Fatal Remedies Part 11

'And the rest went to Dottor Mitri?'

'Yes. As well as rent.'

'Which was?'

'The rent?' Dorandi asked.

'Yes.'

'Three million lire a month.'

'And the profits?'

'Why is it you need to know this?' Dorandi asked in the same level voice.

'At this point, Signore, I've no idea what I need to know and what not. I am simply trying to acc.u.mulate as much information about Dottor Mitri and his affairs as I can.'

'To what purpose?'

'To better understand why he was killed.'

Dorandi's answer was instant. 'I thought that was made very clear by the note you found.'

Brunetti raised a hand as if in concession to this idea. 'I think it's important that we learn as much as we can about him, just the same.'

'There was a note, wasn't there?' Dorandi demanded.

'Where did you hear that, Signor Dorandi?'

'It was in the papers, in two of them.'

Brunetti nodded. 'Yes, there was a note.'

'Did it say what the papers say it did?'

Brunetti, who had seen the papers, nodded.

'But that's absurd.' Dorandi said, voice raised, as if it were Brunetti who had written the words. 'There's no child p.o.r.nography here. We don't cater for pederasts. The whole thing's ridiculous.'

'Have you any idea why someone might have written that, Signore?'

'Probably because of that madwoman,' Dorandi said, making no attempt to disguise his disgust and rage.

'Which madwoman is that?' Brunetti asked.

Dorandi paused a long time before he answered this, studying Brunetti's face carefully, looking for the trick in the question. Finally he said, 'That woman who threw the stone. She began all this. If she hadn't started with her insane accusations - all lies, all lies - then nothing would have happened.'

'Are they lies, Signor Dorandi?'

'How dare you ask that?' Dorandi bent towards Brunetti, voice raised. 'Of course they're lies. We have nothing to do here with child p.o.r.nography or with pederasts.'

'That was the note, Signor Dorandi.'

'What difference does it make?'

'They are two different accusations, Signore. I'm trying to understand why the person who wrote the note might have believed that the agency was involved in pederasty and child p.o.r.nography.'

'And I've told you why,' Dorandi said on a note of rising exasperation. 'Because of that woman. She went to all the papers, libelling me, libelling the agency, saying we arranged s.e.x-tours...'

'But nothing about pederasty or child p.o.r.nography?' Brunetti interrupted.

'What's the difference to a madwoman? Everything's the same to them, anything that has to do with s.e.x.'

'Then do the tours the agency arranged have something to do with s.e.x?'

'I didn't say that,' Dorandi shouted. Then, hearing how loud his voice was, he closed his eyes for a moment, unfolded and carefully refolded his hands, and said in an entirely normal voice, 'I didn't say that.'

'I must have got it wrong.' Brunetti shrugged, then asked, 'But why would this madwoman, as you call her, say those things? Why would anyone, indeed, say those things?'

'Misunderstanding.' Dorandi's smile was back. 'You know how it is with people: they see what they want to see, make things mean what they want them to mean.'

'Specifically?' Brunetti asked with a pleasant expression.

'Specifically I mean what this woman has done. She sees our posters for tours to exotic places - Thailand, Cuba, Sri Lanka - then she reads some hysterical article in some feminist magazine that claims there is child prost.i.tution in those places and that travel agencies arrange tours there, s.e.x-tours, and she puts the two things together in some crazy way, and comes here at night and destroys my window.'

'Doesn't that seem an excessive response? Without proof, I mean.' Brunetti's voice was all sweet reason.

Dorandi answered with more than a touch of sarcasm, 'That's why they're called crazy people: because they do crazy things. Of course it's an excessive reaction. And utterly without cause.'

Brunetti allowed a long pause to spread out between them, and then said, 'In the Gazzettino Gazzettino you were quoted as saying that just as many women go to Bangkok as do men. That is, that most of the men who buy tickets to Bangkok take women along with them.' you were quoted as saying that just as many women go to Bangkok as do men. That is, that most of the men who buy tickets to Bangkok take women along with them.'

Dorandi looked down at his joined hands, but didn't answer. Brunetti reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out the sheets of paper Signorina Elettra had given him. 'Would you be willing to be a bit more precise about that, Signor Dorandi?' Brunetti asked, looking down at the papers.

'About what?'

'The number of men who took women with them when they went to Bangkok. Say in the last year.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

Brunetti didn't waste a smile on him. 'Signor Dorandi, I'll remind you that this is a murder investigation, which means that we have the right to request, or demand, if we are forced to do so, certain information from the people involved.'

'What do you mean, "involved"?' Dorandi spluttered.

'That should be clear to you,' Brunetti answered in a level voice. 'This is a travel agency, which sells a certain number of tickets and arranges tours to what you call "exotic" locations. An accusation has been made that these are for the purposes of s.e.x-tourism, which I hardly need remind you is now illegal in this country. A man, the owner of this agency, has been murdered and a note left suggesting that these tours might be the motive for that crime. You yourself seem to believe that there is a connection. So it would appear that the agency is involved and so are you as its manager.' Brunetti paused for a moment, before asking, 'Have I made myself clear?'

'Yes.' Dorandi's voice was sullen.

'Then would you mind telling me how accurate your statement - or, if I might speak more plainly - how true your statement was that most of the men who went to Bangkok took women along with them?'

'Of course it's true,' Dorandi insisted, s.h.i.+fting to the left side of his chair, one hand still on the desk in front of him.

'Not according to your ticket sales, Signor Dorandi.'

'My what?'

'The sales of plane tickets made by your agency, all of which, I'm sure you must know, are kept in a centralized computer system.' Brunetti saw this register and went on, 'Most of the tickets to Bangkok that your agency sold, during the last six months at least, were to men travelling alone.'

Almost before he could think, Dorandi blurted out, 'Their wives joined them later. They were travelling on business, the men, and their wives joined them.'

'Did they buy tickets from your agency?'

'How do I know?'

Brunetti placed the papers, face up, on the desk in front of him, leaving them in plain sight, open to Dorandi if he chose to try to read them. He drew a deep breath. 'Signor Dorandi, shall we start again with this? I'll repeat my question and this time I'd like you to consider your answer before you give it to me.' He paused a long time, then asked, 'Did the men who bought tickets to Bangkok through your agency travel with women or not?'

Dorandi took a long time to answer, but finally said 'No' and nothing more.

'And these tours you arrange with "tolerant hotel management" and "convenient location" - Brunetti's voice was absolutely neutral, not a trace of emotion audible in it - 'are they for the purpose of s.e.x?'

'I don't know what they do when they get there,' Dorandi insisted. 'It's not my business.' He pulled his head down into the too-wide neck of his jacket, rather in the manner of a turtle under attack.

'Do you know anything about the sort of hotels where these particular tourists go?' Before Dorandi could answer, Brunetti put his elbows on the desk, cupped his chin in his palm and looked down at the list.

'They have tolerant managements,' Dorandi said eventually.

'Does that mean they allow prost.i.tutes to work there, perhaps even provide them?'

Dorandi shrugged. 'Perhaps.'

'Girls? Not women, girls?'

Dorandi glared across the desk at him. 'I don't know anything about the hotels except the prices. What my clients do there isn't my business.'

'Girls?' Brunetti repeated.

Dorandi waved a hand angrily in the air. 'I told you, it's none of my business.'

'But it's our business now, Signor Dorandi, so I would prefer an answer.'

Dorandi looked at the wall again, but found no convenient solution there. 'Yes.' he said.

'Is that the reason you choose them?'

'I choose them because they offer me the best price. If the men who go there decide to take prost.i.tutes back to their rooms in those hotels, that's their business.' He tried but could not restrain his anger. 'I sell travel packages. I don't preach morality. I've checked every word of those ads with my lawyer, and there's nothing at all even remotely illegal in them. I'm not breaking any law.'

'I'm sure of that,' Brunetti couldn't stop himself from saying. Suddenly, he didn't want to be here any more. He stood. 'I'm afraid we've taken up rather a lot of your time, Signor Dorandi. I'll leave you now, but we might like to speak to you again.'

Dorandi didn't bother to answer. Nor did he get to his feet when Brunetti and Vianello left the room.

14.

As they crossed Campo Manin, Vianello and Brunetti knew without discussing it that they would go and speak to the widow now, while they were still out, rather than go back to the Questura. To get to the Mitris' apartment, which was in Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, they walked back to Rialto and took the number 1 towards the station.

They chose to stand outside, preferring the coldness of the open deck to the damp air trapped inside the pa.s.senger cabin. Brunetti waited until they had pa.s.sed under the Rialto before he asked Vianello, 'Well?'

'He'd sell his mother for a hundred lire, wouldn't he?' Vianello answered, making no attempt to disguise his contempt. He paused for a long time, then demanded, 'Do you think it's television, sir?'

At a loss, Brunetti asked, 'That what's television?'

'That lets us get so distanced from the evil we do.' He saw he had Brunetti's attention and continued, 'That is, if we watch it, there on the screen, it's real, but it isn't actually, is it? I mean, we see so many people getting shot and hit, and we watch us,' here he paused, smiled a little and explained, 'the police, that is. We watch us discovering all sorts of terrible things. But the cops aren't real, nor are the things. So maybe, if we watch enough of them, the true horrors, when they happen or when they happen to other people, don't seem real, either.'

Brunetti was a bit confused by Vianello's language, but he thought he understood what he meant - and that he agreed - so he answered, 'They're how far away, those girls he knows nothing about, fifteen thousand kilometres? Twenty? I'd say it's probably very easy not to see what happens to them as being real, or if it is, it probably isn't very important to him.'

Vianello nodded. 'You think it's getting worse?'

Brunetti shrugged. 'There are days when I think everything's getting worse, then there are days when I know they are. But then the sun comes out and I change my mind.'

Vianello nodded again, this time adding a m.u.f.fled, 'Uh huh.'

'And you?' Brunetti asked.

'I think it's worse,' the sergeant answered with no hesitation. 'Like you, though, I have days when everything's fine: the kids jump all over me when I get home or Nadia's happy and it's contagious. But on the whole, I think the world's getting worse as a place to be.'

Hoping to lighten his uncharacteristic mood, Brunetti said, 'Not much other choice, is there?'

Vianello had the grace to laugh at this. 'No, I guess there isn't. For good or bad, this is all we've got.' He paused for a moment, watching the palazzo that held the Casino draw near. 'Maybe it's different for us because we have kids.'

'Why?' Brunetti asked.

'Because we can see ahead to the world they're going to live in and can look back on the one we grew up in.'

Brunetti, a patient reader of history, recalled the countless times the ancient Romans had fulminated against the various ages in which they lived, always insisting that the generation of their own youth or of their parents' had been far superior in every way to the one in which they now found themselves. He recalled their violent screeds against the insensitivity of the young, their sloth, their ignorance, their lack of respect for and deference to their elders, and he found himself greatly cheered by this memory. If every age thinks this way, then perhaps each is wrong and things aren't getting worse. He didn't know how to explain this to Vianello and felt awkward about quoting Pliny, afraid the sergeant would not recognize the writer or would be embarra.s.sed at being made to show that he did not.

Instead, he tapped him warmly on the shoulder as the boat pulled in to the San Marcuola stop and they both got off, walking single file down the narrow calle calle to make way for the people who hurried towards the to make way for the people who hurried towards the embarcadero. embarcadero.

'Nothing we're going to solve, is it, sir?' Vianello commented when they got to the wider street behind the church and could walk side by side.

'I doubt it's something anyone can solve,' Brunetti said, aware of how vague a response he had chosen, unsatisfied with it even as he made it.

'May I ask you a question, sir?' The sergeant started walking again. Both of them knew the address, so they had some idea of the location of the house. 'It's about your wife, sir.'