Doctored Evidence

the figures, said, 'Those are the totals in the accounts. They were all in her name.'

'What happened to them when she died?' Brunetti asked.

'She died on a Friday; on Monday all of it was transferred to the Channel Islands’ she said, and then added a suggestive, 'and…' that successfully captured the attention of both men before she continued, 'though no name is given for the person authorizing the transfers, all of the banks have powers of attorney on file in the names of both Roberta Marieschi and Graziella Simionato.'

‘I asked Marieschi this morning how much money Signora Battestini had left, but all she mentioned was an account at the Uni Credit with about ten million lire.'

'Taxes?' Vianello gave voice to the obvious. By moving the accounts instantly out of the country and then trusting to general bureaucratic incompetence, it was not unlikely that the transfer would pass unobserved by the tax authorities, especially if they were in different banks.

'And the niece?' Brunetti asked.

'I've begun that’ was all she answered.

'It's more than sixty million’ Vianello said, like most people, still calculating in old lire.

'A nice sum to be in the hands of a widow who lived in three rooms’ Signorina Elettra commented, not that this needed to be said.

'And a nice sum to slip past the hands of the taxman’ Vianello added, not without audible admiration. Looking at Signorina Elettra, he asked, 'But can that be done?'

It was impossible for Brunetti to observe her tilted chin and expression of fierce concentration without wondering if there existed limits to her familiarity with the unlawful. Certainly years of employment in the national bank would be superb preparation^ J?ut he feared her craft had been raised to new heights by her years at the Questura.

Like Santa Caterina returning from contemplation of the Divine Presence, Signorina Elettra left the world of theoretical malfeasance behind and came back to Brunetti and Vianello. 'Yes’ she declared, 'if whoever did it counted on incompetence at the Finanza and played the odds that the transfer wouldn't be noticed, then it would be easy enough, I think.' Vianello and Brunetti began to calculate the odds of this until Signorina Elettra interrupted them by asking, 'But why would she leave the money there and never touch it?'

Brunetti, who had read Balzac's descriptions of the cunning and avidity of peasants, had no doubts about this. 'To watch it accumulate’ he said. Vianello's past did not include much in the way of French novels, but he had spent time in the countryside and instantly recognized the truth of this.

‘I was up in the attic, and I saw the things she kept’ Brunetti said, remembering a pair of felt slippers so worn that not even Caritas would have dared to offer them to the poor and tea towels with tattered edges and worn-in stains. 'She'd have enjoyed looking at the numbers and watching them grow, believe me.'

'But where are the original records?' Vianello asked.

'Who packed up the apartment?' countered Brunetti.

'The niece inherited, so it would have been her job’ Signorina Elettra supplied. 'But it would be easy enough for the dead woman's lawyer to go into the apartment before that and take them.' Then, as an afterthought, she added, 'Or her killer.'

'Or they could have been what the killer was looking for’ Vianello said. His face brightened and he suggested, 'But we have the computer records if we ever want proof.'

Like Lachesis and Atropos, turning their blind eyes to an errant Clotho, Brunetti and Signorina Elettra turned and stared at Vianello. 'The government has seen to that, Ispettore’ Signorina Elettra said with a voice that stopped just short of reproach, as though he were responsible for the law that stipulated that only original bank records, not photocopies and not computer records, could be introduced as evidence.

Did Brunetti see the inspector blush? ‘I hadn't thought’ Vianello confessed, realizing instantly that the information would have legal weight only when and if bank officials produced the original records of accounts that had slept unobserved for more than a decade, until their mysterious flight to a tax haven so famous as surely to be known even to a lawyer in a sleepy provincial town such as Venice.

Brunetti moved them away from finance and asked, 'The husband? Did you find anything?'

'Nothing very interesting’ she said. 'He was born here, in 1925, and died at the Ospedale Civile in January of 1993. Lung cancer. For thirty-two years he worked in various city offices, lastly at the schools department - specifically, the personnel office, than which I can imagine no greater tedium. His son worked for the school board, too, until his death five years ago. They overlapped there for a few years.'

'Anything else?' Brunetti asked, amazed that a man could spend three decades and more working in the city bureaucracy and, at the end, have only these few facts to show for it.

'That's all I can find, sir. It's very difficult to find anything from more than ten years ago: they haven't got around to computerizing those records yet.'

'When will they?' Vianello asked.

Signorina Elettra's shrug was so strong that it caused the amber beads to click together as though they, too, wanted to tsk away the very idea.

12

Brunetti refused to see this as an impasse. Turning to Vianello, he said, 'There should still be people working in the office who would remember them. I'd like you to go over and see if there are and what they can remember.'

Vianello's expression showed how unlikely he thought this, but he voiced no objection.

Signorina Elettra said she still had work to do in her office and left the room with the inspector.

Brunetti, thinking it unfair to ask them to work on this while he sat at his desk, picked up the file and found the name of Signora Battestini's doctor. His call was transferred to the doctor's telefonino, and when he answered, the doctor told him that he could talk to Brunetti in his ambulatorio either before or after he saw his afternoon patients. Convinced that it would be wiser to speak to the doctor before he had spent two hours listening to and tending to his patients, Brunetti said that three-thirty would be fine, asked where the office was, and hung up. That done, he dialled the number of Signora Battestini's niece, but no one answered.

There was to be no weekly staff meeting that day, a fact explained by the weather. During summer months, the meetings, which Vice-Questore Patta had initiated some years ago, were often either suddenly cancelled or postponed and then eventually cancelled, depending upon the weather. Sun cancelled the meeting instantly, thus allowing the Vice-Questore to have a swim before lunch as well as in the late afternoon. On rainy days, the meetings were held, though a sudden improvement in the weather often led to their postponement, and one of the police launches would take the Vice-Questore across the Bacino to his undoubtedly well-earned relaxation. Thus the staff conference became another of the secrets of the Questura, like the door to a cabinet that had to be kicked at the bottom before it would open. Brunetti envisioned himself and his colleagues as not unlike augurs, whose impulse, before planning or accepting any engagement, was first to consult the heavens. Brunetti thought it much to their credit that they could so seamlessly adjust their schedules to the vagaries of the Vice- Questore's.

At home, where he took himself for lunch, he arrived just as the family was sitting down. Paola, he noticed, had the lean and hungry look she often had after a bad day at the university, though the children were far too concerned with sating their hunger to pay much attention.

There was, the setting of plates on the table suggested, to be no first course, but before he could protest at this omission, however mildly, Paola appeared, holding an immense bowl from which rose fumes so fragrant as to soothe his soul. Before his powers of prediction could name the dish, Chiara cried with undisguised glee, 'Oh, Mamma, you made the lamb stew.'

'Is there polenta?' Raffi asked, his voice poignant with hope.

When he saw the smile that spread over Paola's face at the sound of their avidity, Brunetti thought of baby birds and the way their chirping forced their parents to behave in genetically determined ways. Paola offered only token resistance to that instinct by saying, 'Just as there has been each of the six hundred times we've eaten this,