‘The Dillis was worth about forty thousand; the Salathé a bit less.’
‘And the others?’ Brunetti said, glancing down at the names of Chiara’s history and geometry teachers.
‘There were some prints: Tiepolo, not worth more than ten or twelve. I think there were six or seven of them.’
‘You didn’t offer him a price for the lot?’
‘No,’ Turchetti said, unable to disguise his irritation. ‘He insisted on bringing them in one at a time.’ Then, unable to disguise his satisfaction at a job well done, he added, ‘He thought he’d get more for them that way.’ So much, his tone stated, for that possibility.
Brunetti refused to give him the satisfaction of a response and asked, ‘What else?’
‘You want to know everything?’ Turchetti asked with carefully orchestrated surprise and another flirtatious smile.
With careful slowness, Brunetti clipped his pen to the inside of the notebook and closed it. He looked across at Turchetti and said, ‘Perhaps I’m not making myself clear enough, Signore.’ He moved his lips in something that was not meant to be a smile. ‘I have a list, with amounts and dates, and I want to know what he gave in exchange for the money he received.’
‘And I assume you have the authorization to ask for such information?’ Turchetti asked. All smiles stopped together.
‘Not only can I have it if I ask for it,’ Brunetti said, ‘but I also have the attention of my father-in-law.’
Turchetti could not hide his surprise, nor could he disguise his uneasiness. ‘What does that mean?’
‘That I have only to suggest to him that the provenance given to some of the objects in this gallery is questionable, and I’m sure he’d call around to his friends to ask if they’ve heard the same thing.’ He waited for a moment, and then added, ‘And I suppose they’d call their friends. And so it would go.’ Brunetti returned to smiling and reopened his notebook. He bent over it and said, ‘What else?’
Turchetti, with a precision that Brunetti found exemplary, gave him a list of drawings and prints, approximate dates, and values. Brunetti made a note of them, using the space to the right of the names of Chiara’s teachers and then turning to a blank page to finish the list. When Turchetti finished, Brunetti did not bother to ask him if he had mentioned everything.
He closed the notebook and put it and his pen back in his pocket, then got to his feet. ‘Have you sold them all?’ he asked, though the question was not necessary. They belonged to whoever had them, and even if the law could get them back, to whom did they now belong?
‘No. There are two left.’ Brunetti saw Turchetti start to say something, force himself to stop, and then give in to the impulse. ‘Why? Do I have to give you one?’
Brunetti turned and left the gallery.
26
Well, well, well. Brunetti walked back towards the bridge. The Dillis was worth forty thousand and poor silly Morandi got four, and why was he thinking of Morandi as poor, or silly? Because the Salathé was worth almost as much and he let Turchetti pay him three?
Brunetti was aware that, no matter how right his own ethical system might feel to him, he still found it difficult to explain, even to himself. He had read the Greeks and Romans and knew what they thought of justice and right and wrong and the common good and the personal good, and he had read the Fathers of the Church and knew what they said. He knew the rules, but he found himself, in every particular situation, bogged down in the specifics of what happened to people, found himself siding with or against them because of what they thought or felt and not necessarily in accord with the rules that were meant to govern things.
Morandi had once been a thug, but Brunetti had seen his protective look at that solitary woman across the room, and so he could not believe Morandi had wanted to keep her from talking to him so much as he wanted to keep anyone from disturbing whatever peace remained to her.
He waited for the Number Two, watching the people cross the bridge. Boats passed in both directions, one of them filled to the gunwales with the possessions, and perhaps the hopes, of an entire family that was moving house. Down to Castello? Or turn in to the left and back into San Marco? A shaggy black dog stood on a table precariously balanced on a pile of cardboard boxes at the prow of the boat, its nose pointing forward as bravely as that of any figurehead. How dogs loved boats. Was it the open air and the richness of scents passing by? He couldn’t remember whether dogs saw at long distance or only very close, or perhaps it differed according to what breed they were. Well, there’d be no determining breed with this one: he was as much Bergamasco as Labrador, as much spaniel as hound. He was happy, that was evident, and perhaps that’s all a dog needed to be and all Brunetti needed to know about a dog.
The arrival of the vaporetto cut off his reflections but did not remove Morandi from his mind. ‘People don’t change.’ How many times had he heard his mother say that? She had never studied psychology, his mother. In fact, she had never studied much at all, but that did not prevent her from having a logical mind, even a subtle one. Presented with an example of uncharacteristic behaviour, she would often point out that it was merely a manifestation of the person’s real character, and when she reminded people of events from the past, she was often proven right.
Usually people surprised us, he reflected, with the bad they did, when some dark impulse slipped the leash and brought them, and others, to ruin. And then how easy it became to find in the past the undetected symptoms of their malice. How, then, find the undetected symptoms of goodness?
When he got to his office, he tried the phone book again and found that Morandi was listed, but the phone rang unanswered until the eighth ring, when a man’s voice said he was not at home but could be reached on his telefonino. Brunetti copied the number and dialled it immediately.
‘Sì,’ a man’s voice answered.
‘Signor Morandi?’
‘Sì. Chi è?’
‘Good day, Signor Morandi. This is Guido Brunetti. We spoke two days ago in the room of Signora Sartori.’
‘You’re the pension man?’ Morandi asked, and Brunetti thought he heard rekindled hope, knew he heard civility, in his voice.
Without answering the question, Brunetti said, ‘I’d like to speak to you again, Signor Morandi.’
‘About Maria’s pension?’
‘Among other things,’ Brunetti answered blandly. He waited for the question, the suspicion about what those other things could be. But they did not come.
Instead, Morandi asked, ‘When can we talk? Do you want me to come to your office?’
‘No, Signor Morandi; I don’t want you to trouble yourself. Perhaps we could meet somewhere nearer to you.’
‘I live behind San Marco,’ he said, unaware that Brunetti knew much more about his house than its location. ‘But I have to be at the casa di cura at five-thirty; perhaps we could meet near there?’
‘In the campo?’ Brunetti suggested.
‘Good. Thank you, Signore,’ the old man said. ‘Fifteen minutes?’
‘Good,’ Brunetti said and hung up. There was enough time, so he first went down to the evidence room and then started towards the campo. The late autumn sun smacked him in the back of the head but cheered him by doing so.
The old man sat on one of the benches in front of the the casa di cura, bent forward from the waist, tossing something to a mini-flock of sparrows dancing around his feet. Oh God, was Brunetti to find himself seduced by a few breadcrumbs tossed to hungry birds? He steeled himself and approached the older man.
Morandi heard him coming, tossed the rest of whatever he had in his hands to the birds, and pushed himself to his feet. He smiled, all memory of their first meeting erased or ignored, and put out his hand; Brunetti took it and was surprised at how weak the other man’s grasp was. This close, he was much taller than the old man. Looking down, Brunetti could see the pink skin of his head shining through the strands of dark hair pasted across it. ‘Shall we sit down?’ Brunetti asked.