A Venetian Reckoning Part 7

Brunetti agreed, though it was something, and as far as Trevisan's death was concerned, it was a good deal more than they had.

Delia Corte's goodbye was abrupt, as if he had been called away to more important things.

Brunetti replaced the phone and sat back in his chair, trying to think of a connection that could link the Venetian lawyer to the accountant from Padua..Both men would have travelled in the same social and professional circles, so it was not at all to be wondered at if they knew one another or if one's address book listed the other's number. How odd, though, for it to be listed without a name, and what odd company for it to keep, two public phones and numbers in some foreign country. Odder still was the fact that the number should appear in the address book of a man who was murdered during the same week as Trevisan.

Brunetti called down to Signorina Elettra to ask if SIP had yet responded to his request that they supply a record of all of Trevisan's phone calls for the last six months, only to learn that she had placed their report on his desk the previous day. He hung up and began to sort through the papers on the top of his desk, shoving aside personnel reports he had postponed completing for the last two weeks and a letter from a colleague with whom he had worked in Naples, too depressing to be reread or answered.

The phone records were there, a manila folder that contained what turned out to be fifteen sheets of computer print-out. He cast his eye down the first page and saw that only long-distance calls were not' 'I, both from Trevisan's office and from his home. Each column began with the numerical city code or, where it applied, country code and then listed the number called, the time of the call, and its duration. In a separate column to the right were listed the names of the cities and countries to which those codes corresponded. Quickly, he paged through the report and saw that it listed only outgoing calls made from the phones and bore no listing of those received. Perhaps no request had been made, or perhaps SIP took longer to trace those, or perhaps, just as likely, some new bureaucratic nightmare had been invented for the processing of such a request, and the information would be delayed.

Brunetti ran his eyes down the column of cities on the right No pattern appeared on the first pages, but by the fourth, he could see that Trevisan - or whoever had been calling from Trevisan's phones, as he was careful to remind himself - called three numbers in Bulgaria with some regularity, at least two or three times a month. The same was true of numbers in Hungary and Poland. He remembered that the first country had been named by della Corte, though the others had not been. Interspersed with these were calls to the Netherlands and England, these perhaps explained by the nature of Trevisan's law practice. The Dominican Republic appeared nowhere on the list, and the calls to Austria and the Netherlands, the other countries della Corte had mentioned, seemed not to have been made with any great frequency.

Brunetti had no idea now much of a lawyer's business would be handled by phone, so he had no idea if the list he was reading represented an inordinate number of phone calls.

He called down to the switchboard and asked to be . connected to the number della Corte had given him. When the other policeman answered, Brunetti identified himself and asked to be given the numbers in Padua and Mestre that had been listed in Favero's address book.

After della Corte read them out to him, Brunetti said, 'I've got a list of Trevisan's calls here, but only the long distance, so the Mestre number won't appear. You want to wait while I check it for the Padua number?'

'Ask me if I want to the in the arms of a sixteen-year-old,' della Corte said. 'You'll get the same answer.'

Taking that for a yes, Brunetti ran his eye down the list, pausing wherever he saw the 049 prefix of Padua. The first three pages revealed nothing, but then on the fifth, and again on the ninth, he saw the number. It disappeared for a time, and then appeared on the fourteenth page, called three times in the same week.

Della Corte s answer when Brunetti told him this was a low, two-syllable hum. 'I think I better get someone to cover that phone in Padua.'

'And I'll get someone to go and have a look at the bar,' Brunetti said, interested now, eager to know what the bar was like, who frequented it, but most eager to get his hands on a list of Trevisan's local calls and see if the bar's number appeared on it.

Brunetti's long years and grim experience as a policeman had destroyed whatever belief he might ever have had in coincidence. A number that was known to two men who had been murdered within a few days of one another was not some random fact, some statistical curiosity to be commented on and then forgotten. The number in Padua had significance, though Brunetti had no idea what it was, and he was suddenly sure that the number of the bar in Mestre was going to appear on the list of Trevisan's local calls.

Promising to let della Corte know as soon as he learned anything about the phone in Mestre, he depressed the bar on the receiver and dialled Vianello's extension. When the sergeant answered, Brunetti asked him to come up to his office.

A few minutes later, Vianello came in. Trevisan?' he asked, meeting Brunetti's gaze with one of frank curiosity.

'Yes. I've just had a call from the police in Padua, about Rino Favero.'

'The accountant, the one who worked for the Minister of Health?' Vianello asked. When Brunetti nodded, Vianello burst out, speaking with real pa.s.sion, 'They should all do it.'

Brunetti looked up, momentarily startled.

'Do what?' he asked.

'Kill themselves, the whole filthy lot of them.' As suddenly as he had erupted, Vianello subsided and sat in the chair in front of Brunetti's desk.

'What brought that on?' Brunetti asked.

Instead of answering, Vianello shrugged, waving one hand in the air in front of him.

Brunetti waited.

'It was the editorial in the Corriere Corriere this morning,' Vianello finally answered. 'Saying what?' this morning,' Vianello finally answered. 'Saying what?'

'That we should have pity on these poor men, driven to take their own lives by the shame and suffering imposed on them, that the judges should let them out of prison, return them to their wives and families. I forget the rest of it; just reading that much made me sick.' Brunetti remained silent, so Vianello continued. 'If someone who s.n.a.t.c.hes a purse gets put in gaol, we don't read editorials, at least not in the Corriere Corriere, begging that they be released or that we all feel sorry for them. And G.o.d knows how much these pigs have stolen. Your taxes. Mine. Billions, thousands of billions.' Suddenly conscious of how high his voice was rising, Vianello repeated the wave of his hand, brushing away his anger, and asked, in a far more moderate voice, 'What about Favero?' begging that they be released or that we all feel sorry for them. And G.o.d knows how much these pigs have stolen. Your taxes. Mine. Billions, thousands of billions.' Suddenly conscious of how high his voice was rising, Vianello repeated the wave of his hand, brushing away his anger, and asked, in a far more moderate voice, 'What about Favero?'

'It wasn't suicide,' Brunetti said.

Vianello "s look was frankly surprised. 'What happened?' he asked, his explosion apparently forgotten.

'He had so much barbiturate in him there was no way he could have driven.'

'How much?' Vianello asked.

'Four milligrams' but before Vianello could tell him this was hardly a heavy dosage, he added, 'of Roipnol' Vianello knew as well as did Brunetti that four milligrams would put either one of them to sleep for the next day and a half.

'What's the connection with Trevisan?' Vianello asked.

Like Brunetti, Vianello had long since lost his faith in coincidence, so he listened with fixed attention to the story of the phone number known to both of the dead men.

"The Padua railway station?' Vianello asked. 'Via f.a.gare?'

'Yes, it's a bar called Pinetta's. You know it?'

Vianello looked off to the side for a moment and then nodded. 'I think so, if it's the place I'm thinking of. Off to the left of the railway station?'

'I don't know,' Brunetti answered. 'I know it's near the railway station, but I've never heard of it.'

'Yes, I think it's this place. Pinetta's?'

Brunetti nodded, waiting for Vianello to say more.

'If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's pretty bad. Lots of North Africans, those 'vous compras' you see all over the place.' Vianello paused for a moment, and Brunetti prepared himself to hear some sort of slighting remark about these unlicensed vendors who crowded the streets of Venice, selling their imitation Gucci bags and African carvings. But Vianello surprised him by saying, instead, 'Poor devils.'

Brunetti had long since abandoned the hope of ever hearing anything like political consistency from his fellow citizens, but still he wasn't prepared for Vianello's sympathy for these immigrant street vendors, usually the most despised of the hundreds of thousands of people flooding into Italy in hopes of dining on the crumbs that fell under the table of the country's wealth. Yet here was Vianello, a man who not only voted for the Lega Nord but who argued strongly that Italy should be divided in half just north of Rome - in his wilder moments, he was known to call for the building of a wall to keep out the barbarians, the Africans, for they were all Africans south of Rome - here was Vianello calling these same Africans 'poor devils' and apparently meaning it.

Though the remark puzzled Brunetti, he didn't want to spend time talking about it now. So he asked, instead, 'Have we got someone who can go in there at night?'

'And do what?' Vianello asked, just as glad as Brunetti to avoid the other topic.

'Have a couple of drinks. Talk to people. See who uses the phone. Or answers it'

'Someone who doesn't look like a cop, you mean?'

Brunetti nodded.

'Pucetti?' Vianello suggested.1 Brunetti shook his head. 'Too young.'

'And probably too dean,' Vianello added immediately.

'You make it sound like a nice place, Pinetta's.'

it's the kind of place where I'd prefer to be wearing my gun,' Vianello said. Then, after a moment's reflection, he added, too casually, 'Sounds like the place for Topa,' mentioning a sergeant who had retired six months before, after thirty years with the police. Topa's real name was Romano, but no one had called him that for more than five decades, not since he was a child, small and round-bodied, looking just like the little baby mouse his nickname suggested. Even after he got his full growth and became so thick-chested that his uniform jackets had to be specially made, the name remained, wildly incongruous but no less unchangeable. No one ever laughed at Topa for having a- nickname with a feminine ending. A number of people, during his thirty years of service, had tried to harm him, but no one had ever dared laugh at his nickname.

When Brunetti said nothing, Vianello glanced quickly up at him and then as quickly down, 'I know how you feel about him, commissario.' And then, before Brunetti had time to comment, 'He wouldn't even be working, at least not officially. He'd just be doing you a favour.'

'By going into Pinetta's?'

Vianello nodded.

'I don't like it,' Brunetti said.

Vianello continued. 'He'd just be a retired man, going into a bar for a drink, perhaps for a game of cards.' In the face of Brunetti's continuing silence, Vianello added, 'A retired policeman can go into a bar and have a game of cards if he wants to, can't he?'

'That's the thing I don't know,' Brunetti said.

'What?'

'Whether he'd want to.' Neither of them, it was clear, wanted to mention or saw any sense in bringing up the reasons for Topa's early retirement. A year ago, Topa had arrested the twenty-three-year-old son of a city councillor for molesting an eight-year-old schoolgirl. The arrest took place late at night, at the young man's home, and when the suspect arrived at the Questura, his left arm and his nose were broken. Topa insisted that the young man had attacked him in an attempt to escape; the young man maintained that Topa had stopped on the way to the Questura, pulled him into an alley, and beaten him.

The man at the desk when they arrived at the Questura that night tried, with no success, to describe the look that Topa gave the suspect when he began to tell this story. The young man never repeated it, and no official complaint was ever bunched. But a week later word filtered down from Vice-Questore Patta's office that it was time for the sergeant to retire, and he did, losing out on a part of his pension by doing so. The young man was sentenced to two years of house arrest. Topa, who had one grandchild, a girl of seven, was never heard to speak of the arrest, his retirement, or the events surrounding it.

Refusing to acknowledge Brunetti's glance, Vianello asked,'Should I call him?'

Brunetti hesitated for a moment and then said, with singular lack of good grace, 'All right.'

Vianello knew better than to smile. 'He's not back from work until eight. I'll call him then.'

'Work?' Brunetti asked, though he knew he shouldn't. The law forbade retired officers from working: if they did, they forfeited their pensions.

'Work,' Vianello repeated but said no more. He got to his feet. 'Will there be anything else, sir?' Brunetti remembered that Topa had been Vianello s partner for more than seven years and that the sergeant had wanted to quit when Topa was forced into retirement, persuaded away from that idea only by Brunetti's fierce opposition. Topa had never seemed to Brunetti the sort of man over whom a high moral position could be taken.

'No, nothing else. On your way down, would you ask Signorina Elettra to get on to the people at SIP and see if she can get the list of Trevisan's local calls from them?'

'Pinetta's isn't the sort of place an international lawyer would call,' Vianello said.

It didn't sound like the sort of place a successful accountant would call, either, but Brunetti chose not to volunteer this. "The records will tell us' he said blandly.

Vianello waited, but when Brunetti said nothing further, he went down to his office, leaving Brunetti to speculate on the reasons wealthy and successful men might have for making calls to public telephones, especially in a place as squalid as Pinetta's.

13.

Dinner that night for the three of them was enlivened - Brunetti could think of no kinder word - by a heated confrontation between Chiara and her mother which blew up when Chiara told her father that, after school, she had gone back to do her maths homework at the home of the girl who was Francesca Trevisan's best friend.

Before Chiara could say any more than that, Paola slammed her hand down on the table. 'I will not live in the same house as a spy,' she shouted at her daughter.

'I'm not a spy,' Chiara answered sharply. 'I'm working for the police.' Then, turning to Brunetti, she asked, 'Aren't I, Papa?'

Ignoring her, Brunetti reached across the table and picked up the nearly empty bottle of Pinot noir.

'Well, aren't I?' Chiara insisted.

'It doesn't matter', her mother began, 'if you're working for the police or not. You can't go around trying to get information from your friends.'

'But Papas always getting information from his friends, too. Does that mean he's a spy?'

Brunetti sipped at his wine and peered across the top of his gla.s.s at his wife, curious how she would answer this.

Paola looked at him but spoke to Chiara. 'It's not that he gets information mom his friends, it's that when he does it, they know who he is and why he's doing it.'

'Well, my friends know who I am and they ought to be able to figure out why I'm doing it,' Chiara insisted, her cheeks slowly suffusing with red.

'It's not the same thing, and you know it,' Paola answered.

Chiara muttered something that, to Brunetti, sounded like, 'Is so,' but her head was lowered over her empty plate, and so he wasn't sure.

Paola turned to Brunetti. 'Guido, would you please try to explain the difference to your daughter?' As ever, in the heat of argument, Paola, like some sort of negligent rodent, had sloughed off all claim to motherhood and abandoned the young thing to its father.

'Your mother's right,' he said. 'When I question people, they know I'm a policeman, and so they tell me things in knowledge of that fact. And they know that they can be held liable for what they say, so that allows them the chance to be cautious, if they want to be.'

'But don't you ever trick anyone?' Chiara asked. 'Or try to?' she added before he could answer.

'I'm sure I've done both,' he admitted. 'But remember, nothing that anyone says to you has any legal weight. They can always deny they said it, and then it would just be your word against theirs.'

'But why would I lie?'

'Why would they?' Brunetti returned.

'Who cares if what people say is legally binding or not?' Paola asked, jumping back into the fray. "We're not talking about what's legally binding; we're talking about betrayal. And, if the people at this table will permit me the use of the word,' she said, looking at the two of them in turn, 'honour.'

Chiara, Brunetti observed, got one of those, 'Oh, here she goes again' looks on her face and turned to him for moral support, but he gave her none.

'Honour?' Chiara asked.

'Yes, honour,' Paola said, suddenly calm, but no less dangerous for that. 'You can't get information from your friends. You can't take what they say and make use of it against them.'

Chiara interrupted her here. 'But nothing Susanna said can be used against her.'

Paola closed her eyes for a moment, then picked up a piece of bread and began to crumble it into small pieces, something she often did when she was upset 'Chiara, it doesn't matter what use ever gets made or doesn't get made of anything she told you. What cannot be done,' she began and then repeated the entire phrase, 'what cannot be done is to lead our friends on to say things to us when we are alone with them and then turn around and repeat that information or make some use of it that they didn't know we had in mind when they were talking to us. That's to betray a confidence.'

'You make it sound like a crime,' Chiara said.

it's worse than a crime,' Paola shot back, it's wrong.'