‘He did that to you and you lied for him?’ Griffoni interrupted, making no attempt to disguise her astonishment.
Bianchi’s chicken-like shoulders pushed the material of his jacket up, then let it drop back into place. With his index finger, he tapped Bardo on the top of the head a few times and asked the dog, ‘He was a friend, wasn’t he, Bardo? And you can’t drop your friends in the shit, no matter what they’ve done, can you?’
The dog turned his head and licked at Bianchi’s hand again, this time in agreement. Head still lowered to the dog, he went on, ‘That’s when they told me it was Davide who had got me out of the building and that he’d been hurt. A lot of people saw him coming out of the warehouse, carrying me in his arms like a child. That’s what they said. That’s when more barrels inside began to explode, the ones with flammable waste, and …’ He stopped. ‘I have some scars on my legs. It burned through the cloth.’
Bardo began to snore, a remarkably peaceful sound. The three of them sat there silently for a long time, listening to the smooth sound of the dog’s breath.
‘When did you speak to him again?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Not for months. He called me. I was still in the eye hospital in Padova. He called me and asked me if I’d talk to him.’
‘What did you tell him?’ Brunetti asked.
Bianchi turned his face towards Brunetti, who saw the man’s brow furrow, as though he didn’t, or couldn’t, understand the question.
‘I said of course I’d talk to him,’ Bianchi said, and nodded at the simplicity of it.
‘Why?’ Griffoni asked.
The sunglasses turned to face her. ‘I told you. Because he was my friend.’
25
‘Of course,’ Griffoni sighed. Brunetti remembered that she was Neapolitan and so might understand this more profoundly than many other people, or might be quicker to sense the unease in Bianchi’s voice. ‘And you remained friends?’
‘We spoke last Sunday,’ Bianchi said. ‘The way we did every Sunday.’
Brunetti quelled his impulse to catch Griffoni’s eye. From the beginning of his career, he had schooled himself to disguise his reaction to what he was told or what he saw, and so, even now, when there was no chance that Bianchi would gain an advantage by seeing Brunetti’s response, he pressed against it and kept it from his face or voice.
’The way we did every Sunday,’ Brunetti repeated to himself. Well, that was a lie, wasn’t it? But why would he bother to tell it to the police? And in what way was it related to the lie about his being kept hungry here?
Brunetti’s thoughts turned to one of the old sayings popular with his mother and her friends: ‘Non c’è due senza tre.’ ‘There are never two without three.’ Bianchi had told them at least two lies already; what would the next one be?
‘Why are you telling us what he did to cause the fire?’ Brunetti asked, quite as though he believed the story.
Bianchi gave a slight shrug of one shoulder. ‘It doesn’t matter any more, does it? Now that Davide’s dead.’
Hoping that Bianchi would not sense his suspicions, Brunetti turned towards him, and was prepared to offer some bromide when Griffoni held up a hand to silence him and said, ‘How fortunate you are to have had a friendship that lasted so long, Signore.’
Bianchi lowered his head but had nothing to say, either to them or to the dog.
‘And how fortunate to be able to stay in a place like this. It’s so lovely.’ Ah, the woman was a snake, undulant and sly and very dangerous. ‘My grandmother was in a home for years, but it was nothing like this.’ Then, before Bianchi could speak, she said, raising her voice minimally, ‘Not that the place where she was had anything wrong with it. Not at all. It’s just that this is so … oh, I don’t know the right word. Elegant?’
Bianchi raised his head and, with a weak smile, said, ‘I’m afraid I’m not able to see that, Signora.’
Hearing Bianchi’s remark and seeing the expression of silent long-suffering he put upon his face, Brunetti realized that he was watching a chess game, played by masters. He thought of the chief tourist attraction of Marostica, a game of chess with humans costumed as the various pieces, played on giant squares in the medieval city centre. That game, however, was played out with identical moves every two years: here, each move was made in response to that of the adversary, and there was no question that they had become adversaries, Bianchi and Griffoni.
‘How is it that you come to be in such a place, Signor Bianchi?’ she insisted, voice dripping with wonder and admiration.
‘It’s what the insurance company suggested,’ he answered. ‘And, as I said, it doesn’t make much of a difference to me, anyway. I can’t see what the other people tell me about: the roses, the paintings, the fresh uniforms.’ To a man with his disability, he left it to them to infer, they were meaningless frivolities, completely foreign to the poor victim of eternal darkness.
Brunetti watched Bianchi’s mouth contract, as though he were trying to decide on his next move or if the last one had been correct. As Brunetti watched, Bianchi gave a tiny nod and said, ‘Even the food, which everyone tells me is so good, tastes different if you can’t see what you’re eating.’ He raised his hands in a gesture of acceptance, as though to emphasize that he spoke reluctantly, like someone forced to tell the truth about a party everyone else had enjoyed. At least he didn’t tell them he was always hungry.
‘Ah, that’s too bad,’ she sighed. ‘But I can assure you that everything is perfect; it couldn’t be lovelier, and the garden is a marvel.’ Like every good actress, she continued the scene even as she prepared to step offstage and, sweet-voiced, asked Brunetti, ‘Wouldn’t you say so, Commissario?’
‘Absolutely,’ Brunetti affirmed and then immediately asked, ‘And which insurance company is that, Signor Bianchi?’
‘Surely you don’t expect me to remember that after all this time,’ Bianchi said, allowing irritation to sift into his voice.
‘I’m sure the accounting office here could give me their name,’ Brunetti said, wondering if his easy certainty would make Bianchi squirm. Though the man gave no sign of being disturbed by Brunetti’s remark, Bardo suddenly raised his head, opened his eyes, and whined, as though he’d been disturbed in his sleep.
Griffoni looked at Brunetti and raised her eyebrows.
‘You said you spoke to Signor Casati every Sunday, Signore,’ Brunetti began. ‘Did he say anything to you recently that might have suggested that he was worried about something, the way his daughter said he was?’
Bianchi put his hand on the dog’s head and patted it to calm him. Bardo lowered his head to Bianchi’s knees and closed his eyes again. ‘No, nothing that I recall.’
‘Do you remember what you talked about the last time you spoke?’