Commissario Brunetti - 11 - Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon

Author:Donna Leon
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780099415183
Publisher: ARROW
Published: 2003-09-15T10:20:07+00:00

17

Paola was asleep when he got home, and though she swam up long enough to ask him how it had gone with her father, she was so dull that Brunetti simply said that they'd talked. He kissed her and went to see if the kids were home and in bed. He opened Raffi's door after knocking lightly and found his son lying face down, sprawled in a giant X, one arm and one foot hanging off the edge of the bed. Brunetti thought of the boy's heritage: one grandfather come back from Russia with only four toes and half a spirit, the other willing executioner of unarmed boys. He closed the door and checked on Chiara, who was neatly asleep under unwrinkled covers. In bed he lay for some time thinking about his family, and then he slept deeply.

The next day he went first to Signorina Elettra's office, where he found her besieged by regiments of paper advancing across her desk.

'Am I meant to find all of that promising?' he asked as he came in.

'What was it Harold Carter said when he could finally see into the tomb, "I see things, marvellous things"?'

'Presumably you don't see golden masks and mummies, Signorina,' Brunetti responded.

Like a croupier raking in cards, she swept up some of the papers on her right and tapped them into a pile. 'Here, take a look: I've printed out the files in her computer.'

'And the bank records?' he asked, pulling a chair up to her desk and sitting beside her.

She waved disdainfully at a pile of papers on the far side of her desk. 'Oh, it was as I suspected’ she said with the lack of interest with which one mentions the obvious. The bank never called the attention of the Finanza to the deposits, and it seems they never troubled to ask the bank.'

'Which means what?' he asked, though he had a fair idea.

'The most likely possibility is that the Finanza simply never bothered to cross-check her statements with the reports on money transfers arriving in the country.'

'And that means?' he asked.

'Negligence or bribery, I'd say.'

'Is that possible?'

'As I have told you upon more than one occasion, sir, when you are dealing with banks, anything at all is possible.'

Brunetti deferred to her greater wisdom and asked, 'Was this difficult for you to get?'

'Considering the laudable reticence of the Swiss banks and the instinctive mendacity of our own, I suppose it was more difficult than usual.'

Brunetti knew the extent of her friendships, and so let it go at that, always uneasy at the thought of the information she might some day be asked to provide in return, and whether she would.

These are her letters’ Signorina Elettra said, handing him the pile of papers. The dates and the sums mentioned correspond to bank transfers made from her account.'

He read the first, to the orphanage in India, saying that she hoped her contribution would help the children have better lives, and then one to a home for battered women in Pavia, saying much the same thing.

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