Vianello came across the room and placed the envelope on Brunetti’s desk. He propped his weight on his hands and leaned over it, studying it again, along with Brunetti.
It looked to Brunetti as if the words had been cut from La Nuova, the most sensational and often most vulgar newspaper of the city. He wasn’t sure: the technicians would be. They were pasted to half a sheet of lined writing paper. ‘Filthy pederasts and baby pornographers. You’ll all die like this.’
Brunetti picked up the envelope by a corner and turned it over. All he could see were the same lines and some small patches where the glue had seeped through the paper, staining it grey. He turned it back over and read it again. ‘There seem to be some crossed wires, don’t there?’ he asked.
‘To say the least,’ Vianello agreed.
Though Paola had told the police who arrested her why she broke the window, she had never spoken to any of the reporters, except briefly and under duress, so whatever stories they carried about her motivation had come from some other source; Lieutenant Scarpa was a good guess. The stories Brunetti had read had done little more than suggest that her motivating force was ‘feminism’, though the term was never defined. Mention had been made of the tours arranged by the agency, but the accusation that they were sex-tours had been heatedly denied by the manager, who insisted that most of the men who bought tickets to Bangkok at his agency took their wives along. The Gazzettino, Brunetti recalled, had carried a long interview with him in which he expressed his shock and disgust at sex-tourism, carefully and repeatedly pointing out that it was illegal in Italy and hence unthinkable for any legitimate agency to play a part in the organizing of it.
Thus the weight of opinion and authority was lined up against Paola, a hysterical ‘feminist’, and in favour of the law-respecting manager and, behind him, the murdered Dottor Mitri. Whoever had got the idea of ‘baby pornographer’ had got things wildly wrong.
‘I think it’s time we talked to a few people,’ Brunetti said, getting to his feet. ‘Starting with the manager of the agency. I’d like to hear what he has to say about all these married women who want to go to Bangkok.’
Brunetti looked at his watch and saw that it was almost two. ‘Is Signorina Elettra still here?’ he asked Vianello.
‘Yes, sir. She was when I came up.’
‘Good. I’d like to have a word with her, then perhaps we could go and get something to eat.’
Confused, Vianello nodded and followed his superior down to Signorina Elettra’s office. From the door, he watched Brunetti lean down and speak to her, saw and heard Signorina Elettra’s laugh. She nodded and turned towards her computer, then Brunetti joined him and they went down to the bar by Ponte dei Grechi and had wine and tramezzini, talking of this and that. Brunetti seemed in no hurry to leave, so they had more sandwiches and another glass of wine.
After another half hour Signorina Elettra came in, managing to capture a smile from the barman and the offer of coffee from two men who stood at the bar. Though it was less than a block from the office, she had put on a quilted black silk coat that came to her ankles. She shook her head in polite refusal of coffee and came towards the two policemen. She pulled a few sheets of paper from her pocket and held them up. ‘Child’s play.’ She shook her head in false exasperation. ‘It’s just too easy.’
‘Of course.’ Brunetti smiled and paid for what had passed as lunch.
13
Brunetti and Vianello turned up at the travel agency just as it was reopening at 3.30 p.m. and asked to speak to Signor Dorandi. Brunetti glanced back into the campo and noticed that the glass in the window was so clean as to seem invisible. The blonde woman at the front desk requested their names, pushed a button on her phone, and a moment later the door at the left of her desk opened, revealing Signor Dorandi.
Not quite as tall as Brunetti, he had a full beard already starting to go grey, though he could not have been much into his thirties. When he saw Vianello’s uniform, he came forward with his hand outstretched, a smile spreading up from the corners of his mouth. ‘Ah, the police. I’m glad you’ve come.’
Brunetti said good-afternoon but didn’t give either of their names, letting Vianello’s uniform serve as sufficient introduction. He asked if they might speak in Signor Dorandi’s office. Turning, the bearded man held open the door for the other two and paused long enough to inquire if they’d like some coffee. Both refused.
Inside, the walls of the office were filled with the predictable posters of beaches, temples and palaces, sure proof that a bad economy and continuing talk of financial crises were not enough to keep Italians at home. Dorandi took his place behind his desk, pushed some papers to the side, and turned to Brunetti, who folded his coat over the back of one of the chairs facing Dorandi and sat down. Vianello lowered himself into the other.
Dorandi was wearing a suit, but something was wrong with it. Distracted, Brunetti tried to figure out what it was, whether the garment was too big or too small, but neither seemed to be the case. Double-breasted, the jacket was cut of some thick blue material which looked like wool but could as easily have been plasterboard. The jacket fell in a straight line, without a single wrinkle, from his shoulder before disappearing behind the desk. Dorandi’s face gave Brunetti the same impression of something being amiss, but he didn’t understand what. Then he noticed the moustache. Dorandi had shaved away the top half, leaving that area of his upper lip clean-shaven, so the adornment ran in a thin straight line under his nose and disappeared into his beard on either side. The trimming had been done very carefully and was clearly not the result of a careless hand, but the proportions of the moustache had been destroyed, and the result was a pasted-on rather than a naturally grown appearance.
‘What may I do for you, gentlemen?’ Dorandi asked, smiling and placing his folded hands in front of him.
‘I’d like you to tell me a bit about Dottor Mitri and the agency, if you would,’ Brunetti said.
‘Ah, yes, gladly.’ Dorandi paused for a moment while he thought where to begin. ‘I’ve known him for years, since I first came here to work.’
‘When was that exactly?’ Brunetti asked.
Vianello took a pad from his pocket, opened it on his lap, and began to take notes.
Dorandi turned his chin to the side and stared at the poster on the far wall, looking for the answer in Rio. He turned back to Brunetti and said, ‘It will be exactly six years in January.’
‘And what position did you have when you came?’ Brunetti inquired.
‘The same as I have now: manager.’
‘But aren’t you also the owner?’
Dorandi smiled as he answered, ‘In everything but name, I am. I own the business, but Dottor Mitri still holds the licence.’
‘What exactly does that mean?’
Again, Dorandi consulted the helpful city on the far wall. When he’d found the answer, he turned back to Brunetti. ‘It means that I decide who gets hired and fired, on what advertizing to use, what special offers to make, and I also get to keep the major portion of the earnings.’
‘What portion?’
‘Seventy-five per cent.’
‘And the rest went to Dottor Mitri?’
‘Yes. As well as rent.’
‘Which was?’
‘The rent?’ Dorandi asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Three million lire a month.’
‘And the profits?’
‘Why is it you need to know this?’ Dorandi asked in the same level voice.
‘At this point, Signore, I’ve no idea what I need to know and what not. I am simply trying to accumulate as much information about Dottor Mitri and his affairs as I can.’
‘To what purpose?’