Wilful Behaviour (23 page)

Brunetti took it from her and went over to the light of the window to read. Guzzardi declared that all of his possessions were to pass directly to his son, Benito and, in the event that his son should predecease him, to his son’s heirs. It could not have been more simple. No mention was made of Hedi
Jacobs
, and no indication was given as to what his estate might consist of. ‘His wife? Is there any sign she contested this?’ he asked, holding up the document.

‘There’s no record in Filipetto’s files that she did.’ Before Brunetti could ask, she added, ‘And that probably means that she divorced him before he died or didn’t know or didn’t care that he did die.’

Brunetti went back to her desk. ‘The son?’

‘The only mention of him is what you were told, sir, that his mother took him to England after the war.’

‘Nothing more?’ Brunetti couldn’t disguise his irritation that a person could so easily disappear.

‘I’ve sent a request to Rome, but all I have to give them is his name, not even an exact date of birth.’ They shared a moment’s despair at the likelihood of getting any sort of a response from Rome. ‘I’ve also contacted a friend in London,’ she went on, ‘and asked him to check the records there. It seems the British have a system that works.’

‘When can you expect an answer?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Long before I can expect anything from Rome, certainly.’

‘I’d like you to contact the university and the Ufficio Anagrafe and see what information they have about Claudia Leonardo. Her parents’ names should be listed, perhaps their dates of birth, which you might send to London to see if that will help.’ He thought of the German grandmother, but before he asked Signorina Elettra to begin to
investigate
the possibilities that created, he would see what there was to find here in the city and in London.

As he went back upstairs he remembered a passage from an ancient poem Paola had insisted on reading to him years ago. The lines described, if he recalled correctly, a dragon that sat on top of what the poet described as treasure trove, breathing fire and destruction at all who came near. He wasn’t sure why it came to him, but he had a strange vision of Signora Jacobs nesting upon her treasures, willing destruction upon anyone who tried to extract anything from her hoard.

Even before he got to his office, he changed his mind and went back downstairs and out of the Questura. It was rash, he knew, and he shouldn’t go back to Signora Jacobs’s so soon after being dismissed, but she was the only person who could answer his questions about the treasures that surrounded her. He should have left word where he was going; he should have sat at his desk and answered the phone and initialled papers; no doubt he should also have reprimanded Signorina Elettra for her lack of deference to Lieutenant Scarpa.

Given the hour and the crowds of tourists who flooded the boats, he decided to walk, sure that he could avoid the worst gaggles of them until he neared Rialto and equally certain that their numbers would decrease again once he got past the
pescheria
. So it proved, but the brief period he spent pushing and evading his way through the streets between San Lio and the fish market soured
his
humour and brought his ever-simmering dislike of tourists to the boil. Why were they so slow and fat and lethargic? Why did they all have to get in his way? Why couldn’t they, for God’s sake, learn to walk properly in a city and not moon about like people at a country fair asked to judge the fattest pig?

His mood lifted as soon as he was free of them and moving through empty streets toward Campo San Boldo. He rang the bell, but there was no answer. Remembering a technique Vianello had employed to awaken people who fell asleep with the television on too loud, he pressed his thumb against the bell and left it there while he counted to a hundred. He counted slowly. There was still no answer.

The man in the tobacco shop had said he took the cigarettes up to her, so Brunetti went back, showed his warrant card and asked if the man had a key to the apartment.

The man behind the counter seemed not at all interested that the police wanted to speak to Signora Jacobs. He reached into his cash drawer and pulled out a single key. ‘All I have is the key to the
portone
downstairs. She always let me into the apartment.’

Brunetti thanked him and said he’d bring the key back. He used it to open the heavy ground floor door and went up the steps that led to her apartment. He rang the bell, but there was no answer. He knocked on the door, but still there was no sound from inside. He employed Vianello’s technique again.

Later, he realized that he knew, in the silence that expanded across the landing when he took his thumb off the bell: knew that the door would be unlocked and would open when he turned the handle. And he supposed he also knew that he would find her dead, fallen or thrown from her chair, a thin thread of blood trailing from her nose. If anything surprised him, it was to discover that he had been right, and when he realized he felt nothing stronger than that, he tried to trace the cause. He accepted then that he hadn’t liked this woman, though the habit of compassion for old people had been strong enough to disguise his dislike and convince him that what he felt was the usual pity and sympathy.

He pulled himself from these reflections and called the Questura, asking to speak to Vianello: he explained what had happened and asked him to organize a crew to come to the apartment.

When Vianello hung up, Brunetti clasped his hands behind his back, embarrassed at having got this idea from a television crime show, and began to walk through the apartment. He moved towards the back and found that, aside from the room in which she had received him, there was only a bedroom, plus a kitchen and a bath. Both of these surprised him by being spotless, a fact which spoke of the existence of someone who came to clean.

The bedroom walls held what looked like celestial maps, scores of them of all sizes, framed in black and looking as if they came from the same collection or the hand of the same framer. Some
were
coloured in pastels, some in the original black and white. He flicked on the light to study them better. From knee height to a metre below the very tall ceiling, they hung in disorderly rows. He recognized what had to be a Cellarius, counted the ones above and below it and realized there were two complete sets. Only an expert could put a price on them, but Brunetti knew they would be worth hundreds of millions. There was a single, monk-like bed, a tall
armadio
against the wall, and a nightstand beside the bed that held a reading lamp, a few bottles of pills and a glass of water on a tray and, when Brunetti moved close enough to read the title, a German bible. A threadbare silk carpet stood beside the bed, a pair of slippers neatly tucked under the hem of the bedspread. There was no sign or scent that she smoked in this room. The wardrobe held only two long skirts and another woollen shawl.

Back in the living room he used a credit card to slide open the bottom drawer of the desk. Then, working up from the bottom, he slid them all open and looked at, but did not touch, the contents. One drawer held neat piles of bills, another what looked like photograph albums, stacked on one another in diminishing order of size; the top one held more bills and a few newspaper clippings.

Brunetti, staring around the room, didn’t know whether to call it spartan or monastic.

He went back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. A litre of milk, a piece of butter inside a covered glass dish, the heel of a loaf of bread. The
cabinets
held just as little: a jar of honey, some salt, butter, tea bags and a tin of ground coffee. Either the woman didn’t eat or her meals were brought to her in the same way as were her cigarettes.

In the bathroom there was a plastic container for false teeth, a flannel nightgown hanging on the back of the door, some toiletries, and four bottles of pills in the cabinet. Returning to the living room, he chose not to look at the dead woman, knowing he would have too much of that once the scene of crime team arrived.

He moved to the window and stood with his back against it and tried to make some sense out of what he saw. The room contained, he was sure, billions of lire in art works: the Cézanne that stood to the left of the door opposite him might be worth that just by itself. He studied the walls, looking for a paler rectangle that would speak of a newly empty space. No thief, no matter how ignorant a thief, could fail to see the value of the things in this room; yet there was no sign that anything had been removed, nor was there any indication that Signora Jacobs had died of anything other than a heart attack.

He knew, from long experience, the danger of imposing preconceived notions on to an investigation; it was one of the first things he warned new inspectors to guard against. Yet here he was, prepared to reject any evidence, no matter how persuasive, that suggested accidental or natural death. His bones, his radar, his very soul suspected that Signora Jacobs had been murdered, and though there was no sign of violence, he had little
doubt
that the killer was the same person who had murdered her adoptive granddaughter. He remembered Galileo and his response to the threats marshalled against him. ‘
Eppur si muove
,’ he whispered and went to the door to meet Vianello and the other officers.

Logic dictates that a task should become easier, and its execution faster, the more often it is performed. Thus the examination of the locus of death should be performed with greater speed each time it is necessary, especially in a case such as this, where an old woman lies dead beside her easy chair, with no sign of violence and no sign of forced entry. Or perhaps, Brunetti reflected, the passing of time is a completely subjective experience, and the photographers and fingerprint technicians were moving with great alacrity. Certainly, as he asked them to photograph and dust, he was aware of their unspoken scepticism at his treating this as a crime scene. What could be easier and more self-explanatory: an old woman, sprawled on the floor, a bottle of pills rolled halfway across the room from her?

Rizzardi, when he showed up, appeared puzzled that he, and not the woman’s doctor, had been called, but he was too good a friend of Brunetti’s to question this. Instead, he pronounced her dead, examined her superficially, said it looked as though she had died the night before, and gave no further sign that he found Brunetti’s request for an autopsy strange.

‘If I’m asked to justify it?’ the doctor asked, getting to his feet.

‘I’ll get a magistrate to order it, don’t worry,’ Brunetti answered.

‘I’ll let you know,’ the doctor said, bending to brush ash off the knees of his trousers.

‘Thanks,’ Brunetti replied, glad to be spared even the doctor’s passive curiosity. He knew he could not find the words with which to describe what he felt about Signora Jacobs’s death, and he realized how weak any attempt to explain would be.

It could have been hours later that Brunetti found himself alone in the apartment with Vianello, but the light that came in from the windows was still late morning light. He looked at his watch, astonished to see that it was not yet one o’clock and that all of this interior time had passed, and all of these things had happened.

‘Do you want to go for lunch?’ Brunetti asked, conscious as he addressed Vianello in the more familiar ‘tu’ of how comfortable it felt. There were few people on the force with whom he would more like to make this grammatical declaration of equality.

‘Well, we’re not going to eat what’s in the kitchen, are we?’ Vianello asked with a smile then added, serious, ‘Let’s have a look around here first, if you like.’

Brunetti grunted his agreement but stayed where he was, studying the room and thinking.

‘What are we looking for?’ Vianello asked him.

‘I’ve no idea. Something about the paintings and the other things,’ he said, with a broad wave that took in all the objects in the room. ‘A copy of her
will
or an indication of where it might be. Name of a notary or a receipt from one.’

‘Papers, then?’ Vianello asked, switching on the light in the corridor and placing himself with his back to one of the shelves of books. At Brunetti’s muttered agreement, Vianello reached up to the first book on the top shelf and pulled it down. Holding it in his right hand, he flipped it open with the left and leafed through all of the pages from the back to the front, then switched it to the other hand and leafed through it the other way. Satisfied that nothing lurked between its pages, he stooped and placed it on the floor to the right of the bookcase and pulled down the next book.

Brunetti took the papers from the top drawer of the desk through to the kitchen and set them on the table. He pulled out a chair, sat, and drew the stack of papers towards him.

Some time later – Brunetti didn’t even bother to look at his watch to see how long it had been – Vianello came into the kitchen, went to the sink and washed a film of dust from his hands, then ran the water until it was cold and drank two glasses.

Neither man spoke. Later, Brunetti heard Vianello go into the bathroom and use the toilet. Mechanically, he read through every receipt and piece of paper, placing them to one side after he had done so. When he was finished, he went back to the desk and took the papers from the bottom drawer and sat down to read. Arranged in precise chronological order, they told the story of the occasional sale of one of the apartments owned by
Signora
Jacobs, the first more than forty years ago. Every twelve years or so, she sold an apartment. There was no bank book, so Brunetti could assume only that payment had been made in cash and kept in the apartment. He took a letter from the gas company and turned it over. Assuming that the declared price of a house, as was usual, was something approximating half of the real price, Brunetti quickly calculated that the money from the sale of each house should have lasted from eight to ten years, given what he could see of her bills for utilities and rent. He found it strange that a woman who had once owned several apartments would live in a rented one, but he had the rent receipts to prove it.