No one spoke for at least a minute, then Griffoni started. ‘Signora Toso, we came because of Dottoressa Donato’s call. She said you wanted to see the police.’
The woman looked at Griffoni, then Brunetti, and then back at Griffoni. She nodded. She could have been thirty, or she could just as easily have been fifty. The flesh had fled her face, leaving behind the bones and the skin. The perfection of both still showed amidst the ruins of her beauty. The darkest of brown eyes looked at them as if from caverns. Grey circles surrounded them, reminding Brunetti of the eyes of lemurs he had seen in a television documentary years ago. Her nose, although still straight and fine, had been honed into a beak, its surface scabby and dry. Only her mouth retained its old beauty: lush, red, full, and now rigid in the grip of some spasm Brunetti did not want to consider.
Griffoni did not speak, and Brunetti did not move. He noticed two small lumps under the red blanket, a bit below where her waist must be. Not wanting to be seen staring at her face, he stared at the lumps while he waited for one of the women to speak. Could there be some medical apparatus hidden there? Some means of injecting and removing fluids – what a horrible word – from her body? The size of apples, they lacked that fruit’s roundness and were covered with what looked like large bumps, on one of them lined up in a row, on the other fewer and larger. The silence remained in the room, as did his eyes on the lumps.
One moved. It stopped before Brunetti was sure of what he had seen, but he was certain it had moved. And then the other. The bumps seemed to undulate and then grew still again. Then, alarmingly, one began to move towards the other, scuttling across her body and yanking a noise from the horrified Brunetti. It was only then, as one lump was covered and absorbed by the other, that he realized they were her hands. He closed his eyes. When he opened them, one of her hands was on top of the covers.
‘Signora?’ he heard, and Griffoni’s voice drew him back to normality. ‘Signora?’ she repeated.
‘Sì?’ the woman in the bed whispered with an almost imperceptible nod.
‘We’ve come to hear what you want to tell us.’
Brunetti looked at Signora Toso, whose eyes were closed. Her chest rose once, twice, and then she opened her eyes. ‘The money,’ she finally said.
‘What about the money?’ Griffoni asked calmly, as though they were two old friends meeting for a coffee and a chat about their children.
‘He said yes,’ she gasped. Then, perhaps seeing their confusion, ‘He took it.’
‘When was that, Benedetta?’ Griffoni asked.
Signora Toso shook her head minimally. ‘I don’t remember,’ she began and then took two deep breaths before adding, ‘time.’
‘I see,’ Griffoni said, leaning forward. ‘It must be hard. To remember.’
Signora Toso looked at the other woman. Her lips moved; Brunetti had no idea if she was trying to smile or to speak. Finally she managed to say, ‘Birthday.’
‘I see,’ Griffoni said amiably, then asked, as if from mere politeness, ‘Yours?’
Signora Toso nodded again, though with less energy. Brunetti watched her hands contracting and expanding.
‘What was it for, Benedetta?’ Griffoni asked.
‘Clinic.’ The sound of the word was followed by an intake of breath that forced Brunetti to clench his teeth.
Griffoni looked around the room. ‘This clinic, do you mean?’
‘No. Before.’
‘Before you came here?’
Signora Toso’s hands relaxed. ‘Sì. Sì.’
‘That’s good, that he found the money,’ Griffoni said and placed her hand lightly on Signora Toso’s, as if to enforce her approval.
Signora Toso stared at her but said nothing. Her breathing grew heavy, painful to hear, and then slowed and grew normal again. Brunetti saw her hand turn upwards and reach for Griffoni’s.
‘Did he tell you where he got it?’ Griffoni asked with real interest and not a little admiration.
‘Work.’
‘What work did he do?’ she asked. Somehow, Brunetti realized, Griffoni had become this woman’s oldest, closest friend and now spoke with the liberty earned by secrets exchanged, promises made and kept all through their lives.
Again, that minimal shake of the head.
‘Wouldn’t he tell you?’ When Signora Toso didn’t answer, Griffoni went on instantly, ‘My husband’s like that, too. You know how men are: they never trust us about money.’ It was only now that Brunetti noticed the pure Veneto cadence in Griffoni’s voice, the scarcity of ‘l’s’, and that she’d tossed the ‘r’ out of the word marito. How did she do it?
‘Bad,’ Signora Toso whispered so softly that Brunetti wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly.
‘Bad not to tell you?’ Griffoni asked.
‘Bad money.’ Saying that, Signora Toso’s mouth fell open, her power of speech replaced by a rough snoring noise.
Still holding the other woman’s hand, Griffoni leaned back in her chair, turned to Brunetti and raised her chin in silent interrogation. He patted the air with his palm and put his finger to his lips.
Brunetti realized only then how hot he was. He tried to lift his right leg, but it was glued to the chair by sweat. More sweat ran down his back, sucked out of him by the heat radiating from the plastic. He braced his palms on the sides of the seat and started to push himself to his feet, his trousers slobbering as they pulled free. He stood and pinched the cloth at the sides of both legs and pulled until he felt it loosen from the back of his thighs.
Signora Toso whipped her head to the left, perhaps in an attempt to escape from questions, or from pain. Brunetti sat down, fearing she would open her eyes and see him looming over the bed. What was ‘bad money’? he wondered.
Someone opened the door without knocking, and Domingo came into the room. He smiled and nodded to both Griffoni and Brunetti, then walked over to the bed. He replaced the now-empty bottle of clear liquid with a full one. Seeing that Griffoni was holding Signora Toso’s hand, he reached under the covers to find her other wrist and held it long enough to take her pulse. When he was finished, he left her hand on top of the covers, made a note on the chart at the foot of the bed, picked up the empty bottle, and left the room as silently as he had entered it.
Brunetti and Griffoni sat, both staring at the sleeping woman, waiting to see what would happen. Neither risked speaking. The door opened again; Domingo came in with two glasses of water on a tray. He offered one to Griffoni, who thanked him softly, then one to Brunetti, who did the same. Both of them drank quickly and set the glasses back on the tray. The young man took them silently and left the room.
When Brunetti glanced back at the woman on the bed, her eyes were open again and she was staring at him. He forced his face to soften and nodded in her direction. Because he was no more than an assistant, he turned his attention towards the person in charge, Griffoni. Signora Toso, he noted, did the same.
Quite as if there had been no intermission in their conversation, Griffoni asked, ‘Why was it “bad money”, Benedetta?’ Listening to her mild voice, Brunetti gave thanks that it was Griffoni who was doing the questioning, not he, with his masculine impatience and unexamined assumption that his questions had to be answered.