Chapter Twelve

Was this the beginning of alcoholism, Brunetti wondered, as he found himself wanting to stop in a bar on the way back to the Questura and have another glass of champagne? Or was it merely the inescapable response to the certainty that he would have to speak to Patta that morning? The first explanation seemed preferable.

When he opened the door to his office, a wave of heat swept across him, so palpable that he turned to see if he could watch it roll down the corridor, perhaps to engulf some innocent soul unfamiliar with the vagaries of the heating system. Each year, on or about the feast day of Saint Agatha, 5 February, heat flared out of all the rooms on the north side of the fourth floor of the Questura at the same time as it disappeared from the corridors and the offices on the south side of the third floor. It remained this way for about three weeks, generally until the feast of Saint Leandro, whom most people in the building tended to thank for their deliverance. No one had ever been able to understand or correct this phenomenon, though it had gone on for five years or more. The main heating unit had, at various times and by various technicians, been worked on, inspected, adjusted, tinkered with, sworn at and kicked, but it had never been repaired. By now, people who worked on these two floors were resigned and took the necessary measures, some removing jackets while others wore gloves in the office.

So closely did Brunetti associate this phenomenon with the feast of Saint Agatha that he could never see an image of that martyr, invariably pictured holding her two severed breasts on a plate, but he imagined she was carrying thereon, instead, two matching pieces from the central heating unit: large washers, perhaps.

He walked across the room, stripping off coat and jacket as he went, and threw open both the tall windows. He was as suddenly chilled and went back to take his jacket from his desk, where he had tossed it. Over the course of the years, he had developed a rhythm for opening and closing the windows, one that not only effectively controlled the temperature in the room but also prevented him from concentrating on anything at all. Could the caretaker be in the pay of the Mafia? Each time he read the paper, it seemed that almost every other person who worked for the police was, so why not the caretaker?

On his desk lay the usual personnel reports and requests for information from police in other cities as well as letters from people in the city. There was one from a woman on the small island of Torcello, asking him personally to look for her son, whom she knew had been kidnapped by the Syrians. The woman was mad, and different members of the police received a letter from her each month: it was always the same non-existent son, but the kidnappers changed according to the winds of world politics.

If he went now, he could see Patta before lunch. With this beacon shining out its bright hope, he took the slim file of papers on the Semenzato and Lynch crimes and went down to Patta’s office.

Though fresh iris abounded, Signorina Elettra was not at her desk. Probably out at the landscaper’s. He knocked and was told to enter. Spared the vagaries of the heating system, Patta’s office was a perfect 22 degrees, the ideal temperature to allow him the luxury of removing his jacket, should the pace of work grow too frenetic. Having so far been spared that necessity, he sat behind his desk, his mohair jacket buttoned, diamond tie-pin neatly in place. As always, Patta looked as if he had just slipped off a Roman coin, his large brown eyes perfectly set among the other perfections of his face.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Brunetti said, taking the seat that Patta gestured him to.

‘Good morning, Brunetti.’ When Brunetti leaned forward to place the folder on Patta’s desk, his superior waved it away with his hand. ‘I’ve read it. Carefully. I take it you’re working on the assumption that the beating of Dottoressa Lynch and the murder of Dottor Semenzato are related?’

‘Yes, sir, I am. I don’t see how they can’t be.’

He thought for a moment that Patta, as was usual with him, would object to any expressed certainty that was not his own, but he surprised Brunetti by nodding his head and saying, ‘Yes, you’re probably right. What have you done so far?’

‘I’ve interviewed Dottoressa Lynch,’ he began, but Patta broke in.

‘I hope you were polite with her.’

Brunetti contented himself with a simple, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good, good. She’s an important benefactress of the city, and she’s to be treated accordingly.’

Brunetti allowed that to trickle away and then resumed. ‘There was a Japanese assistant who came here to close the exhibition and send the pieces back to China.’

‘Dottoressa Lynch’s assistant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A woman?’ Patta asked sharply.

Patta’s tone so dirtied the word that Brunetti had to pause for a moment before he replied, ‘Yes, sir. A woman.’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘Shall I go on, sir?^!

‘Yes, yes. Of course.’

‘Dottoressa Lynch told me that the woman was killed in an accident in China.’

‘What kind of accident?’ Patta asked, as if this would turn out to have been an inescapable consequence of her sexual proclivities.

‘In a fall at the archaeological site where they were working.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Three months ago. It was after Dottoressa Lynch wrote to Semenzato to say that she thought some of the pieces that had been returned to China were false.’

‘And this woman who was killed was the one who packed them?’

‘It would seem so, sir.’

‘Did you ask Dottoressa Lynch what her relationship was to this woman?’

Well, he hadn’t, had he? ‘No, sir. I didn’t. The Dottoressa seemed troubled by her death and by the possibility of the young woman’s involvement in whatever is going on here, but there was no more than that.’

‘Are you sure of that, Brunetti?’ Patta’s eyes actually narrowed when he asked this.

‘Absolutely, sir. I’d stake my reputation on it.’ As he always did when he lied to Patta, he stared him directly in the eyes, careful to keep his own open fully, his gaze level. ‘Shall I go on, sir?’ As soon as he said it, Brunetti realized he didn’t have anything else to say — well, anything else he wanted to say to Patta. Surely not that the Japanese girl’s family was so wealthy that she would, presumably, have had no financial interest in the substitution of pieces. The thought of the way Patta would respond to the idea of sexual jealousy as a motive made Brunetti feel faintly queasy.

‘Do you think this Japanese woman knew that false pieces were sent back to China?’

‘It’s possible, sir.’

‘But it is not possible,’ Patta said with heavy emphasis, ‘that she could have organized it herself. She must have had help here, here in Venice.’

‘It would seem so, sir. That’s a possibility I’m pursuing.’

‘How?’

‘I’ve initiated an investigation of Dottor Semenzato’s finances.’

‘On whose authority?’ Patta snapped.

‘My own, sir.’

Patta let that stand as said. ‘What else?’

‘I’ve already spoken to some people about Semenzato, and I expect to get information about his real reputation.’

‘What do you mean, “real reputation”?’

Oh, so seldom does fate cast our enemy into our hands, to do with as we will. ‘Don’t you think, sir, that every bureaucrat has an official reputation, what people say about him publicly, and then the real reputation, what people know to be true and say about him in private?’

Patta turned his right palm upward on his desk and moved his pinkie ring around on his finger with his thumb, examining it to see that he got the motion right. ‘Perhaps. Perhaps.’ He looked up from his palm. ‘Go on, Brunetti.’

‘I thought I’d begin with these things and see where they lead me.’

‘Yes, that sounds fair enough to me,’ Patta said. ‘Remember, I want to know about anything you do or find out.’ He consulted his Rolex Oyster. ‘I don’t want to keep you from getting busy with this, Brunetti.’

Brunetti stood, recognizing Patta’s lunch hour when it struck. He started towards the door, curious only about the way Patta would remind him to handle Brett with kid gloves.

‘And Brunetti,’ Patta said as Brunetti reached the door.

‘Yes, sir?’ he said, really curious, something he very seldom was with Patta.

‘I want you to handle Dottoressa Lynch with kid gloves.’ Ah, so that’s how he’d say it.

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