The Girl of his Dreams

25

'You think he believed you?' Paola asked Brunetti that evening as they sat in the living room, the children in their rooms and the house quiet with the late-night stillness that encourages people to abandon the day and go to bed.

‘I don't know what he believed,' Brunetti said, taking another sip of the plum liqueur that one of his paid informants had given him for Christmas the year before. The man, who owned three fishing boats in Chioggia, had proven a very useful source of information on the traffic in contraband cigarettes coming in from Montenegro, and so Brunetti and his colleagues in the Guardia di Finanza never expressed any curiosity about the source of the seemingly endless supply of distilled liqueurs -all in unmarked bottles – with which he brightened the holiday season of numerous members of the forces of order.

'Tell me again exactly what you said to him’ Paola asked but then interrupted herself, holding up her glass: 'You think he makes this himself?'

'I've no idea’ Brunetti admitted. 'But it's certainly better than anything I've ever bought that had a tax stamp on it.'

'Pity, then’ Paola said.

'Pity what?'

'That he doesn't make it legally'

'So he could make more of it?' Brunetti asked, really not understanding.

'Something like that, I suppose’ Paola said. 'Or that we could buy it openly and eliminate your sense that you owe him a favour every time he gives it to you.'

'He's been paid enough’ Brunetti said, giving no explanation of what that might mean. 'Besides, you know how hard it is to open a business, especially one where he'd have to get the licences to produce alcohol. No, he's better doing it the way he does.'

'Protected by the police?' she asked, using the vocal equivalent of a poke with a stick.

'And the Guardia di Finanza’ Brunetti added complacently. 'Don't forget them.'

She emptied her glass, set it on the table, and said, this time employing the voice she used when she had been bested, 'All right. But going back to this Gypsy, tell me again exactly what you said to him.'

Brunetti cradled the small glass between his hands. 'That she had a disease when she died. Which is true enough’ he added, realizing that it was only with Paola that he could feel comfortable talking about this. 'And that a doctor would be able to tell who she got the disease from by looking at blood types.' Brunetti had spoken impulsively, hoping that Rocich would somehow have heard enough garbled talk about disease transmission to have some vague inkling that it was possible to trace the source of a disease in this manner. And that he knew what sort of disease the girl had or was likely to have had.

'But how could anyone believe something like that?' Paola asked, making no attempt to disguise her scepticism.

Brunetti could only shrug. 'There's no telling what people will believe.'

Paola considered this for some time, then said, 'You're probably right. God knows what's percolating in the heads of most people.' She gave a weary shake of her own. 'I've got students who think you can't get pregnant the first time you have sex.'

'And I've arrested people who think you can get AIDS from hairbrushes,' Brunetti added.

'So what will you do?'

'No one's claimed the body,' Brunetti said, not by way of answer to her question; more just to say it and see what she thought. 'Or at least no one had yesterday, when I spoke to Rizzardi.'

'What's her family waiting for?'

'God knows,' Brunetti answered. Her family.

'What will happen?'

Brunetti had no answer. The idea that a parent could know that their child was lying dead, no matter where, and not rush to the body was one he found impossible to comprehend. This was the basis of Hecuba's final lament, he knew: ‘I, homeless, childless, and the one to lay you in your grave, you so young and miserably dead.' He had read that just last night and had been forced to put the book aside, the play unfinished.

He would have to call Rizzardi's office again to see if the child's body had been taken away. He knew the urge to do it immediately was futile: no one would be at the morgue at this hour, and it was hardly a matter about which he could disturb the pathologist at home.

'Guido?' Paola asked. 'Are you all right?'

'Yes, yes,' he said, dragging his spirit back to their conversation. 'I was thinking about the girl.' He still lacked the courage to tell Paola he had been dreaming about the child, as well.

'What will happen?'

'If?'

'If no one claims her.'

'I don't know,' he admitted. It had happened in the past, when bodies found in the water had not been identified: then it became the responsibility of the city to see to burying them, a mass said over their nameless corpse in the hope that they were Catholic and perhaps in the added hope that this would make some difference.

In this case, however, where the dead person had been identified and yet remained unclaimed, Brunetti had no idea how to proceed: indeed, he had no idea if a correct procedure existed. Even this heartless state had not been able to imagine people who would not claim their dead. He had no idea of the child's religion. He knew that Muslims buried their dead quickly, and Christians would certainly have done it by now, yet still she rested unburied in her drawer in the hospital's morgue.

Brunetti set his glass on the table and stood. 'Shall we go to bed?' he asked, suddenly feeling very tired.

‘I think we'd better,' Paola agreed. She raised a hand, inviting him to take it and help her to her feet. She had never done this before, and he was unable to disguise his surprise. Seeing this, she said, 'You are my shield and buckler, Guide' Usually, she said such things as jokes, but tonight she sounded serious.

'Against what?' he asked as he drew her towards him.

'Against my sense that it's all a dreadful mess and there's no hope for any of us,' she said calmly and led him to their bed.

The first thing he did when he got to the Questura the next morning was call Rizzardi and ask about the body of the girl.

'She's still here’ the pathologist answered. ‘I had a call from some woman in the social services, saying that it was not their responsibility, and we had to take care of it'

'What does that mean?'

'We informed the Treviso police. They said they'd send someone to the camp to speak to the parents.'

'But do you know if they did?' Brunetti asked.

Rizzardi answered, 'All I'm sure of is that we – the hospital administration, that is – sent the parents a letter, telling them that the child's body was here and that they could come and get her.' The doctor paused for a moment, then added, 'The letter gave the name of the company that takes care of it.'

'Of what?'

'Moving the dead.'

'Oh.'

'First to Piazzale Roma by boat, then in a hearse to wherever they have to go on the mainland.'

Brunetti had nothing to say to this.

Finally Rizzardi said, 'But no one's come in here to get her.'

Brunetti stared at the wall of his office and tried to understand what he had just been told. Into his silence, Rizzardi said, 'It's never happened before, not that I know of. I've spoken to Giacomini – he's the only magistrate I could think of who might know about something like this – and he said he'd look into it and see what the procedure is.'

'When did you talk to him?' Brunetti asked.

'Yesterday afternoon.'

'And?'

'And he's a busy man, Guido.' As he heard the mounting impatience in Rizzardi's voice, the fear came to Brunetti that the doctor, who spent his days surrounded by the silent dead, would say that the girl was not going anywhere or that he would somehow speak lightly of the situation. He could not abide the thought of that possibility, not in a man of whom he thought so highly, so he said, 'Let me know when you hear, Ettore, all right?' and, without waiting for an answer, replaced the phone.

He sat quietly for some time, looking first at the papers on his desk, reading the words and reading them again, waiting for them to make some sort of sense. But they remained letters and words on paper and nothing more. The wall offered no more than the papers. He knew Giacomini, a serious man: surely he would find the proper way to proceed.

Brunetti remembered having written down the name of the doctor: Calfi. Rocich had seemed too surprised to have had time to lie. He called down to the officers' room and asked for Pucetti. When the younger man answered, Brunetti said, 'I'd like you to find me the address and phone number of a doctor named Calfi. Somewhere out by the nomad camp. I don't know his first name.'

'Yes, sir,' Pucetti said and hung up.

Brunetti waited. He should have thought of the doctor long before this, as soon as Rizzardi had told him the results of the autopsy. A doctor would have treated them all: the girl, the mother, the other children, perhaps even Rocich himself. How else would the man have known the doctor's name?

After only a few minutes, Pucetti called back with the doctor's first name, Edoardo; his address, in Scorze; and the phone number of his surgery.

Brunetti dialled the number and, after seven rings, got a recorded voice asking him to describe his problem and leave his name and number, and the doctor would call him back. 'Describe my problem,' Brunetti said while he waited for the machine to click to recording mode. 'Dottor Calfi, this is Commissario Brunetti from Venezia. I'd like to ask you some questions about patients of yours. I'd be very grateful if you would call me here at the Questura.' Brunetti gave his direct number and hung up.

Which of the family were his patients? Did he know that the girl was infected with gonorrhoea? Did her parents know? Had he any idea how she might have contracted the disease? As Brunetti ran through the list of questions he wanted to ask, his thoughts turned to the doctor who had cared for his family when he and his brother were children. As he recalled him, his mother slipped back into his memory, for she had always stayed with him those few times he had been sick as a child. She had always brought him mugs of hot water, lemon and honey, telling him it was nature's best way to fight a cold, or flu, or just about anything that went wrong with him. To this day, it was the remedy he insisted on using with his own children.

His reflections were interrupted by a call from Signorina Elettra, who, with thinly veiled contempt for the ease with which the Department of Public Instruction allowed its files to be 'accessed', told Brunetti that both of the Fornari children were excellent students, the son already accepted at the Bocconi Business School in Milano. He thanked her for the information, got up, and went down to the officers' room in search of Vianello, who had chosen to accompany one of his informants the day before when she spoke to a magistrate and had thus been unable to accompany Brunetti to the nomad camp.

When Brunetti turned into the final flight of steps, he saw Vianello at the bottom. 'You coming up?' Brunetti asked.

'Yes’ the Inspector answered, starting up the steps towards him. 'I'd like to know what happened when you went out there.'

As they walked slowly back to Brunetti's office, he told Vianello about his visit to the camp, concluding with his phone call to the doctor. Vianello listened closely and, when he was finished, complimented Brunetti for having thought to call the tow trucks.

Brunetti was flattered that Vianello saw the humour, as well as the ingenuity, of this.

'And you think she heard you?' Vianello asked.

'She must have’ Brunetti answered. 'She was standing just behind the door: we were less than two metres from her.'

'If she understands Italian.'

'One of the children was there, too’ Brunetti explained. 'They're more likely to speak it.'

Vianello grunted in acknowledgement and followed

Brunetti into the office. As he took his seat, the Inspector said tiredly, 'There are times when I find myself wishing we had more tow trucks’

To do what?' Brunetti asked.

'Move them somewhere else.'

Brunetti stopped himself from staring, but he did say, 'I've known you to say kinder things, Lorenzo.' At Vianello's shrug, he added, 'I've never heard you say you don't like them.'

‘I don't.' Vianello shot back, voice entirely level.

Surprised to hear not so much the statement as the heat with which Vianello gave it, Brunetti didn't bother to disguise his reaction.

Vianello stretched his legs out in front of him and appeared to study his shoes for a moment, then looked at Brunetti and said, 'All right: what I said is an exaggeration. It's not that I particularly dislike them, more that I don't particularly like them.'

'It still sounds strange to hear you say it,' Brunetti insisted.

'And if I said I didn't like white wine? Or spinach? Would that sound strange?' Vianello asked, his voice moving up a notch. 'And would your voice have that same air of disappointment that I'm not thinking the proper thoughts or feeling the proper sentiments?' Brunetti declined to answer, and Vianello went on. 'So long as I say that I don't like a thing, an object, or even a movie or a book, it's perfectly all right to say it. But as soon as I say I don't like Gypsies, or Finns or people from Nova Scotia, for God's sake, all hell breaks loose.'

Vianello glanced at Brunetti, giving him the opportunity to say something if he chose; when he still remained silent, the Inspector went on. ‘I told you, I don't feel any active dislike towards them; I simply feel no active sympathy.'

'There are wiser ways to express your lack of feeling’ Brunetti suggested.

His words might have been ironic, but the tone was not, as Vianello clearly heard. 'You're right’ the Inspector answered, 'that's what I should say: it's the acceptable way to talk. But I think I'm tired, tired to death, of always having to be careful to express the right sympathies, of always having to make sheep's eyes and say pious things whenever I'm confronted with one of life's victims.' Vianello considered this and then added, 'It's almost as if we were living in one of those Eastern European countries, years ago, where you had one way to speak publicly and a different way to speak honestly.'

'I'm not sure I follow.'

Vianello looked up and met Brunetti's eyes. ‘I think you do.' When Brunetti looked away, the Inspector continued, 'You've listened to enough people, the way they say all those things about how we can't have bad feelings and have to accept minorities and respect their rights and be tolerant. But as soon as they've finished saying it, if they trust you, they say what they're really thinking.'

'Which is?' Brunetti enquired mildly.

'That they're fed up with watching this country turn into a place where they don't feel safe and where they lock their doors when they run next door to a neighbour's to borrow a cup of sugar, and whenever the prisons are full the government says some noble words about giving people another chance to insert themselves into society and tosses the doors open to let the killers out.' Vianello stopped as suddenly as he had started.

After what seemed like a long time had passed, Brunetti asked, 'Will you say the same things tomorrow?'

Vianello shrugged and finally looked across at him and said, 'Probably not.' He smiled and gave a different kind of shrug. 'It's hard, never to say these things. I think I'd feel less guilty about thinking them if I could admit to them once in a while.'

Brunetti nodded.

Vianello gave himself a shake, much in the manner of a large dog getting to its feet. Then, his voice steady with friendship, he asked, 'What do you think's going to happen?' He sounded entirely normal, and Brunetti had the strange sensation that he had just watched Vianello's spirit slip back into his body.

‘I have no idea,' Brunetti said. 'Rocich is a ticking bomb. The only way he knows how to deal with anything is by hitting at it. The boss or the leader, or whatever he is, is too powerful for him to try going up against. That leaves the woman and the children.' He hesitated an instant, but then decided that he would say what he was thinking, 'and he'd be violent even if he weren't a Gypsy.'

‘I agree,' Vianello said.

‘I don't want to call attention to the woman. Can't call her in here for questioning, can't go back there and try to talk to her.'

'And so?'

'And so I wait for this doctor to call me. And after he does or I get tired of waiting for him to call, I go back and talk to the Fornaris again and have another look at their apartment.'