Doctored Evidence (7 page)

‘Because, the less the person who did this knows about what we know, the better it is for us.'

‘You say, “the person who did this”, Commissario. Does that mean you believe me, that Flori didn't kill her?'

He sat back in his chair and touched his lower lip with the forefinger of his left hand. ‘From what you tell me, Signora, it doesn't sound likely that she was a killer, especially in that way.'

Hearing this and believing him, she relaxed, and he went on, ‘And once she had a ticket home and some money, I find it unlikely that she'd go back and kill the old woman, no matter how difficult she had been.' He took a notebook from the pocket of his jacket and flipped it open. ‘Could you tell me what she was wearing, please, when you took her to the train?'

‘A housedress, the sort of thing you never see any more. Buttons down the front, short sleeves, made of something like nylon or rayon. Synthetic. Must have been terrible for her in this
heat. It was grey or beige, some light colour, and had a small pattern on it; I don't remember what.'

‘Was it something you saw her wearing in the house, when you saw her from your window?'

Signora Gismondi considered this, then answered, ‘I think so. She had that and a light-coloured blouse and dark skirt. But most of the time she had an apron on, so I don't have a clear memory of her clothes.'

‘Did you see any changes in her while she was there?'

‘I don't know what you mean by changes.'

‘Did she get her hair cut, or coloured? Start to wear glasses?'

She remembered the white roots of Flori's hair that last day, when she'd taken her to the café to try to calm her down. ‘She stopped dyeing her hair,' she finally said. ‘She probably couldn't afford it.'

‘Why do you say that?' he asked.

‘Do you have any idea of what it costs to have your hair dyed in this city?' she asked him, wondering if he had a wife and, if so, whether she was of an age to dye her hair. She guessed him to be somewhere in his fifties: he would have seemed younger than that, she realized, were it not for the thinning of the hair at the crown of his head and for the lines around his eyes. But, paradoxically, his eyes seemed those of a much younger man: astute, bright, quick to register what they saw.

‘Of course,' he said, understanding the
meaning of her question, and then, ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Signora Battestini? Anything at all, Signora, no matter how unimportant or inconsequential it might seem and, yes,' he went on with an easy smile, ‘no matter how much it might sound like gossip.'

She responded easily to the invitation to be of help. ‘I think I said that everyone in the neighbourhood knows her.' He nodded and she continued. ‘And they know she's caused me so much trouble . . .' Here she stopped briefly to interrupt herself, ‘You see, I'm the only person whose bedroom faces her apartment. I don't know whether other people's bedrooms were always at the back, or if they've changed their houses around over the course of the years to get away from the noise.'

‘Or whether it's just recently that this has begun,' he suggested.

‘No,' she responded immediately. ‘Everyone I talk to tells me it's been going on since the son died. The people to my right have air conditioning, so they sleep with the windows closed, and the old people below me close their shutters and windows both. God knows why it is they don't suffocate during the summer.' She suddenly realized how stupidly garrulous she must sound and broke off, tried to remember what had started her on this subject, then, finding the thread, returned to it. ‘Everyone knows her, and if I mention her name, everyone is ready to talk about her. I've heard her life story a dozen times.'

‘Really?' he asked, obviously interested. He turned a page in his notebook and glanced at her with what she took to be an encouraging smile.

‘Well, let's say I've heard bits and pieces of her life story.'

‘And would you tell me what they are?'

‘That she's lived there for decades. I'd guess from what people say that she was in her eighties, maybe older,' she said. ‘There was the one son, but he died. People have told me it wasn't a happy marriage. I think her husband died about ten years ago.'

‘Do you know what he did?'

She paused and tried to remember, dredging through half a decade of random gossip. ‘I think he had some sort of job with the city or the provincial government, but I don't know what it was. People said he spent most of his time after work in the bar on the corner, playing cards. They also said that's the only thing that kept him from, er, from killing her.' She looked up nervously, hearing what she had said, but then went on. ‘Everyone who ever mentioned him sounded like they thought he was a pleasant enough man.'

‘Do you know the cause of his death?'

She paused for a long time. ‘No, but I think someone told me it was a stroke or a heart attack.'

‘Did it happen here?'

‘I've no idea. They just said he died and left them everything, her and the son: the house, whatever money he had, another apartment on
the Lido, I think. When the son died, she must have inherited it all.'

He nodded occasionally as she spoke, in acknowledgement that he understood what she was saying and in encouragement.

‘I think that's all I ever heard about the husband.'

‘And the son?'

She shrugged.

‘What did people say about him?'

‘They didn't,' she said, apparently surprised by her own answer. ‘No one ever mentioned him to me, that is. Well, aside from the person who told me that he'd died.'

‘And about her?'

This time, her answer was immediate. ‘Over the years, she fought with all of the people who lived around her.'

‘About what sort of things?'

‘You're Venetian, aren't you?' she asked, but because this was so evident in his face and audible in his voice, she meant it as a joke.

Brunetti smiled, and she said, ‘Then you know the sort of things we fight about: garbage left in front of someone's door, or a letter put in the wrong letter box and not passed on, a dog that barks all the time: it doesn't really matter what it is. You know that. All you've got to do is respond to it in the wrong way, and you've got an enemy for life.'

‘And Signora Battestini sounds like the kind of person who responded in the wrong way.'

‘Yes,' she said, with an assertive double nod.

‘Was there any incident in particular?' he asked.

‘Do you mean was there any incident that might have led someone to kill her?' Signora Gismondi asked, trying to make it sound like a joke and not really succeeding.

‘Hardly. People like this don't get killed by their neighbours. Besides,' he said with a small, bold smile, ‘from what you've told me, you were the most likely to have done it, but I hardly think you did.'

Hearing him say that, she was struck by an awareness that this was one of the strangest conversations she'd ever had, though no less enjoyable for that.

‘Do you want me to continue to repeat things people said or try to tell you what I made of it all?' she asked.

‘I think the second would be more helpful,' he said.

‘And quicker,' she offered.

‘No, no, Signora. I'm in no hurry at all; please don't think that. Everything you have to say interests me.'

From another man, these words might have sounded deliberately ambiguous, their flirtatiousness disguised by their apparent sincerity, but from him she took only their literal meaning.

She sat back in her chair, relaxed in a way she could not have been with the other policeman, as she knew she could never be with him or with men like him. ‘I told you I've been in that apartment only four years. But I work at home,
and so I'm usually willing to listen to people when they talk to me because I spend most of my time alone, working.' She considered, then added ruefully, ‘That is, when the noise lets me.'

He nodded, having learned over the years that most people need to talk and how easy it was, with either the reality or the semblance of concerned curiosity, to get them to talk about anything at all.

With a wry smile she said, ‘And you see, people in the neighbourhood have told me other things about her. No matter how much their stories showed how much they hated her, they always finished by saying she was a poor widow who had lost her only child, and it was necessary to feel sorry for her.'

Sensing her desire to be prodded into gossip, he asked, ‘What other things did they tell you, Signora?'

‘About her meanness, for one thing. I told you she never tipped the postman, but many people have told me she would always buy the cheapest thing on offer. She'd walk halfway across the city to save fifty lire on the price of a packet of pasta: things like that. And my shoemaker said he got tired of her always saying she'd pay him next time and then saying, when she came in again, that she already had, until he wouldn't let her into the shop any more.' She saw his expression and added, ‘I don't know what's true in all of this. You know how it is: once a person gets a reputation for being one
way or another, then stories begin to be told, and it no longer much matters whether the thing ever happened or not.'

Brunetti had long been familiar with this phenomenon. He'd known people who had been killed because of it, and he'd known people to take their own lives because of it.

Signora Gismondi went on. ‘Sometimes I'd hear her screaming at the women who worked for her, hear it from across the
campo
. She'd shout terrible things: accuse them of lying or stealing. Or she'd complain about the food they made for her or the way they'd made the bed. I could hear it all, at least during the summer if I didn't use the Discman. Sometimes I'd see them at the window and I'd wave or smile at them, the way you do. Then if I saw one of them on the street I'd say hello or nod.' She looked to one side as if she'd never previously bothered to consider why she had done this. ‘I suppose I wanted them to know that not all people were like her, or that not all Venetians were.'

Brunetti nodded again, acknowledging the legitimacy of this desire.

‘One of them, she was from Moldavia, asked me one day if I had any work for her. I had to tell her I already had a cleaning woman, who had worked for me for years. But she looked so desperate that I asked around and found a friend whose cleaning woman had left, so she took her and she liked her, said she was honest and hard working.' She smiled and shook her head at her own garrulousness. ‘Anyway, Jana
told her that all she was being paid was seven thousand lire – that was before the Euro – an hour.' Failing to keep the indignation from her voice, she said, ‘That's less than four Euros an hour, for God's sake. No one can live on that.'

Admiring her for her anger, Brunetti asked, ‘Do you think this is what she was paying Signora Ghiorghiu?'

‘I've no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised.'

‘What was her response when you gave her all that money?' he asked.

Embarrassed, she said, ‘Oh, she was pleased, I think.'

‘I'm sure she was,' Brunetti said. ‘How did she react?'

Signora Gismondi looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, and said, ‘She started to cry.' She paused, then added, ‘And she tried to kiss my hand. But I couldn't have that, not there on the street.'

‘Certainly not,' Brunetti agreed, trying not to smile. ‘Can you remember anything else about Signora Battestini?'

‘She used to be a secretary, I think, in one of the schools, I'm not sure which one, elementary, I think. But she must have retired more than twenty years ago. Maybe even more than that, when it was so easy to retire.' Brunetti wasn't sure, but he thought there was more reproach than regret as she said this.

‘And her family? You said you spoke to a niece, Signora.'

‘Yes, and she didn't want to have anything to
do with her. There was a sister in Dolo, presumably the mother of the niece, but the last time I called, I got the niece, and she told me her mother had died.' She considered all of this and added, ‘I got the feeling she didn't want to hear anything about her aunt until she was dead, too, and she could inherit the house.'

‘You said you spoke to a lawyer, didn't you, Signora?'

‘Yes, Dottoressa Marieschi. She has an office, at least it's listed in the phone book, down in Castello somewhere. I've never met her, just spoken to her on the phone.'

‘How did you locate all these people, Signora?' he asked.

Detecting only curiosity in his tone, she answered, ‘I asked around and I looked them up in the phone book.'

‘How did you learn the name of the lawyer?'

She considered this for a long time before saying, ‘I called her once, Signora Battestini, and I said I was from the electric company and had to talk to her about a bill that hadn't been paid. She gave me the name of the lawyer and told me to call her, even gave me the number.'

Brunetti gave her an admiring smile but stopped himself from praising her for what was no doubt a crime of some sort. ‘Do you know if this lawyer handles all of her affairs?'

‘She made it sound like that when I spoke to her,' she answered.

‘Signora Battestini or the lawyer herself?'

‘Oh, I'm sorry. Signora Battestini. The lawyer
was, well, she was the way lawyers always are: she gave very little information and made it sound as though she had very little control over her client.'

That sounded as good a description of the ways of lawyers as Brunetti had ever heard. Instead of complimenting her on her sagacity, however, he asked, ‘In all you've learned, is there anything you think might be important?'

Smiling, she said, ‘I'm afraid I have no idea of what might be important or not, Commissario. All the neighbours really said was that she was terrible, and if any of them mentioned the husband, it was to say he was an ordinary man, nothing special at all, and that they were not happy together.' He waited for her to comment on the unlikelihood of anyone's finding happiness with Signora Battestini, but she did not.