Doctored Evidence

Vianello gazed across at Palazzo Grassi, where more long lines of tourists waited in front of another temple to art. ‘I doubt it, sir’ the inspector finally admitted. 'She says you have to learn these things by trying different ways of doing them or different ways of thinking about them. So you really need a computer to work with all the time.' He looked at Brunetti, then dared to add, 'And you have to have a sort of feeling for computers, too.'

Brunetti wanted to defend himself by saying that his children had a computer and his wife used one, but he thought this beneath his dignity and so made no response. He contented himself with asking, 'When can we have the names?'

'At the latest by tomorrow afternoon,' Vianello said. 'I'm not sure I would be able to get them, and Signorina Elettra said she had an appointment this afternoon.'

'Did she say where she had this appointment?'

'No.'

'Then let's leave it until tomorrow,' Brunetti suggested, looking at his watch. There was no purpose to be served by returning to the Questura, and he found himself suddenly exhausted by the events of the day. He wanted nothing more than to go home, have a meal with his family, and think of things other than death and greed. Vianello was more than willing to agree and stepped on to the Number One that was going towards the Lido, leaving his superior to wait for the one that would be along in two minutes to take him to his own home.

But when the vaporetto pulled up at his normal stop, San Silvestro, Brunetti remained on board and got off at the next, Rialto. It was only a few steps back along the canal to the city hall at Ca' Farsetti and then down the calle beside it to the building where the school board had its offices. Brunetti showed his warrant card to the portiere and was told that the main office of the Ufficio di Pubblica Istruzione was on the third floor. Never comfortable in elevators, he chose to take the stairs. On the third floor, a sign directed him to the right and along a narrow corridor, at the end of which stood the glass-doored offices of the school board. Inside he found himself in a large open space, four times the size of his own office. Orange plastic chairs lined the walls on either side of him; facing the door stood a battered wooden desk, and behind the desk sat an equally battered-looking woman, though something told him that her look was the result of choice, rather than chance.

There was no one else in the room, so Brunetti approached her. She could have been any age between thirty and fifty: her make-up was applied with sufficient abandon to disguise the evidence that would have allowed him to make that distinction. Though lipstick had enlarged her mouth, it had also managed to seep into and spread out from the many thin wrinkles under her lower lip, giving her mouth the suggestion of youthful promise at the same time that it gave evidence of years of heavy smoking. Her eyes were dark green, a mysterious emerald, but they glittered so brightly as to suggest either contact lenses or drugs. She had no eyebrows, nothing more than a pair of thin brown lines arching across her forehead in steep curves seemingly chosen at random.

Brunetti smiled as he approached her desk. Her lips moved in return and she asked, 'You the water-cooler man?' Her voice was entirely without inflection or emphasis; it could as easily be coming from a machine as from that exaggerated mouth.

‘I beg your pardon?' he asked.

'Are you the water-cooler man?' her voice played back.

'No. I'm here to speak to the Director.'

'You're not the water-cooler man?'

'No, I'm afraid not.'

He watched as this information was processed somewhere behind those emerald eyes. The fact that her expectation had been confounded appeared momentarily to prove too much for her, forcing her to close her eyes. He noticed that she had two tiny silver studs emerging from her left temple, but he refused to wonder about their origin, still less their purpose.

Her eyes opened. Perhaps she opened them; he was not at all certain. 'Dottor Rossi is in his office,' she said, raising a hand with long green fingernails and waving in the general direction of a door that stood behind her left shoulder.

Brunetti thanked her, decided not to tell her he hoped the water-cooler man would arrive soon, and walked to the door. Beyond it stretched a short corridor, doors to the left and a row of windows on the right giving on to a small inner courtyard, on the opposite side of which were more windows.

Brunetti walked down the hall, reading the names and titles on the signs beside the doors. The offices were silent, apparently abandoned. At the end of the corridor, he turned right: this time there were offices on both sides, though none of them that of the Director.

He turned right again; at the end of this corridor he found a sign that read, DOTTORE MAURO ROSSI, DIRETTORE. He knocked. A voice called, 'Avanti,' and Brunetti went in. The man sitting at the desk looked up, seemed puzzled at the arrival of a stranger in his office, and asked, 'Yes, what is it?'

'I'm Commissario Guido Brunetti, Dottore. I've come to ask some questions about a man who used to work here.'

'Commissario of police?' Rossi asked, and at Brunetti's nod, pointed him to a chair in front of his desk. As Brunetti approached, Rossi stood and extended his hand. When Rossi reached his full height, Brunetti saw the bulk of the man, easily half a head taller than he was himself. Though he was more heavily built than Brunetti, there was no suggestion of fat. Rossi looked in his mid-forties; his hair, still thick and dark, fell across his forehead as he moved his head. His skin was rugged with good health, and he moved gracefully for so large a man.

The office projected the same powerful sense of masculinity: a row of silver sports trophies stood on top of a glass-fronted bookcase; silver-framed photos of a woman and two children stood on the left side of the desk; five or six framed certificates hung on the walls, one of them the embossed parchment conferring a doctorate upon Mauro Rossi.

When he was seated, Brunetti said, 'It's about someone who worked here until about five years ago, Dottore: Paolo Battestini.' Rossi nodded for Brunetti to continue but gave no sign that he recognized the name.

'There are some things we'd like to know about him,' Brunetti said. 'He worked here for more than a decade.' When Rossi remained silent, Brunetti asked, 'Could you tell me if you knew him, Dottore?'

Rossi considered the question, then answered, 'Perhaps. I'm not really sure.' Brunetti tilted his head in a request for clarification, and Rossi explained, 'I was in charge of the schools in Mestre.'

'From here?' Brunetti interrupted.

'No, no,' Rossi said, smiling to excuse his oversight in not having specified. 'I was working in Mestre then. It was only two years ago that I was appointed here.'

'As Director?'

'Yes.'

'And so you moved here?'

Rossi smiled again and pursed his lips at the continuing confusion. 'No, I've always lived in the city.' It surprised Brunetti that the other man continued to speak in Italian: at this point in a conversation, most Venetians would slip into Veneziano, but perhaps Rossi wanted to maintain the dignity of his position. 'So the transfer was a double blessing because it meant I didn't have to go out to Mestre every day,' Rossi went on, breaking into Brunetti's reflections.

'The Pearl of the Adriatic,' Brunetti said with some sarcasm.

Rossi nodded in the true Venetian's dismissal of that ugly upstart, Mestre.

Brunetti realized they had wandered astray from his original question and returned to it. 'You said perhaps you knew him, Dottore. Could you explain what you mean?'

‘I suppose I must have known him, actually,' Rossi answered, then added, seeing Brunetti's confusion, 'That is, in the way one knows people who work in the same office or department. You see them or read their names, but you never get to know them personally or speak to them.'

'Did you have occasion to come here, to this office while you were working in Mestre?'

'Yes. The man I replaced as Director was here, and so when I was in charge in Mestre, I had to come in once a week for conferences because the central directorship is here.' Anticipating Brunetti's next question, Rossi said, ‘I don't remember ever meeting someone with that name or talking to him. That is, when you say his name, it sounds familiar, but I don't have a picture of him in my mind. And then, by the time I was transferred here, he must have already left, that is, if you say he left five years ago’

'Have you ever heard people here speak of him?'