Falling in Love (24 page)

‘No, nothing at all. Just what I’ve heard from fans for years. It had nothing to do with what she said: it was about the way she
was
.
Is
.’

A dull noise came from outside the room, freezing them both. Brunetti rose to his feet and slipped around her chair, placing himself between Flavia and the door. He flexed his knees and looked around for anything he could use as a weapon. But then he recognized the wasp-buzz coming from the hallway.

Flavia hurried past him and out into the hall, and he heard her answer with her name. He went back to his chair and lowered himself into it, thinking what a fool he was.

Brunetti had some time to consider this theme before she returned to the room, without her
telefonino
. ‘It was Silvana. The doctors said the blade couldn’t get through the fat and muscle. One hit his belt and slipped off into his buttock. Two went between his ribs, and one went towards his right lung, but the blade was too short.’

He looked away from her stunned face, as he would look away from a friend if he came upon them naked. He thought of his vow never to chide Freddy about his weight. Now he vowed to take him, or send him, the biggest box of chocolates he could find in the city.

He heard a choking noise and turned back to see Flavia, one hand propped against the back of her chair, her face buried in the other. Her shoulders heaved with each sob. She cried the way a child does: relentlessly, as at the end of the world. After some time, she wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweater.

‘I can’t do the last performances,’ she said in an unsteady voice. ‘I can’t do this. It’s bad enough being up there in normal circumstances, but this is too much.’ Though she had wiped her face, tears continued to run from her eyes. When they reached her lips, she wiped her face again.

‘I’ve never seen an opera from backstage,’ Brunetti said before he thought about it.

Confused, she looked across at him. ‘Most people haven’t,’ she said, then choked back another sob.

‘I could come to the performances.’ Again, he spoke without considering the consequences of what he proposed, and no sooner had he made the proposal than he wondered if Vianello would want to come along.

‘And do what?’ she asked, utterly at a loss. ‘You’ve already seen it.’

He thought he might have to hit her over the head with a stick to make her understand. ‘To see that nothing happens,’ he said, only then realizing how very presumptuous that was. ‘I’ll ask someone else to come with me.’

‘And you’ll be backstage?’

‘Yes.’

She wiped at her face again, and he saw that she had stopped crying. ‘With another policeman?’

‘Yes.’

‘In
Tosca
,’ she said, ‘all of the policemen are bad.’

‘We’ll be there to show that some aren’t,’ Brunetti said, which made Flavia smile but also turned his thoughts back to Lieutenant Scarpa.

23

Brunetti left soon after, assuring Flavia that he and Vianello would be there for the last two performances. Glancing at his watch, he was astonished to see that it was almost nine. He called Paola and said he was on his way and would be there in fifteen minutes. She muttered something he didn’t understand and hung up.

He called Vianello, who must have been at home or at least in a place where there was a television, for in the background Brunetti could hear the patently artificial voices of the Italian-speakers who did the voice-over for foreign films. Vianello told him to wait, and the sound diminished as he moved away from it. Brunetti explained what he had volunteered them for, and Vianello said that the idea of going to the opera appealed far more than the thought of another two nights of reruns of
Downton Abbey
, which he could not abide but with which Nadia was enchanted. ‘You think you could organize a permanent assignment until this series is over?’

Brunetti laughed and said he’d see him the following morning. When he reached the Accademia Bridge, he heard the sound of a boat approaching from the right and quickened his steps to catch it. Luckily, it was a Number One, which would take him closer to home than the Two. He went into the cabin to look for a seat, and the sudden warmth of the enclosed space triggered the same rush of exhaustion he had felt in front of the hospital. He turned away from the sight of the passengers and faced front, but that did not relieve the heat or lessen the assault of tiredness. Hoping that fresh air would help, he returned to the deck and leaned back against the window of the cabin, but his terrible lethargy remained. So this is what old age feels like, he told himself. Falling asleep as soon as you enter a warm room. Needing a wall to prop you up so you don’t fall asleep. Longing to be home and in your bed.

He got off at San Silvestro and walked through the underpass, to the left and out to the main
calle
, and then down to the left and to the front door. As he put his key in the lock and thought of the five flights of steps he had to climb, he realized that moving to Palazzo Falier, when that happened, would be no better, not really, for it had just as many steps, even if the family seldom used the top two floors.

Three years ago, the Conte had asked an engineer to examine the possibility of putting in an elevator, and after a month during which the walls had been tapped and measured and dug into by pencil-thin drills, the engineer had told him that, no, there was no possibility that an elevator could be installed in the building. The Conte had inquired if the fact that he had been at school with the father of the current Soprintendente di Belle Arti would affect this decision in any way, only to have the engineer reply immediately that, though this relationship would have had a certain validity and force ten years before, it no longer had the same value, and thus there was no way to install the elevator.

The Conte, unable to contain his surprise, had asked why it was, then, that so many of the
palazzi
of the friends of his youth were now being transformed into hotels, all with elevators.

‘Ah, Signor Conte,’ the engineer had replied, ‘those are commercial projects, so of course the permissions are granted.’

‘And I’m nothing but an ageing citizen of Venice, I suppose?’ the Conte had asked. ‘So my convenience doesn’t count?’

‘Not in the face of that of wealthy tourists, it doesn’t, Signore,’ the engineer had said before leaving. Because he, too, was the son of a school friend of the Conte, he had not sent a bill, and the Conte, for the same reason, had sent him a dozen cases of wine.

By the time Brunetti recalled this story, he was at the door to the apartment. He let himself in, hung up his jacket, and went towards the living room, whence he heard the sound of voices. He entered and found his family on the sofa, facing the television, where people dressed in the fashion of the early part of the last century sat at a long table arrayed with what looked like a formal dinner. The fruit platter at the centre of the table appeared to be the height of a horse, and to wash and iron the tablecloth – should it ever have managed to dry sufficiently – would surely have taken members of the staff an entire day.

‘
Downton Abbey
, I presume,’ he said in English, a remark which was greeted by shushing noises from all three of them. On the screen a thickset and apparently thick-headed woman declared that she was not accustomed to such remarks, prompting the woman facing her to reply that there was no need to take it personally, for she had intended no offence.

‘Nor do I intend any offence,’ Brunetti said and turned and went into the kitchen to eat his dinner.

When he reached his office the following morning, he first checked his emails and found, among a number of official memos and reports he wished he could treat as spam, a mail from Signorina Elettra, telling him that the attachment was taken from a surveillance camera at the parking garage in Piazzale Roma for the hours before the attack on Federico d’Istria. His car was the seventh in the row, she added.

Brunetti opened it and found himself staring down a narrow strip of space between a grey cement wall and the front and back ends of the line of cars parked against it. He watched it for a few moments and saw, at 12.35, a car pull into a space towards the end of the row. A man got out, slammed the door of the car, and walked away. The tape then jumped ahead to the next sign of motion; the small clock in the top right corner of the screen told him that an hour and twenty-two minutes had elapsed. A different man approached another car, opened the door and got in. He backed out and drove away. Forty-two minutes later, something enormous came into the frame from the right-hand side, and then the scene went black.

Brunetti stopped the film and moved the cursor back a minute, then started it again. As soon as he saw motion, he stopped the film and studied the image on the screen. Giant flying white sticks? Something sickle-shaped and black? He tapped the cursor and played the scene again, still failing to grasp what he was seeing.

He picked up his phone and dialled Signorina Elettra’s number. When she answered, he asked, ‘What is it?’

‘A black lens cover from a camera was placed over the lens of the video camera.’

‘And the things that look like white sticks?’

‘Fingers,’ she said, though he had realized it as soon as he asked her the question.

‘White because of gloves?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks,’ Brunetti said. ‘Anything else?’

‘You can see that d’Istria’s car is backed into his space. When he opened the boot, which was about fifteen minutes later, he was attacked. It was still open when the ambulance got there.’

‘Any news from the hospital?’ he asked.

‘I called them at eight, but all they said was that he was resting quietly.’

‘I’ll wait until ten and call his wife,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘When was he attacked?’

‘The call came at two minutes before three, about twenty minutes after the lens was covered.’

‘What was he carrying?’ Brunetti asked.

‘What?’

‘Was anything found by him? A briefcase or a suitcase?’

‘Let me look,’ Signorina Elettra said. He listened to silence and then she was back. ‘A sports bag with two tennis rackets.’

‘Thank you,’ Brunetti said, then quickly added, ‘See if you can find out if a taxi took a woman from Accademia to Piazzale Roma at about that time.’

‘A woman?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I see,’ she said. ‘I’ll see what I can find out.’ She was gone.

If Freddy’s attacker had paid attention to his habits and had seen him leave the
calle
with a bag holding tennis rackets, they’d have had little doubt where he was going. People played tennis on the mainland: he’d be going to the garage at Piazzale Roma. Perhaps he had met a friend and stopped for something to drink, perhaps his boat had been late, perhaps he had decided to walk: anything could have delayed him long enough to allow someone else to get to the garage before him, provided that person knew his habits and knew how to move quickly in the city.

Brunetti dialled Signorina Elettra’s number again. ‘We need the videos from the garage, from that same camera and from whichever ones show the lanes the cars use to drive in and out. And from the elevators and stairway doors opening on that floor. We’re probably looking for a woman who shows up there but doesn’t go to one of the cars, who simply takes a look around and walks away. And who is there that same day, or – if we’re lucky – around the time he was.’

After considering this for a moment, he added, ‘What did the magistrate’s order say?’

‘“Video recordings”,’ she answered immediately. ‘“The ones showing the area in which is parked the car of the victim.”’ She paused, then added, ‘I just love the language of the law.’

Brunetti ignored that and said, ‘Good. Remind them at the garage and ask for the tapes for the last three weeks.’

‘We need someone to look at them,’ she said.

Hearing her use the plural, he suddenly remembered and asked, ‘Aren’t you on strike any more?’

She laughed. ‘No, it ended this morning.’

‘Why?’

‘Some of the men who work with Alvise checked the witness statements – on their own time – that were taken at the protest and questioned the people who gave them. As it turns out, one of them had made a video of the victim tripping over one of the poles their sign was attached to.’ Brunetti, well aware of her rhythms, waited for the grand finale.

‘In the background, Alvise can be seen, at least three metres from him. They also found two people who were with the man when he was filming, and they confirm that the victim tripped and fell and hit his head.’

‘So much for police violence,’ Brunetti said, and then asked, ‘Does that mean Alvise has been reinstated?’

‘As of today. Couldn’t have been better timed.’

‘Why?’

‘Francesca Santello’s aunt took her home yesterday. To Udine. And I didn’t know what other work to invent for Alvise.’

‘What about the father?’ Brunetti asked.