A waiter approached their table, and Dottoressa Landi asked for another coffee. Brunetti knew he could not drink another one before lunch and so asked for a glass of mineral water. Not wanting to be interrupted by the waiter’s return, Brunetti said nothing, and she seemed glad of the silence. Time passed. The waiter returned and replaced their drinks.
When he was gone, she asked, leaping from one subject to another, ‘He came to ask you about the man in the photo, didn’t he?’ Her voice had grown calm, almost as if being able to list the things she had found had worked some sort of exorcism.
Brunetti nodded.
‘And?’
Well, here it was, Brunetti realized, that moment when he had to call upon his experience of life, personal and professional, and decide whether to trust this young woman or not. He knew his weakness for women in distress — though perhaps he did not know its full extent — but he also knew that his instincts were often correct. She had obviously decided that he was to be the posthumous beneficiary of Guarino’s trust, and he saw no reason to suspect her.
‘His name is Antonio Terrasini,’ he began. She did not react to the name, nor did she ask how he had discovered this. ‘He’s a member of one of the Camorra clans.’ Then he asked, ‘Do you know anything about the photo?’
She made a business of stirring her coffee, then set the spoon on her saucer. ‘The man who was killed. .’ she began, then gave Brunetti a stricken look and put her hand to her mouth.
‘Ranzato?’ Brunetti volunteered.
She nodded by way of answer, then forced herself to say, ‘Yes. Filippo said he took it and sent it to him.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No, only that.’
‘When did you see him last?’ Brunetti asked.
‘The day before he went down to talk to you.’
‘Not after?’
‘No.’
‘Did he call you?’
‘Yes, twice.’
‘What did he say?’
‘That he’d spoken to you and thought he could trust you. Then, the second time, that he had spoken to you again and sent you the photo.’ She paused, decided to say it. ‘He said you were very insistent.’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, and they lapsed into silence.
He saw her looking at her spoon, as if trying to decide whether to pick it up and move it around. Finally, she asked, ‘Why kill him?’ and Brunetti realized she had agreed to this meeting in order to ask that question. He had no answer to give.
Voices came from the other side of the room, but it was nothing more than a discussion among the waiters. When Brunetti looked back at her, he saw that she was as relieved as he by the distraction. Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that he had twenty minutes to reach the next train back to Venice. He caught the waiter’s eye and asked for the bill.
After he had paid and left some change on the table, they got to their feet. Outside, the sun was stronger, and it was a few degrees warmer. She tossed her parka into the back seat of the car before she got in. Again, the drive was silent.
In front of the station, he offered his hand. He turned to open his door, and she said, ‘There’s one more thing.’ The sudden seriousness of her voice halted Brunetti just as he touched the handle of the door. ‘I think I should tell you.’ He turned towards her.
‘About two weeks ago, Filippo told me he’d heard rumours. There was all that trouble in Naples, with the dumps closed, too many police. So they stopped shipping and started to stockpile the really bad things, or at least that’s what he told me.’
‘What does “really bad” mean?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Anything heavily toxic. Chemicals. Maybe nuclear. Acids. It would have to be substances that can be held in containers or barrels. That’s what anyone can recognize as dangerous, so they wouldn’t risk shipping it when there was trouble.’
‘Did he have any idea where it might be?’
‘Not really,’ she answered evasively, the way an honest person does when trying to lie. His eyes met hers and held them before she could turn away. ‘It’s really the only place, isn’t it?’ she said.
Paola would be proud of him, he had time to think, his eyes still held by Dottoressa Landi’s. His first thought had been of the short story, though he couldn’t remember who had written it. Hawthorne? Poe? The Something Letter. Hide the letter in the place where no one will notice it: among the letters. Just so. Hide the chemicals among the other chemicals and no one will notice them. ‘It explains why he was at the petrochemical complex,’ he said.
Her smile was infinitely sad as she said, ‘Filippo said you were smart.’
23
When he got back to the Questura, Brunetti decided to start at the bottom of the food chain with someone he had not spoken to for some time. Claudio Vizotti was, not to put too fine a point on it, a nasty piece of work. A plumber, hired decades ago by one of the petrochemical companies in Marghera, he had joined the union when he started his job. Over the years, he had risen effortlessly through its ranks, until now he had the responsibility of representing workers in claims against the companies regarding work-related injuries. Brunetti had first encountered him some years before, about a year after Vizotti had persuaded a worker injured in a fall from badly built scaffolding to settle his claim against the company in return for ten thousand Euros.
It had come to light — during a card game in which a drunken accountant from the company had complained about the vulpine behaviour of the union representatives — that the company had actually given Vizotti a total of twenty thousand Euros for his efforts in persuading the worker to settle, money that had somehow failed to make its way either into the hands of the injured worker or into the union’s coffers. The word had spread, and since the card game had taken place not in Marghera but in Venice, it had spread to the police and not to the workers to whose protection Vizotti had dedicated his professional life. Brunetti, learning of the conversation, had called Vizotti in for another one. At first the union representative had indignantly denied everything and threatened to sue the accountant for libel and to make a complaint against Brunetti for harassment. It was then that Brunetti had pointed out that the injured worker, a man of irascible temper, now had one leg a few centimetres shorter than the other and was in almost constant pain. He knew nothing about the accommodation Vizotti had made with his employers, but he could very easily learn of it.
At this, Vizotti had turned smilingly tractable and said he had actually been keeping the money for the injured man and had somehow forgotten to pass it on to him: the press of work, union responsibilities, so much to do and think about, so little time. Speaking man to man, he had asked Brunetti if he wanted to take part in the transfer. Had he even winked when he proposed this?
Brunetti had refused the opportunity but told Vizotti to keep his name in mind should Brunetti ever want to talk to him again. It took Brunetti a few minutes to locate the number of Vizotti’s telefonino, but there was no delay before Vizotti recognized Brunetti’s name.
‘What do you want?’ the union representative asked.
In the ordinary course of events, Brunetti would have chided the man for his incivility, but he decided to take a more liberal stance and asked in a normal voice, ‘I’d like some information.’
‘About what?’
‘About storage facilities in Marghera.’
‘Call the firemen, then,’ Vizotti shot back. ‘That’s not my job.’
‘Storage facilities for things that the companies might not want to know about,’ Brunetti went on imperturbably.
Vizotti had no instant answer to this, and Brunetti asked, ‘If a person wanted to store barrels there, where would he put them?’