Beastly Things

home, and go home he would.

To Brunetti’s great relief, everyone was there when he arrived, and to his greater relief, after they said hello and kissed him, they left him to whatever he chose while they went about the business of their lives. He poured himself a glass of white wine and took a chair out on to the balcony, where he sat for an hour, watching the light dim and disappear, sipping at his wine, and being grateful that the people he loved all had lives and things to busy themselves with that had nothing at all to do with the dreadful lies and deceptions with which his days were filled.

The next morning dawned sweetly for Brunetti, though that sensation diminished the nearer he got to the Questura and what he decided would have to be another conversation with Patta. He realized he had no choice but to tell his superior what he had learned and where those facts had led his suspicions. Like the composer of an opera, he had notes and arias, a range of singers, the sketch of a plot, but there was as yet no coherent libretto.

‘She’s Maurizio De Rivera’s daughter, and you think her husband knows something about a murder and isn’t telling you?’ Patta erupted after Brunetti recounted his conversation with Papetti. Had Brunetti told him that the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro was a hoax, Patta could have been no more indignant.

‘You know who he is, don’t you, Brunetti?’ his superior demanded.

Ignoring this, Brunetti said, ‘He might want to know what sort of man his daughter is married to.’

‘The truth’s the last thing a man wants to know about the man his daughter’s married to.’ Then, after a pause so long that Brunetti sensed Patta was taking careful aim, Patta let fire. ‘You should know that.’

Brunetti failed to contain his response, but he did manage to limit it to a glance, quickly turned away. It must, however, have sufficed to show Patta that he had finally gone too far, for he added immediately, in a transparent attempt to back-pedal, ‘You’ve got a daughter, after all. You’ll want to believe she’s married to a good man, won’t you?’

Brunetti’s heart was still pounding at the insult, so it took him some time to find an answer. Finally he said, ‘De Rivera might have different standards from other fathers, Vice-Questore. If his daughter or her husband were involved in this killing in any way, he might not be bothered by things like obstruction of justice, lying to a public official in the pursuit of his duties, perhaps even direct support in the commission of the crime.’ Then, after a pause, he added, ‘After all, he’s been tried for the first two.’

‘And acquitted,’ Patta snapped back.

Brunetti ignored the remark and went on, ‘Nava was stabbed in the back and somehow taken to a place where he could be pushed into a canal. That suggests the participation of two people.’ Brunetti was calmer now and in greater control of his voice.

‘And why does this have to involve Papetti?’ Patta asked loftily.

Brunetti stopped himself from blurting out that it simply felt right, well aware of how far he was likely to get with that. ‘It doesn’t necessarily, Dottore. But he knows something, or he knows things, that he’s not telling. He knew about the affair between Nava and Borelli: his surprise that I knew about it was evidence of that. And if he recommended her for the job as his assistant, then she’s got some hold on him,’ Brunetti said, dismissing out of hand the possibility of the generosity that is one of the first signs of love.

Patta drew his lips together in a tight, out-thrust circle, a habit Brunetti had come, over the years, to see as a visual suggestion that he was going to consider things reasonably. The Vice-Questore raised his right hand and studied his fingernails. Brunetti had no idea whether he actually saw them or if this was merely another physical manifestation of thought.

At last Patta lowered his hand and relaxed. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to bring the Borelli woman in here and ask her a few questions.’

‘Such as?’

‘I won’t know that until I have some more information.’

‘What information?’ Patta asked.

‘About some apartments she owns. About Papetti and Nava and how she got her job as Papetti’s assistant. And how her salary was decided. About the slaughterhouse and how well she knows Dottor Meucci,’ he added, a scenario taking shape.

‘Who’s he?’ Patta demanded, giving evidence that he had not read the reports on the case.

‘Nava’s predecessor.’

‘What’s she got, this Borelli woman – a thing for veterinarians?’

Brunetti was tempted to smile at hearing Patta so unthinkingly ask this very interesting question.

‘I’ve no idea, sir. I’m merely curious in a general way.’

‘In a general way?’ Patta repeated slowly. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, sir, that I don’t have a clear idea yet of how all of these people are connected or of what continues to hold them together. But something does, because no one is telling me anything.’ Speaking more to himself than to Patta, Brunetti said, ‘All I need is the way in.’

Patta set his palms firmly on his desk. ‘All right, bring her in and see what she has to say. But, remember, I want to know anything you learn about Papetti before you act on it.’

‘Of course, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said and repaired to the outer office, where he saw the face of Signorina Elettra rising behind the screen of her computer.

‘I’ve accessed the files of the ULSS office in Treviso, sir, since they keep the same records the slaughterhouse does,’ she said. ‘It was easier than trying to get into those of the macello.’ Thoughtfully, she added, ‘Besides, in the unlikely event that any traces of my presence were left, it’s always better to leave them in a government agency than in a private business.’

Not wanting to offend Signorina Elettra, who was perhaps waiting for him to query her use of ‘accessed’ or ‘always’, perhaps even ‘unlikely event’, Brunetti limited himself to a mild ‘Tell me.’

‘I’ve gone back four years, sir, and to make it easier to read, I’ve put it into a graph.’ She nodded to the screen.

She moved the mouse, clicked, clicked again, and a line graph appeared, above which was written ‘Preganziol’. The months of the year were listed at the top; the side held numbers that ascended from 0 to 100.

The line began, in January four years before, at three and zigzagged its way to four the following month, then wiggled back to three the next. This pattern continued for the next two years. In the third year it followed the same erratic path upwards to five before sinking back to three, where it remained until November, when it catapulted up to eight and, rising steadily, finished the year at twelve. The line jumped off from January and hit thirteen, stayed there for a month, and then in March moved up to fourteen. The chart ended that month.

‘So whatever this number reflects,’ Brunetti said, ‘it moved upward suddenly at about the time Nava began working at the macello and continued to do so…’ He leaned forward and tapped at the end of the line, ‘… until the month before his death.’

Signorina Elettra scrolled the page down, allowing Brunetti to read the caption: Percentage of animals rejected by the competent authority as unfit for slaughter.

‘Unfit for slaughter.’ Which probably meant the same thing as ‘Unfit for human consumption.’ So there it was. The cowardly dog had defied the robbers, but this cowardly dog had not managed to turn on the robbers and save anyone, and the family where he had been living had not been able to take him back in and love him again, even though he still wasn’t very brave.

‘So he was doing his job,’ Brunetti said, then added, to Signorina Elettra’s confusion, ‘just like the dog.’ But he quickly added something she did understand, so clear was it made by the graph: ‘And his predecessor was not.’

‘Unless we’re back in Exodus and plagues were unleashed upon the land and pestilence upon the herds the day he started working there,’ she added.

‘Unlikely,’ Brunetti observed, then asked, ‘Anything else about Signorina Borelli?’

‘Aside from the list of her properties, I now have some information about her investments and her bank accounts.’

‘Plural?’

‘Here in the city, one in Mestre where her salary is deposited, and one in the postal banking system.’ She smiled and said, with badly disguised contempt, ‘People seem to believe that no one would think to look there.’