The Golden Egg

9





As he walked towards the vaporetto stop at San Tomà, Brunetti considered what the three women had said about Ana Cavanella: Signora Callegaro had cast doubt on her love for her son; Renata had defended her; and Maria Pia had said anyone familiar with her story would feel sympathy for her. But what was the story?

Maria Pia had also said that the people around there had known her for a long time. It should therefore be easy enough to find out about her: all he had to do was find someone who could begin to ask questions. But it had to be the right person, and they had to be the right questions. A woman, one who spoke Veneziano, not young and not flashy: a woman who looked and sounded like a lower middle-class housewife and mother, the sort of woman who would have stayed home to raise her children while her husband went out to work. Who more likely to feel sympathy with a woman who had lost her son? Who more likely to be honestly interested in the woman and her story?

He stopped at the squad room and found Vianello, asked him to come up to his office for a moment. Pucetti started to get to his feet when he saw his superior, but Brunetti held up a hand and patted the air a few times, signalling that he would talk to him later.

On the stairs, Brunetti asked, ‘You read the report on the man they found in Santa Croce yesterday?’

‘The suicide?’ Vianello asked.

‘He was a deaf mute,’ Brunetti said. Vianello paused in mid-step, then his foot hit the stair at an odd angle and he shifted off balance for a second.

‘You think it’s strange, too?’ Brunetti asked.

On the landing, Vianello stopped again. ‘It’s not that it’s strange: it’s just that I’ve never heard of a deaf person killing himself.’ He gave this some thought, then added, ‘Maybe that’s because there are so few of them.’

They went into the office, and when they were seated, Brunetti asked, as if posing a theoretical question, ‘Do you think Nadia would be willing to do a favour?’

Vianello smiled and said, ‘You’re an evasive devil, aren’t you?’ When Brunetti made an interrogative face, Vianello laughed and said, ‘Aren’t favours usually done for someone?’

Brunetti, found out, could do nothing but nod.

‘Who’s this one for?’ Vianello inquired. ‘Specifically?’

‘Me,’ Brunetti answered, then changed it to, ‘All of us.’

‘Justice in person, sort of?’ Vianello asked.

‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’

‘What’s the favour?’

‘I spoke to the women at the dry cleaner’s near my house. I’ve known them for years: it’s where I used to see the man who died. They let him help them there.’

‘And?’ Vianello asked.

‘His mother refused to talk to me. The women told me she’s lived in the neighbourhood a long time. And it

seems she doesn’t have the best reputation.’

‘In a woman, that always means one thing,’ Vianello observed.

‘True enough,’ Brunetti agreed, then went on. ‘I must have pushed too hard with them because at a certain point they both stopped talking, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything more out of them.’

‘Which means?’ Vianello asked in the same level voice.

‘That we need someone else to ask them questions, someone less threatening.’

‘What makes you think they’d talk to Nadia?’ Vianello asked, not bothering to ask for confirmation that this was the favour Brunetti wanted. ‘She doesn’t live near there.’

‘I know. But she’s Venetian: anyone who listens to her knows that.’ Vianello looked doubtful, so Brunetti added, ‘And she’s simpatica. People trust her instinctively: I’ve seen it happen.’ Before Vianello could object, Brunetti added, ‘None of the female officers is old enough for people to trust them.’

Vianello gazed away. Brunetti watched the Inspector consider the idea and its implications. Though she would be, in a sense, working for his own employers, even Vianello was not free of the citizen’s instinctive distrust of the state. Brunetti watched his friend as he contemplated the ways Nadia might be put in the public eye, how a record of what she heard and reported might somehow be used against her and, ultimately, against him.

Brunetti thought he saw the instant when Vianello’s face registered the thought of Lieutenant Scarpa and the consequences of his learning of Nadia’s involvement – unauthorized involvement – in a police investigation. Immediately after – there was not even the beating of a heart – Vianello said, ‘I think I’d like to suggest an alternative candidate.’

Brunetti ran through the list again, this time even considering his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, only to exclude her at once because she was Sicilian. ‘Who?’ he finally asked.

‘Just as you said, “una donna simpatica e veneziana”.’ With a smile, Vianello added, ‘And this one lives in the neighbourhood.’

Baffled, Brunetti wondered if Vianello had some other branch of the service in mind. Was there a woman Carabiniere who could be enlisted to help them? He shook his head as a sign of his confusion and said, ‘Tell me.’

‘Paola,’ Vianello said, and, as Brunetti’s face made it evident he still did not understand, the Inspector added, ‘Your wife.’

The word ‘but’ formed itself in Brunetti’s mind. Luckily, he did not speak it, for he realized he would do so only in the sentence that insisted he could not ask his wife to do such a thing. Or would not. He looked away and then back at his friend. ‘I see,’ he said, admitting the truth.

Brunetti was silent, as if to allow a sound, or a smell, to dissipate, and then he said, ‘There’s no record of Davide Cavanella’s birth.’

‘If he’s Venetian, that’s hard to believe,’ Vianello said.

‘He could have been born anywhere,’ Brunetti replied. ‘His mother’s from the neighbourhood and she speaks Veneziano, but that doesn’t mean he had to be born here.’

‘How long have you seen him around?’ Vianello asked.

‘Ten, fifteen years.’

Vianello glanced away, taking this in, then asked, ‘Has she started looking in other places?’ He didn’t bother to name Signorina Elettra nor to suggest what the other places might be.

‘Pucetti’s working on it.’ Before Vianello could express his surprise, Brunetti explained: ‘Baptism records, health card, school records, pension for him and for his mother, hospital records,’ then added, ‘Simple things,’ thus acknowledging that he had left the extra-legal explorations to Signorina Elettra.

‘There’s no getting away from them, is there?’ Vianello said in a voice slowed by deep reflection. Before Brunetti could ask, the Inspector continued, ‘They can go into my bank account now and find out where I spend my money and what I spend it on. Or they can check my credit card and see what I’ve been buying.’

Brunetti opened his mouth to speak, but Vianello held up his hand to stop him. ‘I know what you’re going to say: that we get and use the same information.’ He smiled at Brunetti, reached over to pat his arm, as if to persuade his friend that he was not about to begin raving.

‘Think of the chip in our telefonino,’ Vianello went on. ‘It leaves a record of where we go. Well, where it goes.’ Again, he held up his hand. ‘I know. We use that information, too. But who leaves his telefonino behind? Even that fool who killed his wife kept it in his pocket when he dumped her in the woods,’ he said, referring to a recent case they had solved in no time because of this very simple error on the part of the murderer.

‘Then what are you talking about?’ Brunetti asked.

‘That the way we think about it has changed, and we don’t question it. We’ve come to think it’s normal that other people know what we’re buying or reading or where we’ve been.’ Vianello paused, giving Brunetti a chance to object.

He did not, so Vianello added, ‘And the internet? Every time we look at something, we leave a permanent record behind: that we read it or glanced at it, or bought it or tried to buy it, or, for all I know, looked at the timetable for going there.’

Brunetti was unsettled by the feeling that he had looked at another person but seen what he saw in the mirror every morning, heard a voice speaking and recognized it as his own. To the best of his knowledge, he had never left traces behind when breaking a law. He had, however, grown increasingly nervous about the red, howling trail of law-breaking that Signorina Elettra might have left behind her. It wouldn’t even have to be Lieutenant Scarpa who discovered it for her – and anyone connected with what she had done – to be ruined: a well-intentioned journalist could land them all in court, disgraced and unemployed, and without a future.

He pushed this thought away, as he had so many times over the years. ‘This won’t get us anywhere,’ he said.

Like the other partner in an old marriage who by now knew all the patterns, Vianello pursed his lips and gave a half-tilt of his head. ‘Let’s call Pucetti, then, and see what he’s found.’

As it turned out, the young officer had found nothing. Like Dottor Rizzardi, Pucetti had failed to find evidence of the passage through life of Davide Cavanella: he seemed, as far as officialdom was concerned, to have sprung into life only by leaving it. Before his name was written on the form that accompanied his body to the morgue at the Ospedale Civile, it had not been entered in any official register kept by the city of Venice. There was no birth certificate; the files of the Church had no registry of his baptism or first communion. He had not attended school in the city, neither the public grammar schools nor the special school in Santa Croce for deaf children. He had never been issued a carta d’identità; he had never been registered with the health service,

nor had he ever been in hospital. He had never applied for a driver’s licence, passport, gun permit, or hunting licence.

Knowing little about the dead man, Pucetti had

also searched for evidence of his marriage or the birth

of his children, and in those offices had found the same void.

When Pucetti, sitting beside Vianello in front of Brunetti’s desk, had finished his list of non-information, the three men sat in silent amazement until Brunetti said, speaking to Vianello, ‘It seems some people can still slip through the net.’

‘But it’s impossible,’ said a scandalized Vianello. ‘We should be able to find him.’

Brunetti refrained from comment, and Pucetti spoke. ‘I looked everywhere, Commissario, even in our arrest files, but he’s not there. Nothing. I even went down to the archives, but there’s no file on him.’ Then, hesitantly, as if afraid he might have gone too far, Pucetti continued, ‘I did find a Cavanella in the files, sir.’

Vianello turned to face the young officer, and Brunetti said, ‘Good. Did you bring it?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said, taking a discoloured Manila folder from a larger one that lay on his lap and handing both across the desk to Brunetti. ‘Cavanella, Ana,’ was written on the file; handwritten, Brunetti was surprised to note. The Manila cover had once been light blue, but the years, exposure to light, and the penetrating humidity of the archive had turned it a sickly grey and rendered the cover unpleasant to the touch.

‘Have you looked in it?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, sir,’ Pucetti said. Then, risking a small smile, he confessed ‘But I’d like to.’

‘Then let’s,’ Brunetti said and opened it. He discovered an outdated form with the elaborate seal of the Ministry of the Interior stamped on the top, taking up almost a quarter of the page, and below it two typewritten paragraphs. ‘Mirabile visu,’ Brunetti said and held up the page to show them.

‘Wow!’ Pucetti said in the English that had now become international.

‘Never seen typing before?’ Vianello asked, smiling, but not joking.

‘Of course I’ve seen it,’ said an embarrassed Pucetti.

Brunetti, reading the report, barely heard them. ‘6/9/68,’ he read aloud. ‘Suspect apprehended in Standa, carrying four unopened parcels of women’s stockings, two unused lipsticks, and brassiere (size 3) with price tag still attached, in her bag. At the police station at San Marcuola, she presented her carta d’identità, which stated that she was born in 1952.

‘Her employer, with whom she lives, sent her secretary. This woman identified her as Ana Cavanella, showed a copy of a contract of employment signed by the girl’s mother, and took the girl home. Because of her age, no charges will be brought, though a report of this incident has been sent to the social services.’

He looked at the others, who had become a silent audience.

‘Nice touch, the size of the bra,’ Vianello said.

‘Nineteen sixty-eight,’ Pucetti said, speaking of it as though it were light years away, as in many ways it was, at least for him.

‘And Davide bore her name, not his father’s,’ Brunetti said, putting the paper inside and closing the file. He opened the file and looked for the name of the woman who took her away, but it was not given. An address in Dorsoduro was, however.

He slid the paper across the table to Pucetti, saying, ‘This is the address given for them. Have a look at the Anagrafe files and see who lived there.’

‘You think they’ve put things on line?’ Pucetti asked. ‘That far back, I mean.’

Though Brunetti was only a child then, he hardly thought of it as ‘far back’, but he did not pass on this observation to Pucetti. Instead, he said, ‘I don’t know. If you call them, they should be able to tell you. If not, go over and see if they still have paper files.’

‘Why do you want to know?’ Vianello took the liberty of asking.

Brunetti thought about his very brief meeting with the woman. In his experience, the motive that most often drove people to distance themselves from horror or tragedy was guilt. Were they her pills, the pills that Davide had swallowed? Had she made him hot chocolate and given him some biscuits, and had he, stomach full and a ring of chocolate around his mouth, found her sleeping pills and taken them, perhaps having seen her take them before bed and thinking that he should, too?

Guilt made sense; it fitted with what he had observed of her behaviour. How better to keep it at bay than by refusing to discuss or even accept what had happened?

‘Well?’ Vianello asked. Pucetti watched his two superiors, silent.

‘Let’s go and talk to her,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet.