Anonymous Venetian aka Dressed for Death

Chapter Four

Inside, he learned little more: Cola repeated his story, and the foreman verified it. Sullenly, Buffo told him that none of the men who worked in the factory had seen anything strange, not that morning and not the day before. The whores were so much a part of the landscape that no one now paid any real attention to them or to what they did. No one could remember that particular area behind the slaughterhouse ever being used by the whores: the smell alone would explain that. But had one of them been seen in that area, no one was likely to have noticed.

After learning all of this, Brunetti went back to his car and asked the driver to take him to the Questura in Mestre. Officer Scarpa, who had put his jacket back on, got out of the car and joined Sergeant Buffo in the other. As the two cars headed back towards Mestre, Brunetti opened his window half-way to let some air, however hot, into the car and dilute the smell of the slaughterhouse that still clung to his clothing. Like most Italians, Brunetti had always scoffed at the idea of vegetarianism, scorning it as yet another of the many self-indulgences of the well-fed, but today the idea made complete sense to him.

At the Questura, his driver took him to the first floor and introduced him to Sergeant Gallo, a cadaverous man with sunken eyes who looked like the years spent in pursuit of the criminal had eaten into his flesh from the inside.

When Brunetti was seated at the side of Gallo’s desk, the sergeant told him there was little else to add to what Brunetti had been told, though he did have the initial, verbal report from the pathologist: death had resulted from a series of blows to the head and face and had taken place from twelve to eighteen hours before the body was found. The heat made it difficult to tell. From pieces of rust found in some of the wounds and from their shape, the pathologist guessed that the murder weapon had been a piece of metal, most probably a length of pipe, but surely something cylindrical. The lab analysis of stomach contents and blood wouldn’t be back until Wednesday morning at the earliest, so it was impossible to say yet whether he had been under the influence of drugs or alcohol when he was killed. Since many of the prostitutes in the city and almost all of the transvestites were confirmed drug users, this was likely, though there seemed to be no sign on the body of intravenous drug use. The stomach was empty, though there were signs that he had eaten a meal within the twenty-four hours before he was killed.

‘What about his clothing?’ he asked Gallo.

‘Red dress, some sort of cheap synthetic material. Red shoes, barely worn, size forty-one. I’ll have them checked to see if we can find the manufacturers.’

‘Are there any photos?’ Brunetti asked.

‘They won’t be ready until tomorrow morning, sir, but from the reports of the men who brought him in, you might not want to see them.’

‘That bad, eh?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Whoever did it to him must really have hated him or been out of his mind when he did it. There’s no nose left.’

‘Will you get an artist to make a sketch?’

‘Yes, sir. But most of it’s going to be guesswork. All he’ll have is the shape of the face, the eye colour. And the hair.’ Gallo paused for a moment and added, ‘It’s very thin, and he’s got a large bald spot, so I’d guess he wore a wig when, ah, when he worked.’

‘Was a wig found?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, sir, there wasn’t. And it looks like he was killed somewhere else and carried there.’

‘Footprints?’

‘Yes. The technical team said they found a set of them going towards the clump of grass and coming away from it.’

‘Deeper when going?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So he was carried out there and dumped under that clump of grass. Where did the footprints come from?’

‘There’s a narrow paved road that runs along the back of the field behind the slaughterhouse. It looks like he came from there.’

‘And on the road?’

‘Nothing, sir. It hasn’t rained in weeks, so a car, or even a truck, could have stopped there, and there’d be no sign of it. There’s just those footprints. A man’s. Size forty-three.’ Brunetti’s size.

‘Do you have a list of the transvestite prostitutes?’

‘Only those who have been in trouble, sir.’

‘What sort of trouble do they get into?’

‘The usual. Drugs. Fights among themselves. Occasionally, one of them will get into a fight with a client. Usually over money. But none of them has ever been mixed up in anything serious.’

‘What about the fights? Are they ever violent?’

‘Nothing like this, sir. Never anything like this.’

‘How many of them are there?’

‘We’ve got files on about thirty of them, but I’d guess that’s just a small fraction of them. A lot of them come down from Pordenone or in from Padova. It seems business is better for them there, but I don’t know why.’ The first place was the nearest big city to both American and Italian military installations: that would account for Pordenone. But Padova? The university? If so, things had changed since Brunetti took his law degree.

‘I’d like to take a look at those files tonight. Can you make me copies of them?’

‘I’ve already had that done, sir,’ Gallo said, handing him a thick blue file that lay on his desk.

As he took the folder from the sergeant, Brunetti realized that, even here in Mestre, less than twenty kilometres from home, he was likely to be treated as a foreigner, so he sought for some common ground that would establish him as a member of a working unit, not the commissario come in from out of town. ‘But you’re Venetian, aren’t you, Sergeant?’ Gallo nodded and Brunetti added, ‘Castello?’ Again, Gallo nodded, but this time with a smile, as if he knew the accent would follow him, no matter where he went.

‘What are you doing out here in Mestre?’ Brunetti asked.

‘You know how it is, sir,’ he began. ‘I got tired of trying to find an apartment in Venice. My wife and I looked for two years, but it’s impossible. No one wants to rent to a Venetian, afraid you’ll get in and they’ll never be able to get you out. And the prices if you want to buy – five million a square metre. Who can afford that? So we came out here.’

‘You sound like you regret it, Sergeant.’

Gallo shrugged. It was a common enough fate among Venetians, driven out of the city by skyrocketing rents and prices. ‘It’s always hard to leave home, Commissario,’ he said, but it seemed to Brunetti that his voice, when he said it, was somewhat warmer.

Returning to the issue at hand, Brunetti tapped a finger on the file. ‘Do you have anyone here they talk to, that they trust?’

‘We used to have an officer, Benvenuti, but he retired last year.’

‘No one else?’

‘No, sir.’ Gallo paused for a moment, as if considering whether he could risk his next statement. ‘I’m afraid many of the younger officers, well, I’m afraid they treat these guys as something of a joke.’

‘Why do you say that, Sergeant Gallo?’

‘If any of them makes a complaint, you know, about being beat up by a client – not about not being paid, you understand. That’s not something we have any control over – but about being beat up, well, no one wants to be sent to investigate it, even if we have the name of the man who did it. Or if they do go to question him, usually nothing happens.’

‘I got a taste of that, even something stronger, from Sergeant Buffo,’ Brunetti said.

At the name, Gallo compressed his lips but said nothing.

‘What about the women?’ Brunetti asked.

‘The whores?’

‘Yes. Is there much contact between them and the transvestites?’

‘There’s never been any trouble, not that I know of, but I don’t know how well they get on. I don’t think they’re in competition over clients, if that’s what you mean.’

Brunetti wasn’t sure what he meant and realized that his questions would have no clear focus until he read the files in the blue folder or until someone could identify the body of the dead man. Until they had that, there could be no talk of motive and, until that, there could be no understanding what had happened.

He stood, glanced at his watch. ‘I’d like your driver to pick me up at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. And I’d like the artist to have the sketch ready by then. As soon as you have it, even if it’s tonight, get at least two officers to start making the rounds of the other transvestites, to see if any of them know who he is or if they’ve heard that anyone from Pordenone or Padova is missing. I’d also like your men to ask the whores – the women, that is, if the transvestites use the area where he was found or if they know of any of them who ever has in the past.’ He picked up the file. ‘I’ll read through this tonight.’

Gallo had been taking notes of what Brunetti said, but now he stood and walked with him to the door.

‘I’ll see you then tomorrow morning, Commissario.’ He headed back towards his desk and reached for the phone. ‘When you get downstairs, there’ll be a driver waiting to take you back to Piazzale Roma.’

As the police car sped back over the causeway towards Venice, Brunetti looked out to the right, at the clouds of grey, white, green, yellow smoke billowing up from the forest of smokestacks in Marghera. As far as the eye could see, the pall of smoke enveloped the vast industrial complex, and the rays from the declining sun turned it all into a radiant vision of the next century. Saddened by the thought, he turned away and looked off towards Murano and, beyond it, the distant tower of the basilica of Torcello, where, some historians said, the whole idea of Venice had begun more than a thousand years ago, when the people of the coast fled into the marshes to avoid the invading Huns.

The driver swerved wildly to avoid an immense camper-van with German plates that suddenly cut in front of them then swerved off to the parking island of Tronchetto, and Brunetti was pulled back to the present. More Huns, and now no place to hide.

He walked home from Piazzale Roma, paying little attention to what or whom he passed, his mind hovering over that bleak field, still seeing the flies that swarmed around the spot under the grass where the body had been. Tomorrow, he would go and see the body, talk to the pathologist, and see what secrets it might reveal.

He got home just before eight, still early enough for it to seem like he was returning from a normal day. Paola was in the kitchen when he let himself into the apartment, but there were none of the usual smells or sounds of cooking. Curious, he went down the corridor and stuck his head into the kitchen; she was at the counter, slicing tomatoes.

‘Ciao, Guido,’ she said, looking up and smiling at him.

He tossed the blue folder on the kitchen counter, walked over to Paola, and kissed the back of her neck.

‘In this heat?’ she asked, but she leaned back against him as she said it.

He licked delicately at her skin.

‘Salt depletion,’ he said, licking again.

‘I think they sell salt pills in the pharmacies. Probably more hygienic,’ she said, leaning forward, but only to take another ripe tomato from the sink. She cut it into thick slices and added them to the ones already arranged in a circle around the edge of a large ceramic plate.

He opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of acqua minerale, and reached for a glass from the cabinet above his head. He filled the glass, drank it down, drank another, then capped the bottle and replaced it in the refrigerator.

From the bottom shelf, he removed a bottle of Prosecco. He ripped the silver foil from the cap, then slowly pushed the cork up with both thumbs, moving it slowly and working it back and forth gently. As soon as the cork popped from the bottle, he tilted it to one side to prevent the bubbles from spilling out. ‘How is it that you knew how to keep champagne from spilling when I married you and I didn’t?’ he asked as he poured some of the sparkling wine into his glass.

‘Mario taught me about it,’ she explained, and he knew immediately that, from the twenty or so Marios they knew, she was talking about her cousin, the vintner.

‘Want some?’ he asked.

‘Just give me a sip of yours. I don’t like to drink in this heat; it goes right to my head.’ He reached his arm around her and held his glass to her lips while she took a small sip. ‘Basta,’ she said. He took the glass and sipped at the wine.

‘Good,’ he murmured. ‘Where are the kids?’

‘Chiara’s out on the balcony. Reading.’ Did Chiara ever do anything else? Except maths problems and beg for a computer?

‘And Raffi?’ He’d be with Sara, but Brunetti always asked.

‘With Sara. He’s eating dinner at her house, and then they’re going to a movie.’ She laughed with amusement at Raffi’s doglike devotion to Sara Paganuzzi, the girl two floors down. ‘I hope he’s going to be able to pry himself away from her for two weeks to come to the mountains with us,’ Paola said, not meaning it at all: two weeks in the mountains above Bolzano, an escape from the grinding heat of the city, were enough to lure even Raffi away from the delights of new love. Besides, Sara’s parents had said she could join Raffaele’s family for a weekend of that vacation.

Brunetti said nothing to this, poured himself another half glass of wine. ‘Caprese?’ he asked, nodding at the ring of tomatoes on the plate in front of Paola.

‘Oh, supercop,’ Paola said, reaching for another tomato. ‘He sees a ring of tomatoes with spaces left between each slice, pieces just big enough to allow a slice of mozzarella to be slipped in between them, and then he sees the fresh basil standing in a glass to the left of his fair wife, right beside the fresh mozzarella that lies on a plate. And he puts it all together and guesses, with lightning-like induction, that it’s insalata caprese for dinner. No wonder the man strikes fear into the heart of the criminal population of the city.’ She turned and smiled at him when she said this, gauging his mood to see if she had perhaps pushed too far. Seeing that, somehow, she had, she took the glass from his hand and took another slip. ‘What happened?’ she asked as she handed the glass back to him.

‘I’ve been assigned to a case in Mestre.’ Before she could interrupt, he continued. ‘They’ve got two commissari out on vacation, one in hospital with a broken leg, and another one on maternity leave.’

‘So Patta’s given you away to Mestre?’

‘There’s no one else.’

‘Guido, there’s always someone else. For one, there’s Patta himself It wouldn’t hurt him to do something else but sit around in his office and sign papers and fondle the secretaries.’

Brunetti found it difficult to imagine anyone allowing Patta to fondle her, but he kept that opinion to himself.

‘Well?’ she asked when he said nothing.

‘He’s got problems,’ Brunetti said.

‘Then it’s true?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been dying to call you all day and ask you if it was. Tito Burrasca?’

When Brunetti nodded, she put her head back and made an indelicate noise that might best be described as a hoot. ‘Tito Burrasca,’ she repeated, turned back to the sink and grabbed another tomato. ‘Tito Burrasca.’

‘Come on, Paola. It’s not all that funny.’

She whipped around, knife still held in front of her. ‘What do you mean, it’s not that funny? He’s a pompous, sanctimonious, self-righteous bastard, and I can think of no one who deserves something like this better than he does.’

Brunetti shrugged and poured more wine into his glass. So long as she was fulminating against Patta, she might forget Mestre, though he knew this was only a momentary deviation.

‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, turning around and apparently addressing this remark to the single tomato remaining in the sink. ‘He’s been hounding you for years, making a mess of any work you do, and now you defend him.’

‘I’m not defending him, Paola.’

‘Sure sounds like it to me,’ she said, this time to the ball of mozzarella she held in her left hand.

‘I’m just saying that no one deserves this. Burrasca is a pig.’

‘And Patta’s not?’

‘Do you want me to call Chiara?’ he asked, seeing that the salad was almost ready.

‘Not before you tell me how long this thing in Mestre is likely to take.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘What is it?’

‘A murder. A transvestite was found in a field in Mestre. Someone beat in his face, probably with a pipe, then carried him out there.’ Did other families, he wondered, have pre-dinner conversations as uplifting as his own?

‘Why beat in the face?’ she asked, centring on the question that had bothered him all afternoon.

‘Rage?’

‘Um,’ she said, slicing away at the mozzarella and then interspersing the slices with the tomato. ‘But why in a field?’

‘Because he wanted the body far away from wherever he killed him.’

‘But you’re sure he wasn’t killed there?’

‘Doesn’t seem so. There were footprints going up to the place where the body was, then lighter ones going away.’

‘A transvestite?’

‘That’s all I know. No one has told me anything about age, but everyone seems sure he was a prostitute.’

‘Don’t you believe it?’

‘I have no reason not to believe it. But I also have no reason to believe it.’

She took some basil leaves, ran them under cold water for a moment, and chopped them into tiny pieces. She sprinkled them on top of the tomato and mozzarella, added salt, then poured olive oil generously over the top of everything.

‘I thought we’d eat on the terrace,’ she said. ‘Chiara’s supposed to have set the table. Want to check?’ When he turned to leave the kitchen, he kept the bottle and glass with him. Seeing that, Paola set the knife down in the sink. ‘It’s not going to be finished by the weekend, is it?’

He shook his head. ‘Not likely.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘We’ve got the reservations at the hotel. The kids are ready to go. They’ve been looking forward to it since school got out.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she repeated. Once, about eight years ago, he had managed to evade her questions about something; he couldn’t remember what it was. He’d got away with it for a day.

‘I’d like you and the kids to go to the mountains. If this finishes on time, I’ll come up and join you. I’ll try to come up next weekend at any rate.’

‘I’d rather have you there, Guido. I don’t want to spend my vacation alone.’

‘You’ll have the kids.’

Paola didn’t deign to grace this with rational opposition. She picked up the salad and walked towards him. ‘Go see if Chiara has set the table.’