‘The woman upstairs said she was in a hotel in Palermo for five days. I’ll check that,’ Brunetti said.
As they passed the door to the apartment below, Vianello tilted his head towards it. ‘The people in there heard us going up and down, so if they had anything to tell us, they probably would have.’ Then, before Brunetti could comment, he added, ‘But I’ll come back later today and ask them. You never know.’
Outside, the Inspector phoned the station at Piazzale Roma and asked them to send a boat to pick him up at the Riva di Biasio stop. Brunetti knew it would be faster to walk, so he shook hands with his assistant and turned towards home.
5
By the time Brunetti awoke from a troubled sleep, everyone in the house had already left, and for half an hour he drifted in and out of wakefulness, recalling Signora Giusti’s exclamation, ‘She was a good neighbour,’ and the pasty red goo that had seeped into the white hair of that good neighbour. His selective memory found Marillo’s embarrassed reticence and replayed Rizzardi’s cool thoroughness. He turned on to his back and looked at the ceiling. Is that what he would want someone to say about him, someone who had lived near him for a number of years? That he had been a good neighbour? Nothing more to be said about a person after years of acquaintanceship?
After a time, he went out into the kitchen, grumbling at the day, and found a note from Paola. ‘Stop grumbling. Coffee on stove. Just light it. Fresh brioche on counter.’ He saw the second and the fourth, did the first and the third. While the coffee was brewing, he went to the back window and looked off to the north. The Dolomites were clearly visible, the same mountains that Signora Altavilla had turned her back on and that Signora Giusti would see from her fourth-floor windows.
Though Brunetti was the son, grandson, great-grandson – and more – of Venetians, he had always found greater comfort in the sight of mountains than in that of the sea. Each time he heard of the approaching Something that was going to wipe the slate clean of humankind or read about the ever-escalating number of ships filled with toxic and radioactive waste scuttled by the Mafia off the coast of Italy, he thought of the majestic solidity of mountains, and in them he found solace. He had no idea how many years man had left to him, but Brunetti was sure that the mountains would survive whatever was to come and that something else would come after. He had never told anyone, not even Paola, about this idea nor of the strange consolation he took from it. Mountains seemed, he thought, so very permanent, while the sea, ever changing, was to him visibly disturbed by what happened to it; further, it was a more evident victim of the damage and depredations of man.
His thoughts had just moved to the continent-sized mass of garbage and plastic that was floating in the Pacific Ocean when the sound of bubbling coffee pulled him back to a more modest reality. He emptied the pot into his cup, spooned in sugar, and pulled a brioche from the bag. Cup in one hand, brioche in the other, he returned to the contemplation of the mountains.
This time it was the telephone that grabbed his attention. He walked into the living room and, mouth busy with his brioche, answered with his name.
‘Where are you, Brunetti?’ Patta shouted down the line.
When he had been younger and more prone to acts of prankish resistance, Brunetti would have answered that he was in his living room, but the years had taught him to interpret Patta-speak, so he recognized these words as a demand that he explain his absence from his office.
He swallowed the last of the brioche and said, ‘I’m sorry to be delayed, sir, but Rizzardi’s assistant said that the doctor was going to call me.’
‘Don’t you have a telefonino, for God’s sake?’ his superior demanded.
‘Of course, sir, but his assistant said the doctor might want me to go and talk to him at the hospital, so I’m waiting for his call before I leave home. If I get to the Questura and have to go back to the hospital, it will waste-’
Even as Brunetti became aware that he was talking too much, Patta interrupted him. ‘Stop lying to me, Brunetti.’
‘Sir,’ Brunetti said, careful to replicate the tone with which Chiara had answered Paola’s last comment on her choice of clothing.
‘Get down here. Now.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said and replaced the phone.
Showered and shaved and much restored by having drunk the equivalent of three coffees, added to which was the sugar-high provided by two pastries, Brunetti left his apartment feeling strangely cheerful, a mood that was reflected everywhere in one of those glorious sunny days when autumn and nature unite to pull out all the stops and give people something to cheer about. Though his spirit begged him to walk, Brunetti went only as far as the Rialto stop, where he boarded a Number Two heading towards Lido. It would save only a few minutes, but the tone of Patta’s voice had encouraged speed.
He had not had time to buy a newspaper, so he contented himself with reading the headlines he saw around him. Another politician caught on video in the company of a Brazilian transsexual; further assurances by the Minister of the Economy that all was well and getting better and that the reports of factory closings and unemployed workers were calculated exaggerations, a deliberate attempt on the part of the Opposition to instil fear and mistrust in the people. Another unemployed worker had set himself ablaze in a city centre, this time Trieste.
He looked up from the headlines as they passed in front of the university. He saw nothing new there, either. How nice it would be if, one day, just as he was passing below the windows, Paola could fling one of them open and wave to him, perhaps call his name, shout out that she loved him absolutely and always would. He knew he would stand his ground and shout the same things back to her. The man next to him turned the page of his newspaper, and Brunetti turned his eyes back to the Gazzettino and the news that was never new. Teenage driver lost control of his father’s car at two in the morning and slammed right into a plane tree; old woman cheated out of her pension by someone claiming to be an inspector from the electric company; frozen meat in large supermarket filled with worms.
He got out at San Zaccaria and walked along the water, spirits whisked up and about by the sight of the motion of the wind on the waves. He turned into the front door of the Questura a few minutes before ten and went directly up to Patta’s office. His superior’s secretary, Signorina Elettra Zorzi, was behind her computer; she was bedecked, like unto the lilies of the field, in a blouse that had to be silk, for the pattern in gold and white would have been wasted on any lesser fabric.
‘Good morning, Commissario,’ she said formally as he came in. ‘The Vice-Questore is quite eager to have a word with you.’
‘No less so than I, Signorina,’ Brunetti answered and went over to knock on the door.
A bellowed ‘Avanti!’ caused Brunetti to raise his eyebrows, Signorina Elettra her hands from the keys.
‘Oh my, oh my, oh my,’ she said by way of warning.
‘I am just going inside and may be some time,’ Brunetti said in English, to her consternation.
Inside, he found Patta in his no nonsense commander-of-armed-men mode, one with which Brunetti was amply familiar. He adjusted his posture accordingly and walked to the seat Patta indicated in front of his desk.
‘Why wasn’t I called last night? Why was I kept in the dark about this?’ Patta’s voice was irate, but calm, as suited an official with a hard job to do and no help from the people around him, certainly not from the one in front of him.
‘I informed you about the death when I left our dinner, Dottore,’ Brunetti said. ‘By the time we finished our initial investigation, it was after three in the morning, and I didn’t want to disturb you at that hour.’ Before Patta could say, as he usually did at this point, that there was no time, night or day, when he was not prepared to assume the responsibilities of his office, Brunetti said, ‘I knew I should have done it, sir, but I thought a few hours would make no difference and we’d both be better able to deal with things if we had a decent night’s sleep.’