Fatal Remedies

14

As they crossed Campo Manin, Vianello and Brunetti knew without discussing it that they would go and speak to the widow now, while they were still out, rather than go back to the Questura. To get to the Mitris’ apartment, which was in Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, they walked back to Rialto and took the number 1 towards the station.

They chose to stand outside, preferring the coldness of the open deck to the damp air trapped inside the passenger cabin. Brunetti waited until they had passed under the Rialto before he asked Vianello, ‘Well?’

‘He’d sell his mother for a hundred lire, wouldn’t he?’ Vianello answered, making no attempt to disguise his contempt. He paused for a long time, then demanded, ‘Do you think it’s television, sir?’

At a loss, Brunetti asked, ‘That what’s television?’

‘That lets us get so distanced from the evil we do.’ He saw he had Brunetti’s attention and continued, ‘That is, if we watch it, there on the screen, it’s real, but it isn’t actually, is it? I mean, we see so many people getting shot and hit, and we watch us,’ here he paused, smiled a little and explained, ‘the police, that is. We watch us discovering all sorts of terrible things. But the cops aren’t real, nor are the things. So maybe, if we watch enough of them, the true horrors, when they happen or when they happen to other people, don’t seem real, either.’

Brunetti was a bit confused by Vianello’s language, but he thought he understood what he meant – and that he agreed – so he answered, ‘They’re how far away, those girls he knows nothing about, fifteen thousand kilometres? Twenty? I’d say it’s probably very easy not to see what happens to them as being real, or if it is, it probably isn’t very important to him.’

Vianello nodded. ‘You think it’s getting worse?’

Brunetti shrugged. ‘There are days when I think everything’s getting worse, then there are days when I know they are. But then the sun comes out and I change my mind.’

Vianello nodded again, this time adding a muffled, ‘Uh huh.’

‘And you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I think it’s worse,’ the sergeant answered with no hesitation. ‘Like you, though, I have days when everything’s fine: the kids jump all over me when I get home or Nadia’s happy and it’s contagious. But on the whole, I think the world’s getting worse as a place to be.’

Hoping to lighten his uncharacteristic mood, Brunetti said, ‘Not much other choice, is there?’

Vianello had the grace to laugh at this. ‘No, I guess there isn’t. For good or bad, this is all we’ve got.’ He paused for a moment, watching the palazzo that held the Casino draw near. ‘Maybe it’s different for us because we have kids.’

‘Why?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Because we can see ahead to the world they’re going to live in and can look back on the one we grew up in.’

Brunetti, a patient reader of history, recalled the countless times the ancient Romans had fulminated against the various ages in which they lived, always insisting that the generation of their own youth or of their parents’ had been far superior in every way to the one in which they now found themselves. He recalled their violent screeds against the insensitivity of the young, their sloth, their ignorance, their lack of respect for and deference to their elders, and he found himself greatly cheered by this memory. If every age thinks this way, then perhaps each is wrong and things aren’t getting worse. He didn’t know how to explain this to Vianello and felt awkward about quoting Pliny, afraid the sergeant would not recognize the writer or would be embarrassed at being made to show that he did not.

Instead, he tapped him warmly on the shoulder as the boat pulled in to the San Marcuola stop and they both got off, walking single file down the narrow calle to make way for the people who hurried towards the embarcadero.

‘Nothing we’re going to solve, is it, sir?’ Vianello commented when they got to the wider street behind the church and could walk side by side.

‘I doubt it’s something anyone can solve,’ Brunetti said, aware of how vague a response he had chosen, unsatisfied with it even as he made it.

‘May I ask you a question, sir?’ The sergeant started walking again. Both of them knew the address, so they had some idea of the location of the house. ‘It’s about your wife, sir.’

Brunetti knew from the tone of the question what it was bound to be. ‘Yes?’

Keeping his eyes straight ahead of them, though no one was any longer coming towards them on the narrow calle, Vianello asked, ‘Did she tell you why she did it?’

Brunetti walked on, keeping in step with his sergeant. He glanced aside at him and answered, ‘I think it’s in the arrest report.’

‘Ah,’ Vianello said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Didn’t you read it?’

Again, Vianello stopped and turned to Brunetti. ‘As it was about your wife, sir, I didn’t think it was right to read it.’ Vianello was known to be loyal to Brunetti, so it was unlikely that Landi, a follower of Scarpa, would have spoken to him about it, and it was he who had arrested Paola and taken her statement.

The two men resumed walking before Brunetti replied, ‘She said that it was wrong to arrange sex-tours and that someone had to stop them.’ He waited to see if Vianello would question him, but when the sergeant did not, he went on, ‘She told me that, since the law wouldn’t do anything about it, she would.’ He paused again, waiting for Vianello’s reaction.

‘Was it your wife the first time?’

Without hesitation, Brunetti answered, ‘Yes.’

Step and step, feet perfectly in line. Finally the sergeant said, ‘Good for her.’

Brunetti turned to stare at Vianello, but all he saw was his heavy profile and long nose. Before he could ask anything, the other stopped and said, ‘If it’s six-o-seven, it should be right round this corner.’ Turning, they found themselves in front of the house.

Mitri’s was the top of three bells and Brunetti pressed it, waited, then pushed it again.

A voice, made sepulchral either by grief or a bad connection, came through the speaker phone, asking who they were.

‘Commissario Brunetti. I’d like to speak to Signora Mitri.’

For a long time there was no answer, then the voice said, ‘Wait a minute’ and was gone.

Much more than one minute passed before the door clicked. Brunetti pushed it open and led the way into a large atrium with two large palm trees growing on either side of a round fountain. Light filtered down from the sky above.

They ducked into the passage in front of them and headed for the back of the building and the stairs. Just as in Brunetti’s own building, the paint on the walls was flaking off, victim of the salt rising up by absorption from the waters below. Flecks the size of hundred-lire coins lay either swept or kicked to the sides of the staircase, exposing the brick walls below. When they reached the first landing, they could see the horizontal line that marked the point the dampness had reached: above it, the stairs were free of flecks of paint and the walls smooth and white.

Brunetti thought of the estimate an engineering company had given the seven owners of the apartments in his own building to correct the dampness, of the enormity of the sum and, depressed, immediately pushed it from his mind.

At the top the door stood open and a young girl about Chiara’s age stood behind it, her body half hidden.

Brunetti stopped and said, not offering his hand, ‘I’m Commissario Brunetti and this is Sergeant Vianello. We’d like to speak to Signora Mitri.’

The girl didn’t move. ‘My grandmother isn’t well.’ Her voice was uneven with nervousness.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Brunetti said. ‘And I’m sorry about what happened to your grandfather. That’s why I’m here, because we’d like to do something about it.’

‘My grandmother says there’s nothing anyone can do.’

‘Perhaps we can find the person who did it.’

The girl considered this. As tall as Chiara, she had brown hair parted in the middle that fell to her shoulders on either side. She would not grow to be a beauty, Brunetti thought, but that had nothing to do with her features, which were both fine and regular: wide-spaced eyes and a well-defined mouth. Instead, her plainness was made inevitable by a total lack of animation when she spoke or listened. Her placidity and inertness conveyed the sense that she was not concerned with what she was saying or, in a way, not really participating in whatever was said. ‘May we come in?’ he asked, stepping forward as he spoke, either to make her decision easier or to force her into making it.

She didn’t say anything but stepped back and held open the door for them. Both men politely asked permission to enter and followed her into the apartment.

A long central corridor led from the door to a bank of four Gothic windows at the other end. Brunetti’s sense of orientation told him that the light must be coming in from Rio di San Girolamo, especially as the distance to the buildings visible through them was so great: the only open space that large must be the expanse of the Rio.

The girl led them into the first room on the right, a large sitting-room with a fireplace flanked by two windows, each more than two metres high. She waved at the sofa that stood facing the fireplace, but neither man sat.

‘Would you please tell your grandmother we’re here?’ Brunetti asked.

She nodded but said, ‘I don’t think she wants to talk to anyone.’

‘Please tell her it’s very important,’ Brunetti insisted. Thinking it best to make it evident that he intended to stay, he removed his overcoat and put it over the back of a chair, then sat at one end of the sofa. He motioned to Vianello to join him, which he did, first laying his coat on top of Brunetti’s, then taking a seat at the other end of the sofa. Vianello removed his notebook from his pocket and clipped his pen to the front cover. Neither man spoke.

The girl left the room and both men used the opportunity to look around. A large gilded mirror sat above a table on which stood an enormous spray of red gladioli, their colour and number reflected by the glass, so that they seemed to multiply and fill the room. A silk carpet, Brunetti thought it a Nain, lay in front of the fireplace, so close to the sofa that whoever sat there would have to put their feet on it. An oak chest stood against the wall opposite the flowers, on its surface a large brass salver gone grey with age. The wealth and opulence, though discreet, were evident.

Before they could say anything, the door to the room opened and a woman in her fifties came in. She was stout-bodied and wore a grey wool dress that came well below her knees. She had thick ankles and small feet in shoes that looked uncomfortably narrow. Her hair and make-up were perfectly arranged and gave evidence of great expenditure of time and effort. Her eyes were lighter than her granddaughter’s, her features thicker: in fact, there was little familial resemblance between them save that strange placidity of manner.

Both men got to their feet immediately and Brunetti moved towards her. ‘Signora Mitri?’ he asked.

She nodded but said nothing.

‘I’m Commissario Brunetti and this is Sergeant Vianello. We’d like to speak to you for a few moments about your husband and about this terrible thing that has happened to him.’ Hearing this, she closed her eyes but remained silent.

Her face had about it the same absence of animation that was so noticeable on her granddaughter’s, and Brunetti found himself wondering if the daughter in Rome, whose child she must be, displayed a similar immobility.

‘What do you want to know?’ Signora Mitri asked, still standing in front of Brunetti. Her voice had the high pitch that was common among post-menopausal women. Though Brunetti knew she was Venetian, she chose to speak in Italian, as had he.

Before he answered, Brunetti stood away from the sofa and waved his hand towards his former place. She took it automatically and only then did the two men sit, Vianello where he had been and Brunetti in a velvet-covered easy chair that faced the window.

‘Signora, I’d like to know if your husband ever spoke to you of enemies or of someone who would wish to do him harm.’

She started to shake her head in denial even before Brunetti had finished asking the question, but she did not speak, letting the gesture serve as response.

‘He never mentioned disagreements with other people, business associates? Perhaps of some arrangement or contract that didn’t go as planned?’

‘No, nothing,’ she finally said.

‘On the personal level, then. Did he ever have trouble with neighbours, perhaps with a friend?’

She shook her head at this question but again uttered no words.

‘Signora, I ask you to excuse my ignorance, but I know almost nothing about your husband.’ She didn’t respond to this. ‘Would you tell me where he worked?’ She seemed surprised at this, as if Brunetti had suggested Mitri clocked in for eight hours at a factory, so he explained, ‘That is, in which of his factories he had his office or where he spent most of his time.’

‘There’s a chemical plant in Marghera. He has an office there.’

Brunetti nodded, but didn’t ask for the address. He knew they could find it easily. ‘Have you any idea of how much he was involved in the various factories and businesses he owned?’

‘Involved?’

‘Directly, I mean, in the day-to-day running of them.’

‘You’d have to ask his secretary,’ she said.

‘In Marghera?’

She nodded.

As they spoke, however brief her answers, Brunetti watched her for signs of distress or mourning. The impassivity of her face made it difficult to tell, but he thought he detected traces of sadness, though it was more in the way she continually looked down at her own folded hands than anything she said or the tone of her voice.

‘How many years were you married, Signora?’

‘Thirty-five,’ she said without hesitation.

‘And is that your granddaughter who let us in?’

‘Yes,’ she answered, the faintest of smiles breaking the surface of her immobility. ‘Giovanna. My daughter lives in Rome, but Giovanna said she wanted to come and stay with me. Now.’

Brunetti nodded his understanding, though the granddaughter’s concern for her grandmother made the girl’s calm demeanour seem even stranger. ‘I’m sure it’s a great comfort to have her here,’ he said.

‘Yes, it is,’ Signora Mitri agreed and this time her face softened in a real smile. ‘It would be terrible to be here alone.’

Brunetti bowed his head at this and waited a few seconds before looking up and back at her. ‘Just a few more questions, Signora, then you can be with your granddaughter again.’ He didn’t wait for her to respond, but went on without preamble, ‘Are you your husband’s heir?’

Her surprise was evident in her eyes – the first time anything appeared to have touched her. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she said without hesitation.

‘Has your husband other family?’

‘A brother and a sister, and one cousin, but he emigrated to Argentina years ago.’

‘No one else?’

‘No, no one in the direct family.’

‘Is Signor Zambino a friend of your husband’s?’

‘Who?’

‘Awocato Giuliano Zambino.’

‘Not that I know of, no.’

‘I believe he was your husband’s lawyer.’

‘I’m afraid I know very little about my husband’s business,’ she said and Brunetti was forced to wonder how many women he had heard tell him the same thing over the course of the years. Very few of them turned out to have been telling the truth, so it was an answer he never believed. At times he was uncomfortable about how very much Paola knew about his own business dealings, if that’s what one called the identities of suspected rapists, the results of gruesome autopsies, and the surnames of the various suspects who appeared in the newspapers as ‘Giovanni S, 39, bus driver, of Mestre’ or ‘Federico G, 59, mason, of San Dona di Piave’. Few secrets resisted the marriage pillow, Brunetti knew, so he was sceptical about Signora Mini’s professed ignorance. Nevertheless, he let it pass unquestioned.

They already had the names of the people she had been at dinner with the night her husband was murdered, so there was no need to pursue that now. Instead, he asked, ‘Had your husband’s behaviour changed in any way during the last weeks? Or days?’

She shook her head in strong denial. ‘No, he was just the same as always.’

Brunetti wanted to ask her exactly what that was, but he resisted and instead got to his feet. ‘Thank you, Signora, for your time and help. I’m afraid I will have to speak to you again when we have more information.’ He saw that she took no pleasure in that prospect but thought she wouldn’t deny a request for further information. His last words came unsummoned: ‘I hope this time is not too painful for you and that you find the courage to bear it.’

She smiled at the audible sincerity of his words, and again he saw sweetness in that smile.

Vianello stood, took his overcoat, and handed Brunetti his. Both men put them on and Brunetti led the way to the door. Signora Mitri got up and followed them to the threshold of the apartment.

There, Brunetti and Vianello took their leave of her and made their way downstairs to the atrium, where the palm trees still flourished.