‘Paola,’ he said when she answered with her name, ‘things got away from me.’
‘So did a rombo cooked in white wine with fennel.’
Well, at least she was not angry. ‘And baby potatoes and carrots,’ she went on relentlessly, ‘and one of those bottles of Tokai your informer gave you.’
‘I wasn’t supposed to have told you that.’
‘Then pretend you didn’t hear me say I know who you got them from.’
Perhaps he was not going to get off so lightly. ‘I had to meet the son of that woman who died last night.’
‘It wasn’t in the paper this morning, but it’s already in the online version.’
Brunetti was not comfortable with the cyber age, still preferring to read his newspapers in paper form; the fact that a newspaper such as the Gazzettino now existed in cyberspace was to him a cause of great uneasiness. ‘What will become of people who are exposed to the Gazzettino twenty-four hours a day?’ he asked.
Paola, who often took a longer and more measured view than did Brunetti, said, ‘It might help to think of it as toxic waste we don’t ship to Africa.’
‘Assuredly. I hadn’t considered that. I’m at peace with my conscience now,’ Brunetti said. Then, curious to learn how the story was being played, he asked, ‘What are they saying?’
‘That she was found in her apartment by a neighbour. Death was apparently caused by a heart attack.’
‘Good.’
‘Does that mean it wasn’t?’
‘Rizzardi’s being dodgier and more noncommittal than usual. I think he might have seen something, but he didn’t say anything to the woman’s son.’
‘What’s he like, the son?’
‘He seems a decent man,’ Brunetti said, which had certainly been his first impression. ‘But he couldn’t disguise his relief that the police aren’t showing any interest in his mother’s death.’
‘Is it you who isn’t doing the showing?’ she asked.
‘Yes. He seemed bothered that I wanted to speak to him, so I had to pass it off as a procedural formality because we were the ones who received the call.’
‘Why would he be nervous? He can’t have had anything to do with it.’ Hearing her speak so categorically, Brunetti realized that he too had dismissed this possibility a priori. The world offered a cornucopia of variations on the theme of homicide; wives and husbands killed one another with staggering frequency, lovers and ex-lovers existed in a state of undeclared warfare; he had lost count of the women who had killed their children in recent years. But still his mind stopped short of this: men don’t kill their mothers.
He let himself wander off in pursuit of these thoughts. Paola remained silent, waiting. Finally he admitted, ‘It could just as easily be nothing. After all, he’s had a terrible shock, and after I talked to him, he had to go back to the hospital to identify her.’
‘Oddio,’ she exclaimed. ‘Couldn’t they have found someone else?’
‘A relative has to do it,’ Brunetti said.
For a few moments neither of them spoke, then he pulled them both away from these things and said, ‘I should be on time tonight.’
‘Good.’ And she was gone.
The best way to get to the rest home was to walk past the Questura: the map in his brain offered other possibilities, but they were all longer. He could go by and pick up Vianello to come along with him, so that he could tell him about Niccolini and how the presence of the other man had stopped Rizzardi from telling him whatever it was he had wanted to say about the autopsy.
He pulled out his phone and dialled Vianello’s number, told him where he was and that he would pass by to get him in five minutes or so. The sun had passed its zenith, and the first calle he turned into was beginning to lose the warmth of the day.
As he walked alongside Rio della Tetta, Brunetti was cheered, as always happened when he walked here, by the sight of the most beautiful paving stones in Venice. Of some colour between pink and ivory, many of the stones were almost two metres long and a metre wide and gave an idea of what it must have been to walk in the city in its glory days. The palazzo on the other side of the canal, however, provided proof that those days were gone for ever. There was a way to recognize abandonment: the flaking dandruff of sun-blasted paint peeling from shutters; rusted stanchions holding flowerpots out of which trailed the desiccated memory sticks of flowers; and water-level gates hanging askew from their rust-rotten hinges, moss-covered steps leading up and into cavernous spaces where only a rat would venture. Brunetti looked at the building and saw the slow decline of the city, while an investor would see only opportunity: a studio for foreign architects, yet another hotel, perhaps a bed and breakfast or, for all he knew, a Chinese bordello.
He crossed the small bridge, down to the end, left, right, and there ahead of him he saw Vianello, leaning against the railing. When he saw Brunetti, Vianello pushed himself upright and fell into step with him. ‘I spoke to the people who live on the first floor,’ the Inspector said. ‘Nothing. They didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anyone. They didn’t hear the woman upstairs come home, didn’t hear anything until we started to show up. Same with the old people on the second floor.’
‘You believe them?’
With no hesitation, Vianello said, ‘Yes. They’ve got two little kids, so I doubt they’d hear much of anything. And the old people are pretty much deaf, anyway.’ Then he added, ‘They said she had people to stay with her. Always women. At least the ones they’ve seen.’
Brunetti gave him an inquisitive glance, and Vianello said, ‘That’s all they said.’
As they continued walking, Brunetti said, ‘Her son told me Signora Altavilla volunteered in that casa di cura down in Bragora, so I thought we should talk to the sisters about her. He said she went there to talk to – but really to listen to – the old people.’
‘That’s far more useful, don’t you think?’ Vianello asked.
‘Hmm?’
‘Seems to me, the older people get, the less interest they have in the world around them, and in the present, and so the more they want to think about the past and talk about the past. And maybe live in the past.’ He paused, but when his superior remained silent, Vianello continued. ‘It’s certainly that way with most of the old people I know, or knew: my grandmother, my mother, even Nadia’s parents. Besides, if you think about it, why should they be interested in the present? For most of them, it’s filled with health problems, or money problems, and they’re getting weaker and weaker. So the past is a better place to spend their time, and even better if they’ve got someone to listen to them.’
Brunetti was forced to agree with him. It had surely been the case with his parents, though he wasn’t sure if they – his father returned from the war a broken, unhappy man and his mother eventually lost to Alzheimer’s – were reliable examples. He thought of Paola’s parents, Conte and Contessa Falier – anchored in the present and curious about the future – and Vianello’s theory fell apart.
‘Are we doing this,’ Vianello asked, keeping perfectly in step with Brunetti, ‘because of that mark?’
Brunetti fought the impulse to shrug and said, ‘Rizzardi’s at his uncommunicative best. He told the son she died of a heart attack – so I suppose that’s true – but he didn’t say anything about the mark. And we couldn’t talk.’
‘You got any ideas?’ Vianello asked.
This time Brunetti permitted himself the shrug, then said, ‘I’d like to learn something about her, then see what Rizzardi decides to tell us.’