Transient Desires (Commissario Brunetti #30)(57)

‘Good morning, Signorina,’ he said. ‘Is the Vice-Questore in his office?’

‘Ah,’ she began, using the tone she reserved to announce Vice-Questore Patta’s absence from the Questura. ‘I’m afraid Dottor Patta won’t be in until tomorrow afternoon.’ Brunetti stood in front of her desk, smiling to show that no explanation was necessary.

She folded the newspaper closed and set it aside before asking, ‘Is there some way I might be of help?’

Brunetti did not hesitate to take advantage of the situation. ‘Commissario Griffoni and I spoke to a Capitano Alaimo at the Guardia Costiera two days ago,’ he began, pleased to see Signorina Elettra drag a notebook towards her. ‘I’d like you to have a look.’

‘At?’ she asked, looking up, already curious.

‘Anything you can find,’ he began, ‘that might be interesting to us. All I know is that he’s Neapolitan.’

From long experience, Brunetti knew that Signorina Elettra viewed a piece of information much in the way a shark viewed a leg dangling from a surfboard.

‘I’ll start with his performance record, then,’ she said. She was not crouched on one knee, palms resting on the surface of the track, but the faster rhythm of her speech seemed to suggest to Brunetti that he hasten from her office.

Before he did, however, she informed him that she had received a call from the hospital in Mestre, requesting that the commissario in charge of the investigation of the accident in the laguna involving the two young American women give them a call. Signorina Elettra told Brunetti that she had taken the liberty of assuring the person who called that Commissario Brunetti would certainly call as soon as he could. He nodded his thanks.

In the corridor, he dialled Griffoni’s number and, when she answered, asked, ‘Coffee?’

When Griffoni came into the bar, she stopped at the counter and gave her order to Bamba, the Senegalese immigrant who had pretty much taken over the work of Sergio, the proprietor, then came back to slip into the booth opposite Brunetti.

Before he could bring her up to date, Bamba came to the table and set a coffee in front of Brunetti and a pot of hot water in front of Griffoni. ‘We don’t have any verbena, Dottoressa, so I brought you these,’ he said, placing a saucer with four or five tea bags of different varieties in front of her. He nodded and went back to his place behind the counter.

‘No coffee?’ Brunetti asked, tearing open the envelope and pouring in the sugar.

Hand poised over the saucer, Griffoni said, ‘If I had any more, I’d take wing and fly back to my office: wouldn’t even have to use the stairs.’

‘The window’s too small,’ Brunetti said. ‘You’d never fit in.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said, dropping one of the bags into the hot water. Then she asked, ‘What did you learn yesterday?’

He told her about his conversations with Borgato and his nephew, she laughing with delight as he described his costume and mouse-like behaviour. Then he told her what he had learned from Duso, but she surprised him by asking no questions. Further, she seemed impatient for him to finish.

He stopped speaking and asked, ‘What is it you want to tell me?’

She smiled. ‘Am I that obvious?’

Brunetti nodded, as if to give right of precedence to a person who arrived at a narrow calle just as he did.

‘I had a look for Borgato, to find out where he was during those years he was gone,’ she said, struggling to sound calm.

‘And?’ Brunetti encouraged her.

‘He never changed his residence, was always registered at his address here,’ she said. ‘So I began thinking of the traces I might leave if I were living somewhere and not resident there.’

‘And what did you come up with?’ Brunetti asked, happy to help her towards her revelation.

‘Something a Venetian would never think of,’ she answered.

‘Do I get three guesses?’

‘It wouldn’t help, Guido, believe me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Venetians don’t drive, and more importantly, because you don’t drive too fast or go through stop signs or get into automobile accidents.’

Brunetti’s face was blank for a moment and then lit up with a smile.

‘While we feckless Neapolitans do all of those things,’ she went on. ‘And more, so I’d naturally think of them,’ she said, lifting Brunetti’s spirit with her casual joke about the customs of Neapolitans.

‘You found him? Oh, wonderful. Where?’

‘Castel Volturno,’ she said, then added, though it hardly needed saying, ‘home of the Nigerian Mafia.’

‘Tell me.’

‘He was in an accident – ran into the back of a car that was stopped at a red light – fourteen years ago. Then he was stopped for running a red light in Villa Literno, about ten kilometres from Castel Volturno. That was twelve years ago, and then for speeding on a state highway near Cancello, ten kilometres away. That was ten and a half years ago. Since then, there’s been nothing, and he never had any real trouble with the police.’

‘That’s a sign,’ Brunetti interrupted to say.

Griffoni nodded. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ she asked.

‘I am if you’re thinking he’s involved with the Nigerians, in which case the police would leave him alone.’