Falling in Love (21 page)

‘It might be a woman,’ Brunetti finally said, and explained about the theft of Flavia’s address book and the phone call from an unknown woman to her friend in Paris.

Griffoni shot him a surprised glance, then turned to consult the Cyclops. She crossed her legs and let her shoe, which had an inordinately high heel, dangle from her toe. She swung it up and down, apparently unconscious of what she was doing. First Signorina Elettra’s tie, and now this shoe. Brunetti found himself wondering what Petrarch would have done had Laura worn those shoes or that dark tie. Written a sonnet to them? Turned away in horror from such unseemly dress?

He was trying to compose the third line of a sonnet to the shoe when Griffoni said, ‘I suppose it could be.’

Brunetti abandoned his search for a rhyme for ‘
scarpa
’, happy to do so because he feared ‘
arpa
’ would not aid in the expression of deep sentiments, however much the harp would sit comfortably in a sonnet.

‘Flavia Petrelli said that it’s female fans who make her nervous because they want something from her.’

‘Do you think that’s because of her sexual history?’ Griffoni asked, as if inquiring about hair colour.

‘I don’t know,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I have no idea how women think.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘That probably depends on the woman,’ she said, adding, ‘If this fan is a woman, she’s hardly representative of the species.’

‘Probably not,’ Brunetti temporized.

‘I meant only that we aren’t prone to violence, and this one seems to be.’ She looked out the window, as if pursuing the thought. ‘But she’s not very good at it, is she?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Assuming she pushed the girl,’ she began, ‘she didn’t do a very thorough job. She took a look and walked away.’

‘Meaning?’ Brunetti asked.

She looked back at him when she answered. ‘I’d guess it means she didn’t want to kill her, only hurt her or threaten her. Or maybe she had second thoughts. God knows what’s in her mind.’

Brunetti was interested by the way both of them had fallen so easily into changing the pronoun they used to describe the assailant. There was no proof, only the voice of the person who made the phone call to Flavia’s friend in Paris, and that could just as easily have been a real friend, calling to ask where Flavia was.

He wondered if he and Claudia were giving in to the thinking that characterized former centuries: bizarre behaviour was all womb-driven, hysteria, failure to find a man.

‘I think I’ll go to lunch,’ he said and got to his feet.

She looked at her watch and stood too. They went down the stairs together, Brunetti amazed that she managed to walk so easily on heels so high they would have catapulted him down the stairs unless he chose to walk sideways and one stair at a time. What talented creatures they were, women.

21

Brunetti remained distracted all during lunch, still resisting the idea of a violent woman. He had known some in the past, had even arrested some, but he had never encountered one in, as it were, his real life.

The family chattered around him quite happily, distracted from his silence first by lentils with hot salami and candied currants and then by veal roll filled with sweet sausage. Even though Brunetti especially loved the lentils, he did little more than tell Paola they were wonderful before lapsing back into consideration of what, for him, remained an oxymoron: a violent woman.

He ate his crème caramel and for once did not ask for more. Paola said she’d bring coffee into the living room or – if he thought it was warm enough – they could drink it on the terrace.

It wasn’t warm enough, so Brunetti went to the sofa and thought about literature. When Paola joined him a few minutes later, two cups of coffee on a wooden tray, he asked her, ‘Can you think of violent women in literature?’

‘Violent?’ she asked. ‘Murderously violent, or just violent?’

‘Preferably the first,’ he answered and took his coffee.

Paola spooned sugar into hers and went to stand by the window, looking out at the bell tower. She stirred the spoon round a few times and then continued stirring until the noise began to grate on Brunetti’s nerves. He was just about to ask her to stop when she turned to him and said, ‘The first that comes to mind is Tess of the D’Urbervilles, but God knows she’s got cause.’ She picked up her cup and raised it to her lips, then replaced it on the saucer, untasted. ‘There’s Mrs Rochester, but she’s mad, and I suppose Balzac is full of them, but it’s been so long since I read him that I don’t remember. I’m sure the Russians, and probably the Germans, have them, but none comes to mind.’

She finally took a sip and asked, ‘What about Dante? You’re better on him than I am.’

Brunetti looked at his cup and hoped she had not seen his flash of surprise, quickly replaced by delight, at her compliment. He, a better reader? He sat back and crossed his legs. ‘No,’ he said easily, ‘I can’t think of a single one. Francesca got slammed away for adultery, and Thaïs is there for flattery. Medusa and the Harpies probably don’t count.’

How interesting – he’d either forgotten it or never considered it – how easily women got off in Dante. Well, he was another one of those guys in love with a woman he barely knew, though Brunetti thought better of pointing this out to Paola and risk having her take a whack at another pillar of Italian culture. ‘If anything, he defends them: why else punish the Panderers and Seducers?’

She came back to set her cup on the tray. ‘Can’t you think of any more?’ he asked.

‘There are lots of unpleasant ones who do very nasty things to people: Dickens is full of them.’ She raised a hand in the air, reminding him of an Annunciation they had seen in the Uffizi. ‘Ah,’ she said, as the Virgin had probably whispered. ‘There’s the French maid in
Bleak House
.’ She stood, awaiting Illumination, while he watched her scroll through the collected works of Charles Dickens, stopping at
Bleak House
to page through to the scene. He saw the memory grace her, whereupon she turned to him and said, ‘Hortense.’

Brunetti spent the time it took him to walk back to the Questura trying to understand how it was done. It was not a party trick, nor did Paola show off, ever, her ability to recall what she had read. Well, he had known men who could give a play-by-play account of every soccer game they had ever seen, so perhaps it was a skill more common than he knew. He certainly remembered the clever things he heard people say, and he remembered faces.

He was two minutes from the Questura, the canal already in sight, when his phone rang. He recognized Vianello’s number. ‘What is it, Lorenzo?’

‘Where are you?’ the Inspector demanded.

‘Almost at the front door. Why?’

‘I’ll meet you there. Get on the boat.’ Before Brunetti could question him, Vianello was gone. Brunetti turned the corner and heard the boat before he saw it, in front of the Questura, with Foa at the wheel.

Vianello, wearing his uniform, catapulted from the door and jumped on to the boat without bothering to look in Brunetti’s direction. Spurred by this, Brunetti ran the last twenty metres and leaped aboard without thinking.

‘Go,’ Vianello said, clapping Foa on the back. The boat, already unmoored, slid from the dock. Foa turned on the siren; they picked up speed and headed towards the
bacino
. Vianello grabbed Brunetti by the arm and pulled him down the steps and into the cabin, closing the swinging doors behind them in a vain attempt to block out the sound of the siren.

‘What is it?’

‘A man was stabbed in the parking garage at Piazzale Roma,’ Vianello said, sitting opposite him, leaning forward, hands clasped on the edge of the velvet-covered seats.

As they turned into the open water, Brunetti asked, ‘Why aren’t we going to the hospital?’

‘When they called, there was no ambulance there to go and get him, so they took him to the hospital in Mestre.’

‘How can that be?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Sanitrans had an ambulance there already, delivering a patient back from Padova, so they drove into the garage to get him.’

‘Who is it?’

‘I think he’s a friend of yours.’

Cold fingers grasping at his heart, Brunetti asked, ‘What friend?’

‘Federico d’Istria.’

‘Freddy?’ he asked, recalling the last time he’d seen him. On the bridge. With Flavia. Brunetti stayed very still. Freddy had been stabbed, Freddy, who’d met Paola when they were six and had decided to call her Poppie, a name she’d hated then and which could still drive her wild. ‘How bad is he?’ he asked in a voice he fought to keep level.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘We got the call about fifteen minutes ago, but he was already on his way to the hospital.’

‘Who called?’

‘The people at the garage,’ Vianello answered. ‘They said a man had been stabbed and left near his car. He managed to crawl out into the aisle, and someone saw him and called them, and they called the hospital and then us.’

Brunetti had to fight to make what he heard have a meaning. ‘So he’s still on his way there?’ he asked.

Vianello glanced at his watch. ‘No, it was longer ago than that. A half-hour: he should be there by now.’

Brunetti started to reach for his phone, but then spread his palm flat on his thigh. ‘Will there be a car?’ he asked, thinking of Piazzale Roma and the ride out to the hospital.

‘It’s already waiting,’ Vianello assured him.

‘They didn’t tell you anything?’ Brunetti was unable to stop himself from asking.

Vianello shook his head. ‘Nothing. I called the hospital and asked them to call the men in the ambulance, but they refused. Said we’d find out when we got there.’

‘Did they call his wife?’

‘I don’t know.’

Brunetti took out his phone and scrolled through the numbers until he found Silvana’s, but on the seventh ring an impersonal female voice gave him the option of leaving a message. He couldn’t bring himself to leave a message or send an SMS.

‘How’d you know he’s a friend of mine?’ he asked Vianello.

‘You mentioned him last year when you went to the reunion of your class at
liceo
: you said he was there.’

‘Why would you remember something like that?’ Brunetti asked, honestly puzzled.

‘Nadia’s mother was his parents’ cook – this was ages ago – and I remember she said he was a nice little boy.’

Brunetti’s fingers entwined themselves and he leaned forward, stabbing them between his legs. Head lowered, he said, ‘I didn’t know him when he was a little boy. But he’s a very nice man.’

The only sound for the next few minutes was the siren, and then the motor slowed and they were at Piazzale Roma. Forgetting to thank Foa, Brunetti jumped from the boat and ran up the steps to the roadway. The blue car with its flashing light was there; he and Vianello got in, and Brunetti told the driver to use the siren.

It took twelve minutes. Brunetti knew because he timed it, urging them around a slow-moving bus and a bicycle that had no business to be on the road. The driver remained silent, concentrating on the traffic. They took a new turn-off, and within seconds Brunetti was completely lost. He looked out of the window, but everything he saw was ugly, so he shifted his eyes to the back of the driver’s head. At a certain point, the car stopped, and the driver turned to look at him. ‘We’re here, Commissario.’

Brunetti thanked him and went into the hospital, which was only a few years old but already looking a bit worn. Vianello led the way deeper into the central part of the building. The second time someone in a white uniform asked who they were, Vianello pulled out his warrant card and held it in front of them, waving it back and forth as though it were a talisman that would ward off evil. Brunetti hoped it was.

The Inspector pushed open the doors to the Emergency Ward and, still holding out his identification, stopped the first person he saw, a tall woman with a stethoscope around her neck. ‘Where’s the man who was just brought in?’

‘Which one?’ she asked. She was very tall, taller than either of them, and sounded harassed and impatient.

‘The one who was stabbed,’ Vianello answered.

‘He’s in surgery.’

‘How bad is he?’ Brunetti asked. She turned to look at him, wondering which of them was in charge, and Brunetti pulled out his own warrant card. ‘Commissario Brunetti. Venice.’

She gave him a level look, and it came to him to wonder if people who have great experience of human pain develop a defensive coolness they can project from their eyes. She pointed to a row of orange plastic chairs, most of them already occupied, and said, ‘You can wait over there.’ Seeing their reluctance, she added, ‘Or you can go and find some other place if you prefer.’

‘Here is fine,’ Brunetti said and tried to smile. Then, as a concession, he added, ‘We’d be grateful for any information you can give us.’

She turned and left the room. Brunetti and Vianello went and sat in the only two adjoining chairs that were free. To their right, a young man with blood on his face held one swollen hand upright in the other; on their left sat a young woman with her eyes closed, mouth twisted with pain.