Doctored Evidence

contract. But what we're after here is something small, something mean and personal and private.'

'And probably nasty,' Vianello added.

Brunetti turned to Signorina Elettra. 'I've no idea what sort of information you can get about the people who were working at the school board when the payments started’ he said, judging it superfluous to add that he no longer cared how she got it, 'and I'm not sure what sort of person we're looking for. Avvocatessa Marieschi said Signora Battestini told her it was her son who took care of her old age’ he began, then, raising his eyes in a parody of belief, added, 'with the help of the Madonna.' Both of them smiled at that, and he went on, 'We're looking for someone who worked there and who could pay a hundred thousand lire a month.'

'Perhaps’ Vianello interrupted, 'they were so rich the money didn't matter to them.'

Signorina Elettra turned to him and said, ‘I don't think that's the sort of person who works at the school board, Ispettore.'

For a moment, Brunetti feared that Vianello would be offended by the apparent sarcasm of her remark, but he seemed not to be. In fact, after considering it, the inspector nodded and said, 'What's strange, if you think about it, is that the amount never changed. Salaries have gone up, everything's become more expensive, yet the payments never changed.'

Interested by what he said, Signorina Elettra slid into her chair and typed in a few words, then a few more, and the pages of print on the screen were replaced by the records of the vanished bank accounts. She scrolled them down to the month of the conversion to the Euro. After she'd checked those for January, she went on to February. Looking up at Brunetti, she said, 'Look at this, Commissario. There's a difference of five centesimi between January and February.'

Brunetti bent to look at the screen and saw that, as she said, the payment for February was five centesimi more than that for January. She hit a key, and he saw March and April, both with the adjusted total. Signorina Elettra pulled a pocket calculator from her desk, the tiny one sent to every citizen in the country at the time of the Euro conversion. Quickly she did the sums, looked up, and said, 'The February total is the right amount.' She slipped the calculator back into her drawer and shut it. 'Five centesimi’ she said with awe, as in the face of the terrible.

'Either the person realized the error…' Vianello began, but Brunetti cut him off by finishing the sentence with the more likely explanation, 'or Signora Battestini corrected him.'

'For five centesimi’ Signorina Elettra repeated in a soft voice, still in awe of the avarice capable of that precision.

Brunetti remembered his conversation with Dottor Carlotti and blurted out, 'Her phone. Her phone. Her phone.' When he saw their looks of incomprehension, Brunetti said, 'She hadn't been out of the apartment for three years. The only way she could have told them to make the correction was by phone.' He cursed himself for not having thought to get her phone records before, cursed himself for following the path he wanted to be the right one instead of looking at what was in front of them.

It will take a few hours’ Signorina Elettra said. Before Brunetti could ask why there was no way to get the records more quickly, she explained, 'Giorgio's wife just had a baby, so he's working only half-days and won't be in until after lunch.' Even before Brunetti could ask, she said, 'No, I told him I wouldn't try to get into the system by myself. If I make a mistake, they'll be able to see who was helping me.'

'A mistake?' Vianello asked.

A long silence followed his words, and just as it was beginning to become awkward, she said, 'With computers, I mean. But I still gave my word. I can't do it.'

Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a glance of uneasy acquiescence, both thinking of the mistake Signorina Elettra had made some years before. 'All right,' Brunetti said. 'Check incoming and outgoing calls, if you would.' He remembered the time he had met her friend Giorgio, years ago. 'Boy or girl?' he asked.

'Girl,' she said then, with a smile just short of beatific, she added, 'They named her Elettra.'

'I'm surprised they didn't call her Compaq’ Vianello said, and at her laugh, ease was restored.

As he walked back to his office, Brunetti tried to invent a scenario that would allow for blackmail, imagining all manner of secrets or vices, all manner of outrage that might have led to someone's becoming Battestini's victim. That word rang strangely out of tune in Brunetti's mind, persuaded as he was that the person being blackmailed was the same person who had killed Signora Battestini. 'Subject’ then? And what was the line that separated one from the other, what the impulse that had driven her killer to cross it?

He ran through a list of possible crimes and vices until he found himself faced with the truth of Paola's claims: most of the Seven Deadly Sins were no longer so. Who would kill in order not to be exposed as having been guilty of gluttony, of sloth, of envy, or pride? Only lust remained or anger if it led to violence, and avarice, if it could be interpreted as meaning bribe-taking. For the rest, no one any longer cared. Paradise, he had been told as a child, was a sinless world, but this brave new, post-sinful, world in which he found himself was hardly to be confused with paradise.

21

Brunetti had passed into the phase of an investigation he hated most, when everything came to a halt while a new map was drawn. In the past, his frustration at the imposed immobility of this situation had provoked him to acts of rashness he had sometimes regretted. But now he resisted the impulse to act on impulse and hunted for something he could justify doing. He pulled out the phone book and made a note of the numbers and addresses for both the homes and the offices of Fedi and Sardelli, even as he told himself they were the least likely suspects: it didn't have to be one of the directors; if it had been, Paolo Battestini would probably have asked for more.

He pulled out the Battestini file and read through all the press clippings. And there it was, on the second day after the murder: La Nuova reported that the woman calling herself Florinda Ghiorghiu had worked for Signora Battestini for only five months before the crime and that the victim's only son had died five years before. So it was not only the director of the school board who had this knowledge about Signora Battestini and her family.

After an hour, Vianello came in, bringing the list Signorina Elettra had prepared – the inspector took special pains to point out that she had obtained the information by means of an official police request – of the people who had worked at the school board here in the city during the three months before the payments began. 'She's doing a cross-check on them through other records,' Vianello said, 'to see where they are now, if they've married, died, moved.'

Brunetti looked at the list and saw that it contained twenty-two names. Experience, prejudice and intuition united in him, and he asked, 'Shall we ignore the women?'

'At least for now, I think we can,' Vianello agreed. ‘I saw the photos of her body, too.'

'That leaves eight,' Brunetti said.

Vianello said, ‘I know. I copied down the first four names for you. I'll go back down and start calling around and see what I can find out about the other four’

Brunetti was already reaching for the phone when the inspector left the office. He had recognized three of the names on the list, though that was due to nothing more than the presence of a Costantini and two Scarpas, all of whose names had fallen to Vianello. From memory, he dialled the office of the union to which he belonged, to which, in fact, most civil servants belonged, gave his name, and asked for Daniele Masiero.

The call was transferred, and while he waited, Brunetti was treated to one of the Four Seasons. When Masiero answered with, 'Ciao, Guido, and the privacy of whose life do you want me to betray today?' Brunetti continued humming the main theme of the second movement of the concerto.

'I didn't choose it,' Masiero insisted. 'And luckily I never have to call, so I never have to listen to it.'

'Then how do you know about it?' Brunetti asked.

'So many people say how sick they are of hearing it.'

Ordinarily Brunetti would have observed the conventions and asked Masiero about his family and his job, but today he lacked the patience and so asked only, 'I've got the names of four people who worked at the school board about ten years ago, and I'd like you to find out whatever you can about them.'

'Things that have to do with my job or yours?' Masiero asked.