Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [67]
‘One night he went to her new apartment with a gun, and he shot her when she opened the door. Then he shot her three more times, and then he shot himself in the head.’ Brunetti remembered the case: four, five years ago.
‘You came back?’
‘Do you mean then, when she was killed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, I came back. And I decided to stay and do something new. If I could.’
‘Alba Libera?’ he asked.
Perhaps hearing scepticism in the way he pronounced the name, she said quickly, ‘Well, it is dawning liberty for most of these women.’ Brunetti nodded, and she went on. ‘It took me two years to set it up. I was already managing an NGO in Rome, so I was familiar with the system and knew how to get the permissions and money from the state.’
He liked the fact that she called it ‘money’ and did not bother with all the euphemisms people used. And now that she was talking about procedure and routine, the angry undertone had disappeared from her voice.
She went on. ‘She should have gone to another city: she could have found work. The law couldn’t protect her, but she didn’t want to believe that. There was no safe house, no place where she could go and live and be with people who would try to protect her.’
Brunetti knew well how little chance a person in danger had of getting any sort of protection from the state. The current government was doing everything in its power to eviscerate the existing witness protection programme: there were too many people saying embarrassing things in court about the Mafia. These witnesses provided information, at least, in return for safety: imagine the chance of protection being offered to a woman who had nothing to offer the state in return.
Perhaps she too heard the tinge of outrage creeping into her voice. ‘I think that’s enough explanation. At least you know why I started it. We have a number of houses, most of them out on terra ferma: here in the city, we have some people who will give a room to the women we send them and not ask questions.’
‘Are they safe here?’
‘Safer than where they come from. Much.’
‘Always? They don’t get found?’
‘It happens,’ she said, pushing her glass to one side without picking it up. ‘Last year, near Treviso, there was a case.’
Brunetti searched his memory but could come up with nothing. ‘What happened?’
‘Her boyfriend found out where she was – we never learned how he did or who told him – and came to the home where she was living and asked for her.’
‘What happened?’
Her face softened, as if to announce that there would be some lessening of misery in this story. ‘The old woman she was staying with – she’s almost ninety – said she didn’t really understand what he was talking about, she lived alone, but told him he looked like a nice boy, so she invited him in to have a coffee. She told me she left him alone in the living room while she went to the kitchen.’
She saw Brunetti’s fear for the old woman, and for the younger one, so she explained, ‘She’s a wily old thing, told me her parents had a Jewish friend live with them all during the war. That’s where she learned the rules she imposes.’ In response to Brunetti’s unspoken question, she said, ‘No items of any sort from their old lives, not even underwear. Everything they wear is kept in her closet and drawers, mixed in with her things. And every time they leave the apartment, no matter for what, they have to leave their room looking as though no one uses it.’
‘Just in case?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Just in case.’
‘What happened?’
‘She took as long as she could making the coffee, and all the while she could hear him moving around in the other rooms. He went into the guest room. Then he came into the kitchen, and she gave him a coffee and some biscuits, and she started talking about her grandchildren and telling him what a fine-looking young man he was, and was he married, and soon he got up and left.’
‘And?’
‘And we moved her to another city that night.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘You’re very efficient.’
‘We have to