He was just pushing himself to his feet when Paola said, ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t listen to your calls.’
He froze, bent over like an old man with a bad back. ‘Madre di Dio,’ Brunetti exclaimed. He stood and stared across at Paola, who remained at the door, giving him a strange look.
‘What is it, Guido? Did you hurt your back?’
‘No, no. I’m fine. But I think I’ve got it. I think I’ve got him.’ He walked to the armadio and took out his coat.
When she saw him, Paola asked, ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going out,’ he said, offering no explanation.
‘What’ll I tell this woman?’
‘Tell her I’m not here,’ he answered and, a moment after he spoke, that was true.
* * * *
Signora Mitri let him in. She wore no make-up and the roots of her hair showed grey at the parting. She wore a shapeless brown dress and seemed to have grown even stouter in the time since he had last seen her. As he came close to shake her hand, he caught a faint whiff of something sweet, vermouth or Marsala.
‘You’ve come to tell me?’ she said when they were seated in the sitting-room, facing one another across a low table on which stood three soiled glasses and an empty bottle of vermouth.
‘No, Signora, I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything.’
Her disappointment pulled her eyes closed and drew her hands towards one another. After a moment, she glanced across at him and whispered, ‘I’d hoped ...’
‘Have you read the papers, Signora?’
She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. She shook her head.
‘I need to know something, Signora,’ Brunetti said. ‘I need you to explain something to me.’
‘What?’ she asked neutrally, not really interested.
‘You said, when we last spoke, that you listened to your husband’s conversations.’ When she made no acknowledgement that he had spoken he added, ‘With other women.’
As he had feared, her tears started, trailing down her cheeks and dropping on to the thick fabric of her dress. She nodded.
‘Signora, could you tell me how you did this?’
She looked up at him, her eyes pulled together in complete confusion.
‘How did you listen to the calls?’
She shook her head.
‘How did you do it, Signora?’ She didn’t answer and he went on. ‘It’s important, Signora. I need to know this.’
As he watched, her face blushed red with embarrassment. He’d told too many people that he was like a priest, that all secrets were safe with him, but he knew this to be the lie it was, so he didn’t try to convince her. Instead, he waited.
Finally she said, ‘The detective. He attached something to the phone in my room.’
‘A tape-recorder?’ Brunetti asked.
She nodded, her face growing even redder.
‘Is it still there, Signora?’
Again, she nodded.
‘Could you get it for me, Signora?’ She didn’t acknowledge having heard him, so he repeated, ‘Could you get it for me? Or tell me where it is?’
She put one hand over her eyes, but the tears continued to spill out from under it.
Brunetti waited. Finally, with her other hand, she pointed over her left shoulder, towards the back of the apartment. Quickly, before she had time to change her mind, Brunetti got up and went out into the hall. He walked down the corridor, past a kitchen on one side, a dining-room on the other. At the back, he glanced into one room and saw a man’s suit rack standing against the wall. He opened the door opposite and found himself in a teenager’s dream room: white chiffon flounces surrounded the lower part of the bed and dressing-table; one wall was entirely covered with mirrors.
Beside the bed stood an elaborate brass phone, its receiver resting on top of a large square box, the round dial a memento from an earlier time. He approached it, knelt and pushed aside the billows of chiffon. Two wires led from the base, one to the phone jack and the other to a small black recorder no larger than a Walkman. He recognized it as one he’d used in the past, when speaking to suspects: voice-activated, its clarity of sound was remarkable for something so small.
He detached the recorder and went back into the sitting-room. When he entered she still had her hand over her eyes, but she looked up when she heard him coming in.
He set the machine on the table in front of her. ‘Is this the tape recorder, Signora?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘May I listen to what’s on here?’ he asked.
He’d once watched a television programme, one that showed the way snakes could mesmerize their prey. As her head moved back and forth, following him as he leaned down towards the recorder, he thought of it and the thought made him uncomfortable.
She nodded in agreement and, her head again following his gesture, he leaned down and pressed the ‘Rewind’ button and, when that clicked to show the tape was rewound, he pushed ‘Play’.
Together they listened, as other voices, one of them that of a dead man, filled the room. Mitri spoke to an old school friend and made a date for dinner; Signora Mitri ordered new drapes; Signor Mitri called a woman and told her how eager he was to see her again. At this, Signora Mitri turned away her face in shame and the tears came again.
There followed minutes of the same mixture of calls, all equal in their banality and inconsequence. And nothing, now that he had embraced death, seemed more inconsequential than the vocal expression of Mitri’s lust. Then he heard Bonaventura’s voice, asking Mitri if he would have time to look at some papers the next evening. When Mitri agreed, Bonaventura said he’d stop by at about nine or perhaps send one of the drivers over with the documents he wanted Mitri to see. Then he heard it, the call he had prayed would be there. The phone rang twice, Bonaventura answered with a nervous ‘si?’ and the voice of another dead man was heard in the room. ‘It’s me. It’s done.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m still here.’
The pause that followed this was evidence of Bonaventura’s shock at this rashness. ‘Get out. Now.’
‘When can I see you?’
‘Tomorrow. In my office. I’ll give you the rest.’ Then they both heard the phone put down.
The next thing they listened to was the shaken voice of a man asking for the police. Brunetti reached over to the recorder and pressed ‘Stop’. When he looked across at her, all emotion had been blasted from her face, all tears forgotten. ‘Your brother?’
Like the victim of a bombing, she could do nothing but nod, eyes wide and staring.
Brunetti got to his feet and reached down to pick up the recorder. He slipped it into his pocket. ‘I have no words to tell you how sorry I am, Signora,’ he said.
* * * *
28
He walked home, the small tape-recorder heavier in his pocket than any pistol or other instrument of death had ever been. It pulled him down, and the messages it contained weighed on his spirit. So easily had Bonaventura been able to prepare his brother-in-law to meet his death: no more than a phone call and the message that the driver would pass by with some papers he wanted him to read. Mitri, unsuspecting, had let his killer in, had perhaps taken papers from him, turned away to put them on a table or desk. Thus had he given Palmieri the opportunity he needed to slip the fatal wire over his head and draw it tight around his neck.
To a man as strong and practised as Palmieri, it would have been the work of an instant, and then perhaps another minute, even less, to pull the ends tight and hold them until Mitri’s life was choked out of him. The traces of skin under Mitri’s fingernails proved that he had tried to resist, but it had been hopeless from the moment Bonaventura called to talk about delivering the papers, from the instant, whenever that was and for whatever reason, Bonaventura decided to free himself of the man who endangered his factory and its squalid business.
Brunetti had no idea how many times he’d said that there was little in human evil t
hat could surprise him, yet each time he stumbled or pounced upon it, it did. He’d seen men killed for a few thousand lire and for a few million dollars, but it never made any sense to him, regardless of the amount, for it still put a price on human life and said that the acquisition of wealth was a greater good - a first principle he could not grasp. Nor, he realized, could he ever fully comprehend how anyone could do it. He could understand why they did it. That was easy enough and the motives were as clear as they were varied: greed, lust, jealousy. But how bring themselves actually to do the deed? His imagination failed him; the action seemed too profound, its consequences utterly beyond his powers to know.
He arrived back at his apartment with this confusion filling his mind. When she heard him Paola, left her study and came down the corridor towards him. She saw the expression on his face and said, ‘I’ll make us some tisane.’
He hung up his coat and went into the bathroom, where he washed his hands and face, and looked at himself in the mirror. How could he know such things, he wondered, and not see some sign of them in his face? He remembered a poem Paola had once read to him, something about the way the world looked on disaster and was not shaken by it. The dogs, he thought he remembered the poet writing, continued to go about their doggy business. He went about his.
In the kitchen, his grandmother’s teapot stood on a raffia mat in the centre of the table, two mugs beside it, a large jar of honey to the left. He sat down and Paola poured out the aromatic tea.
‘Is linden all right?’ she asked as she opened the honey and spooned some into his mug. He nodded and she slid it across the table, leaving the spoon inside. He stirred it round and round, glad of the scent and the steam that rose to his nostrils.
With no introduction he said, ‘He sent someone to kill him and, after it was done, the killer phoned him from Mitri’s house.’ Paola said nothing, but went through the same ritual of adding honey, this time a bit less, to her own tisane. As she stirred it Brunetti continued, ‘His wife - Mitri’s - was taping his calls from other women. And to them.’ He blew across the top of the mug and sipped. Having set it down he went on, ‘There’s a tape of the call. From the killer to Bonaventura. He says he’ll give him the rest of the money the next day.’
Paola continued stirring, as if she’d quite forgotten she was meant to drink it. When she sensed that Brunetti had nothing else to say she asked, ‘Is this enough? Enough to convict him?’
Brunetti nodded. ‘I hope so. I think so. They should be able to get a voice print from the tape. The machine’s very sophisticated.’
‘And the conversation?’
‘There’s no mistaking what they mean.’
‘I hope so,’ she said, still stirring her tea.
Brunetti wondered which of them would say it first. He looked across at her, saw the bright wings of her hair falling to either side of her face and, touched by that, said, ‘So you had nothing to do with it.’
She was silent.
‘Nothing at all,’ he repeated.
This time she shrugged, but still she didn’t speak.
He reached across the table and eased the spoon from her fingers. He placed it on the raffia mat and took her hand in his. When she made no response he insisted, ‘Paola, you had nothing at all to do with it. He would have killed him anyway.’
‘But I gave him a way to make it easier.’
‘You mean the note?’
‘Yes.’
‘He would have used something else, done something else.’
‘But he did that.’ Her voice was firm. ‘If I hadn’t given them the opportunity, perhaps he wouldn’t have died.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No and I never will. That’s what I can’t stand, that I’ll never know. So I’ll always feel responsible.’
He paused a long time before he found the courage to ask, ‘Would you still do it?’ She didn’t answer, so he added, needing to know, ‘Would you still throw the stone?’
She considered this for a long time, her hand motionless beneath his. Finally she said, ‘If I knew only what I knew then, yes. I’d still do it.’
When he made no answer, she turned her hand over and gave his an interrogative squeeze. He looked down, then up at her. ‘Well?’ she finally asked.
His voice was level when he said, ‘Do you need me to approve?’
She shook her head.
‘I can’t, you know,’ he said, not without sadness. ‘But I can tell you that you weren’t responsible for what happened to him.’
She considered this for a while. ‘Ah, Guido, you want so much to take the trouble from the world, don’t you?’
He picked up his mug with his free hand and took another sip. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘But you want to, don’t you?’
He thought about that for long time and finally said, as though confessing to a weakness, ‘Yes.’
She smiled then and squeezed his hand again. ‘The wanting’s enough, I think.’
Donna Leon, Fatal Remedies
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