Beastly Things

30

WHEN PUCETTI WAS gone, taking Meucci with him, Brunetti forced himself to resist the urge to open Foa’s list immediately. Better to start with a careful reading of the file Signorina Elettra had compiled on Signorina Borelli. Four years at Tekknomed, which firm she left suddenly and under a cloud, only to move effortlessly into a much more highly paid position as the assistant to the son of Tekknomed’s lawyer. Though he scorned the same prejudice in Patta and would confess his own only to Paola and then only when bamboo shoots were shoved under his fingernails, Brunetti considered a slaughterhouse an unseemly place for a woman to work, especially one as attractive as she. That being the case, one had then to consider what inducement might have taken her there.

Brunetti turned a page and studied the information on the properties she owned. Neither her salary at Tekknomed nor that at the slaughterhouse would have allowed her to buy even one of them, let alone all three. The apartment in the centre of Mestre was one hundred metres. The two apartments in Venice were slightly smaller but, if rented to tourists and well managed, would earn her a few thousand Euros a month. So long as this rental income was not reported to the tax authorities, the total sum would equal her salary at the macello, no mean achievement for a woman in her early thirties. Added to this would be sums she was earning – though the use of that verb left Brunetti uncomfortable – from the various farmers who brought unhealthy animals to the slaughterhouse.

His mind fled to the scandal in Germany some years before of the dioxin-laden eggs that resulted from the deliberate contamination of livestock food. And then he remembered a dinner party soon thereafter at which the hostess, one of those upper-class women who grew more ingenuous with each passing year, had asked how people could possibly do such a thing. It had been with considerable restraint that Brunetti had stopped himself from shouting down the table at her: ‘Greed, you fool. Greed.’

Brunetti had always assumed that most people were strongly motivated by greed. Lust or jealousy might lead to impulsive actions or violence, but to explain most crimes, especially those that took place over time, greed was a better bet.

He set the file aside and picked up the list Pucetti had given him of the owners of the houses on either side of the Rio del Malpaga that corresponded with the water doors he had seen. The search for their names, Brunetti assumed, would have taken hours of patient research among the chaotic records in the Ufficio Catasto.

He ran his eye down the first page, not at all sure what he was looking for or, indeed, that he was looking for anything. Near the middle of the second page, his eye fell upon the name ‘Borelli’. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as a chill slithered across his flesh. He set the papers down very gently and spent some time aligning them with the front edge of his desk. When that was done to his satisfaction, he stared at the opposite wall and shifted pieces of information around, fitting them into different scenarios, leaving pieces out or shifting them to new places.

He reached for the phone and dialled the number on the front of the folder on his desk. She answered on the third ring.

‘Borelli.’ Direct, no nonsense, just like a man.

‘Signorina Borelli,’ he said, ‘this is Commissario Brunetti.’

‘Ah, Commissario, I hope you saw everything,’ she said in a voice entirely without nuance or suggestion of hidden meaning.

‘Yes, we stayed,’ Brunetti said. ‘But I doubt we saw everything that goes on there.’

That gave her pause, but after a moment she said, ‘I’m not sure I understand you entirely, Commissario.’

‘I meant that we still don’t have a full understanding of everything that goes on at the slaughterhouse, Signorina.’

‘Oh,’ was all she said.

‘I’d like you to come in to the Questura and talk about it.’

‘I’m very busy.’

‘I’m sure you can make time to come in and have a talk,’ Brunetti said, voice level.

‘But I’m not sure that I can, Signore,’ she insisted.

‘It might be easier,’ Brunetti suggested.

‘Than?’

‘Than my asking a magistrate for an arrest warrant and having you brought here under duress.’

‘Duress, Commissario?’ she asked with what she tried to make sound like a flirtatious laugh.

‘Duress.’ No flirting. No laugh.

After pausing long enough to allow Brunetti to add something if he chose, she finally said, ‘Your tone makes me wonder if I should bring a lawyer with me.’

‘As you please,’ Brunetti answered.

‘Oh my, as serious as all that?’ she said, but she didn’t have the gift of irony, and the question fell flat.

Brunetti knew what she would say and what she would do. Greed. Mindless, atavistic greed. Think what a lawyer would cost. If she could talk her way out of it, there would be no need of a lawyer, would there? So why pay one to come along? Surely she was smarter than some time-serving policeman, wasn’t she?

‘When would you like me to come in?’ she said with sudden docility.

‘As soon as you can, Signorina,’ Brunetti replied.

‘I could come in after lunch,’ she conceded. ‘About four?’

‘Very good.’ Brunetti was careful not to thank her. ‘I’ll expect you then.’

He went immediately down to Patta’s office and told him about Signorina Borelli’s apartment on the canal where the dead man was found. Recalling the missing shoe and the scrapes on the back of Nava’s heel, Brunetti said, ‘The scientific boys might want to go over the place.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Patta said, quite as though he was just about to suggest it.

Leaving it to his superior to get the magistrate’s order, Brunetti excused himself and returned to his own office.

When the man at the front door called Brunetti at ten minutes after four to tell him he had a visitor, Brunetti said that Vianello would go down to meet her, having arranged it this way to ensure the Inspector’s presence during their conversation.

Brunetti looked up when he saw them at the door: the large man and the small woman. He wondered about that, had wondered about that ever since the idea had first come to him. He had taken another look at Rizzardi’s report and seen that there were holes in Nava’s shirt and traces of cotton fibres in the wounds. So it had not been a lovers’ quarrel, or at least not one that had taken place in bed. The trajectory of the wounds – Brunetti doubted that was the correct word – had been upward, so the person standing behind him had been shorter than he.

Habit brought Brunetti to his feet. He said good afternoon and waved them to the chairs in front of him; Vianello waited and when she was seated took the other chair and pulled out his notebook. She looked at the tape recorder, then at Brunetti

Brunetti switched the machine on and said, ‘Thank you for coming in, Signorina Borelli.’

‘You didn’t leave me much choice, did you, Commissario?’ she asked, her tone halfway between anger and light-heartedness.

Brunetti ignored the tone, just as he ignored the idea that this woman could have any lightness of heart, and said, ‘I explained the choices open to you, Signorina.’

‘And do you think I’ve made the right one?’ she asked, almost as if she could not break herself of the habit of flirtatiousness.

‘We’ll see,’ Brunetti responded.

Vianello crossed his legs and riffled through the pages of his notebook.

‘Could you tell me where you were on Sunday evening?’

‘I was at my home.’

‘Which is where, Signorina?’

‘Mestre, Via Mantovani 17.’

‘Was anyone with you?’

‘No.’

‘Could you tell me what you did that evening?’

She looked at him, then off towards the window, while memory returned to her. ‘I went to the cinema, an early showing.’

‘What film, Signorina?’

‘Città aperta,’ she said. ‘It was part of a Rossellini retrospective.’

‘Did anyone go with you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. Maria Costantini. She lives in the building next to mine.’

‘And after that?’

‘I went home.’

‘With Signora Costantini?’

‘No. Maria was going to have dinner with her sister, so I went home alone. I had some dinner, then I watched television, and I went to bed early. I have to be at work early: at six.’

‘Did anyone call you that evening?’

She considered that, then said, ‘No, not that I recall.’

‘Could you give me an idea of your duties at the macello in Preganziol?’ Brunetti asked, as if he’d heard enough about her activities on Sunday evening.

‘I’m Dottor Papetti’s assistant.’

‘And your duties, Signorina?’

Vianello filled the room with the sound of a turning page.

‘I plan the timetable for the workers, both the knackers and the cleaning crew; I keep track of the numbers of animals brought in to the macello, of the total quantity of meat that is produced each day; I keep the farmers current with the directives that come down from Brussels.’

‘What sort of directives?’ Brunetti interrupted to ask.

‘Methods of slaughtering, how the animals are to be brought in to the macello, where and how they are to be kept if they have to wait a day, or more, before slaughter.’ She looked at him and tilted her head to one side as if asking him if she should continue.

‘The matter of price, Signorina, of what a kilo of a particular cut of meat is worth: who determines that?’

‘The market,’ she answered immediately. ‘The market and the season and the quantity of meat available at any given time.’

‘And the quality?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ she said.

‘The quality of the meat, Signorina,’ Brunetti said. ‘Whether an animal is healthy and can be slaughtered. Who determines that?’

‘The veterinarian,’ she said, ‘not me.’

‘And how does he judge the health of an animal?’ Brunetti asked as Vianello turned another page.

‘That’s what he went to university for, presumably,’ she said, and Brunetti realized he had goaded her or come close to doing so, surprised at himself for choosing this word.

‘So that he can identify animals that are too sick to be slaughtered?’

‘I should certainly hope so,’ she said, but she said it too forcefully, making it sound false, not only to Brunetti but, he suspected, to herself.

‘What happens if he judges that an animal is not suitable to be slaughtered?’

‘Do you mean not healthy enough?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then the animal is given back to the farmer who brought it, and he is responsible for disposing of it.’

‘Could you tell me how that is done?’

‘The animal has to be slaughtered and destroyed.’

‘Destroyed?’

‘Burned.’

‘How much does this cost?’

‘I have no…’ she started to say, then realized how hollow that would sound and changed her sentence. ‘… way to give you a fixed sum for that. It would depend on the weight of the animal.’

‘But, presumably, it would be a significant sum?’ he asked.

‘I would think so,’ she agreed. Then, reluctantly, ‘As much as four hundred Euros.’

‘So it’s in the best interests of the farmers to bring only healthy animals to the macello?’ Brunetti asked, making it a question, though it really was not.

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Dottor Andrea Nava was employed as the veterinarian at the macello,’ Brunetti began.

‘Is that a question?’ she interrupted.

‘No, it is a statement,’ Brunetti said. ‘My question is what your relationship with him was.’

The question seemed not to surprise her in the least, but she paused a bit before she answered. ‘He was employed by the macello, as I was, so I suppose you would say we were colleagues.’

Brunetti folded his hands neatly on the desk in front of him, a gesture he had seen his professors use when a student failed to supply an adequate answer. He remembered, as well, the technique of the long silence, one that almost invariably proved successful with the most insecure students. He looked at Signorina Borelli, at the view from his window, and then back to her.

‘And that was the extent of it?’ he asked.

If he had only imagined her response to the thought of hiring a lawyer, this time he could watch her think the problem through. She wanted to stall him so as to have more time to work out how much she could admit, though surely she must have known this question was bound to be asked.

Finally she shrugged and gave a raffish smile. ‘Well, not really. We had sex a few times, but it was nothing serious.’

‘Where?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Where what?’ she asked, genuinely confused.

‘Where did you have sex?’

‘A couple of times at his place, the one above his office, and in the changing room at the macello.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Once in my office.’ She tilted her chin to one side and gave his question the thought she believed it deserved. ‘I think that’s all.’

‘How long did this affair go on?’ Brunetti asked.

She looked up at him, either surprised or pretending to be. ‘Oh, it wasn’t an affair, Commissario. It was sex.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, accepting the reprimand. ‘How long did it go on?’

‘From a few months after he started work until about three months ago.’

‘What caused it to end?’ Brunetti asked.

She dismissed the question, perhaps even the answer, as uninteresting. ‘It stopped being fun,’ she said. ‘I thought it would be convenient for us both, but the first thing I knew, he was talking about us as a couple, with a future.’ She shook her head at this. ‘You’d think he’d forgotten he had a wife and child.’

‘You hadn’t forgotten it, Signorina?’ he asked.

‘Of course not,’ she said hotly. ‘That’s why married men are so convenient: you know either one of you can end it when you want, and no one’s hurt.’

‘But he didn’t see it that way?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘What did he want?’

‘I have no idea. As soon as he started talking about a future, I told him it was over. Finito. Basta.’ She moved around in her chair, rather like an angry chicken fluffing out its feathers. ‘I didn’t need that.’

‘You mean his attentions?’ Brunetti asked.

‘The whole thing: call them attentions if you want. I didn’t want to listen to his guilt and his remorse and how he was betraying his wife. And I wanted to be able to go out to dinner or for a drink without having the man I was with looking over his shoulder every second, as if he were a criminal.’ She sounded genuinely angry; Brunetti had no doubt that she was, and had been, though perhaps not for those reasons.

‘Or as if you were,’ Brunetti said.

That stopped her. She hesitated, and just as it became too late for her to ask what he meant, she finally forced herself to say it. ‘What do you mean?’

As if she had not spoken, Brunetti went on, ‘You said that one of his duties was to inspect the animals brought into the macello to see if they were healthy enough to be slaughtered.’

Taken aback by his change of pace, she agreed, ‘Yes.’

‘From the time Dottor Nava took the position as veterinarian at the macello, there was a sudden increase in the number of animals declared unfit to be slaughtered.’ He paused, and when she did not acknowledge the truth of this, he broke into the silence of her hesitation by saying, ‘Before he began to inspect the animals, the average rate of rejection – if I might call it that – was about three per cent, yet as soon as Dottor Nava began, that rate tripled, then quadrupled, and then went even higher.’

Brunetti studied her response: none was evident. ‘Can you explain that, Signorina?’

She brought her lips together, as if in consideration of his question, and then said, ‘I think you’ll have to ask Bianchi about that.’

‘You didn’t know about the increase?’ he asked with false surprise.

‘Of course I knew about it,’ she said, unable to disguise her satisfaction in being able to correct him. ‘But I had, and have, no idea of the cause.’

‘Did you speculate about what it might be?’ Brunetti asked, expecting that she would try to answer this: it would make sense for someone in her position to be involved in the discussion.

After some time, she said, ‘I don’t like to say it.’ And then didn’t.

‘Say what?’ Brunetti asked.

With great evidence of reluctance, she said, voice hesitant, ‘One of the suggestions that was made – I don’t remember who made it – was that maybe the farmers were trying to unload sick animals on the new veterinarian. That they thought they’d test the new man and see how severe he was.’ She gave an awkward smile, as though embarrassed to have to give voice to this example of human duplicity.

‘The test went on a long time,’ Brunetti said drily. At her look, he added, ‘The numbers kept rising, didn’t they?’ Then, before she could answer, he added, ‘Right up until his death.’

She raised her brows to acknowledge either ignorance or incomprehension. But she said nothing.

Vianello turned another page. Signorina Borelli and Brunetti looked at one another, each waiting for the other to speak. For a moment, neither did.

But then Brunetti asked, wanting to have it in her own words, ‘Could you tell me something about your relationship with Dottor Papetti?’

This question surprised her. ‘“Relationship”?’ she asked.

‘He hired you as his assistant after you were let go from your previous job, presumably without any good recommendation.’ That Brunetti had this information seemed to surprise her even more. ‘Thus my question: “Relationship”.’

She laughed. It was an honest, musical laugh. When she stopped, she said, voice tight with the anger she was growing tired of suppressing, ‘You men really can think of only one thing, can’t you? He was my boss; we worked together; and that’s all.’

‘So there was no sexual link between you, as there was with Dottor Nava?’

‘You’ve seen him, haven’t you, Commissario? You think any woman would find him attractive?’ Then, as if to expand the impossibility, ‘Desirable?’ She laughed again, and Brunetti finally understood the biblical passage, ‘They laughed him to scorn.’ Then, with acid audible in her voice, she added, ‘Besides, he knows if he ever looked at another woman, his little Natasha’s daddy would have his legs broken the same day.’ She began another sentence, perhaps having to do with other things that his father-in-law would do, but contented herself with a mere ‘Or worse.’

‘So you were never lovers?’

‘If you find these questions get you excited, Commissario, I have to put an end to your pleasure. No, Alessandro Papetti and I were never lovers. He tried to kiss me once, but I’d rather fuck one of the knackers.’ She gave him a saccharine smile. ‘Does that answer your question?’

‘Thank you for coming in, Signorina,’ he said. ‘If we have more questions, we’ll ask to speak to you again.’

‘You mean I can go?’ she asked and immediately saw this was the wrong thing to say.

Impulsive, Brunetti thought. Very pretty and probably charming when she wanted to be or when it served her purposes. He looked at her attractive face and thought of what she had said about Nava and was chilled to realize that the appearance of cold-heartedness was not an attempt to distance herself from Nava but simply the way she was.

Both men got to their feet, and then she did. Vianello opened the door for her. She turned away from Brunetti silently and walked from the office. Vianello followed her, and Brunetti went to stand by the window.

A few minutes later he saw the top of her head appear on the pavement below him, and then the rest of her as she walked to the left and disappeared.

Still watching the place where she had been, he heard Vianello come back. ‘Well?’ the Inspector said.

‘I think it’s time we had another conversation with Dottor Papetti,’ Brunetti said. ‘But let’s do it here. He’s sure to be more uncomfortable.’