Beastly Things

15

NUMBER 26 WAS one of the first in a row of duplex houses on a street leading away from a small cluster of shops on the outskirts of Mestre. They passed the house; Vezzani parked the unmarked car a hundred metres ahead. As the three men got out of the car, Vezzani pointed to a bar on the other side of the road. ‘I’ll be in there,’ he said.

Brunetti and Vianello walked along the row of houses and climbed the steps of number 26. There were two doors and two bells, beneath both of which were slots holding the names of the residents. One, the script faded by the light, bore the names ‘Cerulli’ and ‘Fabretti’; the other, handwriting fresh and dark, read ‘Doni’. Brunetti pressed that bell.

A few moments later, the door was opened by a dark-haired boy of about eight. He was thin and blue-eyed, his expression surprisingly serious for so young a child. ‘Are you the policemen?’ he asked. In one hand he held some sort of futuristic plastic weapon: a ray gun, perhaps. From the other hand hung a faded teddy bear with a large bald spot on his stomach.

‘Yes, we are,’ Brunetti said. ‘Could you tell us who you are?’

‘Teodoro,’ he said and stepped back from the door, saying, ‘My mamma is in the big room.’ They asked permission and entered; the boy closed the door behind them. At the end of a corridor that seemed to bisect the house, they entered a room that looked out on an explosively disordered garden. In this suburban setting, Brunetti expected to see gardens of military rigidity, with straight lines of growing things, whether flowers or vegetables, and, regardless of the season, everything kept well pruned and clean. This one, however, spoke of neglect, with vines overgrowing what might once have been neat rows of bushes or plants. Brunetti saw the wooden poles that had supported tomatoes and beans gobbled up and tipped aside by the slow invasion of vines and brambles, as if someone had abandoned the garden at the end of summer and had completely lost interest by springtime.

The room into which the boy led them, however, reflected none of this disorder. A machine-made Heriz covered most of the marble floor; a dark blue sofa stood against one wall. On a low table in front of it was a neat pile of magazines. Two easy chairs, covered in a flower print dominated by the same dark blue as the sofa, stood facing it. On the walls Brunetti saw dark-framed prints of the sort that are bought in furniture shops.

As the boy entered, he said, ‘Here are the policemen, Mamma.’ The woman got to her feet as they came in and took a step towards them, her hands at her sides. She was of moderate height, the rigidity of her posture making her appear taller than she was. She looked to be in her late thirties, with shoulder length dark hair. Rectangular glasses enforced the angularity of her face. Her skirt fell to just below her knee; her grey sweater might have been silk.

‘Thank you, Teodoro,’ she said. She nodded at them and said, ‘I’m Anna Doni.’ Her face softened, but she did not smile.

Brunetti gave both their names and thanked her for letting them come to speak with her.

The boy looked back and forth as the grown-ups talked. She turned to him and said, ‘I think you can go and do your homework now.’

Brunetti saw the boy begin to protest, then decide not to bother with it. He nodded and left the room without saying anything, taking both his weapon and his friend with him.

‘Please, gentlemen,’ the woman said, waving towards the sofa. She sat in one of the chairs, then rose halfway to straighten her skirt. When they were seated, she said, ‘I’d like you to tell me why you’ve come.’

‘It’s in relation to your husband, Signora,’ Brunetti said. He paused but she asked nothing. ‘Could you tell me the last time you saw him or heard from him?’

Instead of answering, she asked, ‘You know that we’re separated?’

Brunetti nodded as if he did know but did not ask about it. Eventually she said, ‘I saw him a bit more than a week ago when he brought Teodoro home.’ In explanation, she added, ‘He has visiting rights, and every second weekend he can take Teo to sleep at his house.’ Brunetti relaxed to hear her finally use the boy’s nickname.

‘Is yours an amicable separation, Signora?’ Vianello broke in to ask, signalling to Brunetti that he had decided to play the role of good cop, should that become necessary.

‘It’s a legal separation,’ she said tersely. ‘I don’t know how amicable they can ever be.’

‘How long were you married, Signora?’ Vianello asked with every sign of sympathy for what she had just said. Then, as if to suggest she had the right to refuse to answer, he added, ‘Excuse me for asking.’

That stopped her. She unfolded her hands and gripped the arms of her chair. ‘I think that’s enough, gentlemen,’ she said with sudden authority. ‘It’s time for you to tell me what this is all about, and then I’ll decide which of your questions I want to answer.’

Brunetti had hoped to delay telling her, but there was no chance of that now. ‘If you’ve read the papers, Signora,’ he began, ‘you know that the body of a man was found in the water in Venice.’ He paused for long enough for her to grasp what was bound to come next. Her hands tightened on the arms of her chair, and she nodded. Her mouth opened, as if the air around her had suddenly changed to water and she could no longer breathe.

‘It appears that the man was murdered. We have reason to believe that the man is your husband.’

She fainted. During all his years in the police, Brunetti had never seen a person faint. He had seen two suspects, a man and a woman and at separate times, pretend to faint, and both times he had known instantly that they were only trying to buy time. But she fainted. Her eyes rolled upwards; her head fell against the back of the chair. Then, like a sweater placed carelessly on a piece of furniture, she slithered to the floor at their feet.

Brunetti reacted before Vianello did, pushed her chair aside and knelt beside her. He grabbed a cushion from the sofa and placed it under her head and then – and only because he had seen it done in the movies – took her hand and felt for her pulse. It beat, slow and steady; her breathing seemed normal, as though she had simply fallen asleep.

Brunetti looked up at Vianello, who had come to stand above him. ‘Should we call an ambulance?’ the Inspector asked.

Signora Doni opened her eyes, then raised a hand to straighten her glasses, which had been knocked askew by her fall. Brunetti saw that she looked around her, as if to ascertain where she was. A full minute passed before she said, ‘If you’ll help me, I think I can sit.’

Vianello knelt on her other side, and together, holding her as though she were sure to collapse, they helped raise her to her feet. She thanked them and waited until they released her, then she lowered herself into her chair, supporting herself with one hand.

‘Would you like something to drink?’ Brunetti asked, repeating what sounded like the script of a romantic comedy.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m all right. I just need to sit quietly for a moment.’

Both men turned from her when she said that and went to the window to stare out at the desolate garden. Time passed while they waited for some word or sound from the woman behind them.

Finally she said, ‘I’m all right now.’

They returned to the sofa. ‘Please don’t tell Teo,’ she said.

Brunetti nodded and Vianello shook his head, both meaning the same thing.

‘I don’t know how… about his father,’ she said, her voice growing unsteady. She took a few deep breaths, and Brunetti stifled the impulse to ask her again if she would like something to drink. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.

Brunetti saw no way to dress it up to make it more palatable. ‘Your husband was stabbed and put in a canal. His body was found early on Monday morning, and he was taken to the Ospedale Civile. There was no identification: that’s why it’s taken us so long to find you.’

She nodded a number of times, then considered everything she had heard. ‘There was no description of him in the papers,’ she said. ‘Or his disease.’

‘We gave them the only information we had, Signora.’

‘I read that,’ she said angrily. ‘But it didn’t mention Madelung. Surely your pathologist would have recognized something like that.’ She had chosen not to hear him or not to believe him, Brunetti realized as her voice lost the fight against sarcasm. Then, speaking more to herself than to them, she said, ‘If I’d seen that, I would have called.’ Brunetti believed her.

‘I’m sorry, Signora. Sorry you had to learn it this way.’

‘There’s no way to learn it,’ she said coolly, but seeing his response, added, ‘is there?’

‘How long did he have the disease?’ Brunetti asked from simple curiosity.

‘That’s hard to say,’ she told him. ‘At first he thought he was just gaining weight. Nothing helped: no matter how little he ate, he kept getting heavier. It went on for almost a year. So he asked a friend. They’d been at university together, but Luigi went on to study medicine: human medicine, that is. He said what he thought it was, but we didn’t believe him at first. We couldn’t, really: Andrea never drank more than a glass or two of wine with dinner, often nothing, so it didn’t seem possible.’ She shifted her legs and moved around on her chair.

‘Then about six months ago, he had a biopsy and a scan. And that’s what it was.’ All emotion scoured from her voice, she said, ‘There’s no treatment and no cure.’ Then, with a false smile, she added, ‘But it’s not life-threatening. It turns you into a barrel, but it doesn’t kill you.’

The false smile now forgotten, she said, ‘But you didn’t come here to talk about that, did you?’

Brunetti tried to assess how much he could ask of her and decided to risk speaking frankly. ‘No, we didn’t, Signora.’ He paused, then asked, ‘Is there anyone who might have wanted to do your husband an injury?’

‘Besides me, you mean?’ she asked with absolute lack of humour. Brunetti was taken aback by her remark and, glancing at Vianello, saw that the Inspector was, as well.

‘Because of the separation?’ Brunetti asked.

She looked out of the window, studying the mess in the garden. ‘Because of what caused the separation,’ she finally answered.

‘Which was?’ Brunetti asked.

‘The oldest cliché in the world, Commissario. A woman where he worked, who is more than ten years younger than he is.’ Then, with real rancour, she added, ‘Or I am, which is perhaps closer to the point.’ She looked at Brunetti directly, as if to suggest that he lived with a woman, too, and was merely biding his time before doing the same thing.

‘He left you for her?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No. He had an affair with her, and when he told me about it – I suppose the right word here is “confessed” – he said he hadn’t wanted to do it, that she’d seduced him.’ Like a thermometer on to which the morning sun begins to shine, the bitterness in her voice rose as she spoke.

Brunetti waited. This was not a moment when a man could interrupt a woman who was speaking.

‘He said he thought she planned it.’ Abruptly, she raised one hand and made a waving gesture, as though she wanted to shoo away her husband, or the woman, or the memory of what he had said. Then, voice just over the edge of bitterness, she added, ‘It wouldn’t be the first time a man’s claimed that, would it?’

Vianello, in his good-cop voice, slipped in to ask, ‘You said he told you about it, Signora. Why was that?’

She glanced at the Inspector, reminded that he was there. ‘He said the woman was going to tell me, so he wanted to be the one to do it before she did.’ She raised her hand and rubbed at her forehead a few times. ‘To tell me, that is.’

She gave the Inspector a level glance, then turned to Brunetti. ‘So he didn’t leave me for her, Commissario. I told him to get out.’

‘And he left?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. He left the same day. Well, the next day.’ She sat quietly for some time, apparently reflecting on those events. ‘We had to talk about what to tell Teo.’ Then, in a softer voice, she said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can tell them – children – not really.’

Brunetti was tempted to ask her what they had told their son, but he could not justify that and so he asked, instead, ‘When did this happen?’

‘Three months ago. We’ve both spoken to lawyers and signed papers.’

‘And where was this leading, Signora?’

‘Do you mean was I going to divorce him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Of course.’ More slowly and far more thoughtfully, she added, ‘Not for the affair; please understand that. But because he didn’t have the courage of it, because he had to play the victim.’ Then, in a savage voice, she said, one arm raised across her breast and hand grabbing her shoulder as if to contain her rage, ‘I hate victims. I hate people who don’t have the courage of their own foul behaviour and blame it on someone else or something else.’ She fought herself into silence, but lost the fight and went on: ‘I hate the cowardice of it. People have affairs. They have affairs all the time. But for God’s sake, at least admit that you did it. Don’t go blaming the woman or the man. Just say you did it and, if you’re sorry, say you’re sorry, but don’t go blaming some other person for your own weakness or stupidity.’

She stopped, exhausted, perhaps not so much by what she had said as by the circumstances in which she had said it. Two complete strangers, after all, and policemen, to boot, who had come to tell her that her husband was dead.

‘Assuming that you are not the person responsible, Signora,’ Brunetti said with the smallest of smiles, hoping that his irony would turn her away from the path this conversation seemed to have taken, ‘can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to harm your husband?’

She weighed his question, and her face softened. ‘Before I answer that, let me tell you one thing,’ she said.

Brunetti nodded.

‘The papers said the man in Venice – Andrea – was found on Monday morning,’ she said, but it was a question.

Brunetti answered it. ‘Yes.’

‘I was here with my sister that night. She brought her two kids over, and we had dinner together, and then they all spent the night here.’

Brunetti permitted himself a glance in Vianello’s direction and saw that the good cop was nodding. Signora Doni’s voice called his attention back as she said, ‘As to your other question, I don’t know of anyone. Andrea was a…’ She paused here, perhaps conscious that she had now to speak his epitaph. ‘He was a good man.’ Taking three deep breaths, she went on. ‘I do know he was troubled at work or because of work. It was only during the last months we were together that I realized this; that’s when he was…’ Her voice trailed off, and Brunetti left her to remember what she chose. But then she spoke again. ‘It might have been guilt about what he was doing. They were doing. But it might have been more than that.’ Another long pause. ‘We didn’t talk much in the months before he told me.’

‘Where does he work, Signora?’ Brunetti asked, then cringed at the realization that he had used the present tense. To attempt to correct it would make things worse.

‘His office isn’t far from here. But two days a week he works at another job.’ Unconsciously – perhaps because she had heard Brunetti do it – she had also fallen back into the present tense.

Brunetti assumed the work of a veterinarian must be pretty standard; he wondered what extra work Dr Nava could have done, aside from his private practice. ‘Was he working as a veterinarian at this other job, too?’

She nodded. ‘He was offered it about six months ago. With the financial crisis, there was less work at his clinic. That’s strange, really, because people will usually do anything or pay anything to take care of their pets.’ She twisted her hands together in a cliché gesture of helplessness, and Brunetti found himself wondering if she worked or whether she stayed home to take care of their son. And if so, then what would become of her now?

‘So when they offered him the job, he took it,’ she said. ‘We had the mortgage for the house and the costs of the clinic, and then there were the medical bills.’ Seeing their surprise, she said, ‘Andrea had to do it all privately. The waiting time for a scan at the hospital was more than six months. And he paid for all the visits to specialists. That’s the reason he took the job.’

‘Doing what, Signora?’

‘Working at the slaughterhouse. They have to have a vet there when the animals are brought in. To see that they’re healthy enough to be used.’

‘As meat, do you mean?’ Vianello asked.

She nodded again.

‘Two days a week?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. Monday and Wednesday. That’s when the farmers bring them in. He arranged things at the clinic so that he didn’t have to be there in the morning, though his staff would accept patients if necessary.’ She stopped there, hearing herself describing this. ‘Doesn’t that sound strange: “patients”, when you’re talking about animals?’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘Crazy, really.’

‘Which slaughterhouse, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Preganziol,’ she said and then added, as though it still made a difference, ‘It’s only fifteen minutes by car.’

Thinking back to what she had said about what people would do for their pets, Brunetti asked, ‘Did any of the people who took their pets to your husband ever display anger at him?’

‘You mean, did they threaten him?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘He never told me about anything as serious as that, though a few did accuse him of not having done enough to save their pets.’ She said this in a level voice; the coolness of her face suggested her opinion of such behaviour.

‘Is it possible that your husband might not have told you about something like that?’ Vianello asked.

‘You mean to keep me from worrying about him?’ she asked. It was a simple question, not a trace of sarcasm in it.

‘Yes.’

‘No, not before things got bad. He told me everything. We were…’ she began, then paused to search for the proper word. ‘… close,’ she said, having found it. ‘But he never said anything. He was always happy with his work there.’

‘Was the trouble you mentioned at the other job, then, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.

Her eyes seemed to drift out of focus, and she turned her attention to the neglected garden, where there were no signs of returning life. ‘That’s when his behaviour started to change. But that was because of… other things, I’d say.’

‘Is that where he met the woman?’ Brunetti asked, having for some reason thought she was someone who worked in his practice.

‘Yes. I don’t know what she does there: I wasn’t interested in what her job was.’

‘Do you know her name, Signora?’

‘He had the grace never to use it,’ she said with badly withheld anger. ‘All he said was that she was younger.’ Her voice turned to iron on the last word.

‘I see,’ he said, then asked, ‘How did he seem, the last time you saw him?’

He watched her send her memory back to that meeting, watched as the emotions from it played across her face. She took a deep breath, tilted her head to one side to look away from both of them, and said, ‘It was about ten days ago.’ She took a few more deep breaths, and her arm again moved across her chest to anchor her hand on her shoulder. Finally she said, ‘He’d had Teo for the weekend, and when he brought him back, he said he wanted to talk to me. He said something was bothering him.’

‘About what?’ Brunetti asked.

She released her hand and joined it to the one in her lap. ‘I assumed it was about this woman, so I told him there was nothing he could say to me that I wanted to hear.’

She stopped, and both of them could see her recall saying those words. Neither of them spoke, however, and she eventually went on, ‘He said there were things that were going on that he didn’t like, and he wanted to tell me about them.’ She looked at Vianello, then at Brunetti. ‘It was the worst thing he did, the most cowardly.’

There was a noise from somewhere else in the house, and she half rose from her chair. But the noise was not repeated, and she sat down again. ‘I knew what he wanted to tell me. About her. That maybe it wasn’t going well and he was sorry. And I didn’t care. Then. I didn’t want to listen to it, so I told him that anything he had to tell me, he could say to my lawyer.’

She took a few breaths and went on. ‘He said it wasn’t really about her. He didn’t use her name. Just called her “her”. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to talk to me about her. In my home.’ She had been looking between the two men as she spoke, but now she addressed her attention to the hands she kept folded in her lap. ‘I told him he could leave.’

‘Did he, Signora?’ Brunetti asked after a long silence.

‘Yes. I got up and left the room, and then I heard him leave the house, heard his car drive away. And that was the last time I saw him.’

Brunetti, who was looking at her hands, was startled by the first drop. It splashed on the back of her hand and disappeared into the fabric of her skirt, and then another drop, and another, and then she got to her feet and walked quickly from the room.

After some time, Vianello said, ‘Pity she didn’t listen to him.’

‘For her reasons or for ours?’ Brunetti asked.

Surprised by the question, Vianello answered, ‘For hers.’