The Golden Egg

14





Foa, glad of the chance to go for what Brunetti did not tell him was little more than a joyride, gave him a hand getting on to the boat. Over to Dorsoduro to look at a building: this made as much sense to Foa as taking the Vice-Questore to lunch and was certainly much more fun because Brunetti at least stood on deck and enjoyed the ride rather than sitting in the cabin talking on his telefonino. Brunetti learned all of this indirectly, just as he learned much of what he knew. Foa never criticized their superior openly, but perhaps because they were speaking in Veneziano, he could make use of a wide range of references and expressions that were virtually untranslatable.

Foa took the Canale della Giudecca, rather than the Grand Canal because the more direct route was around the back, he said. He knew the building, of course: was there a water door in the city he had not taken a boat past in the last twenty years? They turned into Rio delle Toresele, Foa slowing to make the turn. He slowed down even more as they approached Calle Capuzzi on the left. ‘That’s it,’ Foa said, pointing to a high-arched dark green door that stood at the top of three moss-covered steps leading down to the water.

Brunetti had never noticed the door, but who would notice a door that looked exactly like thousands in the city? ‘You know anything about the place?’ Brunetti asked.

Foa pulled the boat up at the entrance to the next calle and switched the motor to idle. ‘Some rich people used to live there. I remember because there was a very nice boat they used to tie up here.’

‘When was this?’

‘Must have been twenty years ago. Maybe more.’ Then, after a moment’s reflection, Foa added, ‘Boat hasn’t been there for years.’

‘Can you get in a little closer to the riva?’ Brunetti asked. ‘I’d like to go around and take a look at the place.’

Foa pulled the boat up beside the riva. Luckily, it was high tide, so Brunetti could avoid the slippery stairs and step directly on to the pavement of the riva. He walked down the narrow calle to the door of 616, a ponderous oak slab varnished dark brown and divided into four high rectangles by thick, bevelled strips of the same colour. There was a modern brass lock, dulled nearly green by the humidity.

To the left was a tarnished brass plaque with the name ‘Lembo’ incised below the single bell. The Copper King, or was it tin? Brunetti stepped back and studied the façade of the palazzo. Narrow, it rose four floors: the grey plaster had flaked away in many places, exposing the brick beneath. Two simple arched windows stood to the left of the door and one to the right, all three of them heavily grilled with iron bars that were not free of the rust of neglect. The quadrifora of the first floor was blackened at the top, as though smoke had leaked out of the four narrow windows for centuries and stained the carved marble above them, which might well have been the case.

The windows of the floor above appeared almost twice as tall as those on the floor below, making them seem curiously etiolated in relation to the building. The frames and glass were obviously modern and the marble pilasters dividing them were a shocking white, smooth and almost entirely devoid of ornamentation, unlike the worn fluted columns of the windows below.

Brunetti took another step back and leaned against the building opposite. Above the windows he saw a row of small barbacani supporting a marble drain, though the much later addition of a low top floor had turned the drain into a mere ornamental motif. The real drain, metal and jarringly noticeable, corroded in more than one place, ran under the tiled roof and leaked two dark feathers of mould and rust down the façade.

Brunetti turned to his right, out to the fondamenta and down to the bridge at San Vio. He crossed it and went into the bar on the left, where he had often stopped for a coffee and was familiar with the people working there without knowing their names. He asked for a glass of white wine, glanced around at the people at the tables, looking for someone he knew, but he recognized no one.

When the barman brought the wine, Brunetti thanked him. Nodding at the calle with his chin, he asked, careful to speak Veneziano, ‘Does the Lembo family still live in that palazzo?’ The man, who was short, stocky, balding, with a thick nose and the rugged skin of a drinker, set the glass on the counter and took a small step back, as if to put a greater distance between himself and the question.

There followed a process Brunetti had been observing for decades. The barman might not know his rank or branch of service, but he was certain to know, however vaguely, that Brunetti, a client for decades, was involved with the police. Thus his question was not innocent, nor was it idle. This meant that the man had to weigh up his sense of duty to the state (which one could probably estimate as zero) with his accumulated memories of Brunetti’s behaviour over time, and then against that he had to weigh any obligation he might have to the Lembo family. This calculation was immediate, and Brunetti was probably more conscious of it than was the man engaged in it.

‘The daughters still live there,’ he said after a hesitation so short most people would not have noticed it. He turned and switched on the coffee grinder next to the coffee machine, though the plastic container was well more than half full.

Brunetti took a sip of his wine, waited out the noise, and when it stopped, asked for a tuna and artichoke tramezzino. It came wrapped in a paper napkin and on a plate.

‘Ana Cavanella used to live there, didn’t she?’ Brunetti asked and took a bite of the sandwich. Too much mayonnaise, as was increasingly the case all over the city, he didn’t know why.

‘Is this about her son?’ the barman asked.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered, seeing no reason to lie.

‘What happened?’

‘He took sleeping pills, vomited, and choked to death,’ Brunetti said.

The man’s hand rose protectively to his throat; he left it there while he said, ‘Oh, the poor woman.’

‘You knew her?’ Brunetti asked quite naturally, as though they were old friends and the subject had come up in conversation.

‘Years ago,’ the man said. ‘Must be forty. Even more.’ Then, ‘How old was he?’

‘In his forties,’ Brunetti answered and took another sip of his wine. Then, very casually, ‘She’s still an attractive woman. Must have had him when she was young.’

The man shot him a suspicious look; Brunetti countered it by taking another bite of his sandwich and nodding his appreciation. ‘I spoke to her three days ago, just after he died. Terrible, terrible.’

The man’s curiosity got the better of him. ‘How’d that happen? I always thought the boy was retarded. You think she’d be careful with pills and things like that.’

Brunetti sighed and said, ‘I don’t think we can be careful all the time.’

Two men came into the bar and asked for coffees. The barman served them and was quickly back in front of Brunetti. He picked up a glass and wiped at it with a towel.

‘What was it people called Lembo?’ Brunetti asked, as if the name were dangling just at the edge of his memory, in need only of some help from a person with a better one. ‘The Duke of Something?’

‘King,’ the barman said, pleased to have found it first. ‘The King of Copper.’

Brunetti smiled in approval. ‘Of course. Thanks.’ Then, the way people did, he repeated the name, ‘The King of Copper’, shaking his head at the outlandishness of it. He finished his tramezzino and did not order another one because he did not want the barman to move away.

‘My father,’ Brunetti lied, ‘used to talk about him.’ Then, as if allowing memory to seep back, he continued, ‘He had a boat – my father – and he would take him . . .’

He broke off and allowed a look of great confusion to cross his face. ‘I don’t remember whether it was fishing or to Piazzale Roma.’ He shook his head: age takes away so many memories. ‘He used to talk about his daughters. One of them was about my age, and he’d tell me I should be more like her; quieter, more obedient.’

‘That must have been Lucrezia,’ the barman said.

Delight flashed from Brunetti’s eyes. ‘Yes, of course. That was her name.’ He caught the barman’s eyes in his glance and said, ‘I never met her, but I have to confess there were times when I wanted to go on the boat with my father and throw her off.’ He chuckled, looked down at his feet, and shook his head.

‘Why?’

With a smile that displayed his pleasure that this man should be curious about his family memories, Brunetti said, ‘Because my father talked about her so much. Said she was like this and like that: all the things I wasn’t.’

‘Is your father still alive?’ the barman surprised him by asking.

‘No. Why?’

‘Because, if he were, you could tell him that he was wrong.’

Confused smile. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

‘You’re a respectable man. A policeman, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘Yes to the policeman,’ Brunetti said. ‘I don’t know about the respectable.’

‘Well, Lucrezia isn’t.’

Once more Brunetti looked confused and, he attempted, faintly concerned. ‘What happened?’

‘Men. Alcohol. Trouble with her children. Divorce.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Brunetti said, speaking as though he’d just had bad news about an old friend. Then, deciding to risk it, ‘I’m glad my father never had to hear this.’

‘No one likes to hear bad things about people they like, do they?’ the barman asked.

‘No, not at all,’ Brunetti said, shaking his head and deciding to meet cliché with cliché: ‘But life’s a funny thing: it tells us things we don’t want to hear.’ He shook his head and then, deciding it would be best not to ask more questions, he reached into his pocket and took out some change. He asked how much he owed, left more than that on the counter, thanked the man for his time, and left the bar.

Foa was on the deck, bent over a copy of La Gazzetta dello Sport, giving the impression that he wanted to eat it, rather than read it. He heard Brunetti’s footsteps and reached a hand across the open space to help him on to the boat.

‘Latest scandal?’ Brunetti asked, pointing to the screaming headlines.

Foa folded the paper closed and stuffed it under

the control panel. ‘It’s strange, Commissario,’ he said as he moved past Brunetti to unmoor the boat. ‘We all know it’s fake, that the games are all fixed, but you’d think they’d be more clever about keeping what they’re doing secret.’ He reached down and slapped the paper with the back of his fingers. ‘They’re blabbing about it on the phone all the time, sending emails back and forth, talking about how much they want to be paid to lose the game, giving the names of the players who will help.’ He turned the key, revved the engine, and pulled away from the riva, heading for the Grand Canal.

They turned right, back towards the Questura. Foa seemed to have exhausted his comments on soccer and sportsmanship, but Brunetti wondered if he might still be interested in blabbing.

‘That palazzo belongs to a family called Lembo,’ he began. ‘You ever hear of them?’

A taxi was making straight for them, the driver busy on his telefonino. Keeping one hand on the tiller, Foa gave a sharp blast of their siren. The driver looked up and saw them, dropped his telefonino and pulled his boat skittering to the right. ‘Stupid bastard,’ Foa said as the two boats passed.

Then, taxi forgotten, he said, ‘Yes.’

‘Much?’

‘Enough. Give me a day, sir, and I’ll know a lot more.’ He turned and smiled at Brunetti, unable to disguise his pleasure at being treated like a real policeman.

Brunetti was content to stand and watch the buildings and the light, entranced, as he so often was, by the casual, unending beauty of it. Stone, sky, gold, marble, space, proportion, chaos, disorder, glory.

They glided to the dock. Foa switched off the engine and tossed the mooring rope effortlessly over the stanchion, jumped to the dock and held out a hand to Brunetti. It was the second time that day the younger man had offered him a hand: Brunetti put his lightly on the outstretched arm and jumped to the riva.

He decided it was time to throw Signorina Elettra some fresh meat and went to her office. She was not at her desk, but the door to Patta’s office was open and he could hear voices, one of them hers, from inside. He could have stood by the door to hear what they were saying, but the idea displeased him: next, he’d be scrolling through her computer files, using the skills she had taught him.

Instead he went to the window and looked down at the waters of the canal; he thought about the man in the bar and what he had told him. ‘Daughters.’ After some time, he heard footsteps and then the closing of the door to Patta’s office. Signorina Elettra came across the room and gave him a smile. She sat behind her computer and said, without asking him what he had found in Dorsoduro, ‘I am a saint.’

‘You are a saint,’ Brunetti repeated. ‘You are probably also a martyr.’

‘I am a martyr.’

‘What does he want?’

‘This office,’ she surprised him by saying.

‘What?’ he asked and then, as the obvious dawned, he changed that to the even more obvious, ‘For whom?’

‘Lieutenant Scarpa,’ she said, as if this could be the only answer. As it certainly was.

‘But why?’

‘So their symbiosis can grow even stronger, I imagine,’ she said angrily. Brunetti wondered when he had ever seen her really angry, to the extent that her face was red and her voice tight, as was the case now.

‘Can’t you stop it?’ Brunetti asked, realizing how tentative his voice sounded.

‘Of course I can,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want to.’

‘Why?’ he asked, unable to hide his astonishment.

‘Because I don’t want to have to leave.’

His heart stopped. Brunetti was not given to excessive reactions, nor to excessive language, but he felt his heart stop, well, at least miss a few beats and then begin again with a faster rhythm.

‘But you can’t even think about that,’ he bleated before he could adjust the tone. ‘I mean, if you’re going to leave, then you should have a better reason for it than that.’

He thought about offering her his office but knew Patta would never accept that. He felt as though he had walked into a wall.

‘I don’t mean leave leave, I mean leave this floor.’

‘For where?’ Brunetti asked, disguising his relief and running his mind through the building.

‘All I have to do is change a few offices around,’ she said, her anger subsiding.

There was something in the ease with which she

said this, as if the task were no more complicated than prising the cork from a bottle of prosecco, that jangled Brunetti’s nerves. He sent his memory through the building again, seeking out the offices that might be suitable to her and the names of the persons who currently used those offices. And there it was, on the same floor as his but on the other side of the building, a much smaller room with a view of the garden in the back. The room was currently crowded with two enormous cupboards no one had thought to move when the desk was put in and the office was given to Claudia Griffoni.

He stopped himself from slapping his palm to his forehead and crying out ‘Aha!’ but that did not dull the clarity of his revelation. Signorina Elettra felt little simpatia for her: it was as simple as that. Brunetti had no idea of the reason: he did not want to attribute it to feminine jealousy and, to avoid discussion of that, he had chosen never to talk to Paola about it.

His wiser self told him to stay out of this, to make no comment, and to pretend it did not concern or interest him, so long as she found an office. ‘Well,’ he said idly, ‘I hope you can work it out.’ He tried to think of a quid pro quo he could offer Patta. The consequences of non-intervention here, he knew, would not be peace in our time.

Careful to make it clear that what he was about to offer was much more interesting than any talk of offices and who would move into them, he said, ‘I have a name for you.’

‘For?’

‘For you to have a look at.’ Seeing that this had caught her attention, he said, ‘I went over to Dorsoduro to have a look at the palazzo.’ In an attempt to relax things further, he added, ‘And I came back with a name.’

‘Which is?’ she said, turning the computer screen to

face her.

‘Lucrezia Lembo.’

‘The wife of the Copper King?’

‘The daughter. There are at least two, and they apparently still live at that address.’

Signorina Elettra smiled a real smile, relaxed and easy, and he watched tension and anger seep away from her. ‘I’ll see what I can find,’ she said.

‘The person who gave me her name said she’s had a troubled life: men, trouble with her kids, divorce, alcohol.’

She pulled her lips together. ‘That’s more than enough for anyone.’

‘I’d like anything you can find about either of the sisters: I don’t know the name of the other one,’ he said. He had a vague memory that both of the parents had died.

She hit a few keys, then a few more; she read for a moment, hit some more keys, and when Brunetti saw her begin to smile again he wondered if it was at the thought of being back at work or at the prospect of being able to access the data banks of the various institutions of the city without having to bother about pesky things like warrants or permissions or orders from magistrates.

He thanked her and started back to his office, proud of having returned an angry, petulant woman to her rightful place as a buccaneer utterly without respect for rules or regulations.