About Face

‘I haven’t been able to find that out, sir.’

‘I see. Anything else?’

‘He has, in the past, rented trucks to Signor Cataldo.’ Her face was motionless when she said this, almost as though she had never heard the name before.

‘I see,’ Brunetti remarked, then asked, ‘and what else?’

‘The nephew, sir: Antonio. It would seem, but this is only at the level of rumour, that he is involved with Signora Cataldo.’ Her voice could not have been more level or dispassionate.

There were times when Signorina Elettra annoyed Brunetti almost past bearing, but he thought of the way he had behaved when caught in the crossfire of flirtation between her and Guarino and so said only, ‘The first wife or the second?’

‘The second.’ She paused, then added, ‘People couldn’t wait to tell me.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘That he’s taken her to dinner at least once; when the husband was away.’

‘That could be easily explained,’ Brunetti said.

‘I’m sure it could be, sir, especially if her husband and his uncle have common business interests.’

He knew she had more, and he knew it would be more damning, but he would not ask.

After it became apparent that Brunetti was not going to speak, she said, ‘He was also seen leaving their apartment — well, to be fair, the building in which they have an apartment, at two in the morning.’

‘Seen by whom?’

‘By people who live there.’

‘How did they know who he was?’ Brunetti asked.

‘At the time, they didn’t, but they paid attention to him, as would anyone meeting an unfamiliar man on the steps of their building at that time of night. Some weeks later, they met her in a restaurant, having dinner with the same man, and when they went over to say hello to her she had no choice but to introduce them. Antonio Terrasini.’

‘And how did you come to learn all of this?’ Brunetti inquired with false lightness.

‘When I asked about Cataldo, I got told this as an extra. Twice.’

‘Why is everyone so eager to repeat gossip about her?’ Brunetti asked in a neutral tone that allowed her to include herself in the category or not.

She looked away from him and out the window again before she answered. ‘It probably has nothing to do with her specifically, sir. There’s the trope of the older man who marries a much younger wife: folk wisdom says it’s only a matter of time before she betrays him. And there’s the fact that people just like to gossip, especially when it’s someone who keeps aloof from them.’

‘And she does?’

‘It would seem so, sir.’

Brunetti said only, ‘I see.’ The snow was entirely gone from the roof of the church by now; he thought he could see steam rising from the tiles.

‘Thank you, Signorina.’

Franca Marinello and Antonio Terrasini. A woman about whom he thought he knew something and a man about whom he wanted to know a great deal more. Who was it who said that she had been working to impress Brunetti? Paola?

Was it that easy, he wondered? Just talk to him about books and sound like you know what you’re talking about, and Brunetti falls into your hands like a ripe fig? Tell him you’re in love with Cicero and then go out to dinner with. . with whom and to do what, Brunetti wondered? What was that expression the Americans were always using to describe men like Terrasini? Rough something. Rough time? Rough taste? Rough traffic? The expression would not come, no matter how many times he tried to summon it. Rough something. In the photo, Terrasini did not look rough: he looked slick.

Thinking back over the evening he had spent with Franca Marinello, Brunetti was forced to admit that her face, even after the hours opposite her, would still occasionally shock him. If she found something he said amusing, he could read it only in her eyes or in the tone of her response. Occasionally he had succeeded in making her laugh, but even then her face had remained as immobile as when she spoke of her loathing of Marc Antonio.

She was still in her thirties, and her husband was twice her age. Did she not want, at times, the company of a younger man, the feel of a stronger body? Had he been so concerned with her face that he had forgotten about the rest of her?

But still, why this thug? Brunetti kept coming back to this question. He and Paola knew enough about the workings of the city to have a good idea which of the wives of the powerful and wealthy sought the solace of arms other than their husbands’. But all of that was usually carried out among acquaintances and friends: discretion was thus assured.

Then what of all of her talk of being worried about kidnapping? Perhaps Brunetti had been too eager to dismiss her story of the computer intruder; and perhaps the signs of tampering had not been left by Signorina Elettra but by some other person curious to learn the extent of Cataldo’s wealth. Terrasini’s past certainly suggested that he would not mind having a try at kidnapping, but computer exploration hardly seemed the way he would begin things.

Years ago, Conte Falier had observed that he had never met anyone who could resist flattery. Brunetti had been younger then and had taken this as a comment on a technique of which the Conte approved, but as the years passed and he knew the man better, Brunetti realized that it was nothing more than another of the Conte’s merciless observations about the nature of human activity. ‘And Cataldo’s wife was working to impress you,’ he heard Paola’s voice again. If he eliminated all sympathy for the woman, how much of what she told him would he still believe? Was he to be seduced by the fact that she had read Ovid’s Fasti and he had not?

21

Brunetti called down to the squad room and asked for Vianello. The Ispettore was out of the office, but someone passed the phone to Pucetti. By now everyone knew that when Vianello was not present, Brunetti would want Pucetti. ‘Come up for a moment, would you?’ Brunetti asked.

It seemed only seconds after Brunetti replaced the phone that Pucetti was there, swinging around the door and into his office, fresh-cheeked, as though he had run, or flown, up the steps. ‘Yes, Commissario?’ he said, eager, all but straining at the leash that might get him out of the office or at least out of whatever it was he had been doing downstairs.

‘Gilda Landi,’ Brunetti said.

‘Yes, sir?’ Pucetti asked with no sign of surprise, only curiosity.

‘She is a civilian employee of the Carabinieri. Well, I assume she’s a civilian and I assume it’s the Carabinieri, but maybe not. Perhaps the Ministry of the Interior. I’d like you to see if you can find out where she works and, if possible, what she does.’ Pucetti raised a hand in a vestigial salute, and left.

Though there was no reason to do it, aside from the fact that he had spent so much of the morning thinking about another woman, Brunetti called Paola and said he could not come home for lunch. She asked no questions, a reaction which bothered Brunetti more than if she had complained. Alone, he left the Questura and walked down into Castello, where he had a bad meal in the worst sort of tourist trap and left feeling both cheated and somehow justified, as if he had paid for having been dishonest with Paola.

When he got back, he stopped in the officers’ squad room, but there was no sign of Pucetti. He went to Signorina Elettra’s office, where he found her at her computer, Pucetti standing behind her, eyes intent on the screen.

When Pucetti saw Brunetti come in, he said, ‘I had to ask her, sir. There was no way I could do that alone. There was one place where if I had. .’

Brunetti stopped him by holding up a hand. ‘Good. I should have told you to ask.’ Then, to Signorina Elettra, who had glanced at him, ‘I didn’t want to burden you with anything else. I had no idea it would be so. .’ He allowed