‘I take it he availed himself of your experience with the peculiarities of the city.’
Her smile was calm, her nod an exercise in graciousness. ‘His secretary said a few kind words about me before she put me through to him.’
‘After which you induced him to overlook the dubious legality of some of the things you asked him to authorize?’
The phrase appeared to wound her; if nothing else, it spurred her into saying, ‘I’m not sure there any longer exists a legality in this country that is not dubious.’
‘Be that as it may, Signorina,’ Brunetti said, ‘I’m curious to know what you persuaded him to authorize.’
‘Everything,’ she said with unconcealed delight. ‘I think this young man might prove a gold mine for us.’
Brunetti thought of the warning written above the Gates of Hell and was for a moment tempted to dissociate himself from her further progress into a land, not of dubious, but of absent, legality, but hypocrisy was not among his vices. Also, he appreciated the fact that she had used the plural, and so he smiled and said, ‘I tremble at the thought of what you might ask him to authorize.’
Failing to disguise her disappointment, she said, ‘I’d never compromise you in any of this, Dottore.’
‘Just yourself?’ he enquired, knowing the impossibility of this.
Her failure to answer forced him, finally, to confront the fact that she had for years been making requests that lay far beyond her mandate. But how to ask the question without making it sound like an accusation?
‘To whom will the responses to these requests be sent?’
‘To the Vice-Questore, of course,’ she said simply, and for a moment Brunetti had a vision of her as she would appear when saying this to a judge, saw her hair pulled tightly back, face completely unadorned by makeup, jewellery forgone; the modest way she was dressed, perhaps in a dark blue suit with a skirt of an unfashionable cut and length, sensible shoes. Would she risk wearing a pair of glasses? Her eyes would be modestly turned down in the face of the majesty of the law; her speech modest; no jokes, no sparring, no wit. He wondered, for the first time, if she had some sort of dreary second name she would pull out for an occasion like this: Clotilde, Olga, Luigia. And Patta – Brunetti had no choice but to use the American phrase – would take the fall.
‘You’d do that to him?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Please, Dottore,’ she said in an offended voice, ‘you must give me some credit for human affection, or weakness.’
As a matter of fact, Brunetti had reason to give her more than some credit for those things, and so he asked, deciding to speak bluntly, ‘But if anything went wrong, you’d let Patta hang for this?’
She managed to look genuinely shocked at his question, shocked and then disappointed that he could think of asking such a thing. ‘Ah,’ she said, letting the syllable run on for a long time, ‘I could never live with myself if I did that. Besides, you have no idea of how long it would take me to train whoever was sent to replace him.’ At least, Brunetti thought, there was something other than rank hypocrisy on offer here.
With grudging voice, she said, ‘And I must confess that, over the years, I’ve become almost fond of him.’ Hearing her say it like this surprised Brunetti into accepting that he probably shared her feelings.
After leaving him with enough time to consider everything she had said, she added, with an easy smile, ‘Besides, all of the requests are sent in Lieutenant Scarpa’s name.’ Her use of the passive voice did not go unremarked by Brunetti.
It took him but a moment to realize the genius of it. ‘So it appears that the Lieutenant has been exceeding his professional powers all these years? Asking for information without an order from a magistrate,’ he mused, not thinking it necessary to comment on the trail of cyber-proof that was sure to have been left behind him.
‘He’s also been breaking into bank codes, pilfering information from Telecom, rifling through the classified files held on citizens in state offices, and stealing copies of people’s credit card statements,’ she said, scandalized by the magnitude of the Lieutenant’s perfidy.
‘I’m shocked,’ Brunetti said. And he was: what kind of mind could set up such an elaborate trap for the Lieutenant? ‘And all of these requests came directly from his email?’ he asked, wondering what labyrinth she had created to deal with the responses.
Her hesitation was minimal, her answer a smile as she said, ‘The Lieutenant believes he is the only person who has the password to his account.’ Her voice softened, but her look did not. ‘I didn’t want him to be troubled reading any replies, so they’re transferred automatically to one of the Vice-Questore’s accounts.’ The name ‘Giorgio’ slithered into Brunetti’s ear, Signorina Elettra’s frequently named friend, the cyber-genius of all cyber- geniuses, but discretion stood on Brunetti’s tongue and he did not speak the name aloud, nor did he ask if the Vice-Questore knew of the existence of his account.
‘Remarkable, that the Lieutenant would be so rash as to use his own address to get this information,’ Brunetti said, his thoughts turning to Riverre and Alvise and how very safe this information would make them.
‘He probably thinks he’s too clever to be caught,’ she suggested.
‘How very foolish of him,’ Brunetti said, recalling how often the Lieutenant had made a point of attempting to prove to Signorina Elettra his own superior cleverness. ‘He should have realized how dangerous it was,’ Brunetti began and, seeing her smile at the breadth of his understanding, added, ‘to have thought he could get away with anything.’
‘The Lieutenant does at times try my patience,’ she said. The coolness of her smile warmed his heart.
24
As though given wings by the novel experience of working within the limits of the law, Signorina Elettra obtained the missing information by noon the following day, when she came into his office. Though she perhaps attempted to imitate the bland expression of blindfolded Justice as she placed the papers on his desk, she failed to disguise her satisfaction at having so quickly succeeded in her task.
‘It’s so easy, it’s enough to make me think of changing my ways,’ she said, though Brunetti was quick to hear the lie.
‘I shall live in that single hope,’ he said mildly as he looked at the first paper, which was a copy of a document written in a spidery hand, signed with an indecipherable scribble at the bottom. Two other signatures stood below it.
‘You might want to look at the second paper, sir,’ she suggested. He did so and saw that it was the death certificate of Marie Reynard.
In all these years, Brunetti had never decided whether Signorina Elettra preferred to explain things to him or have him discover them himself. To save time, he asked, ‘And I am looking for?’
‘The dates, sir.’
He glanced back at the first sheet and saw that its date was four days before that on the death certificate. Pointing to it, he said, ‘So this is the famous will?’ No wonder it had caused so much trouble: only an expert could make out this script.
‘The third sheet is a transcript, sir. It was done by three different people, and they all produced roughly the same text.’
‘Roughly?’
‘Nothing that mattered. Or so the accompanying papers state.’
He turned to the third page and read that, being of sound mind, Marie Reynard left her entire estate, comprising bank accounts, investment accounts, houses and their attached estates, apartments, patents, and all moveable property to Avvocato Benevento Cuccetti, and that this will precluded and superseded all previous wills and was an expression of her total desire and irrevocable decision.
‘Nice mixture of the poetic and the legal: “total desire and irrevocable decision”,’ Brunetti observed.
‘Nice mixture of fixed and moveable property, as well,’ Signorina Elettra added, nodding to the papers in his hand. Brunetti turned over the transcript and found a list of bank accounts, properties, and other possessions.
‘What else did you learn?’ he asked.
‘The apartment that was sold to Morandi is behind the Basilica, top floor, one hundred and eighty metres.’
‘If the owner was Cuccetti’s wife, then it can’t have been part of the Reynard estate.’
