Beastly Things (26 page)

He emerged into Campo Santa Margherita, by day the same, normal
campo
it had been for centuries, with fruit and fish stands, a
gelateria
, a pharmacy, shops of all sorts, and the odd, elongated shape that made it such a good place for children to run after dogs or other children. Because he had given himself free time, Brunetti turned his mind away from the chaos that now plagued the
campo
at night and that had driven people he knew to sell their family homes, if only to escape the noise.

Had Gobbetti still been there, he would have stopped to buy a chocolate mousse to take home, but they had sold the business, and the
pasticceria
that had replaced them had not replaced the mousse. How replace the sublime?

The boats were moored on the other side of Ponte dei Pugni, one for fruit and one for vegetables, and he tried to remember if he had ever known them
not
to be there. If not, and they were permanently there, were they – at least in the philosophical sense – still boats? Musing on this, he got halfway across Campo San Barnaba before he decided he would like to go home and enjoy the rest of the evening’s softness from his balcony. He passed in front of the
calle
that led to his parents-in-law’s
palazzo
without giving a thought to stopping to see them. The idea was in his mind to go home, and go home he would.

To Brunetti’s great relief, everyone was there when he arrived, and to his greater relief, after they said hello and kissed him, they left him to whatever he chose while they went about the business of their lives. He poured himself a glass of white wine and took a chair out on to the balcony, where he sat for an hour, watching the light dim and disappear, sipping at his wine, and being grateful that the people he loved all had lives and things to busy themselves with that had nothing at all to do with the dreadful lies and deceptions with which his days were filled.

The next morning dawned sweetly for Brunetti, though that sensation diminished the nearer he got to the Questura and what he decided would have to be another conversation with Patta. He realized he had no choice but to tell his superior what he had learned and where those facts had led his suspicions. Like the composer of an opera, he had notes and arias, a range of singers, the sketch of a plot, but there was as yet no coherent libretto.

‘She’s Maurizio De Rivera’s daughter, and you think her husband knows something about a murder and isn’t telling you?’ Patta erupted after Brunetti recounted his conversation with Papetti. Had Brunetti told him that the liquefaction of the blood of San Gennaro was a hoax, Patta could have been no more indignant.

‘You know who he is, don’t you, Brunetti?’ his superior demanded.

Ignoring this, Brunetti said, ‘He might want to know what sort of man his daughter is married to.’

‘The truth’s the last thing a man wants to know about the man his daughter’s married to.’ Then, after a pause so long that Brunetti sensed Patta was taking careful aim, Patta let fire. ‘You should know that.’

Brunetti failed to contain his response, but he did manage to limit it to a glance, quickly turned away. It must, however, have sufficed to show Patta that he had finally gone too far, for he added immediately, in a transparent attempt to back-pedal, ‘You’ve got a daughter, after all. You’ll want to believe she’s married to a good man, won’t you?’

Brunetti’s heart was still pounding at the insult, so it took him some time to find an answer. Finally he said, ‘De Rivera might have different standards from other fathers, Vice-Questore. If his daughter or her husband were involved in this killing in any way, he might not be bothered by things like obstruction of justice, lying to a public official in the pursuit of his duties, perhaps even direct support in the commission of the crime.’ Then, after a pause, he added, ‘After all, he’s been tried for the first two.’

‘And acquitted,’ Patta snapped back.

Brunetti ignored the remark and went on, ‘Nava was stabbed in the back and somehow taken to a place where he could be pushed into a canal. That suggests the participation of two people.’ Brunetti was calmer now and in greater control of his voice.

‘And why does this have to involve Papetti?’ Patta asked loftily.

Brunetti stopped himself from blurting out that it simply
felt
right, well aware of how far he was likely to get with that. ‘It doesn’t necessarily, Dottore. But he knows something, or he knows things, that he’s not telling. He knew about the affair between Nava and Borelli: his surprise that I knew about it was evidence of that. And if he recommended her for the job as his assistant, then she’s got some hold on him,’ Brunetti said, dismissing out of hand
the
possibility of the generosity that is one of the first signs of love.

Patta drew his lips together in a tight, out-thrust circle, a habit Brunetti had come, over the years, to see as a visual suggestion that he was going to consider things reasonably. The Vice-Questore raised his right hand and studied his fingernails. Brunetti had no idea whether he actually saw them or if this was merely another physical manifestation of thought.

At last Patta lowered his hand and relaxed. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I want to bring the Borelli woman in here and ask her a few questions.’

‘Such as?’

‘I won’t know that until I have some more information.’

‘What information?’ Patta asked.

‘About some apartments she owns. About Papetti and Nava and how she got her job as Papetti’s assistant. And how her salary was decided. About the slaughterhouse and how well she knows Dottor Meucci,’ he added, a scenario taking shape.

‘Who’s he?’ Patta demanded, giving evidence that he had not read the reports on the case.

‘Nava’s predecessor.’

‘What’s she got, this Borelli woman – a thing for veterinarians?’

Brunetti was tempted to smile at hearing Patta so unthinkingly ask this very interesting question.

‘I’ve no idea, sir. I’m merely curious in a general way.’

‘In a general way?’ Patta repeated slowly. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, sir, that I don’t have a clear idea yet of how all of these people are connected or of what continues to hold them together. But something does, because no one is telling me anything.’ Speaking more
to
himself than to Patta, Brunetti said, ‘All I need is the way in.’

Patta set his palms firmly on his desk. ‘All right, bring her in and see what she has to say. But, remember, I want to know anything you learn about Papetti before you act on it.’

‘Of course, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said and repaired to the outer office, where he saw the face of Signorina Elettra rising behind the screen of her computer.

‘I’ve accessed the files of the ULSS office in Treviso, sir, since they keep the same records the slaughterhouse does,’ she said. ‘It was easier than trying to get into those of the
macello
.’ Thoughtfully, she added, ‘Besides, in the unlikely event that any traces of my presence were left, it’s always better to leave them in a government agency than in a private business.’

Not wanting to offend Signorina Elettra, who was perhaps waiting for him to query her use of ‘accessed’ or ‘always’, perhaps even ‘unlikely event’, Brunetti limited himself to a mild ‘Tell me.’

‘I’ve gone back four years, sir, and to make it easier to read, I’ve put it into a graph.’ She nodded to the screen.

She moved the mouse, clicked, clicked again, and a line graph appeared, above which was written ‘Preganziol’. The months of the year were listed at the top; the side held numbers that ascended from 0 to 100.

The line began, in January four years before, at three and zigzagged its way to four the following month, then wiggled back to three the next. This pattern continued for the next two years. In the third year it followed the same erratic path upwards to five before sinking back to three, where it remained until November, when it catapulted up to eight and, rising steadily, finished the year at twelve. The line jumped off from January and hit thirteen, stayed
there
for a month, and then in March moved up to fourteen. The chart ended that month.

‘So whatever this number reflects,’ Brunetti said, ‘it moved upward suddenly at about the time Nava began working at the
macello
and continued to do so …’ He leaned forward and tapped at the end of the line, ‘… until the month before his death.’

Signorina Elettra scrolled the page down, allowing Brunetti to read the caption:
Percentage of animals rejected by the competent authority as unfit for slaughter
.

‘Unfit for slaughter.’ Which probably meant the same thing as ‘Unfit for human consumption.’ So there it was. The cowardly dog had defied the robbers, but this cowardly dog had not managed to turn on the robbers and save anyone, and the family where he had been living had not been able to take him back in and love him again, even though he still wasn’t very brave.

‘So he was doing his job,’ Brunetti said, then added, to Signorina Elettra’s confusion, ‘just like the dog.’ But he quickly added something she did understand, so clear was it made by the graph: ‘And his predecessor was not.’

‘Unless we’re back in Exodus and plagues were unleashed upon the land and pestilence upon the herds the day he started working there,’ she added.

‘Unlikely,’ Brunetti observed, then asked, ‘Anything else about Signorina Borelli?’

‘Aside from the list of her properties, I now have some information about her investments and her bank accounts.’

‘Plural?’

‘Here in the city, one in Mestre where her salary is deposited, and one in the postal banking system.’ She smiled and said, with badly disguised contempt, ‘People seem to believe that no one would think to look there.’

‘And what else?’ he asked, so familiar with her manner that he knew there were still treats to be revealed.

‘Meucci. Not only has he made three phone calls to Signorina Borelli’s
telefonino
in the last two days, but it turns out that he is not a veterinarian at all.’

‘What?’

‘He spent four years at Padova, took and passed most of the exams, but seems not to have taken the last four, and there’s no record that he took his degree from the university or that he passed – or ever applied to take – the state exams.’

Brunetti was about to ask how it was possible for the provincial department of health to give him a job as a veterinarian at a slaughterhouse or by what means he had set up a private practice, but he stopped himself in time. Few weeks passed without the revelation of some fake doctor or dentist; why should the species of the patient make fraud any less likely?

He decided on the instant. ‘Call his office and find out if he’s there: ask if you can bring your cat in or something like that – just find out if he’s there. If he is, send Foa and Pucetti over to ask him if he’d like to come in to talk to me.’

‘I’d be delighted, sir,’ she said, then, ‘Have a look at the papers about Signorina Borelli, why don’t you?’

Brunetti took the folder, intending to go to his office to read through the papers, but instead he went to the officers’ room to give more precise instructions to Foa and Pucetti, telling Pucetti to be careful to address Meucci as ‘Signore’ and not ‘Dottore’. After that, still carrying the file, he went down to the bar at Ponte dei Greci and had a coffee and two
tramezzini
.

Back in the office, he called Paola and asked what they were going to have for dinner. To please her, he asked
how
she was feeling about having orchestrated the non-renewal of her colleague’s contract.

‘Like Lucrezia Borgia,’ she said and laughed.

Brunetti spent some time looking for a tape recorder, which he found in the back of his bottom drawer. He checked that it worked and placed it very conspicuously on his desk. He opened the file then and began to read but had got as far only as the prices paid for Signorina Borelli’s apartment in Mestre and the first one in Venice when he heard a sound at his door.

Looking up, he saw Pucetti and, beside him, Meucci. If he were a tyre, then some of the air had been let out of him; this was most evident in his face, where the eyes seemed to have grown larger. His cheeks had sagged and hung loose above the soft little mouth. Less flesh pressed against the retaining wall of his collar.

His body seemed smaller, as well, but that might have been because of the dark woollen jacket that had replaced his voluminous lab coat.

Pucetti waited at the door while Meucci entered. The door closed; the only sound was the officer’s retreating footsteps.

‘Come in, Signor Meucci,’ Brunetti said coolly. He leaned across the desk and clicked on the tape recorder.

The man came slowly forward, as timidly as a young wildebeest forced to step into tall grass. As he approached Brunetti’s desk, his eyes moved around the room in search of the danger he knew was there. Slowly he lowered himself into a chair. Brunetti thought the noise was a sigh, but then he realized it was the sound of Meucci’s flesh-crammed clothing as it rubbed against the sides and back of the chair.

Brunetti observed the man’s hands, which remained
fixed
to the arms of the chair. The stained fingers were wrapped under the arms and so the hands looked like normal hands, however swollen with fat.

‘How did you obtain your job at the
macello
, Signor Meucci?’ Brunetti asked. No greeting, no politeness, only the simple question.

Brunetti watched Meucci consider various possibilities, and then the fat man said, ‘The opening was announced, and I applied for it.’

‘Were you asked to submit supporting documents with your application, Signore?’ Brunetti asked, giving special emphasis to the last word.

‘Yes,’ Meucci answered. The fact that he did not answer with an indignant ‘of course’ told Brunetti that he would have no trouble with this interview. Meucci was a defeated man who wanted only to limit the damage he was going to endure.

‘And the absence of evidence that you were a doctor of veterinary medicine did not serve as an obstacle to your application for that position?’ Brunetti asked with the mildest interest.