‘Why have you come?’ she asked with nervous curiosity.
‘I’d prefer to tell you that inside, Signora.’
‘Ah,’ she said, lifted her hands, and pulled halfway back inside the window. She ran the fingers of one hand through her hair, which she wore in a curly cloud around her head. Finally she asked, ‘And if I don’t want to let you in, Signore?’ She asked it as a real question, one that required an answer.
‘We could continue to talk like this,’ Brunetti said mildly, glancing around at the other buildings, although there seemed to be no life in any of them. He backed across the street and propped his shoulders against the wall of the house opposite. This would be fine for him, he thought, though holding his neck at such an angle was already uncomfortable and would, he was sure, very soon begin to hurt.
‘All right,’ she said and disappeared from the window. A moment later, the door snapped open and they went in. The stairs were narrow and well-worn, a single window at the top of the first flight. They turned and continued up the second ramp, where the woman stood at an open door.
‘Do you have identification, gentlemen?’ she asked; it was only then that Brunetti heard the tremor in her voice. From outside, the angle and distance had prevented him from seeing her clearly. As he reached the landing in front of her apartment, he saw reflected in her face the tension he’d heard in her voice. She was very thin and almost as tall as he was. She had dark eyes surrounded by the deep wrinkles left by long periods under the sun.
Remaining in the hallway, they handed her their warrant cards; she looked at them carefully, glancing up to study their faces and compare them with the photos. Then she handed the cards back, thanking them in a calmer voice. She stepped back through the door and waved them into the apartment.
Brunetti saw four white easy chairs around a thick-legged low table made out of what looked like a carved shutter that must have come from the Middle East. On one wall were rows of tall, narrow framed pieces of Arabic calligraphy, two with what looked like a flamboyant signature at the bottom. Two other walls held framed pages in different sizes, all in a variety of Arabic handwriting. On the last wall were books, leaving the Arab conquest to the other three.
‘They’re beautiful,’ Brunetti said, moving closer to take a look at one of the framed documents. ‘What are they?’
‘Land registry documents,’ she said. ‘The others are pages from the Koran.’
‘Where did you find them?’
‘I lived in Uzbekistan for some years. The municipal office in the village where I worked had records from past centuries. When they decided to get rid of them, no one was interested, so I asked for a box of them and they were happy to give them to me.’ She looked across the room and observed, ‘I’ve always found the calligraphy beautiful.’
‘Where you worked?’ Brunetti asked, ignoring her comment. Vianello, he saw, was walking from one to another of the framed pieces, studying the calligraphy, shifting back and forth to bring it into closer focus.
‘For FAO,’ she said, naming the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN but not giving any further explanation.
‘What were you doing for them?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I was an edaphologist.’
‘What does that mean?’ Vianello interrupted with real curiosity, looking away from the pages towards her.
If she was surprised that this had now become a double inquisition, she gave no sign of it and said, ‘It means I tested the soil to see what nutrients were in it. Or were lacking. And the salt content.’
‘In the soil?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Yes.’ She looked at Vianello. At his nod, she continued. ‘When we found out what there was too much of or too little of, FAO tried to find a natural way to rebalance the soil by rotating crops or planting something that would fix the nitrogen in the soil. Or encouraging the farmers to rely less on pesticides and chemical fertilizers.’ She smiled, and Brunetti could see her relax even more. Straight-faced, she explained, ‘I tried to convince them that cow-shit’s the best.’
Vianello laughed and said right back, ‘My great-uncle always said horse was better.’
‘Was he a farmer?’
‘When he was a young man, that’s what most people in Friuli did.’
‘I see,’ she answered.
While the two of them were speaking, Brunetti had moved behind one of the chairs. When she saw this, Signora Minati said, ‘I suppose we’d all better sit down.’
‘When were you in Uzbekistan, Signora, if I might ask?’ Brunetti said when they were seated.
‘Until ten years ago. I was there a total of three years, at the ends of the earth; near the Aral Sea, in a small town called Moynaq,’ she said with a small smile. ‘We had electricity but little more, and even that wasn’t very reliable.’
‘How did you test soil?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Did you have a laboratory?’
She sat with her hands folded in her lap, paying careful attention to his questions. Instead of answering this one, however, she said, ‘Before we continue with this, I’d like you to tell me why you’re asking me these questions.’ When Brunetti failed to answer for some time, she added, ‘The only people who’ve been this curious about my work there were men from the Uzbeki Secret Service. They came to Moynaq to question me.’
‘I should have begun by asking you if you knew Davide Casati,’ Brunetti said and watched her response to the mention of his name.
She showed no surprise at all. In fact, she looked at him and smiled, deepening the wrinkles around her eyes, then said, ‘I was waiting for you to ask about him.’ She glanced away and, looking at the quiet motion in her curtains, said, ‘He was a good man.’
‘Did you know him well?’ Brunetti asked.
‘At least well enough to know that much about him. As I assume you did, as well, Commissario, if you spent much of the last two weeks rowing with him, unless Brunetti is a more common name than I thought.’ She had the grace to smile again after saying this, removing Brunetti’s suspicion that he had unknowingly had a computer chip placed in his ear.
Brunetti let a moment pass before asking, ‘Could you tell me the nature of your relationship with him?’
‘“Relationship with him”?’ she repeated, putting ironic emphasis on the first word.
‘Yes.’
‘I did him favours and he gave me fish,’ she said, showing the first sign of exasperation with Brunetti’s questions.
‘What sort of favours did you do for him?’
‘You should know that, Commissario,’ she said sharply. ‘You saw him collecting the samples of his bees.’
‘Yes, I did. The ones he took last week, of bees and soil.’
‘He’d sent others.’
‘I’d assumed as much,’ Brunetti said. He thought of the vial of mud Casati had carried back to the boat. ‘Did he want you to read the reports when they came back?’ he asked, thinking it better not to mention their visit to the post office.