Dressed for Death (34 page)

Ratti got to his feet. ‘I’d like
some time to speak to my wife. In private.’

‘No,’ Brunetti said, raising his
voice for the first time.

‘I have that right,’ Ratti
demanded.

‘You have the right to speak to
your lawyer, Signor Ratti, and I will gladly allow you to do that. But you and
your wife will decide that other matter now, in front of me.’ He was way beyond
his legal rights, and he knew it; his only hope was that the Rattis did not.

They looked at one another for so
long that Brunetti lost hope. But then she nodded her burgundy head and they
both sat back down in their chairs.

‘All right,’ Ratti said, ‘but I
want to make it clear that we know nothing about this murder.’

‘Murders,’ Brunetti said and saw
that Ratti was shaken by the correction.

‘Three years ago,’ Ratti began, ‘a
friend of ours in Milano told us he knew someone he thought could help us find
an apartment in Venice. We had been looking for about six months, but it was
very difficult to find anything, especially at that distance.’ Brunetti
wondered if he was going to have to listen to a series of complaints. Ratti,
perhaps sensing Brunetti’s impatience, continued, ‘He gave us a phone number we
could call, a number here in Venice. We called and explained what we wanted,
and the person on the other end asked us what sort of apartment we had in mind
and how much we wanted to pay.’ Ratti paused, or did he stop?

‘Yes?’ Brunetti urged, his voice
just the same as that priest’s had been when the children had some question or
uncertainty about the catechism.

‘I told him what I had in mind,
and he said he’d call me back in a few days. He did, and said he had three
apartments to show us, if we could come to Venice that weekend. When we came,
he showed us this apartment and two others.’

‘Was he the same man who answered
the phone when you called?’

‘I don’t know. But it was
certainly the same man who called us back.’

‘Do you know who the man was? Or
is?’

‘It’s the man we pay the rent to,
but I don’t know his name.’

‘And how do you do that?’

‘He calls us in the last week of
the month and tells us where to meet him. It’s usually a bar, though sometimes,
during the summer, it’s outside.’

‘Where, here in Venice or in
Milano?’

His wife interrupted. ‘He seems
to know where we are. He calls us here if we’re in Venice or Milano if we’re
there.’

‘And then what do you do?’

Ratti answered this time. ‘I meet
him and I give him the money.’

‘How much?’

‘Two and a half million lire.’

‘A month?’

‘Yes, though sometimes I give him
a few months in advance.’

‘Do you know who this man is?’
Brunetti asked.

‘No, but I’ve seen him on the
street here a few times.’

Brunetti realized there would be
time to get a description later and let that pass. ‘And what about the Lega?
How are they involved?’

‘When we told this man that we
were interested in the apartment, he suggested a price, but we bargained him
down to two and a half million.’ Ratti said this with ill-disguised
self-satisfaction.

‘And the Lega?’ Brunetti asked.

‘He told us that we would receive
application forms from the Lega and that we were to fill them out and return
them, and that we would be able to move into the apartment within two weeks of
that.’

Signora Ratti broke in here. ‘He
also told us not to tell anyone about how we had got the apartment.’

‘Has anyone asked you?’

‘Some friends of ours in Milano,’
she answered, ‘but we told them we found it through a rental agency.’

‘And the person who gave you the
number - do you know how he got it?’

‘He told us someone had given it
to him at a party.’

‘Do you remember the month and
year when you made that original call?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Why?’ Ratti asked, immediately
suspicious.

‘I’d like to have a clearer idea
of when this began,’ Brunetti lied, thinking that he could have their phone
records checked for calls to Venice at that time.

Though he looked and sounded
sceptical, Ratti answered. ‘It was in March, two years ago. Towards the end of
the month. We moved in here at the beginning of May.’

‘I see,’ said Brunetti. ‘And
since you’ve been living in the apartment, have you had anything to do with the
Lega?’

‘No, nothing,’ Ratti said.

‘What about receipts?’ Brunetti
asked.

Ratti shifted uncomfortably in
his chair. ‘We get one from the bank every month.’

‘For how much?’

‘Two hundred and twenty thousand.’

‘Then why didn’t you want to show
it to Sergeant Vianello?’

His wife broke in again and
answered for him. ‘We didn’t want to get involved in anything.’

‘Mascari?’ Brunetti suddenly
asked.

Ratti’s nervousness seemed to
increase. ‘What do you mean?’

‘When the director of the bank
that sent you the receipts for the rent was killed, you didn’t find it strange?’

‘No, why should I?’ Ratti said,
putting anger into his voice. ‘I read about how he died. I assumed he was
killed by one of his “tricks”.’

‘Has anyone been in touch with
you recently about the apartment?’

‘No, no one.’

‘If you should happen to receive
a call or perhaps a visit from the man you pay the rent to, I expect you to
call us immediately.’

‘Yes, of course, Commissario,’
Ratti said, restored to his role as irreproachable citizen.

Suddenly sick of them, their
posing, their designer clothes, Brunetti said, ‘You can go downstairs with
Sergeant Vianello. Please give him as detailed a description as you can of the
man you pay the rent to.’ Then, to Vianello, ‘If it sounds like anyone we might
know, let them take a look at some pictures.’

Vianello nodded and opened the
door. The Rattis both stood, but neither made any effort to shake Brunetti’s
hand. The professor took his wife’s arm for the short trip to the door, then
stood back to allow her to pass through it in front of him. Vianello glanced
across at Brunetti, allowed himself the smallest of smiles, and followed them
out of the office, closing the door after them.

* * * *

Chapter Twenty-Four

His
conversation with Paola that night was short. She asked if there was any news,
repeated her suggestion that she come down for a few days; she thought she
could leave the children alone at the hotel, but Brunetti told her it was too
hot even to think of coming to the city.

He spent the rest of the evening
in the company of the Emperor Nero, whom Tacitus described as being ‘corrupted
by every lust, natural and unnatural’. He went to sleep only after reading the
description of the burning of Rome, which Tacitus seemed to attribute to Nero’s
having gone through a marriage ceremony with a man, during which the emperor
shocked even the members of his dissolute court by ‘putting on the bridal veil’.
Everywhere, transvestites.

The next morning, Brunetti,
ignorant of the fact that the story of Burrasca’s arrest had appeared in that
morning’s
Corriere,
a story that made no mention of Signora Patta,
attended the funeral of Maria Nardi. The Chiesa dei Gesuiti was crowded, filled
with her friends and family and with most of the police of the city. Officer
Scarpa from Mestre attended, explaining that Sergeant Gallo could not get away
from the trial in Milan and would be there for at least another three days.
Even Vice-Questore Patta attended, looking sombre in a dark blue suit. Though
he knew it was a sentimental and no doubt politically incorrect view, Brunetti
could not rid himself of the idea that it was worse for a woman to die in the
course of police duty than a man. When the Mass was finished, he waited on the
steps of the church while the coffin was carried out by six uniformed
policemen. When her husband emerged, weeping brokenly and staggering with
grief, Brunetti turned his eyes to the left and looked out across the waters of
the
laguna
towards Murano. He was still standing there when Vianello
came up to him and touched him on the arm.

‘Commissario?’

He came back. ‘Yes, Vianello?’

‘I’ve got a probable
identification from those people.’

‘When did that happen? Why didn’t
you tell me?’

‘I didn’t know until this
morning. Yesterday afternoon, they looked at a number of pictures, but they
said they weren’t sure. I think they were but wanted to talk to their lawyer.
In any case, they were back in this morning, at nine, and they identified
Pietro Malfatti.’

Brunetti gave a silent whistle.
Malfatti had been in and out of their hands for years; he had a record for
violent crimes, among them rape and attempted murder, but the accusations
seemed always to dissipate before Malfatti came to trial, when witnesses
changed their minds or said that they had been wrong in their original
identification. He had been sent away twice, once for living off the earnings
of a prostitute, and once for attempting to extort protection money from the
owner of a bar. The bar had burned down during the two years Malfatti was in
jail.

‘Did they identify him
positively?’

‘Both of them were pretty sure.’

‘Do we have an address for him?’

‘The last address we had was an
apartment in Mestre, but he hasn’t lived there for more than a year.’

‘Friends? Women?’

‘We’re checking.’

‘What about relatives?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that. It
ought to be in his file.’

‘See who he’s got. If it’s
someone close, a mother or a brother, get someone into an apartment near them
and watch for him. No,’ he said, remembering what little he knew of Malfatti’s
history, ‘get two.’

‘Yes, sir. Anything else?’

‘The papers from the bank and
from the Lega?’

‘Both of them are supposed to
give us their records today.’

‘I want them. I don’t care if you
have to go in there and take them. I want all the records that have to do with
the payments of money for these apartments, and I want everyone in that bank
interviewed to see if Mascari said anything to them about the Lega. At any
time. If you have to ask the judge to go with you to get them, then do it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘When you go to the bank, try to
find out whose job it was to oversee the accounts of the Lega.’

‘Ravanello?’ Vianello asked.

‘Probably.’

‘We’ll see what we can find out.
What about Santomauro, sir?’

‘I’m going to speak to him today.’

‘Is that...’ Vianello stopped
himself before asking if that was wise and asked, instead, ‘Is that possible,
without an appointment?’