A Noble Radiance, Page 4

  5

  Though the man in Treviso who had headed the Lorenzoni kidnapping was unknown to Brunetti, he well remembered Gianpiero Lama, who had been in charge of that part of the investigation handled by the Venice police. Lama, a Roman who had come to Venice heralded by the successful arrest and subsequent conviction of a Mafia killer, had worked in the city for only two years before being promoted to the position of Vice-Questore and sent to Milan, where Brunetti believed him still to be.

  He and Brunetti had worked together, but neither of them had much enjoyed the experience. Lama had found his colleague too timid in the pursuit of crime and criminals, unwilling to take the kind of risks which Lama believed necessary. Since Lama had also thought it perfectly acceptable that the law sometimes be ignored, or even bent, in order to effect an arrest, it was not uncommon that the people he arrested were later released on some technicality discovered by the magistratura. But as this usually happened some time after Lama's original handling of the case, his behaviour was seldom viewed as the cause of the subsequent dismissal of the charges or the overturning of a conviction. The perceived audacity of Lama's behaviour had ignited his career, and like a flaring rocket he rose higher and ever higher, each promotion preparing the way for the next.

  Brunetti recalled that it was Lama who had interviewed the Lorenzoni boy's girlfriend, he who had failed to follow up either her or the father's suggestion that the kidnapping could have been a joke. Or if he had questioned them about it, Lama had failed to make any mention of it in his report

  Brunetti pulled the envelope towards him and began another list, this time of those people who might help him learn more, if not about the actual kidnapping, then about the Lorenzoni family. At the top of fiie list he automatically put the name of his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier. If anyone in the city would be sensitive to the delicate spider's web where nobility, business, and enormous wealth were interwoven, it was Count Orazio.

  Signorina Elettra's entrance distracted him momentarily from the list. ‘I called Cesare’ she said as she placed a folder on his desk. 'He took a look in his computer and found the date, so he says hell have no trouble in getting a copy of the tape. He’ll send it up by courier this afternoon.' Even before he could ask how she did it, Signorina Elettra answered. ‘It has nothing to do with me, Dottore.

  He said he's corning to Venice next month, and I think he wants to use his having spoken to me as an excuse to get in touch with Barbara again.'

  'And the courier?' Brunetti asked.

  'He said he'll put it down against the report RAI's doing on the airport road,' she said, reminding Brunetti of one of the most recent scandals. Billions had been paid to friends of the government officials who had arranged the planning and construction of the useless autostrada out to Venice's tiny airport. Some of them had subsequently been convicted of fraud, but the case was now caught up in the endless appeal process, while the ex-Minister who had made a fortune by masterminding the whole thing continued not only to receive his state pension, rumoured to be in excess of ten million lire a month, but was said to be off in Hong Kong, amassing yet another fortune.

  He pulled himself back from this reverie and looked up at Signorina Elettra. 'Please thank him for me,' Brunetti finally said.

  'Oh, no, Dottore, I think we should let him think we're the ones doing him a favour, giving him an excuse to get in touch with Barbara again. I even told him I'd say something to her about it, so he'd have an excuse to call her.'

  'And why is that?' Brunetti asked.

  She seemed surprised that Brunetti would not have seen it. 'In case we need him again. You never know, do you, when we might want to make use of a television network?' Remembering the last shambles of an election, when the owner of three of the largest television networks had used them shamelessly to advance his campaign, he waited for her comment. ‘I think it’s time the police, rather than the others, made use of them’

  Brunetti, always wary of political discussions, thought it best to demur, and so pulled the copy of the hie towards him and thanked her as she left.

  The phone rang before Brunetti could do anything more than think about making calls. When he answered it, he heard the familiar voice of his brother.

  'Ciao, Guido, come stai!’

  'Bene’ Brunetti answered, wondering why Sergio would call him at the Questura. His mind, and then his heart, fled to his mother. 'What's wrong, Sergio?'

  'Nothing, nothing at all. It's not about Mamma that I'm calling’ As it had managed to do since their childhood, Sergio's voice calmed him, assured him that all was well or soon would be. 'Well, not about her directly.'

  Brunetti said nothing.

  'Guido, I know you've gone to see Mamma the last two weekends. No, don't even say anything. I'm going on Sunday. But I want to ask you if you'd go the next two’

  'Of course,' Brunetti said.

  Sergio went on as though he hadn't heard. 'If s important, Guido. I wouldn't ask unless it were.'

  ‘I know that, Sergio. I'll go’ Having said that, Brunetti felt embarrassed to ask the reason.

  Sergio continued. ‘I got a letter today. Three weeks to get a letter here from Rome. Puttana Eva, I would walk here from Rome in less time than that. They had the fax number of the laboratory, but did they think to send a fax? No, the idiots sent it through the mails’

  From long experience, Brunetti knew that Sergio had to be headed off once he got on to the subject of any of the state's variously incompetent services. 'What was in the letter, Sergio?'

  'The invitation, of course. That's why I'm calling you’

  'For the conference on Chernobyl?'

  'Yes, they've asked us to read our paper. Well, Battestini will read it, since his name is on it, but he's asked me to explain my part of the research and to help answer questions afterwards. I didn't know until I got the invitation that we'd go. That's why I didn't call you until now, Guido.'

  Sergio, a researcher in a medical radiology lab, had been talking about this conference, it seemed, for years, though it was really no more than months. The damages wrought by the incompetencies of yet another state system could now no longer be hidden, and this had given rise to endless conferences on the effects of the explosion and subsequent fall-out, this latest one to be held in Rome next week. No one, Brunetti thought in his more cynical moments, dared to suggest that no further nuclear reactors be built or tests performed - here he silently cursed the French - but all rushed to the endless conferences to engage in collective hand-wringing and the exchange of terrible information.

  'I'm glad you're getting the chance to go, Sergio. Congratulations. Can Maria Grazia go with you?'

  ‘I don't know yet. She's almost finished with the place on the Giudecca, but someone's asked her to make plans and give an estimate for a complete restoration in a four-floor palazzo over in the Ghetto, and if she doesn't get them done by then, I doubt she'll be able to come.'

  'She trusts you to go to Rome by yourself?' Brunetti asked, knowing, even as he asked it, how foolish the question was. Similar in many things, i fratelli Brunetti shared a common uxoriousness which was often a source of humour among their friends.

  'If she gets the contract, I could go to the moon by myself, and she wouldn't even notice.'

  'What's your paper about?' Brunetti asked, knowing he was unlikely to understand the answer.

  'Oh, it's technical stuff, about fluctuations in red and white blood cell counts during the first weeks after exposure to fall-out or intense radiation. There are some people in Auckland we've been in touch with who are working on the same thing, and it seems that their results are identical to ours. That's one of the reasons I wanted to go to the conference - Battestini would have gone anyway, but this way someone else pays for us, and we get to see them and talk to them and compare results.'

  'Good, I'm happy for you. How long will you be gone?'

  The conference lasts six days, from Sunday until Friday, and then I might stay on in Rome for
two days more and not get back until Monday. Wait a minute; let me give you the dates.' Brunetti heard the flipping of pages, and then Sergio's voice was back. 'From the eighth until the sixteenth. I should be back the morning of the sixteenth. And, Guido, I'll go the next two Sundays.'

  'Don't be silly, Sergio. These things happen. I'll go while you're away, and then you go the Sunday after you get back, and I’ll go the next one. You've done the same for me’

  ‘I just don't want you to think I don't want to go and see her, Guido’

  ‘Let's not talk about that, all right, Sergio?' Brunetti asked, surprised how painful he still found the thought of his mother. He had tried for the last year, with singular lack of success, to tell himself that his mother, that bright-spirited woman who had raised them and loved them with unqualified devotion, had moved off to some other place, where she waited, still quick-witted and eager to smile, for that befuddled shell that was her body to come and join her so that they could drift off together to a final peace.

  1 don't like asking you, Guido’ his brother repeated, reminding Brunetti as he did of how careful Sergio had always been not to abuse his position as elder brother or the authority that position invested him with.

  Brunetti recalled a term his American colleagues were in the habit of using, and he 'stonewalled' his brother. 'Tell me about the kids, Sergio.'

  Sergio laughed outright at the way they'd fallen into the familiar pattern: his need to justify everything; his younger brother's refusal to find that necessary. 'Marco's almost finished with his military service; he’ll be home for four days at the end of the month. And Maria Luisa's speaking nothing but English so she’ll be ready to go to the Courtauld in the autumn. Crazy, isn't it, Guido, that she's got to go to England to study restoration?'

  Paola, Brunetti's wife, taught English Literature at the University of Ca Foscari. There was little his brother could tell him about the insanity of the Italian university system that Brunetti did not already know.

  'Is her English good enough?' he asked.

  'Better be, huh? If it isn't. I’ll send her to you and Paola for the summer.'

  'And what are we supposed to do, speak English all the time?'

  'Yes.'

  'Sorry, Sergio, we never use it unless we don't want the kids to know what we're saying. Both of them have taken so much of it in school that we can't even do that any more.'

  'Try Latin,' Sergio said with a laugh. 'You were always good at that.'

  ‘I'm afraid that was a long time ago,' said Brunetti sadly.

  Sergio, ever sensitive to things he couldn't name, caught his brother's mood. 'I'll call you before I leave, Guido.'

  'Good, stammi bene’ Brunetti said.

  'Ciao’ Sergio answered and was gone.

  During his life, Brunetti had often heard people begin sentences with, 'If it weren't for him . ; .' and he could not hear the words without substituting Sergio's name. When Brunetti, always the acknowledged scholar of the family, was eighteen, it was decided that there was not enough money to allow him to go to university and delay the time when he could begin to contribute to the family's income. He yearned to study the way some of his friends yearned for women, but he assented to this family decision and began to look for work. It was Sergio, newly engaged and newly employed in a medical laboratory as a technician, who agreed to contribute more to the family if it would mean that his younger brother would be allowed to study. Even then, Brunetti knew that it was the law he wanted to study, less its current application than its history and the reasons why it developed the way it had.

  Because there was no faculty of law at Ca Foscari, it meant that Brunetti would have to study at Padova, the cost of his commuting adding to the responsibility Sergio agreed to assume. Sergio's marriage was delayed for three years, during which time Brunetti quickly rose to the top of his class and began to earn some money by tutoring students younger than himself.

  Had he not studied, Brunetti would not have met Paola in the university library, and he would not have become a policeman. He sometimes wondered if he would have become the same man, if the things inside of him that he considered vital would have developed in the same way, had he, perhaps, become an insurance salesman or a city bureaucrat. Knowing idle speculation when he saw it, Brunetti reached for the phone and pulled it towards him.

  6

  Just as Brunetti had always thought it vulgar to ask Paola how many rooms there were in her family's palazzo and hence remained ignorant of that number, so too had he no idea of the exact number of phone lines going into Palazzo Falier. He knew three of the numbers: the more or less public one that was given out to all friends and business associates; the one given only to members of the family; and the Count's private number, which he had never found it necessary to use.

  He called the first, as this was hardly, an emergency or a matter of great privacy.

  'Palazzo Falier,' a male voice Brunetti had never heard responded on the third ring.

  'Good morning. This is Guido Brunetti. I'd like to speak to ...' here he paused for an instant, uncertain whether to call the Count by his title or to refer to him as his father-in-law.

  'He's on the other line, Doctor Brunetti. May I have him call you in...' It was the other man's turn to pause. 'The light's just gone out. I’ll connect you.'

  There followed a soft click, after which Brunetti heard the deep baritone of his father-in-law's voice, 'Falier.' Nothing more.

  'Good morning. It’s Guido.'

  The voice, as it had done of late, softened. 'Ah, Guido, how are you? And how are the children?'

  'We're all well. And both of you?' He couldn't call her 'Donatella', and he wouldn't call her ‘The Countess'.

  'Both well, thank you. What is it I can do for you?' The Count knew there could be no other reason for Brunetti's call.

  'I'd like to know whatever you can tell me about the Lorenzoni family.'

  During the ensuing silence, Brunetti could all but hear the Count sorting through the decades of information, scandal, and rumour which he possessed about most of the notables of the city. 'Why is it you're interested in them, Guido?' the Count asked, and then added, 'If you're at liberty to tell me’

  'The body of a young man's been dug up near Belluno. There was a ring in the grave with him. It has the Lorenzoni crest’

  'It could be the person who stole it from him’ the Count volunteered.

  It could pretty well be anyone,' Brunetti agreed. 'But I've been looking through the file of the original investigation of the kidnapping, and there are a few things I'd like to clear up if I could.'

  'Such as?' the Count asked.

  In the more than two decades that Brunetti had known the Count, he had never known him to be indiscreet; further, nothing Brunetti had to say could not be told to anyone interested in the investigation. 'Two people said they thought it was a joke. And the stone that was blocking the gate had to have been placed there from inside.'

  'I don't have a very clear memory of it, Guido. I think we were out of the country when it happened. It happened at their villa, didn't it?'

  'Yes,' Brunetti answered, and then from something in the Count's voice, asked, 'Have you been there?'

  'Once or twice.' The Count's tone was absolutely non-committal.

  'Then you know the gates’ Brunetti said, not wanting to ask directly about the Count's familiarity with the Lorenzonis. Not yet, at any rate.

  'Yes’ the Count answered. They open inward. There's a call box on the wall, and all a visitor has to do is push the bell and then announce himself. The gates can be opened from the house.'

  'Or from the outside if you have the code’ Brunetti added. "That's what his girlfriend tried to do, but the gates wouldn't open.'

  'The Valloni girl, wasn't it?' the Count asked.

  The name was familiar from the report 'Yes. Francesca.'

  'A pretty girl. We went to her wedding.'

  'Wedding?' Brunetti asked. 'How long ago was that?'
<
br />   'A little more than a year ago. She married that Salviati boy. Enrico, Fulvio's son; the one who likes speedboats’

  Brunetti grunted in acknowledgement of a vague memory he had of the boy. 'Did you know Roberto?'

  'I met him a few times. I didn't think very much of him’

  Brunetti wondered if it was the Count's social position that allowed him to speak ill of the dead, or the fact that the boy had been gone for two years, my not?'

  'Because he had all the pride of his father and none of his talent.'

  'What sort of talent does Count Ludovico have?'

  He heard a noise from the other end of the phone, as though a door had closed, and then the Count said, 'Excuse me a moment, Guido’ A few seconds passed, after which he returned to the phone and said, I'm sorry, Guido, but a fax has just come in, and I'm afraid I have to make some calls while my agent in Mexico City is still in the office’

  Brunetti wasn't sure, but he thought Mexico City was about half a day behind them. Isn't it the middle of the night there?'

  'Yes. He's paid to be there, and I want to get him before he leaves.'

  'Oh, I see’ Brunetti said. 'When may I call you again?'

  The Count's answer came quickly. 'Is there any chance we could meet for lunch, Guido? There are some things I've been wanting to talk to you about. Perhaps we could do both.'

  'Gladly. When?'

  'Today. Is that too soon?'

  'No, not at all. I’ll call Paola and tell her. Would you like her to come?'

  'No,' the Count said, almost sharply, and then added, 'Some of the things I want to discuss concern her, so I'd prefer she not be there’

  Confused, Brunetti said only, 'All right. Where shall we meet?' expecting the Count to name one of the famous restaurants in the city.

  'There's a place over near Campo del Ghetto. The daughter of a friend of mine and her husband run it, and the food's very good. If it’s not too far for you, we could meet there’