Acqua Alta

He turned left and walked down to the first large cross street, Calle Giacinto Gallina, and there he found, just as he remembered from his first visit, the news stand that stood at the corner, in front of die grammar school, facing on to the street that was the main artery of this neighbourhood. And, as though she hadn’t moved from where he had seen her last, he found Signora Maria, seated on a high stool inside the newsstand, her upper body wrapped in a hand-knitted scarf that made at least three passes around her neck. Her face was red, either with cold or an early morning brandy, perhaps both, and her short hair seemed even whiter by the contrast.

‘Buon giorno, Signora Maria,’ he said, smiling up at her ensconced behind the papers and magazines.

‘Buon giorno, Commissario,’ she answered, as casually as if he were an old customer.

‘Signora, since you know who I am, you probably know why I’m here.’

‘L’americana?’ she asked, but it really wasn’t a question.

He sensed motion behind him; suddenly a hand shot forward and took a newspaper from one of the stacks in front of Maria, extending a ten-thousand-lire note. ‘Tell your mother the plumber will come at four this afternoon,’ Maria said, handing back change.

‘Grazie, Maria,’ the young woman said and was gone.

‘How can I help you?’ Maria asked him.

‘You must see whoever passes this way, signora.’ She nodded. ‘If you see anyone lingering in the neighbourhood who shouldn’t be here, would you call the Questura?’

‘Of course, Commissario. I’ve been keeping an eye on things since she got home, but there’s been no one.’

Once again a hand, this one clearly male, shot in front of Brunetti and pulled down a copy of La Nuova. It disappeared for a moment, then returned with a thousand-lire note and some small change, which Maria took with--a muttered ‘Grazie’.

‘Maria, have you seen Piero?’ the man asked.

‘He’s down at your sister’s house. He said he’d wait for you there.’

‘Grazie,’ the man said and was gone.

He had come to the right person. ‘If you call, just ask for me,’ he said, reaching for his wallet to give her one of his cards.

‘That’s all right, Dottor Brunetti,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the number. I’ll call if I see anything.’ She raised a hand in a friendly gesture, and he noticed that the tips of her woollen gloves were cut off, leaving her fingers free to handle change.

‘Can I offer you something, signora?’ he asked, nodding with his head to the bar that stood on the opposite corner.

‘A coffee would help against the cold,’ she answered. ‘Un caffe corretto,’ she suggested, and he nodded. If he spent the entire morning sitting motionless in this damp cold, he’d want a shot of grappa in his coffee, too. He thanked her again and went into the bar, where he paid for the caffe corretto and asked that it be taken out to Signora Maria. It was clear from the barman’s response that this was standard procedure in the neighbourhood. Brunetti couldn’t remember if there was a Minister of Information in the current government; if so, Signora Maria was a natural for the job.

At the Questura, he went quickly up to his office and found it, surprisingly, neither tropical nor arctic. For a moment he entertained the fantasy that the heating system had finally been fixed, but then a shriek of escaping steam from the radiator under his window put an end to it. The explanation, he realized lay in the thick sheaf of papers on his desk. Signorina Elettra must have put them there recently, opened the window for a moment, then closed it before she left.

He hung his overcoat behind the door and walked over to his desk. He sat, picked up the papers and began to read through them. The first was a copy of Semenzato’s bank statements, going back four years. Brunetti had no idea how much the museum director had been paid and made a note to find out, but he did know the bank statement of a rich man when he saw one. Large deposits had been made with no apparent regularity; just so, amounts of fifty million and more had been taken out, again, with no apparent pattern. At his death, Semenzato’s balance had been two hundred million lire, an enormous amount to keep in a savings account. The second page of the statement noted that he also had double that amount invested in government bonds. A wealthy wife? Good luck on the stock market? Or something else?

The next pages listed foreign calls made from his office number. There were scores of them, but, again, no pattern that Brunetti could discern.

The last three pages were copies of Semenzato’s credit card receipts for the last two years, and from them Brunetti got an idea of the airline tickets he had paid for. He ran his eye quickly down the list, amazed at the frequency and distance of the trips. The museum director, it seemed, would spend a weekend in Bangkok as casually as another man might go to his beach house, would go to Taipei for three days and stop in London for the night on his way back to Venice. A copy of the statements from his two charge cards accompanied the itinerary and gave proof that Semenzato did not stint himself in any way when he travelled.

Beneath these, he found a sheaf of fax papers, clipped together at the top. All of these related to Carmello La Capra. On the first sheet, Signorina Elettra had pencilled the observation, ‘Interesting man, this one.’ Salvatore’s father, it appeared, had no visible means of support; that is, he appeared to have no job or fixed employment. Instead, on his tax return for the last three years, he listed his profession as ‘consultant’, a term which, when added to the fact that he was from Palermo, sounded alarm bells in Brunetti’s mind. His bank statement showed that large transfers had been made to his various accounts in interesting, one might even say suspicious, currencies: Colombian pesos, Ecuadorean escudos, and Pakistani rupees. Brunetti found copies of the bill of sale of the palazzo La Capra had bought two years ago; he must have paid in cash, for there was no corresponding withdrawal from any of his accounts.

Not only had Signorina Elettra succeeded in getting copies of La Capra’s bank statements, but she had also managed to provide copies of his credit card receipts as complete as those she had obtained for Semenzato. Well aware of how long it took to obtain this information through legal channels, Brunetti had no choice but to accept the fact that she must be doing it unofficially, which probably meant illegally. He admitted this, and he read on. Sotheby’s and the Metropolitan Opera box office while in New York, Christie’s and Covent Garden in London, and the Sydney Opera House, apparently while on the way back from a weekend in Taipei. La Capra had stayed, of course,