Dressed for Death (41 page)

He was still considering this
when Vianello tapped at his door and came in, followed by a short, deeply
tanned man in a wrinkled cotton suit. ‘Commissario,’ the sergeant began in the
formal tones he adopted when addressing Brunetti in front of civilians. ‘I’d
like to present Luciano Gravi.’

Brunetti approached Gravi and
extended his hand. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Signor Gravi. In what way may I be
of help to you?’ He led the man over to his desk and pointed to a chair in
front of it. Gravi looked around the office and then took the chair. Vianello
sat in the chair beside him, paused a moment to see if Gravi would speak and,
when he did not, began to explain.

‘Commissario, Signor Gravi is the
owner of a shoe store in Chioggia.’

Brunetti looked at the man with
renewed interest. A shoe store.

Vianello turned to Gravi and
waved a hand, inviting him to speak. ‘I just got back from vacation,’ Gravi
began, speaking to Vianello but then, when Vianello turned to face Brunetti,
turning his attention towards him. ‘I was down in Puglia for two weeks. There’s
no sense in keeping the store open during Ferragosto. No one wants to shop for
shoes, anyway. It’s too hot. So we close up every year for three weeks, and my
wife and I go on vacation.’

‘And you just got back?’

‘Well, I got back two days ago,
but I didn’t go to the store until yesterday. That’s when I found the postcard.’

‘Postcard, Signor Gravi?’
Brunetti asked.

‘From the girl who works in my
shop. She’s on vacation in Norway, with her fiancé. He works for you, I think.
Giorgio Miotti.’ Brunetti nodded; he knew Miotti. ‘Well, they’re in Norway, as
I said, and she wrote to tell me that the police were curious about a pair of
red shoes.’ He turned back to Vianello. ‘I have no idea what they must have
been talking about for them to think of that, but she wrote on the bottom of
the card that Giorgio said you were looking for someone who might have bought a
pair of women’s shoes, red satin, in a large size.’

Brunetti found that he was
holding his breath and forced himself to relax and breathe it out. ‘And did you
sell those shoes, Signor Gravi?’

‘Yes, I sold a pair of them,
about a month ago. To a man.’ He paused here, waiting for the policemen to
remark on how strange it was that a man would buy those shoes.

‘A man?’ Brunetti asked
obligingly.

‘Yes, he said he wanted them for
Carnevale. But Carnevale isn’t until next year. I thought it strange at the
time, but I wanted to sell the shoes because the satin was torn away from the
heel on one of them. The left one, I think. Anyway, they were on sale, and he
bought them. Fifty-nine thousand lire, reduced from a hundred twenty. Really a
bargain.’

‘I’m sure it was, Signor Gravi,’
Brunetti agreed. ‘Do you think you’d recognize the shoes if you saw them again?’

‘I think so. I wrote the sale
price on the sole of one of them. It might be there.’

Turning to Vianello, Brunetti
said, ‘Sergeant, could you go and get those shoes back from the lab for me? I’d
like Signor Gravi to take a look at them.’

Vianello nodded and left the
room. While he was gone, Gravi talked about his vacation, describing how clean
the water in the Adriatic was, so long as you went far enough south. Brunetti
listened, smiling when he thought it required, keeping himself from asking
Gravi to describe the man who bought the shoes until Gravi had identified them.

A few minutes later, Vianello was
back, carrying the shoes in their clear plastic evidence bag. He handed the bag
to Gravi, who made no attempt to open it. He moved the shoes around inside the
bag, turning first one and then the other upside-down and peering at the sole. He
held them closer, smiled, and held the bag out to Brunetti. ‘See, there it is.
The sale price. I wrote it in pencil so whoever bought it could erase it if
they wanted to. But you can still see it, right there.’ He pointed to faint
pencil markings on the sole.

At last Brunetti permitted
himself the question. ‘Could you describe the man who bought these shoes,
Signor Gravi?’

Gravi paused for only a moment
and then asked, voice respectful in the face of authority, ‘Commissario, could
you tell me why you’re interested in this man?’

‘We believe he can provide us
with important information about an on-going investigation,’ Brunetti answered,
telling him nothing.

‘Yes, I see,’ Gravi answered.
Like all Italians, he was accustomed not to understand what he was told by the
authorities. ‘Younger than you, I’d say, but not all that much. Dark hair. No
moustache.’ Perhaps it was hearing himself say it that made Gravi realize how
vague his description was. ‘I’d say he looked pretty much like anyone else, a
man in a suit. Not very tall and not short, either.’

‘Would you be willing to look at
some photos, Signor Gravi?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Perhaps that would help you
recognize the man?’

Gravi smiled broadly, relieved to
find it all so much like television. ‘Of course.’

Brunetti nodded to Vianello, who
went downstairs and was quickly back with two folders of police photos, among
which, Brunetti knew, was Malfatti’s.

Gravi accepted the first folder
from Vianello and laid it on top of Brunetti’s desk. One by one, he leafed
through the photos, placing them face down on a separate pile after he looked
at them. As Vianello and Brunetti watched, he placed Malfatti’s picture face
down with the others and continued until he reached the bottom of the pile. He
looked up. ‘He’s not here, not even someone who looks vaguely like him.’

‘Perhaps you could give us a
clearer idea of what he looked like, Signore.’

‘I told you, Commissario, a man
in a suit. All these men,’ he said, pointing to the pile of photos that lay
before him, ‘well, they all look like criminals.’ Vianello stole a look at
Brunetti. There had been three photos of police officers mixed in with the
others, one of them of Officer Alvise. ‘I told you, he wore a suit,’ Gravi
repeated. ‘He looked like one of us. You know, someone who goes to work every
day. In an office. And he spoke like an educated man, not a criminal.’

The political naivety of that
remark caused Brunetti to wonder, for a moment, if Signor Gravi was really an
Italian. He nodded to Vianello, who picked up the second folder from where he
had set it on the desk and handed it to Gravi.

As the two policemen watched,
Gravi leafed through a smaller stack of photos. When he got to Ravanello’s, he
paused and looked up at Brunetti. ‘That’s the banker who was killed yesterday,
isn’t it?’ he asked, pointing down at the photo.

‘He’s not the man who bought the
shoes, Signor Gravi?’ he asked.

‘No, of course not,’ Gravi
answered. ‘If it had been, I would have told you when I came in.’ He looked at
the photo again, a studio portrait that had appeared in a brochure which
carried photos of all of the officers of the bank. ‘It’s not the man, but it’s
the type.’

‘The type, Signor Gravi?’

‘You know, suit and tie and
polished shoes. Clean white shirt, good haircut. A real banker.’

For an instant, Brunetti was
seven years old, kneeling beside his mother in front of the main altar of Santa
Maria Formosa, their parish church. His mother looked up at the altar, crossed
herself, and said, voice palpitant with pleading and belief, ‘Maria, Mother of
God, for the love of your Son who gave His life for all of us unworthy sinners,
grant me this one request, and I will never ask a special grace of you in
prayer for as long as I may live.’ It was a promise he was to hear repeated
countless times in his youth, for, like all Venetians, Signora Brunetti always
placed her trust in the influence of friends in high places. Not for the first
time in his life, Brunetti regretted his own lack of faith, but still he
prayed.

He returned his attention to
Gravi. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the other man who might have
bought these shoes from you, but if you could come with me, perhaps you could
help us by taking a look at him in the place where he works.’

‘You mean literally take part in the
investigation?’ Gravi’s enthusiasm was childlike.

‘Yes, if you’d be willing.’

‘Certainly, Commissario. I’d be
glad to help you in any way I can.’

Brunetti stood, and Gravi jumped
to his feet. As they walked towards the centre of the city, Brunetti explained
to Gravi what he wanted him to do. Gravi asked no questions, content only to do
as told, a good citizen helping the police in their investigation of a serious
crime.

When they got to Campo San Luca,
Brunetti pointed out the doorway that led up to Santomauro’s office and
suggested to Signor Gravi that he have a drink in Rosa Salva and allow Brunetti
five minutes before he came upstairs.

Brunetti went up the now familiar
stairway and knocked on the door to the office. ’
Avanti
,’ the secretary
called out, and he went in.

When she looked up from her
computer and saw who it was, she couldn’t resist the impulse that brought her
half-way out of her chair. ‘I’m sorry, Signorina,’ Brunetti said, putting both
hands up in what he hoped was an innocent gesture. ‘I’d like to speak to Avvocato
Santomauro. It’s official police business.’

She seemed not to hear him,
looked at him with her mouth open in a widening O, either of surprise or fear,
Brunetti had no idea which. Very slowly, she reached forward and pressed a
button on her desk, keeping her finger on it and getting to her feet but
staying safely behind her desk. She stood there, finger still on the button,
staring at Brunetti, silent.

A few seconds later, the door was
pulled open from inside, and Santomauro came into the outer office. He saw his
secretary, silent and still as Lot’s wife, then saw Brunetti by the door.

His rage was immediate and
fulminant. ‘What are you doing here? I called the Vice-Questore and told him to
keep you away from me. Get out, get out of my office.’ At the sound of his
voice, the secretary backed away from her desk and stood against the wall. ‘Get
out,’ Santomauro said again, almost shouting now. ‘I will not be subjected to
this sort of persecution. I’ll have you...’ he began but stopped as another man
came into the office behind Brunetti, a man he didn’t recognize, a short man in
a cheap cotton suit.

‘The two of you, get back to the
Questura where you came from,’ Santomauro shouted.

‘Do you recognize this man,
Signor Gravi?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, I do.’

Santomauro stopped at this,
though he still didn’t recognize the little man in the cheap suit.

‘Could you tell me who he is,
Signor Gravi?’

‘He’s the man who bought the
shoes from me.’

Brunetti turned away from Gravi
and looked across the office at Santomauro, who seemed now to have recognized
the little man in the cheap suit. ‘And what shoes were they, Signor Gravi?’

‘A pair of red women’s shoes.
Size forty-one.’

* * * *

Chapter Thirty-One

Santomauro
fell apart. Brunetti had observed the phenomenon often enough to recognize what
was happening. The arrival of Gravi when Santomauro believed himself to have
triumphed over all risk, when the police had not responded to the accusations
in Malfatti’s confession, had fallen so suddenly, from the very heavens
themselves, that Santomauro had neither the time nor the wit to create some
sort of story to explain his purchase of the shoes.

At first, he shouted at Gravi,
telling him to get out of his office, but when the little man insisted that he
would know Santomauro anywhere, knew that he was the man who had bought those
shoes, Santomauro collapsed sideways against his secretary’s desk, arms wrapped
around his chest, as if he could that way protect himself from Brunetti’s
silent gaze and from the puzzled faces of the other two.