About Face

‘Do you mean Maggior Guarino, sir?’

‘Yes. Guarino. Whatever he called himself.’ Patta’s voice had grown more strident after he said the name, Guarino the source of his anger. ‘Stupid bastard,’ Patta muttered, surprising Brunetti by his unaccustomed use of bad language, but not making it clear whether he was referring to Guarino or the person who had called about him.

Guarino had perhaps not been telling the complete truth, but he was by no means stupid, nor did Brunetti think he was a bastard. But Brunetti made no mention of these judgements and asked, voice level, ‘What’s happened, sir?’

‘He’s got himself killed: that’s what’s happened. Shot in the back of the head,’ Patta said with no diminution of his anger, though it seemed now to be aimed at Guarino for having been killed. Murdered.

Possibilities clamoured for attention, but Brunetti pushed them away, waiting for Patta to explain. He kept the same intent expression on his face and his eyes on Patta. The Vice-Questore raised a fist and slammed it on the surface of his desk. ‘Some captain from the Carabinieri called this morning. He wanted to know if I’d had a visitor last week. He was very cagey, didn’t name the visitor, just asked if I’d had a visit from an official from out of town.’ Petulance replaced anger in his face and voice as Patta said, ‘I told him I have lots of visitors. How did he expect me to remember them all?’

Brunetti had no answer and Patta continued. ‘At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. But I had a suspicion he meant Guarino. It’s not like I have a lot of visitors, is it?’ Seeing Brunetti’s confusion at this contradiction, Patta deigned to clarify. ‘He was the only person who came last week that I didn’t know. Had to be him.’

The Vice-Questore pushed himself suddenly to his feet, took a step away from his desk, then turned and sat down again. ‘He asked if he could send me a photo.’ Brunetti had no need to feign confusion. ‘Imagine that,’ Patta went on. ‘They’d taken it with a telefonino and he sent it to me. As if he expected me to recognize him from what was left of his face.’

This last phrase stunned Brunetti; it was not until some moments had passed that he was able to ask, ‘And did you?’

‘Yes. Of course. The bullet went in at an angle, so only the chin was damaged. I could still recognize him.’

‘How was he killed?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I just told you,’ Patta said in a loud voice. ‘Weren’t you paying attention? He was shot. In the back of the head. That’s enough to kill most people, wouldn’t you think?’

Brunetti raised a hand. ‘Perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly, sir. Did this man who called tell you anything about the circumstances?’

‘Nothing. All he wanted was for me to say whether I recognized him or not.’

‘What did you say?’

‘That I wasn’t sure,’ Patta answered and gave Brunetti a sharp look.

Brunetti bridled the impulse to ask his superior why he had done that.

Patta followed on by saying, ‘I didn’t want to give them anything until I knew more.’ It took Brunetti very little time to translate this from Patta-speak into Italian: it meant that Patta wanted to pass the responsibility on to someone else. Hence this conversation.

‘Did he tell you why he called you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘It seems they knew he had an appointment at the Questura in Venice, so they called and asked to talk to the person in charge to see if he had come here.’ Indeed, Brunetti reflected, even a bullet through a man’s skull could not prevent Patta from that little burst of pride: ‘the person in charge’.

‘When did he call, sir?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Half an hour ago.’ With no attempt to disguise his irritation, Patta added, ‘I’ve been trying to locate you since then. But you weren’t in your office.’ As if to himself, Patta muttered, ‘Questioning a witness.’

Ignoring this, Brunetti asked, ‘When did it happen?’

‘He didn’t say,’ Patta answered vaguely, as if he saw no reason why the question mattered.

By force of will, Brunetti removed all trace of interest from his expression while he allowed his mind to lunge ahead. ‘Did he say where he was calling from?’

‘From there,’ Patta answered in the voice he used for addressing the weak of mind and character. ‘Where they found him.’

‘Ah,’ Brunetti said, ‘so that’s when he sent you the photo.’

‘Very clever, Brunetti,’ Patta snapped. ‘Of course that’s when he sent me the photo.’

‘I see, I see,’ Brunetti said, stalling for time.

‘I’ve called the Lieutenant,’ Patta said, and again Brunetti washed all expression from his face. ‘But he’s in Chioggia and can’t get there until the afternoon.’

Brunetti felt his heart tighten at the thought that Patta wanted to involve Scarpa in this. ‘Excellent idea,’ he said, then allowed a bit of enthusiasm to drain from his voice as he added, ‘I just hope the. .’ He dragged his voice to a stop, then repeated, ‘Excellent idea.’

‘What don’t you like about it, Brunetti?’ Patta demanded.

Brunetti this time plastered confusion across his face and did not answer.

‘Tell me, Brunetti,’ Patta said, his voice slipping towards menace.

‘It’s really a question of rank, sir,’ Brunetti said hesitantly, speaking only to keep the bamboo shoots from being stuck under his fingernails. Before Patta could inquire, he explained. ‘You said the man who called was a captain. My only concern is how it’s going to look if we’re represented by a person of lower rank.’ He studied Patta’s body and saw the first tightening of the muscles.

‘It’s not that I have doubts about the Lieutenant,’ he said. ‘But we’ve had jurisdictional trouble with the Carabinieri before, and sending a person of superior rank would eliminate the possibility of that.’

Patta’s eyes were suddenly hooded with mistrust. ‘Who are you talking about, Brunetti?’

Looking as surprised as he could manage, Brunetti said, ‘Why, you, sir. Of course. You should be the person to represent us, sir. After all, as you said yourself, Vice-Questore, you’re the person in charge here.’ Though this rendered the Questore irrelevant, Brunetti doubted that Patta would notice.

Patta’s glance was fierce, filled with unvoiced suspicions, probably ones that Patta did not realize he felt. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said.

Brunetti shrugged, as if to suggest it would have been only a matter of time before he had done so. Patta bestowed his most serious look on Brunetti, then asked, ‘You think it’s important, then?’

‘That you go, sir?’ asked an alert Brunetti.

‘That someone who outranks a captain should go.’

‘You certainly do, sir, and by a great degree.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about me, Brunetti,’ Patta snapped.

Brunetti made no attempt to disguise his inability to understand and said, fresh-faced, ‘But you have to go, Dottore.’ Brunetti suspected that a case of this nature was bound to gather national attention, but this was not something he wanted Patta to realize.

‘You think this investigation will drag on?’ Patta asked.

Brunetti allowed himself to measure out the tiniest of shrugs. ‘I have no way of knowing that, sir, but these cases sometimes tend to.’ Brunetti, as he spoke, had no idea what he meant by ‘these cases’, but the prospect of sustained effort would suffice to discourage Patta.

Patta leaned forward and put a smile on his face. ‘I think, Brunetti, since you were the person who liaised with him, that you should be the one to represent us.’

Brunetti was trying to find the proper tone of moderate resistance when Patta said, ‘He was killed in Marghera, Brunetti. That’s in our territory, so it’s our jurisdiction. It’s the sort of call a commissario would answer, so it makes complete sense for you to go out there and have a look.’

Brunetti started to protest, but Patta cut him short: ‘Take that Griffoni woman along with you. That way there will be two commissari.’ Patta smiled with grim satisfaction, as though he had just come up with a clever move in chess. Or draughts. ‘I want the two of you to go there and see what you can find out.’

Brunetti got to his feet, doing his best to appear disgruntled and unwilling. ‘All right, Vice-Questore, but I don’t think. .’