GB_23: By Its Cover: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

  She ran the keys through her fingers as if they were a metal rosary. Finally she said, ‘His only interest in other people was finding their weak spot and using it to get what he wanted from them.’ She let the keys jangle in her hand, then added, ‘But I think he’d buy from other people; yes.’

  Brunetti studied the houses on the other side of the canal. Her voice was replaced by the continued click of the keys against one another and then by the footsteps of people coming down the calle and crossing the bridge.

  ‘I remember,’ she said, ‘one time, when Roberto showed him a book, he said he already had a copy but he’d take it anyway.’

  ‘Do you remember what the book was?’

  ‘No. They all looked the same to me: old, with leather covers. I don’t know why anyone would want them.’

  Even before Brunetti could decide not to try to explain, she added, ‘But if he could sell them for a lot of money, then they’re worth something, aren’t they?’

  He nodded, gave her his card and asked her to call him on his telefonino if she remembered anything else.

  He was surprised that she offered him her hand and even more surprised that he was not unpleased to shake it.

  19

  He backtracked and took the Number One from Santa Maria del Giglio to save time as well as to avoid the crowds, though the vaporetto, at this hour, was perhaps not the better choice. The disembarking and embarking at the few stops he had to pass seemed to take for ever, with crowds blocking the exit, both from the boat and from the landing. After a six-minute delay – he timed it – at Vallaresso, he was ready to commandeer the boat or dial Foa’s number and tell him to come and rescue him. He calmed himself for the rest of the ride with the scene of Foa’s pulling up beside the moving vaporetto – much in the way he had picked them up at the Punta della Dogana – and himself leaping from one to the other while the remaining passengers viewed the event with a mixture of astonishment and envy.

  He pushed this scenario from his mind and concentrated on what Signora Marzi had told him: a man apparently without a conscience, who would not only buy stolen books but, if the opportunity arose, also steal them himself. Yet they had found only seventeen volumes in his apartment, hardly the hoard of a major fence and thief. They had found no diary, nor an address book – not even a computer – only the simplest uncharged telefonino that had not a single number programmed into it and had not made or received a call in more than three months.

  When he reached the Questura, he stopped in the officers’ squad room, but neither Vianello nor Pucetti was there. He went to Signorina Elettra’s office, where he found her in conversation with Commissario Claudia Griffoni, Signorina Elettra at her desk and Griffoni leaning against the windowsill, the place Brunetti had come to consider, over the years, as his. They stopped when he came in, and he said, before thinking, ‘I don’t want to interrupt,’ realizing, as soon as the words were out, how much he sounded like a jealous husband.

  Claudia laughed and said, ‘All you’ve interrupted is a discussion of a way to access the files of the Department of Foreign Affairs.’ The memory of her saying this, and so lightly, and the amusement her remark caused Signorina Elettra, would no doubt pull him out of a sound sleep, at some future time, when the whole lot of them were under investigation by the Security Services for the unauthorized pillaging – he thought he should use the proper word – these two women, their friendship so long in forming, were now capable of committing. Pucetti and Vianello, he feared, had also been corrupted by them, sucked into a cyber-gyre that could lead – or so he feared in his darkest moments – to ineluctable ruin.

  ‘For what purpose?’ he asked, calmly.

  ‘There’s a rumour going around,’ Signorina Elettra said, not supplying either the source or scope of that rumour, ‘that someone in the Department has managed to make a copy of the Mafia–Stato conversations. We thought it would be interesting to listen to them.’

  The Romans, he knew, honoured the goddess Fama, she of the thousand-windowed house of reverberating bronze, she who heard and repeated everything, first in whispers, then in a booming voice. Surely she would be interested in repeating the telephone conversations of politicians, recorded decades ago, in which they discussed seriously the possibility of making a non-aggression pact with the Mafia. True or not? Fact or fiction? The highest court had ruled that the tapes of those purported conversations be destroyed, but Rumour declared they had been copied before that could be done.

  Brunetti remembered a time when he had cared about things like this, felt indignation and rage that such things could happen, even that people could believe that they could happen. And now he listened and nodded, neither believing nor disbelieving, wanting only to get on with his work and then go home and be with his family and read the literary record left by the people to whom Rumour was indeed a goddess.

  ‘May I help you, Commissario?’ Signorina Elettra asked.

  Griffoni moved away from the windowsill, but Brunetti held up a hand to stop her from leaving. He turned to Signorina Elettra. ‘It’s about Signora Marzi,’ he said.

  He saw from her look that she had found nothing and so was prepared when she said, ‘I have birth certificate, school reports, health records, certificate of residence, job history, bank statements, tax returns, but there’s nothing in any way unusual. She’s never been arrested, was once questioned as a possible witness – when Franchini was assaulted – but there was nothing she could say because she wasn’t present when it happened. She also had an injunction served against her former companion, who had threatened her in the presence of a witness.’

  Brunetti was not surprised. She had spent time living with a petty criminal, but that did not make her one, and she had certainly shown loyalty and gratitude to her employer. Even though he recognized these things, Brunetti could not erase her bland indifference to her own ignorance.

  Changing the subject, he asked, ‘Anything from Rizzardi?’

  Signorina Elettra shook her head. ‘It’s still early,’ she said, reminding him that only a day had passed since Franchini had been discovered.

  ‘And Contessa Morosini-Albani’s donation to the library?’

  Signorina Elettra nodded. ‘The gift was made in honour of her late husband and at the time was said to be worth several hundred thousand Euros,’ she said, and then added, with a note of disappointment, ‘I haven’t had time to verify the value of the individual volumes, so that’s the only amount I can provide.’

  After a pause, she added, ‘I’ve spoken to people at some of the other libraries, and they all insist that they have systems in place that will prevent theft.’ Brunetti glanced at Griffoni, who raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

  ‘I sent them copies of Nickerson’s passport photo and letter of recommendation and suggested they see if he had done research in their libraries.’

  ‘Had he?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No one seemed to know. But all of them said they’d check their records for his name.’

  ‘And if he used a different name?’ Griffoni broke in to ask. ‘What records would they check?’

  ‘Is one of their systems a central record of people who have stolen from other libraries?’ Brunetti asked.

  Signorina Elettra’s only answer was an angry snort.

  He turned to Griffoni and said, ‘You want to come down to Castello and help take another look at his apartment?’

  She smiled. ‘Let me go and get my jacket.’

  On the way, she made it clear that she was familiar with the facts of the case; she even knew about Signora Marzi and Roberto Durà. Brunetti told her about his meeting with Marzi and his certainty that Franchini had been in the business of stealing books as well as buying stolen copies.

  Griffoni seemed aware of the fascination rare books exercised over many people. When he asked about this, she explained that she had once had a fidanzato who was doing research on musical manuscripts in the Girolamini. ‘He was sure the lost manuscript of Mon
teverdi’s Arianna is there,’ she said.

  Seeing his confusion, she went on, ‘It was performed in his lifetime, and there are copies of the libretto, but the music’s lost, except for her Lament.’ Seeing that she had captured his interest, she went on, ‘From what I understood when he talked about it, it’s the Loch Ness Monster of musicology: the manuscript was sighted ages ago, and people believe it’s still around.’

  ‘Were you ever in the Girolamini?’

  She stopped, as if unable to walk and talk about this at the same time. ‘Yes, and it was paradise. There are more than a hundred thousand volumes, hundreds of incunabula. My friend was there for the musical manuscripts, but I spent two days looking at the books on the history of Naples: incredible things.’

  ‘It’s closed now, isn’t it?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘The Carabinieri put seals on everything when they went in.’ She started walking again. ‘It would make a stone weep. They looted the place.’

  ‘It makes what happened at the Merula seem like petty theft,’ Brunetti said.

  Her voice grew savage, and she said, ‘I’d cut their hands off.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘People who steal books or deface paintings or vandalize things. I’d cut their hands off.’

  ‘You’re speaking metaphorically, I hope,’ he said, wondering what they taught children in schools in Naples these days.

  ‘Of course I’m speaking metaphorically. I’d seize everything they own until they’ve paid for what they’ve destroyed or stolen, or I’d keep them in jail until they’ve paid enough.’

  ‘And if they couldn’t pay?’ he asked.

  She stopped abruptly to face him and said, ’Oh, stop being so literal, Guido: you know I don’t mean it. But it makes me wild, something like this. We gave the world so much beauty, and then to see it stolen or destroyed … and lost.’ She let her voice trail away, and they resumed walking; then they were crossing the bridge into the campo, and Franchini’s house came into view.

  Brunetti let them in with the keys he had kept. As they climbed the steps, Griffoni asked, ‘Do we know what we’re looking for?’

  Brunetti stopped in front of the door to the apartment and put the key in the lock. ‘If I tell you that we’re looking for anything that might be suspicious, will you promise not to laugh?’

  ‘I can’t count the places I’ve searched for “anything that might be suspicious”.’

  ‘Ever find anything?’

  ‘I once found twenty kilos of cocaine.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a private kindergarten outside of Naples. The woman who ran it was the cousin of the local boss. There was a fire in the kitchen, and the firemen found it there, hidden in a cupboard. They called us.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Same as always. Nothing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We seized the drugs, but they disappeared the same night from the basement of the Questura. So there was no evidence to produce against her, and everyone in the kitchen swore it was flour.’

  He opened the door and held it for her. ‘Are you making this up?’

  ‘No. I wish I were.’

  He followed her inside and switched on the lights. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Anything that might be suspicious.’

  An hour later, they had failed to find anything that might be suspicious. Before they entered, Brunetti had warned her about the blood on the walls and floor, and Griffoni told him she’d seen her first Mafia victim when she was six, his body lying in the street across from her school.

  Franchini possessed an expensive wardrobe: handmade shirts, five cashmere jackets, and countless pairs of very expensive shoes. There was nothing hidden under the bed or the mattress, and the top shelves of the wardrobe held only bed linen and towels. The toilet cistern contained only water, and the medicine cabinet aspirin and toothpaste. In a desk in the study, Brunetti found bank statements which showed that Franchini received a pension of 659 Euros a month.

  Disgruntled at having been deprived of quick reward for his intuition, he looked inattentively at the other papers in Franchini’s desk, receipts for his water, electric, gas and garbage bills. Brunetti’s mind wandered, as it sometimes did, to books he had read, and he found himself remembering a short story about a detective sent to search a suspect’s home for an important letter. Though he hunted everywhere, he found no trace of the letter, not, that is, until he noticed the file of letters in open view in the room. And there it was, a letter hidden among other papers.

  He set the folder with Franchini’s pension records on the desk and went over to the bookcase. He knelt down – a burglar having once told him that people always try to hide things from thieves in places near the floor – and pulled out a modern hardback edition of Machiavelli’s Mandragola. He fanned through the pages, then opened it to the middle and read a few lines, closed it and set it on the floor. Next to it were his Discourses on Livy, a book Brunetti had always preferred to The Prince. As he opened it to read a few paragraphs, he felt something slip through his fingers. His right hand caught it halfway and helped to free it, like a knife from a sheath. He saw the age-dulled brown morocco binding, and he understood.

  ‘Claudia,’ he called, getting to his feet. After a moment she emerged from the kitchen, where she had been going through the cabinets. In her right hand she held a potato peeler: when she saw him staring at it, she said, ‘It can be a screwdriver. I’m trying to remove the baseboard.’

  ‘I think that can wait,’ he said, holding up the cover and the book he had discovered inside it. ‘Look what I’ve found.’

  Griffoni was wearing plastic gloves, but Brunetti had forgotten to put his back on. He placed the book on the floor and took his gloves from his pocket. He picked it up again and studied the binding. ‘It’s in Hebrew,’ he said, holding the book out to her. She opened it and together they studied the double-columned page, the five illuminated letters at the top of the page on the right. She closed it, but they knew nothing more about the text than they had when she opened it. ‘Where was it?’ she asked.

  ‘Hidden in a book,’ he said, retrieving the empty cover and fitting the Hebrew text inside it.

  ‘Oh, the clever devil,’ she said, unable to disguise her admiration.

  She looked at the backs of the books still on the shelves. ‘All of them?’ she asked, assessing the job in front of them.

  ‘It’s finally something that might be suspicious,’ Brunetti said, ‘so it’s the least we can do.’ He reached for another book.

  An hour later, they had examined all of the books in the case and found thirty-seven more ancient texts hidden within modern volumes, so many that Brunetti had to call Foa and ask him to come and get them. Along the wall to their left they had discarded stacks of books, cascades of books, mounds of books, some intact and some the gutted volumes that Franchini had used as camouflage.

  Along with the books he had found – hidden inside a first edition of Marx’s Das Kapital – records from a private bank in Lugano and one in Luxembourg containing a joint total of 1.3 million Euros on deposit. The Lugano account was more than twelve years old, the one in Luxembourg only three. Most deposits had been in cash, though there were a number of bank transfers; all withdrawals had been in cash. Since this was now an investigation of murder, and not just theft, the banks could be forced to divulge the source of those transfers. It also occurred to Brunetti that the Art Theft people might be interested in the numbers of the accounts from which the money had been sent.

  Brunetti had thought to tell Foa to bring along two cardboard boxes, and when he rang the bell from downstairs, Brunetti buzzed him in. By that time Brunetti and Griffoni had carried all of the books into the hallway and piled them on a table near the door. When Foa arrived, Brunetti asked the gloveless pilot to hold the boxes, one after the other, while he and Griffoni packed the books.

  In the hallway, Brunetti locked the door, then took one of the boxes from Foa and started dow
n the stairs.

  ‘What about the books we left?’ Griffoni asked.

  Brunetti shrugged. Someone would have to re-shelve them, probably Franchini’s brother if he decided to keep the house. His attention was devoted to the bank records and trying to think of someone he could ask about the value of the books they had just found. The bank deposits, in easily expressed numbers, would create no confusion of interpretation.

  When they emerged from Franchini’s house, Brunetti was surprised to find that darkness had fallen on the campo. He looked at his watch and saw that it was after nine: they’d been inside for more than three hours, and he was both exhausted and, now that he thought about it, very hungry. But things were moving, finally, and he dismissed tiredness and hunger.

  As they turned on to the canal that led to the Questura, Brunetti considered the people who might be of help to him. The man who came to mind lived in Rome now, and Brunetti had not spoken to him for years, but Sella had been engaged to a cousin of Brunetti’s a decade ago, and the two men had remained in occasional contact since then. ‘Why not?’ he said out loud.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Griffoni called above the noise of the motor.

  ‘Someone I know,’ Brunetti answered, stepping closer to her. ‘He can tell us what the books are worth.’ They had already cost, he reflected, Franchini’s life, but he saw no reason to say that. Even before they pulled up to the Questura, he had dialled Sella’s number.

  Disregarding the usual formalities, Brunetti asked if there were any way Sella could give him an idea of the market value of a number of books.

  ‘Guido,’ Sella said into the sudden silence left when Foa cut the engine, ‘I have no idea what you’re calling me for at this hour, and I also don’t know what century you think you’re living in.’

  ‘What?’ Brunetti asked, fearing that the sound of the motor had blocked out something Sella had said.

  ‘Ever hear of the internet?’