Death and Judgement (3 page)

4

The wheels locked and the train slid to a halt; passengers were knocked to
the
floor of the corridors and into the laps of strangers sitting opposite them. Within seconds, windows were yanked down and heads popped out, searching up and down the track for whatever it was that had caused the train to grind to a stop. Cristina Merli lowered the window in the corridor, glad of the biting winter air, and stuck her head out, waiting to see who would come towards the train. It turned out to be two of the uniformed
poli
zia ferr
ovia
who came ru
nning up the platform. She leaned out from the window and waved at them. 'Here, over here.
’
Because she didn't want anyone except the police to hear what she had to tell them, she said nothing more until they were directly underneath her window.

When she told them; one of them broke away and ran back towards the station; the other moved towards the engine to tell the engineer what was going on. Slowly, with two false starts, the train began to crawl into the station, inching its way up the track until it came to a halt at its usual place on track 5. A few people stood on the platform, waiting for passengers to get down from the train or to climb aboard themselves for the late-night trip to Trieste. When the doors didn't open, they mulled together, asking one another what was wrong. One woman, assuming that this was yet another train strike, threw her hands into the air and her suitcase to the ground. As the passengers stood
there
, talking and growing irritated at the unexplained delay, yet another proof of the inefficiency of
the
railways, six police officers, each carrying a machine-gun, appeared at the front of the platform and walked along
the
train, positioning themselves at every second car. More heads appeared at the windows, men shouted down angrily, but no one listened to anything that was said. The doors of the train remained locked.

After long minutes of this, someone told the sergeant in charge of the officers that the train had a public-address system. The sergeant pulled himself up into
the
engine and began to explain to the passengers that a crime had been committed on the train and they were being held there in
the
station until
the
police could take their names and addresses.

When he finished speaking, the engineer unlocked the doors and the police swung themselves aboard. Unfortunately, no one had thought to explain anything to the people waiting on the platform, who consequently crowded on to the train, where they quickly became confused with the original passengers. Two men in the second carriage tried to push past
the
officer in
the
corridor, insisting that they had seen nothing, knew nothing, and were already late. He stopped them by raising his machine-gun across his chest in front of them, effectively blocking off the corridor and forcing
them
into a compartment, where they grumbled about police arrogance and their rights as citizens.

In the end, there proved to be only thirty-four people on the train, excluding those who had crowded on behind the police. After half an hour, the police got their names and addresses and asked if they had seen anything strange on the train. Two people remembered a black pedlar who got off at Vicenza; one said he'd seen a man with long hair and a beard coming out of the toilet before they pulled into Verona, and someone had seen a woman in a fur hat get off at Mestre, but aside from that, no one had noticed anything at all out of
the
ordinary.

Just as it began to look as though
the
train would be there all night and people were beginning to straggle off to telephone relatives in Trieste to tell them not to expect their arrival, an engine backed its way into the far end of the track and attached itself to the rear of
the
train, suddenly converting it into
the
front. Three blue-uniformed mechanics crawled under the train and detached the last carriage,
the
one in which the body still lay, from
the
rest of the train. A conductor ran along the platform, yell
ing '
I
n
partenza, in partenza, siamo in partenza',
and passengers scrambled b
ack up into the train. The condu
ttore slammed a door, then another one, and pulled himself up on to the train just as it started to move slowly out of the station. And Cristina
Merli
stood in the office of the Station Master, attempting to explain why she should not be subject to a fine of 1 million lire for having pulled the train's alarm.

5

Guido Brunetti did
not learn of the murder of Avvo
cato Carlo Trevisan until the following morning, and he learned of it in a most unpolicemanlike manner, from the shouting headlines of
II Gazzettino,
the same newspaper that had twice applauded
Avvocato
Trevis
an's tenure as city counsellor. '
Avvocato
Assassinato sul Treno,' the headline cried, while
La Nuova,
ever
drawn to melodrama, spoke of 'Il
Treno della Morte'. Brunetti saw the headlines while on his way to work, stopped and bought both papers, and stood in the Ruga Orefici to read both articles while early-morning shoppers passed by him unnoticed. The article gave the barest facts: shot to death on the train, body found as it crossed the
laguna,
police conducting the usual investigation.

Brunetti looked up and allowed his eyes to wander sightlessly across the banked stalls of fruit and vegetables. The 'usual investigation'? Who had been on duty last night? Why hadn't he been called? And if he hadn't been called, which one of his colleagues had been?

He turned away from the news-stand and continued walking toward the Questura, calling to mind the various cases on which they were working at the moment,
trying to
calculate who would be given this one. Bru
netti was himself almost at the end of an investigation that had to do, in Venice's minor way; with the enormous spider web of bribery and corruption that had been radiating out from Milan for the last few years. Super highways had been built on
the
mainland, one to connect the city with the airport, and billions of fire had been spent to build dm It was not until after construction was completed that anyone had troubled to consider that the airport, one with fewer than a hundre
d daily flights, was already well
served by road, public buses, taxis, and boats. It was only then that anyone thought to question
the
enormous expenditure of public monies on a road that no stretch of
the
imagination could view as being in any way neces
sary. Hence Brunetti's involvem
ent and hence the wa
rrants that had gone out for both
-
the arrest and the freezing of the
assets of the owner of the constr
uction firm that had done the major portion of
the
work on the road and of the three members of
the
City Council who had fough
t most vociferously for his being awarded the contract.

Another commissario was busy with the Casino where, yet once again,
the
croupiers had found
a way to beat the system and sk
im off a percentage. The other was involved with an on-going investigation of Mafia-controlled businesses in Mestre, an mvestigation that appeared to have no limits and, alas, no end.

And so it was no surprise for Brunetti to arrive at the Questura and be greeted by the guards at the front door with the news, 'He wants to see you.
’
If Vi
ce-Questore Patta wanted to see him this early, then perhaps Patta had been called last night and not one of the commissari. And if Patta was sufficiently interested in the death to be here
this
early, then Trevisan was more important or more powerfully connected than Brunetti had realized.

He went up to his own office and hung up his coat, then checked his desk. There was nothing on it that hadn't been
there
when he left the night before, which meant that any papers already generated by the case were down in Patta's office. He went down the back steps and into
the
Vice-Questore's outer office. Behind her desk, looking as though she were
there
only to meet the photographers from
Vogue,
sat Signorina Elet
tra Zorzi, today arrayed as were the lilies of the field, in a white crepe-de-Chine dress that fell in diagonal, but decidedly provocative, folds across her bosom.

'Buon giomo, commissariat
she said, looking up from the magazine open on her desk and smiling.

'Trevisan?' Brunetti asked.

She nodded. 'He's been on the phone for the last ten minutes. The Mayor.' 'Who called whom?'

'The Mayor called him,' Signorina Elettra answered. 'Why, does it matter?'

'Yes, it probably means we have nothing to go on.' 'Why?'

'If he called the Mayor, it would mean he was sure enough about something to assure him that we had a suspect or would soon have a confession. That
the
Mayor called him means Trevisan was important and they want it settled fast.'

Signorina Elettra closed her magazine and moved it to the side of the desk. When she had first started working for Patta, Brunetti remembered, she used to put them in the drawer when she wasn't reading
them
; now she didn't even bother to torn
them
face down.

'What time did he get here?' Brunetti asked.

'Eight-thirty.' Then, before Brunetti asked, she told him, 'I was already here, and I told him you'd been in and had gone out to see if you could talk to the Leonardis' maid.' He had spoken to the woman the afternoon before as part of his investigation of the builder, spoken to her and learned nothing.

'Grazie!’
he said. Brunetti had more dun once reflected upon the strangeness of the fact that a woman with Signorina Elettra's natural indention towards the duplicitous should
have chosen to work for the pol
ice.

She glanced down at her desk and saw that a red light on her phone had ceased to bank. 'He's finished talking,' she said.

Brunetti nodded and turned away. He knocked on Patta's door, waited for the shouted Viwmtt", and went into the office.

Though
the
Vice-Questore had arrived early, he had app
arently had ample time to perfor
m his toilette:
the
scent of some pungent aftershave hung in the air, and Patta's handsome face g
lowed. His tie was wool, Hi
s suit silk
; no slave to tradition, the Vice
-Questore. 'Where
have you been?' was Patta's greet
ing

'At the Leonardis'. I thought I could talk to their maid.' 'And?'

'She knows nothing.'

'That doesn't matter,'
Patta
said, then gestured to the chair in front of his desk. 'Sit down, Brunetti.' When he was seated,
Patta
asked, 'Have you heard about this?'

It was not necessary to ask him what 'this' was. 'Yes,' Brunetti answered. 'What happened?'

'Someone shot him on
the
train from Torin
o last night. Twice, at very cl
ose range. Body shots. One must have severed an artery, there was so much blood.' If
Patta
said 'must have', that meant the autopsy hadn't been done yet, and he was only guessing.

'Where were you last night?'
Patta
asked, almost as if he wanted to eliminate Brunetti as a suspect before going any further.

'We went to dinner at a friend's house.'

‘
I was told they tried to reach you at home.'

‘
I was at a friend's house,' Brunetti repeated.

'Why don't you have an answering machine?'

'I have two children.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

"That if I had an answering machine, I'd spend my time listening to messages from their friends.' Or that he'd spend it listening to his children's many prevarications as to their lateness or absence. It also meant that Brunetti saw it as his children's responsibility to take messages for their parents, but he didn't want to spend his time with
Patta
discussing the issue.

'They had to call me,' Patta said, making no attempt to disguise his indignation.

Brunetti suspected he was meant to apologize. He said nothing.

'I went to the railway station. The
polizia ferrov
ia
had made a mess of it, of course.' Patta looked down at his desk and pushed a few photos towards Brunetti.

Brunetti leaned forward, picked up the photos, and glanced at them while Patta continued to catalogue the many incompetencies of the
polizia ferrovia.
The first photo was taken from the door of the train compartment and showed the body of a man lying on his back between the facing seats. The angle made it impossible to see more than the back of the man's head, but the dark red splotches on the upturned dome of his paunch were unmistakable. The next photo showed the body from the other side of the compartment and must have been taken through the window of the carriage. In this one, Brunetti could see that the man's eyes were closed and that one of his hands was c
losed tightly around a pen. The
other photos revealed little more, though they had been taken from inside the carriage. The man appeared to be sleeping; death had wiped his face free of all expression and left what seemed to be the sleep of the just.

'Was he robbed?' Brunetti asked, cutting into
Patta’s continuing complaint. ‘
What?'

'Was he robbed?'

'It seems not. His wallet was still in his pocket, and his briefcase, as you can see, is still on the seat opposite where he was sitting
’

'Mafia?' Brunetti asked, the way one did, the way one had to.

Patta shrugged. 'He's a lawyer,' he answered, leaving it to Brunetti to infer if
this
made him more or less likely to merit execution by
the
Mafia.

'Wife?
’
Brunetti asked, expressing with the question the fact that he was bom an Italian and a married man.

'Not likely. She's the Secretary of the Lions' Club,' Patta answered, and Brunetti, caught by the absurdity of his remark, involuntarily guffawed, but when he caught
the
look Patta shot him, he turned the noise into a cough, which turned into a real cough that left him red faced and teary eyed.

When he had recovered enough to breathe normally, Brunetti asked, 'Business partners? Anything
there
?'

'I don't know.' Patta tapped a finger on his desk, calling for Brunetti's attention. 'I've been looking over the case-load, and it seems like you're the one who's got
the
least to do.' One of the things that most endeared Patta to Brunetti was his unfailing felicity of phrase. 'I'd like to assign this case to you, but before I do, I want to be certain that you'll handle it in the proper fashion.'

This meant, Brunetti was certain, that Patta wanted to be sure he would defer to the social status implied by the secretaryship of the Lions' Club. Because he knew he wouldn't be
there
if Patta had not already decided to give him the case, Brunetti chose to ignore the admonition implicit in these words and, instead, asked, 'What about the people on the train?'

His talk with the Mayor must have impressed on Patta that speed was more important here than making a point with Brunetti, for he answered directly, The
polizia ferrovia
got the names and addresses of all the people who were on the train when it pulled into the station.' Brunetti raised his chin in an inquisitive gesture, and Patta went on, 'One or two of them said they saw people on the train. It's all in the file,' he said, tapping at a manila folder that lay in front of him.

'What judge has been assigned to this?' Brunetti asked. Once he knew this, Brunetti would know how much he'd have to defer to the Lions' Club.

'Vantuno,' Patta answered, naming a woman about Brunetti s own age, one with whom he had worked successfully in the past. A Sicilian, as was Patta, Judge Vantuno knew that there were complexities and nuances in the society of Venice that would be forever elusive to her, but she was co
nfident enough in the local com
missari to give them great liberty in the way they chose to conduct an investigation.

Brunetti nodded, unwilling to reveal even this minimal satisfaction to Patta.

'But I'll expect a daily report from you,' Patta went on. 'Trevisan was an important man. I've already had a call from the Mayor's office about it, and I make n
o secret that he wants this settl
ed as quickly as possible.'

'Did he have any suggestions?' Brunetti asked.

Accustomed to impertinence from his inferior, Patta sat back in his chair and peered at Brunetti for a moment before asking, 'About what?', putting sharp emphasis on the second word to imply his disapproval
of
the question.

'About
anything Trevisan might have been involved in,' Brunetti replied blandly. He was quite serious about this. The fact that a man was mayor did not exclude him from knowledge
of
the dirty secrets
of
his friends; in fact, the opposite was more likely to be the case.