Beastly Things

16

THERE WAS NOTHING for them to do but wait for her to return. Keeping their voices low, they discussed what she had said and the possibilities it created for them.

‘We need to find this woman and see what was going on,’ Brunetti said.

Vianello’s look was easily read.

‘No, not that,’ Brunetti continued with a shake of his head. ‘She’s right: it’s a cliché, one of the oldest ones. I want to know if he was bothered by anything other than the affair he was having with her.’

‘You don’t think that’s enough to worry a married man?’ Vianello asked.

‘Of course it is,’ Brunetti conceded. ‘But most married men who are having affairs don’t end up floating in a canal with three stab wounds in their back.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Vianello agreed. Then, with a backward nod towards the door Signora Doni had used, he said, ‘If I had her to contend with, I think an affair would make me very nervous.’

‘What would Nadia do?’ Brunetti asked, not sure how much criticism of Signora Doni lay in Vianello’s question.

‘Take my pistol and shoot me, probably,’ Vianello answered with a small grin from which pride was not entirely absent. ‘And Paola?’

‘We live on the fourth floor,’ Brunetti answered. ‘And we have a terrace.’

‘Crafty, your wife,’ Vianello said. ‘Would she leave an unsigned note in the computer?’

‘I doubt it,’ Brunetti said. ‘Too obvious.’ Entering into the puzzle, he gave it some thought. ‘She’d probably tell people I’d been depressed for months and had recently talked about ending it all.’

‘Who would she persuade to agree with her and say they’d heard you say the same thing?’

‘Her parents.’ Brunetti spoke before he thought about it, then quickly amended this: ‘No, only her father. Her mother wouldn’t lie.’ Something occurred to him and he said it, his pleasure evident in his face and voice. ‘I don’t think she’d lie about me. I think she likes me.’

‘Doesn’t her father?’

‘Yes, but in a different way.’ Brunetti knew it was impossible to explain this, but he was much cheered at this sudden recognition of the Contessa’s regard.

They heard Signora Doni’s steps in the corridor and stood as she came back into the room. ‘I had to check on Teo,’ she said. ‘He knows something big is wrong, and he’s worried.’

‘You told him we were policemen?’ Brunetti asked, though the boy had told them so.

She met his gaze directly. ‘Yes. I thought you’d come in uniform, and I wanted him to be prepared for that,’ she said too quickly, as if she had been waiting for his question. Perhaps encouraged by their silence, she finally got to it: ‘And I was afraid when you asked about Andrea. He usually called once or twice during the week. But I hadn’t heard from him since he left.’ She placed her palms on her thighs and studied them. ‘I suppose I knew what you were going to tell me.’

Ignoring this, Brunetti said, ‘You told us that his behaviour changed after he started the other job.’ Brunetti knew he had to go carefully here, find a way to work himself through the tangle of her emotions. ‘You said that you and he were close, Signora.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘Do you remember how soon after he began to work there he showed signs of being worried?’

He read in the stiffness of her mouth that she was close to the end of what she would accept and answer. She started to speak, coughed lightly, then went on: ‘He hadn’t been there long; maybe a month. But by then the disease had grown worse.

‘He’d started eating less to try to lose weight, and that made him cranky, I’m afraid.’ She frowned at the memory of this. ‘I couldn’t get him to eat anything except vegetables and pasta, and bread and some fruit. He said that would work. But it didn’t do any good: he kept getting bigger.’

‘Did he ever talk about a problem?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Other than the disease.’

She had grown visibly restless, so Brunetti forced himself into a more relaxed posture, hoping it would prove contagious.

‘He didn’t like the new job. He said it was hard to do both, especially now that the disease had got worse, but he couldn’t leave because we needed the extra money.’

‘That’s quite a burden for a man who isn’t in good health,’ Vianello offered sympathetically.

She looked at him and smiled. ‘That’s the way Andrea was,’ she said. ‘He worried about the people who worked for him at the clinic. He felt responsible and wanted to keep it open.’

Brunetti left this alone. Years ago, less versed in the ways of emotions, he might have pointed to the dissonance between her behaviour towards her husband and these remarks, but the years had worn away his desire to find consistency, and so he never assumed it nor questioned its absence. She was aboil with emotions: Brunetti suspected the most powerful of them might be remorse, not anger.

‘Could you tell us where his clinic is, Signora?’ Brunetti asked. Vianello pulled a notebook from his pocket.

‘Via Motta 145,’ she said. ‘It’s only five minutes from here.’ Brunetti thought she looked embarrassed. ‘They called me yesterday and told me Andrea hadn’t come in. I told them I didn’t… didn’t know where he was.’ In the manner of a person not accustomed to lying, she looked down at her hands, and Brunetti suspected she had also told them she didn’t care.

She forced herself to look at him and went on. ‘He was living in a small apartment on the second floor of the building. Should I call them and tell them you’re coming?’ she asked.

‘No, thank you, Signora. I think I’d like to go there unannounced.’

‘To see if anyone tries to run away when they hear you’re policemen?’ she asked, only half joking.

Brunetti smiled. ‘Something like that. Though if your husband hasn’t been there for two days, and we show up without an animal, they’ll probably guess who we are.’

It took a few moments for her to decide that he was exaggerating. She did not smile.

‘Is there anything else?’ she asked.

‘No, Signora,’ Brunetti said, then added, speaking with great formality, ‘I’d like to thank you for being generous with your time.’ Speaking as a father, he said, ‘I hope you can find a way to tell your son,’ unconsciously using the plural when he spoke.

‘He is, isn’t he?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Ours.’

Vezzani was waiting for them in the bar, watching an afternoon cooking programme, the Gazzettino open on the table in front of him, a coffee cup placed to its side.

‘Coffee?’ he asked.

They nodded, and Vezzani waved to the barman and asked for two coffees and a glass of water.

They came and sat at his table. He folded the newspaper and tossed it on the empty fourth chair. ‘What did she tell you?’

‘That he was having an affair with a woman at work,’ Brunetti answered.

Vezzani opened his mouth in a gasping O and held up both hands. ‘Well, who ever heard of such a thing? What’s the world coming to?’ The waiter approached with the coffees and a glass of water for Vezzani.

They drank and then Vezzani, in a more serious voice, asked, ‘What else?’

‘He was also working at the slaughterhouse,’ Vianello began.

‘The one at Preganziol?’ Vezzani asked.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Are there others?’

‘I think there’s one in Treviso, but that’s a different province. Preganziol’s the closest one to us.’

Vezzani asked, ‘Why do they need a vet at a slaughterhouse? It’s not as if he’s there to save the lives of the animals, is it?’

‘To check that they’re healthy, and I imagine he also has to see that they slaughter them in a humane way,’ Brunetti said. ‘There’s got to be some EU regulation about that.’

‘Name the activity about which there is no EU regulation and win a prize,’ Vezzani said, gave a mock toast with his glass, and took a sip of water. Then, his glass still held in the air in front of him, ‘Did he have any trouble with clients at his practice?’

‘His wife didn’t know of any,’ Brunetti said, but then added, ‘She did say that some people were unhappy with the way their animals were treated. But that’s not trouble.’

‘I’ve heard people say awful things,’ Vianello jumped in to say. ‘Some of them would be capable of violence to anyone who hurt their animals. I think they’re nuts, but we don’t have a pet, so maybe I don’t understand.’

‘It does seem exaggerated,’ Vezzani agreed, ‘but I’ve lost the ability to understand what people do. If they’ll kill you because you damage their car,’ he said, referring to a recent case, ‘think what they’d do if you hurt their dachshund.’

‘You know where his clinic is?’ Brunetti asked. He put some coins on the table and got to his feet. ‘Via Motta 145. It seems he was living there, too.’

Vezzani stood, saying, ‘Yes, I know the place. Let’s go and talk to them.’

At one time, the clinic must have been a two-floor suburban residence large enough for two families. Similar houses stood on either side of it, each surrounded by a broad expanse of grassed land. As they slowed in front of it, they could hear the sound of a dog barking from behind the building, then another one answering: a human voice intervened; a door slammed, and then silence.

Vezzani had trouble parking the car. He drove ahead a hundred metres or so, but there were cars everywhere and no chance of finding a space. Is this, Brunetti wondered, what it is to live out here on terraferma? He turned to Vianello in the back seat; the two men exchanged a glance, but neither said a word.

With an irritated noise, Vezzani pulled the car into a sudden U-turn and drove back to the clinic. He parked on the wrong side of the road directly in front. He pulled down a plastic ticket from the windscreen, set it on the dashboard and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Brunetti and Vianello got out but did not slam the doors.

The three men walked up the short pavement to the front door. To one side a metal plaque bore the name ‘Clinica Amico Mio’, with below it the hours of operation. Dott. Andrea Nava was listed as the director.

Vezzani opened the door without ringing and entered; Brunetti and Vianello followed him inside. There was nothing, Brunetti realized, that could be done to eliminate the smell of the animals. He had smelled it before in the homes of friends of theirs who had pets, in the apartments of people he arrested, in abandoned buildings, and once in an antique shop where he had gone to question a witness. Sharp, rich with the tang of ammonia, it gave him the feeling that it would sink into his clothing and linger for hours after he left. And Nava had been living for some time above this.

The entrance was brightly lit, the floor covered with grey linoleum, and at one side stood a desk, behind which sat a young man in a white lab jacket. ‘Buon dì,’ he said, smiling. ‘May I help you?’

Vezzani stepped aside and allowed Brunetti to approach the desk. The boy could not have been eighteen and filled the air around him with a sense of health and well-being. Brunetti saw matched rows of perfect teeth, brown eyes so large his mind flashed to the description of ‘ox-eyed Hera’, even though he was looking at a boy. If roses had skin, his was the same.

‘We’re looking for the person in charge,’ Brunetti said, smiling back, as who could not?

‘Is it about your pet?’ the young man asked, not managing to sound as if he expected a positive response. He leaned to the side to see around them.

‘No,’ Brunetti said, letting his smile disappear. ‘It’s about Dottor Nava.’

At those words, the boy’s smile went the way of Brunetti’s, and he studied each of them more closely, as if in search of some new odour they might have carried into the room. ‘Have you seen him?’ he finally brought himself to ask.

‘Perhaps I could speak to the person in charge,’ Brunetti said.

The boy got to his feet, suddenly in a hurry. ‘That would be Signora Baroni,’ he said. ‘I’ll get her.’ Abruptly he turned away from them to open a door just behind him. Leaving it open, he walked down a short corridor and entered a room on the right. Animal sounds came from the open door: barking and a thumping sound that could have been anything.

After less than a minute, a woman emerged and came towards them. Leaving the door open behind her, she approached Brunetti, who was closest to her. Though her face suggested she was a generation older than the receptionist, there was no sign of this in the ease and fluidity of her motions.

‘Clara Baroni,’ she said, shaking Brunetti’s hand and nodding to the others. ‘I’m Dottor Nava’s assistant. Luca said you came to talk about him. Do you know where he is?’

Brunetti was struck by the awkwardness of the situation, the four of them standing in the room. It did not seem the best setting for what he had to say, but he saw no alternative. ‘We’ve just come from speaking to Dottor Nava’s wife,’ he began. Then, in case it was still necessary, ‘We’re policemen.’

She nodded, encouraging him.

‘The doctor’s been killed.’ He could find no better way to say it.

‘How?’ she asked, face blank with shock. ‘In an accident?’

‘No, Signora. Not an accident,’ Brunetti said evasively. ‘He had no identification, so it’s taken us this long to trace him.’ As he spoke to her, the focus of her eyes drifted away from him while she studied some interior place. She braced herself with one hand against the receptionist’s desk. None of the men said anything.

After what seemed an interminable time, she stood upright and turned back to Brunetti. ‘Not an accident?’ she asked.

‘It doesn’t appear that way, Signora,’ Brunetti said.

Like a dog coming out of the water, she gave a shake of her entire body and asked in a tight voice, ‘What was it, then?’

‘He was the victim of a crime.’

She bit at her upper lip. ‘Was he the man in Venice?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, wondering why, if she had had any suspicion, she had not contacted them. ‘Why do you ask that, Signora?’

‘Because no one’s heard from him for two days, and even his wife doesn’t know where he is.’

‘Did you call us, Signora?’

‘The police?’ she asked in honest astonishment.

Brunetti was tempted to ask her who else, but he resisted temptation and answered with a simple ‘Yes.’

As if she were only now aware of the three men standing in the room, she said, ‘Perhaps we could go back to my office.’

They followed her down a corridor, where the smell of animal grew even stronger, and into the room on the right. Against one wall, the receptionist sat in a straight-backed chair, a black and white rabbit on his lap. The rabbit had only one ear but, aside from that, seemed well-fed and sleek. A large grey cat was asleep in the sun on the windowsill behind them. It opened one eye when they came in but then closed it.

At their arrival, the boy leaned down and set the rabbit on the ground, then left the room without speaking. The rabbit hopped over to Vianello and sniffed at the bottom of his trousers, then did the same with Vezzani’s, and then Brunetti’s. Unsatisfied, it hopped over to Signora Baroni and raised itself on its hind legs against her leg. Brunetti was surprised to see that its front paws reached well above her knees.

She bent down and picked it up, saying, ‘Come on, Livio.’ The animal settled comfortably into her arms. She went and sat behind her desk. Vianello leaned against the windowsill, leaving the two chairs in front of the desk to the commissari. As soon as Signora Baroni sat and created a lap, the rabbit fell asleep in it.

As if there had been no interruption, the woman said, the fingers of one hand idly scratching the belly of the rabbit, ‘I didn’t call because Andrea’s been gone from here only one full day, and then again today. I was going to call his wife again, but then you came.’ Her attention left the rabbit and she looked at all three of them in turn, as if to assure herself that they were all listening and had understood. ‘Then, when you said he’d been the victim of a crime, my first thought, obviously, was that man in Venice.’

‘Why “obviously”, Signora?’ Brunetti asked in a pleasant voice.

Her fingers returned their attentions to the rabbit, which appeared to have been transformed into a piece of splay-legged drapery. ‘Because the article said the man had not been identified, and Andrea’s missing, and you’re the police, and you’re here. So that’s the conclusion I came to.’ She shifted the rabbit, who refused to emerge from his coma, to her other knee and asked, ‘Am I mistaken?’

Brunetti said, ‘We don’t have a definite identification yet,’ but quickly added, ‘There’s little doubt, but we need a positive identification.’ He told himself he had forgotten to ask Nava’s wife, but that was not the truth.

‘Who has to do it?’ she asked.

‘Someone who knew him well.’

‘Does it have to be a relative?’

‘Not necessarily, no.’

‘His wife’s the obvious person, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

Signora Baroni picked up the rabbit, shook him into something resembling consciousness, and lowered him gently on to his feet. He hopped as far as the wall beside her, stretched out on the floor, and was immediately asleep. She sat upright, met Brunetti’s eyes, and said, ‘Could I do it? I worked with him for six years.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘It would be too much for Anna.’

Though he was surprised, Brunetti was relieved that Nava’s wife would be spared at least this.

Signora Baroni seemed to know a great deal about Nava’s life, both personal and professional. Yes, she knew about his separation from his wife, and yes, she thought he was not happy with his job at the slaughterhouse. Here she sighed and added that Nava had made it clear that, no matter how disagreeable he might find the job, he felt obliged to keep it in order, among other reasons, she explained, ‘to pay my salary here’. Saying that, she closed her eyes for a moment and rubbed at her forehead with her fingers.

‘He said it as a joke, of course,’ she said, looking up at Vianello. ‘But it wasn’t.’

Brunetti asked, ‘Did he say anything else about his work there, Signora?’

She reached down and picked up the sleeping rabbit, whose eyes did not open. She began to stroke the rabbit’s single ear. Finally she said, ‘He never told me, but I think it was more than the job that was bothering him.’

‘Do you have any idea what it might have been?’ Brunetti asked.

She shrugged, disturbing the rabbit with the motion. It jumped to the floor again but this time walked over to a radiator and lay down beside it.

‘I suppose it was a woman,’ she said at last. ‘It usually is, isn’t it?’

None of the men answered her.

‘He never spoke about it, if that’s what you want to know. And I didn’t ask him because I didn’t want to know. It was none of my business.’

After that, she explained to them what her business was: make appointments; send samples to the labs and register the results for each animal; send bills and keep the accounts; occasionally help with exams and treatments. Luca and another assistant, who was not there that day, greeted patients, fed the animals, and helped Doctor Nava with procedures; no, he had never been threatened by the owner of a pet, though some had been distressed by the death of their animals. On the contrary, most people saw his concern for their pets and liked him as a result.

Yes, he lived upstairs, had been there for the last three months or so. When Brunetti told her that they had keys and wanted to have a look at his apartment, she said she saw no reason why they couldn’t do so.

She led them to a door at the far end of the corridor, explaining, ‘Because it was originally all one house, the entrance to his apartment is from here.’

Brunetti thanked her and opened the door with a key from the set that had been in Nava’s pocket and that he had taken from the evidence room. At the top of the stairs another door, unlocked, opened into a large, open space running from the back of the building clear to the front, as though the original builders had stopped before dividing it into separate rooms. To say it was sparsely furnished was to understate the case: a two-seat sofa faced a small television placed on the floor, a neat pile of DVDs on the floor in front of it. A wooden table stood in front of the window that gave on to the back of the house and provided a view of the houses opposite. To the left of the window was a two-ring electric cooker on a narrow wooden table; frequent scrubbing had worn away the enamel. Clean pots hung from hooks above a small sink. On top of a small refrigerator was a ceramic bowl filled with apples.

A single bed stood under the eaves at the back of the room, blanket and sheet tucked in with military precision. Opposite it, along the other wall, was another bed covered with a tightly tucked Mickey Mouse blanket and a hillock of toy animals.

A cardboard wardrobe stood against the back wall. Brunetti looked inside and saw a few suits and an overcoat whose weight was turning the closet’s crossbar into a U. Below these were a few pairs of small sneakers and to their right three pairs of larger shoes, one pair of which, Brunetti observed, were well-worn brown tasselled loafers. Plastic-wrapped white shirts lay stacked on a shelf above the clothes bar. The shelf below held the neatly folded underwear and clothing of a small boy.

The bathroom was just as spartan as the rest of the apartment but surprised Brunetti by being very clean. In fact, the apartment held no empty cups, old clothing, food wrappers, dirty plates, or any of the detritus Brunetti associated with the homes of the abandoned or solitary.

A few magazines and books lay on the table next to the man’s bed. Brunetti drifted over and picked them up. There was a book about vegetarianism and, stuck into it, a photocopied chart of the combinations of grains and vegetables that would best create protein and amino acids. There was a printout of an article about lead poisoning and what appeared to be a veterinarian textbook on bovine diseases. Brunetti flicked through this, looked at two photos, and set the book down again.

The other men walked around the apartment, but neither stooped to pick up anything interesting or stopped to point out an object or an incongruity. The bathroom held nothing but soap, razors, and towels. A chest of drawers at the end of the bed held clean and folded men’s underwear and, in the bottom drawer, clean towels and sheets.

There was none of the mess left behind by the permanent residence of a child. Only the clothing said anything about the persons using the apartment, and all it said was that it was a man of a certain size and a small boy.

‘You think it’s just the way he lived, or has someone been in here?’ Brunetti finally asked.

Vezzani shrugged, reluctant to answer. Vianello gave another long look around and then said, ‘I hate to say it, but I think he lived like this.’

‘Poor devil,’ Vezzani said. Soon after, none of them having found anything further to say, they left.