28
As Brunetti had both known and feared, it proved impossible to persuade Vice-Questore Patta that the laboratory tests performed by Signorina Montini should be repeated. His superior had already dismissed the idea of investigating Signor Gorini or his dealings with his clients. The man – Patta had this on good authority – had been very helpful in treating the wife of a member of the city council, and thus the idea of causing him trouble – in the face of a complete absence of evidence – was unthinkable.
When Brunetti refused to abandon the idea of redoing the tests, Patta demanded, ‘Do you have any idea how much money ULSS loses every year?’ When Brunetti did not answer, Patta said, ‘And you want to add to it because of some wild theory you have that a faith healer corrupted this woman into falsifying medical reports?’
‘A faith healer with a long criminal record, Dottore,’ Brunetti added.
‘A long history of accusation of crime,’ Patta corrected. ‘I don’t think you, of all people, Commissario, should have to be reminded that they are not the same thing.’ Patta gave a friendly smile here, as if this were a joke with an old friend who had never understood the difference.
Brunetti was having none of it. ‘If this woman was tampering with test results, Vice-Questore, then the tests have to be redone.’
Patta gave another smile, but there was no humour in his voice when he said, ‘In the absence of any evidence that this woman was involved in criminal behaviour – regardless of what you suspect, Commissario – I think it would be irresponsible on our part to spread needless alarm among the people whose tests she might have performed.’ He paused in reflection and then added, ‘Or to weaken in any way the public’s faith in government institutions.’
As so often happened when Brunetti dealt with Patta, he was forced to admire the skill with which his superior could transmute his own worst failings – in this case blind ambition and an absolute refusal to perform any action that did not benefit him directly – into the appearance of probity.
Not bothering to explain or prepare for the change in subject, Brunetti said, ‘I’m going to Fontana’s funeral tomorrow morning, sir.’
The temptation proved too strong for Patta, who asked, ‘In hopes of seeing the murderer there?’ He smiled, inviting Brunetti to share the joke.
‘No, sir,’ Brunetti said soberly. ‘So that his death isn’t treated as something insignificant.’ Good sense and the instinct of survival stopped Brunetti from adding, ‘too’ to his sentence. He got to his feet, said something polite to the Vice-Questore, went upstairs and made two disappointing calls to his colleagues in Aversa and Naples, and then went home and spent the rest of the day and evening reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a pleasure he had not permitted himself for some years.
The funeral took place in the church of Madonna dell’Orto, the parish into which Fontana’s mother had been born and which had always been the spiritual centre of her life. Brunetti and Vianello arrived ten minutes before the Mass began and took seats in the twelfth row. Vianello wore a dark blue suit and Brunetti dark grey linen. He was glad of the jacket, for this was the first place he had felt cool since stepping into the house where he had found Lucia and Zinka.
The heat of the day had kept at bay the morbidly curious and the habitual attenders of funerals, so there were only about fifty people present, seated sparsely and in sad separation in the rows in front of them. After doing his rough count of those present, Brunetti realized they averaged only one person for each year of Fontana’s life.
Brunetti and Vianello were too far back to see who sat in the first rows, reserved for family and close friends, but they would soon file from the church after the coffin and reveal themselves.
The music began: some sort of dreary organ theme that would have suited an elevator in a very respectable, if not necessarily wealthy, neighbourhood. Noise from behind slipped under the sound of the organ; Brunetti and Vianello stood and turned to face it.
A flower-draped coffin on a wheeled bier came down the aisle, pulled along by four black-suited men who looked extraneous to any emotional weight this scene might have. Would the mother have hired mutes if they had been available, Brunetti wondered? When the coffin stopped in front of the altar, everyone in the church sat and the Mass began. Brunetti was attentive for the first minutes, but the ceremony was duller now than it had been when he, as a boy, had attended the funerals of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles. The words were spoken in Italian: he missed the magical incantation of the Latin. Suddenly aware of the silence, he wondered if the absence of the tolling of the death bell during the Mass, the sound that had accompanied so many members of his family to their last resting place, most recently his mother, was also planned in this modern – and banal – ceremony.
As he stood and sat, knelt briefly only to rise to his feet again, moved on the tides of memory, Brunetti reflected on this strange death. Signorina Elettra had ‘accessed’ the files of the Tribunale and had managed to trace Signor Puntera’s legal history. Both the case of the contested warehouses and the injured worker had been assigned to Judge Coltellini, and in both cases long delays had resulted from the absence or temporary misplacing of files and pertinent documents. Further, other cases that had been assigned to the judge’s docket had experienced similar delays. In all of them, Signorina Elettra’s researches had ascertained, one party in the cause stood to profit from these delays. The judge, however, owned her own home, which she had bought three years ago, though not from Signor Puntera.
The bank of which Signor Fulgoni was the director, it turned out, had granted a loan to Signor Puntera at very favourable rates, and Signor Marsano was a lawyer in a firm that had once represented a client in a case brought, unsuccessfully, against Signor Puntera. Signor Puntera’s tax return listed the rent he received from each of their apartments, as well as that occupied by the Fontanas, at four hundred and fifty Euros a month or about 20 per cent of the rent they might be expected to pay.
The priest circled the coffin, dipping his aspergillum repeatedly into the holy water and sprinkling it across the surface. Brunetti saw how perfectly the rituals of pre-Christian Rome – priests mumbling incantations that put evil spirits to flight, searching for the future in the organs of sacrificed animals – blended with those of the new Italy – evil spirits kept at bay by magic tisana, the future revealed in the turn of a card. We pass through centuries, and we learn nothing.
Puntera, too, had adapted to the new order: nothing he had done was in any way unusual in these modern times, and it was unlikely that anything could be proven against Judge Coltellini for her various accommodations in his favour. With bitter cynicism, Brunetti had to admit they had been in no danger from any revelations Fontana might have chosen to make. There was the risk of temporary embarrassment for Puntera and Coltellini, but if embarrassment were a bar to advancement, then there would be no government and no Church.
The return of the organ’s rumbling put an end to Brunetti’s reflections and signalled the end of the Mass; Brunetti and Vianello got to their feet and turned to face the aisle.
The four men wheeled the coffin slowly towards the door of the church; first behind it came Signora Fontana, her head covered by a black veil that blended into the long-sleeved black dress she wore. A man Brunetti did not recognize walked close beside her, supporting her by her right arm. Two steps behind them walked her nephew, who nodded to Brunetti as he passed. Brunetti recognized a few faces, people who worked at the Tribunale; he was surprised to see Judge Coltellini among them. The people filing out kept their eyes straight ahead or on the pavement in front of them.
A youngish couple walked arm in arm, and close behind them came Signora Zinka, bulky and overheated in a black dress that was too long and too tight. Her face was damp and swollen, not because of the heat, Brunetti thought. An arm’s length to her right walked Penzo, looking as though he were somewhere else, or wanted to be.
Seeing the next couple, Brunetti realized he had been wrong in believing the habitual frequenters of funerals had been deterred by the heat. Maresciallo Derutti and his wife were well known in the city, omnipresent at funerals, to which he insisted on wearing the dress uniform of the Carabinieri, whose ranks he had left more than two decades before. Seeing the Maresciallo walk by, Brunetti decided the funeral was over and stepped into the aisle, Vianello close behind.
Slowed by the solemnity of motion the situation imposed, it took them some time to reach the door of the church. From inside the church, Brunetti saw the coffin being wheeled, untolled, towards a boat moored by the riva. He and Vianello stepped outside; the marble pavement caught the light and hurled it back into Brunetti’s eyes, momentarily blinding him. He turned towards the church and, protected by his own shadow, fumbled in his pocket for his sunglasses. He felt them in his right pocket, but they were caught in his handkerchief; he pulled, but they would not come free. He opened his eyes to narrow slits to see what was wrong, but before he could look down, he noticed Signora Fulgoni emerging from the church into the dazzling light on the arm of another woman, one even taller, though not as slender, as she. Both wore wide-shouldered trouser suits, and both of them paused to put on their sunglasses.
He gave another tug and pulled the glasses free from his pocket. He slipped them on and looked back at Signora Fulgoni, only to see that the person holding her arm was actually a man who wore identical sunglasses to the woman; taller, though with the same feminine look and carefully cut short hair. Together, they descended the steps of the church and followed the other people to the water.
‘And the scales fell from his eyes,’ Brunetti whispered, wondering even as he spoke at his need, always, to be such a clever boots.
‘What?’ Vianello turned to ask him.
‘Patta joked that the murderer always comes to the funeral,’ Brunetti answered.
Confused, Vianello, eyes safe behind his own sunglasses, looked across the open space in front of the church, towards the people clustered around the boat that would take Fontana’s coffin to San Michele. He saw what Brunetti saw: the mother of the deceased, climbing now into the boat that would take her son away from her, Penzo’s rigid form next to the squat cylinder that was Zinka, the Maresciallo, arm raised in a long-held salute, and two tall people standing to his left.
Seeing the Inspector’s perplexity, Brunetti said only, ‘Wait until those two turn around.’
Brunetti and Vianello waited, both suddenly unaware of the sun or the heat. The man who had accompanied Signora Fontana handed her on to the boat and then followed her on board and down into the cabin. Someone on shore cast off the mooring rope, and the boat started to move slowly away from the riva. The people on the embankment remained motionless as the sound of the motor diminished until it was gone, leaving only silence behind. Then, as if they had all heard the same command at the same time, the people standing in front of the church turned to right or left and began to take themselves away from the place of grief.
Penzo, Brunetti noticed, went in the opposite direction from Signora Zinka, who joined the two young people. They started towards the Misericordia, and Zinka fell into step behind them.
Signora Fulgoni appeared to be keeping an eye on the other couple, for she stood still, clinging to the arm of the person with her, until the others had climbed the bridge and disappeared down the calle on the other side. She raised her head and spoke to her companion. They turned and started to walk in the same direction as the other two; Signora Fulgoni’s companion was nearest to them and thus was visible in profile.
It was a man walking beside Signora Fulgoni. Nothing strange in that. She said something to him, and he stopped and turned to her. They exchanged words, apparently not kind words, and then the man pulled his arm free of hers and waved a hand at her, as if to chase her away. Was it the way his wrist moved, finishing in a sharp angle, fingers pointing at the pavement, that made Vianello see? Was it the sudden twist of his head, a motion that was unconscious of itself as a violent parody of anger?
‘ “My husband is a bank director,” ’ said Vianello.
The sun blasted down on them from its highest point, nailing them to the pavement, and they were again aware of its weight. Brunetti looked at his watch just as the sound of the bells of some other church rolled across the city and over them. Amazed, he looked up at the bell tower of La Madonna dell’Orto and saw the bells hanging there, lifeless. ‘The bells aren’t ringing,’ he said, marvelling.