‘No one objects to the person who’s telling them how wonderful they are,’ Vianello observed, a sentiment to which the barman Bambola assented with a deep nod. After a moment’s thought, Vianello asked, ‘What’s between them? Is he a relative? An employee?’ The Inspector sipped at his coffee, having finished his brioche some time before, then continued. ‘Only someone who wants something would dare that sort of flattery. But he’d have to know her well.’
Brunetti had already considered this. Only someone who knows us well knows how best to flatter us, knows which virtues we’d like to have attributed to us and which not. Paola was deaf to compliments about her appearance but was a sucker for anyone who praised her for being quick-witted. And he knew that he himself was impervious to comments about the quality of his work, while praise of his understanding of history or taste in books was sure to please him.
‘He praised her generosity,’ Brunetti explained. ‘Her largesse,’ he added, putting the second word in audible quotation marks. He had no idea of the truth of this praise, for he knew little or nothing about the activities of the Contessa other than what had been said the night before. In fact, he knew very little about her at all. Largesse, however, was a quality seldom attributed to Venetians, noble or commoner.
‘You know anything about her, or the family?’ he asked Vianello.
‘Lando-Continui,’ Vianello repeated, leaning back against the bar to study the people going past towards the bridge that led to the Greek church. ‘There’s a notary in Mestre: a cousin of mine went to him when he sold his apartment.’ People crossed the bridge, either disappearing deeper into Castello or heading the opposite way, towards the bacino or San Marco.
‘There’s something else, but I can’t remember it,’ Vianello added, disappointed at his failure to recall the past. ‘If it’s important, you could ask Signorina Elettra.’ Her talents would surely surpass his memory. ‘It was something unpleasant, years ago, but I can’t remember what.’
‘I’ve known her for a long time,’ Brunetti said, ‘but I’ve never had more than a superficial conversation with her. Last night was the first time I had any real sense of her. She’s not as stiff as I thought she was.’ But then he added, ‘She does grumble, though.’
‘About?’
‘The way our fair city has been turned into a kasbah,’ Brunetti said in a sing-song voice. ‘No longer the city in which I played as a child.’ Then, returning to his normal voice, ‘Things like that.’
‘Doesn’t sound much different from what we say ourselves, does it?’ Vianello suggested. Bambola turned away, but not before Brunetti saw his smile.
After quelling his initial resentment at the comment, Brunetti said, ‘Maybe.’ Was it the unconscious recognition of his own lamentations that had made him not like the Contessa’s?
He reached into his pocket and put two euros on the counter. Bambola’s employer, Sergio, the owner of the bar, had raised the price of coffee to one euro, ten, but not for anyone who worked at the Questura. They would continue to pay one euro, ‘until’, as Sergio was wont to say, ‘they do away with the euro and we can go back to lire, when things will cost less’. No one at the Questura had the courage to dispute this with Sergio and all were happy to pay only one euro for coffee.
Back in his office, he found a sealed manila envelope on his desk, the signature of his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, scrawled across the flap.
He opened it and pulled from it six plastic folders containing the latest reports from those officers who were permitted to hire and pay informers. Brunetti knew that other officers had informal, sometimes not very licit, relationships with criminals, and would pay their contacts with favours or cigarettes or, he feared, confiscated drugs, should any be kept back when they fell into the hands of the police. The six officers, five men and one woman, whose reports he read every two months, however, passed to their contacts money from the Ministry of the Interior, receipts for which were clipped to their reports, every euro carefully recorded, though there was no way the sums on them could be verified.
Consider the first, a receipt from a restaurant for 63.40 euro, at the bottom of which was carefully penned in, ‘6.40 euro: tip’. Seventy euros was what it cost to learn, according to what was written in the report, that Afghan refugees were being carried into the country on trucks coming from Greece, information that could be picked up for free on any street corner in Mestre or, for that matter, read at least once a week in the pages of Il Gazzettino. The same officer reported that he had been told by a friend who owned a tobacco kiosk in Mogliano that a client, whose name was given, had offered to sell him some jewellery: the only condition of purchase was that he not reveal the source. This had cost twenty euros.