Read Online Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon - Free Book Online

but when he did she was no longer there. He heard her in the kitchen, the familiar sounds of water, coffee pot, a chair scraping on the floor. Knotting his tie, he went along there and, as he saw her sitting at her regular place, noticed that two large cups were placed at their normal places on the table. He finished with his tie, bent and kissed the top of her head.
     
    ‘Why do you do that?’ she asked, reaching backwards with her right arm and wrapping it around his thigh. She pulled him towards her.
     
    He leaned against her, but he did not touch her with his hand. ‘Habit, I suppose.’
     
    ‘Habit?’ she asked, already on the way to being offended.
     
    ‘The habit of loving you.’
     
    ‘Ah,’ she said, but anything further was cut off by the hiss of the coffee pot. She poured coffee, added steaming milk and stirred sugar into both cups. He didn’t sit, drank his standing.
     
    ‘What will happen?’ she asked after the first sip.
     
    ‘As it’s your first offence, I suppose there will be a fine.’
     
    ‘That’s all?’
     
    ‘That’s enough,’ Brunetti said.
     
    ‘And what about you?’
     
    ‘That depends on how the papers play it. There are a few journalists who have waited years for something like this.’
     
    Before he could list the possible headlines she said, ‘I know. I know,’ and so he spared them both that.
     
    ‘But there’s an equal chance that you’ll be turned into a heroine, the Rosa Luxemburg of the sex industry.’
     
    Both of them smiled, but there was no attempt at sarcasm.
     
    ‘That’s not what I’m after, Guido. You know that.’ Before he could ask her what it was she was after she said, ‘I just want them to stop it. I want them to be so shamed by what they do that they’ll stop it.’
     
    ‘Who, the travel agents?’
     
    ‘Them, yes,’ she said and returned to her coffee for a while. When it was almost gone she set down the cup and said, ‘But I’d like them all to be shamed by what they do.’
     
    ‘The men who go as sex-tourists?’
     
    ‘Yes, all of them.’
     
    ‘That’s not going to happen, Paola, no matter what you do.’
     
    ‘I know.’ She finished her coffee and got up to make some more.
     
    ‘No,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’ll stop at a bar and get some on the way.’
     
    ‘It’s early.’
     
    ‘There’s always a bar,’ he said.
     
    ‘Yes.’
     
    There was, and he stopped for more coffee, lingering over it so as to delay his arrival at the Questura. He bought the Gazzettino, even though he knew it was impossible that anything could appear until the next day. Still he looked at the first page of the first section, then at the second, the part dedicated to local news, but there was nothing.
     
    There was a different officer at the front door of the Questura: because it was still before eight he had to unlock the door for Brunetti and saluted him as he walked past.
     
    ‘Is Vianello here yet?’ Brunetti asked.
     
    ‘No, sir. I haven’t seen him.’
     
    ‘Tell him I’d like him to come up to my office when he gets in, would you?’
     
    ‘Yes, sir,’ he said and saluted again.
     
    Brunetti took the back steps. Marinoni, the woman just returned from maternity leave, greeted him on the steps, but said only that she’d heard about the man in Treviso and was sorry.
     
    In his office, he hung up his coat, sat at his desk, and opened the Gazzettino. There was the usual: magistrates investigating other magistrates, former ministers making accusations against other former ministers, riots in the capital of Albania, the Minister of Health asking for an investigation of the illegal manufacture of false pharmaceuticals for the Third World.
     
    He turned to the second section and, on the third page, found the story about the death of Signora Iacovantuono. ‘Casalinga muore cadendo per le scale (Housewife dies by falling down the stairs).’ Sure.
     
    He’d heard it all the day before: she fell, the neighbour found