Implicit in Griffoni’s tone was the understanding that she was not a police officer gathering information but a friend trying to find a way to understand so as perhaps to be of help.
Signora Toso stopped moving her head from side to side and gave Griffoni a steady look. Brunetti watched her mouth contract, as if she were straining at a heavy burden. Her eyes closed with the effort, but when she opened them again, they seemed clearer and better focused.
‘It was bad money. I told him no,’ she said in a clear voice. It was her first fully lucid moment, and Brunetti had seen the struggle it took her to achieve it.
He hoped Griffoni would not give in to the impulse to ask questions, but she was already saying, ‘Poor man. But he had to, didn’t he?’ When Signora Toso did not respond, Griffoni asked, ‘You’d do it for him, wouldn’t you?’ Then, upping the ante, she added, ‘Or for your girls.’
‘But …’
Griffoni cut the other woman off sharply. ‘If it gave you more time with the girls, then there’s no “but”, Benedetta.’
Brunetti glanced at his colleague and saw her leaning towards the dying woman, one hand embracing Signora Toso’s, the other anchored to her chair. Her hair had come loose and fell close to the other woman. Signora Toso lifted her hand free of Griffoni’s and placed her fingers around one of the strands. She had time only to smile as she rubbed it between thumb and fingers before her hand fell.
She looked at Griffoni, then at Brunetti, and back towards Griffoni. ‘They killed him,’ she said in a completely normal voice, as if she were commenting on the weather.
‘Who?’ Griffoni asked, unable to hide her surprise but not making it clear whether she was asking about the victim or one of the killers.
‘Vittorio,’ she said. Suddenly her eyes closed and her head fell to one side; then her entire body began to slide from the pillows towards Griffoni. She began to moan and pulled her arms tight to her chest.
Brunetti leaped to his feet and took two steps towards the bed. He grabbed the railing and yanked it up into place, then leaned over the bars and opened his hands to block the motion of the woman in the bed and stop her from crashing against the metal rails.
But Griffoni had been faster and had her hands braced against Signora Toso’s shoulder and ribs. She pulled out one of the pillows and stuffed it between Signora Toso and the railing. The woman didn’t move.
‘I’ll get someone,’ Griffoni said, starting towards the door.
Brunetti remained beside the woman, ready to help her, if he only knew how. He looked away and then back at her. Emaciated, lined, devoured by the disease that was soon to take her, she looked older than he, although he knew she was not yet forty. He longed to provide some comfort, to offer her some solace for all she was about to leave. He wanted to promise that he would see that her children were kept safe, that Vittorio’s killers would be found, that she would soon be at peace, but he wasn’t certain about any of those things. All he knew was that soon she would die, but not before she had suffered even more.
She made another moaning noise and opened her eyes. Brunetti met her glance and tried to smile, wanted to speak. Her eyes wandered and then closed, and she was asleep again, although it was restless sleep, filled with intermittent whimpers.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said to the sleeping woman. Because she was asleep, he assumed she had not heard or understood. But he had promised, and that would have to suffice.
4
Dottoressa Donato hurried into the room, followed by Griffoni. The doctor went to the side of the bed and took Signora Toso’s hand, speaking softly as one would to a troubled child. After a few moments, the moaning stopped and the woman seemed to grow calmer. Dottoressa Donato slipped her fingers down to the pulse and held them there for some time, then nodded and lowered the limp hand to the blanket.
Turning her attention to Brunetti, she asked, her voice tight with anger, ‘What happened?’
From behind him, Griffoni said, ‘We asked her why she wanted to speak to us. She said someone had received “bad money” to pay for a clinic, and then she said that “they” killed Vittorio.’ She waited to see if Brunetti would add anything. When he did not, she said, ‘She had to struggle to speak to us.’
The doctor looked back and forth between the two of them but asked only, ‘Anything else?’
As Griffoni did not speak, Brunetti said, ‘Only that. But we don’t know what clinic or how much money or why the money was “bad”, and we don’t know who Vittorio is, or was.’
‘That was her husband, Vittorio Fadalto,’ Dottoressa Donato said in a level voice. ‘I told you: he died recently. She came to us from a clinic on the mainland. I don’t know anything about money.’
‘How long was she there?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I have no idea, Signore,’ she answered, then added, as if she’d heard the chill in her own voice, ‘It would be in her file.’ She made no offer to give them the information, and Brunetti had the sense not to ask.
‘Thank you, Dottoressa,’ he said. Fearful that they had made a mess of this first interview, he asked, choosing his words carefully to make clear that he saw where power resided, ‘Will you permit us to speak to her again?’
Dottoressa Donato looked at Brunetti and then at Griffoni but took some time before she said, ‘That depends on how she is. This excitement hasn’t been good for her.’ Perhaps reading their expressions as acknowledgement of this, she said, ‘I have your number. I’ll call you.’
Brunetti could do no more than nod in acceptance and turn to Griffoni, who had nothing to say. She extended her hand to the doctor, thanked her for her help, then walked to the door and opened it.
Brunetti too shook hands with the doctor; he and Griffoni left the room and then the hospital. When they emerged on to the riva, the sun assailed them. Brunetti put his hand to his forehead and tried to screen the light. Griffoni took a pair of sunglasses from her bag and put them on but still stepped back inside the entrance to the building in search of shade.
‘You’re the native,’ she said. ‘What vaporetto can we take?’ Before Brunetti could answer, she said, ‘I can’t walk. It will kill me.’
‘And this from a Neapolitan,’ Brunetti said, trying to strike the proper light tone.
Refusing to re-emerge into the sunlight, she spoke to him from the shadow with Sibylline solemnity. ‘In Naples there are tall buildings and narrow, dark, humid streets. There are tunnel-like entrances to courtyards with running fountains.’ A hand emerged from the shadowed entrance and pointed an accusing finger at the canal behind him. ‘Naples does not have wide canals to reflect light, nor white buildings – not even buildings with clean façades. We have darkness and gloom; the sun shines on the sea, but that’s safely removed from the city centre and is enough for us.’
Brunetti had spent much of his life with an intransigent woman, so he recognized one when he encountered her. He said nothing but pulled out his phone and dialled Foa’s number.
The pilot answered on the second ring. ‘Sì, Commissario?’
‘I have an emergency, Foa.’
‘What is it, sir?’ Foa asked with real concern.