Beastly Things

29

‘SHE’S PAPETTI’S ASSISTANT, isn’t she?’ Brunetti asked, as if unfamiliar with her.

‘Yes,’ Meucci said.

‘Who brought up the subject of your degree?’

‘I did,’ Meucci said, removing his cigarette from his mouth. ‘I suppose I was nervous that she would find out, though Rub…’ he stopped before pronouncing his predecessor’s full name, as if too stunned by what was happening to realize his name would be public information. ‘My colleague assured me it wouldn’t matter. But I couldn’t believe it. So I asked her if she had checked my file and if it was satisfactory.’ He gave Brunetti a look that asked for his comprehension. ‘I suppose I needed to know, really, that they knew I didn’t have the licence, and that it didn’t matter and wouldn’t come back to haunt me.’ Meucci looked away from Brunetti and out the window.

‘And did it?’ Brunetti asked with what sounded like real concern.

Meucci shrugged, crushed out his cigarette and reached for another, only to be stopped by Brunetti’s glance.

‘What do you mean?’ Meucci asked, stalling.

‘Did anyone at the macello ever try to make use of that information?’

Again Brunetti watched the fat man consider lying, saw him weigh the alternatives: which was the greater danger? Which would cost him less, the truth or a lie?

Like a drunkard who pours a bottle of whisky down the kitchen sink as proof of reformation, Meucci placed the crumpled packet of cigarettes on Brunetti’s desk and lined it up carefully beside the tape recorder. ‘It happened during my first week,’ he said. ‘A farmer from Treviso brought in some cows: I don’t remember now how many: maybe six. Two of them were more dead than alive. One looked like it was dying of cancer: it had an open sore on its back. I didn’t even bother to do an exam: anyone could see it was sick: skin and bones and saliva dripping from its mouth. The other one had viral diarrhoea.’

Meucci looked at the cigarettes, and went on. ‘I told the knacker, Bianchi, that the farmer would have to take those two cows back and destroy them.’ He looked at Brunetti and raised one of his hands towards him. ‘After all, it was my job. To inspect them.’ He stopped and made a heaving motion that could have been a shrug or an attempt to extricate himself from the constriction of the chair.

‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Bianchi told me to wait there with the cows and went to get Signorina Borelli. When she came and asked me what was going on, I told her to look at the cows and tell me if she thought they were healthy enough to be slaughtered.’ His voice was filled with the sarcasm he could not use with Brunetti.

‘And what did she say?’

‘She barely looked at them.’ Meucci, Brunetti could see, was back there, at the macello, having this conversation again. ‘And she said,’ he began, moving forward to bring his mouth closer to the tape recorder, ‘she said, “They’re as healthy as your application, Signor Meucci.”’ He closed his eyes at the memory. ‘She’d always called me Dottor Meucci before that. So I knew she knew.’

‘And?’ Brunetti asked after some time.

‘And I knew that it had,’ Meucci answered.

‘Had what?’

‘Come back to haunt me.’

‘What did you do about the cows?’ Brunetti asked.

‘What do you think I did?’ Meucci demanded indignantly. ‘I certified them.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, forbidding himself to allow the words ‘safe for human consumption’ to pass his lips. He remembered then that Nava’s wife had said her husband ate fruit and vegetables. ‘And after that?’ he asked calmly.

‘After that I did what I was told to do. What else did you expect me to do?’

Ignoring that, Brunetti asked, ‘Who told you what that was?’

‘Bianchi was the one who told me that the average rate of rejection was about three per cent, so that’s where I stayed: some months a little more, some a little less.’ He paused to hoist himself up in his chair. ‘At least I tried to condemn the worst of them. But so many of them were sick. I don’t know what they feed them, or what medicines they pump into them, but some were disgusting.’

Ignoring the temptation to comment that this had not prevented Meucci from approving their entry into the food chain, Brunetti said, ‘Bianchi told you, but someone must have told him.’ When Meucci said nothing, Brunetti prodded him. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Of course,’ Meucci answered, snatching back the cigarettes and lighting one. ‘It was Borelli who gave him the orders: that’s obvious. And that’s what I did. Three per cent. Sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. But always right around there.’ It sounded, this time, like a kind of incantation.

‘Did you ever speculate about who might be giving Signorina Borelli the orders?’ Brunetti asked.

Meucci shook his head quickly, then said, ‘No. That wasn’t my business.’

Brunetti let a suitable amount of time pass and then asked, ‘For how long did you do this?’

‘Two years,’ Meucci snapped, and Brunetti wondered how many kilos that represented in cancerous and diseased meat.

‘Until what?’

‘Until I went into the hospital and they had to hire someone else,’ Meucci said.

He cared nothing about the cause, but aware of how useful a display of concern would seem, Brunetti asked, ‘Why were you in the hospital, Signor Meucci?’

‘Diabetes. I collapsed at home, and when I woke up I was in Intensive Care; it took them a week to find out what was wrong with me, and then two weeks to get me stabilized, and then a week at home.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, unable to say that he was sorry.

‘At the end of the first week, they hired Nava.’ He looked at Brunetti and said, ‘You didn’t believe me, did you? When I said I never met him? Well, I didn’t. I don’t know how they found him or who recommended him.’ Meucci took visible pleasure in being able to say this.

‘But you were lying when you said you didn’t know I had been out to the macello, which means you were lying when you said you didn’t keep in touch with anyone there.’ He waited for Meucci to respond, and when he didn’t, Brunetti snapped the whip. ‘Doesn’t it?’

‘She called me,’ Meucci said.

Brunetti thought it unnecessary to ask him whom he meant.

‘She said she wanted me to go and work in Verona,’ Meucci said with lowered eyes. ‘But I told her about the diabetes and told her my doctor said I couldn’t work until they had me stabilized.’

‘Is that true?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, but it got me out of having to go to Verona,’ he said, sounding pleased with himself.

‘To do the same thing?’ Brunetti asked. ‘In Verona?’

‘Yes,’ Meucci said. He opened his mouth to proclaim his virtue in having refused, but when he saw Brunetti’s expression, he said nothing.

‘Is she still in touch with you?’ Brunetti asked, keeping to himself his knowledge that Meucci had called her.

Meucci nodded, and Brunetti pointed to the tape recorder. ‘Yes.’

‘What for?’

‘She called me last week and said that Nava was gone and said I had to come back until they could find someone suitable.’

‘What do you think she meant by “suitable”?’ Brunetti asked calmly.

‘What do you think she meant?’ Meucci asked, finally using sarcasm with Brunetti.

‘I’m afraid I’m the person who does the asking, Signor Meucci,’ Brunetti said coldly.

Meucci sulked for a moment but then he answered. ‘She wanted someone who would maintain the three per cent.’

‘When did she tell you this?’

Meucci thought about this, then said, ‘She called me on the first – I remember the date because it was my mother’s birthday.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I didn’t have much choice, did I?’ Meucci asked with the petulance of a sixteen-year-old. And with the same moral clarity.

‘If she wanted you to go to Verona,’ Brunetti said, trying to clarify this, ‘does it mean she’s involved with other macelli?’

‘Of course,’ Meucci said, giving Brunetti a look that suggested he was the sixteen-year-old. ‘There are five or six of them. Two near here and four more, I think, out around Verona: anyway, in the province. They belong to Papetti’s father-in-law.’ Then, unable to resist the temptation to goad Brunetti by showing that he knew something the other man did not, he asked, ‘How else do you think Papetti would get a job like that?’

Ignoring Meucci’s provocation, Brunetti asked, ‘Have you ever been to any of the others?’

‘No, but I know Bianchi’s worked at two of them.’

‘How do you know that?’

Surprised, Meucci said, ‘We got on well, working together the way we did. He told me about it, said he preferred Preganziol because he knew the crew better.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said neutrally, then asked, ‘Do you know if she and Papetti are involved with them all?’

‘They visit them occasionally.’

‘Together?’ Brunetti asked.

Meucci laughed out loud. ‘You can put that idea out of your head, Commissario.’ He laughed so long it started him coughing. Panicked, he tried to get up but remained trapped in the chair, which he managed to lift from the floor in his attempt to stand. Brunetti rose to go around his desk to try to do something, but Meucci forced himself to sit back. The coughing spluttered out. He reached over and took a cigarette, lit it, and pulled life-saving smoke deep into his lungs.

Brunetti asked, ‘Why shouldn’t I think about it, Signor Meucci?’

Meucci’s eyes narrowed, and Brunetti saw the pleasure he could not disguise at having information that might be useful to Brunetti. Or to both of them. Meucci might be a coward, but he was not a fool.

Nor, it seemed, did he want to waste time. ‘What do I get in exchange?’ Meucci asked, stabbing out his cigarette.

Brunetti had known that something like this was bound to come, so he said, ‘I leave you alone at your private practice, and you don’t work in a slaughterhouse again.’

He watched Meucci calculate the offer, and he watched him accept it. ‘There’s nothing between the two of them,’ he said.

‘How do you know?’

‘She told Bianchi.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Brunetti said.

‘Yes, Bianchi. They’re friends. Bianchi’s gay. They just like one another, and they gossip together like teenagers: who they’ve had, who they’d like to have, what they did. She told him all about Nava and how easy he was. It was like a game to her, I think. Anyway, that’s the way it sounded when Bianchi told me about it.’

Brunetti made sure he looked very interested in what the other man was saying. ‘What else did Bianchi tell you?’

‘That she tried with Papetti, but he almost wet his pants, he was so frightened.’

‘Of her?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew the answer.

‘No, of course not. Of his father-in-law. He ever screw around on his wife, the old man would probably see he never did any screwing again.’ Then, reflective and expansive, Meucci added, ‘After all, the old guy’s turned a blind eye to the way Papetti’s been screwing the company for years, so it’s obvious that it’s only his daughter he cares about. She’s in love with Papetti, so De Rivera lets him do whatever he wants. I guess it’s worth it to him.’

Brunetti made no comment and, instead, asked, ‘Why’d she bother with Nava?’

‘The usual thing. She wanted him to approve the animals so they could get their cut from the farmers. The way it worked with my friend.’

‘And with you,’ Brunetti reminded him.

Meucci did not respond.

‘But not with Nava?’ Brunetti asked.

The thought of that restored Meucci’s good humour and he said, ‘No, not with Nava. Bianchi told me she was like a hyena. She fucked him, even told Bianchi how he was: not so great. And then he wouldn’t do what she asked him to do. So she threatened to tell his wife. But it didn’t work: he told her to go ahead, he still wouldn’t – he said he couldn’t, can you imagine that? – do it.’

‘When did she threaten to tell his wife?’

Meucci closed his eyes to think. Opening them, he said, ‘I don’t remember exactly: at least a couple of months ago.’ Seeing Brunetti trying to work out the timing, he said, ‘She told Bianchi it took her almost two months to get him to fuck her, so it would have been after that that she asked him to approve the animals.’

Brunetti, deciding to change tack, said, ‘The animals that are brought in – the sick ones, that is – why did Signorina Borelli want you to declare these animals healthy?’

Meucci stared at him. ‘I just told you,’ he said. ‘Don’t you get it?’

‘I’d prefer that you explain it to me again, Signor Meucci,’ said an imperturbable Brunetti, conscious of the future use that might be made of this recording.

With a small snort of disbelief or contempt, Meucci said, ‘They pay her, of course. She and Papetti get a part of what they’re paid for the animals once they’re declared healthy. And since she works there, she knows exactly how much they get.’ Before Brunetti could ask, he said, ‘I have no idea, but from things I’ve heard, I’d guess their cut is about twenty-five per cent. Think about it. If the animal’s condemned, the owners lose everything they would have got for it, and they have to pay to have it destroyed and then disposed of.’ With an expression he probably supposed demonstrated virtue, Meucci said, ‘I think it’s a fair price, when you consider everything.’

After a reflective pause, Brunetti said, ‘Certainly,’ then, ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

‘Well, maybe you should,’ Meucci said with the tone of the person who always had to have the last word.

Brunetti picked up his phone and dialled Pucetti’s telefonino number.

When the young man answered, Brunetti said, ‘Come up here, would you? I’d like you to take this witness downstairs to wait while a stenographer makes a copy of his statement. When it’s ready, have him read it and sign it, would you? You and Foa can witness it.’

‘Foa’s gone, sir. His shift ended an hour ago, and he’s gone home. But he gave me the list,’ Pucetti said.

‘What list?’ Brunetti had to ask, still lost in the world of animals.

‘The addresses of the houses along the canal, sir. That’s what he told me.’

‘Yes, good,’ Brunetti said, remembering. ‘Bring it up when you come, will you?’

‘Of course, Commissario,’ Pucetti said and hung up.