The Golden Egg

26

Her mouth opened and stayed that way for a long time. Brunetti saw no expression on her face, only her once-beautiful eyes, frozen now, and the grey-red flush on the left side. This woman, he had been told, had once been thought to be a good girl: her patent fear suggested that Signora Ghezzi’s assessment might be closer to the truth.

‘What are you talking about?’

How many times had he been asked that? Short of a confession, it was as close to an admission of guilt as he had known many people to come. He had heard it said with indignation, incredulity, arrogance, menace; only rarely had he heard it asked in honest confusion: this was not one of those times.

‘Money has been transferred into your bank account for the last forty years, Signora. From Lucrezia Lembo.’

‘I work for her,’ she spat out, trying for indignation.

‘Doing what?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

Brunetti allowed himself a small smile. ‘Perhaps not, Signora.’ Then, after a slight pause, ‘Have you paid taxes on that money?’

He watched the once-beautiful eyes move from him to the window, to the door, as if she were looking for a way out of the room. Failing to find it, she said, ‘She pays the tax.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said. Then, ever so casually, in the voice of the man who had once seemed genuinely concerned for her welfare, he asked, ‘Where are you going to live, Signora?’

This time, her confusion was real. ‘What?’

‘Where will you live now?’

‘What are you talking about?’ she asked so timidly that Brunetti had no doubt about her failure to understand.

‘It was Davide who had the usufrutto for the house.’ He saw she didn’t recognize the legal term. ‘He had the right to stay in it. Not you, Signora. You’ll have to leave.’

A friend of Paola’s often said her son had married a woman with ‘cash-register eyes’, but he had never understood the expression until he watched the calculation Ana Cavanella made in response to his statement.

She stared at the window behind him and to his left, and he had the sense that he had disappeared from the room, so far as she was concerned. She pulled her eyebrows together, pursed her lips, and worked at the problem for a long time. He saw the moment when she found her way free of it: her brows relaxed, and she gave a small, satisfied nod.

‘That won’t matter,’ she said, and he heard the steel in her voice and at the same time saw her face snap shut.

‘I’m sorry about your son,’ he said and left the room.

He walked from the hospital and went directly to Rosa Salva. He had seen the grey-haired woman behind the bar for at least twenty years, if not more. To Brunetti, she looked much the same as she always had, though that was impossible. He wondered if he looked the same to her, but could not ask, not after all these years of polite formality.

He did ask for a glass of white wine and two panini with ham, then added a tramezzino with ham and artichokes. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror, as he always did in bars.

Ana Cavanella had said it wouldn’t matter that she could no longer stay in the house where she and Davide had been living, and she had used the future tense, the grammar of gamblers, or dreamers. But she’d found her answer. Did this mean the blackmail would continue or that Ana Cavanella saw herself as headed for finer things?

He paid and started towards the Questura.

He found Griffoni in Signorina Elettra’s office, the two of them sitting behind the computer like friends at a PlayStation. When he came in, Griffoni was saying, ‘Could you go back to her will, please?’

She used the familiar tu, and Signorina Elettra answered in kind, when she said, ‘But you’ve already seen it.’

‘I know, but I want . . .’ Griffoni began but stopped when she became aware of Brunetti standing at the door, all traces of paternal approbation wiped from his face. ‘Come and look at this,’ she said, moving her chair to clear a space between them.

‘It’s Signora Lembo’s will,’ she explained, pointing to the monitor. He saw that she had died fifteen years before. ‘Her husband and daughters got her interest in the company, and almost all of the rest was divided among them.’ He looked at the copy of the will and saw what a considerable ‘rest’ it was. She tapped at a name, Sister Maria Rosaria Lembo-Malfa, who had received a modest sum. She was probably the nun who lived with them: perhaps nuns didn’t need large bequests.

‘They were still married?’ Brunetti asked. Her husband had left her for the physical therapist, Brunetti recalled, but a man of his wealth was unlikely to complicate his finances with a divorce.

‘Of course,’ Signorina Elettra answered, and hit a few keys, to display the last will and testament of Ludovico Lembo. Both the company and all of his remaining wealth were divided evenly between Lucrezia and Lavinia. There were no codicils, no other stipulations, just that simple statement of desire prefaced and followed by the usual decoration of legal terminology.

Griffoni moved her chair farther to the side and turned to him. ‘What did she tell you?’

‘That she worked for Lucrezia Lembo: that’s where the money’s coming from. The first’s a lie.’ She nodded her agreement and he went on. ‘It took her a while to understand about the usufrutto, but when she did, she said it wouldn’t matter.’

‘Which means?’ Signorina Elettra asked.

‘That she has a plan of some sort. Or a place to go. She’s not troubled in the least.’

‘How smart is she?’ Griffoni asked.

Brunetti had not thought about Cavanella in these terms, but his answer was immediate: ‘Not very.’ Seeing that this was insufficient, he went on. ‘She doesn’t think about the consequences of things. I doubt she plans anything or thinks anything through. Or she thinks she does, but doesn’t know how to do it.’

Silence fell as each of them tried to find a way to continue this conversation. Finally Brunetti said, ‘Beni Borsetta was in her room.’ He used the nickname because it was the more widely known; the lawyer’s real name had almost fallen into disuse apart from direct address or by someone meeting him for the first time.

‘Oddio,’ Griffoni exclaimed. ‘If we need proof that she’s stupid, there it is. Poor woman.’

A more reflective Signorina Elettra asked Brunetti, ‘Do you have any idea what he was doing there?’

‘Trying to earn money by persuading her to bring a case against someone, I’d guess,’ Griffoni interrupted to answer. Neither of the others tried to contradict her, even though she’d been in Venice only a few years.

Brunetti thought about the extent of Beni’s creative genius. Would he try to sue the pharmaceutical company for having sold a sleeping pill that was packaged like a sweet? The rescue service for being late? The social services for forty years of negligence?

Beni, he knew, was willing to take chances with his clients: there was no ambulance he would not chase. But he doubted that even a gambler like Beni would waste his time in litigation about any of those claims. No lawyer in his right mind, even one with a better reputation than Beni Borsetta’s, would go up against Big Pharma with such a weak case; the rescue services came when they came; and where was Davide’s birth certificate to authorize the intervention of the social services?

‘While you have that turned on,’ he said to Signorina Elettra, his choice of words causing her to close her eyes in momentary distress, ‘could you check the register of the lawyers and see if Avvocato Cresti is still listed?’ Walking to the Questura, he had recalled a few incidents in Beni’s variegated past when he had been threatened with expulsion from the union of lawyers and one time – it must have been ten years ago – when a judge had had him removed from the courtroom by the bailiffs when he refused to stop talking. Beni, in Brunetti’s estimation, was not a man who would learn from his mistakes, and certainly change of behaviour was not in his repertory.

He stepped back to give Signorina Elettra better access to the computer; Griffoni leaned to her left, better to see the screen, but did not move her chair. Brunetti folded his arms and studied the screen from behind them. Documents appeared on the monitor but remained there for such a brief time that he had no chance to read them. Griffoni, he noticed, occasionally wrote things in a notebook open on the desk beside her. Once she asked Signorina Elettra to explain something, nodded at her answer, muttering, ‘Very nice.’

After ten minutes, Signorina Elettra swivelled around and said, ‘If he’s practising law, he’s also breaking it. He’s been barred for three years, and the time isn’t up for another twenty-seven months.’

Beni might be a friend of Ana Cavanella’s, Brunetti supposed, were it not that Beni didn’t have any friends. The fact that his visit had taken place in the hospital made it even more certain that he had been in pursuit of work, not practising one of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy. If he needed proof of Ana Cavanella’s lack of intelligence, the fact that she would have anything to do with Beni Borsetta was more than enough.

With a pleasant nod in the direction of the computer, Brunetti asked, ‘You think that thing could find his address and phone number?’

Avvocato Cresti, when Brunetti called him a short time later, sounded not in the least surprised to be contacted by an officer of the law. Indeed, he was vociferous in his expressions of goodwill towards the Commissario, whom he had met on various occasions and remembered well. Eager to be of service to the state, he seemed delighted to learn that all it requested of him was conversation. He asked for a moment to check his calendar and seemed even more delighted to discover that he had a convenient gap in his schedule and could pass by the Questura in an hour. That is, unless it suited the Commissario’s convenience that they meet in some other place?

‘My office is fine, Avvocato,’ Brunetti interrupted the stream of words to say and broke the connection before the lawyer could return to the floodgates. Brunetti had twice been a witness in trials where Beni had appeared for the defence and remembered clearly the feeling he had had, both times, of being suffocated by irrelevant detail. He had been in the courtrooms only briefly, but he had heard enough not to be surprised when both of Beni’s clients lost their cases.

Griffoni had opted to remain downstairs with Signorina Elettra, who had started to explain to her the easiest way to access the records of two state agencies which had, until then, proven resistant to all legitimate requests for information on the holding company that owned the company that owned the chain of hotels that had displayed interest in acquiring the gutted factory. As he left the office, the last thing Brunetti had heard was Griffoni, saying, ‘It’s like one of those Russian dolls, isn’t it? There’s always something else inside.’

Brunetti went to the window and stared down at the water of the canal and, not for the first time, began to ask himself what in heaven’s name he had been doing for the last week. He had not broken any laws, he had not lied to any of the people he had spoken to, he had not subverted the cause of justice in any way. But he had also not learned anything significant about Davide Cavanella. His mother was a liar, his doctor knew more about him than he was willing to say, an old woman knew probably even more but would not say what that was, and the daughter of his mother’s former employer lived in a buffered world where she didn’t have to know or say anything and was probably paying her way out of having to.

To learn this little, he had avoided his professional responsibilities for a week, and had engaged or commandeered the help of other officers of the state, all in pursuit of what was becoming to seem like nothing more than a whim. And now he was about to drag in another member of the public but one who – unlike everyone else he had spoken to – was knowledgeable enough about the law to realize that his questions were not part of an authorized investigation.

He could easily go downstairs when Borsetta came in and tell him that the question he had wanted to discuss with him had been resolved, thank him for his civic-

mindedness, and send him on his way. And he could then decide to forget about those forty and more years of monthly payments to the account of Ana Cavanella and what they might mean. Or he could threaten Beni Borsetta and wring him dry.

‘Commissario?’ someone asked from the door of his office, and he turned to see Avvocato Cresti, today without his briefcase though most decidedly with his paunch and his air of self-satisfaction.

‘Ah, Avvocato,’ Brunetti said with an easy smile. ‘How exemplary a model of civic duty you present. Do come in and have a seat.’

Made nervous by this effulgent goodwill, Cresti crossed the room towards Brunetti, who stood and leaned across his desk to shake hands. He waved towards a chair and Cresti sat. The chair had armrests, and Cresti fitted easily within them, leading Brunetti to realize that the man was larger front to back than side to side. He smiled and took a closer look at the lawyer: his shoulders were actually quite narrow, narrower than his own. A portrait bust or a painting would show a perfectly normal man in late middle age, with a thinning patch of greyish hair, none too clean and perhaps too long, brushed back from a long, thin face.

He must buy his clothing ready-made – always an error on the part of a man with a paunch as vast as Cresti’s, Brunetti thought, for his jacket gaped open at least three hands’ breadths and left his paunch free to pull at the buttons of his shirt.

Brunetti gave Cresti his most benign smile but said nothing. Silence apparently made the lawyer nervous: he wrapped his fingers around the armrests of the chair, released them, then grabbed them again. Brunetti, smile nailed to his face, studied the other man. His face was quite thin and looked out of place above that girth: had Cresti’s neck been a metre long, he would have looked very much like an ostrich, his head disproportionately small in relation to his body.

The silence proved too much for the lawyer, and he launched himself. ‘I’m very glad to be of service to you, Commissario, for whatever’s necessary. Lawyers, as I’m sure you know – you studied law, I believe – have a heightened respect for the law. In fact, I’m sure that this bond between us will aid us in establishing a mutually helpful and productive relationship.’

He paused to breathe and Brunetti forgot his smile and asked, ‘What have you been telling Signora Cavanella?’

‘Who?’ Cresti asked, as stupid a mistake as he could have made, and Brunetti knew he would have no trouble wringing him dry.

Brunetti ignored his question. Cresti must have realized he had made a tactical error, for he asked, ‘Ah, do you mean Ana Cavanella?’ He smiled. It was an automatic smile, utterly humourless, that he could flick on and off, and did, without response to any sort of stimulus.

Brunetti permitted himself a small nod. This conversation was private and could never be introduced as evidence, so he did not have to speak for the tape recorder and could use gestures if he chose.

‘Yes. She’s an old friend of mine,’ Cresti said with another automatic smile.

‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘When did you last see her?’

‘Before I answer that,’ Cresti said, with one of his flashsmiles, ‘could you tell me what it is you want to know about her?’

‘I want to know when she last saw you.’

Just like Signora Cavanella, though with a great deal more certainty that he could calculate the response to various answers, Cresti prepared an answer. ‘I’m not sure. It’s been some time.’

‘You were seen in the hospital, Avvocato, coming from her room. Only a few hours ago.’ He watched Cresti move some pieces around on the board of his mind and volunteered, ‘Perhaps you were so troubled by seeing her there that all memory of your visit has been driven from your mind?’

Cresti nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it exactly. I saw her this morning.’

‘And were shocked, I assume.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you remember what you talked about, I’m sure. After all, you were there as her lawyer.’

Cresti moved uncomfortably in his chair, as if the arms had begun to contract. ‘Not exactly as her lawyer, you understand, Commissario. More as a friend who might be able to give her some legal advice.’ As if startled by that last word, Cresti jumped a little in his chair and said, too quickly, ‘Legal information, that is.’

Brunetti nodded, and the lawyer went on. ‘I was there as a friend, please understand: only that. It never occurred to either of us that I would work for her in a professional sense.’ Brunetti was suddenly aware that Cresti was speaking for the tape recorder he assumed was running. ‘Only out of my affection for the woman, please understand.’ He flashed a smile that was meant to show his integrity and goodwill.

‘You’re also a neighbour, aren’t you, Avvocato?’ Brunetti asked, having noticed the San Polo address when Signorina Elettra printed out the information he had asked her for.

‘Am I?’ Cresti asked. ‘How very coincidental.’

Now, why should he lie about that? Brunetti asked himself. He remembered the unified silence of her neighbours and began to wonder what information they were all so eager to protect.

‘Shall I look in Calli, Campielli e Canali and remind you of just how close you live to her, or do you perhaps recall having seen her?’ Brunetti’s voice echoed his diminishing patience.

‘Yes, I do remember seeing her, now that you mention it,’ the lawyer said. ‘But only occasionally, the way one does.’ Brunetti saw that Cresti was holding the arms of the chair as tightly as if he were trying to keep himself from being spilled from his seat in the middle of a storm at sea.

‘So you knew her history?’

‘Well, everyone in the neighbourhood does,’ Cresti said, aiming to sound casual, and failing.

‘And if I might inquire into your professional dealings with Signora Cavanella,’ Brunetti began. ‘That is, your work for her as her lawyer . . .’

‘But I’m not her lawyer,’ Cresti said with another strained smile. ‘I’m just trying to help the poor woman. She lost her son, you know.’ Cresti’s voice was rich with an actor’s pathos.

‘I know. Did she come to you about that?’

‘Well,’ Cresti began nervously, ‘yes and no.’ Seeing that Brunetti was not satisfied with this, he continued, ‘That is, she came to me before he died.’

‘Asking you to work as her lawyer?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No.’ Cresti’s lie was adamant. ‘She came to me as a neighbour and asked if I could give her some information, being as I was a lawyer.’

‘But not then working as one,’ Brunetti supplied ruthlessly, to let Cresti understand how much he knew.

‘Right, exactly right. I’d never tell a person I could act for them, not until my suspension is over and I’m taken back into the union of lawyers.’ Avvocato Cresti, exemplar of justice.

‘What did she want to know?’

‘About bastards.’

‘What, specifically, about bastards?’

‘She’d read something in the papers, and she asked me about a new law.’

‘Which law?’

‘The one from last year, that says bastards are entitled to an equal share of their father’s estate.’