Fatal Remedies

11

He found the broken pieces of the mob in front of his apartment when he got there, three of them the same men who had tried to interrogate him outside the Questura. He made no attempt to answer their shouted questions, pushed his way through them and raised his key to the lock in the enormous portone that led into the entrance hall. A hand shot out from behind him and took his arm, trying to pull his hand away from the door.

Brunetti wheeled to his right, the large bunch of keys clutched in his hand like a weapon. The reporter, seeing not the keys but the expression on Brunetti’s face, backed away, one hand raised placatingly between them. ‘Excuse me, Commissario,’ he said, his smile as false as his words. Something animal in the others heard the naked fear in his tone and responded to it. No one spoke. Brunetti looked around at their faces. No cameras flashed and the video cameras were not raised.

Brunetti turned back to the door and placed the key in the lock. He turned it and let himself into the entrance hall, closed the door, and leaned back against it. His chest, indeed his entire upper body, was covered with the heavy sweat of sudden rage, and his heart pounded uncontrollably. He unbuttoned his coat and pulled it open, letting the chill air of the hallway cool him. With his shoulders, he shoved himself away from the door and started up the stairs.

Paola must have heard him coming because she opened the door when he got to the bottom of the final ramp of stairs. She held it for him and, when he got inside, took his coat and hung it up. He bent and kissed her cheek, liking the smell of her.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Something called “administrative leave”. Invented for the occasion, I think.’

‘Which means?’ she asked, walking beside him into the living-room.

He flopped down on to the sofa, his feet splayed out in front of him. ‘It means I get to stay home and read until you and Mitri come to some sort of agreement.’

‘Agreement?’ she asked, sitting on the edge of the sofa beside him.

‘Apparently Patta thinks you should pay Mitri for the window and apologize.’ He thought about Mitri and corrected himself, ‘Or just pay for the window.’

‘Once or twice?’ she asked.

‘Does it make any difference?’

She looked down and, with her foot, straightened the edge of the carpet that ran in front of the sofa. ‘No, not really. I can’t give him a lira.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Can’t.’

‘Well, I guess it’ll give me a chance, finally, to read Gibbon.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘That I get to stay home until some sort of resolution, either personal or legal, is made.’

‘If they give me a fine, I’ll pay it,’ she said, her voice so much that of the virtuous citizen that Brunetti was forced to grin.

Still smiling, he said, ‘I think it’s Voltaire who says somewhere, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”‘

‘He said a lot of things like that, Voltaire. Sounds good. He had a habit of saying things that sounded good.’

‘You seem sceptical.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m always suspicious of noble sentiments.’

‘Especially when they come from men?’

She leaned towards him, covering one of his hands with hers. ‘You said that, I didn’t.’

‘No less true for that.’

She shrugged again. ‘You really going to read Gibbon?’

‘I’ve always wanted to. But in translation, I think. His style’s a bit too manicured for me.’

‘That’s the joy of it.’

‘I get enough fancy rhetoric in the newspapers; I don’t need it in a history book.’

‘They’re going to love this, aren’t they, the newspapers?’ she asked.

‘No one’s tried to arrest Andreotti for ages, so they’ve got to write about something.’

‘I suppose so.’ She got to her feet. ‘Is there anything I can bring you?’

Brunetti, who had had little lunch and not enjoyed it, said, ‘A sandwich and a glass of Dolcetto.’ He leaned down and started to untie his shoes. When Paola started towards the door he called after her, ‘And the first volume of Gibbon.’

She was back in ten minutes with all three, and he indulged himself shamelessly, stretching out on the sofa, glass on the table beside him, plate balanced on his chest, while he opened the book and began to read. The panino contained speck and tomato, with fine slices of an aged Pecorino slipped between them. After a few minutes, Paola came in and spread a cloth napkin under his chin, just in time to catch a piece of damp tomato that fell out of the sandwich. He set his food on the plate, reached for the glass and took a long swallow. Returning to the book, he read the magisterial opening chapter, with its politically incorrect paean to the glory of the Roman Empire.

After some time, just as Gibbon was explaining the tolerance with which the polytheist observes all religions, Paola came in and refilled his glass. She took the empty plate from his chest, picked up the napkin and went back into the kitchen. Gibbon would no doubt have something to say about the submissiveness of the good Roman wife: Brunetti looked forward to reading it.

The next day he alternated his reading of Gibbon with his perusal of the national and local press, brought into the house by the children. Il Gazzettino, whose reporter had pulled his arm away from the door, raged about the abuse of power on the part of the authorities, about Brunetti’s refusal to co-operate with the press’s legitimate right to information, his arrogance, his inclination to violence. Paola’s professed motivation, which they had somehow learned about, was made light of, the newspaper fierce in its denunciation of this spirit of vigilante crime, presenting her as a woman in search of publicity, clearly unsuited for her position as a university professor. The fact that she had never been asked for an interview was nowhere mentioned in the article.

The larger papers were less fulminating, though the story was always presented as an example of a dangerous tendency on the part of the private citizen to abrogate the legitimate power of the State in a misguided search for some mistaken idea of ‘justice’, a word they never failed to include within the quotation marks of their contempt.

After reading the papers Brunetti continued with his book and did not leave the house. Nor did Paola, who spent most of her time in her study, going through the doctoral dissertation of a student who was preparing for his exams under her direction. The children, though alerted by their parents to what was going on, came and went undisturbed, doing the shopping, bringing up the newspapers and in general behaving very well in light of the disruption of their family life.

On the second day, Brunetti treated himself to a long nap after lunch, even going to the trouble of getting into bed and under the covers, not simply stretching out on the sofa to let sleep come upon him accidentally. In the afternoon the phone rang a few times, but he left it to Paola to answer. If Mitri or his lawyer called to speak to her she’d tell him, or maybe she wouldn’t.

The phone rang shortly after breakfast on the third day of what Brunetti was coming to think of as purdah. After a few minutes Paola came into the living-room and said it was for him.

He leaned forward on the sofa, not bothering to put his feet on the floor, and picked up the receiver. ‘Si?’

‘It’s Vianello, sir. Have they called you?’

‘Who?’

‘The men on duty last night.’

‘No. Why?’

Whatever Vianello started to say was blocked out by the sound of loud voices in the background.

‘Where are you, Vianello?’

‘Down at the bar near the bridge.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Mitri was killed last night.’

Brunetti pulled himself up on the sofa, feet on the floor in front of him. ‘How? Where?’

‘In his home. He was garrotted, or that’s what it looks like. Someone must have got behind him and choked him. Whatever they used, they took it with them. But-’ he said and again his voice was drowned out by what seemed like noises coming over a radio.

‘What?’ Brunetti asked when the sound died down.

‘They found a note, next to his body. I haven’t seen it, but Pucetti told me it said something about paedophiles and the people who help them. Something about justice.’

‘Gesù bambino,’ Brunetti whispered under his breath. ‘Who found him?’

‘Corvi and Alvise.’

‘Who called them?’

‘His wife. She got home from dinner with friends and discovered him in the kitchen, on the floor.’

‘Who was she at dinner with?’

‘I don’t know, sir. All I know is the little Pucetti could tell me, and all he knew was what Corvi told him before he went off duty this morning.’

‘Who’s been given the case?’

‘I think Lieutenant Scarpa went to see the body after Corvi called in.’

Brunetti said nothing to this, though he wondered why Patta’s personal assistant would be assigned. ‘Is the Vice-Questore in yet?’

‘He wasn’t in when I left to come down here a few minutes ago, but Scarpa called him at home and told him about it.’

‘I’ll come in,’ Brunetti said, searching with his feet for his shoes.

Vianello was silent for a long time, but then he said, ‘Yes. I think you’d better.’

‘Twenty minutes.’ Brunetti hung up.

He tied his shoes and walked to the back of the apartment. The door to Paola’s study was open, an unspoken invitation for him to come in and tell her about the phone call. ‘It was Vianello,’ he said as he walked in.

She looked up, saw his face, put down the page she was reading and, closing her pen, she placed it on the desk. ‘What did he say?’

‘Mitri was murdered last night.’

She moved back in her seat, as if someone had waved a menacing hand in her direction. ‘No.’

‘Pucetti said there was a note, something about paedophiles and justice.’

Her face went rigid, then she raised the back of her right hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, Madonna Santa.’ From behind it she whispered. ‘How?’

‘He was strangled.’

She shook her head, eyes closed. ‘Oh, my God, my God.’

Now was the time to do it, Brunetti knew. ‘Paola, before you did it, did you discuss it with anyone else? Or is there anyone who encouraged you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did you act alone?’

He watched her eyes change, saw the irises grow smaller with shock. ‘Are you asking me if someone I know, some fanatic, knew I was going to break the window? And went and killed him?’

‘Paola,’ he said, careful to keep his voice level, ‘I’m trying to ask you a question and to exclude a possibility before anyone else puts things together in the same way and asks you the same thing.’

‘There’s nothing to put together,’ she answered immediately, putting the heavy emphasis of sarcasm on the last two words.

‘Then there was no one?’

‘No. I never discussed it with anyone. It was a completely independent choice. Not an easy one.’

He nodded. If she had acted alone, then it must have been someone inflamed or encouraged by the press handling of the case. God, we were becoming just like America, where the police go in fear of copy-cat killers, where the mere mention of a crime is enough to encourage imitation. ‘I’m going in,’ he said. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back.’

She nodded but stayed at her desk, not speaking.

Brunetti went down the corridor, got his coat and left the apartment. No one was waiting outside, but he knew that the truce would soon end.