again and answered for him. ‘We didn’t want to get involved in anything.’

‘Mascari?’ Brunetti suddenly asked.

Ratti’s nervousness seemed to increase. ‘What do you mean?’

‘When the director of the bank that sent you the receipts for the rent was killed, you didn’t find it strange?’

‘No, why should I?’ Ratti said, putting anger into his voice. ‘I read about how he died. I assumed he was killed by one of his “tricks”.’

‘Has anyone been in touch with you recently about the apartment?’

‘No, no one.’

‘If you should happen to receive a call or perhaps a visit from the man you pay the rent to, I expect you to call us immediately.’

‘Yes, of course, Commissario,’ Ratti said, restored to his role as irreproachable citizen.

Suddenly sick of them, their posing, their designer clothes, Brunetti said, ‘You can go downstairs with Sergeant Vianello. Please give him as detailed a description as you can of the man you pay the rent to.’ Then, to Vianello, ‘If it sounds like anyone we might know, let them take a look at some pictures.’

Vianello nodded and opened the door. The Rattis both stood, but neither made any effort to shake Brunetti’s hand. The professor took his wife’s arm for the short trip to the door, then stood back to allow her to pass through it in front of him. Vianello glanced across at Brunetti, allowed himself the smallest of smiles, and followed them out of the office, closing the door after them.

Chapter Twenty-Four

His conversation with Paola that night was short. She asked if there was any news, repeated her suggestion that she come down for a few days; she thought she could leave the children alone at the hotel, but Brunetti told her it was too hot even to think of coming to the city.

He spent the rest of the evening in the company of the Emperor Nero, whom Tacitus described as being ‘corrupted by every lust, natural and unnatural’. He went to sleep only after reading the description of the burning of Rome, which Tacitus seemed to attribute to Nero’s having gone through a marriage ceremony with a man, during which the emperor shocked even the members of his dissolute court by ‘putting on the bridal veil’. Everywhere, transvestites.

The next morning, Brunetti, ignorant of the fact that the story of Burrasca’s arrest had appeared in that morning’s Corriere, a story that made no mention of Signora Patta, attended the funeral of Maria Nardi. The Chiesa dei Gesuiti was crowded, filled with her friends and family and with most of the police of the city. Officer Scarpa from Mestre attended, explaining that Sergeant Gallo could not get away from the trial in Milan and would be there for at least another three days. Even Vice-Questore Patta attended, looking sombre in a dark blue suit. Though he knew it was a sentimental and no doubt politically incorrect view, Brunetti could not rid himself of the idea that it was worse for a woman to die in the course of police duty than a man. When the Mass was finished, he waited on the steps of the church while the coffin was carried out by six uniformed policemen. When her husband emerged, weeping brokenly and staggering with grief, Brunetti turned his eyes to the left and looked out across the waters of the laguna towards Murano. He was still standing there when Vianello came up to him and touched him on the arm.

‘Commissario?’

He came back. ‘Yes, Vianello?’

‘I’ve got a probable identification from those people.’

‘When did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t know until this morning. Yesterday afternoon, they looked at a number of pictures, but they said they weren’t sure. I think they were but wanted to talk to their lawyer. In any case, they were back in this morning, at nine, and they identified Pietro Malfatti.’

Brunetti gave a silent whistle. Malfatti had been in and out of their hands for years; he had a record for violent crimes, among them rape and attempted murder, but the accusations seemed always to dissipate before Malfatti came to trial, when witnesses changed their minds or said that they had been wrong in their original identification. He had been sent away twice, once for living off the earnings of a prostitute, and once for attempting to extort protection money from the owner of a bar. The bar had burned down during the two years Malfatti was in jail.

‘Did they identify him positively?’

‘Both of them were pretty sure.’

‘Do we have an address for him?’

‘The last address we had was an apartment in Mestre, but he hasn’t lived there for more than a year.’

‘Friends? Women?’

‘We’re checking.’

‘What about relatives?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that. It ought to be in his file.’

‘See who he’s got. If it’s someone close, a mother or a brother, get someone into an apartment near them and watch for him. No,’ he said, remembering what little he knew of Malfatti’s history, ‘get two.’

‘Yes, sir. Anything else?’

‘The papers from the bank and from the Lega?’