Dressed for Death (16 page)

He checked the listings in the
yellow pages for banks, and found that the Bank of Verona was listed in Campo
San Bartolomeo, the narrow
campo
at the foot of the Rialto where many
banks had their offices; this surprised him, for he could not remember ever
having seen it. More out of curiosity than anything else, he dialled the
number. The phone was picked up on the third ring, and a man’s voice said, ‘Si?’
as though he were expecting a call.

‘Is this the Bank of Verona?’
Brunetti asked.

There was a moment’s pause, and
then the man said, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve reached a wrong number.’

‘Sorry to trouble you,’ Brunetti
said.

The other man replaced the phone
without saying anything else.

The vagaries of SIP, the national
telephone service, were such that having reached a wrong number would strike no
one as in any way strange, but Brunetti was certain he had dialled the number
correctly. He dialled the number again, but this time it rang unanswered twelve
times before Brunetti replaced the receiver. He looked at the listing again and
made a note of the address. Then he checked the phone book for Morelli’s
pharmacy. The addresses were only a few numbers apart. He tossed the phone book
back into the drawer and kicked it shut. He closed the windows, went
downstairs, and left the Questura.

Ten minutes later, he walked out
from the
sottoportico
of Calle della Bissa and into Campo San Bartolomeo.
His eyes went up to the bronze statue of Goldoni, perhaps not his favourite
playwright, but certainly the one who could make him laugh the hardest,
especially when the plays were presented in their original Veneziano dialect,
as they always were here, in the city that swarmed to his plays and loved him
enough to put up this statue. Goldoni was in full stride, which made this
campo
the perfect place for him to be, for here, everyone rushed, always on their way
somewhere: across the Rialto Bridge to go to the vegetable market; from Rialto
to either the San Marco or the Cannaregio district. If people lived anywhere
near the heart of the city, its geography would pull them through San
Bartolomeo at least once a day.

When Brunetti got there, foot
traffic was at its height as people rushed to the market before it closed, or
they hurried home from work, the week finally over. Casually, he walked along
the east side of the
campo,
looking at the numbers painted above the
doors. As he had expected, the number was painted above an entrance-way two
doors to the right of the pharmacy. He stood for a moment in front of the panel
of bells beside the door and studied the names. The Bank of Verona was listed,
as were three other names with bells beside them, probably private apartments.

Brunetti rang the first bell
above the bank. There was no answer. The same happened with the second. He was
about to ring the top bell when he heard a woman’s voice behind him, asking in
purest Veneziano, ‘May I help you? Are you looking for someone who lives here?’

He turned away from the bells and
found himself looking down at a small old woman with an enormous shopping
trolley leaning against her leg. Remembering the name on the first bell, he
said, answering in the same dialect, ‘Yes, I’m here to see the Montinis. It’s
time for them to renew their insurance policy, and I thought I’d stop by and
see if they wanted to make any changes on the coverage.’

‘They’re not here,’ she said,
looking into an enormous handbag, hunting for her keys. ‘Gone to the mountains.
Same with the Gasparis, except they’re at Jesolo.’ Abandoning her hope of
touching or seeing the keys, she took the bag and shook it, bent on locating
them by sound. It worked, and she pulled out a bunch of keys as large as her
hand.

‘That’s what all this is,’ she
said, holding the keys up to Brunetti. ‘They’ve left me their keys, and I go in
and water the plants, see the place doesn’t fall down.’ She looked up from the
keys and at Brunetti’s face. Her eyes were a faded pale-blue, set in a round
face covered with a tracery of fine lines. ‘Do you have children, Signore?’

‘Yes, I do,’ he responded
immediately.

‘Names and ages?’

‘Raffaele’s sixteen, and Chiara’s
thirteen, Signora.’

‘Good,’ she said, as though he
had passed some sort of test. ‘You’re a strong young man. Do you think you
could carry that cart up to the third floor for me? If you don’t, then I’ll
have to make at least three trips to get it all up there. My son and his family
are coming to lunch tomorrow, so I’ve had to get a lot of things.’

‘I’d be very glad to help you,
Signora,’ he said, bending down to pick up the cart, which must have weighed
fifteen kilos. ‘Is it a big family?’

‘My son and his wife and their
children. Two of them are bringing the great-grandchildren, so there’ll be, let’s
see, there’ll be ten of us.’

She opened the door and held it
open while Brunetti slipped past her with the cart. She pushed on the timed
light and started up the steps ahead of him. ‘You wouldn’t believe what they
charged me for peaches. Middle of August, and they’re still charging three
thousand lire a kilo. But I got them anyway; Marco likes to cut his up in red
wine before lunch and then have it as dessert. And fish. I wanted to get a
rombo,
but it cost too much. Everyone likes a good boiled
bosega,
so
that’s what I got, but he still wanted ten thousand lire a kilo. Three fish and
it cost me almost forty thousand lire.’ She stopped at the first landing, just
outside the door to the Bank of Verona, and looked down at Brunetti. ‘When I
was a girl, we gave
bosega
to the cat, and here I am, paying ten
thousand lire a kilo for it.’

She turned and started up the
next flight. ‘You’re carrying it by the handles, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Signora.’

‘Good, because I have a kilo of
figs right on the top, and I wouldn’t want them to be crushed.’

‘No, they’re all right, Signora.’

‘I went to Casa del Parmigiana
and got some
prosciutto
to go with the figs. I’ve known Giuliano since
he was a boy. He’s got the best
prosciutto
in Venice, don’t you think?’

‘My wife always goes there,
Signora.’

‘Costs
l’ira di dio,
but
it’s worth it, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, Signora.’

They were at the top. She still
carried the keys, so she didn’t have to hunt for them again. She opened the
single lock on the door and pushed it open, letting Brunetti into a large
apartment with four tall windows, closed and shuttered now, that opened on to
the
campo.

She led the way through the
living-room, a room familiar from Brunetti’s youth: fat armchairs and a sofa
with horsehair stuffing that scratched at whoever sat down; massive dark brown
credenzas, their tops covered with silver candy bowls and silver-framed photos;
the floor of poured Venetian pavement that glistened, even in the dim light. He
could have been in his grandparents’ house.

The kitchen was the same. The
sink was stone, and an immense cylindrical water-heater sat in one corner. The
kitchen table had a marble surface, and he could see her both rolling out pasta
and ironing on the surface.

‘Just put it there, by the door,’
she said. ‘Would you like a glass of something?’

‘Water would be nice, Signora.’

As he knew she would, she reached
down a small silver salver from the top of the cabinet, placed a small round
lace doily on it, then set a Murano wineglass on top of it. From the
refrigerator, she took a bottle of mineral water and filled the glass.

‘Grazie infinite,’
he said before he drank the
water. He set it carefully down on the centre of the doily and refused her
offer of more. ‘Would you like me to help you unpack it all, Signora?’

‘No, I know where everything is
and where it all goes. You’ve been very kind, young man. What’s your name?’

‘Brunetti, Guido.’

‘And you sell insurance?’

‘Yes, Signora.’

‘Well, thank you very much,’ she
said, placing his glass in the sink and reaching into the trolley.

Remembering what his real job
was, he asked, ‘Signora, do you always let people into the apartment with you
like this? Without knowing who they are?’

‘No, I’m not a fool. I don’t let
just anyone in,’ she replied. ‘I always see if they have children. And, of
course, they have to be Veneziano.’

Of course. When he thought about
it, her system was probably better than a lie detector or a security check. ‘Thank
you for the water, Signora. I’ll let myself out.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, bent over
her trolley, hunting for the figs.

He went down the first two
flights of stairs and stood on the landing above the door of the Bank of
Verona. He heard nothing at all, though occasionally a voice or a shout would
float up from the
campo.
In the dim light that filtered in through the
small windows of the staircase, he looked at his watch. A little after one. He
stood for another ten minutes and still heard nothing except odd, disjointed
sounds from the
campo.

He walked slowly down the stairs
and stood outside the door to the bank. Feeling not a little ridiculous, he
bent his head and put his eye against the horizontal keyhole of the metal
porta blindata.
From behind it, he could make out the faintest trace of
light, as if someone had forgotten to turn off a light when they closed the
shutters on Friday afternoon. Or as if someone were working inside on this
Saturday afternoon.

He went back up the steps and
leaned against the wall. After about ten minutes, he took his handkerchief from
his pocket and spread it on the second step above him, hiked up his trousers, and
sat down. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees and his chin on his
fists. After what seemed a long time, he got up, moved the handkerchief closer
to the wall, and sat down again, now leaning against the wall. No air
circulated, he had eaten nothing all day, and the heat battered at him. He
glanced down at his watch and saw that it was after two. He determined that he
would stay there until three and not a minute later.

At 3.40, still there but now
determined to leave at four, he heard a sharp sound from below. He stood and
backed up on to the second step. Below him, a door opened, but he remained
where he was. The door closed, a key turned in the lock, and footsteps sounded
on the stairs. Brunetti stuck his head out and looked down after the retreating
figure. In the dim light, he made out only a tall man in a dark suit, carrying
a briefcase. Short dark hair, a starched white collar just visible at the back
of his neck. The man turned and started down the next flight of stairs, but the
dim light of the stairwell revealed little about him. Brunetti moved silently
down behind him. At the door to the bank, Brunetti glanced in through the
keyhole, but it was now dark inside.

From below, he heard the sound of
the front door being opened and closed, and at the sound Brunetti ran down the
remaining steps. He paused at the door, opened it quickly, and stepped out into
the
campo.
For a moment, the bright sun blinded him, and he covered his
eyes with his hand. When he took it away, he swept his eyes across the
campo,
but all he saw were pastel sports clothes and white shirts. He
walked to the right and looked down Calle della Bissa, but there was no
dark-suited man there. He ran across the
campo
and looked down the
narrow
calle
that led to the first bridge, but he didn’t see the man.
There were at least five other
calli
that led off the
campo,
and
Brunetti realized the man would be long gone before he could check them all. He
decided to try the Rialto
embarcadero
: perhaps he had taken a boat.
Dodging past people and pushing others out of his way, he ran to the water’s
edge and then up towards the
embarcadero.
When he got there, a boat was
just leaving, heading towards him in the direction of San Marcuola and the
train station.