Keeping his eyes straight ahead of them, though no one was any longer coming towards them on the narrow
Brunetti walked on, keeping in step with his sergeant. He glanced aside at him and answered, ‘I think it’s in the arrest report.’
‘Ah,’ Vianello said. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Didn’t you read it?’
Again, Vianello stopped and turned to Brunetti. ‘As it was about your wife, sir, I didn’t think it was right to read it.’ Vianello was known to be loyal to Brunetti, so it was unlikely that Landi, a follower of Scarpa, would have spoken to him about it, and it was he who had arrested Paola and taken her statement.
The two men resumed walking before Brunetti replied, ‘She said that it was wrong to arrange sex-tours and that someone had to stop them.’ He waited to see if Vianello would question him, but when the sergeant did not, he went on, ‘She told me that, since the law wouldn’t do anything about it, she would.’ He paused again, waiting for Vianello’s reaction.
‘Was it your wife the first time?’
Without hesitation, Brunetti answered, ‘Yes.’
Step and step, feet perfectly in line. Finally the sergeant said, ‘Good for her.’
Brunetti turned to stare at Vianello, but all he saw was his heavy profile and long nose. Before he could ask anything, the other stopped and said, ‘If it’s six-o-seven, it should be right round this corner.’ Turning, they found themselves in front of the house.
Mitri’s was the top of three bells and Brunetti pressed it, waited, then pushed it again.
A voice, made sepulchral either by grief or a bad connection, came through the speaker phone, asking who they were.
‘Commissario Brunetti. I’d like to speak to Signora Mitri.’
For a long time there was no answer, then the voice said, ‘Wait a minute’ and was gone.
Much more than one minute passed before the door clicked. Brunetti pushed it open and led the way into a large atrium with two large palm trees growing on either side of a round fountain. Light filtered down from the sky above.
They ducked into the passage in front of them and headed for the back of the building and the stairs. Just as in Brunetti’s own building, the paint on the walls was flaking off, victim of the salt rising up by absorption from the waters below. Flecks the size of hundred-lire coins lay either swept or kicked to the sides of the staircase, exposing the brick walls below. When they reached the first landing, they could see the horizontal line that marked the point the dampness had reached: above it, the stairs were free of flecks of paint and the walls smooth and white.
Brunetti thought of the estimate an engineering company had given the seven owners of the apartments in his own building to correct the dampness, of the enormity of the sum and, depressed, immediately pushed it from his mind.
At the top the door stood open and a young girl about Chiara’s age stood behind it, her body half hidden.
Brunetti stopped and said, not offering his hand, ‘I’m Commissario Brunetti and this is Sergeant Vianello. We’d like to speak to Signora Mitri.’
The girl didn’t move. ‘My grandmother isn’t well.’ Her voice was uneven with nervousness.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I’m sorry about what happened to your grandfather. That’s why I’m here, because we’d like to do something about it.’
‘My grandmother says there’s nothing anyone can do.’
‘Perhaps we can find the person who did it.’
The girl considered this. As tall as Chiara, she had brown hair parted in the middle that fell to her shoulders on either side. She would not grow to be a beauty, Brunetti thought, but that had nothing to do with her features, which were both fine and regular: wide-spaced eyes and a well-defined mouth. Instead, her plainness was made inevitable by a total lack of animation when she spoke or listened. Her placidity and inertness conveyed the sense that she was not concerned with what she was saying or, in a way, not really participating in whatever was said. ‘May we come in?’ he asked, stepping forward as he spoke, either to make her decision easier or to force her into making it.
She didn’t say anything but stepped back and held open the door for them. Both men politely asked permission to enter and followed her into the apartment.
A long central corridor led from the door to a bank of four Gothic windows at the other end. Brunetti’s sense of orientation told him that the light must be coming in from Rio di San Girolamo, especially as the distance to the buildings visible through them was so great: the only open space that large must be the expanse of the Rio.
The girl led them into the first room on the right, a large sitting-room with a fireplace flanked by two windows, each more than two metres high. She waved at the sofa that stood facing the fireplace, but neither man sat.
‘Would you please tell your grandmother we’re here?’ Brunetti asked.
She nodded but said, ‘I don’t think she wants to talk to anyone.’
‘Please tell her it’s very important,’ Brunetti insisted. Thinking it best to make it evident that he intended to stay, he removed his overcoat and put it over the back of a chair, then sat at one end of the sofa. He motioned to Vianello to join him, which he did, first laying his coat on top of Brunetti’s, then taking a seat at the other end of the sofa. Vianello removed his notebook from his pocket and clipped his pen to the front cover. Neither man spoke.
The girl left the room and both men used the opportunity to look around. A large gilded mirror sat above a table on which stood an enormous spray of red gladioli, their colour and number reflected by the glass, so that they seemed to multiply and fill the room. A silk carpet, Brunetti thought it a Nain, lay in front of the fireplace, so close to the sofa that whoever sat there would have to put their feet on it. An oak chest stood against the wall opposite the flowers, on its surface a large brass salver gone grey with age. The wealth and opulence, though discreet, were evident.
Before they could say anything, the door to the room opened and a woman in her fifties came in. She was stout-bodied and wore a grey wool dress that came well below her knees. She had thick ankles and small feet in shoes that looked uncomfortably narrow. Her hair and make-up were perfectly arranged and gave evidence of great expenditure of time and effort. Her eyes were lighter than her granddaughter’s, her features thicker: in fact, there was little familial resemblance between them save that strange placidity of manner.
Both men got to their feet immediately and Brunetti moved towards her. ‘Signora Mitri?’ he asked.
She nodded but said nothing.
‘I’m Commissario Brunetti and this is Sergeant Vianello. We’d like to speak to you for a few moments about your husband and about this terrible thing that has happened to him.’ Hearing this, she closed her eyes but remained silent.
Her face had about it the same absence of animation that was so noticeable on her granddaughter’s, and Brunetti found himself wondering if the daughter in Rome, whose child she must be, displayed a similar immobility.
‘What do you want to know?’ Signora Mitri asked, still standing in front of Brunetti. Her voice had the high pitch that was common among post-menopausal women. Though Brunetti knew she was Venetian, she chose to speak in Italian, as had he.
Before he answered, Brunetti stood away from the sofa and waved his hand towards his former place. She took it automatically and only then did the two men sit, Vianello where he had been and Brunetti in a velvet-covered easy chair that faced the window.
‘Signora, I’d like to know if your husband ever spoke to you of enemies or of someone who would wish to do him harm.’
She started to shake her head in denial even before Brunetti had finished asking the question, but she did not speak, letting the gesture serve as response.
‘He never mentioned disagreements with other people, business associates? Perhaps of some arrangement or contract that didn’t go as planned?’
‘No, nothing,’ she finally said.
‘On the personal level, then. Did he ever have trouble with neighbours, perhaps with a friend?’
