A Noble Radiance (28 page)

Vianello trailed
along beside Brunetti, and together they went into the first bar they found.
Each of them ordered a large glass of mineral water and then another. Neither
of them wanted alcohol, and both of them turned their eyes away from the tired
sandwiches lying in a glass case at one side of the bar.

'Go home, Lorenzo,'
Brunetti finally said. "There's nothing else we can do. Not tonight.'

The poor man,'
Vianello said, reaching into his pocket for a few thousand lire bills to put on
the bar. 'And the woman. How old can she be? Not much past fifty. She looks
like she's seventy. More. This will kill her’

Brunetti nodded in
sad agreement. 'Maybe he'll be able to do something.'

'Who? Lorenzoni?'

Brunetti nodded but
said nothing.

Together they left
the bar, neither of them bothering to answer the barman's farewell. At Rialto,
Vianello said good-bye and went to get the boat that would take him towards
Castello and home. The
traghetto
had stopped running at seven,
thus leaving Brunetti no choice but to cross the bridge and then walk back up
the other side of the Grand Canal towards his home.

The sight of
Maurizio's body and the terrible evidence of the manner of his death that
spread out on the wall behind him followed Brunetti down the
calle
that
led to his house and up the stairs to his door. Inside, he heard the sound of
the television: his family was gathered in front of a police series they
watched every week, usually in company with him in his usual chair, pointing
out the howlers and inaccuracies.

'Ciao Papa'
rang out twice, and he forced himself to answer with a
friendly greeting.

Chiara's head
appeared in the doorway to the living room. Did you eat,
Papa?'

'Yes, angel,' he
lied, hanging up his jacket, careful to keep his back to her.

She paused there for
a moment, then ducked back into the room. An instant later Paola appeared in
the doorway, a hand stretched out towards him. 'What’s wrong, Guido?' she
asked, voice raw with fear.

He stayed near his
jacket, fumbling at his pocket, as if looking for something. She put an arm
around his waist.

'What did Chiara
say?' he managed to ask.

That something
terrible's happened to you.' She pulled his busy hands from their useless hunt
through the pockets of the jacket. 'What is it?' she asked, bringing one of his
hands to her lips and kissing it.

‘I can't talk about
it now,' he said.

She nodded. Still
holding his hands, she led him towards the back of the apartment and their
room. 'Come to bed, Guido. Get into bed and I'll bring you a tisane.'

1 can't talk about it
Paola’ he insisted.

Her face remained
solemn. ‘I don't want you to, Guido. I just want you to get into bed and drink
something hot and go to sleep.'

'Yes’ he said, and he
lapsed again into the strange sense of unreality. Later, undressed and under
the covers, he drank the tisane - linden with honey - and held Paola's hand, or
she held his, until he fell asleep.

He had a peaceful
night, waking only twice and then to find himself wrapped in Paola's arms, his
head on her shoulder. Both times, he didn't manage to come fully awake and was
soothed back to sleep by the kisses she placed on his forehead and the sense
that she was there, keeping him safe.

In the morning, after
the children left for school, he told her part of what had happened. She let
him tell his edited version of it, asking nothing, drinking her coffee and
watching his face as he spoke.

When he finished, she
asked, 'Is that the end of it, then?'

Brunetti shook his
head. ‘I don't know. There are still the kidnappers.'

'But if the nephew
sent them, then he's the one really responsible.'

'That's just it’
Brunetti said.

'What is?' Paola
asked, not following him.

'If he sent them.'

She knew him too well
to waste words or time asking him what he meant. 'Hmm’ she said and nodded,
then sipped at her coffee, waiting for him to say something more.

‘It doesn't feel
right’ Brunetti finally said. 'The nephew, he didn't seem capable of it.'

'"A man can
smile and smile yet be a villain’" Paola said in the voice she used for
quotations, but Brunetti was too distracted to ask what it was.

'He seemed genuinely
fond of Roberto, almost protective of him’ Brunetti shook his head. ‘I’m not
convinced’

'Then who?' Paola
asked. ‘People don't kill their children like that; men don't kill their only
sons.'

‘I know, I know,'
Brunetti said, acknowledging the unthinkable.

'Then who?'

'That's what's wrong.
There's no other possibility.'

'Could you be wrong
about the nephew?' she asked.

'Of course’ Brunetti
admitted. ‘I could be wrong about it all. I have no idea what happened. Or
why.'

To get money. Isn't
that the reason for most kidnappings?' she asked.

‘I don't know that it
was a kidnapping, not any more’ Brunetti said.

'But you just spoke
of the kidnappers.'

'Oh, yes, he was
taken. And someone sent the ransom notes. But I don't think there was ever any
intention to get money’ He told her about the offer of money that had been made
to Count Lorenzoni.

'How did you learn of
that?' she asked.

'Your father told me’

She smiled for the
first time. ‘I like it that you keep all this in the family: When did you speak
to him?'

'A week ago. And then
yesterday’ 'About this?'

'Yes, and about other
things’ 'What other things?' she asked, suddenly suspicious.

'He said you weren't
happy.'

Brunetti waited to
see how Paola would respond to this; it seemed the most honest way to get her
to talk about whatever was wrong.

Paola said nothing
for a long time, got up and poured them both more coffee, added hot milk and
sugar, then sat back opposite him. 'Psychobabblers,' she said, 'call this
projection’

Brunetti sipped at
his coffee, added more sugar, then looked at her.

'You know how people
are always seeing their own problems in those around them’

'What’s he unhappy
about?' he asked.

'What did he say I
was unhappy about?'

'Our marriage.'

'Well, there you
are,' she said simply. 'Has your mother said anything?' She shook her head.

'You don't seem
surprised,' Brunetti said.

'He's getting old,
Guido, and he's beginning to realize it. So I think he's beginning to examine
what is important to him, and what isn't’

'And isn't his
marriage?'

'Quite the opposite.
I think he's beginning to see just how important it is to him, and how he's
ignored that for years. Decades.'

They had never
discussed her parents' marriage, though Brunetti had for years heard rumours of
the Count's fondness for pretty women. Though it would have been easy for him
to discover whatever truth lay behind those rumours, he had never asked the
right questions.

Italian to the core,
he did not for an instant doubt that a man could be passionately devoted to the
wife he betrayed with other women. There was no question in his mind that the
Count was in love with the Countess, and leaping from one title to the next,
Brunetti realized that the same was blazingly true of Count Lorenzoni: the one
thing that seemed fully human about him was his love of the Countess.

‘I don't know,' he
said, letting that profession of confusion serve for both Counts.

She leaned across the
table and kissed his cheeks. 'So long as I'm with you, I could never be
unhappy.'

Brunetti lowered his
head and blushed.

24

Brunetti could have
written the script. Patta was bound to speak that morning, putting in the sombre
remarks about the double tragedy to strike this noble family, the terrible
disregard for the most sacred bonds of humanity, the weakening of the fabric of
Christian society, and so on endlessly, ringing the changes on home, hearth,
and family. He could have captured the flatulent pomposity of Patta's every
word, the carefully timed naturalness of his every gesture, even noted within
small parentheses the places where he would pause and cover his eyes with his
hand while speaking of this crime that dared not speak its name.

Just as easily could
he have written the headlines that were sure to scream from every newsstand in
the city:
Delitto in Famiglia;
Caino e Abele; Figlio Addotivo-Assassino.
To avoid both, he called the Questura and said he would not
be in until after lunch and refused to look at the papers that Paola - had
brought back to the house while he was still sleeping. Sensing that Brunetti
had said all that he wanted to about the Lorenzonis, Paola abandoned the
subject and left him alone while she went to Rialto to buy fish. Brunetti,
finding himself with nothing to do for the first time in what seemed like
weeks, decided to impose upon his books the order he was obviously incapable of
imposing upon events and so went into the living room and stood in front of the
ceiling-high bookcase. Years ago, there had been some distinction made
according to language, but when that fell apart, he had attempted to impose
the order of chronology. But the curiosity of the children had soon put an end
to that, and so Petronius now stood next to St John Chrysostom, and Abelard
sidled up to Emily Dickinson. He studied the ranked bindings, pulled down first
one and then two more, and then another pair. But then just as suddenly, he
lost all interest in the job, took all five books and jammed them indiscriminately
in a space on the bottom shelf.

He pulled down his
copy of Cicero's
On the Good
Life
and turned to the
section on duties, where Cicero writes of the divisions of moral goodness. 'The
first is the ability to distinguish truth from falsity, and to understand the
relationship between one phenomenon and another and the causes and consequences
of each one. The second category is the ability to restrain the passions. And
the third is to behave considerately and understanding in our associations with
other people.'

He closed the book
and slid it back into the place the vagaries and whims of the Brunetti family
had assigned it John Donne to the right, Karl Marx to the left. To understand
the relationship between one phenomenon and another and the causes and
consequences of each one’ he said aloud, startling himself with the sound of
his own voice. He went into the kitchen, wrote a note for Paola, and left the
apartment, heading towards the Questura.

By the time he got
there, well after eleven, the press had come, feasted, and gone, and so he was
at least spared the necessity of listening to Patta's remarks. He took the back
steps to his office, closed the door behind him, and sat at his desk. He opened
the Lorenzoni folder and read through it all, page by page. Starting with the
kidnapping two years ago, he listed a complete chronology of those things he
knew. It took him four sheets of paper to list everything, ending with
Maurizio's death.

He spread the four
sheets in front of him, tarot cards filled with death. To distinguish the truth
from falsity. To understand the relationship between one phenomenon and another
and the causes and consequences of each one.' If Maurizio had been the
organizer of the kidnapping, then all phenomena were explained, all
relationships and consequences clear. Desire for wealth and power, perhaps even
jealousy, would have led to the kidnapping. And that would lead to the
attempted attack on his uncle. And thus to his own violent death, the blood on
the jacket, the brain matter on the Fortuny curtains.

But if Maurizio were
not the guilty person, there was no connection between the phenomena. Uncles
might well kill their nephews, but fathers do not kill theirs sons, not in that
peculiarly coldblooded manner.