About Face

Guarino’s voice trailed off.

It occurred to Brunetti that the other man could as easily have stopped himself from saying ‘who we can trust’ as anything else. ‘It’s strange that he never set it up so that you could have a look at this man,’ he said. ‘After all, you knew about him for a long time.’

Guarino said nothing.

There were countless questions to be asked, Brunetti realized. Had a truck even been stopped and the driver asked for papers? What if there was an accident?

‘You talked to the drivers?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘And they weren’t very helpful.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It could mean that they drove where they were told to drive and didn’t give it a thought.’ Brunetti’s expression showed how believable he found this, so Guarino added, ‘Or that Ranzato’s murder helped to wipe out their memories.’

‘You think it’s worth trying to find out which?’

‘My guess is no. People up here don’t have a lot of direct experience with the Camorra, but they’ve already learned not to cause them trouble.’

‘If this is the way it is already, then there’s no hope of trying to stop them, is there?’ Brunetti asked.

Guarino got to his feet and leaned across Brunetti’s desk to shake his hand, saying, ‘You can reach me at the Marghera station.’

Brunetti shook his hand. ‘I’ll ask around.’

‘I’d be grateful.’ Guarino gave Brunetti a long look, nodded as if he believed him, and walked quickly to the door. He let himself out quietly.

‘Oh my, oh my, oh my,’ Brunetti muttered to himself. He sat at his desk for some time, thinking over what he had been told, then went down to Signorina Elettra’s office. She looked up from her computer screen as he came in. The winter sun streamed through the window of her office, illuminating the roses he had seen earlier, and her shirt, which managed to make the roses look dingy.

‘If you’ve got time, there’s something I’d like to ask you to look into,’ he said.

‘For you or for Maggior Guarino?’ she asked.

‘For both of us, I think,’ he answered, conscious of the warmth with which she pronounced the other man’s name.

‘In December, a man named Stefano Ranzato was killed in his office in Tessera,’ he said. ‘During a robbery.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ she said, then asked, ‘And the Maggiore is in charge?’

‘Yes.’

‘How can I help you both?’ she asked.

‘He has reason to believe that his killer might live close to San Marcuola.’ This was not exactly what Guarino had told him, but it was close enough to the truth. ‘The Maggiore, as you noticed, is not Venetian, and it turns out no one else in his squad is.’

‘Ah,’ she exclaimed, ‘the infinite wisdom of the Carabinieri.’

As if he had not heard her, Brunetti went on, ‘They’ve already checked the arrest records for the area around San Marcuola.’

‘For violent crime or assault?’ she asked.

‘Both, I imagine.’

‘Did the Maggiore say anything else about the murderer?’

‘That he was about thirty, good-looking, and dressed expensively.’

‘Well, that cuts the number down to about a million.’

Brunetti did not bother to reply.

‘San Marcuola, eh?’ she asked. She sat silent for some time; as he waited, he saw her touch her cuff and button it closed. It was after eleven o’clock, yet there was no wrinkle to be seen in either of the stark cuffs of her blouse. Should he warn her to be careful about cutting her wrists on the edges?

She tilted her head and glanced at the space above Patta’s door while one hand idly unbuttoned and rebuttoned the same cuff. ‘The doctors are a possibility,’ Brunetti said after some time.

She looked at him in open surprise, then smiled. ‘Ah, of course,’ she said appreciatively. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘I don’t know if Barbara. .’ Brunetti prompted, naming her sister, a doctor, who had in the past spoken to him but had always made a clear distinction between what she could and could not tell the police.

Signorina Elettra’s answer was immediate. ‘I don’t think we’ll have to ask her. I know two doctors who have offices near there. I’ll ask them. People talk to them, so they might have heard something.’ In response to Brunetti’s look, she said, ‘They’re the ones Barbara would ask, anyway.’

He nodded and said, ‘I’ll ask down in the squad room.’ The men there usually knew about the lives of the people living in the neighbourhoods they patrolled.

As he was turning away, Brunetti paused as if remembering something, and said, ‘There’s another thing, Signorina.’

‘Yes, Commissario?’

‘A part of another investigation, well, not really an investigation, but something I’ve been asked to look into: I’d like you to see what you can find about a businessman here in the city, Maurizio Cataldo.’

Her ‘ah’ could have meant anything.

‘And his wife, as well, if there’s anything about her.’

‘Franca Marinello, sir?’ she said, head lowered above the paper on which she had written Cataldo’s name.

‘Yes.’

‘Anything specific?’

‘No,’ Brunetti said, then, offhandedly, ‘The usual things: business, investments.’

‘Are you interested in their personal life, sir?’

‘Not particularly, no,’ Brunetti said, then quickly added, ‘But if you find anything that might be interesting, make a note of it, would you?’

‘I’ll have a look.’

He thanked her and left.

6

On the stairs back to his own office, Brunetti’s thoughts moved away from the unknown dead man to the people he had met at the dinner party the night before. He decided that the business of asking Paola for gossip — perhaps best to be honest with himself and call it what it was — about Cataldo and his wife could be done after lunch.

January had declared itself unkind this year and had assailed the city with damp and cold. A grey cloud had taken up residence over northern Italy, a cloud that begrudged the mountains snow at the same time as it kept the temperature warm enough for fog but no rain.

The streets had thus not been washed clean for weeks, though a viscous layer of condensation covered them every night. The one acqua alta, four days before, had done nothing but shift the dirt and grime around without leaving the streets any cleaner. Undispersed by bora or tramontana, the air from the mainland had gradually oozed eastward and now spread across the city, nudging the levels of pollution higher each day, covering Venice in who knew what sort of chemical miasma.

Paola had responded to the situation by asking them to take their shoes off before coming into the house,