‘What are you talking about?’ Patta asked, using the tone he reserved for her and not the one he used with Brunetti. Honey, washing powder.
Signorina Elettra waved in Brunetti’s direction: he took the cue and said, in his most sober voice, ‘I was telling Signorina Elettra how pleased I am that Officer Alvise is keeping an eye on the girl in the hospital.’
Like a lighthouse rotating towards a new ship, Patta turned his sleek head to face Brunetti and asked, ‘Girl?’ And then, ‘Alvise?’
‘It was very wise of the Lieutenant to think of it.’
‘You aren’t usually so complimentary about the Lieutenant, are you, Commissario?’ Though the Vice-Questore tried to disguise his self-satisfaction, traces of it showed in his voice.
Brunetti, finding self-satisfaction better than suspicion, risked a small, chastised grimace, added a slight shake of the head, and answered, ‘I have to admit that’s true, Dottore. But there are some times when credit has to be given, whoever makes the decision.’ He considered the wisdom of pulling his lips together and giving a small affirmative nod, but he thought this might be excessive and fought back the impulse.
Patta looked back at Signorina Elettra, but she was occupied with re-knotting her tie; Brunetti was amazed that this masculine activity could be so imbued with grace and delicacy. It was a dark grey tie with almost invisible red stripes, for heaven’s sake, and the person knotting it wore a black wool vest and pinstripe trousers: why did the motion of the cloth as she slipped it through the knot remind him of the way Paola used to remove her stockings, before stockings disappeared?
‘Are you here to see me?’ Patta’s question pulled Brunetti back to the office.
‘No, Dottore. I came to ask Signorina Elettra to try to trace a piece of jewellery for me.’
‘Stolen?’ Patta demanded.
‘Not that I know of, sir.’
‘Valuable?’
‘To the owner, I suppose,’ Brunetti answered. Then, before the clouds forming in Patta’s eyes at his answer could become inclement, he added, ‘I suppose most people place a greater value on what they own or like than other people do,’ he said, thinking of the value the Vice-Questore placed on the Lieutenant.
Signorina Elettra broke in to say, ‘I doubt it’s of great worth, Commissario, but I’ll see what I can find.’ She managed to sound both bored and faintly annoyed to be bothered with such trivia.
That she should speak to Brunetti in this manner seemed to please the Vice-Questore, so Brunetti allowed himself a surprised glance in her direction before saying, ‘If you have nothing else, Dottore, I’ll go back to my office.’
Patta nodded and turned towards his door. Behind his back, Signorina Elettra pulled her tie straight, glanced at Brunetti, and winked.
20
Once behind his desk, Brunetti had no idea what to do. He had little desire to congratulate himself about his nugatory victory over Patta, for he had, in the last years, ceased to enjoy baiting his superior, though he proved unable to stop himself from doing it. Colleagues of his in other cities and provinces continually told him of the sort of men and women they worked for, hinting – though never daring to say it outright – that some of them had given their allegiance to an institution other than the State, something that could not be said of the Vice-Questore.
Patta had given his, Brunetti had discovered over the years, to his family. Without reservation, without reflection or restraint: Brunetti liked him for it. Patta was vain and lazy, selfish and at times foolish, but these were not active failings. There was a great deal of bluster in the man, but there was no deep malice: that was left to Lieutenant Scarpa.
Patta’s motives, too, were easily read and just as easily understood: he sought the advancement of his career and the approval of his superiors. Most people did, Brunetti admitted; had he not had the cushion of his wife’s family’s wealth and power, he would hardly be as cavalier about his job, and his superior, as he was.
But why Patta’s loyalty to Scarpa, which was hardly likely to impress his superiors or advance his career? Brunetti had never seen them together outside the Questura, nor had anyone else ever mentioned having seen them in each other’s company. They were both from Palermo. Family ties? Old debts of patronage to be paid?
Brunetti pushed himself back in his chair, folded his arms, and stared across the campo. From there, the single round window near the top of the façade of the church of San Lorenzo stared back at him like that of a flat-faced Cyclops. Scarpa, to the best of his memory, had simply appeared one day, years ago: Brunetti had no memory of the Vice-Questore’s mentioning his arrival before it occurred. Nor did Brunetti have the impression that the men had known one another beforehand, though it was difficult to reconstruct those first months, when Lieutenant Scarpa was merely a tall, thin presence, more noticeable for the perfection of his uniform than for anything he did or said.
He recalled his recognition of the first symptom, observed when he chanced upon the two men in the corridor outside Signorina Elettra’s office, talking with deep nasality in a language that reminded him of Arabic, Greek, and – vaguely – Italian. He heard – or thought he heard – ‘tr’ transformed into ‘ch’ and verbs dislodged to the end of sentences. He understood nothing.
That had been at the beginning of the second investigation of the Casinò, so it would have been about eight years ago. And it was from then that Patta had become Scarpa’s paladin. And why was that?
No matter how sternly Brunetti stared at the Cyclops, it refused to answer him. Odysseus had hidden his men, and then himself, under the rams to outwit the Cyclops: Brunetti could think of no stratagem that would do the same for him.
There was a quick triple knock on his door and Griffoni let herself in, now among the people who took the liberty of not waiting for an answer. Perhaps in anticipation of a hot summer, she had had her hair cut very short, thus providing the Questura with another boyish woman, this one with a crown of golden curls and a black dress that fell just below her knees. At least she wasn’t wearing a tie.
Brunetti indicated the more comfortable of the two chairs facing him. ‘Looks good,’ he limited himself to saying, then asked, ‘Anything at the theatre?’
‘While I was talking to the portiere, three men came in and punched their time cards and left.’
‘And?’ Brunetti asked.
‘It reminded me of home,’ she said in a voice warmed by nostalgia.
Naples? ‘How so?’ he asked.
‘I had an uncle who was a cab driver but who had a friend in the office at Teatro San Carlo,’ she said, as though that explained everything.
‘And?’
‘And he was on the payroll as a stagehand, but all he had to do was drive by twice a day and check in and check out.’ She saw Brunetti’s surprise and said, ‘I know, I know. But there had been an audit, and they’d introduced the time cards to be sure that everyone on the payroll did at least check in and out.’
Brunetti, puzzled, said, ‘He didn’t work there?’
‘Good heavens, no. He had five kids, so he drove his taxi twelve hours a day, seven days a week.’ She smiled, and Brunetti realized she was enjoying this.
‘And checked in and checked out and was on the payroll?’ When she nodded, he asked, ‘And no one ever noticed?’
‘Well,’ she said hesitantly, ‘it wasn’t as if he were the only person doing it. And he never had a licence for the taxi, so the only job he had – officially, that is – was at the theatre.’
‘How many years did he . . . work at the theatre?’
She hesitated, looked down at her fingers and counted the years. ‘Twenty-seven.’ Then, after a moment, ‘And he drove the cab for thirty-six.’
‘Ah,’ Brunetti sighed and said the only thing that came to mind. ‘He must have come to know the city very well.’
‘In every sense,’ Griffoni said. She sat up straighter, as if to banish the temptation of idle chat. ‘The portiere told me that all sorts of people come in on t
he night of a performance, not just the cast and musicians: relatives of the singers, friends, understudies . He said there are times the lobby is so crowded that anyone could come in and he wouldn’t notice.’
Brunetti remembered the crowd that had been there the night he and Paola had waited for Flavia.
Claudia went on. ‘He told me the worst time is about an hour before a performance, when everyone comes in, especially with an opera like Tosca where there’s a chorus and a second chorus of children, so there’s madness when they start arriving.’ Before he could speak, she said, ‘It’s the same afterwards, when people come into that room outside his office and wait for the singers.’
‘What about the flowers?’ Brunetti asked.
‘The porter didn’t remember much: two men brought them. Her dresser and the woman who does the wigs didn’t notice anything until after the performance, when they saw the flowers in her dressing room. I spoke to some of the stage crew: no one saw anything unusual.’
‘But someone managed to get into her dressing room with the flowers.’
‘And the vases,’ she added: ‘at least if what the dresser told me is true.’
‘And someone managed to take more of them into one of the side boxes and toss them down at her,’ he said, recalling what he had seen. ‘How could that happen?’
‘Maybe an usher took them in. Who knows?’ Then she added, ‘If crazy people have friends, maybe a friend helped bring them.’
Seeing little chance of success here, Brunetti decided to change the subject. ‘What about Alvise?’
‘He introduced himself to the girl at the hospital and told her he was there to keep an eye on her and see that no one disturbed her.’ Griffoni hardly needed to tell Brunetti that secrecy was alien to Alvise.
‘How much time does he spend there?’ Brunetti asked.
‘He told me he’ll go during visiting hours: ten until one and then from four until seven.’
‘And the rest of the time?’
Griffoni could only shrug. Alvise was, after all, Alvise. ‘It hasn’t occurred to him that something might happen outside visiting hours.’
‘No,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘It wouldn’t, would it?’
‘Do you think she’s safe?’ Griffoni couldn’t stop herself asking.
‘That’s anyone’s guess, but I’m sure she feels safe, which probably helps her. And there’s no one else we can ask at the moment except Alvise.’
They lapsed into the comfortable silence that exists between colleagues who find that, over the years, they have become friends. The sound of a boat approaching from the right drifted into the room.
‘It might be a woman,’ Brunetti finally said, and explained about the theft of Flavia’s address book and the phone call from an unknown woman to her friend in Paris.
Griffoni shot him a surprised glance, then turned to consult the Cyclops. She crossed her legs and let her shoe, which had an inordinately high heel, dangle from her toe. She swung it up and down, apparently unconscious of what she was doing. First Signorina Elettra’s tie, and now this shoe. Brunetti found himself wondering what Petrarch would have done had Laura worn those shoes or that dark tie. Written a sonnet to them? Turned away in horror from such unseemly dress?
He was trying to compose the third line of a sonnet to the shoe when Griffoni said, ‘I suppose it could be.’
Brunetti abandoned his search for a rhyme for ‘scarpa’, happy to do so because he feared ‘arpa’ would not aid in the expression of deep sentiments, however much the harp would sit comfortably in a sonnet.
‘Flavia Petrelli said that it’s female fans who make her nervous because they want something from her.’
‘Do you think that’s because of her sexual history?’ Griffoni asked, as if inquiring about hair colour.
‘I don’t know,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I have no idea how women think.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘That probably depends on the woman,’ she said, adding, ‘If this fan is a woman, she’s hardly representative of the species.’
‘Probably not,’ Brunetti temporized.
‘I meant only that we aren’t prone to violence, and this one seems to be.’ She looked out the window, as if pursuing the thought. ‘But she’s not very good at it, is she?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Assuming she pushed the girl,’ she began, ‘she didn’t do a very thorough job. She took a look and walked away.’
‘Meaning?’ Brunetti asked.
She looked back at him when she answered. ‘I’d guess it means she didn’t want to kill her, only hurt her or threaten her. Or maybe she had second thoughts. God knows what’s in her mind.’
Brunetti was interested by the way both of them had fallen so easily into changing the pronoun they used to describe the assailant. There was no proof, only the voice of the person who made the phone call to Flavia’s friend in Paris, and that could just as easily have been a real friend, calling to ask where Flavia was.
He wondered if he and Claudia were giving in to the thinking that characterized former centuries: bizarre behaviour was all womb-driven, hysteria, failure to find a man.
‘I think I’ll go to lunch,’ he said and got to his feet.
She looked at her watch and stood too. They went down the stairs together, Brunetti amazed that she managed to walk so easily on heels so high they would have catapulted him down the stairs unless he chose to walk sideways and one stair at a time. What talented creatures they were, women.
21
Brunetti remained distracted all during lunch, still resisting the idea of a violent woman. He had known some in the past, had even arrested some, but he had never encountered one in, as it were, his real life.
The family chattered around him quite happily, distracted from his silence first by lentils with hot salami and candied currants and then by veal roll filled with sweet sausage. Even though Brunetti especially loved the lentils, he did little more than tell Paola they were wonderful before lapsing back into consideration of what, for him, remained an oxymoron: a violent woman.
He ate his crème caramel and for once did not ask for more. Paola said she’d bring coffee into the living room or – if he thought it was warm enough – they could drink it on the terrace.
It wasn’t warm enough, so Brunetti went to the sofa and thought about literature. When Paola joined him a few minutes later, two cups of coffee on a wooden tray, he asked her, ‘Can you think of violent women in literature?’
‘Violent?’ she asked. ‘Murderously violent, or just violent?’
‘Preferably the first,’ he answered and took his coffee.
Paola spooned sugar into hers and went to stand by the window, looking out at the bell tower. She stirred the spoon round a few times and then continued stirring until the noise began to grate on Brunetti’s nerves. He was just about to ask her to stop when she turned to him and said, ‘The first that comes to mind is Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but God knows she’s got cause.’ She picked up her cup and raised it to her lips, then replaced it on the saucer, untasted. ‘There’s Mrs Rochester, but she’s mad, and I suppose Balzac is full of them, but it’s been so long since I read him that I don’t remember. I’m sure the Russians, and probably the Germans, have them, but none comes to mind.’
She finally took a sip and asked, ‘What about Dante? You’re better on him than I am.’
Brunetti looked at his cup and hoped she had not seen his flash of surprise, quickly replaced by delight, at her compliment. He, a better reader? He sat back and crossed his legs. ‘No,’ he said easily, ‘I can’t think of a single one. Francesca got slammed away for adultery, and Thaïs is there for flattery. Medusa and the Harpies probably don’t count.’
How interesting – he’d either forgotten it or never considered it – how easily women got off in Dante. Well, he was another one of those guys in love with a woman he barely knew, though Brunetti thought better of pointing this out to Paola and risk having her take a whack at anoth
er pillar of Italian culture. ‘If anything, he defends them: why else punish the Panderers and Seducers?’
She came back to set her cup on the tray. ‘Can’t you think of any more?’ he asked.
‘There are lots of unpleasant ones who do very nasty things to people: Dickens is full of them.’ She raised a hand in the air, reminding him of an Annunciation they had seen in the Uffizi. ‘Ah,’ she said, as the Virgin had probably whispered. ‘There’s the French maid in Bleak House.’ She stood, awaiting Illumination, while he watched her scroll through the collected works of Charles Dickens, stopping at Bleak House to page through to the scene. He saw the memory grace her, whereupon she turned to him and said, ‘Hortense.’
Brunetti spent the time it took him to walk back to the Questura trying to understand how it was done. It was not a party trick, nor did Paola show off, ever, her ability to recall what she had read. Well, he had known men who could give a play-by-play account of every soccer game they had ever seen, so perhaps it was a skill more common than he knew. He certainly remembered the clever things he heard people say, and he remembered faces.
He was two minutes from the Questura, the canal already in sight, when his phone rang. He recognized Vianello’s number. ‘What is it, Lorenzo?’
‘Where are you?’ the Inspector demanded.
‘Almost at the front door. Why?’
‘I’ll meet you there. Get on the boat.’ Before Brunetti could question him, Vianello was gone. Brunetti turned the corner and heard the boat before he saw it, in front of the Questura, with Foa at the wheel.
Vianello, wearing his uniform, catapulted from the door and jumped on to the boat without bothering to look in Brunetti’s direction. Spurred by this, Brunetti ran the last twenty metres and leaped aboard without thinking.
‘Go,’ Vianello said, clapping Foa on the back. The boat, already unmoored, slid from the dock. Foa turned on the siren; they picked up speed and headed towards the bacino. Vianello grabbed Brunetti by the arm and pulled him down the steps and into the cabin, closing the swinging doors behind them in a vain attempt to block out the sound of the siren.