Drawing Conclusions (11 page)

‘It’s what we found in Signora Altavilla’s apartment, yes,’ he answered. ‘Why do you ask?’

Attention still directed at the church, as if consulting with it to find an answer, she said, ‘Because in a man’s apartment, it would suggest one thing; in a woman’s, something entirely different.’

‘What would it suggest in a man’s?’ he asked, though he suspected he knew.

She turned to face him and answered, ‘In a man’s, it would suggest fresh underwear for a woman – or for the women – he brought home for the night,’ she said, pausing to consider the sound of this. Then she added, sounding less certain, ‘But then it probably wouldn’t be simple cotton, would it? And it wouldn’t be in another room. Not unless he was very strange indeed.’

Presumably, then, she considered it not at all strange for a man to keep women’s underwear in differing sizes in his home, so long as it was expensive and kept in his bedroom. For a moment, Brunetti wondered what other information had been closed off to him by the vows of matrimony. But he confined himself to asking, ‘And in a woman’s?’

‘There’s nothing to preclude the same explanation,’ she said, surprising him with how ordinary she managed to make it sound. But then she smiled and added, ‘But more likely it would suggest she brought the women home for some more prosaic reason.’

‘Such as?’ he asked.

‘Such as to protect them from the sort of men who would invite them home for one night,’ she said in a tone that suggested she might be serious.

‘That’s a puritanical vision of things.’

‘Not necessarily,’ she said levelly. Then, in a more accommodating voice, she went on, ‘It’s more likely she’s helping illegal refugee women, letting them stay with her – safely – while they look for work or find a place to live.’ She paused, and he watched her run through possibilities. ‘Or it could be that she wanted to protect them from other people.’

‘Such as?’

‘Any man who thought he had a right over them. A boyfriend. A pimp.’

He gave her a level look but did not say anything. Brunetti toyed with her idea and, after a while, found that he liked the feel of it. To test it, he said, ‘Do you think she could organize that on her own? After all, where would she find out about them or be put in touch with them?’

As a knight would first swing into the saddle of his horse before lifting his lance, Signorina Elettra returned to the chair behind her computer. She hit a few keys, studied the screen, and hit a few more. Brunetti pushed himself away from the desk and turned to watch. After some time she
waved a hand to him and said, ‘Come and have a look.’

He moved behind her and looked at the screen. He saw the usual photomontage of a woman, her face turned away from the viewer, the menacing shadow of a man lurking behind her. A headline declared ‘Stop Illegal Immigration.’ Below it were a few sentences, offering support and help and providing an 800 telephone number. He did not read the full text, but he did take out his notebook and write down the number.

‘You remember what the President said last year?’ Signorina Elettra asked him.

‘About this?’ he asked, indicating the screen and what it held.

‘Yes. Do you remember the number he gave?’

‘Of victims?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘I do,’ she said, and Brunetti could all but hear her adding that she remembered because she was a woman and he did not because he was a man. But she said nothing else, and Brunetti did not ask.

‘Would you like me to do anything, sir? Call them?’

‘No,’ he said too quickly; he saw that she was surprised by the answer as well as by the speed with which he gave it. ‘I’ll do it.’ He wanted to say something more to cover up the force of his response to her proposal, but that would be to draw attention to it.

‘Anything else, Commissario?’ he heard her asking.

‘No, thank you, Signorina. The number’s enough.’

‘As you will, Dottore,’ she said and bent her head over the screen.

Walking up the steps, Brunetti was assailed by uneasiness about his strong rebuff of Signorina Elettra’s offer; she was so obviously superior to most of the people who worked at the Questura that she deserved far better of him. Inventive and
clever, she was also well versed in the law and would have been an ornament to any police department lucky enough to hire her as an officer. But she was not, and he should not permit her to present herself as a police officer when asking questions or requesting information on the phone. It was bad enough that he turned a blind eye to the various acts of cyber-piracy in which he knew she engaged; indeed, acts which he encouraged her to commit. There was a line somewhere between what she could and could not be permitted to do: Brunetti’s dilemma was that the line he drew was never straight and was never drawn in the same place twice.

On his desk, delivered there he had no idea how, Brunetti found the autopsy report as well as the one from the scene of crime team. He stacked the papers in the centre of the desk, pulled his reading glasses from their case in his pocket, slipped them on, and started to read.

Rizzardi, a quiet man and not at all given to vanity or boasting, could not resist the temptation to show off in two fields: his dress and his prose. Understated, subtle in colour, his suits and overcoats, even his raincoat, were of such a quality as to make Brunetti suspicious of his sources of income; his prose was of a grammatical precision and inventiveness of expression Brunetti despaired of finding in any of the other reports he read. It was not unusual for the pathologist to describe an organ as being ‘captive within the tendrils of small veins’, or to describe the ‘starburst’ of cigarette burns on the back of a victim of torture. Indeed, the report of the first autopsy Rizzardi had done at Brunetti’s request had described the slash marks on the victim’s stomach, from which he had bled to death, by saying, ‘The wounds are reminiscent of Fontana when he worked in red.’

There were no flourishes, however, in his report on Signora Altavilla. He described the condition of her heart, making it clear that the cause of death had been uncontrollable fibrillation. He described the injury to the
vertebrae and surrounding tissue and described the cut on her forehead, saying that they were not inconsistent with a bad fall soon before her death. Brunetti put his report aside long enough to open the technicians’ report, where he found reference to the presence of blood and skin tissue on the radiator in the sitting room, blood of the same type as Signora Altavilla’s.

Rizzardi also described ‘a grey mark,’ 2.1 centimetres in length and close to the left of the collarbone of the dead woman. The marks on her shoulders were ‘barely visible’, as banal an expression as Brunetti had ever known the pathologist to use.

He read quickly through the rest of the report: signs of her having given birth at least once, the seam left by a broken left wrist, a bunion on her right foot. Rizzardi presented the physical information without comment. Brunetti knew that, in a police department led by Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, physical evidence this inconclusive was likely to lead to the conclusion of natural death.

Brunetti placed the technicians’ preliminary report on top of Rizzardi’s and read through it carefully this time. He noticed a certain willingness to cater to Patta’s preference for non-interpretation. Aside from the blood on the radiator, the examination of the house suggested nothing beyond ‘normal domestic use’.

Then, on the last page, came a hammer blow to any hope Brunetti might have had of conducting an investigation. Propafenone was found in the medicine cabinet in Signora Altavilla’s bathroom. Thus proof of a pre-existing condition validated Rizzardi’s posthumous diagnosis of death by heart fibrillation.

Brunetti set the report on top of Rizzardi’s and carefully tapped at the sides of the papers until they were aligned. He folded his hands and placed them in the middle of the top sheet. He studied his thumbs, noticed that the right-hand cuff
of his shirt was beginning to fray, then looked away from it and out the window.

The reports would please Patta: that was a given. But they would also please – Brunetti was equally certain of this – Niccolini. No, that was the wrong word: too strong. Slowly, as though it were a film he could view at will and at leisure, Brunetti played over his meeting with the veterinarian.

His emotion, really, might more accurately be called relief, the same emotion Brunetti had seen on the faces of people when hearing the verdict ‘Innocent’ read out. But innocent of what? No stranger to pretence and emotional forgery, Brunetti did not doubt the intensity of Niccolini’s pain. He recalled the doctor’s face after he blurted out that he too had performed autopsies. And, remembering that scene, Brunetti grew indignant that he could have been left there, while he knew what was being done in the nearby room.

He unfolded his hands and dialled the internal number for the officers’ squad room, asked to speak to Vianello. When the Inspector answered, Brunetti said, ‘I think we should go back and have another look at her apartment.’

‘Now?’ asked an audibly reluctant Vianello.

‘Why?’

‘It’s almost seven,’ the Inspector began. Surprised, Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that it was so. ‘You think we could leave it until tomorrow morning?’ Vianello asked. Before Brunetti could answer, the Inspector said, ‘I’ll call this Signora Giusti and tell her we’ll be there – what time should I say?’

Brunetti was tempted to ask Vianello if he was making a suggestion or giving an order. Instead, he said, ‘Ten would be fine.’

They took the Number One but chose to sit inside, where Brunetti told Vianello about the contents of both Rizzardi’s and the technicians’ reports. He also gave him his general impression of Niccolini as a man made uncomfortable by unsaid things.

As the boat passed in front of the Piazza, Brunetti looked to the right and asked, ‘It never becomes ordinary, does it?’ Before Vianello could answer and as though the Inspector had removed it from his drawer while he was out of the office, Brunetti added, ‘Where’d yesterday go?’

‘We walked,’ Vianello said.

‘What?’

‘It’s not like the movies, where you get in a car and speed to where you’re going, siren blaring. You know that. We walked, and then we walked back. So it took a long time. And the old nun, even if she didn’t want to tell us anything, she still took a fair amount of time doing it. We’re not in New York, Guido,’ he said and smiled to show the vast relief with which he greeted that fact.

As if to argue in favour of Vianello’s assertion, they were strafed by a sudden burst of light reflected from the windows of the buildings on the left side of the canal. Their eyes followed the origin of the dazzle to the row of buildings: beige, ochre, something between yellow and brown, pink; and then the windows: pointing up and pirouetting at the top, pushing aside twisted columns in order to let in more light. Then, barely seen at the waterline, the enormous cubes of stone from which the city leaped up towards the heavens.

‘We should have had Foa take us,’ Brunetti said, still unsettled by how swiftly the previous day had passed. Spurred by his restlessness, they got off at San Silvestro and walked: it would take the same time if they waited to get off at San Stae, but at least this way they were moving.

As they walked, Brunetti explained that he wanted to take another look at the place. ‘And talk to the neighbour,’ he added as they walked down the bridge from San Boldo, turned into Calle del Tintor and towards the
campo
.

Brunetti was wearing the same jacket and pulled the keys from his pocket. The largest of the three opened the street door, and the one next to it fitted the lock on the door to the apartment, where Vianello’s tape was still in place. Brunetti pulled it loose on one side and let it hang free before opening the door.

Inside, he noticed the envelopes he had seen the night before, leafed through them, and saw that they were all – including a registered letter – addressed to Signora Giusti. He slipped them into the pocket of his jacket. During the next half-hour, they found nothing more than they had the night before save for receipts for bills that had been paid through the post office and bank records stretching back five years. Looking through them, Brunetti saw an entirely normal pattern: her pension arrived each month, along with a second payment from what might have been her widow’s pension. The first amount reflected the fact that she had chosen to
retire early; the second one was more substantial and raised her monthly income to a sum on which a single person could live very comfortably. This would be even easier – Brunetti saw no sign that she had been paying rent through the bank – for a woman living in an apartment she owned.

One thing that caught Brunetti’s attention were the tiny nails, lonely nails that had lost their paintings. There were two in the corridor, under them only rectangles of paint minimally whiter than the paint on the wall. In the smaller bedroom, now that Brunetti knew to look, he saw another phantom painting and, above it, the nail.

By mutual consent, they decided to go upstairs. When they left, Vianello reattached the tape as best he could while Brunetti stood, keys in hand, waiting to lock the door. After he did, he held the keys in the palm of his hand and showed them to Vianello and said, ‘I wonder what the third one’s for.’

‘Perhaps a storeroom downstairs?’ the Inspector suggested.

Brunetti started up the stairs. ‘We can ask Signora Giusti.’

The woman opened the door to her apartment while they were still on the final flight of steps. ‘I heard you moving around down there,’ she said by way of greeting, then remembered to put out her hand and say good morning. She looked less agitated now, and Brunetti was surprised to realize that she no longer seemed as tall. Perhaps it had something to do with the relaxation of her body or her shoulders. She had also moved closer to the loveliness he had imagined before.

Brunetti introduced Vianello, and she let them into the apartment, which Brunetti thought had relaxed as much as she had. The table in the living room held two newspapers, one of them open to the Culture section, the other obviously gone through and sloppily closed. Beside it stood an empty glass and a plate that held the skin and core of an apple as well as the knife that had peeled it. The cushions on the sofa were dented; one lay on the floor.