‘Find out whatever I can about them.’
‘And then?’
‘That depends on what I learn.’
There was silence then Paola said, ‘I was thinking about you today, about your work.’ He waited. ‘It was when I was washing the windows, and that’s what made me think of you,’ she added, surprising him.
‘Why the windows?’
‘I was washing them, and then I did the mirror in the bathroom, and that’s when I thought of what you do.’
He knew she’d continue, even if he said nothing, but he also knew she liked to be encouraged, so he asked, ‘And?’
‘When you clean a window,’ she said, eyes on his, ‘you have to open it and pull it toward you, and when you do that, the angle of the light that’s coming through it changes.’ She saw that he was following, so she continued, ‘So you get it clean. Or you think you do. But when you close the window, the light comes through from the original angle, and then you see that the outside’s still dirty, or that you missed a patch on the inside. That means you have to open it and clean it again. But you can never be sure it’s really clean until you close it again or until you move so that you see it from a different angle.’
‘And the mirror?’ he asked.
She looked up at him and smiled. ‘You see a mirror only from one side. No light comes from behind, so when you clean it, it’s clean. There’s no trick of perception.’ She looked back down at her work.
‘And?’
Still looking at the peas, perhaps to hide her disappointment in him, she explained, ‘That’s what your work’s like, or how you want it to be. You want to clean mirrors, want everything to be two-dimensional and easy to take care of. But every time you begin to take a look at something, it turns out to be like the windows: if you change perspective or you look at things from a new angle, everything changes.’
Brunetti considered this for a long time and then added, hoping to lighten the mood, ‘But in both cases, I’ve always got to clean up the dirt.’
Paola said, ‘You said that; I didn’t.’ When Brunetti made no response, she dropped the last peas into the bowl, and got to her feet. She walked to the counter and set the bowl down. ‘Whichever it is you do, I suppose you’d prefer to do it on a full stomach,’ she said.
Stomach indeed full, he started to do it that afternoon, as soon as he got back to the Questura. He began, a better place than most, with Signorina Elettra.
Smiling, she greeted his arrival, today dressed in something that looked tantalizingly nautical: navy blue skirt, a square-yoked silk blouse. He caught himself thinking that all she lacked was a little sailor hat until he saw a stiff white cylindrical cap sitting on the desk beside her computer.
‘Volpato,’ he said before she could ask him how he was. ‘Angelina and Massimo. They’re in their sixties.’
She pulled forward a sheet of paper and began to write.
‘Living here?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Any idea where?’
‘No,’ he answered.
‘That’s easy enough to check,’ she said, making a note. ‘What else?’
‘I’d like financial records most of all: bank accounts, any investments they might have, property registered in their names, anything you can find.’ He paused while she wrote and then added, ‘And see if we have anything on them.’
‘Phone records?’ she asked.
‘No, not yet. Just the financial stuff.’
‘For when?’
He looked down at her and smiled. ‘When do I always want everything?’
She pushed back her cuff and glanced down at the heavy diver’s watch on her left wrist. ‘I should be able to get the information from the city offices this afternoon.’
‘The banks have closed already, so that can wait until tomorrow,’ he said.
She smiled up at him. ‘The records never close,’ she said. ‘I should have everything in a few hours.’
She reached down and pulled open a drawer, from which she took a pile of papers. ‘I’ve got these,’ she began but suddenly stopped and looked to her left, toward the door of her office.
He sensed, rather than saw, a motion and turned to see Vice-Questore Patta, just now returned from lunch.
‘Signorina Elettra,’ he began, making no acknowledgement that he was aware of Brunetti standing in front of her desk.
‘Yes, Dottore?’ she asked.
‘I’d like you to come into my office to take a letter.’
‘Of course, Dottore,’ she said, placing the papers she had just taken from the drawer on the centre of her desk and tapping at them with the first finger of her left hand, a gesture which Brunetti’s body prevented Patta from seeing. She pulled open her front drawer and removed an old-fashioned stenographer’s pad. Did people still dictate letters, and did secretaries still sit, legs crossed like Joan Crawford’s, quickly taking words down in little squiggles and crosses? As Brunetti wondered about this, he realized that he had always left it to Signorina Elettra to decide how to phrase a letter, had relied on her to choose the correct rhetorical elaboration with which to disguise simple things or to smooth the way for requests which went beyond the strict limits of police power.
Patta walked past him and opened the door to his office, and Brunetti had the distinct feeling that he was himself behaving in the manner of one of those timid forest animals, a lemur perhaps, which froze at the slightest sound, declaring itself invisible by virtue of its immobility and thus believing itself safe from any roving predator. Before he could speak to Signorina Elettra, he saw her get to her feet and follow Patta into his office, but not before glancing back at the papers on her desk. As she closed the door behind her, Brunetti observed no suggestion of timidity in her bearing.
He leaned over her desk, pulled the papers toward him, and then quickly wrote a note, asking her to find the name of the owner of the building in front of which Rossi had been found.
18
On the way up to his office, he looked at the papers he’d taken from Signorina Elettra’s desk: a long print-out of all the numbers called from both Rossi’s home and from his office. In the margin, she had noted that Rossi’s name did not appear as a customer for any of the mobile telephone companies, which suggested that he had been calling on a phone issued by the Ufficio Catasto. Four of the calls made from his office were to the same number, one that had the Ferrara prefix and that Brunetti thought was the number of Gavini and Cappelli’s office. When he got to his desk, he checked it and proved his memory right. The calls had all been made in a period of less than two weeks, the last one the day before Cappelli was murdered. Nothing after that.
Brunetti sat for a long time, wondering at the connection between the two dead men. He realized that he was now considering them the two murdered men.
While he waited for Signorina Elettra, he considered many things: the location of Rossi’s office at the Ufficio Catasto and how much privacy it would have afforded him; the appointment of Magistrato Righetto to the investigation of Cappelli’s murder; the likelihood that a professional killer would mistake another man for his victim and why, after that crime, no further attempt was made on the supposed real victim. He thought about these and other things, and then he returned to the list of the people who might be able to provide him with information, but stopped when he realized he wasn’t at all sure what sort of information he wanted. Certainly he needed to know about the Volpatos, but he also needed to know more about financial trafficking in the city and the secret
