CB18 About Face (2009) (29 page)

‘They didn’t tell us, when we took these jobs, about this part of it, did they?’ he said, crossing the room and sitting opposite her. ‘What did she say?’

Griffoni ran both hands through her hair in a gesture he had seen her make towards the end of Patta’s meetings, a sign that her patience was running short. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ Brunetti asked. ‘How much time did you spend with her?’

‘I brought her back here in the boat, but she didn’t say anything except thank you to the pilot, and then to the man who opened the door, and then to me.’ She moved her hands towards her head but stopped herself and said, ‘I told her she could call her lawyer if she wanted to, but all she said was, “No, thank you. I’d prefer to wait until the morning”, like a teenager caught for drunk driving who didn’t want to wake her parents up.’ She shook her head, either at the comparison or at Marinello’s behaviour.

‘I told her she could leave if her lawyer came and she made a statement in my presence, but she said she wanted to talk to you. She was perfectly polite – I even liked her – but she refused to say anything, and there was nothing I could do to make her change her mind. I’d ask her, and she’d say thank you but no. It’s strange, really. And that face.’

‘Where is she?’ Brunetti asked, not wanting to enter into that discussion.

‘Downstairs, in one of the interview rooms.’

Ordinarily, these rooms would have been called ‘interrogation rooms’. Brunetti wondered what made her use the less threatening description, but that was not something he wanted to talk about, either.

‘I’ll go down,’ he said, getting to his feet. He held out his hand. ‘Could you give me the key?’

She opened her hands in a helpless gesture. ‘The door’s not locked. As soon as she went in, she sat down and took a book out of her bag and started to read. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t lock the door.’ Brunetti smiled at her, liking her for her weakness. ‘Besides, Giuffrè’s down there, and she’d have to go past him if she tried to leave.’

‘All right, Claudia. Maybe you should go home and get some sleep. Thanks. And thanks for coming tonight.’

She looked up at him and asked, unable to hide her nervousness, ‘Your ears? Are they still ringing?’

‘No. Are yours?’

‘Not really. But there’s a small buzz. It’s much less than it was, but a little bit of it’s still there.’

‘Get some sleep, then go over to the hospital in the morning and tell them what happened. There might be something they can tell you.’

‘Thanks, Guido, I will,’ she said and reached to switch off her desk lamp. She got to her feet and Brunetti helped her into her coat and waited for her at the door to her office. Not speaking, they went down the stairs together. On the ground floor, she said good-night. Brunetti turned down the corridor towards the single light that came from the door of one of the rooms at the end.

He paused and glanced in, and Franca Marinello looked up from her book.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you had to wait for me.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. I don’t sleep a lot any more, and I had a book with me, so it doesn’t matter.’

‘But you’d be more comfortable at home, I’m sure.’

‘Yes, surely that’s true. But I thought you might think it important that we talk tonight.’

‘Yes, I think it is,’ he said, coming into the room.

As if it were her salon, she nodded to the chair across from her, and he sat. She closed her book and laid it on the table, but he could not see the spine and so had no idea what it was.

She had seen his glance. ‘Psellus’s
Chronographia
,’ she said, placing a hand on the book. Brunetti recognized the author and the title, but no more than that. ‘It’s about decline,’ she told him.

It was late, almost four, and he longed for sleep. This was not the time or the occasion for the discussion of books. ‘I’d like to talk to you about the events of this evening, if I might,’ Brunetti said soberly.

She turned to the side as if to try to look around him. ‘Isn’t there supposed to be someone with a tape recorder, or at least a stenographer?’ she asked lightly, hoping to make it sound like a joke.

‘I suppose there should be, but that can wait until later. I’d like you to speak to your lawyer first.’

‘But isn’t this a policeman’s dream, Commissario?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, his patience slipping, and he too tired to disguise that fact.

‘A suspect willing to talk to him without a tape recorder and without a lawyer?’

‘I’m not sure what you’re suspected of, Signora,’ he said, trying to say it lightly, if only to change the mood, probably failing, he realized. ‘And nothing you say has much value, simply because it isn’t being recorded or filmed, and so you will always be able to deny having said it.’

‘I’m afraid I long to say it,’ she said. He saw that she had become serious, even sober, but her face gave no sign of that, only her voice.

‘I’d appreciate it, then, if you’d tell me.’

‘I killed a man tonight, Commissario.’

‘I know. I saw you do it, Signora.’

‘How did you interpret what happened?’ she asked, as if she were asking him what he thought of a film they had both seen.

‘I’m afraid that’s irrelevant. What counts is what happened.’

‘But you saw what happened. I shot him.’

He felt a wave of tiredness wash over him. He had climbed up and into that storage tank, seen Pucetti’s hand, skin hanging off, seen his blood on the bandages. And he’d watched her shoot and kill a man, and he was too tired to endure this talk, talk, talk.

‘And I saw you speak to him, and each time he did something different.’

‘What did you see him do, then?’

‘I saw him look up at us as though you’d warned him we were there, and then you said something else and he gave you the gun, and then after you had it, I saw him pull his hand back as if he were going to hit you.’

‘He
was
going to hit me, Commissario. Please don’t let there be any question of that.’

‘Could you tell me why?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Signora, what I think or don’t think doesn’t matter, I’m afraid. What matters is that Commissario Griffoni and I saw that he was going to hit you.’

She surprised him by saying, ‘It’s a pity you still haven’t read it.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The
Fasti
: ‘The Flight of the King’. I know it’s a minor work, but some other writers found him interesting. I’d like the piece to get the just attention it deserves.’

‘Signora,’ Brunetti snapped, pushing his chair back and getting angrily to his feet. ‘It’s almost four o’clock in the morning, and I’m tired. I’m tired of being out in the cold for most of the night and, if you don’t mind my saying so, I’m tired of playing literary cat and mouse with you.’ He wanted to be at home, warm, in his bed, asleep, with no buzzing in his ear and no provocation of any sort, from anyone.

Her mask gave no sign of how this affected her. ‘Well, then,’ she said and sighed. ‘I think then I’ll wait until the morning and call my husband’s lawyer.’ She slid the book closer, looked him in the eye, and said, ‘Thank you for coming to talk to me, Commissario. And thank you for talking to me those other times, as well.’ She picked up the book. ‘Perhaps it does me good to realize that a man can be interested in me for something other than my face.’

With a final glance at him and something that might have been a smile, she returned to her reading.

Brunetti was glad she had turned her attention away from him. There was nothing he could say to this, no response, no question.

He wished her good-night and left the room and went home.

He slept. Paola, about to leave for class, tried to wake him at nine, but she managed no more than to shift him to her side of the bed. Some time later, the phone rang, but it did not penetrate to wherever Brunetti had gone, a place where Pucetti had two good hands, where Guarino was not lying dead in the mud, nor Terrasini on the marble floor, and where Franca Marinello was a lovely woman in her thirties whose whole face moved when she smiled or laughed.

After eleven Brunetti woke, looked out the window and saw that it was raining. He slept again. When next he woke there was bright sun, and for the first moments, Brunetti wondered if he were still asleep and this was a dream. He lay still for at least a minute, and then he pulled one hand slowly from under the covers, happy to hear the rustling of the sheets. He tried to snap his fingers, but all he managed to create was the sound of two fingers rubbing together. But he heard it clearly, with no buzz, and then he shoved back the covers, delighted by the slithery sound of them.

He stood, smiled at the sun, and accepted the fact that he needed a shave and a shower, but more than that, he needed coffee.

He took the coffee back to bed with him and set the cup and saucer on the night table. Kicking off his slippers, he got back under the covers and reached over to pull out his old copy of Ovid from the books beside him. He had found it two days ago but had had no time, no time.
Fasti
. What had she said, ‘The Something of the King’? He flipped through the table of contents and found it, ‘The Flight of the King’, for 24 February. He pulled up the covers, shifted the book to his right hand, and took a sip of coffee. He replaced the coffee and began to read.

After a paragraph he recognized the story: he thought it was also told in Plutarch, and hadn’t Shakespeare used it for something? Wicked Tarquin, the last king of Rome, driven from the kingdom by the populace at the head of which strode the noble Brutus, outraged by the death of his wife, the fair Lucrezia, who had been driven to suicide by her rape by the even more wicked son of the king, who had threatened to destroy her husband’s reputation.

He read the passage again, then closed the book very softly and placed it on the covers beside him. He finished his coffee, allowed himself to slide lower in the bed, and looked out the bedroom window at the clear sky.

Antonio Terrasini, nephew of a Camorra boss. Antonio Terrasini, arrested for rape. Antonio Terrasini, photographed by a man who was later shot to death in an apparent robbery, the photo in the possession of a man who died in similar fashion. Antonio Terrasini, apparent lover of the wife of a man somehow involved with the first victim. Antonio Terrasini, shot to death by that same woman.

As Brunetti looked out the window he moved these people and facts around on the surface of his memory, prodding them here and there with a recalled detail, then shoving one possibility aside to replace it with some new speculation that lined them up in a different order.

He recalled the scene at the gaming table: the man’s hand on her hip and the look she gave him then; his hands on her breasts and the way she failed to move away, though her entire body seemed to shrink from him. She had been in profile to Brunetti when she shot him, not that her face was capable of indicating much. Her words, then: what words had lit the man’s anger, then quelled it, then set it flaming again?

Brunetti reached for the phone and dialled the number of the home of his parents-in-law. One of the secretaries answered, and he gave his name and asked to speak to the Contessa. Brunetti had learned over the years that the speed with which his call was transferred seemed related to his use of their titles.

‘Yes, Guido?’ she asked.

‘I wonder if I might stop by on my way to work and speak to you,’ Brunetti said.

‘Come along whenever you can, Guido,’ she said.

He turned to look at the bedside clock, amazed to see that it was after one. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour or so; if that’s convenient for you, that is.’

‘Of course, Guido, of course. I’ll expect you, then.’

When she was gone, Brunetti pushed back the covers and went down to shower and shave. Before he left the house, he opened the refrigerator and found the remains of the leftover lasagne. He set it on the counter, took a fork from the cabinet, and ate most of what remained, put the fork in the sink, pulled the plastic wrap back over the ravaged lasagne, and put it back in the refrigerator.

Ten minutes later, he rang the bell to the
palazzo
and was taken, by some dark-suited person he did not recognize, to the Contessa’s study.

She kissed him when he came in, asked if he wanted coffee, insisted until he agreed, and asked the man who had accompanied Brunetti to bring coffee and biscotti for them both. ‘You can’t go to work without coffee,’ she said. She took her usual place in the easy chair that allowed her to see out over the Grand Canal and leaned over to pat the seat of the chair beside her.

‘What is it?’ she asked when he sat down.

‘Franca Marinello.’

She did not seem surprised. ‘Someone called and told me,’ she said in a sober voice that grew softer as she added, ‘The poor girl, the poor girl.’

‘What did they say?’ he asked, wondering who had called but unwilling to ask.

‘That she was involved in something violent at the Casinò last night and was taken to be questioned by the police.’ She waited for Brunetti to explain and when he did not, she asked, ‘You know about this?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘She shot a man.’

‘And killed him?’

‘Yes.’

She closed her eyes, and Brunetti heard her whisper what might have been a prayer, or something else. He thought he heard the word ‘dentist’, but that made no sense. She opened her eyes and looked at him directly. In a voice that had regained its force, she said, ‘Tell me what happened.’

‘She was there in the Casinò with a man. He threatened her, and she shot him.’

She considered this and asked, ‘Were you there?’

‘Yes. But for the man, not for her.’

Again, the Contessa paused a long time before asking, ‘Was it this Terrasini man?’