Guarino stretched out his legs and glanced back at the window, as if the view of the façade of the church would help him tell his story in the clearest way. ‘Once our attention had been called to this company, we went to talk to the owner. Been in the family for more than fifty years; inherited from his father. It turned out he’d been having problems: rising fuel costs, competition from foreign haulers, workers who went on strike whenever they didn’t get what they wanted, need for new trucks and equipment. The usual things.’
Brunetti nodded. If this was the same trucking company in Tessera, then the ending had not been one of the usual things. With a candour and resignation that surprised Brunetti, Guarino said, ‘So he did what anyone would do: he started to cook the books.’ Almost with regret, he added, ‘But he wasn’t very good at it. He could drive and fix a truck and make out a schedule for pick-ups and deliveries, but he was not a bookkeeper, so the Guardia di Finanza smelled something wrong the first time they took a look at his records.’
‘Why did they investigate his records?’ Brunetti asked.
Guarino raised his hand in a gesture that could mean anything.
‘Did they arrest him?’
The Maggiore looked at his feet, then flicked a hand at his knee, wiping away a speck invisible to Brunetti. ‘It’s more complicated than that, I’m afraid.’ This seemed obvious to Brunetti: why else would Guarino be there, talking to him?
Slowly, and with some reluctance, Guarino said, ‘The person who told us about him said he was transporting things we were interested in.’
Brunetti cut him off by saying, ‘There are a lot of things being shipped around that we’re all interested in. Perhaps you could be more specific.’
Ignoring Brunetti’s interruption, Guarino went on, ‘A friend of mine in the Guardia told me what they had found, and I went to talk to the owner.’ Guarino glanced at Brunetti and then away. ‘I offered him a deal.’
‘In return for not arresting him?’ Brunetti asked unnecessarily.
Guarino’s look was as angry as it was sudden. ‘It’s done all the time. You know it.’ Brunetti watched the Maggiore decide to say what he would immediately regret saying. ‘I’m sure you do it.’ Guarino’s look softened at once.
‘Yes, we do,’ Brunetti said calmly, then added, to see how Guarino would react, ‘And it doesn’t always work out the way it’s planned.’
‘What do you know about this?’ the other man demanded.
‘Nothing more than what you’ve just told me, Maggiore.’ When Guarino said nothing, he asked, ‘And then what happened?’
Guarino took another swipe at his knee, then forgot about it and left his hand there. ‘He was killed in a robbery,’ he finally said.
The details began to seep into Brunetti’s memory. Because Tessera was closer to Mestre than to Venice, Mestre had been given the case. Patta had outdone himself in seeing that the Venice police did not get dragged into the investigation, claiming lack of manpower and jurisdictional uncertainty. Brunetti had spoken of it at the time to friends in the Mestre police, but they said it looked like a botched robbery with no leads.
‘He always went in early,’ Guarino continued, still not bothering to give the dead man’s name, an omission which irritated Brunetti. ‘At least an hour before the drivers and the other workers. They shot him. Three times.’ Guarino looked across at him. ‘You know about it, of course. It was in all the papers.’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, not mollified: Guarino had been a long time about it. ‘But I never read more than what was in the papers.’
‘Whoever did it,’ Guarino went on, ‘had already searched his office, or went through it after they killed him. They tried to open a wall safe — failed — went through his pockets and took whatever money he had on him. And his watch.’
‘So it looked like a robbery?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Suspects?’
‘No.’
‘Family?’
‘Wife, two grown children.’
‘They involved with the company?’
Guarino shook his head. ‘The son’s a doctor in Vicenza. The daughter’s an accountant and works in Rome. The wife’s a teacher, due to retire in a couple of years. With him gone, it all fell apart. The business didn’t survive him by a week.’ He saw Brunetti’s raised eyebrows. ‘I know it sounds incredible, in the age of the computer, but none of our people could find a list of orders, or routes, or pick-ups and deliveries, not even a list of drivers. He must have kept everything in his head. All of the records were a mess.’
‘So what did the widow do?’ Brunetti asked blandly.
‘She had no choice: she closed it down.’
‘Just like that?’ Brunetti asked.
‘What else could she do?’ Guarino answered, almost as if he were pleading with Brunetti to have patience with the woman’s inexperience. ‘I told you, she’s a teacher. Elementary school. She didn’t have a clue. It was one of those one-man businesses we’re so good at running.’
‘Until that one man dies,’ Brunetti said ruefully.
‘Yes,’ Guarino said and sighed. ‘She wants to sell it, but no one’s interested. The trucks are old, and now there aren’t any clients. The best she can hope for is that another company will buy up the trucks and she’ll be able to find someone to take over the lease for the garage, but she’ll still end up selling it all for nothing.’Guarino stopped speaking, almost as if he had given all the information he was prepared to give. He had not said a thing, Brunetti realized, about whatever might have passed between the two of them during the time they knew one another and, in a certain sense, worked together.
‘Am I correct in assuming,’ Brunetti asked, ‘that you discussed something other than the fact that he was cheating on his taxes?’ If not, then there was no reason for the man to be here, though he hardly had to point this out to Guarino.
Guarino measured out a single word. ‘Yes.’
‘And that he gave you information about something other than his tax situation?’ Brunetti found his voice growing tight. For God’s sake, why couldn’t the man just tell him what was going on and ask him whatever he wanted? For surely he had not come here to chat about the lovely silence of the city nor the charms of Signora Landi.
Guarino seemed content to say nothing further. Finally, making no attempt to disguise his irritation, Brunetti asked, ‘Perhaps you could stop wasting my time and explain why you’re here?’
3
It was obvious that Guarino had been waiting for Brunetti’s patience to expire, for his answer came without hesitation and quite calmly. ‘The police treated his death as a robbery that went bad and turned into murder.’ Before Brunetti could ask what the police made of the three shots, Guarino volunteered, ‘We suggested that approach. I don’t think they cared one way or the other. Doing it like that was probably easier for them.’
And, reflected Brunetti, probably ensured the murder’s swift passage out of the news, but instead of remarking on that, he asked, ‘What do you think happened?’
Again, that quick glance at the church, the flick at his knee, and then Guarino said, ‘I think whoever it was, one or more of them were waiting when he went in. There were no other signs of violence on his body.’
Brunetti imagined the waiting men, their unsuspecting victim, and their interest in learning what he knew. ‘Do you think he told them anything?’
Guarino’s glance was sharp, and he answered, ‘They could get it out of him without having to hurt him, you know.’ He paused, as if conjuring up the memory of the dead man, and added, with audible reluctance, ‘I was his contact, the person he talked to.’ This, Brunetti realized, explained Guarino’s edginess. The Carabiniere glanced away, as if uncomfortable at the memory of how easy it had been for him to make the murdered man talk. ‘He wouldn’t have been hard to frighten. If they had threatened his family, he would have told them whatever they wanted.’