A Noble Radiance Part 15

'No, nothing at all, I'm glad to see,' Brunetti said and smiled again. 'But why did you speak of a lawyer?'

'I signed a statement, after it happened, saying that I would never make a complaint, never bring charges against him. It really was an accident, you know,' she added warmly. 'I was getting out of the car on his side, and he closed the door before he knew I was there'

'Then why did you need to sign that statement, if it was an accident?'

She shrugged. 'I don't know. His lawyer told him I should do it'

'Was there any payment made?' Brunetti asked.

Her ease of manner disappeared with the question. It's not illegal' she insisted with the authority of one who has been told as much by more than one lawyer.

'I know that, Signorina. I was merely curious. It has nothing at all to do with what I'd like to know about Maurizio.'

A voice spoke behind him, addressed to Bonamini. 'Do you have the fox in size forty?'

A smile flowed on to the girl's face. 'No, Signora. They've all been sold. But we have it in forty-four.'

'No, no' the woman said vaguely and drifted away, back towards the skirts and blouses.

'Did you know his cousin?' Brunetti asked when Signorina Bonamini returned her attention to him.

'Roberto?'

'Yes.'

'No, I never met him, but Maurizio did talk about him once in a while.'

'What did he say about him? Can you remember?'

She considered this for a while. 'No, nothing specific'

'Then can you tell me if, by the way Maurizio spoke about him, they seemed to like one another?'

"They were cousins,' she said, as if that were explanation enough.

I know that, Signorina, but I wondered if you can remember Maurizio's ever saying something of Roberto or if you had some idea -1 don't think it matters how you formed it - about what Maurizio thought about him.' Brunetti tried another smile.

Absently, she reached out and straightened a mink jacket. 'Well' she said, paused a while, and then continued, 'if I had to say, then I'd say that Maurizio was impatient with him.'

Brunetti knew better than to interrupt or question her.

'There was one time when they sent him - Roberto, that is - to Paris. I think it was Paris. A big city, anyway, where the Lorenzonis had some sort of business deal going. I never really understood what happened, but Roberto opened a package or something like that or saw what was in a contract, and he talked about it to someone he shouldn't have told about it. Anyway, the deal was cancelled.'

She glanced up at Brunetti and saw the look of disappointment on his face. 'I know, I know it doesn't sound like very much, but Maurizio was really angry when it happened.' She weighed up the next comment but decided to say it. 'And he's got a terrible temper, Maurizio.'

'Your hand?' Brunetti asked.

'No' she answered instantly. 'That really was an accident. He didn't mean to do it. Believe me, if he had, I would have been down at the Cardbinieri Cardbinieri station the next morning, straight from the hospital.' She used the hand in question to adjust another fur. station the next morning, straight from the hospital.' She used the hand in question to adjust another fur. He He just gets mad and shouts. I've never known him to just gets mad and shouts. I've never known him to do do anything.- But you can't talk to him when he's like that; it's like he becomes someone else.' anything.- But you can't talk to him when he's like that; it's like he becomes someone else.'

'And what is he like when he's being himself?'

'Oh, he's serious. That's why I stopped going out with him: he was always calling up and saying he had to stay and work, or we had to take other people to dinner, business people. And then this happened' she said, waving the hand again, 'and so I told him I didn't want to see him any more' How did he take that?'

'I think he was relieved, especially after I told him I'd still sign the paper for his lawyers'

'Have you heard from him at all since then?'

'No. I see him on the street, the way you always do, and we say h.e.l.lo. No talk, nothing really, just "How are you?" and things like that'

Brunetti pulled out his wallet again and took one of his cards from it. 'If you think of anything else, Signorina, would you call me at the Questura?'

She took the card and slipped it into the pocket of the brown sweater she was wearing. 'Of course' she said neutrally, and he doubted that his card would survive the afternoon.

He extended his hand and shook hers, then made his way back through the racks of furs, towards the stairs. As he walked down towards the main exit, he wondered how many undeclared millions she had been given in return for her signature on that paper. But, as he so often reminded himself, tax evasion was not his business.

19.

When he returned to work after lunch, Brunetti was told by the guard at the front door that Vice-Questore Patta wanted to see him. Fearing that this might be the repercussions of Signorina Elettra's behaviour towards Lieutenant Scarpa, he went up immediately.

If Lieutenant Scarpa had said anything, however, it was in no way apparent, for Brunetti found Patta in an uncharacteristically friendly mood. Brunetti was instantly on his guard.

Have you made any progress on the Lorenzoni murder, Brunetti?' Patta asked after Brunetti had taken his seat in front of the Vice-Questore's desk.

'Nothing yet, sir, but I've got a number of interesting leads.' This measured lie, Brunetti thought, would suggest that enough was happening to keep him on the case, yet would not seem so successful as to prompt Patta to ask for details.

'Good, good,' Patta muttered, enough for Brunetti to infer that he was not at all interested in the Lorenzonis. He asked nothing; long experience had shown him that Patta preferred people to worm news out of him, rather than to tell them straightforwardly. Brunetti wasn't going to help him out.

'It's about this programme, Brunetti,' Patta finally said: 'Yes, sir? Brunetti inquired politely.

'The one RAI is doing about the police.'

Brunetti remembered something about a police programme to be produced and edited in a film studio in Padova. He'd had a letter some weeks ago, asking if he would agree to serve as consultant, or was it commentator? He'd tossed the letter into his wastepaper basket and forgotten about it. 'Yes, sir?' he repeated, no less politely.

'They want you.'

'I beg your pardon, sir.'

'You. They want you to be the consultant and to give them a long interview about how the police system works.'

Brunetti thought of the work that waited for him, thought of the Lorenzoni investigation. 'But that' s absurd.'

'That's what I told them,' Patta agreed. 'I told them they needed someone with broader experience, someone who has a wider vision of police work, can see it as a whole, not as a series of individual cases and crimes.'

One of the things Brunetti most disliked about Patta was the fact that the cheap melodrama of his life always had such bad scripts.

'And what did they say to this suggestion, sir?'

'They have to call Rome. That's where the original suggestion came from. They're supposed to get back to me tomorrow morning.' Patta's inflection turned this into a question and one that demanded an answer.

1 can't imagine who could have suggested me for this sort of thing, sir. If s not anything I like or anything I want to be involved with.'

'I've told them that,' Patta said, but when he caught Brunetti's look of sharp surprise, added, 'I knew you wouldn't want to be taken away from this Lorenzoni thing, not after having just reopened it.'

'And so?' Brunetti asked. 'And so I suggested that they choose someone else.'

'Someone with broader experience?' 'Yes.'

'Who?' Brunetti asked bluntly.

'Myself, of course,' Patta said, tone level and in the instructional mode, as if giving the boiling point of water.

Brunetti, though it was true that he wanted no part of a television programme, found himself unaccountably enraged by Patta's blithe a.s.sumption that he could take it for himself, just like that.

'It was TelePadova, wasn't it?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes. Whaf s that got to do with anything?' Patta asked. Television was television to the Vice-Questore.

Caught in the grip of sheer perversity, Brunetti answered, Then perhaps they'll be aiming the programme at an audience in the Veneto, and they might like someone local. You know, sir, someone who speaks dialect or at least sounds like he's from the Veneto'

All warmth disappeared from Patta's voice or manner. 'I don't see what difference that makes. Crime is a national problem and one that must be treated nationally, not divided up province by province, as you seem to think it should be' His eyes narrowed and he asked, 'You aren't a member of this Lega Nord, are you?'

Brunetti, who wasn't, didn't believe that Patta had any right either to ask the question or get an answer to it. 'I didn't realize you'd called me in to have a political discussion, sir'

It was with evident difficulty that Patta, the bright prize of a television appearance dancing before his eyes, reined in his anger. 'No, but I mention it to you to point out the dangers of that sort of thinking.' He straightened a folder on the top of his desk and asked, voice as calm as if the subject was just being introduced, 'Now, what are we going to do about this television thing?'

Brunetti, ever open to the seduction of language, was enchanted with Patta's use of the plural, as well as with his dismissal of the programme as a 'television thing'. He must want it desperately, Brunetti realized.

'When they call you, just tell them that I'm not interested'

'And then what?' Patta asked, waiting to see what Brunetti was going to ask in exchange for this.

"Then make any suggestion you please, sir.' Patta's expression made it clear that he didn't believe a word of what Brunetti was saying. In the past, he'd had ample proof of his subordinate's instability: he'd once referred to a Ca.n.a.letto his wife had hanging in the kitchen; Brunetti had himself turned down a promotion to work directly for the Minister of the interior in Rome, and now this, proof of sovereign madness if ever Patta had seen it: the flat rejection of a chance to appear on television.

'Very well. If that's the way you feel about it, Brunetti, I'll tell them.' As was his habit, Patta moved some papers around on the surface of his desk, thus giving evidence of his labours. 'Now, what's happening with the Lorenzonis?'

'I've spoken to the nephew and to some people who know him'

'Why?' Patta asked with real surprise.

'Because he's become the heir' Brunetti didn't know this to be true, but in the absence of any other male Lorenzoni, he believed it a safe a.s.sumption.

'Are you suggesting he's responsible for his own cousin's murder?' Patta asked.

'No, sir. I'm suggesting he's the one person who appears to have profited the most from his cousin's death, and so I think he bears examination.'

Patta said nothing to this, and Brunetti wondered if he were busy contemplating the interesting new theory that personal profit might serve as a motive for crime to see if it might be helpful in police work.

'What else?'

'Very little,' Brunetti answered. 'There are a few other people I want to talk to, and then I'd like to speak to his parents again'

'Roberto's?' Patta asked.

Brunetti bit back the temptation to answer that Maurizio's parents, one dead and one absent, would be difficult to speak to. 'Yes.'

'You realize who he is, of course?' Patta asked.

'Lorenzoni?'

'Count Lorenzoni,' Patta corrected automatically. Though the Italian government had done away with t.i.tles of n.o.bility decades ago, Patta was among those who would always love a lord.

Brunetti let it pa.s.s. 'I'd like to speak to him again. And to his wife.'

Patta started to object, but then perhaps remembered TelePadova and so said only. Treat them well.'

'Yes, sir,' Brunetti said. He toyed for a moment with the idea of again bringing up Bonsuan's promotion but said nothing and got to his feet. Patta returned his attention to the papers on his desk and ignored Brunetti's departure.

Signorina Elettra was still not at her desk, so Brunetti went down to the officers' room, looking for Vianello. When he found the sergeant at his desk, Brunetti said, 'I think it's time we talked to those boys who stole Roberto's car.'

Vianello smiled and nodded towards some papers on his desk. Seeing the rigorously clear type of the laser printer, Brunetti asked, 'Elettra?'

'No, sir. I thought to call that girl who was going out with him - she complained about police hara.s.sment and said she'd already given them to you, but I still asked -1 got their names and then found the addresses.'

Brunetti pointed to the paper, so different from the usual crabbed scrawl of Vianello's reports.

'She's teaching me how to use the computer' Vianello said with pride he made no attempt to disguise.

Brunetti picked up the paper, holding it at arm's length to read the small print. 'Vianello, this is two names and addresses. You need a computer to get this?'

'Sir, if you'll look at the addresses, you'll see that one of them is in Genoa, doing his military service. The computer got me that.'

'Oh' Brunetti said and looked more closely at the paper. 'And the other one?'

'He's here in Venice, and I've already spoken to him' Vianello said sulkily.

'Good work' Brunetti said, the only way he could think of to soothe Vianello's injured feelings. 'What did he say about the car? And about Roberto?'