‘Better.’ She set the glass on the table.
Not knowing if this was a piece of theatre or not, Brunetti decided to wait her out. Companionably, they sipped at their drinks for a while, until Flavia finally asked, ‘How necessary was the guard in the hospital?’
‘Until I have some clearer idea of what’s going on here, I won’t know how necessary anything is,’ he answered.
Her smile was broad. ‘How refreshing it is to hear a public official admit to ignorance,’ she said, reaching forward to place her empty glass on the table.
The champagne gone, her voice changed and grew more serious. ‘Matsuko?’ she asked.
‘Probably.’
‘But how would she know Semenzato? Or know enough about him to know he’d be the person to contact?’
Brunetti considered this. ‘It seems he had a reputation, at least here.’
‘The kind of reputation Matsuko would know about?’
‘Perhaps. She’d worked with antiquities for years, so she probably heard things. And Brett said her family was very rich. Maybe the very rich know about this sort of thing.’
‘Yes, we do,’ she agreed with an offhandedness he was sure was real. ‘It’s almost a private club, as if we’d taken a vow to keep one another’s secrets. And it’s always easy, very easy, to know where to find a crooked tax lawyer - not that there’s any other type, at least not in this country — or someone who can get drugs, or boys, or girls, or someone who’s willing to see that a painting gets from one country to another, and no questions asked. Of course, I’m not sure how these things work in Japan, but I don’t see why there should be any difference. Wealth carries its own passport.’
‘Had you heard anything about Semenzato?’
‘I told you, I met him only that one time, and I didn’t like him, so I wasn’t interested in anything that was said about him. And it’s too late to find out now, since everyone will be busy talking well of him.’ She reached forward and took Brett’s drink and sipped at it. ‘Of course, that will change in a few weeks, and people will go back to telling the truth about him. But now’s not the time to try to find that out.’ She set the glass back on the table.
Though he thought he knew what the answer would be, he still asked, ‘Has Brett said anything about Matsuko? That is, since Semenzato was killed?’
Flavia shook her head. ‘She hasn’t said much about anything. Not since this began.’ She leaned forward and shifted the glass a few millimetres to the left. ‘Brett is afraid of violence. That doesn’t make any sense to me because she’s very brave. We Italian women aren’t, you know. We’re brash and brazen, but we have little physical courage. She’s off in China, living in a tent half of the time, roaming around the country. She even went to Tibet on a bus. She told me that when the Chinese officials refused to give her a visa, she simply forged the papers and went. She’s not afraid of that sort of thing, of the things that most people are terrified of, of getting into official trouble or being arrested. But actual physical violence terrifies her. I think it’s because she lives in her mind so much, solving things there and working them out there. She hasn’t been the same since this happened. She doesn’t want to answer the door. She pretends she doesn’t hear or she waits for me to go and do it. But the reason is that she’s afraid.’
Brunetti wondered why Flavia was telling him all of this. ‘I’ve got to leave next week,’ she said, answering his question. ‘My children have been skiing with their father for two weeks, and they come home then. I’ve cancelled three performances, but I can’t cancel any more. And I don’t want to. I’ve asked her to come with me, but she refuses.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. She won’t say. Or she can’t.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘I think she’d listen to you.’
‘If I said what?’
‘If you asked her to go with me.’
‘To Milan?’
‘Yes. Then, in March, I have to go to Munich for a month. She could come with me.’
‘What about China? Isn’t she supposed to go back there?’
‘And end up with her neck broken on the floor of that pit?’ Even though he knew her anger wasn’t directed at him, he still winced at the sound of it.
‘Has she talked about going back?’ he asked.
‘She hasn’t talked about anything.’
‘Do you know when she was supposed to leave?’
‘I don’t think she had any plan. When she arrived, she said she didn’t have a return reservation.’ She met Brunetti’s inquisitive look. ‘That depended on what she learned from Semenzato.’ From her tone, it was clear that this was only part of the explanation. He waited for her to finish it. ‘But part of it depended on me, I suppose.’ She paused, looked away from Brunetti, then quickly back. ‘She’s managed to get me an invitation to teach master classes there, in Beijing. She wanted me to go back with her.’
‘And?’ Brunetti asked.
Flavia dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand but said only, ‘We hadn’t discussed it before this happened.’
‘And not since?’
