The old man bent, bracing himself with one hand, and lowered himself slowly on to the bench. Brunetti left a space between them and sat, and the birds scuttled up to Morandi’s feet. Automatically, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out some pieces of grain, which he tossed far out into the campo. Startled by the motion of his arm, some of the birds took flight, only to land amidst the grains just as the ones that had decided to run arrived. They did not squabble or dispute but all set to picking up as much as they could.
Morandi glanced at Brunetti and said, ‘I come here most days, so they know me by now.’ As he spoke, the birds began to approach, but he sat back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘No more. I have to talk to this gentleman now.’ The birds peeped their protest, waited a moment, then abandoned him in a group on the arrival of a white-haired woman on the other side of the campo.
‘I think I should tell you, Signor Morandi,’ Brunetti began, believing it best to clear his conscience, ‘I wasn’t there about the pension.’
‘You mean she’s not going to get an increase?’ he asked, leaning forward and turning to Brunetti.
‘There was no mistake: she’s already getting her pension for those years,’ Brunetti said.
‘So there won’t be an increase?’ Morandi asked again, unwilling to believe what he heard.
Brunetti shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, Signore.’
Morandi’s shoulders sank, then he pushed himself upright against the back of the bench. He looked across the campo, dappled in the afternoon sun, but to Brunetti it seemed as though the old man was looking across a wasteland, a desert.
‘I’m sorry to have got your hopes up,’ Brunetti said.
The old man leaned aside and placed a hand on Brunetti’s arm. He gave it a weak squeeze and said, ‘That’s all right, son. It’s never been right since she first started to get it, but at least this time we were able to hope a little bit.’ He looked at Brunetti and tried to smile. There were the same broken veins, the same battered nose and ridiculous hair, but Brunetti wondered where the man he had seen in the casa di cura had gone, for surely this was not the same one.
The anger or fear or whatever it was had disappeared. Here in the sunlight, Morandi was a quiet old man on a park bench. Perhaps, in the manner of a bodyguard, Morandi reacted only in defence of whom he was sent to guard and for the rest was content to sit and toss seeds to the little birds.
What then to make of his criminal record? After how many years did a record cease to matter?
‘Are you a policeman?’ Morandi surprised him by asking.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said. ‘How did you know?’
Morandi shrugged. ‘When I saw you there in the room, that was the first thing I thought, and now that you tell me you weren’t there for the pension, that’s what I go back to thinking.’
‘Why did you think I was a policeman?’ Brunetti wanted to know.
The old man glanced at him. ‘I thought you’d come. Sooner or later,’ he said, speaking in the plural. He shrugged, placed his palms on his thighs, and said, ‘I didn’t think it would take you this long, though.’
‘Why? How long has it been?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Since she died,’ Morandi answered.
‘And why did you think we’d come?’
Morandi looked at the backs of his fingers, at Brunetti, and then again at his hands. In a much softer voice, he said, ‘Because of what I did.’ That said, he stiffened his elbows and leaned forward, arms braced on his thighs. He wasn’t getting ready to get to his feet, Brunetti could see: he looked at the ground. Suddenly the birds were back, looking up at him and peeping insistently. Brunetti thought he didn’t see them.
The old man, with visible effort, pulled himself up and leaned against the back of the bench once again. He looked at his watch and abruptly got to his feet. Brunetti stood. ‘It’s time. I have to go and see her,’ Morandi said. ‘Her doctor came at five, and the sisters said I could see her after he spoke to her. But only for a few minutes. So she doesn’t have to worry about anything he said.’
He turned and walked in the direction of the casa di cura, just on the other side of the campo. The building had only the front door, so Brunetti could easily have waited in the campo, but he fell into step with Morandi, who seemed not to notice or, if he did, to mind.
This time, in deference to the other man’s age, Brunetti took the elevator, though he hated them and felt trapped inside. The Toltec waited in front of the elevator, smiled at Morandi, nodded to Brunetti, and took the old man’s arm to lead him through the door of the nursing home and down the corridor.
Left alone, Brunetti went into a small sitting room that had a view of the front door. He sat on a precarious chair and picked up the single magazine – Famiglia cristiana – that lay on a table. At a certain point, he found himself confronted with the need to choose between reading the Pope’s catechism lesson for the week or the recipe for a cheese and ham pie. The ingredients were just being slipped into the oven when he heard footsteps coming into the room.
One strand of Morandi’s hair had come loose and snaked down on to the shoulder of his jacket. He looked at Brunetti with stunned eyes. ‘Why do they have to tell the truth?’ he asked as he came in, voice harsh and desolate. Brunetti got quickly to his feet and took the man under the arm, holding him up and leading him to the overstuffed sofa.
Morandi sat in the centre, made his right hand into a fist, and pounded it a few times into the seat next to him. ‘Doctors. To hell with them all. Sons of bitches, all of them.’ With each phrase, his face grew more mottled as his fist came crashing down on to the cushion, and with each phrase he came more to resemble the man Brunetti had seen in Signora Sartori’s room.
Finally spent, he fell against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Brunetti returned to his chair, closed the magazine and put it back on the table. He waited, wondering which Morandi would open his eyes, the soft-hearted San Francesco or the enraged enemy of doctors and bureaucrats?
Time passed, and Brunetti used it to construct a scenario. Morandi expected the police to come and find him after Signora Altavilla’s death: and for what reason other than guilt? At the memory of those bruises, Brunetti turned his eyes to Morandi’s hands: broad and thick, the hands of a worker. If the sight of a stranger in Signora Sartori’s room or the thought that a doctor would tell the truth could catapult him into such anger, how was he likely to respond to… to what, exactly? What form had Signora Altavilla’s dangerous honesty taken? Had she encouraged him to confess their help in the deceit of Madame Reynard without considering its effect on Signora Sartori?
Brunetti’s mind ran into a wall. Oddio, what if Madame Reynard’s will had not been falsified? What if the handwriting had indeed been hers, and she had really wanted her lawyer – who certainly would have been as courteous and helpful as Lucifer himself – to have it all? The fact that Cuccetti was a liar and a thief in the eyes of half of Venice meant nothing if the old woman had sincerely wanted him to inherit her estate. Must only the good be rewarded?
Why, then, the apartment, and whence the Dillis and the Tiepolos and the Salanthé? Brunetti looked at the old man, who appeared to have fallen asleep, and the desire swept over him to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he told the truth.