Beastly Things (15 page)

‘Police business, no doubt,’ Vezzani commented, giving evidence that Patta’s reputation extended even to the Questura in Mestre.

‘If the police have to investigate a restaurant, it is,’ Vianello answered. Brunetti told him to tell the pilot he was still waiting for a report on the tides for the night of Nava’s murder. Vianello passed on the message and snapped his phone closed.

‘You guys have any idea how lucky you are?’ Vezzani asked.

Brunetti turned to him and asked, ‘To work for Patta?’

Vezzani laughed. ‘No, to work in Venice. There’s hardly enough crime worth talking about.’ Before either of them could protest, he said, ‘I don’t mean this Nava guy, but in general. The worst criminals are the politicians, but since there’s nothing we can do about them, they don’t count. So what do you get? A few break-ins, some tourist who gets his wallet stolen? The guy who kills his wife and calls you up to confess? So you spend your days reading notices from the idiots in Rome, or waiting for the next Minister of the Interior to be arrested so you get a new boss and new notices, or you walk down the street to have a coffee and sit in the sun and read the newspaper.’ He tried to make it sound like a joke, but Brunetti suspected he meant every word of it.

Brunetti took a quick glance into the rear-view mirror but saw only Vianello’s left shoulder. In a level voice, he said, ‘People pray for rain. Perhaps we should pray for murder.’

Vezzani took his eyes off the road and glanced quickly at Brunetti, but there was nothing to read in Brunetti’s face, just as there had been nothing to read in his voice.

At Piazzale Roma, Brunetti and Vianello got out of the car and reached in to shake Vezzani’s hand, then Brunetti said they’d get one of their own drivers to take them to the slaughterhouse the next morning. Vezzani did not bother to protest, said goodbye, and drove off.

Brunetti looked at Vianello, who shrugged.

‘If that’s the way he thinks, there’s nothing we can do about it,’ Brunetti said.

Vianello followed him towards the
embarcadero
of the Number One. The Inspector could get home more quickly by taking the Number Two, so Brunetti took this as a sign that Vianello wanted to continue the conversation.

People hurried towards them, most of them keeping to the left but some swerving closer to the water to get past faster and arrive a few seconds earlier at the buses that would take them to their homes on the mainland.

They passed the taxis bobbing in the water. Finally Vianello said, ‘I suppose I can understand him. After all, the
calli
aren’t lined with whores, and we don’t get called to go out to the Chinese factories and arrest everyone. Or their whorehouses, for that matter.’

‘And we don’t have drunk drivers,’ Brunetti offered.

‘That’s for the
Polizia Stradale
, Guido,’ Vianello said with false reproach.

Undeterred, Brunetti added, ‘Or arson. People don’t set fire to factories.’

‘That’s because we don’t have any factories any more. Only tourism,’ said a dispirited Vianello, quickening his steps at the sound of the approaching vaporetto. The Inspector flashed his warrant card at the uniformed young woman on the boat landing.

The gate slid shut just behind them and they went inside to sit. Neither of them spoke until they passed under the Scalzi bridge, when Vianello said, ‘You think he’s jealous?’

On the left, the church of San Geremia slid towards them, and after a moment they could see, ahead of them on the right, the columned façade of the Natural History Museum.

‘He’d be crazy if he weren’t, don’t you think?’ Brunetti asked.

* * *

Only when he reached the door to his apartment did Brunetti realize how profoundly tired he was. He felt like a billiard ball that had been sliding around all day, first to this side and then to that. He’d learned too much and travelled too much, and now all he wanted to do was sit quietly and eat his dinner while listening to his family discuss subjects that had nothing to do with crime or death. He wanted a peaceful, uncontentious evening.

However much this might have been Brunetti’s wish, it was not that of his lady wife, something he realized at the first sight of her and by the greeting she gave him when he went into her study.

‘Ah, there you are,’ she said with a broad smile that was perhaps too graced with teeth. ‘I want to ask you a legal question.’

Brunetti sat on the sofa, and only then did he say, ‘After eight at night, I function only as a private legal consultant and expect to be paid for my time and for any information I might provide.’

‘In prosecco?’

He kicked off his shoes and extended himself to his full length on the sofa. He pummelled a pillow until its shape suited him, and lay back. ‘Unless it is a serious or a non-rhetorical question, in which case I am to be paid in champagne.’

She removed her glasses, placed them on the open pages of the book she had been reading, and left the room. Brunetti closed his eyes and let his mind wander through the day in search of something restful he could contemplate until Paola’s return. He found himself remembering the teddy bear in Teo’s hand, its stomach fur rubbed or chewed away by childish adoration. Brunetti emptied his mind of everything else and considered the bear, which led him to the bears his children had loved and then to
the
one he could still remember having, though where he came from and where he went were mysteries long removed from his memory.

The clink of glass on glass brought him back from childhood to adult life. The fact that his eyes opened to a bottle of Moët in the hand of his wife did a great deal to ease the transition.

She filled the second glass and came towards the sofa. He pulled back his feet to give her room and took the glass she offered him. He held it toward her and joyed in the sound the glasses made as they touched, then took the first sip. ‘All right,’ he said as she sat down beside him, ‘tell me.’

She shot him a look, tried to inject it with surprise, but when his expression remained unmoved, she abandoned the attempt and drank some of her wine. She pushed herself back in the sofa and let her left hand fall on to his calf. ‘I want to know whether it’s a crime to know that something illegal is going to take place and not report it.’

He took another sip of champagne, decided not to try to distract her with compliments for it, and considered her question. In similar manner to that with which he had conjured up Teo’s teddy bear, though casting his net much farther into the past, he ran through those elements of criminal law he had studied at university.

‘Yes and no,’ he finally said.

‘When is it a yes?’ she asked.

‘For example, if you are some sort of public official, you have to inform the authorities.’

‘And ethically?’ she asked.

‘I don’t do ethical,’ Brunetti said and returned to his champagne.

‘Is it right to stop a crime from being committed?’ she asked.

‘You want me to say yes?’

‘I want you to say yes.’

‘Yes.’ Then Brunetti added, ‘Ethically. Yes.’

Paola considered this in silence, then got up and went over to fill both of their glasses. Still silent, she came back and handed him his and sat down again. Out of the habit of decades, her left hand returned to his leg.

Sitting back in the sofa she crossed her legs, then took another sip of champagne. Looking at the painting on the far wall, the portrait of an English naturalist holding a tufted grouse they had found years ago in, of all places, Seville, she said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask me what this is all about?’

He looked at his wife, not at the naturalist and not at the tufted grouse, and said, ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Why?’

‘In the immediate sense, because I’ve had a long day and I’m very tired, and I don’t have room in my brain or in my sensibility for anything that might lead to trouble. And from the way you ask, I suspect that possibility exists.’

‘And in the larger sense or longer sense, why don’t you want to hear about it?’ she asked.

‘Because if it does lead to trouble, I’ll learn about it sooner or later, so there’s no need for you to tell me about it now.’ He leaned forward and placed his hand on hers. ‘I really can’t do this now, Paola.’

She turned up her palm, gave his a strong squeeze, and said, ‘Then I’ll go and start dinner, shall I?’

18

BRUNETTI WOKE A
few times in the night, thinking about what Paola had asked him and trying to imagine what it might mean, what she was up to, for he knew she was up to something. He knew the signs from long exposure and long experience: once she started on one of what he thought of as her missions, she grew intense, sought specific information rather than concepts or ideas, and seemed to lose her sense of irony and humour. Over the years, she had had attacks of zeal, and they had often led to trouble. Brunetti sensed that another one was on the way.

Each time he woke, he had but to sense the presence of the inert lump beside him to marvel anew at her gift of plunging into sleep, no matter what was happening around her. He thought of the nights he had spent lying awake and worrying about his family or his job or his future or the future of the planet, or simply kept awake by the inability to digest his dinner. While beside him
rested
a monument to peace and tranquillity, motionless, barely breathing.

He woke again a bit before six and decided it was useless to try to go back to sleep. He went down to the kitchen and made himself coffee, heated milk to pour into it, and went back to bed.

Having finished the
Agamemnon
and in need of a break before continuing that familiar family saga, Brunetti did what he often did in such circumstances: he picked up the
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
and, much in the way devout Christians were said to consult the Bible, opened it at random. It was rather like playing a slot machine, he had to admit: sometimes what came up was sententious pap that led to nothing and certainly provided no riches. But sometimes the words came at him like a stream of coins, flooding out of the trough in the slot machine and splashing across his feet.

He opened to Book Two and found this: ‘Failure to read what is happening in another’s soul is not easily seen as a cause of unhappiness: but those who fail to attend to the motions of their own soul are necessarily unhappy.’ He looked up from the book and out the window, where the curtain was only half drawn; he was conscious of the light, not from the approaching dawn, but from the ambient illumination with which the city was filled.

He considered the words of the wise emperor, but then he thought of Patta, of whom many things could be said, among which was the undeniable fact that he was happy. Yet if ever man had been made who was unconscious of the motions of his own soul, that man was Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta.

In no way deterred by the failure of the book to spin up a winning combination, Brunetti opened to Book Eleven. ‘No thief can steal your will.’ This time he closed
the
book and set it aside. Again, he gave his attention to the light in the window and the statement he had just read: neither provided illumination. Government ministers were arrested with frightening frequency; the head of government himself boasted, in the middle of a deepening financial crisis, that he didn’t have financial worries and had nineteen houses; Parliament was reduced to an open shame. And where were the angry mobs in the piazzas? Who stood up in Parliament to discuss the bold-faced looting of the country? But let a young and virginal girl be killed, and the country went mad; slash a throat and the press was off and running for days. What will was left among the public that had not been destroyed by television and the penetrant vulgarity of the current administration? ‘Oh, yes, a thief can steal your will. And has,’ he heard himself say aloud.

Brunetti, trapped in the mixture of rage and despair that was the only honest emotion left to the citizenry, pushed back the covers and got out of bed. He stayed under the shower for a long time, indulging in the luxury of shaving there without giving a thought to the consumption of water, the energy expended to heat it, nor yet to the fact that he was using a disposable razor. He was tired of taking care of the planet: let it take care of itself for a change.

He went back to the bedroom and dressed in a suit and tie, but then he remembered where it was he and Vianello were going that morning and replaced the suit in the closet and put on a pair of brown corduroy trousers and a heavy woollen jacket. He searched around on the floor of the closet until he found a pair of Topsiders with thick rubber waffle soles. He had little idea of the proper attire for a slaughterhouse, but he knew a suit was not it.

It was seven-thirty before he left the house, stepping
out
into an early morning crispness that gave promise of clean air and growing warmth. These really were the best days of the year, with the mountains sometimes visible from the window in the kitchen, the nights cool enough to summon a second blanket from the closet.

He walked, stopped to get a newspaper –
La Repubblica
and not either of the local papers – and then in Ballarin for a coffee and a brioche. The
pasticceria
was busy, but not yet crowded, so most people could still find a place to stand at the bar. Brunetti took his coffee to the small round table, placed the paper to the left of his cup, and studied the headlines. A woman about his age, with hair the colour of marigolds, set her cup not far from his, studied the same headlines while sipping at her coffee, looked at him, and said, speaking Veneziano, ‘It makes a person sick, doesn’t it?’

Brunetti held up his brioche and tilted it in the equivalent of a shrug. ‘What can we do?’ had come from his lips before he remembered the words of Marcus Aurelius. The thief, it seemed, had stolen his will during the short time since he had left his home. Thus, as if he had intended his first remark as a rhetorical flourish, he looked at her directly and said, ‘Other than to vote, Signora.’

She looked at him as if she had been stopped on the street by one of the patients from Palazzo Boldù, some raving lunatic who would now reveal the Secret of the Ages. Disgust at his own moral cowardice swept Brunetti, forcing him to add, ‘And throw small coins at them if we see them on the street.’