Doctored Evidence (6 page)

‘Anything else?'

‘Occasionally, I'd telephone and ask her to turn the television down,' she said, then explained, ‘Flori, that is. I'd been calling Signora Battestini for years, and sometimes she'd be very nice and turn it down, and other times she'd scream at me. Once she even slammed down the phone and turned the television up louder, God knows why.' She glanced at him to see what he was making of all of this, nothing more than the worst sort of small town gossip, but he still seemed genuinely interested. ‘But Flori would say “
Sì, Signora
” and turn it down. I suppose that's why I liked her, or I felt sorry for her, whatever it was.'

‘I'm sure that was a great relief. Nothing's worse, is it, especially when you're trying to sleep?' His sympathy was audible.

‘Sometimes, during the summer, it was impossible. I've got a house up in the mountains,
near Trento, and I'd have to go up there just to get a good night's sleep.' She smiled and shook her head at the apparent lunacy of the situation. ‘I know it sounds crazy that a person can drive you out of your own home, but that's the way it was.' Then, with a puckish smile, she added, ‘Until I discovered the firemen.'

‘How did they get in?' Brunetti asked.

She told him with evident pleasure. ‘The downstairs door was always locked, and they couldn't open it. So they had to go to Madonna dell'Orto, or somewhere over there, and come back with a ladder. They'd lay it on the ground in front of her house and put it together, then raise it up to her windows . . .'

‘Second floor?' he asked.

‘Yes. It must have been, I don't know, seven or eight metres long. And then one or two of them would climb up and in her window and go into her bedroom and wake her up.'

‘You saw all of this?' he asked.

‘Yes. I watched it from my windows. When they got inside, I'd move into my bedroom. That's when I saw them wake her up.' She smiled at the memory. ‘They were really very nice, the firemen. They're all Venetian, so she had no trouble understanding them. They'd ask her how she was and then they'd suggest she turn down the television. And then they'd leave.'

‘How?'

‘Excuse me?' she asked.

‘How did they leave? Back down the ladder?'

‘Oh, no,' she said with a laugh. ‘They'd go out the door and down the stairs, and when they got outside, they'd take the ladder down and take it apart.'

‘How many times did you do this, Signora?'

‘Why? Is it illegal?' she asked, worried for the first time in her conversation with Brunetti.

‘I don't see how it could be,' he answered calmly. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. If you couldn't see her from one of the windows in your apartment, then it seems to me you'd have every reason to be concerned that something had happened to her.'

He didn't repeat his question, but still she answered it. ‘Four times, I think. They always got here in about fifteen minutes.'

‘Hum,' he said appreciatively, and she wondered if he was surprised or pleased. Then he said, ‘Did it stop when Flori came?'

‘Yes.'

He allowed a long time to pass and then said, ‘The lieutenant told me that you took her to the station, Signora, and left her there. Is this true?'

‘Yes.'

‘At about ten-thirty?'

‘Yes.'

Changing the subject, he asked, ‘Did Signora Ghiorghiu have any other friends here that you know of?'

Hearing him refer to Flori with such formality pleased her, but her smile was brief, more a tightening of her lips than a smile. ‘I was hardly a friend, Commissario.'

‘You behaved like one.'

Reluctant to try to speak about this, she returned to his question. ‘No, not that I know of. We weren't really friends because we really couldn't talk. Just people who liked one another.'

‘And when you left her at the station, how would you describe her behaviour or her mood?'

‘She was still upset by what had happened but much less so than before.'

He looked down at the floor for a moment, then back at her. ‘Did you ever see anything else from your window, Signora?' he asked, but before she could even think about defending herself from the suggestion of nosiness, he went on, ‘I ask because, if we accept the premise that Flori didn't do this, then someone else must have, and anything you can tell me about Signora Battestini might help.'

‘You mean, to find out who it really was?' she asked.

‘Yes.'

So effortless had been his acceptance of the possibility of Flori's innocence that she didn't have time to register surprise. ‘I've been thinking about this since I called you,' she said.

‘I imagine you must have, Signora,' he said but didn't prod her.

‘I've lived across from her for more than four years, since I bought the apartment.' She paused but he gave no indication of wanting or needing to hurry her. ‘I moved in in February, I think;
towards the end of winter, at any rate. So I didn't notice her, not until the spring, when it got warmer and we started to open our windows. That is, I might have seen her moving around the apartment, but I paid no attention to her.

‘As soon as the noise started, though, I paid attention. I started by calling across the
calle
, but it didn't do any good. She was always asleep; never woke up. So one day I went over and looked at the doorbells, then I found her number in the phone book and called her. I didn't say who I was or where I lived or anything like that; I just asked her if she could, at night, try to keep her television turned down.'

‘And how did she respond?' he asked.

‘She said she always turned it off before she went to bed and hung up.'

‘And then?'

‘Then it started during the day, and I'd call and when she answered I'd ask her, always very politely, to turn it down.'

‘And?'

‘And most of the times she did.'

‘I see. And at night?'

‘Sometimes it wasn't on, for weeks at a time. I'd begin to hope something had happened, that she'd been taken away or gone away.'

‘Did you ever think of getting her a pair of those earphones, Signora?'

‘She'd never wear them,' she answered with absolute certainty. ‘She's crazy. That's why. Mad as a horse. Believe me, Signore, I did my homework on this woman. I spoke to her
lawyer, her doctor, her niece, the people at the psychiatric centre at Palazzo Boldù, to the neighbours, even to the postman.'

She saw his interest and went on. ‘She was a patient at Boldù for years, when she could still manage the stairs and leave the house. But either she stopped or they threw her out – if a psychiatric centre can throw people out, that is.'

‘I doubt they can,' he said. ‘But I suppose they could encourage her to leave.' He waited a moment, then asked, ‘The niece? What did she say?'

‘That her aunt was “a difficult woman”.' She snorted in scorn, ‘As though I didn't know that. She didn't want to have anything to do with it. In fact, I'm not sure she really understood what I was talking about. Same with the police, as I told you, and with the
Carabinieri
.' She paused, then added, ‘Someone in the neighbourhood – I can't remember who it was – told me her son died five or six years ago, and that's when the television began. For company.'

‘So he died before you moved in?'

‘Yes. But from what I've heard, I suspect she was always “a difficult woman”.'

‘And her lawyer?' Brunetti asked.

‘She said she'd speak to Signora Battestini.'

‘And?'

Signora Gismondi pushed her lips together as if in disgust.

‘The postman?' he asked with a smile.

She laughed out loud. ‘He had nothing good to say about her, as a matter of fact. He'd take
everything up to her, whenever it came – he was always climbing those steps – and she never gave him anything. Not even at Christmas. Nothing.'

His attention was unwavering and so she went on. ‘The best story I heard about her was from the marble man, the one over by the Miracoli,' she said.

‘Costantini?' he asked.

‘Yes. Angelo,' she said, pleased that he knew whom she was talking about. ‘He's an old friend of the family, and when I told him who I was having trouble with, he told me that she called him about ten years ago and asked him to come and give her an estimate for a new flight of steps. He said he already knew her or knew about her, so he knew it was pointless to go, but he went anyway. He measured the steps, did all the calculations, and went back the next day to tell her how many steps she needed and how high they would have to be, and how much it would cost.' Like anyone who enjoys telling a good story, she paused there, and he responded like any good listener.

‘And?'

‘And she said she knew he was trying to cheat her, and she wanted him to do it with fewer stairs and each of them lower.' She allowed the full idiocy of this to sink in, then added, ‘It makes you wonder whether maybe Palazzo Boldù really did throw her out.'

He nodded at this. ‘Did people visit her, Signora?' he asked after a moment.

‘No, no one I can remember, well, not anyone I remember seeing more than a few times. There were all the women who worked for her, of course. Most of them were black, and once I spoke to a woman who said she was from Peru. But they all left, usually after only a few weeks.'

‘But Flori stayed?' he asked.

‘She said she had three daughters and seven grandchildren, and I suppose she had to keep the job so she could send them money.'

‘Do you know if she was paid, Signora?'

‘Who? Flori?'

‘Yes.'

‘I think so. At least she had a little money.' Before he could ask her to explain, she said, ‘I met her once on Strada Nuova. It was about six weeks ago and I was having a coffee in a bar, and she came in. It was that place just at the corner near the Santa Fosca
traghetto
. When I went over, she recognized me, you know, from the window, and she kissed me on the cheek, as if we were old friends. She had her purse open in her hands, and I saw that all she had were some coins. I don't know how much. I didn't look, you know, but I saw there wasn't much.' She stopped speaking, memory taking her back to that afternoon in the bar. ‘I asked why she had come in, and she said she wanted an ice-cream. I think she said she loved ice-cream. I know the man who runs the place, so I told him I was offering and not to take her money, that I'd pay.'

It was only now that the possibility occurred
to her: ‘I hope I didn't hurt her feelings. By insisting I pay, I mean.'

‘I don't think it would, Signora,' he said.

‘I asked her what she wanted and she said chocolate, so I asked him to give her a double cone, and I could see from her face when he gave it to her that all she had been going to get for herself was a single, and that made me feel so sorry for her. She had to put up with that horrible woman all day and all night long, and she couldn't even afford a double ice-cream cone.'

For a long time, neither of them said anything.

‘And the money you gave her, Signora?' he asked.

‘It was an impulse, nothing more than that. The money I had was for a job I'd bid for and intentionally bid too high, hoping I wouldn't get it because it was very boring: designing packaging for a new range of light bulbs. But they gave me the job, and it turned out to be so easy that I felt a little bit guilty about being paid all that money. So I guess it was easier to give it away than it would have been if I'd really worked to get it.' She remembered the money and the impulse that had caused her to give it to Flori. ‘It didn't do her much good, did it?' she asked. ‘She never got to spend it.'

As the idea came to her, she said, ‘Wait a minute; I've just realized something. I've still got three hundred Euros of that money. I left it here when I went to England. I knew I couldn't use it there. So I've still got the notes.'

The evident interest in his glance prompted her to continue, ‘That's all you've got to do to prove that I did give it to her, that she didn't steal it from Signora Battestini.' When he didn't respond, she went on. ‘The notes were all new and were probably in a series, so all I've got to do is give you the notes I've still got, and if you compare the serial numbers with the ones on the money she had with her on the train, you'll see that she didn't steal anything.'

Puzzled by his lack of enthusiasm and, she admitted to herself, hurt by his lack of appreciation, she asked, ‘Well? Wouldn't it be proof?'

‘Yes,' he said with evident reluctance, ‘it would be proof.'

‘But?' she asked.

‘But the money is gone.'

‘
HOW CAN THAT
be?' she asked. Enough time elapsed between her question and his response to render it, when it came, redundant. She had to consider only for a moment to realize that such a sum of money passing through a series of public offices and officials had as much chance of survival as would an ice cube passed from hand to hand on the beach at the Lido.

‘There seems to be no record of the money after it left the police in Villa Opicina,' he said.

‘Why are you telling me this, Commissario?'

‘In the hope that you won't tell anyone else,' he answered, making no attempt to avoid her gaze.

‘Are you afraid of the bad publicity?' she asked with more than a little of Lieutenant
Scarpa's sarcasm, as if it were somehow contagious.

‘No, not particularly, Signora. But I would like this piece of information not to be made public, just as I would like to keep everything you're telling me from becoming public knowledge.'

‘And may I ask why?' The sarcasm had backed off, but there was still plenty of scepticism left in her voice.