Pozzi was transformed into the teacher proud of his student. ‘All of it, I don’t know, Signore. But some of it, yes.’
‘If you’ve known about it for all of this time, why haven’t you ever said anything?’ Brunetti asked, as though he were piqued by curiosity, not by indignation; no, never that.
Griffoni had herself become a clam, stuck to something hard under metres of murky water and thus invisible, barely breathing. Brunetti kept his eyes on Pozzi, as though they were alone in the room.
‘Because, as you know from the Bible, it is far better to invest a talent than to bury it,’ Pozzi said, then smiled in anticipation of Brunetti’s response.
Brunetti forced himself to produce a grin and then cite the same passage in a discreet compliment to Pozzi. ‘What is it that you’ve done, you good and faithful servant?’
‘I did as the first servant did: I invested the talent wisely.’
‘And how did you do that?’ Brunetti asked, telling himself to behave as though he were being told another story, another nursery rhyme.
Pozzi looked off into a corner of the ceiling, and Brunetti could all but see him putting his words in order, shifting them around so as to put the hero in the right place at the right time, where he was sure to do the one right thing. Brunetti noticed that Pozzi actually looked bigger than he had when they entered the room.
‘I invested it in my future,’ Pozzi finally said with a very small smile.
Brunetti allowed his eyes to travel appreciatively around the entire room, his gaze lingering longer than necessary on the bookcase, consciously avoiding the place where Griffoni sat, before he returned it to Pozzi. He thought of complimenting him on the room, but, much as he tried, he could not bring himself to speak those words. Instead, he indicated the room with a wave, and nodded.
Taking Brunetti’s gaze as a compliment, Pozzi continued. ‘It took me some time to realize that I had something to sell and had a buyer.’
‘You make it sound easy,’ Brunetti said, relieved to find the words sounding normal.
‘I was in the hospital for months, you know?’ Pozzi asked, and Brunetti responded with a shake of his head meant to suggest ignorance of and sympathy for this fact.
‘Then they sent me to a rehab facility. State run. They gave me a bed and one hour of rehabilitation a week.’ He looked at Brunetti, raised a hand to shoulder height, and ran it down the front of his torso and out into the air at the height where his knees might still have been. ‘They would have let me lie there until I died.’ Brunetti was familiar with such places.
‘After I’d been there for a month,’ Pozzi continued, ‘some of the men I had worked with came to visit, and they told me about the two who died and about Casati and Bianchi. They said Bianchi had been in a private clinic and had gone to a private nursing home when the clinic released him.’ He let that sink in and then added, ‘And I was lying in a room with three other men, with one hour of rehabilitation a week.’
Neither Griffoni nor Brunetti said a word; their silence led him on.
‘So I called GCM and told them I’d like to speak to one of their lawyers, and when they asked what it was about, I mentioned the fire.’ He paused to observe Brunetti’s reaction: Brunetti did his part and showed every sign of interest.
Apparently pleased with what he saw on his listener’s face, Pozzi continued. ‘When they transferred the call, I told the person who I was and where I was, and why. I told him I’d had a long time in the hospital to think about what had been going on before the fire and wanted to discuss it with them before contacting the authorities.’ Pozzi could not suppress a smile, the same sly smile that Brunetti didn’t like.
‘Their lawyers came the next day, two of them. That they were so eager was enough to tell me I’d already won, so I said I knew about how Bianchi was being treated, and I wanted everything he had, but with rehab every day and enough money every month to be able to live as I pleased.’ Pozzi looked at Griffoni, as though he wanted to be sure she was following his story, and she nodded, though she did not smile.
It was enough, however, to persuade Pozzi to continue. ‘I told them I was willing to make the same agreement with them that Bianchi had.’ Pozzi threw his head back in a motion of pure glee and, eyes on the ceiling, added, ‘I didn’t know what Bianchi had given them, but I knew what he got.’
‘You knew where the barrels had been sent?’ Brunetti asked, wanting to be sure.
‘I was the logistical engineer,’ Pozzi said by way of answer. ‘Remember?’ He forgot to smile when he asked this, then continued. ‘I told them I’d made copies of company invoices and left them in a safe place.’ When Pozzi turned to check the expression on Griffoni’s face, he smiled and said, ‘It was my insurance policy, Signora.’
‘I see,’ she answered and relapsed into silence.
‘And?’ asked Brunetti, though the fact that Pozzi was a patient in Villa Flora made it obvious what the response had been.
Pozzi turned the same smile to Brunetti. ‘They gave it to me: this place, rehabilitation, and they fitted me with artificial legs.’
When he saw Brunetti’s involuntary expression of surprise, Pozzi said, ‘Yes, I’ve got them. Like that South African guy who killed his girlfriend.’ He paused, and in the absence of Brunetti’s question, volunteered: ‘They’re in the other room. I ask them to put them there during the day because it’s easier not to use them all the time.’
Brunetti nodded and then asked, ‘Bianchi. Do you see him?’
Before answering, Pozzi glanced toward the door, as if fearing his words might slip away down the corridors and work their way into Bianchi’s room. ‘I never liked him when we worked together, so I don’t see any reason why I’d like him now.’ Then, as though to erase all doubt, he added, ‘Besides, he can’t read, so what would we talk about?’
‘Of course, of course,’ Brunetti muttered.
A new look, self-satisfied and smug, passed across Pozzi’s face. ‘The lawyer probably thought he was dealing with some crippled idiot. He asked me to sign a form saying that the company had maintained the highest professional standards of security in the areas assigned to them for clean-up.’ Then anger replaced self-satisfaction. ‘What did he think I was?’
‘He underestimated you, I can see,’ Brunetti said, speaking the truth.
Pozzi preened at the compliment. ‘He did, indeed.’
‘What did you have to give …?’ Brunetti began but let his voice trail off, wondering how far Pozzi would let himself go before he remembered that he was talking to a policeman.