‘Anything heavily toxic. Chemicals. Maybe nuclear. Acids. It would have to be substances that can be held in containers or barrels. That’s what anyone can recognize as dangerous, so they wouldn’t risk shipping it when there was trouble.’
‘Did he have any idea where it might be?’
‘Not really,’ she answered evasively, the way an honest person does when trying to lie. His eyes met hers and held them before she could turn away. ‘It’s really the only place, isn’t it?’ she said.
Paola would be proud of him, he had time to think, his eyes still held by Dottoressa Landi’s. His first thought had been of the short story, though he couldn’t remember who had written it. Hawthorne? Poe? The Something Letter. Hide the letter in the place where no one will notice it: among the letters. Just so. Hide the chemicals among the other chemicals and no one will notice them. ‘It explains why he was at the petrochemical complex,’ he said.
Her smile was infinitely sad as she said, ‘Filippo said you were smart.’
23
When he got back to the Questura, Brunetti decided to start at the bottom of the food chain with someone he had not spoken to for some time. Claudio Vizotti was, not to put too fine a point on it, a nasty piece of work. A plumber, hired decades ago by one of the petrochemical companies in Marghera, he had joined the union when he started his job. Over the years, he had risen effortlessly through its ranks, until now he had the responsibility of representing workers in claims against the companies regarding work-related injuries. Brunetti had first encountered him some years before, about a year after Vizotti had persuaded a worker injured in a fall from badly built scaffolding to settle his claim against the company in return for ten thousand Euros.
It had come to light — during a card game in which a drunken accountant from the company had complained about the vulpine behaviour of the union representatives — that the company had actually given Vizotti a total of twenty thousand Euros for his efforts in persuading the worker to settle, money that had somehow failed to make its way either into the hands of the injured worker or into the union’s coffers. The word had spread, and since the card game had taken place not in Marghera but in Venice, it had spread to the police and not to the workers to whose protection Vizotti had dedicated his professional life. Brunetti, learning of the conversation, had called Vizotti in for another one. At first the union representative had indignantly denied everything and threatened to sue the accountant for libel and to make a complaint against Brunetti for harassment. It was then that Brunetti had pointed out that the injured worker, a man of irascible temper, now had one leg a few centimetres shorter than the other and was in almost constant pain. He knew nothing about the accommodation Vizotti had made with his employers, but he could very easily learn of it.
At this, Vizotti had turned smilingly tractable and said he had actually been keeping the money for the injured man and had somehow forgotten to pass it on to him: the press of work, union responsibilities, so much to do and think about, so little time. Speaking man to man, he had asked Brunetti if he wanted to take part in the transfer. Had he even winked when he proposed this?
Brunetti had refused the opportunity but told Vizotti to keep his name in mind should Brunetti ever want to talk to him again. It took Brunetti a few minutes to locate the number of Vizotti’s
‘What do you want?’ the union representative asked.
In the ordinary course of events, Brunetti would have chided the man for his incivility, but he decided to take a more liberal stance and asked in a normal voice, ‘I’d like some information.’
‘About what?’
‘About storage facilities in Marghera.’
‘Call the firemen, then,’ Vizotti shot back. ‘That’s not my job.’
‘Storage facilities for things that the companies might not want to know about,’ Brunetti went on imperturbably.
Vizotti had no instant answer to this, and Brunetti asked, ‘If a person wanted to store barrels there, where would he put them?’
‘Barrels of what?’
‘Barrels of dangerous substances.’
‘Not drugs?’ Vizotti asked quickly, a question Brunetti found interesting but would not pause to consider just now.
‘No, not drugs. Liquids, perhaps powders.’
‘How many barrels?’
‘Perhaps several truckloads.’
‘Is this about that man they found out here?’
Seeing no reason to lie, Brunetti said, ‘Yes.’
There ensued a long silence, during which Brunetti could almost hear Vizotti plunking down on the scales the possible consequences of lying against those of telling the truth. Brunetti knew enough of the man to know that Vizotti’s thumb would be pressed down on the side that held self-interest.
‘You know where he was found?’ Vizotti asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Some of the men were talking — I don’t remember who they were — and they said something about the storage tanks out in that area. Where the body was.’
Brunetti recalled the scene, the abandoned rust-eaten tanks that served as a background to the body in the field.
‘And what did they say about them?’ he asked in his mildest voice.
‘That some of them look like they’ve doors now.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘If you hear anything else, I’d be. .’
But Vizotti cut him short, saying, ‘There won’t be any more.’ Then the line went dead.
Brunetti replaced his phone quietly. ‘Well, well, well,’ he allowed himself to say. He felt enmeshed in ambiguity. The case was not theirs, but Patta had ordered him to investigate it. The Carabinieri had control over the investigation of illegal shipping and dumping, and Brunetti had no authorization from a magistrate to make inquiries, certainly not to make an unauthorized raid. Well, if he and Vianello went alone, it could hardly be described as a raid on to private property, could it? They would be doing nothing more than going back to have another look at the scene of the murder, after all.
He was just getting to his feet to go down and talk to Vianello when the phone rang. He looked at it, let it ring three more times, then decided to answer it.
‘Commissario?’ a man’s voice asked.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s Vasco.’
It took Brunetti a moment to struggle through the events of the last few days, during which he stalled for time by saying, ‘Good of you to call.’
‘You remember me, don’t you?’ the man asked.
‘Of course, of course,’ Brunetti said and, with the lie, memory returned. ‘At the Casino. Have they come back?’
‘No,’ Vasco said. ‘I mean yes.’ Which was it, an irritated Brunetti wanted to ask. Instead he waited and the other man explained, ‘That is, they were here last night.’
‘And?’
‘And Terrasini lost heavily, perhaps forty thousand Euros.’
‘The other one; was it the same man who was with him last time?’
‘No,’ Vasco said. ‘It was a woman.’
Brunetti did not bother asking for a description: he knew who it had to be. ‘How long were they there?’
‘It was my night off, Commissario, and the man on duty couldn’t find your phone number. He didn’t think to call me, so I didn’t know about it until I got here this morning.’
