Uniform Justice (18 page)

‘That’s why we have the launch,’ was Signorina Elettra’s opening shot in her last volley, which drew to a close with her promise to send the signed papers and the necessary deposit off by the end of the week, followed by a polite goodbye.

Brunetti found himself filled with unwonted sympathy for Vice-Questore Patta: the man simply didn’t have a chance. ‘Filiberto?’ he asked.

‘It was his father’s choice,’ Signorina Elettra replied.

‘And yours? Eustasio?’

‘No, Eriprando.’

17

THE INFORMATION THAT
exceptions to the school rules could be made at the discretion of the Comandante did not tell Brunetti anything he had not already suspected: where the children of the wealthy and powerful congregated, rules were often bent to follow the whim of their parents. What he did not know was the extent of the Comandante’s subservience. Nor, he had to admit, did he have a clear idea of how this might be related to Ernesto’s death.

Deciding not to speculate further, Brunetti dialled Signora Moro’s phone again, and again the phone rang on unanswered. Spurred by some impulse he registered but did not question, he decided to pass by her apartment and see if any of her neighbours could
give
him an idea of where she was.

He chose to take the vaporetto to San Marco, then cut back towards the apartment. He rang the bell, waited, and rang again. Then he rang the bell to the left of hers, waited, then rang the others in succession, working his way across and down, like a climber rappelling down the face of a cliff. The first response came from an apartment on the first floor, the bell of which bore the name Della Vedova. A woman’s voice answered, and when he explained that he was from the police and needed to speak to Signora Moro, the door clicked open. As he entered, the light in the dim hall flashed on, and a few moments later a woman’s voice called from above, ‘Up here, Signore.’

He ascended the steps, and noted that attached to one side of them was a system which would allow a wheelchair to move up and down. The explanation waited just inside the door at the top of the steps: a young woman in a wheelchair, an enormous grey cat resting on her lap. As he reached the landing, she smiled at him and, shifting the cat to one side, reached up with her right hand. ‘Beatrice Della Vedova,’ she said. ‘My pleasure to meet you.’

He gave his name and rank, then she put both hands on the wheels of her chair, whipped it around in a neat half-circle and propelled herself back into the apartment. Brunetti followed her inside, closing the door behind him.

She led him into a living room in the centre of which stood an architect’s drawing board that
had
been lowered almost a metre to a height that would allow her wheelchair to slip comfortably under it. Its surface was covered with water-colour sketches of bridges and canals, painted in the Day-Glo colours tourists seemed to favour. By contrast, the three views of the façades of churches – San Zaccaria, San Martino and San Giovanni in Bragora – that hung on the rear wall all showed a close attention to architectural detail that was absent from the paintings on the drawing board. Their muted colours captured the glowing warmth of stone and the play of light on the canal in front of San Martino and on the façades of the other churches.

She spun around and saw him studying the drawings on the wall. ‘That’s what I really do,’ she said. Then, with a vague swipe at the paintings on the board, she added, ‘And that’s what I get paid to do.’ She bent down to the cat and whispered in its ear, ‘We’ve got to keep you in Whiskas, don’t we, fatty?’

The cat rose slowly from her lap and jumped, with a thump that surely could be heard in the entrance hall below, to the floor. Tail raised, it walked from the room. The woman smiled up at Brunetti. ‘I never know if he’s offended at my comments about his weight or if he just doesn’t like being made to feel responsible for those paintings.’ She let this lie in the air between them, then with a smile added, ‘Either position seems justified, wouldn’t you say?’

Brunetti smiled in return, and she asked him to take a seat. As he did, she wheeled her chair
around
until it was facing him. She might have been in her late twenties, though the flecking of grey in her hair made her seem older, as did the vertical lines between her eyebrows. Her eyes were a light amber, her nose a bit too large for the rest of her face, her mouth so soft and relaxed that it seemed out of place on a face so marked with what Brunetti thought was a history of pain.

‘You said you were interested in Signora Moro?’ she prompted.

‘Yes, I’d like to speak to her. I’ve been phoning but she’s never home. The last time I spoke to her, she …’

The woman cut him off. ‘When was that?’

‘Some days ago. She didn’t say anything about leaving the city.’

‘No, she wouldn’t. Say anything, I mean.’

Brunetti registered the remark and said, ‘I didn’t get the feeling that …’ He paused, not certain how to express it. ‘I didn’t have the feeling that she had anywhere to go.’

Signora or Signorina Della Vedova looked at him with fresh interest. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I don’t know. I just had a very strong feeling that the city was where she belonged and that she had no interest in going anywhere. Or desire.’

When it seemed that Brunetti had no more to say, she replied, ‘She didn’t. Have anywhere to go, that is.’

‘Do you know her well?’

‘No, not really. She’s been here for less than two years.’

‘Since the accident?’ Brunetti asked.

She looked at Brunetti, and all pleasantness disappeared from her face. ‘This,’ she said, flipping the fingers of her right hand across her lap to indicate the legs that rested uselessly below it, ‘was an accident. What happened to Federica was not.’

Brunetti stifled any response he might have made to this and asked, calmly, ‘Are you so sure of that?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, her voice calm again. ‘I wasn’t there and I didn’t see what happened. But Federica, the two times she spoke to me about it, said, “When they shot me …” People who are in accidents don’t talk about it that way.’

Brunetti had no doubt that this woman knew full well how people who were in accidents speak. ‘She said this twice?’

‘Yes, so far as I can remember. But simply by way of description, not complaint. I never asked her what happened, didn’t want to pry. I’ve had enough of that myself. And I figured she’d tell me what she wanted to when she was ready.’

‘And has she?’

She shook her head. ‘No, only those two references.’

‘Have you seen her often?’

‘Perhaps every week or so. She stops in and has a coffee or simply comes down and talks for a while.’

‘Did you know her before she moved into this apartment?’

‘No. I knew about her husband, of course. But I suppose everyone does. Because of his report, I mean.’ Brunetti nodded. ‘I met her because of Gastone,’ she said.

‘Gastone?’

‘The cat. She found him outside the front door one day and when she opened the door, he came in. When he came up and stood outside my door, she knocked and asked me if he were mine. He gets out of here sometimes and then lurks out in the
calle
until someone opens the door, or rings my bell and asks me to open the street door so they can let him in. People who know he’s mine, that is.’ Her face warmed in a smile. ‘Good thing they do. It’s not as if it’s easy for me to go down and let him in.’ She said this simply, and Brunetti did not hear in it an unspoken prompting to strangers to ask questions, nor did he hear an unconscious appeal for pity.

‘When did you see her last?’

She had to think about this. ‘The day before yesterday, and I didn’t really see her, just heard her on the stairs. I’m sure of that. I’d read about the boy’s death, and then, when she came in, I recognized her steps outside. I went over to the door, and I was going to open it, but then I didn’t know what I could say to her, so I didn’t. I just sat here and listened to her go up the stairs. Then, about an hour later, I heard her come down again.’

‘And since then?’

‘Nothing.’ Before he could speak, she added, ‘But I sleep in the back of the apartment, and I sleep very deeply because of the pills I take, so she could have come in or gone out and I wouldn’t have heard her.’

‘Has she called you?’

‘No.’

‘Is it like her to be away for two days?’

Her answer was immediate, ‘No, not at all. In fact, she’s almost always here, but I haven’t heard her on the steps and I haven’t heard her moving around in her apartment.’ She said this last with a gesture towards the ceiling.

‘Do you have any idea where she might have gone?’

‘No. None. We didn’t talk to one another like that.’ When he looked puzzled, she tried to clarify things. ‘I mean, we weren’t friends, just lonely women who talked to one another once in a while.’

There was no hidden message in that, either, so far as Brunetti could tell: merely the truth, and the truth told clear. ‘And she lived alone?’

‘Yes, so far as I know.’

‘No one ever visited her?’

‘Not that I know of, no.’

‘You never heard a child?’

‘Do you mean her son?’

‘No, her daughter.’

‘Daughter?’ she asked, her surprise answering the question for him. She shook her head.

‘Never?’

Again she shook her head, as though the idea of a mother never mentioning one of her children was something too shocking to bear comment.

‘Did she ever mention her husband?’

‘Seldom.’

‘And how? That is, how did she speak about him? With rancour? Anger?’

She thought for a moment and then answered, ‘No, she mentioned him in a normal way.’

‘Affectionately?’

She gave him a quick glance, rich in unspoken curiosity, then answered, ‘No, I couldn’t say that. She simply mentioned him, quite neutrally.’

‘Could you give me an example?’ Brunetti asked, wanting to get a feel of it.

‘Once, we were talking about the hospital.’ She stopped here, then sighed, and continued. ‘We were talking about the mistakes they make, and she said that her husband’s report had put an end to that, but only for a short time.’

He waited for her to clarify, but it seemed that she had said enough. Brunetti could think of nothing else to ask her. He got to his feet. ‘Thank you, Signora,’ he said, leaning down to shake her hand.

She smiled in response and turned her wheelchair towards the door. Brunetti got there first and was reaching for the handle when she called out, ‘Wait.’ Thinking she had remembered something that might be important, Brunetti
turned
, then looked down when he felt a sudden pressure against his left calf. It was Gastone, serpentining his way back and forth, suddenly friendly with this person who had the power to open the door. Brunetti picked him up, amazed at the sheer mass of him. Smiling, he placed him in the woman’s lap, said goodbye, and let himself out of the apartment, though he did not pull the door closed until he made sure that there was no sign of Gastone between the door and the jamb.

As he had known he would do ever since Signora Della Vedova told him that there had been no sign of Signora Moro for two days, Brunetti went up the stairs to her apartment. The door was a simple one: whoever owned the apartment had no concern that his tenants should be safe from burglars. Brunetti took out his wallet and slid out a thin plastic card. Some years ago, Vianello had taken it from a burglar so successful he had become careless. Vianello had used it on more than one occasion, always in flagrant violation of the law, and upon his promotion from sergeant to inspector, he had given it to Brunetti in token of his realization that the promotion was due primarily to Brunetti’s insistence and support. At the time, Brunetti had entertained the possibility that Vianello was merely freeing himself of an occasion of sin, but the card had since then proven so useful that Brunetti had come to appreciate it as the gift it was.

He slipped it between the door and the jamb,
just
at the height of the lock, and the door swung open at a turn of the handle. Long habit made him stop just inside the door and sniff the air, hunting for the scent of death. He smelled dust and old cigarette smoke and the memory of some sharp cleaning agent, but there was no scent of rotting flesh. Relieved, he closed the door behind him and walked into the sitting room. He found it exactly as he had left it: the furniture in the same position, the single book that had been lying face down on the arm of a sofa still there, still at the same page, for all he knew.

The kitchen was in order: no dishes in the sink, and when he pried the door open with the toe of his shoe, he found no perishable food in the refrigerator. He took a pen from the inner pocket of his jacket and opened all of the cabinets: the only thing he found was an open tin of coffee.

In the bathroom, he opened the medicine cabinet with the back of a knuckle and found nothing more than a bottle of aspirin, a used shower cap, an unopened bottle of shampoo, and a package of emery boards. The towels on the rack were dry.

The only room left was the bedroom, and Brunetti entered it uneasily: he disliked this part of his job as much as anything about it. On the nightstand beside the bed a thin rectangle of clear space stood outlined in the dust: she had removed a photo from there. Two more had been taken from the dresser. Drawers and closet,
however
, seemed full as far as he could tell, and two suitcases lay under the bed. Shameless now, he pulled back the covers on the side of the bed closest to the door and lifted the pillow. Under it, neatly folded, lay a man’s white dress shirt. Brunetti pulled it out and let it fall open. It would have fitted Brunetti, but the shoulders would have fallen from Signora Moro’s, and the sleeves would have come far down over her hands. Just over the heart of the man who would wear the shirt he saw the initials ‘FM’ embroidered in thread so fine it could only have been silk.

He folded the shirt and replaced it under the pillow, then pulled the covers up and tucked them neatly in place. He went back through the living room and let himself out of the apartment. As he passed the door to the Della Vedova apartment, he wondered if she was sitting inside, holding her cat, listening for the footsteps that carried life back and forth outside her door.