'But you have proof?' Brunetti asked.
Tassini gave a sly smile. 'I've started a file, and I keep everything in there. The new job gives me the time to find the final proofs. I'm close. I'm very close.' He glanced across at Brunetti, his eyes filled with the illumination of one who has discovered the truth. 'I put it all in there. I read a lot, and it helps me understand things. I keep track of everything.' With a sly glance he added, 'But we'll have to wait and see, won't we?'
'Why?'
Brunetti was not sure Tassini had heard his question, for by way of answer he said, 'Our greatest men knew about these things long before we did, and so now I do, too.' Ever since his daughter had been mentioned, Tassini had become increasingly agitated. When he started to talk of his file and the information he kept there, a bemused Brunetti decided it was time to deflect him back to the subject of De Cal.
He lowered his head in a gesture that suggested deep thought, then looked across at Tassini and said, 'I'll have a look at our file as soon as I get back to the Questura.' He shifted his cup to one side to indicate a change of subject and went on, 'I'd like to ask you some questions about your employer, Giovanni De Cal.'
His question brought Tassini up short, and the man could not disguise his surprise and disappointment, just when he had begun to talk about the great men who agreed with him. He took a not very clean handkerchief out of his left-hand pocket and blew his nose. He stuffed it back in his pocket and asked, 'What do you want to know?'
'It's been reported to us that Signor De Cal has threatened the life of his son-in-law. Do you know anything about this?'
'Well, it makes sense, doesn't it?' Tassini asked.
Brunetti gave a smile of mild confusion and said, 'I'm not sure I follow your reasoning.' He smiled again to emphasize his belief that there was some thread of reasoning here, although he in fact suspected there might be none.
'To keep him from inheriting the fornace.'
'But isn't it his daughter who would inherit?' Brunetti inquired.
'Yes. But then Ribetti would be free to go there’ Tassini said, as if this were something so obvious it hardly needed mentioning.
'Doesn't he go there now?' Behind them, a telephone rang; not a telefonino, a real telephone.
Tassini laughed. 'I heard the old bastard talk about killing him once. That was just talk, but if he saw him at the fornace, he'd probably try.'
Just as Brunetti started to ask Tassini to explain this remark, the barman called, 'Giorgio, it's your wife. She wants to talk to you.'
Panic crossed Tassini's face and he scrambled to his feet. He walked quickly to the bar and took the receiver the barman handed to him. He turned his back on both the barman and Brunetti and hunched over the phone.
As Brunetti watched, Tassini's body relaxed, but only minimally. He listened for some time, spoke again, and then listened for an even longer time. As the conversation progressed, he gradually stood more and more upright until he reached his normal height. He said something and put the phone down, then turned and thanked the barman. He took a few coins out of his pocket and put them on the bar.
He came back to Brunetti and said, 'I have to go.' From the look on his face, he was already gone; he had already forgotten Brunetti or dismissed him as insignificant.
Brunetti pushed his chair back and started to get to his feet, but by the time he was standing, Tassini had already turned and was walking towards the door. He opened it, slipped through it, and shut it behind him.
11
The conversation, interrogation, whatever it was, with Tassini left Brunetti uneasy. He felt cheapened by the way he had deceived the man and by the way he had induced him to speak of his daughter. Who knew what the poor devil suffered because of her? And who knew the effect of the presence of the healthy child: a sense of relief that at least one of them was not afflicted? Or was his health and vitality but part of the daily flagellation that the profundity of the other child's condition caused the father?
Brunetti was neither a religious nor a superstitious man, though if he could have thought of the proper deity, he would have given thanks for the health and safety of his own children. As it was, he was left with a vague sense of unease at their continued good fortune and never ceased to worry about them. Sometimes he viewed this quality in himself with favour and thought of it as feminine; other times he saw it as a form of cowardice and chided himself with being womanly. Paola, not much given to sparing him the rough edge of her tongue, never joked with him about this tendency, certainly an indication that she saw it as central to his being and thus unapproachable.
He carried these unhappy thoughts back to the Questura and, to divert himself from them, went directly to Signorina Elettra's office. Perhaps the Vice-Questore had come up with some new directive suggesting a strategy for dealing with the recidivist adolescents.
She smiled when he came in and asked, 'Did Vianello tell you?'
'Tell me what?'
To come and see me after you spoke to Signor Tassini.'
'No. Nothing. What have you got?'
She picked up a sheaf of papers and waved them, then set them on the desk and started to leaf through them, identifying each as she did: 'The non-arrest report for Signor De Cal; Ribetti's driver's licence application and driving record—it was the only thing about him in our files; Bovo's real arrest record, for assault, though it was six years ago; and copies of the letters Tassini has been sending for more than a year, as well as the medical records for his wife and child.'
There were still a number of papers on the desk when she finished, and he asked, 'And those?'
She looked up with an embarrassed grin and said, 'Copies of De Cal's tax statements for the last six years. Once I start looking for things, it's hard for me to stop.' She smiled with what a less astute person might have mistaken for sincerity.
He nodded to suggest that he, too, understood the frenzy of the hunt, and she said, 'The most interesting are the medical records, especially if you read them in conjunction with Tassini's letters.'
'Do you want to tell me,' he asked seriously, 'or do you want me to read them and then come back and talk about them to see if I find them interesting in the same way you do?'
'I think that would be the best thing’ she said and handed him the papers. 'But I'll come up when you want to look at them together. I'm not sure the Vice-Questore would be pleased, if he should come in and find us discussing documents from a non-case.'
He thanked her, accepted the papers, and went up to his office to read them. Though he trusted her judgement that the first papers were not likely to prove of great interest, he read through them anyway, only to come to the same conclusion. The police report exonerated De Cal from any aggression; Bovo's case was quite the opposite, but things ended when the other man refused to press charges; and Ribetti was revealed to have a blameless driving record.
He turned to the medical records and noticed a few notations and, above the first of them, in Signorina Elettra's hand, 'Barbara checked through these.' Her sister, a doctor, should certainly be able to interpret a medical record, and judging from the pencilled notes in the margin, she had paid close attention.
The story told by the records was a grim one. It began with a pregnant woman who had decided, with her husband, to have her child at home. Even when they were told that the child they were expecting was two children, thus increasing the danger of home delivery, they persisted in their decision. The record of obstetrical visits had a pencilled 'tutto normale' in the margin. Two weeks before the estimated date of delivery, there was an unscheduled obstetrical visit. The record contained a recommendation for a Caesarean, followed by, 'Refused by patient.' The margin contained a lone exclamation point.