Authors: Donna Leon
‘Which is?’ he asked.
‘A Ravenna-based company which supplies uniforms, boots and backpacks to the military, along with other things.’
‘What other things?’
‘I’ve not been able to break into their computer yet,’ she said, clearly still in no doubt that this entire conversation was protected by the same dispensation. ‘But it looks like they supply anything soldiers can wear or carry. It would seem, as well, that they serve as subcontractors for companies that sell food and drink to the military.’
‘And all of this means?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Millions, sir, millions and millions. It’s a money fountain, or it could be. After all, the military spends about seventeen billion Euros a year.’
‘But that’s insane,’ he blurted out.
‘Not for anyone who has a chance to take any of it home, it’s not,’ she said.
‘Edilan-Forma?’
‘Even so,’ she replied, and then returned to the information she had gathered. ‘At one point, the committee examined the contracts with Edilan-Forma because one of the committee members had raised questions about them.’
Though he barely thought it necessary, Brunetti asked, ‘Moro?’
She nodded.
‘What sort of questions?’
‘The parliamentary minutes mention pricing for a number of items, also the quantities ordered,’ she said.
‘And what happened?’
‘When the committee member resigned, the questions were not repeated.’
‘And the contracts?’
‘They were all renewed.’
Was he mad, he wondered, to find this so normal and so simple to understand? Or were they all mad, everyone in the country, in a way that demanded the papers lying on Signorina Elettra’s desk could be read in only one way? The public purse was a grab bag, and public spoil the supreme gift of office. Moro, stupid and transparently honest Moro, had dared to question this. Brunetti was no longer in any doubt that the answer to Moro’s questions had been given, not to him, but to his family.
‘If you haven’t already begun it, could you take a closer look at Toscano and Filippi?’
‘I was just beginning that when you came in, sir,’ she said. ‘But my friend in Rome, the one who works in military records, has been sent to Livorno for a few days, so I won’t have access to their records until the end of the week.’
Failing to remind her that she had been standing at the window, looking out sadly at her past or her future, when he came in, not beginning to work on anything, Brunetti thanked her and went back to his office.
22
BY FORCE OF
will, Brunetti kept himself at the Questura until the normal time for leaving. He occupied himself with reading and initialling reports, then decided that he would read only every second one, then every third, though he scrupulously wrote a careful ‘GB’ on the bottom of all of them, even the unread ones. As his eyes ran over the words, the columns of numbers, the endless spew of facts and figures that were as closely related to reality as Anna Anderson to Tsar Nicholas II, Brunetti’s thoughts remained anchored to Moro.
Just before leaving, he called Avisani in Palermo.
Again, the journalist answered with his name.
‘It’s me, Beppe,’ Brunetti said.
‘It’s not even a day, Guido. Give me some time, will you?’ the journalist said waspishly.
‘I’m not calling to nag, Beppe. Believe me. It’s that I want to add two names to the list,’ Brunetti began. Before Avisani could refuse, he continued, ‘Colonello Giovanni Toscano and Maggiore Marcello Filippi.’
After a long time, Avisani said, ‘Well, well, well. If there’s salt, there’s pepper; oil, there’s vinegar; smoke, fire.’
‘And Toscano, Filippi, I assume?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Very much so. How is it you’ve stumbled on those two?’
‘Moro,’ Brunetti said simply. ‘They’re both tied to the committee Moro was working on when he left Parliament.’
‘Ah yes. Procurement,’ Avisani said, stretching the word out as if better to enjoy the sound of it.
‘Do you know anything?’ Brunetti asked, though he was sure his friend did.
‘I know that Colonello Toscano was encouraged to leave his position as consultant to the parliamentary committee and soon after that decided to retire from the Army.’
‘And Filippi?’
‘My sense is that the Maggiore decided his position had become too obvious.’
‘What position was that?’
‘Husband to the cousin of the president of the company from whom the Paratroopers obtained most of their supplies.’
‘Edilan-Forma?’ Brunetti inquired.
‘Haven’t you been a busy boy?’ Avisani asked by way of compliment.
Honesty demanded that Brunetti make it clear that it was Signorina Elettra who had been a busy girl, but he thought it best not to reveal this to a member of the press. ‘Have you written about this?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Time and time again, Guido,’ Avisani answered with heavy resignation.
‘And?’
‘And what are people supposed to do? Pretend to be surprised, pretend this isn’t the way they do business, too? Remember what that television comic said when they started the Mani Pulite investigation?’
‘That we were all guilty of corruption and should all spend a few days in jail?’ Brunetti asked, remembering Beppe Grillo’s frenetic admonition to his fellow citizens. He was a comic, Grillo, and so people were free to laugh, though what he said that night had been in no way funny.
‘Yes,’ Avisani said, pulling back Brunetti’s attention. ‘I’ve been writing articles about this for years, about this and about other agencies of the government that exist primarily to siphon money to friends and relatives. And no one cares.’ He waited for Brunetti to react, and then repeated, ‘No one cares because they all think that, sooner or later, they might get a chance at some of the easy money, so it’s in their best interests that the system stay the way it is. And it does.’
Since Brunetti knew this to be the case, there was no reason to object to his friend’s remarks. Returning to Avisani’s original reaction, he asked, ‘Is that the only way they’re linked?’
‘No. They graduated in the same class from the Academy in Modena.’
‘And after that?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I don’t know. I doubt it’s important. What is, is that they knew one another well and that both were eventually involved in procurement.’
‘And both retired?’
‘Yes, pretty much at the same time.’
‘Where’s Filippi, do you know?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I think he lives in Verona. You want me to find out about him?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much?’
‘Whatever you can.’
‘And I suppose you’ll pay me the same as you always do?’ Avisani asked with a laugh.
‘You don’t want to eat my wife’s cooking?’ Brunetti asked with fake indignation, then, before Avisani could answer, Brunetti said, ‘I don’t want you to go to any trouble with this, Beppe.’
This time it was the journalist who laughed. ‘Guido, if I worried about going to trouble, or, for that matter, getting into trouble, I doubt I could do this job.’
‘Thanks, Beppe,’ Brunetti said, and the warmth of the other man’s parting laugh told him that their friendship remained as strong as ever.
He went downstairs, and though he tried to resist the siren lure of Signorina Elettra and her computer, he failed. There was no light on in her office, and the darkened screen of the computer suggested she had not yet found what he had asked her to get. There was nothing else for him to do, short of rifling through her desk, so he went home to his family and his dinner.
The next morning he was at the Questura before eight, and when his detour past Signorina Elettra’s office showed that she was not yet in, he continued to the officers’ room, where he found Pucetti at a desk, reading a magazine. The young man got to his feet when he saw Brunetti. ‘Good morning, Commissario. I was hoping you’d come in early.’
‘What have you got?’ Brunetti asked. He was vaguely conscious of motion behind him, and he saw its reflection on Pucetti’s face, from which the smile disappeared. ‘Only these forms, sir,’ he said, reaching across his desk to the one beside it and gathering up two stacks of papers. ‘I think they need your signature,’ he said, his voice neutral.
Imitating his tone, Brunetti said, ‘I’ve got to go down to see Bocchese for a minute. Could you take them up and put them on my desk for me?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ Pucetti said, setting one stack, and then the second, on top of his magazine and tapping them together to straighten the edges. When he picked them up, the magazine had disappeared.
Brunetti turned towards the door and found it blocked by Lieutenant Scarpa. ‘Good morning, Lieutenant,’ Brunetti said neutrally. ‘Is there something I can do for you?’
‘No, sir,’ the lieutenant answered. ‘I wanted to speak to Pucetti.’
Brunetti’s face lit up with grateful surprise. ‘Ah, thank you for reminding me, Lieutenant: there’s something I need to ask Pucetti about.’ He turned to the young man. ‘You can wait for me in my office, Officer. I won’t be a minute with Bocchese.’ With a friendly smile at the lieutenant, Brunetti said, ‘You know how Bocchese loves to get an early start,’ suggesting this was common knowledge at the Questura, despite the well-known truth that Bocchese spent the first hour of his day reading
La Gazzetta dello Sport
and using his email address at the Questura to place bets in three countries.
Silently, the lieutenant moved aside to let his superior pass. Brunetti waited just outside the door until Pucetti joined him and then closed the door of the office behind them.
‘Oh, I suppose Bocchese can wait a few minutes,’ Brunetti said resignedly. When they got to his office, Brunetti closed the door behind them and while he took off his overcoat and hung it in the closet, said, ‘What did you learn?’
Pucetti kept the papers tucked under his arm and said, ‘I think there’s something wrong with the Ruffo boy, sir. I went over there yesterday and hung around in the bar down the street from the school, and when he came in I said
hello
. I offered him a coffee, but it seemed to me he was nervous about talking to me.’
‘Or being seen talking to you,’ Brunetti suggested. When Pucetti agreed, Brunetti asked, ‘What makes you think there’s something wrong with him?’
‘I think he’s been in a fight.’ Not waiting for Brunetti to question him, Pucetti went on. ‘Both of his hands were scraped, and the knuckles of his right hand were swollen. When he saw me looking at them, he tried to hide them behind his back.’
‘What else?’
‘He moved differently, as though he were stiff.’
‘What did he tell you?’ asked Brunetti as he sat down behind his desk.
‘He said he’s had time to think about it and he realizes now that maybe it was suicide, after all,’ Pucetti said.
Brunetti propped his elbows on his desk and rested his chin on his folded hands. Silently, he waited to hear not only what Pucetti had been told but what he thought of it.
In the face of his superior’s silence, Pucetti ventured, ‘He doesn’t believe that, sir, at least I don’t think he does.’
‘Why?’
‘He sounded frightened, and he sounded as if he were repeating something he’d had to memorize. I asked him why he thought it might have been suicide, and he said it was because Moro had been acting strangely in the last few weeks.’
Pucetti
paused, then added, ‘Just the opposite of what he told me the first time. It was as if he needed some sign from me that I believed him.’
‘And did you give it to him?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Of course, sir. If that’s what he needs to feel safe, and I think it is, then it’s better he have it.’
‘Why’s that, Pucetti?’
‘Because it will cause him to relax, and when he relaxes he’ll be even more frightened when we talk to him again.’
‘Here, do you mean?’
‘Downstairs, yes. And with someone big in the room with us.’
Brunetti looked up at the young man and smiled.
The obvious choice to serve the role of enforcer was Vianello, a man who had perfected the art of disguising his essential good nature behind expressions that could vary from displeased to savage. He was not, however, to be given the chance to employ his repertory on Cadet Ruffo, for when the Inspector and Pucetti arrived at the San Martino Academy an hour later, the cadet was not in his room, nor did the boys on his floor know where to find him. It was the Comandante who brought illumination by telling them, when their inquiries finally led them to his office, that Cadet Ruffo had been granted leave to visit his family and was not expected to return to the Academy for at least two weeks.
When asked, the Comandante remained vague as to the precise reason for Cadet Ruffo’s
leave
, saying something about ‘family matters’, as if that should satisfy any curiosity on their part.
Vianello knew that the student list was in Signorina Elettra’s possession, a list that would surely provide the address of Ruffo’s parents, and so it was nothing more than interest in the Comandante’s response that prompted Vianello to ask him to provide it. He refused, insisting that the addresses of the students constituted privileged information. Then he announced that he had a meeting to attend and asked them to leave.
After the two men returned to the Questura and reported this encounter to Brunetti, he asked Pucetti, ‘What was your general impression of the cadets?’
‘I’d like to say they were frightened, the way Ruffo was when I talked to him the last time, but they weren’t. In fact, they seemed angry that I’d ask them anything, almost as if I didn’t have a right to talk to them.’ The young officer shrugged in confusion about how to make all of this clear. ‘I mean, they’re all seven or eight years younger than I am, but they acted like they were speaking to a kid or someone who was supposed to obey them.’ He looked perplexed.
‘An enlisted man, for example?’ Brunetti asked.
Not following, Pucetti asked, ‘Excuse me, sir?’
‘As if they were speaking to an enlisted person? Is that how they spoke to you?’
Pucetti nodded. ‘Yes, I think so, as if I was supposed to obey them and not ask questions.’
‘But that doesn’t tell us why they didn’t want to talk,’ Vianello interrupted.