‘Because if this man Bianchi’s been there since then, he’s paid them more than two million Euros.’ She glanced away momentarily and then looked back at him and said, speaking with quiet emphasis, ‘I can’t even count how many years I’d have to work to earn that.’
They turned into a road that ran along the right side of the Brenta canal. Brunetti made no comment, waiting to hear more of what she thought. ‘Someone’s paying for him, then,’ she said. It was a declaration, not a question. ‘We can exclude the possibility of insurance,’ she went on in the same tone. ‘They’d drag something this expensive through the courts for decades before they’d pay.’
Brunetti nodded in agreement but said nothing.
She leaned back in the seat and turned away from him, watching the large houses and extensive gardens on their right. ‘Who’d pay?’ she asked in a low voice, as if speaking to herself.
After asking that, she turned to Brunetti and repeated, ‘Who’d pay?’
By way of answer, Brunetti said, ‘And if someone was paying, why weren’t they also paying Casati?’
‘Because he was hurt in the same accident?’
‘I have no proof of that,’ Brunetti answered. ‘But it makes sense: they were hospitalized at about the same time and kept in touch for years.’
‘Why was that, do you think?’
‘No idea.’ When Griffoni did not comment, he continued. ‘All I know is what Casati’s daughter told us: old times, old friends who had an argument, and the misery Bianchi lived in.’
At that moment, the car turned through the iron gates in the fence that isolated Villa Flora from the rest of the world and headed up the gravel drive. The fa?ade of the villa declared itself, upright and square and glowing warmly in the sun, the garden in front of it dappled with white and red roses.
Griffoni bent forward to see more of the building and garden. ‘Misery,’ she said and leaned back in her seat.
The driver stopped in front of the building, got out, and opened the door for Griffoni. Together she and Brunetti started up the steps. He raised the small brass lion head that served as knocker and hit it a few times against the metal plate beneath it.
After some time, the door was opened by a woman who wore a dark blue jacket and mid-calf skirt that might have been a uniform or merely a sober taste in clothing. In her fifties, she had a plump and amiable face that succeeded in making them feel welcomed by the smile she flashed at them. A plastic ID card was pinned to the right lapel of her jacket, adding to the argument that it was a uniform. It bore her photo and name: Anita Segalin.
‘Welcome to Villa Flora,’ she said. Her eyes were a deep brown and moved slowly from Brunetti to Griffoni and back again. Though neither of them answered, she flashed them another smile that resided exclusively in her mouth. The flash erased, her face returned to its normal passivity, her eyes continuing to move back and forth between them, assessing things. ‘How may I help you?’
‘We’ve come to visit one of your residents,’ Brunetti said, choosing that word in place of ‘patients’, a word that seemed out of place in these surroundings.
‘And who might that be?’ she asked, stepping back to allow them to enter a long hallway illuminated by the sunshine that flowed in from the rooms on either side.
‘Zeno Bianchi,’ Brunetti answered.
A half-second before Brunetti spoke the name, Signora Segalin had flashed him another tight smile, as though both to encourage his memory and congratulate him for coming to see any resident of Villa Flora. ‘Ah,’ she breathed when she heard the name. ‘He’ll be delighted; he has very few visitors.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Brunetti said.
‘And you are?’ the woman asked.
‘Guido Brunetti, and this is Dottoressa Claudia Griffoni.’
Signora Segalin’s eyes widened slightly and she asked, ‘Dottoressa?’
Griffoni put on her warmest, most disarming smile and said, ‘Not of medicine, I’m afraid, Signora.’ This time, she looked mildly relieved.
‘Public Administration,’ Claudia said, a half-truth, for she had taken a degree in this before taking another in Law.
‘Is there some problem?’ Signora Segalin asked, as though this were an official visit of some sort. The question was not followed by a smile.
‘Nothing that can’t be sorted out very quickly, I’m sure,’ Griffoni said with easy confidence. ‘The new regulations for persons with handicaps are very complicated, and I wanted to explain some changes to Signor Bianchi.’
Signora Segalin nodded, as though she completely understood this desire. Brunetti thought of the way Alvise’s wife had spent the last six months going from office to office, trying to get a public health nurse to come to visit her grandmother, more than ninety, who had been confined to bed for the last four years. Perhaps the sort of people who could afford Villa Flora were accustomed to greater solicitude from the social services: certainly Signora Segalin appeared to find nothing untoward in their unannounced visit.
‘I last saw Signor Bianchi in the gazebo,’ she said, semaphoring her pleasure at the word, eager to help now that she knew these people had something to do with public administration, the broad group charged with visiting rest homes to see that the rules of patient care were being followed. ‘I’ll take you to him.’ She turned and walked swiftly towards the back of the building; they followed, drawn along so quickly that they had little time to pause to look into the rooms on either side of the corridor.
Brunetti glanced through the first doorway they passed and saw an enormous bouquet of mixed roses standing on a narrow table, magazines and newspapers fanned out on both sides of it. From the next room floated what he thought might be a Chopin nocturne, badly played, but when he glanced inside, the view was too narrow to allow him to see anything but the curved back of a grand piano. At the end of the corridor, the woman paused and opened a thick wooden door. The door, Brunetti noticed, had a normal metal handle that was pressed down to open it, not the long metal bars of fire exits he was accustomed to seeing in nursing homes.
Outside, a gravel path led to a small gazebo covered with trailing roses, the sweetness of which he could smell at a distance. Signora Segalin stopped when they were still a few metres away and turned to flash them another smile. ‘Let me go ahead to prepare Signor Bianchi. He has so few visitors.’ She kept her voice low, as if afraid someone might overhear her.