Signorina Elettra, whose reaction to the email was even more sceptical than Brunetti’s – and whose comments more acerbic – managed to dispel the Vice-Questore’s fears in very little time. When a now-scandalized Patta demanded to know who might have done such a thing as to send him a false threat, she had no suggestions to offer. She did say, however, that she might be able to discover the real source within a few days. Patta was pleased with this, as he always was when another person offered to do something for him.
She and Brunetti left their superior’s office together, buoyed up by his pleasant farewells. Once the door was closed, Signorina Elettra told Brunetti that her friend Giorgio was out of contact temporarily, so it would be a few days before she would have the information about the calls made from the phonecards. Before he had time to ask why she did not, for once, use official channels to seek this information, she explained that the normal procedure took a minimum of ten days.
The investigation of Cavanis’ death thus slowed down: the fingerprints and DNA left on the murder weapon found no match in police records; no one in the neighbourhood remembered having seen anything unusual near Cavanis’ building on the day of the murder; the few men who knew him had heard only vague rumours – passed on from the barman – about his expected turn in fortune.
During this period, a young tourist fell to his death from the altana of the apartment he and his girlfriend were renting soon after they were involved in an argument in a restaurant. Police attention was diverted for a few days until it was determined that the argument had been between the two of them and a young Italian who had been too forward in his behaviour towards the young woman; further, the girl had been across the street in a café when her boyfriend fell. Their presence in the apartment, it turned out, had not been registered with the appropriate city office, a violation which led to an investigation of the owners of the apartment, a well-known pharmacist and his wife, who worked in the Land Registry Office.
The police soon discovered that they owned and rented to tourists a total of six apartments, none of the income declared to the authorities. They were also the owners of a boutique twenty-three-room hotel which somehow had prospered in a building invisible to the Land Registry Office and the Guardia di Finanza, notwithstanding the fact that they had managed to obtain electricity, gas, telephone, water, and garbage collection services, and employed eleven people, all of whom were registered with the tax authority and paying their taxes.
The Guardia di Finanza soon relieved the police of the need to concern themselves with the pharmacist and his wife. The newspapers, although growing tired of the couple, failed to return the public eye to the murder on Rio Marin, so Pietro Cavanis was replaced by usurers, seven hundred kilos of cocaine in a truck coming off the ferry from Patras, and a band of Moldavian criminals known to be at work in the Veneto.
Brunetti felt obliged to tell the Contessa that they had made little progress in the investigation of what had happened to her granddaughter and decided to do this in person. To his surprise, he found both Griffoni and Manuela there when he arrived late one afternoon, and was even more surprised to learn that Griffoni occasionally brought Manuela to see her grandmother and stayed to have tea with them before taking Manuela back home.
Brunetti met Griffoni on the ground floor the next day and, as they started up towards their offices, asked her about this. She explained that, since the horse that she was going out to Preganziol to ride still legally belonged to the Contessa, the least she could do to thank her was accompany Manuela once a week when she went to see her grandmother.
‘What do you talk about with Manuela?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Oh, about the people we see on the street, or the shop windows, or the dogs that go by, and how nice it is to have tea with her grandmother.’
‘Every week?’
‘More or less,’ Griffoni said. ‘It makes Manuela happy.’
‘Seeing you?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Getting out and being with people, seeing life on the streets. Her mother doesn’t get on well with her ex-mother-in-law and doesn’t like to go there. This way, with me, Manuela gets to see her grandmother, who’s very happy to have her visit,’ Griffoni said, having failed to answer his question.
‘What about the horse?’ he asked, pausing when they arrived at the second floor.
‘Oh, I go out once in a while and take her out. Petunia’s very sweet.’
‘Is that enough for you?’ Brunetti asked, not at all sure what he meant but thinking of her silver medal and the sort of horse that would be worth transporting to the Olympics.
‘At this time of our lives, it is. Both of us have had time to calm down and take things more easily,’ Griffoni said, a remark that reminded Brunetti of how very little he knew about her life beyond the Questura.
‘Do you ride her in that field?’ he asked.
‘The first few times, Enrichetta asked me to, and I did. But then we both got bored, and Enrichetta could see that, so she told me to go out on the paths in the woods.’ She smiled at that. ‘It’s much better.’