Dressed for Death (25 page)

‘And where was that, if I might
ask?’ he said, thinking of insurance agencies, perhaps an accountant’s office.

‘For the Banca d’ltalia,’ she
said, as much to the screen as to Brunetti.

He raised his eyebrows. She
glanced up and, seeing his expression, explained. ‘I was an assistant to the
president.’

One didn’t have to be a banker or
a mathematician to work out the drop in salary that a change like this meant.
Further, for most Italians, a job in a bank represented absolute security;
people waited years to be accepted on the staff of a bank, any bank, and Banca
d’ltalia was certainly the most desirable. And she was now working as a
secretary for the police? Even with flowers twice a week from Fantin, it made
no sense. Given the fact that she would work, not just for the police, but for
Patta, it seemed an act of sovereign madness.

‘I see,’ he said, though he didn’t.
‘I hope you’ll be happy with us.’

‘I’m sure I will be, Commissario,’
Signorina Elettra said. ‘Is there any other information you’d like me to find?’

‘No, not at the moment, thank
you,’ Brunetti said and left her to go back to his office. Using the outside
line, he dialled the number of the hotel in Bolzano and asked to speak to
Signora Brunetti.

Signora Brunetti, he was told,
had gone for a walk and was not expected to be back at the hotel before dinner.
He left no message, merely identified himself and hung up.

The phone rang almost
immediately. It was Padovani, calling from Rome, apologetic about the fact that
he had succeeded in learning nothing further about Santomauro. He had called
friends, both in Rome and in Venice, but everyone seemed to be away on
vacation, and he had done no more than leave a series of messages on answering
machines, requesting that his friends call him but not explaining why he wanted
to speak to them. Brunetti thanked him and asked him to call if he did learn
anything further.

After he hung up, Brunetti pushed
the papers on his desk around until he found the one he wanted, the autopsy
report on Mascari, and read through it carefully again. On the fourth page he
found what he was looking for. ‘Some scratches and cuts on the legs, no sign of
epidermal bleeding. Scratches no doubt caused by the sharp edges on - ‘ and
here the pathologist had done a bit of showing off by giving the Latin name of
the grass in which Mascari’s body had been hidden.

Dead people can’t bleed; there is
no pressure to carry the blood to the surface. This was one of the simple
truths of pathology that Brunetti had learned. If those scratches had been
caused by, and here he repeated out loud the orotund syllables of the Latin name,
then they would not have bled, for Mascari was dead when his body was shoved
under those leaves. But if his legs had been shaved by someone else, after he
was dead, then they would not have bled, either.

Brunetti had never shaved any
part of his body except his face, but he had, for years, been witness to this
process as performed by Paola, as she attempted to run a razor over calf,
ankle, knee. He had lost count of the times that he had heard muttered curses
from the bathroom, only to see Paola emerge with a piece of toilet paper
sticking to some segment of her limb. Paola had been shaving her legs regularly
since he knew her; she still cut herself when she did it. It seemed unlikely
that a middle-aged man could achieve this feat with greater success than Paola
and shave his legs without cutting them. He tended to believe that, to a
certain degree, most marriages were pretty similar. Hence, if Brunetti were
suddenly to begin to shave his legs, Paola would know it immediately. It seemed
to Brunetti unlikely that Mascari could have shaved his legs and not have his
wife notice, even if he didn’t call her while away on business trips.

He glanced at the autopsy report
again: ‘No evidence of bleeding on any of the cuts on victim’s legs or traces
of wax.’ No, Signor Mascari, regardless of the red dress and the red shoes,
regardless of the make-up and the underwear, had not shaved or waxed his own
legs before he died. And so that must mean that someone had done it for him
after he was dead.

* * * *

Chapter Nineteen

He
sat in his office, hoping that a late afternoon breeze would spring up and
bring some relief, but the hope proved to be as futile as his hope that he
would begin to see some connection between all the random factors of the case.
It was clear to him that the whole business of the transvestism was an
elaborate posthumous charade, designed to pull attention away from whatever the
real motive had been for Mascari’s death. That meant that Ravanello, the only
person to have heard Mascari’s ‘confession’, was lying and probably knew
something about the murder. But, though Brunetti found no difficulty in
believing that bankers did, in fact, kill people, he couldn’t bring himself to
believe that they would do it merely as a short cut to promotion.

Ravanello had been in no way
reluctant to admit to having been in the bank’s office that weekend; in fact,
he had volunteered the information. And with Mascari just identified, his
reason made sense - what any good friend would do. Moreover, what any loyal
employee would do.

Still, why hadn’t he identified
himself on the phone on Saturday, why kept secret, even from some unknown
caller, that he was in the bank that afternoon?

His phone rang and, still musing
on this, still dulled with the heat, he gave his name. ‘Brunetti.’

‘I need to talk to you,’ a man’s
voice said. ‘In person.’

‘Who is this?’ Brunetti asked
calmly.

‘I’d rather not say over the
phone,’ answered the voice.

‘Then I’d rather not talk to you,’
Brunetti said and hung up.

This response usually stunned
callers so much that they felt they had no option but to call back. Within
minutes, the phone rang again, and Brunetti answered in the same way.

‘It’s very important,’ the same
voice said.

‘So is it that I know who I’m
talking to,’ Brunetti said quite conversationally.

‘We talked last week.’

‘I talked to a lot of people last
week, Signor Crespo, but very few of them have called me and said they wanted
to see me.’

Crespo was silent for a long
time, and Brunetti feared for a moment that it might be his turn to be hung up
on, but instead, the young man said, ‘I want to meet you and talk to you.’

‘We are talking, Signor Crespo.’

‘No, I have some things I want to
give you, some photos and some papers.’

‘What sort of papers and what
sort of photos?’

‘You’ll know when you see them.’

‘What does this have to do with,
Signor Crespo?’

‘With Mascari. The police got it
all wrong about him.’

Brunetti was of the opinion that
Crespo was correct about this, but he thought he’d keep that opinion to
himself.

‘What have we got wrong?’

‘I’ll tell you when I see you.’

Brunetti could tell from Crespo’s
voice that he was running out of courage or whatever other emotion had led him
to make the call. ‘Where do you want to meet me?’

‘How well do you know Mestre?’

‘Well enough.’ Besides, he could
always ask Gallo or Vianello.

‘Do you know the parking lot at
the other side of the tunnel to the train station?’

It was one of the few places
where someone could park for free in the vicinity of Venice. All anyone had to
do was park in the lot or along the tree-lined street that led to the tunnel
and then duck into the entrance and up on to the platforms for the trains to
Venice. Ten minutes by train, no parking fee, and no waiting in line to park or
pay at Tronchetto.

‘Yes, I know it.’

I’ll meet you there, tonight.’

‘What time?’

‘Not until late. I’ve got
something to do first, and I don’t know when I’ll be finished.’

‘What time?’

‘I’ll be there by one this
morning.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘When you come up out of the
tunnel, go down to the first street and turn left. I’ll be parked on the right
side in a light blue Panda.’

‘Why did you ask about the
parking lot?’

‘Nothing. I just wanted to know
if you knew about it. I don’t want to be in the parking lot. It’s too well lit.’

‘All right, Signor Crespo, I’ll
meet you.’

‘Good,’ Crespo said and hung up
before Brunetti could say anything more.

Well, Brunetti wondered, who had
put Signor Crespo up to making that particular call? He did not for an instant
believe that Crespo had made the call for his own purposes or designs - someone
like Crespo would never have called back - but that in no way diminished his
curiosity to know what the call had really been about. The most likely
conclusion was that someone wanted to deliver a threat, or perhaps something
stronger, and what better way to do that than to lure him out on to a public
street at one in the morning?

He phoned the Mestre Questura and
asked to speak to Sergeant Gallo, only to be told that the sergeant had been
sent to Milan for a few days to give evidence in a court case. Did he want to
speak to Sergeant Buffo, who was handling Sergeant Gallo’s work? Brunetti said
no and hung up.

He called Vianello and asked him
to come up to his office. When the sergeant came in, Brunetti asked him to sit
down and told him about Crespo’s call and his own to Gallo. ‘What do you think?’
Brunetti asked.

‘I’d say they’re, well, somebody’s
trying to get you out of Venice and into an open space where you’re not well
protected. And if there’s any protecting to be done, it’s going to have to be
done by our boys.’

‘What means would they use?’

‘Well, it could be someone
sitting in a car, but they’d know we’ll have people there. Or it could be a car
or a motorcycle that came by, either to run you down or to take a shot at you.’

‘Bomb?’ Brunetti asked, shivering
involuntarily at the memory of the photos he’d seen of the wreckage left by the
bombs that had destroyed politicians and judges.

‘No, I don’t think you’re that
important,’ Vianello said. Cold comfort, but comfort nevertheless.

‘Thanks. I’d say it will probably
be someone who will drive by.’

‘So what do you want to do?’

‘I’d like people in at least two
of the houses, one at the beginning and one at the end of the street. And, if you
can get someone to volunteer for it, someone in the back seat of a car. It’ll
be hell, being inside a closed car in this heat. That’s already three people. I
don’t think I can assign more than that.’

‘Well, I won’t fit in a back
seat, and I don’t think I’d much like just sitting in a house and having to
watch, but I think I might park around the corner, if I can get one of the
women officers to come with me, and make love for a while.’

‘Perhaps Signora Elettra would be
willing to volunteer,’ Brunetti said and laughed.

Vianello’s voice was sharp, as
sharp as it had ever been. ‘I’m not joking, Commissario. I know that street; my
aunt from Treviso always leaves her car there when she comes to visit, and I
always take her back. I often see people in cars there, so one or two more won’t
make any difference.’

Brunetti had it on his lips to
ask how Nadia would view this, but he thought better of it and, instead, said, ‘All
right, but she has to be a volunteer for this. If there’s any danger, I don’t
like the idea of a woman being involved.’ Before Vianello could object,
Brunetti added, ‘Even if she is a police officer.’