CB19 A Question of Belief (2010) (15 page)

Griffoni chose not to go into the third storeroom when Zucchero removed the chain and opened the door. It was
identical in size to the other, about three metres in width and extending at least five towards the back wall. Inside, shelves holding boxes ran from floor to ceiling on both sides. The boxes were all the same size and made of plain brown cardboard: these were boxes meant to store things, not boxes brought home from the supermarket and pressed into service. Each bore a neat hand-printed label in the centre of the side that faced out from the shelf. ‘Zia Maria’s Tea Set’, ‘Handkerchiefs’, ‘Winter shoes’, ‘Woollen scarves’, ‘Araldo’s books’. And so it went, the detritus of life ordered and sealed in boxes and nothing to be discarded if it might some time be used or needed again.

Brunetti turned away from the room and the life it held, switched off the light, and followed Zucchero to the fourth storeroom, Griffoni again close behind them, all of them silent.

When Zucchero let them into the last, Brunetti switched on the light and saw that it was the same size as the previous storeroom and had similar shelving. It too gave evidence of many lives or, at least, that many lives had passed through the hands of the owners. Most of the shelves on the left side held empty bird cages, at least twenty of them. They were wooden and metal, all sizes, all colours. Some of them still held their water bottles, dry now, with dark stains showing the level of water when they had been placed in the storeroom. All of the doors were closed, and none of the little wooden swings moved. They had been wiped clean, but the dusty, acid smell of bird filled the space. There was one stack of boxes, these too the sort one bought to store things in. Labelled in a different hand, they contained ‘Lucio’s sweaters’, ‘Lucio’s boots’, and ‘Eugenia’s sweaters’.

The other side held wine racks; not shelves, racks that began about thirty centimetres from the ground and ran almost to the ceiling. Brunetti walked over and read the labels; he recognized and approved of some of them, saw that
others had detached themselves from the bottles and hung loose. Griffoni asked, ‘In this humidity, with that other smell?’

Brunetti put out a finger and rubbed one of the corks, which had herniated the metal foil. A rough white film covered the top of the cork. He pulled out the bottle. ‘Nineteen eighty,’ he said, and slid the bottle back, both of them wincing at the sound of glass scraping on metal.

At the far end of the room they saw a sofa and at one end a standard lamp that must have fallen victim to redecoration. Over the back of the sofa was draped a hand-knitted afghan in violent reds and greens, and at the other end stood a square table with a greying crocheted doily in the centre.

Without bothering to comment on any of the things, Brunetti said to Griffoni, ‘Let’s go up and see how much Vianello has got out of her so far.’ This would have sounded – to anyone unfamiliar with the Ispettore’s uncanny ability to lure even the most recalcitrant witness – slightly menacing; but it was merely what anyone who knew Vianello would expect him to have achieved.

Brunetti nodded to Zucchero, who saluted and moved back into the shadow.

‘It’s on the second floor,’ Griffoni said, leading him up the stairs to the main entrance, which was open. Inside, they paused at the bottom of the oval staircase that led to the upper floors. The steps were marble, broad and low, at the top a skylight: nothing else would explain the light that flooded down, illuminating and heating the area around them.

‘Were you up there before?’ Brunetti asked, staring at the skylight.

‘No, Scarpa went up to talk to her when he found out that Fontana lived with his mother. He didn’t call me until after he’d spoken to her.’

Brunetti nodded, and the young officer left them, staring
back across the courtyard. Turning to Griffoni, Brunetti asked, ‘Why do you think he waited so long?’

‘Power,’ she answered, then more reflectively, ‘So long as he can control or limit what other people know, he knows more than they do and feels as if he has power over them or what they do.’ She shrugged, adding, ‘It’s a common enough technique.’

‘I’d say in some places it’s standard operating procedure,’ Brunetti added and started up the stairs.

The landing of the second floor had only two doors; a policeman stood outside one of them. He saluted when he saw Brunetti and Griffoni and said, ‘Ispettore Vianello is still inside.’

Brunetti indicated the other door, but the officer said, ‘That side of the building’s not been restored, sir. All three apartments are empty.’ Then, before Brunetti could ask, he added, ‘We checked them, sir.’

Brunetti nodded his thanks and tapped on the door twice, but when he saw it was ajar he pushed it open and went into the apartment. The light evaporated, and all he saw was a dim glow at the end of what must have been a long corridor. Unconsciously, Griffoni took a step closer to him until her arm was touching his in the near-darkness. They stood still until their eyes adjusted and they could begin to make out the objects lining the corridor. Brunetti saw the outline of a door on his right and opened it, hoping to allow some light to filter into the corridor, but the room was dark, and all he could make out were four thin vertical bars of gold. It took Brunetti a moment to realize they were cracks of light at the edges of the shutters closed over two windows. Here, as well, he saw the dim shadows of objects standing about in the room, but it was impossible to distinguish what they were.

He pulled the door closed and began to pat the wall of the corridor in search of a light switch. When he found one and
pressed it, the difference was minimal, for it illuminated only a single overhead light halfway down the corridor. The objects emerged closer to visibility: narrow tables, low trunks, a few standing lamps, a suitcase – all crowded back against the walls.

They heard the murmur of a voice, perhaps more than one, from the end of the corridor, and both of them set off at the same moment. They passed another door on the right and another on the left. Ordinarily the darkness would have provided some relief from the heat, but that was not the case here. If air be stagnant, then stagnant air grew in that hall. It pressed itself against them as they moved, reluctant to let them pass and interested only in adding to their discomfort. The dampness wrapped itself around them and stroked their exposed flesh.

They stopped in front of a door which was ajar, and Brunetti was about to call Vianello’s name when he recalled that the woman was a widow, had lived alone with her only son, who had just been killed. ‘You call him,’ he told Griffoni softly.

‘Ispettore Vianello?’ Griffoni said into the crack between the door and the jamb.

Her voice was answered by the sound of a chair scraping on the floor, and Vianello appeared at the door and pulled it fully open. Like Brunetti, he was dressed for vacation, in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Whatever his clothing lacked in seriousness was more than made up for by the expression on his face and by the voice in which he said, ‘Commissario Griffoni. Commissario Brunetti. I’d like to present you to Signora Fontana, the mother of the victim.’ The Inspector’s voice grew softer with the final word.

He stepped slowly back from the doorway and turned towards two chairs that sat in the middle of the room, both with their backs to what appeared to be a row of windows obscured by maroon velvet curtains.

The apartment had prepared Brunetti to see a woman of some austerity: he had imagined grey hair pulled tight in a small bun at the back of her head, stick-like calves under a long dark skirt. Instead, the woman sitting in the centre of the room was plump and so short that, even with her feet resting on a velvet-covered hassock, her head did not reach the top of the back of the chair. She had short curly hair, the standard dark red chosen by women of her age. She needed no makeup: her cheeks were rosy with good health, the skin as smooth and soft as that of a young woman. Her eyes, when Brunetti got close enough to see them, seemed to be the eyes of a different person entirely or to belong on a different face. Hooded, deep-set, angled down at the corners, they looked at the world, and at Brunetti, with a sharpness that was evident nowhere on her body.

He moved up behind Griffoni, who bent over the woman and said, ‘Signora, I would like to extend my condolences at this terrible time.’ The woman extended her hand and allowed Griffoni to press hers, but she said nothing.

Brunetti bent down then and said, ‘I join my colleague in extending my sympathies, Signora.’ The hand she gave him was soft as a baby’s, the skin smooth and unblemished by age spots. She exerted no pressure on his hand, merely allowed hers to be held for a few seconds and then removed it from his grasp.

She looked at Vianello and asked in a soft voice, ‘Are these the colleagues you were telling me about, Ispettore?’

‘Yes, Signora. Commissario Brunetti and I have worked together for years, and Commissario Griffoni, because of her exemplary conduct at another Questura, has been assigned here.’ This was not strictly the truth. In fact, it was a lie. Claudia Griffoni, Brunetti had discovered only after she had been at the Questura for almost a year, had been sent there because she had been too active in her investigation of the business activities of one of the politicians of the party
currently holding the majority in Parliament. Her questore had warned her, as had two magistrates who were working on the same investigation. Both of them had told her to be less obvious, not to speak to the press, but the press had not been able to resist a story in which the conflicting parts were played by a convicted criminal and a very attractive female police commissario, who just happened to be blonde, and whose father had been seriously wounded in a Mafia attempt on his life two decades before.

A week after a story appeared, stating that the politician was the subject of a police investigation, Griffoni had found herself transferred to Venice, a city not famed for active interference in the doings of either the members of the political class or the Mafia.

Brunetti was pulled back from these reflections by the voice of Signora Fontana, who said to Vianello, ‘Ispettore, perhaps you could bring chairs for your colleagues?’

When the four of them were sitting in a rough circle, Brunetti said, ‘Signora, I realize this is going to be a terribly hard time for you. Not only have you suffered an unbearable loss, but you will now have to suffer the invasion of the press and public.’

‘And police,’ she said instantly.

He gave an easy smile and nodded. ‘And the police, Signora. But the difference is that we are interested in finding the person who did this: the press has other goals.’

Vianello sat up straighter and turned to Brunetti. ‘Signora Fontana has already had an offer from a magazine. To tell her story. And her son’s.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, turning to the woman. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘The Ispettore spoke to them for me,’ she said. ‘And told them I was not interested, which I am not.’ She brought her lips together in an expression of prim disapproval, but her eyes were careful to watch for Brunetti’s response.

He nodded in open approval, giving her what he thought she wanted.

‘It won’t change what they write,’ Vianello interrupted to say, ‘but of course they won’t be able to use family photos.’

‘At least not from my side of the family,’ Signora Fontana said with more than a touch of asperity.

Brunetti let it pass as though he had not heard and asked, ‘Have you any idea who might have wanted to hurt your son, Signora?’

She shook her head furiously, but not a single lock of her permed hair fell out of place. ‘No one could want to hurt Araldo. He was such a good boy. He was always a good boy. His father raised him that way, and then when his father died, I tried to do the same.’

Griffoni placed her hand on Signora Fontana’s arm and said something Brunetti could not hear, but it had no effect whatsoever on the woman. Indeed, it seemed to spur her on. ‘He was hard-working and honest and devoted to his work. And to me.’ She put her face in her hands and her shoulders moved convulsively, but for some reason Brunetti was not persuaded of the sincerity of her grief until she took her hands away from her face and he saw the tears. Like Saint Thomas, he was convinced then that she did mourn her son, but still he was left uneasy by the manner in which she showed it, as though the round-faced part of her was being instructed by those guarded eyes to behave in a fashion that would persuade.

When she had stopped crying and her handkerchief was clutched in her left hand, Brunetti said, ‘Signora, was it unusual for your son not to return home in the evening?’

She gave him an offended look. Had not her tears washed away the possibility that she would have to answer such questions? ‘I never knew when he returned home, Signore,’ she said, either having forgotten, or choosing to ignore, Brunetti’s rank. ‘He was fifty-two years old, please
remember. He had his own life, his own friends, and I tried to interfere as little as I could.’

Griffoni muttered something appreciative of suffering motherhood, and Vianello nodded in approbation of Signora Fontana’s self-sacrifice.

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘Did you usually see one another in the morning, before he went to work?’

‘Of course,’ she insisted. ‘I wouldn’t let my boy go off in the morning without
caffè latte
and some bread and jam.’

‘But this morning, Signora?’ Vianello asked.

‘The first thing I knew was Signor Marsano, banging on the door and telling me something was wrong. I was still in my nightgown so I couldn’t go out, but by the time I was dressed the police were here and they wouldn’t let me go down.’ She glanced at the circle of sympathetic faces surrounding her and said, ‘They wouldn’t let a mother go to her only son’, and again Brunetti had the feeling that the whole thing was being orchestrated for some purpose he could not understand.

When Signora Fontana seemed a bit calmer, Griffoni asked, ‘Did he tell you where he was going last night, Signora?’

The woman looked away from the question and from the person who had asked it and addressed Brunetti. ‘I go to bed early, Signore. Araldo was here when I did. We’d had dinner together.’